“Test,” one of the men on the bandstand said laconically into the two mikes. “Test-one, test-two… “One of the speakers in the park uttered a loud feedback whine, and the guy on the podium motioned that he wanted it moved backward.
This isn't the way you set up for a political speech and rally, Johnny thought. They're setting up for a love-feast or a group grope.
“Test-one, test-two… test, test, test.”
They were strapping the big speakers to the trees, Johnny saw. Not nailing them but strapping them. Stillson was an ecology booster, and someone had told his advance men not to hurt so much as one tree in one town park. The operation gave him the feeling of having been honed down to the smallest detail. This was no grab-it-and-run-with-it deal.
Two yellow school buses pulled into the turnaround left of the small (and already full) parking lot. The doors folded open and men and women got out, talking animatedly to one another. They were in sharp contrast to those already in the park because they were dressed in their best-men in suits or sports coats, ladies in crisp
skirt-and-blouse combinations or smart dresses. They were gazing around with expressions of nearly childlike wonder and anticipation, and Johnny grinned. Ngo's citizenship class had arrived.
He walked over to them. Ngo was standing with a tall man in a corduroy suit and two women, both Chinese.
“Hi, Ngo,” Johnny said.
Ngo grinned broadly. “Johnny!” he said. “Good to see you, man! It is being a great day for the state of New Hampshire, right?”
“I guess so,” Johnny said.
Ngo introduced his companions. The man in the corduroy suit was Polish. The two women were sisters from Taiwan. One of the women told Johnny that she was much hoping for shaking hands with the candidate after the program and then, shyly, she showed Johnny the autograph book in her handbag.
“I am so glad to be here in America,” she said. “But it is strange, is it not, Mr. Smith?”
Johnny, who thought the whole thing was strange, agreed.
The citizenship class's two instructors were calling the group together. “I'll see you later, Johnny,” Ngo said. “I've got to be tripping.”
“Going,” Johnny said.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Have a fine time, Ngo.”
“Oh, yes, I am sure I will. “And Ngo's eyes seemed to glint with a secret amusement. “I am sure it will be most entertaining, Johnny.”
The group, about forty in all, went over to the south side of the park to have their picnic lunch. Johnny went back to his own place and made himself eat one of his sandwiches. It tasted like a combination of paper and library paste.
A thick feeling of tension had begun to creep into his body.
By two-thirty the park was completely full; people were jammed together nearly shoulder to shoulder. The town police, augmented by a small contingent of State Police, had closed off the streets leading to the Trimbull town park. The resemblance to a rock concert was stronger than ever. Bluegrass music poured from the speakers, cheery and fast. Fat white clouds drifted across the innocent blue sky.
Suddenly, people started getting to their feet and craning their necks. It was a ripple effect passing through the crowd. Johnny got up too, wondering if Stillson was going to be early. Now he could hear the steady roar of motorcycle engines, the beat swelling to fill the summer afternoon as they grew closer. Johnny got an eyeful of sun-arrows reflecting off chrome, and a few moments later about ten cycles swung into the turnaround where the citizenship buses were parked. There was no car with them. Johnny guessed they were an advance guard.
His feeling of disquiet deepened. The riders were neat enough, dressed for the most part in clean, faded jeans and white shirts, but the bikes themselves, mostly Harleys and BSAs, had been customized almost beyond recognition: ape-hanger handlebars, raked chromium manifolds, and strange fairings abounded.
Their owners killed the engines, swung off, and moved away toward the bandstand in single file. Only one of them looked back. His eyes moved without haste over the big crowd; even from some distance away Johnny could see that the man's irises were a brilliant bottle green. He seemed to be counting the house. He glanced left, at four or five town cops leaning against the chain-link backstop of the Little League ballfield. He waved. One of the cops leaned over and spit. The act had a feeling of ceremony to it, and Johnny's disquiet deepened further. The man with the green eyes sauntered to the bandstand.
Above the disquiet, which now lay like an emotional floor to his other feelings, Johnny felt predominantly a wild mix of horror and hilarity. He had a dreamlike sense of having somehow entered one of those paintings where steam engines are coming out of brick fireplaces or clockfaces are lying limply over tree limbs. The cyclists looked like extras in an American-International bike movie who had all decided to Get Clean For Gene. Their fresh, faded jeans were snugged down over square-toed engineer boots, and on more than one pair Johnny could see chromed chains strapped down over the insteps. The chrome twinkled savagely in the sun. Their expressions were nearly all the same: a sort of vacuous good humor that seemed directed at the crowd. But beneath it there might have been simple contempt for the young mill workers, the summer students who had come over from UNH in Durham, and the factory workers who” were standing to give them a round of applause. Each of them wore a pair of political buttons. One of them showed a construction worker's yellow hard hat with a green ecology sticker on the front. The other bore the motto STILLSON'S GOT “EM IN A FULL-NELSON.
And sticking out of every right hip pocket was a sawed-off pool cue.
Johnny turned to the man next to him, who was with his wife and small child. “Are those things legal?” he asked.
“Who the hell cares,” the young guy responded. laughing. “They're just for show, anyway. “He was still applauding. “Go-get-em-Greg!” he yelled.
The motorcycle honor guard deployed themselves around the bandstand in a circle and stood at parade rest.
The applause tapered off, but conversation went on at a louder level. The crowd's mass mouth had received the meal's appetizer and had found it good.
Brownshirts, Johnny thought, sitting down. Brown-shirts is all they are.
Well, so what? Maybe that was even good. Americans had a rather low tolerance for the fascist approach-even rock-ribbed righties like Reagan didn't go for that stuff; nothing but a pure fact no matter how many tantrums the New Left might want to throw or how many songs Joan Baez wrote. Eight years before, the fascist tactics of the Chicago police had helped lose the election for Hubert Humphrey. Johnny didn't care how clean-cut these fellows were; if they were in the employ of a man running for the House of Representatives, then Stillson couldn't be more than a few paces from overstepping himself. If it wasn't quite so weird, it really would be funny.
All the same, he wished he hadn't come.
Just before three o'clock, the thud of a big bass drum impressed itself on the air, felt through the feet before actually heard by the ears. Other instruments gradually began to surround it, and all of them resolved into a marching band playing a Sousa tune. Small-town election hoopla, all of a summer's day.
The crowd came to its feet again and craned in the direction of the music. Soon the band came in sight-first a baton-twirler in a short skirt, high-stepping in white kidskin boots with pompons on them, then two majorettes, then two pimply boys with grimly set faces carrying a banner that proclaimed this was THE TRIMBULL HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND and you had by. God better not forget it. Then the band itself, resplendent and sweaty in blinding white uniforms and brass buttons.