TV, barely visible through the interference, is the slicky-hair PREACHER, looking every bit as trustworthy as Jimmy Swaggart in the courtyard of a triple-X motel.
MIKE
(speaks to the TV) Hallelujah, brother. Tell it.
He's in an overstaffed chair a little apart from the rest. He looks very tired and probably won't be awake for much longer. He's already started to nod out. On his hip he's wearing his revolver in a holster.
PREACHER
(continues)
Brethern, tonight I'd like to speak to you especially of the secret sin. And tonight I'd like to remind you, say hellelujah, that sin tastes sweet on the lips but sour on the tongue, and it poisons the belly of the righteous. God bless you, but can you say "amen"?
MIKE cannot, as it happens. His chin has drifted down to his chest, and his eyes have closed.
PREACHER
(continues) But the secret sin! The selfish heart that says "I need not
STORM OF THE CENTURY 227
share; I can keep it all for myself, and no one'll ever know." Think of that, brethern! It's easy to say, "Oh, I can keep that dirty little secret, it's nobody else's business, and it won't hurt me," and then try to ignore the canker of corruption that begins growing around it ... that soul sickeness that begins to grow around it ...
During this, THE CAMERA PANS some of the sleeping faces among them we see SONNY BRAUTIGAN and UPTON BELL, SNORING on one sofa with their heads together, and on the other, JONAS and JOANNA STANHOPE with their arms around each other. Then we FLOAT AWAY AGAIN, toward those makeshift draw curtains. Behind us, the PREACHER'S VOICE fades. He continues to talk about secrets and sin and selfishness.
We DRIFT THROUGH the draw curtains. Here, in the sleeping area, we hear DORMITORY SOUNDS OF REPOSE: COUGHS, WHEEZES, SOFT SNORES.
We pass DAVEY HOPEWELL, sleeping on his back with a frown on his face. ROBBIE BEALS, on his side, reaching across to SANDRA. They are holding hands in their sleep. URSULA GODSOE sleeping with her daughter, SALLY, and her sister-in-law, TAVIA, close-by, the three of them drawn as tightly together as they can in the wake of PETER'S death.
MELINDA HATCHER and PIPPA are sleeping with their cots pushed together, forehead to forehead, and RALPHIE is cradled in his sleeping mother's arms.
We drift to the area where the kids were initially put to bed, and quite a few of them are still there BUSTER CARVER, HARRY ROBICHAUX, HEIDI ST. PIERRE, and DON BEALS.
The residents of Little Tall are sleeping. Their rest is uneasy, but they are sleeping.
206 INTERIOR: ROBBIE BEALS, CLOSE-UP.
He MUTTERS SOMETHING INCOHERENT. His eyeballs move rapidly behind his closed lids. He's dreaming.
228 STEPHEN KING
207 EXTERIOR: MAIN STREET, LITTLE TALL ISLAND DAY.
Standing in the street actually above it, as Main Street is buried under at least four feet of snow is a TV REPORTER. He is young and conventionally handsome, dressed in a bright purple Thermo-Pak ski suit, matching purple gloves, and wearing skis . . . the only way he could get to his stand-up position, one assumes.
There's four feet of snow in the streets, but that's only the beginning. The stores have been all but buried under MONSTER DRIFTS. Downed power lines disappear into the snow like torn strands of cobweb.
TV REPORTER
CHAPTER 21
The so-called Storm of the Century is history in New England now folks from New Bedford to New Hope are digging out from beneath snowfall amounts that have added not just new entries but new pages to the record books.
The REPORTER begins to ski slowly down Main Street, past the drugstore, the hardware store, the Handy Bob Restaurant, the Tie-Up Lounge, the beauty parlor.
TV REPORTER
They're digging out everywhere, that is, except here, on Little Tall Island a little scrap of land off the coast of Maine and home to almost four hundred souls, according to the last census. About half the population sought shelter on the mainland when it became clear that this storm was really going to hit, and hit hard. That number includes most of the island's schoolchildren in grades K through high school. But nearly all the rest . . . two hundred men and women and young children . . . are gone. The exceptions are even more ominous and distressing.
208 EXTERIOR: THE REMAINS OF THE TOWN DOCK DAY.
Teams of grim-faced EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIANS are carrying four stretchers down to the POLICE BOAT that has tied up to the stump of the dock. Each stretcher bears a zipped body bag.
TV REPORTER (voice-over) Four