Stephen King - Under the Dome

Freddy came down the store’s steps and stood beside Junior.

“Go ahead, say it,” Junior told him.

“Say what?”

“I overreacted.”

“The fuck you did. You heard what Pete said: Take no shit from anybody. Partner, that deal starts here and now.”

Partner! Junior’s heart lifted at the word.

“You can’t throw me out when I got money!” Sam raved. “You can’t beat me up! I’m an American citizen! I’ll see you in court!”

“Good luck on that one,” Freddy said. “The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed.”

He hauled the old man to his feet. Sam’s nose was also bleeding, and the flow had turned his shirt into a red bib. Freddy reached around to the small of his back for a set of his plastic cuffs ( Gotta get me some of those, Junior thought admiringly). A moment later they were on Sam’s wrists.

Freddy looked around at the witnesses—those on the street, those crowding the doorway of the Gas & Grocery. “This man is being arrested for public disturbance, interfering with police officers, and attempted assault!” he said in a bugling voice Junior remembered well from his days on the football field. Hectoring from the sidelines, it had never failed to irritate him. Now it sounded delightful.

Guess I’m growing up, Junior thought.

“He is also being arrested for violating the new no-alcohol rule, instituted by Chief Randolph. Take a good look!” Freddy shook Sam. Blood flew from Sam’s face and filthy hair. “We’ve got a crisis situation here, folks, but there’s a new sheriff in town, and he intends to handle it. Get used to it, deal with it, learn to love it. That’s my advice. Follow it, and I’m sure we’ll get through this situation just fine. Go against it, and…” He pointed to Sam’s hands, plasticuffed behind him.

A couple of people actually applauded. For Junior Rennie, the sound was like cold water on a hot day. Then, as Freddy began to frog-march the bleeding old man up the street, Junior felt eyes on him. The sensation so clear it might have been fingers poking the nape of his neck. He turned, and there was Dale Barbara. Standing with the newspaper editor and looking at him with flat eyes. Barbara, who had beaten him up pretty good that night in the parking lot. Who’d marked all three of them, before sheer weight of numbers had finally begun to turn things around.

Junior’s good feelings began to depart. He could almost feel them flying up through the top of his head like birds. Or bats from a belfry.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Barbara.

“I’ve a better question,” Julia Shumway said. She was wearing her tight little smile. “What are you doing, brutalizing a man who’s a quarter your weight and three times your age?”

Junior could think of nothing to say. He felt blood rush into his face and fan out on his cheeks. He suddenly saw the newspaper bitch in the McCain pantry, keeping Angie and Dodee company. Barbara, too. Maybe lying on top of the newspaper bitch, as if he were enjoying a little of the old sumpin-sumpin.

Freddy came to Junior’s rescue. He spoke calmly. He wore the stolid policeman’s face known the world over. “Any questions about police policy should go to the new Chief, ma’am. In the meantime, you’d do well to remember that, for the time being, we’re on our own. Sometimes when people are on their own, examples have to be made.”

“Sometimes when people are on their own, they do things they regret later,” Julia replied. “Usually when the investigations start.”

The corners of Freddy’s mouth turned down. Then he hauled Sam down the sidewalk.

Junior looked at Barbie a moment longer, then said: “You want to watch your mouth around me. And your step.” He touched a thumb deliberately to his shiny new badge. “Perkins is dead and I’m the law.”

“Junior,” Barbie said, “you don’t look so good. Are you sick?”

Junior looked at him from eyes that were a little too wide. Then he turned and went after his new partner. His fists were clenched.

In times of crisis, folks are apt to fall back on the familiar for comfort. That is as true for the religious as it is for the heathen. There were no surprises for the faithful in Chester’s Mill that morning; Piper Libby preached hope at the Congo, and Lester Coggins preached hellfire at Christ the Holy Redeemer. Both churches were packed.

Piper’s scripture was from the book of John: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. She told those who filled the pews of the Congo church that prayer was important in times of crisis—the comfort of prayer, the power of prayer—but it was also important to help one another, depend on one another, and love one another.

“God tests us with things we don’t understand,” she said. “Sometimes it’s sickness. Sometimes it’s the unexpected death of a loved one.” She looked sympathetically at Brenda Perkins, who sat with her head bowed and her hands clasped in the lap of a black dress. “And now it’s some inexplicable barrier that has cut us off from the outside world. We don’t understand it, but we don’t understand sickness or pain or the unexpected deaths of good people, either. We ask God why, and in the Old Testament, the answer is the one He gave to Job: ‘Were you there when I made the world?’ In the New—and more enlightened—Testament, it’s the answer Jesus gave to his disciples: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ That’s what we have to do today and every day until this thing is over: love one another. Help one another. And wait for the test to end, as God’s tests always do.”

Lester Coggins’s scripture came from Numbers (a section of the Bible not known for optimism): Behold, ye have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out.

Like Piper, Lester mentioned the testing concept—an ecclesiastical hit during all the great clustermugs of history—but his major theme had to do with the infection of sin, and how God dealt with such infections, which seemed to be squeezing them with His Fingers the way a man might squeeze a troublesome pimple until the pus squirted out like holy Colgate.

And because, even in the clear light of a beautiful October morning, he was still more than half convinced that the sin for which the town was being punished was his own, Lester was particularly eloquent. There were tears in many eyes, and cries of “Yes, Lord!” rang from one amen corner to the other. When he was this inspired, great new ideas sometimes occurred to Lester even as he was preaching. One occurred to him this day, and he articulated it at once, without so much as a pause for thought. It needed no thought. Some things are just too bright, too glowing, not to be right.

“This afternoon I’m going out to where Route 119 strikes God’s mysterious Gate,” he said.

“Yes, Jesus!” a weeping woman cried. Others clapped their hands or raised them in testimony.

“I reckon two o’clock. I’m going to get on my knees out there in that dairy field, yea, and I’m going to pray to God to lift this affliction.”

This time the cries of Yes Lord and Yes Jesus and God knows it were louder.

“But first—” Lester raised the hand with which he had whipped his bare back in the dark of night. “First, I’m going to pray about the SIN that has caused this PAIN and this SORROW and this AFFLICTION ! If I am alone, God may not hear me. If I am with two or three or even five, God STILL may not hear me, can you say amen.”