“No, it doesn't,” Johnny said truthfully. “What does he do? Just shake hands?”
“No, he's got a hall in every town. Reserves it for all day Saturday. He gets in there about ten in the morning, and people can come by and talk to him. Tell him their idears, you know. If they got questions, he answers them. If he can't answer them, he goes back to Washington and finds the answer!” He looked at Johnny triumphantly.
“When was he here in Timmesdale last?”
“Couple of months ago,” O'Donnell said. He went to the cash register and rummaged through a pile of papers beside it. He came up with a dog-eared clipping and laid it on the bar beside Johnny.
“Here's the list. You just take a look at that and see what you think.”
The clipping was from the Ridgeway paper. It was fairly old now. The story was headlined STILLS ON ANNOUNCES “FEEDBACK CENTERS”. The first paragraph looked as though it might have been lifted straight from the Stillson press kit. Below it was the list of towns where Greg would be spending his weekends, and the proposed date's. He was not due in Timmesdale again until mid-March.
“I think it looks pretty good,” Johnny said.
“Yeah, I think so. Lotta people think so.”
“By this dipping, he must have been ill Goorter's Notch just last weekend.”
“That's right,” O'Donnell said, and laughed. “Good old Coorter's Notch. Want another beer, Johnny?”
“Only if you'll join me,” Johnny said, and laid a couple of bucks on the bar.
“Well, I don't care if I do.”
One of the two bar-bags had put some money in the juke and Tammy Wynette, sounding old and tired and not happy to be here, began singing, “Stand By Your Man.”
“Hey Dick!” the other cawed. “You ever hear of service in this place?”
“Shut your head! “he hollered back.
“Fuck-YOU,” she called, and cackled.
“Goddammit, Clarice, I told you about saying the eff-word in my bar! I told you…:
“Oh get off it and let's have some beer.”
“I hate those two old cunts,” O'Donnell muttered to Johnny. “Couple of old alky diesel-dykes, that's what they are. They been here a million years, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both lived to spit on my grave. It's a hell of a world sometimes.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Pardon me, I'll be right back. I got a girl, but she only comes in Fridays and Saturdays in the winter.”
O'Donnell drew two schooners of beer and brought them over to the table. He said something to them and Clarice replied “Fuck-YOU!” and cackled again. The beerjoint was filled with the ghosts of dead hamburgers. Tammy Wynette sang through the popcorn-crackle of an old record. The radiators thudded dull heat into the room and outside snow spatted dryly against the glass. Johnny rubbed his temples. He had been in this bar before, in a hundred other small towns. His head ached. When he had shaken O'Donnell's hand he knew that the barkeep had a big old mongrel dog that he had trained to sic on command. His one great dream was that some night a burglar would break into his house and he would legally be able to sic that big old dog onto him, and there would be one less goddam hippie pervo junkie in the world.
Oh, his head ached.
O'Donnell came back, wiping his hands on his apron. Tammy Wynette finished up and was replaced with Red Sovine, who had a CB call for the Teddy Bear.
“Thanks again for the suds,” O'Donnell said, drawing two.
“My pleasure,” Johnny said, still studying the dipping. “Coorter's Notch last week, Jackson this coming weekend. I never heard of that one. Must be a pretty small town, huh?”
“Just a burg,” O'Donnell agreed. “They used to have a ski resort, but it went broke. Lotta unemployment up that way. They do some wood-pulping and a little shirttail farming. But he goes up there, by the Jesus. Talks to em. Listens to their bitches. Where you from up in Maine, Johnny?”
“Lewiston,” Johnny lied. The dipping said that Greg Stillson would meet with interested persons at the town hall.
“Guess you came down for the skiing, huh?”
“No, I hurt my leg a while back. I don't ski anymore.
Just passing through. Thanks for letting me look at this. “Johnny handed the clipping back. “It's quite interesting.”
O'Donnell put it carefully back with his other papers. He had an empty bar, a dog back home that would sic on command, and Greg Stillson. Greg had been in his bar.
Johnny found himself abruptly wishing himself dead. If this talent was a gift from God, then God was a dangerous lunatic who ought to be stopped. If God wanted Greg Stilison dead, why hadn't he sent him down the birth canal with the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat? Or strangled him on a piece of meat? Or electrocuted him while he was changing the radio station? Drowned him in the ole swimming hole? Why did God have to have Johnny Smith to do his dirty work? It wasn't his responsibility to save the world, that was for the psychos and only psychos would presume to try it. He suddenly decided he would let Greg Stillson live and spit in God's eye.
“You okay, Johnny?” O'Donnell asked.
“Huh? Yeah, sure.”
“You looked sorta funny for just a second there.”
Chuck Chatsworth saying: if I didn't, I'd be afraid all those people he killed would haunt me to my grave.
“Out woolgathering, I guess,” Johnny said. “I want you to know it's been a pleasure drinking with you.”
“Well, the same goes back to you,” O'Donnell said, looking pleased. “I wish more people passing through felt that way. They go through here headed for the ski resorts, you know. The big places. That's where they take their money. If I thought they'd stop in, I'd fix this place up like they'd like. Posters, you know, of Switzerland and Colorado. A fireplace. Load the juke up with rock “n” roll records instead of that shitkicking music I'd… you know, I'd like that. “He shrugged. “I'm not a bad guy, hell.”
“Of course not,” Johnny said, getting off the stool and thinking about the dog trained to sic, and the hoped-for hippie junkie burglar.
“Well, tell your friends I'm here,” O'Donnell said
“For sure,” Johnny said.
“Hey Dick!” one of the bar-bags hollered. “Ever hear of service-with-a-smile in this place?”
“Why don't you get stuffed?” O'Donnell yelled at her, flushing.
“Fuck-YO U!” Clarice called back, and cackled. Johnny slipped quietly out into the gathering storm,
He was staying at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth. When he got back that evening, he told the desk clerk to have his bill ready for checkout in the morning.
In his room, he sat down at the impersonal Holiday Inn writing desk, took out all the stationery, and grasped the Holiday Inn pen. His head was throbbing, but there were letters to be written. His momentary rebellion-if that was what it had been-had passed. His unfinished business with Greg Stillson remained.
I've gone crazy, he thought. That's really it. I've gone entirely off my chump. He could see the headlines now.
PSYCHO SHOOTS N. H. REP. MADMAN ASSASSINATES STILLS ON. HAIL OF BULLETS CUTS DOWN U. S. REPRESENTATIVE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.
And Inside View, of course, would have a field day.
SELF-PROCLAIMED “SEER” KILLS STILLSON, 12 NOTED PSYCHIATRISTS TELL WHY SMITH DID
IT. With a sidebar by that fellow Dees, maybe, telling how Johnny had threatened to get his shotgun and “shoot me a trespasser”.
Crazy.
The hospital debt was paid, but this would leave a new bill of particulars behind, and his father would have to pay for it. He and his new wife would spend a lot of days in the limelight of his reflected notoriety. They would get the hate mail. Everyone he had known would be interviewed-the Chatsworths, Sam, Sheriff George Bannerman. Sarah? Well, maybe they wouldn't get as far as Sarah. After all, it wasn't as though he were planning to shoot the president. At least, not yet. There's a lotta people afraid to come right out and say it, but I'm not. I'll say it right out loud. Some day Greg Stillson's apt to be president.