Stephen King - Insomnia

“Gretchen Tillbury,” Ralph said.

“Yes,” Lois agreed. “But surely we don’t need to do any more-I can’t believe they’ll go ahead with the rally now. I mean, how could they? My God, at least four people are dead! Probably more! They’ll have to cancel her speech or at least postpone it. Isn’t that so?”

Neither Dorrance nor Joe replied. Ralph didn’t reply, either-he was thinking of Helen’s red-rimmed, furious eyes. How can you even ask? she’d said. If they stop us now, they win.

If they stop us now, they win.

Was there any legal way the police could stop them? Probably not.

The City Council, then? Maybe. Maybe they could hold a special meeting and revoke WomanCare’s rally permit. But would they? If there were two thousand angry, grief-stricken women marching around the Municipal Building and yelling If they stop us now they win in unison, would the Council revoke the permit?

Ralph began to feel a deep sinking sensation in his gut.

Helen clearly considered tonight’s rally more important than ever, and she wouldn’t be the only one. It was no longer just about choice and who had the right to decide what a woman did with her own body; now it was about causes important enough to die for and honoring the friends who had done just that. Now they were talking not just about politics but about a kind of secular requiem mass for the dead.

Lois had grabbed his shoulder and was shaking it hard. Ralph came back to the here and now, but slowly, like a man being shaken awake in the middle of an incredibly vivid dream.

“They will cancel it, won’t they? And even if they don’t, if for some crazy reason they don’t, most people will stay away, right-,) After what happened at High Ridge, they’ll be afraid to come!”

Ralph thought about that and then shook his head. “Most people will think the danger’s over. The news reports are going to say that two of the radicals who attacked High Ridge are dead, and the third is catatonic, or something.”

“But Ed! What about Ed?” she cried. “He’s the one who got them to attack, for heaven’s sake! He’s the one who sent them out there in the first place.”

“That may be true, probably is true, but how would we prove it?

Do you know what I think the cops will find at wherever Charlie Pickering’s been banging his hat? A note saying it was all his idea.

A note exonerating Ed completely, probably in the guise of an accusation… how Ed deserted them in their time of greatest need.

And if they don’t find a note like that in Charlie’s rented rooi-n, they’ll find it in Frank Felton’s. Or Sandra McKay’s.”

“But that… that’s…” Lois stopped, biting at her lower lip.

Then she looked at Wyzer with hopeful eyes. “What about Susan Day? Where is she? Does anybody know? Do you? Ralph and I will call her on the telephone and-”

“She’s already in Derry,” Wyzer said, although I doubt if even the police know for sure where she is. But what I heard on the news while the old fella and I were driving out here is that the rally is going to happen tonight… and that’s supposedly straight from the woman herself.”

Sure, Ralph thought. Sure it is. The show’s going on, the show has to go on, and she knows it. Someone who’s ridden the crest of the women’s movement all these years-hell, since the Chicago convention in ’68-knows a genuine watershed moment when she sees it.

She’s evaluated the risks and found them acceptable. Either that or she’s evaluated the situation and decided that the credibility-loss involved in walking away would be unacceptable. Maybe both. In any case, she’s as much a prisoner of events-of ka-tet-as the rest of us.

They were on the outskirts of Derry again. Ralph could see the Civic Center on the horizon.

Now it was Old Dor Lois turned to. “Where is she? Do you know?

It doesn’t matter how many security people she’s got around her; Ralph and I can be invisible when we want to be… and we’re very good at changing people’s minds.”

“Oh, changing Susan Day’s mind wouldn’t change anything,” Dor said. He still wore that broad, maddening smile. “They’ll come to the Civic Center tonight no matter what. If they come and find the doors locked, they’ll break them open and go inside and have their rally just the same. To show they’re not afraid.”

“Done-bun-can’the-undone,” Ralph said dully.

“Right, Ralph!” Dor said cheerily, and patted Ralph’s arm.

Five minutes later, Joe drove his Ford past the hideous plastic statue of Paul Bunyan which stood in front of the Civic Center and turned in at a sign which read THERE’s ALWAYS FREE PARKING AT YOUR CIVIC CENTER!

The acre of parking lot lay between the Civic Center building itself and the Bassey Park racetrack. If the event that evening had been a rock concert or a boat-show or a wrestling card, they would have had the parking lot entirely to themselves this early, but tonight’s event was clearly going to be light-years from an exhibition basketball game or a monster truck-pull. There were already sixty or seventy cars in the lot, and little groups of people standing around, looking at the building. Most of them were women. Some had picnic hampers, several were crying, and almost all wore black armbands.

Ralph saw a middle-aged woman with a weary, intelligent face and a great mass of gray hair passing these out from a carrybag. She was wearing a tee-shirt with Susan Day’s face on it and the words \\!I”

The drive-through area in front of the Civic Center’s bank of entrance doors was even busier than the parking lot. No fewer than six TV newsvans were parked there, and various tech crews stood under the triangular cement canopy in little clusters, discussing how they were going to handle tonight’s event. And according to the bedsheet banner which hung down from the canopy, flapping lazily in the breeze, there was going to be an event. RALLY IS oN, it read in large, blurry spray-paint letters. 8 P.M. COME SHOW YOUR

SOLIDARITY EXPRESS YOUR OUTRAGE COMFORT YOUR SISTERS.

Joe put the Ford in Park, then turned to Old Dor, eyebrows raised.

Dor nodded, and Joe looked at Ralph. “I guess this is where you and Lois get out, Ralph. Good luck. I’d come with you if I could-I even asked him-but he says I’m not equipped.”

“That’s all right,” Ralph said. “We appreciate everything you’ve done, don’t we, Lois?”

“We certainly do,” Lois said.

Ralph reached for the doorhandle, then let it go again. He turned to face Dorrance. “What’s this about? Really, I mean. It’s not about saving the two thousand or so people Clotho and Lachesis said are going to be here tonight, that’s for sure. To the kind of All-Time forces they talked about, two thousand lives are probably Just a little more grease on the bearings. So what’s it all about, Alfie? Why are we here?”

Dorrance’s grin had faded at last; with it gone he looked younger and strangely formidable. ’Job asked God the same question,” he said, “and got no answer. You’re not going to get one either, but I’ll tell you this much: you’ve become the pivot-point of great events and vast forces. The work of the higher universe has almost completely come to a stop as those of both the Random and the Purpose turn to mark your progress.”

“That’s great, but I don’t get it,” Ralph said, more in resignation than in anger.

“Neither do I, but those two thousand lives are enough for me,” Lois said quietly. “I could never live with myself if I didn’t at least try to stop what’s going to happen. I’d dream of the deathbag around that building for the rest of my life. Even if I only got an hour’s sleep a night I’d dream of it.”