old friend you secretly hate. Yes, he would go down to Boston on Saturday. That would be better.
Although he relived that day over and over in the months afterward, Johnny could never remember exactly how or why it was that he ended up in Trimbull after all. He had set out in another direction, planning to go down to Boston and take in the Red Sox at Fenway Park, then maybe go over to Cam-bridge and nose through the bookshops. If there was enough cash left over (he had sent four hundred dollars of Chatsworth’s bonus to his father, who in turn sent it on to Eastern Maine Medical—a gesture tantamount to a spit in the ocean) he planned to go to the Orson Welles Cinema and see that reggae movie, The Harder They Come. A good day’s program, and a fine day to implement it; that August 19 had dawned hot and clear and sweet, the distillation of the perfect New England summer’s day.
He had let himself into the kitchen of the big house and made three hefty ham-and-cheese sandwiches for lunch, put them in an old-fashioned wicker picnic basket he found in the pantry, and after a little soul-searching, had topped off his haul with a sixpack of Tuborg Beer. At that point he had been feeling fine, absolutely first-rate. No thought of either Greg Stillson or his homemade bodyguard corps of iron horsemen had so much as crossed his mind.
He put the picnic basket on the floor of the Mercedes and drove southeast toward I-95. All clear enough up to that point. But then other things had begun to creep in. Thoughts of his mother on her deathbed first. His mother’s face, twisted into a frozen snarl, the hand on the counterpane hooked into a claw, her voice sounding as if it were coming through a big mouthful of cotton wadding.
Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say it was so?
Johnny turned the radio up louder. Good rock ‘n’ roll poured out of the Mercedes’s stereo speakers. He had been asleep for four-and-a-half years but rock ‘n’ roll had remained alive and well, thank you very much. Johnny sang along.
He has a job for you. Don’t run from him, Johnny.
The radio a couldn’t drown out his dead mother’s voice. His dead mother was going to have her say. Even from beyond the grave she was going to have her say.
Don’t hide away in a cave or make him have to send a big fish to swallow you.
But he had been swallowed by a big fish. Its name was not leviathan but coma. He had spent four-and-a-half years in that particular fish’s black belly, and that was enough.
The entrance ramp to the turnpike came up—and then slipped behind him. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he had missed his turn. The old ghosts just wouldn’t give up and let him alone. Well, he would turn around and go back as soon as he found a good place.
Not the potter but the potter’s clay, Johnny.
“Oh, come on,” he muttered. He had to get this crap off his mind, that was all. His mother had been a religious crazy, not a very kind way of putting it, but true all the same. Heaven out in the constellation Orion, angels driving flying saucers, kingdoms under the earth. In her way she had been at least as crazy as Greg Stillson was in his.
Oh for Christ’s sake, don’t get off on that guy.
“And when you send Greg Stillson to the House of Representatives, you gonna say HOT DOG! SOMEONE GIVES A RIP AT LAST!”
He came to New Hampshire Route 63. A left turn would take him to Concord, Berlin, Ridder’s Mill, Trimbull. Johnny made the turn without even thinking about it. His thoughts were elsewhere.
Roger Chatsworth, no babe in the woods, had laughed over Greg Stillson as if he were this year’s answer to George Carlin and Chevy Chase all rolled up into one. He’s a clown, Johnny.
And if that was all Stillson was, then there was no problem, was there? A charming eccentric, a piece of blank paper on which the electorate could write its message: You other guys are so wasted that we decided to elect this fool for two years instead. That was probably all Stillson was, after all. Just a harmless crazy, there was no need at all to associate him with the patterned, destructive madness of Frank Dodd. And yet ... somehow ... he did.