looked down into the case and rubbed his eyes. His vision doubled briefly and then things came together again. He was getting an impression from the very wood he was sitting on. A very old impression; if it had been a photograph, it would have been sepia-toned. Men standing here and smoking cigars, talking and laughing and waiting for town meeting to begin. Had it been 1920? 1902? There was something ghostly about it that made him feel uneasy. One of them had been talking about the price of whiskey and cleaning his nose with a silver toothpick and
(and two years before he had poisoned his wife)
Johnny shivered. Whatever the impression was, it didn’t matter. It was an impression of a man who was long dead now.
The rifle gleamed up at him.
When men do it in wartime, they give them medals, he thought.
He began to assemble the rifle. Each click! echoed back, just once, solemnly, the sound of a cocking pistol.
He loaded the Remington with five bullets.
He placed it across his knees.
And waited.
3
Dawn came slowly. Johnny dozed a little, but he was too cold now to do more than doze. Thin, sketchy dreams haunted what sleep he did get.
He came fully awake at a little past seven. The door below was thrown open with a crash, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out, Who’s there?
It was the custodian. Johnny put his eye to one of the diamond shapes cut into the balustrade and saw a burly man who was bundled up in a thick Navy pea coat. He was coming up the center aisle with an armload of firewood. He was humming “Red River Valley.” He dropped the armload of wood into the woodbox with a crash and then disappeared below Johnny. A second later he heard the thin screeing noise of the stove’s firebox door being swung open.
Johnny suddenly thought of the plume of vapor he was producing every time he exhaled. Suppose the custodian looked up? Would he be able to see that?
He tried to slow the rate of his breathing, but that made his head ache worse and his vision doubled alarmingly.
Now there was the crackle of paper being crumpled, then the scratch of a match. A faint whiff of sulphur in the cold air. The custodian went on humming “Red River Valley,” and then broke into loud and tuneless song: “From this valley they say you are going ... we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smiiiiile ...”
Now a different crackling sound. Fire.
“That’s got it, you sucker,” the custodian said from directly below Johnny, and then there was the sound of the firebox door being slammed shut again. Johnny pressed both hands over his mouth like a bandage, suddenly afflicted with suicidal amusement. He saw himself rising up from the floor of the gallery, as thin and white as any self-respecting ghost. He saw himself spreading his arms like wings and his fingers like talons and calling down in hollow tones: “That’s got you,you sucker.”
He held the laughter behind his hands. His head throbbed like a tomato full of hot, expanding blood. His vision jittered and blurred crazily. Suddenly he wanted very badly to move away from the impression of the man who had been cleaning his nose with the silver toothpick, but he didn’t dare make a sound. Dear Jesus, what if he had to sneeze?
Suddenly, with no warning a terrible wavering shriek filled the hall, drilling into Johnny’s ears like thin silver nails, climbing, making his head vibrate. He opened his mouth to scream—
It cut off.
“Oh, you whore,” the custodian said conversationally.
Johnny looked through the diamond and saw the custodian standing behind the podium and fiddling with a microphone. The mike cord snaked down to a small portable amp. The custodian went down the few steps from the podium to the floor and pulled the amplifier farther from the mike, then fooled with the dials on top of it. He went back to the mike and turned it on again. There was another feedback whine, this one lower and then tapering away entirely. Johnny pressed his hands tight against his forehead and rubbed them back and forth.
The custodian tapped on the mike with his thumb, and the sound filled the big empty room. It sounded like a fist knocking on a coffin lid. Then his voice, still tuneless, but now amplified to the point of monstrosity, a giant’s voice bludgeoning into Johnny’s head: “FROM THIS VAL-LEEE THEY SAY