Stephen King - Under the Dome

Joe organized the protestors into a big circle that rotates just in front of the Dome, which is marked by a line of dead birds on the Chester’s Mill side (those on the Motton side have been removed by the military personnel). The circle gives all of Joe’s people—for so he thinks of them—a chance to wave their signs at the posted guards, who stand with their backs resolutely (and maddeningly) turned. Joe also gave out printed “chant-sheets.” He wrote these with Benny Drake’s skateboarding idol, Norrie Calvert. Besides being balls-to the-wall on her Blitz deck, Norrie’s rhymes are simple but tight, yo? One chant goes, Ha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee! Chester’s Mill must be set free! Another: You did it! You did it! Come on out and just admit it! Joe has—with real reluctance—vetoed another Norrie masterpiece that goes Take off the gags! Take off the gags! Let us talk to the press, you fags! “We have to be politically correct about this,” he told her. What he’s wondering just now is if Norrie Calvert is too young to kiss. And if she would slip him any tongue if he did. He has never kissed a girl, but if they’re all going to die like starving bugs trapped under a Tupper-ware bowl, he probably should kiss this one while there’s still time.

In the second ring is Pastor Coggins’s prayer circle. They are really getting God-sent. And, in a fine show of ecclesiastical détente, the Holy Redeemer choir has been joined by a dozen men and women from the Congo church choir. They’re singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and a good number of unaffiliated townsfolk who know the words have joined in. Their voices rise to the blameless blue sky, with Lester’s shrill exhortations and the prayer circle’s supporting cries of amen and hallelujah weaving in and out of the singing in perfect counterpoint (although not harmony—that would be going too far). The prayer circle keeps growing as other townsfolk drop to their knees and join in, laying their signs temporarily aside so they can raise their clasped hands in supplication. The soldiers have turned their backs; perhaps God has not.

But the center ring of this circus is the biggest and most bodacious. Romeo Burpee pitched the End of Summer Blowout Sale tent well back from the Dome and sixty yards east of the prayer circle, calculating the location by testing the faint gasp of breeze that’s blowing. He wants to make sure that the smoke from his rank of Hibachis reaches both those praying and those protesting. His only concession to the afternoon’s religious aspect is to make Toby Manning turn off his boombox, which was blaring that James McMurtry song about living in a small town; it didn’t mix well with “How Great Thou Art” and “Won’t You Come to Jesus.” Business is good and will only get better. Of this Romeo is sure. The hotdogs—thawing even as they cook—may gripe some bellies later, but they smell perfect in the warm afternoon sun; like a county fair instead of chowtime in prison. Kids race around waving pinwheels and threatening to set Dinsmore’s grass on fire with leftover Fourth of July sparklers. Empty paper cups that held either citrus-powder drinks (foul) or hastily brewed coffee (fouler still) are littered everywhere. Later on, Romeo will have Toby Manning pay some kid, maybe Dinsmore’s, ten bucks to pick up the litter. Community relations, always important. Right now, though, Romeo’s totally focused on his jackleg cash register, a carton that once contained Charmin toilet paper. He takes in long green and returns short silver: it’s the way America does business, honeybunch. He’s charging four bucks per dog, and he’s goddamned if people aren’t paying it. He expects to clear at least 3K by sundown, maybe a lot more.

And look! Here’s Rusty Everett! He got away after all! Good for him! He almost wishes he’d stopped to get the girls—they would surely enjoy this, and it might allay their fears to see so many people having a good time—but it might be a little too much excitement for Jannie.

He spots Linda at the same time she spots him and starts waving frantically, practically jumping up and down. With her hair done in the stubby Fearless Police Girl braids she almost always wears when she’s working, Lin looks like a junior high school cheerleader. She’s standing with Twitch’s sister Rose and the young man who short-orders at the restaurant. Rusty’s a little surprised; he thought Barbara had left town. Got on Big Jim Rennie’s bad side. A bar fight is what Rusty heard, although he wasn’t on duty when the participants came in to get patched up. Fine by Rusty. He’s patched up his share of Dipper’s customers.

He hugs his wife, kisses her mouth, then plants a kiss on Rose’s cheek. Shakes hands with the cook, and gets reintroduced.

“Look at those hotdogs,” Rusty mourns. “Oh dear.”

“Better line up the bedpans, Doc,” Barbie says, and they all laugh. It’s amazing to be laughing under these circumstances, but they aren’t the only ones… and good God, why not? If you can’t laugh when things go bad—laugh and put on a little carnival—then you’re either dead or wishing you were.

“This is fun,” Rose says, unaware of how soon the fun is going to end. A Frisbee floats past. She plucks it out of the air and wings it back to Benny Drake, who leaps to catch it and then spins to throw it on to Norrie Calvert, who catches it behind her back—show-off! The prayer circle prays. The mixed choir, really finding its voice now, has moved on to that all-time chart topper “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A child no more than Judy’s age bops past, skirt flapping around her chubby knees, a sparkler clutched in one hand and a cup of the awful limeade in the other. The protestors turn and turn in a widening gyre, chanting Ha-ha-ha! Hee-hee-hee! Chester’s Mill must be set free! Overhead, puffy clouds with shady bottoms float northward from Motton… and then divide as they near the soldiers, skirting around the Dome. The sky directly overhead is a cloudless, flawless blue. There are those in Dinsmore’s field who study those clouds and wonder about the future of rain in Chester’s Mill, but nobody speaks of this aloud.

“I wonder if we’ll still be having fun next Sunday,” Barbie says. Linda Everett looks at him. It’s not a friendly look. “Surely you think before then—”

Rose interrupts her. “Look over there. That kid shouldn’t be driving that damn rig so fast—he’ll tip it over. I hate those ATVs.”

They all look at the little vehicle with the fat balloon tires, and watch as it cuts a diagonal through the October-white hay. Not toward them, exactly, but certainly toward the Dome. It’s going too fast. A couple of the soldiers hear the approaching engine and finally turn around.

“Oh Christ, don’t let him crash,” Linda Everett moaned.

Rory Dinsmore doesn’t crash. It would have been better if he had.

An idea is like a cold germ: sooner or later someone always catches it. The Joint Chiefs had already caught this one; it had been kicked around at several of the meetings attended by Barbie’s old boss, Colonel James O. Cox. Sooner or later someone in The Mill was bound to be infected by the same idea, and it wasn’t entirely surprising that the someone should turn out to be Rory Dinsmore, who was by far the sharpest tool in the Dinsmore family box (“I don’t know where he gets it from,” Shelley Dinsmore said when Rory brought home his first all-As rank card… and she said it in a voice more worried than proud). If he’d lived in town—and if he’d had a computer, which he did not—Rory would undoubtedly have been a part of Scarecrow Joe McClatchey’s posse.

Rory had been forbidden to attend the carnival/prayer meeting/demonstration; instead of eating weird hotdogs and helping with the car-park operation, he was ordered by his father to stay at home and feed the cows. When that was done, he was to grease their udders with Bag Balm, a job he hated. “And once you got those teats nice and shiny,” his father said, “you can sweep the barns and bust up some haybales.”