at least ten months; then for the poorer pocketbook there was The American TruthWay New Testament for sixty-five cents, with no color plates but with the words of Our Lord Jesus printed in red; and for the big spender there was The American TruthWay Deluxe Word of God for $19.95, bound in imitation white leather, the owner’s name to be stenciled in gold leaf on the front cover, twenty-four color plates, and a section in the middle to note down births, marriages, and burials. And the Deluxe Word of God might remain in one piece for as long as two years. There was also a carton of paperbacks entitled America the TruthWay: The Communist-Jewish Conspiracy Against Our United States.
Greg did better with this paperback, printed on cheap pulp stock, than with all the Bibles put together. It told all about how the Rothschilds and the Roosevelts and the Greenblatts were taking over the U.S. economy and the U.S. government. There were graphs showing how the Jews related directly to the Communist-Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyite axis, and from there to the Antichrist Itself.
The days of McCarthyism were not long over in Washington; in the Midwest Joe McCarthy’s star had not yet set, and Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was known as “that bitch” for her famous Declaration of Conscience. In addition to the stuff about Communism, Greg Stillson’s rural farm constituency seemed to have a morbid interest in the idea that the Jews were running the world.
Now Greg turned into the dusty driveway of a farmhouse some twenty miles west of Ames, Iowa. It had a deserted, shut-up look to it—the shades down and the barn doors closed—but you could never tell until you tried. That motto had served Greg Stillson well in the two years or so since he and his mother had moved up to Omaha from Oklahoma. The house-painting business had been no great shakes, but he had needed to get the taste of Jesus out of his mouth for a little while, you should pardon the small blasphemy. But now he had come back home—not on the pulpit or revival side this time, though, and it was something of a relief to be out of the miracle business at last.
He opened the car door and as he stepped out into the dust of the driveway a big mean farm dog advanced out of the barn, its ears laid back. It volleyed barks. “Hello, pooch,” Greg said in his low, pleasant, but carrying voice—at twenty-two it was already the voice of a trained spellbinder.
The pooch didn’t respond to the friendliness in his voice. It kept coming, big and mean, intent on an early lunch of traveling salesman. Greg sat back down in the car, closed the door, and honked the horn twice. Sweat rolled down his face and turned his white linen suit darker gray in circular patches under his arms and in a branching treeshape up his back. He honked again, but there was no response. The clodhoppers had loaded themselves into their International Harvester or their Studebaker and gone into town.
Greg smiled.
Instead of shifting into reverse and backing out of the driveway, he reached behind him and produced a Flit gun—only this one was loaded with ammonia instead of Flit.
Pulling back the plunger, Greg stepped out of the car again, smiling easily. The dog, which had settled down on its haunches, immediately got up again and began to advance on him, growling.
Greg kept smiling. “That’s right, poochie,” he said in that pleasant, carrying voice. “You just come on. Come on and get it.” He hated these ugly farm dogs that ran their half-acre of dooryard like arrogant little Caesars: they told you something about their masters as well.
“Fucking bunch of clodhoppers,” he said under his breath. He was still smiling. “Come on, doggie.”
The dog came. It tensed its haunches down to spring at him. In the barn a cow mooed, and the wind rustled tenderly through the corn. As it leaped, Greg’s smile turned to a hard and bitter grimace. He depressed the Flit plunger and sprayed a stinging cloud of ammonia droplets directly into the dog’s eyes and nose.
Its angry barking turned immediately to short, agonized yips, and then, as the bite of ammonia really settled in, to howls of pain. It turned tail at once; a watchdog no longer but only a vanquished cur.
Greg Stillson’s face had darkened. His eyes had drawn down to ugly slits. He stepped forward rapidly and administered a whistling kick to the