by Stephen King
Which you just about are, ma'am, if you but knew it.
To her he must have looked like the biggest pervo of all time. He had to get rid of this. Real or hallucination, it didn't matter - he had to make it quit. If he didn't somebody was going to call either the cops or the men with the butterfly nets. For all he knew, the pretty mother could be making the bank of pay-phones just inside the market's main doors her first stop.
He was just asking himself how one thought away something which was all in one's mind to begin with when he realized it had already happened. Psychic phenomenon or sensory hallucination, it had simply disappeared while he'd been thinking about how awful he must have looked to the pretty young mother. The day had gone back to its previous Indian summery brilliance, which was wonderful but still a long way from that pellucid, all-pervading glow. The people crisscrossing the parking lot of the strip-mall were just people again: no auras, no balloon-strings, no fireworks. Just people on their way to buy groceries in the Shop 'n Save, or to pick up their last batch of summer pictures at Photo-Mat, or to grab a take-out coffee from Day Break, Sun Down. Some of them might even be ducking into the Rite Aid for a box of Trojans or, God bless us and keep us, a SLEEPING AID.
Just your ordinary, everyday citizens of Derry going about their ordinary, everyday business.
Ralph released pent-up breath in a gusty sigh and braced himself for a wave of relief. Relief did come, but not in the tidal wave he had expected. There was no sense of having drawn back from the brink of madness in the nick of time; no sense of having been close to any sort of brink. Yet he understood perfectly well that he couldn't live for long in a world that bright and wonderful without endangering his sanity; it would be like having an orgasm which lasted for hours. That might be how geniuses and great artists experienced things, but it was not for him; so much juice would blow his fuses in short order, and when the men with the butterfly nets rolled up to give him a shot and take him away, he would probably be happy to go.
The most readily identifiable emotion he was feeling just now wasn't relief but a species of pleasant melancholy which he remembered sometimes experiencing after sex when he was a very young man. This melancholy was not deep but it was wide, seeming to fill the empty places of his body and mind the way a receding flood leaves a scrim of loose, rich topsoil. He wondered if he would ever have such an alarming, exhilarating moment of epiphany again. He thought the chances were fairly good . . . at least until next month, when James Roy Hong got his needles into him, or perhaps until Anthony Forbes started swinging his gold pocket watch in front of his eyes and telling him he was getting . . . very . . . sleepy. It was possible that neither Hong nor Forbes would have any success in curing his insomnia, but if one of them did, Ralph guessed he would stop seeing auras and balloon-strings after his first good night's sleep. And, after a month or so of restful nights, he would probably forget this had ever happened. As far as he was concerned, that was a perfectly good reason to feel a touch of melancholy.
You better get moving, buddy - if your new friend happens to look out the drugstore window and sees you still standing here like a dope, he'll probably send for the men with the nets himself.
'Call Dr Litchfield, more like it,' Ralph muttered, and cut across the parking lot toward Harris Avenue.
5
He poked his head through Lois's front door and called, 'Yo! Anybody home?'
'Come on in, Ralph!' Lois called back. 'We're in the living room!'
Ralph had always imagined a hobbit-hole would be a lot like Lois Chasse's little house half a block or so down the hill from the Red Apple - neat and crowded, a little too dark, perhaps, but scrupulously clean. And he guessed a hobbit like Bilbo Baggins, whose interest in his ancestors was eclipsed only by his interest in what might be for dinner, would have been enchanted by the tiny living room, where relatives looked down from every wall. The place of honor, on top of the television, was held by a tinted studio photograph of the man Lois always referred to as 'Mr Chasse'.
McGovern was sitting hunched forward on the couch with a plate of macaroni and cheese balanced on his bony knees. The television was on and a game-show was clattering through the bonus round.
'What does she mean, we're in the living room?' Ralph asked, but before McGovern could answer, Lois came in with a steaming plate in her hands.
'Here,' she said. 'Sit down, eat. I talked with Simone, and she said it'll probably be on News at Noon.'
'Gee, Lois, you didn't have to do this,' he said, taking the plate, but his stomach demurred strongly when he got his first smell of onions and mellow cheddar. He glanced at the clock on the wall - just visible between photos of a man in a raccoon coat and a woman who looked as if vo-do-dee-oh-do might have been in her vocabulary - and was astounded to see it was five minutes of twelve.
