Stephen King - Under the Dome

It was hopeless. Sleep was out of the question for now, and the worst thing you could do in a situation like that was try to flog your way into dreamland.

There was half a loaf of Linda’s famous cranberry-orange bread downstairs; he’d seen it on the counter when he came in. Rusty decided he’d have a piece of it at the kitchen table and thumb through the latest issue of American Family Physician. If an article on whooping cough wouldn’t put him to sleep, nothing would.

He got up, a big man dressed in the blue scrubs that were his usual nightwear, and left quietly, so as not to wake Linda.

Halfway to the stairs, he paused and cocked his head.

Audrey was whining, very soft and low. From the girls’ room. Rusty went down there and eased the door open. The golden retriever, just a dim shape between the girls’ beds, turned to look at him and voiced another of those low whines.

Judy was lying on her side with one hand tucked under her cheek, breathing long and slow. Jannie was a different story. She rolled restlessly from one side to the other, kicking at the bed-clothes and muttering. Rusty stepped over the dog and sat down on her bed, under Jannie’s latest boy-band poster.

She was dreaming. Not a good dream, by her troubled expression. And that muttering sounded like protests. Rusty tried to make out the words, but before he could, she ceased.

Audrey whined again.

Jan’s nightdress was all twisted. Rusty straightened it, pulled up the covers, and brushed Jannie’s hair off her forehead. Her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth beneath her closed lids, but he observed no trembling of the limbs, no fluttering fingers, no characteristic smacking of the lips. REM sleep rather than seizure, almost certainly. Which raised an interesting question: could dogs also smell bad dreams?

He bent and kissed Jan’s cheek. When he did, her eyes opened, but he wasn’t entirely sure she was seeing him. This could have been a petit mal symptom, but Rusty just didn’t believe it. Audi would have been barking, he felt sure.

“Go back to sleep, honey,” he said. “He has a golden baseball, Daddy.”

“I know he does, honey, go back to sleep.”

“It’s a bad baseball.”

“No. It’s good. Baseballs are good, especially golden ones.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She rolled over and closed her eyes. There was a moment of settling beneath the covers, and then she was still. Audrey, who had been lying on the floor with her head up, watching them, now put her muzzle on her paw and went to sleep herself.

Rusty sat there awhile, listening to his daughters breathe, telling himself there was really nothing to be frightened of, people talked their way in and out of dreams all the time. He told himself that everything was fine—he only had to look at the sleeping dog on the floor if he doubted—but in the middle of the night it was hard to be an optimist. When dawn was still long hours away, bad thoughts took on flesh and began to walk. In the middle of the night thoughts became zombies.

He decided he didn’t want the cranberry-orange bread after all. What he wanted was to snuggle against his bedwarm sleeping wife. But before leaving the room, he stroked Audrey’s silky head. “Pay attention, girl,” he whispered. Audi briefly opened her eyes and looked at him.

He thought, Golden retriever. And, following that—the perfect connection: Golden baseball. A bad baseball.

That night, despite the girls’ newly discovered feminine privacy, Rusty left their door open.

Lester Coggins was sitting on Rennie’s stoop when Big Jim got back. Coggins was reading his Bible by flashlight. This did not inspire Big Jim with the Reverend’s devotion but only worsened a mood that was already bad.

“God bless you, Jim,” Coggins said, standing up. When Big Jim offered his hand, Coggins seized it in a fervent fist and pumped it.

“Bless you too,” Big Jim said gamely.

Coggins gave his hand a final hard shake and let go. “Jim, I’m here because I’ve had a revelation. I asked for one last night—yea, for I was sorely troubled—and this afternoon it came. God has spoken to me, both through scripture and through that young boy.”

“The Dinsmore kid?”

Coggins kissed his clasped hands with a loud smack and then held them skyward. “The very same. Rory Dinsmore. May God keep him for all eternity.”

“He’s eating dinner with Jesus right this minute,” Big Jim said automatically. He was examining the Reverend in the beam of his own flashlight, and what he was seeing wasn’t good. Although the night was cooling rapidly, sweat shone on Coggins’s skin. His eyes were wide, showing too much of the whites. His hair stood out in wild curls and bumbershoots. All in all, he looked like a fellow whose gears were slipping and might soon be stripping.

Big Jim thought, This is not good.

“Yes,” Coggins said, “I’m sure. Eating the great feast… wrapped in the everlasting arms…”

Big Jim thought it would be hard to do both things at the same time, but kept silent on that score.

“And yet his death was for a purpose, Jim. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”

“Tell me inside,” Big Jim said, and before the minister could reply: “Have you seen my son?”

“Junior? No.”

“How long have you been here?” Big Jim flicked on the hall light, blessing the generator as he did so.

“An hour. Maybe a little less. Sitting on the steps… reading… praying… meditating.”

Rennie wondered if anyone had seen him, but did not ask. Coggins was upset already, and a question like that might upset him more.

“Let’s go in my study,” he said, and led the way, head down, lumbering slowly along in his big flat strides. Seen from behind, he looked a bit like a bear dressed in human clothes, one who was old and slow but still dangerous.

In addition to the picture of the Sermon on the Mount with his safe behind it, there were a great many plaques on the walls of Big Jim’s study, commending him for various acts of community service. There was also a framed picture of Big Jim shaking hands with Sarah Palin and another of him shaking with the Big Number 3, Dale Earnhardt, when Earnhardt had done a fundraiser for some children’s charity at the annual Oxford Plains Crash-A-Rama. There was even a picture of Big Jim shaking hands with Tiger Woods, who had seemed like a very nice Negro.

The only piece of memorabilia on his desk was a gold-plated baseball in a Lucite cradle. Below it (also in Lucite) was an autograph reading: To Jim Rennie, with thanks for your help in putting on the Western Maine Charity Softball Tournament of 2007! It was signed Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

As he sat behind his desk in his high-backed chair, Big Jim took the ball from its cradle and began tossing it from hand to hand. It was a fine thing to toss, especially when you were a little upset: nice and heavy, the golden seams smacking comfortably against your palms. Big Jim sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a solid gold ball. Perhaps he would look into that when this Dome business was over.

Coggins seated himself on the other side of the desk, in the client’s chair. The supplicant’s chair. Which was where Big Jim wanted him. The Reverend’s eyes went back and forth like the eyes of a man watching a tennis match. Or maybe a hypnotist’s crystal.

“Now what’s this all about, Lester? Fill me in. But let’s keep it short, shall we? I need to get some sleep. Got a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Will you pray with me first, Jim?”

Big Jim smiled. It was the fierce one, although not turned up to maximum chill. At least not yet. “Why don’t you fill me in before we do that? I like to know what I’m praying about before I get kneebound.”