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 YOU ARE GOING…”
Stop it, Johnny wanted to scream. Oh, please stop it, I'm going crazy, can't you stop it?
The singing ended with a loud, amplified snap! and the custodian said in his own voice, “That's got you, whore.”
He walked out of Johnny's line of sight again. There was a sound of tearing paper and the low popping sounds of twine being snapped. Then the custodian reappeared, whistling and holding a large stack of booklets. He began to place them at close intervals along the benches.
When he had finished that chore, the custodian buttoned his coat and left the hall. The door slammed hollowly shut behind him. Johnny looked at his watch. It was 7: 45. The town hall was warming up a little. He sat and waited. The headache was still very bad, but oddly enough. it was easier to bear than it had ever been before. All he had to do was tell himself that he wouldn't have to bear it for long.
The doors slammed open again promptly at nine o'clock, startling him out of a catnap. His hands clamped tightly over the rifle and then relaxed. He put his eye to the diamond-shaped peephole. Four men this time. One of them was the custodian, the collar of his pea coat turned up against his neck. The other three were wearing topcoats with suits underneath. Johnny felt his heartbeat quicken. One of them was Sonny Elliman. His hair was cut short now and handsomely styled, but the brilliant green eyes had not changed.
“Everything set?” he asked.
“Check for yourself,” the custodian said.
“Don't be offended, Dad,” one of the others replied. They were moving to the front of the hall. One of them clicked the amplifier on and then clicked it off again, satisfied.
“People round these parts act like he was the bloody emperor,” the custodian grumbled.
“He is, be is,” the third man said-Johnny thought he also recognized this fellow from the Trimbull rally. “Haven't you got wise to that yet, Pop?”
“Have you been upstairs?” Elliman asked the custodian, and Johnny went cold.
“Stairway door's locked,” the custodian answered. “Same as always. I gave her a shake.”
Johnny silently gave thanks for the spring lock on the door.
“Ought to check it out,” Elliman said.
The custodian uttered an exasperated laugh. “I don't know about you guys,” he said. “Who are you expecting? The Phantom of the Opera?”
“Come on Sonny,” the fellow Johnny thought he recognized said. “There's nobody up there, We just got time for a coffee if we shag ass down to that resrunt on the corner.”
“That's not coffee,” Sonny said. “Fucking mud is all that is. Just run upstairs first and make sure no one's there, Moochie. We go by the book.”
Johnny licked his lips and clutched the gun. He looked up and down the narrow gallery. To his right it ended in a blank wall. To his left it went back to the suite of offices, and either way it made no difference. If he moved, they would hear him. This empty, the town hall served as a natural amplifier. He was stuck.
There were footfalls down below. Then the sound of the door between the hall and the entryway being opened and closed. Johnny waited, frozen and helpless. Just below him the custodian and the other two were talking, but he heard nothing they said. His head had turned on his neck like some slow engine and he stared down the length of the gallery, waiting for the fellow Sonny Elliman had called Moochie to appear at the end of it. His bored expression would suddenly turn to shock and incredulity, his mouth would open: Hey Sonny, there's a guy up here!
Now he could hear the muffled sound of Moochie climbing the stairs. He tried to think of something, anything. Nothing came. They were going to discover him, it was less than a minute away now, and he didn't have any idea of how to stop it from happening. No matter what he did, his one chance was on the verge of being blown.
Doors began to open and close, the sound of each drawing closer and less muffled. A drop of sweat spilled from Johnny's forehead and darkened the leg of his jeans. He could remember each door he had come past on his way here. Moochie had checked TOWN MANAGER and TOWN SELECTMEN and TAX ASSESSOR. Now he was opening the door of MEN'S, now he was glancing through the office that belonged to the O'SEER OF THE POOR, now the LADIES” room. The next door would be the one leading to the galleries.
It opened.
There was the sound of two footfalls as Moochie approached the railing of the short gallery that ran along the back of the hall. “Okay, Sonny? You satisfied?”
“Everything look good?”
“Looks like a fucking dump,” Moochie responded, and there was a burst of laughter from below.
“Well, come on down and let's go for coffee,” the third man said. And incredibly, that was it. The door slammed to. The footsteps retreated back down the hall, and then down the steps to the first floor.
Johnny went limp and for a moment everything swam away from him into shades of gray. The slam of the entryway door as they went out for their coffee brought him partially out of it.
Below, the custodian presented his judgment: “Bunch of whores. “Then he left, too, and for the next twenty minutes or so, there was only Johnny.
Around 9: O A. M., the people of Jackson began to file into their town hall. The first to appear was a trio of old ladies dressed in formal black, chattering together like magpies. Johnny watched them pick seats close to the stove-almost entirely out of the field of his vision-and pick up the booklets that had been left on the seats. The booklets appeared to be filled with glossy pictures of Greg Stillson.
“I just love that man,” one of the three said. “I've gotten his autograph three times and I'll get it again today, I'll be bound.”
That was all the talk there was about Greg Stillson. The ladies went on to discuss the impending Old Home Sunday at the Methodist Church.
Johnny, almost directly over the stove, went from very cold to very hot. He had taken advantage of the slack tide between the departure of Stillson's security people and the arrival of the first townfolk, using it to shed both his jacket and his outer shirt. He kept wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief, and the linen was streaked with blood as well as sweat. His bad eye was kicking up again, and his vision was constantly blurred and reddish.
The door below opened, there was the hearty tromp-tromp-tromp of men stamping snow from their pacs, and then four men in checked woolen jackets came down the aisle and sat in the front row. One of them launched immediately into a Frenchman joke.
A young woman of about twenty-three arrived with her son, who looked about four. The boy was wearing a blue snowmobile suit with bright yellow markings, and he wanted to know if he could talk into the microphone.
“No, dear,” the woman said, and they went down behind the men. The boy immediately began to kick his feet against the bench in front of him, and one of the men glanced back over his shoulder,
“Sean, stop that,” she said.
Quarter of ten now. The door was opening and closing with a steady regularity. Men and women of all types and occupations and ages were filling up the hall. There was a drifting hum of conversation, and it was edged with an indefinable sense of anticipation. They weren't here to quiz their duly-elected representative; they were waiting for a bona-fide star turn in their small community. Johnny knew that most “meet-your-candidate” and “meet-your-representative” sessions were attended by a handful of die-hards in the nearly empty meeting halls. During the election of 1976 a debate between Maine's Bill Cohen and his challenger, Leighton Cooney, had attracted all of twenty-six people, press aside. The skull-sessions were so much window-dressing, a self-testimonial to wave when election time came around again. Most could have been held in a middling-sized closet. But by 10 A. M., every seat in the town hall was taken, and there were twenty or thirty standees at the back. Every time the door opened, Johnny's hands tensed down on the rifle. And he was still not positive he could do it, no matter what the stakes.