'I didn't do anything but stick some leftovers into the microwave,' she said. 'Someday, Ralph, I'll cook for you. Now sit down.'
'Not on my hat, though,' McGovern said, without taking his eyes from the bonus round. He picked the fedora up off the couch, dropped it on the floor beside him, and went back to his own portion of the casserole, which was disappearing rapidly. 'This is very tasty, Lois.'
'Thank you.' She paused long enough to watch one of the contestants bag a trip to Barbados and a new car, then hurried back into the kitchen. The screaming winner faded out and was replaced by a man in wrinkled pajamas, tossing and turning in bed. He sat up and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It said 3:18 a.m., a time of day with which Ralph had become very familiar.
'Can't sleep?' an announcer asked sympathetically. 'Tired of lying awake night after night?' A small glowing pill came gliding in through the insomniac's bedroom window. To Ralph it looked like the world's smallest flying saucer, and he wasn't surprised to see that it was blue.
Ralph sat down beside McGovern. Although both men were quite slim (scrawny might actually have described Bill better), between them they used up most of the couch.
Lois came in with her own plate and sat down in the rocker by the window. Over the canned music and studio applause that marked the end of the game-show, a woman's voice said, 'This is Lisette Benson. Topping our News at Noon, a well-known women's rights advocate agrees to speak in Derry, sparking a protest - and six arrests - at a local clinic. We'll also have Chris Altoberg's weather and Bob McClanahan on sports. Stay tuned.'
Ralph forked a bite of macaroni and cheese into his mouth, looked up, and saw Lois watching him. 'All right?' she asked.
'Delicious,' he said, and it was, but he thought that right now a big helping of Franco-American spaghetti served cold right out of the can would have tasted just as good. He wasn't just hungry; he was ravenous. Seeing auras apparently burned a lot of calories.
'What happened, very briefly, was this,' McGovern said, swallowing the last of his own lunch and putting the plate down next to his hat. 'About eighteen people showed up outside WomanCare at eight-thirty this morning, while people were arriving for work. Lois's friend Simone says they're calling themselves The Friends of Life, but the core group are the assorted fruits and nuts that used to go by the name of Daily Bread. She said one of them was Charles Pickering, the guy the cops caught apparently getting ready to firebomb the joint late last year. Simone's niece said the police only arrested four people. It looks like she was a little low.'
'Was Ed really with them?' Ralph asked.
'Yes,' Lois said, 'and he got arrested, too. At least no one got Maced. That was just a rumor. No one got hurt at all.'
'This time,' McGovern added darkly.
The News at Noon logo appeared on Lois's hobbit-sized color TV, then dissolved into Lisette Benson. 'Good afternoon,' she said. 'Topping our news on this beautiful late-summer day, prominent writer and controversial women's rights advocate Susan Day agrees to speak at the Civic Center next month, and the announcement of her speech sparks a demonstration at WomanCare, the Derry women's resource center and abortion clinic which has so polarized--'
<
br /> 'There they go with that abortion clinic stuff again!' McGovern exclaimed. 'Jesus!'
'Hush!' Lois said in a peremptory tone not much like her usual tentative murmur. McGovern gave her a surprised look and hushed.
'- John Kirkland at WomanCare, with the first of two reports,' Lisette Benson was finishing, and the picture switched to a reporter doing a stand-up outside a long, low brick building. A super at the bottom of the screen informed viewers that this was a LIVE-EYE REPORT. A strip of windows ran along one side of WomanCare. Two of them were broken, and several others were smeared with red stuff that looked like blood. Yellow police-line tape had been strung between the reporter and the building; three uniformed Derry cops and one plainclothesman stood in a little group on the far side of it. Ralph was not very surprised to recognize the detective as John Leydecker.
'They call themselves The Friends of Life, Lisette, and they claim their demonstration this morning was a spontaneous outpouring of indignation prompted by the news that Susan Day - the woman radical pro-life groups nationwide call "America's Number One Baby-Killer" - is coming to Derry next month to speak at the Civic Center. At least one Derry police officer believes that's not quite the way it was, however.'
