Stephen King - Under the Dome

Dodee had crept back to town at roughly sixteen miles an hour, still high and paranoid as hell, constantly checking the rearview mirror for cops, knowing if she did get stopped it would be by that redhaired bitch Jackie Wettington. Or her father would be taking a break from the store and he’d smell the booze on her breath. Or her mother would be home, so tired out from her stupid flying lesson that she had decided to stay home from the Eastern Star Bingo.

Please, God, she prayed. Please get me through this and I’ll never you-know again. Either you-know. Never in this life.

God heard her prayer. Nobody was home. The power was out here too, but in her altered state, Dodee hardly noticed. She crept upstairs to her room, shucked out of her pants and shirt, and laid down on her bed. Just for a few minutes, she told herself. Then she’d put her clothes, which smelled of ganja, in the washer, and put herself in the shower. She smelled of Sammy’s perfume, which she must buy a gallon at a time down at Burpee’s.

Only she couldn’t set the alarm with the power out and when the knocking at the door woke her up it was dark. She grabbed her robe and went downstairs, suddenly sure that it would be the redheaded cop with the big boobs, ready to put her under arrest for driving under the influence. Maybe for crack-snacking, too. Dodee didn’t think that particular you-know was against the law, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

It wasn’t Jackie Wettington. It was Julia Shumway, the editor-publisher of the Democrat. She had a flashlight in one hand. She shined it in Dodee’s face—which was probably puffed with sleep, her eyes surely still red and her hair a haystack—and then lowered it again. Enough light kicked up to show Julia’s own face, and Dodee saw a sympathy there that made her feel confused and afraid.

“Poor kid,” Julia said. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Don’t know what?” Dodee had asked. It was around then that the parallel universe feeling had started. “Don’t know what ?”

And Julia Shumway had told her.

“Angie? Angie, please !”

Fumbling her way up the hall. Hand throbbing. Head throbbing. She could have looked for her father—Mrs. Shumway had offered to take her, starting at Bowie Funeral Home—but her blood ran cold at the thought of that place. Besides, it was Angie that she wanted. Angie who would hug her tight with no interest in the you-know. Angie who was her best friend.

A shadow came out of the kitchen and moved swiftly toward her.

“There you are, thank God!” She began to sob harder, and hurried toward the figure with her arms outstretched. “Oh, it’s awful! I’m being punished for being a bad girl, I know I am!”

The dark figure stretched out its own arms, but they did not enfold Dodee in a hug. Instead, the hands at the end of those arms closed around her throat.

Andy Sanders was indeed at the Bowie Funeral Home. He had walked there, toting a heavy load: bewilderment, grief, a broken heart.

He was sitting in Remembrance Parlor I, his only company in the coffin at the front of the room. Gertrude Evans, eighty-seven (or maybe eighty-eight), had died of congestive heart failure two days before. Andy had sent a condolence note, although God knew who’d eventually receive it; Gert’s husband had died a decade ago. It didn’t matter. He always sent condolences when one of his constituents died, handwritten on a sheet of cream stationery reading FROM THE DESK OF THE FIRST SELECTMAN. He felt it was part of his duty.

Big Jim couldn’t be bothered with such things. Big Jim was too busy running what he called “our business,” by which he meant Chester’s Mill. Ran it like his own private railroad, in point of fact, but Andy had never resented this; he understood that Big Jim was smart. Andy understood something else, as well: without Andrew DeLois Sanders, Big Jim probably couldn’t have been elected dog-catcher. Big Jim could sell used cars by promising eye-watering deals, low-low financing, and premiums like cheap Korean vacuum cleaners, but when he’d tried to get the Toyota dealership that time, the company had settled on Will Freeman instead. Given his sales figures and location out on 119, Big Jim hadn’t been able to understand how Toyota could be so stupid.

Andy could. He maybe wasn’t the brightest bear in the woods, but he knew Big Jim had no warmth. He was a hard man (some—those who’d come a cropper on all that low-low financing, for instance—would have said hardhearted), and he was persuasive, but he was also chilly. Andy, on the other hand, had warmth to spare. When he went around town at election time, Andy told folks that he and Big Jim were like the Doublemint Twins, or Click and Clack, or peanut butter and jelly, and Chester’s Mill wouldn’t be the same without both of them in harness (along with whichever third happened to be currently along for the ride—right now Rose Twitchell’s sister, Andrea Grinnell). Andy had always enjoyed his partnership with Big Jim. Financially, yes, especially during the last two or three years, but also in his heart. Big Jim knew how to get things done, and why they should be done. We’re in this for the long haul, he’d say. We’re doing it for the town. For the people. For their own good. And that was good. Doing good was good.

But now… tonight…

“I hated those flying lessons from the first,” he said, and began to cry again. Soon he was sobbing noisily, but that was all right, because Brenda Perkins had left in silent tears after viewing the remains of her husband and the Bowie brothers were downstairs. They had a lot of work to do (Andy understood, in a vague way, that something very bad had happened). Fern Bowie had gone out for a bite at Sweetbriar Rose, and when he came back, Andy was sure Fern would kick him out, but Fern passed down the hall without even looking in at where Andy sat with his hands between his knees and his tie loosened and his hair in disarray.

Fern had descended to what he and his brother Stewart called “the workroom.” (Horrible; horrible!) Duke Perkins was down there. Also that damned old Chuck Thompson, who maybe hadn’t talked his wife into those flying lessons but sure hadn’t talked her out of them, either. Maybe others were down there, too.

Claudette for sure.

Andy voiced a watery groan and clasped his hands together more tightly. He couldn’t live without her; no way could he live without her. And not just because he’d loved her more than his own life. It was Claudette (along with regular, unreported, and ever larger cash infusions from Jim Rennie) who kept the drugstore going; on his own, Andy would have run it into bankruptcy before the turn of the century. His specialty was people, not accounts and ledgers. His wife was the numbers specialist. Or had been.

As the past perfect clanged in his mind, Andy groaned again.

Claudette and Big Jim had even collaborated on fixing up the town’s books that time when the state audited them. It was supposed to be a surprise audit, but Big Jim had gotten advance word. Not much; just enough for them to go to work with the computer program Claudette called MR. CLEAN. They called it that because it always produced clean numbers. They’d come out of that audit shiny side up instead of going to jail (which wouldn’t have been fair, since most of what they were doing—almost all, in fact—was for the town’s own good).

The truth about Claudette Sanders was this: she’d been a prettier Jim Rennie, a kinder Jim Rennie, one he could sleep with and tell his secrets to, and life without her was unthinkable.