Kirkland's report went to tape, beginning with a close-up of Leydecker, who seemed resigned to the microphone in his face.
'There was no spontaneity about this,' he said. 'Clearly a lot of preparation went into it. They've probably been sitting on advance word of Susan Day's decision to come here and speak for most of the week, just getting ready and waiting for the news to break in the paper, which it did this morning.'
The camera went to a two-shot. Kirkland was giving Leydecker his most penetrating Geraldo look. 'What do you mean "a lot of preparation"?' he asked.
'Most of the signs they were carrying had Ms Day's name on them. Also, there were over a dozen of these.'
A surprisingly human emotion slipped through Leydecker's policeman-being-interviewed mask; Ralph thought it was distaste. He raised a large plastic evidence bag, and for one horrified instant Ralph was positive that there was a mangled and bloody baby inside. Then he realized that, whatever the red stuff might be, the body in the evidence bag was a doll's body.
'They didn't buy these at Kmart,' Leydecker told the TV reporter. 'I guarantee you that.'
The next shot was a long-lens close-up of the smeared and broken windows. The camera panned them slowly. The stuff on the smeared ones looked more like blood than ever, and Ralph decided he didn't want the last two or three bites of his macaroni and cheese.
'The demonstrators came with baby-dolls whose soft bodies had been injected with what police believe to be a mixture of Karo syrup and red food-coloring,' Kirkland said in voice-over. 'They flung the dolls at the side of the building as they chanted anti-Susan Day slogans. Two windows were broken, but there was no major damage.'
The camera stopped, centering on a gruesomely smeared pane of glass.
'Most of the dolls split open,' Kirkland was saying, 'splattering a substance that looked enough like blood to badly frighten the employees who witnessed the bombardment.'
The shot of the red-smeared window was replaced by one of a lovely dark-haired woman in slacks and a pullover.
'Oooh, look, it's Barbie!' Lois cried. 'Golly, I hope Simone's watching! Maybe I ought to--'
It was McGovern's turn to say hush.
'I was terrified,' Barbara Richards told Kirkland. 'At first I thought they were really throwing dead babies, or maybe fetuses they'd gotten hold of somehow. Even after Dr Warper ran through, yelling they were only dolls, I still wasn't sure.'
'You said they were chanting?' Kirkland asked.
'Yes. What I heard most clearly was "Keep the Angel of Death out of Derry."'
The report now reverted to Kirkland in his live stand-up mode. 'The demonstrators were ferried from WomanCare to Derry Police Headquarters on Main Street around nine o'clock this morning, Lisette. I understand that twelve were questioned and released; six others were arrested on charges of malicious mischief, a misdemeanor. So it seems that another shot in Derry's continuing war over abortion has been fired. This is John Kirkland, Channel Four news.'
'"Another shot in -"' McGovern began, and threw up his hands.
Lisette Benson was back on the screen. 'We now go to Anne Rivers, who talked less than an hour ago to two of the so-called Friends of Life who were arrested in this morning's demonstration.'
Anne Rivers was standing on the steps of the Main Street cop-shop with Ed Deepneau on one side and a tall, sallow, goateed individual on the other. Ed was looking natty and downright handsome in a gray tweed jacket and navy slacks. The tall man with the goatee was dressed as only a liberal with daydreams of what he might think of as 'the Maine proletariat' could dress: faded jeans, faded blue workshirt, wide red fireman's suspenders. It took Ralph only a second to place him. It was Dan Dalton, owner of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. The last time Ralph had seen him, he had been standing behind the hanging guitars and bird-cages in his shop window, flapping his hands at Ham Davenport in a gesture that said Who gives a shit what you think?
But it was Ed his eyes were drawn back to, of course, Ed who looked natty and put together in more ways than one.
McGovern apparently felt the same. 'My God, I can't believe it's the same man,' he murmured.
'Lisette,' the good-looking blonde was saying, 'with me I have Edward Deepneau and Daniel Dalton, both of Derry, two of those arrested in this morning's demonstration. That's correct, gentlemen? You were arrested?'
They nodded, Ed with the barest twinkle of humor, Dalton with dour, jut-jawed determination. The gaze the latter fixed on Anne Rivers made him look - to Ralph, at least - as if he were trying to remember which abortion clinic he had seen her hurrying into, head down and shoulders hunched.
'Have you been released on bail?'
'We were released on our own recognizance,' Ed answered. 'The charges were minor. It was not our intention to hurt anyone, and no one was hurt.'
'We were arrested only because the Godless entrenched power-structure in this town wants to make an example of us,' Dalton said, and Ralph thought he saw a minute wince momentarily tighten Ed's face. A there-he-goes-again expression.
Anne Rivers swung the mike back to Ed.
'The major issue here isn't philosophical but practical,' he said. 'Although the people who run WomanCare like to concentrate on their counselling services, therapy services, free mammograms and other such admirable functions, there's another side to the place. Rivers of blood run out of WomanCare--'
'Innocent blood!' Dalton cried. His eyes glowed in his long, lean face, and Ralph had a disturbing insight: all over eastern Maine, people were watching this and deciding that the man in the red suspenders was crazy, while his partner seemed like a pretty reasonable fellow. It was almost funny.
Ed treated Dalton's interjection as the pro-life equivalent of Hallelujah, giving it a single respectful beat before speaking again.
'The slaughter at WomanCare has been going on for nearly eight years now,' Ed told her. 'Many people - especially radical feminists like Dr Roberta Warper, WomanCare's chief administrator - like to gild the lily with phrases like "early termination", but what she's talking about is abortion, the ultimate act of abuse against women by a sexist society.'
'But is lobbing dolls loaded with fake blood against the windows of a private clinic the way to put your views before the public, Mr Deepneau?'
For a moment - just a moment, there and gone - the twinkle of good humor in Ed's eyes was replaced by a flash of something much harder and colder. For that one moment Ralph was again looking at the Ed Deepneau who had been ready to take on a truck-driver who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Ralph forgot that what he was watching had been taped an hour ago and was afraid for the slim blonde, who was almost as pretty as the woman to whom her interview subject was still married. Be careful, young lady, Ralph thought. Be careful and be afraid. You're st
anding next to a very dangerous man.
Then the flash was gone and the man in the tweed coat was once more just an earnest young fellow who had followed his conscience to jail. Once more it was Dalton, now nervously snapping his suspenders like big red rubber bands, who looked a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.
'What we're doing is what the so-called good Germans failed to do in the thirties,' Ed was saying. He spoke in the patient, lecturely tones of a man who has been forced to point this out over and over . . . mostly to those who should already know it. 'They were silent and six million Jews died. In this country a similar holocaust--'
'Over a thousand babies every day,' Dalton said. His former shrillness had departed. He sounded horrified and desperately tired. 'Many of them are ripped from the wombs of their mothers in pieces, with their little arms waving in protest even as they die.'
'Oh good God,' McGovern said. 'That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever--'
'Hush, Bill!' Lois said.
'- purpose of this protest?' Rivers was asking Dalton.
'As you probably know,' Dalton said,'the City Council has agreed to re-examine the zoning regulations that allow WomanCare to operate where it does and how it does. They could vote on the issue as early as November. The abortion rights people are afraid the Council might throw sand in the gears of their death-machine, so they've summoned Susan Day, this country's most notorious pro-abortion advocate, to try and keep the machine running. We are marshalling our forces--'
The pendulum of the microphone swung back to Ed. 'Will there be more protests, Mr Deepneau?' she asked, and Ralph suddenly had an idea she might be interested in him in a way which was not strictly professional. Hey, why not? Ed was a good-looking guy, and Ms Rivers could hardly know that he believed the Crimson King and his Centurions were in Derry, joining forces with the baby-killers at WomanCare.
'Until the legal aberration which opened the door to this slaughter has been corrected, the protests will continue,' Ed replied. 'And we'll go on hoping that the histories of the next century will record that not all Americans were good Nazis during this dark period of our history.'
'Violent protests?'
'It's violence we oppose.' The two of them were now maintaining strong eye contact, and Ralph thought Anne Rivers had what Carolyn would have called a case of hot thighs. Dan Dalton was standing off to one side of the screen, all but forgotten.
