Of course if Jackson looked impossible-or even chancy-he could wait until next week, where Stillson would be doing the whole thing all over again in the town of Upson. Or the week after, in Trimbull. Or the week after that. Or never.
It should be this week. It ought to be tomorrow.
He snapped the big woodstove in the corner, and then glanced upward. There was a balcony up there. No-not precisely a balcony, more like a gallery with a waist-high railing and wide, white-painted slats with small, decorative diamonds and curlicues cut into the wood. It would be very possible for a man to crouch behind that railing and look through one of those doodads. At the right moment, he could just stand up and -'What kind of camera is that?”
Johnny looked around, sure it was the cop. The cop would ask to see his filmless camera-and then he would want to see some ID-and then it would be all over.
But it wasn't the cop. It was the young man who had been taking his driver's permit test. He was about twenty. two, with long hair and pleasant, frank eyes. He was wearing a suede coat and faded jeans.
“A Nikon,” Johnny said.
“Good camera, man. I'm a real camera nut. How long have you been working for Yankee?”
“Well, I'm a free lance,” Johnny said. “I do stuff for them, sometimes for Country Journal, sometimes for Downeast, you know.”
“Nothing national, like People or Life?”
“No. At least, not yet. “What f-stop do you use in here?” What in hell is an f-stop.”
Johnny shrugged. “I play it mostly by ear.”
“By eye, you mean,” the young man said, smiling. “That's right, by eye. “Get lost, kid, please get lost. “I'm interested in f,ree4andng myself,” the young man said, and grinned. “My big dream is to take a picture some day like the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.”
“I heard that was staged,” Johnny said.
“Well, maybe. Maybe. But it's, a classic. Or how about the first picture of a UFO coming in for a landing? I'd sure like that. Anyway, I've got a portfolio of stuff I've taken around here. Who's your contact at Yankee?”
Johnny was sweating now. “Actually, they contacted me on this one,” he said. “It was a…”
“Mr. Clawson, you can come over now,” the cop said, sounding impatient. “I'd like to go over these answers with you.”
“Whoops, his master's voice,” Clawson said. See you later, man. “He hurried off and Johnny let out his breath in a silent, whispering sigh. It was time to get out, and quickly.
He snapped another two or three “pictures” just so it wouldn't look like a complete rout, but he was barely aware of what he was looking at through the viewfinder. Then he left.
The young man in the suede jacket-Clawson-had forgotten all about him, He had apparently flunked the written part of his exam. He was arguing strenuously with the cop, who was only shaking his head.
Johnny paused for a moment in the town hall's entryway. To his left was a cloakroom. To his right was a closed door. He tried it and found it unlocked. A narrow flight of stairs led upward into dimness. The actual offices would be up there, of course. And the gallery.
He was staying at the Jackson House, a pleasant little hotel on the main drag. It had been carefully renovated and the renovations had probably cost a lot of money, but the place would pay for itself, the owners must have reckoned, because of the new Jackson Mountain ski resort. Only the resort had gone bust and now the pleasant little hotel was barely hanging on. The night clerk was dozing over a cup of coffee when Johnny went out at four o'clock on Saturday morning, the attache case in his left hand.
He had slept little last night, slipping into a short, light doze after midnight. He had dreamed. It was 1970 again. It was carnival time. He and Sarah stood in front of the Wheel of Fortune and again he had that feeling of crazy, enormous power. In his nostrils he could smell burning rubber.
“Come on,” a voice said softly behind him, “I love to watch this guy take a beatin. “He turned and it was Frank Dodd, dressed in his black vinyl raincoat, his throat slit from ear to ear in a wide red grin, his eyes sparkling with dead vivaciousness. He turned back to the booth, scared-but now the pitchman was Greg Stillson, grinning knowingly at him, his yellow hard hat tipped cockily back on his skull. “Hey-hey-hey,” Stillson chanted, his voice deep and resonant and ominous, “Lay em down where you want em down, fella. What do you say? Want to shoot the moon?”
Yes, he wanted to shoot the moon. But as Stillson set the Wheel in motion he saw that the entire outer circle had turned green. Every number was double-zero. Every number was a house number.
He had jerked awake and spent the rest of the night looking out the frost-rimmed window into darkness. The headache he'd had ever since arriving in Jackson the day before was gone, leaving him feeling weak but composed. He sat with his hands in his lap. He didn't think about Greg Stillson; he thought about the past. He thought about his mother putting a Band-Aid on a scraped knee; he thought about the time the dog had torn off the back of Grandma Nellie's absurd sundress and how he had laughed and how Vera had swatted him one and cut his forehead with the stone in her engagement ring; he thought about his father showing him how to bait a fishing hook and saying, It doesn't hurt the worms, Johnny at least, I don't think it does. He thought about his father giving him a pocketknife for Christmas when he was seven and saying very seriously, I'm trusting you) Johnny. All those memories had come back in a flood.
Now he stepped off into the deep cold of the morning, his shoes squeaking on the path shoveled through the snow. His breath plumed out in front of him. The moon was down but the stars were sprawled across the black sky in idiot's profusion, God's jewel box, Vera always called it. You're looking into God's jewel box, Johnny.
He walked down Main Street, and he stopped in front of the tiny Jackson post office and fumbled the letters out of his coat pocket. Letters to his father, to Sarah, to Sam Weizak, to Bannerman. He set the attache case down between his feet, opened the mailbox that stood in front of the neat little brick building, and after one brief moment of hesitation, dropped them in. He could hear them drop down inside, surely the first letters mailed in Jackson this new day, and the sound gave him a queer sense of finality, The letters were mailed, there was no stopping now.
He picked up the case again and walked on. The only sound was the squeak of his shoes on the snow. The big thermometer over the door of the Granite State Savings Bank stood at 3 degrees, and the air had that feeling of total silent inertia that belongs exclusively to cold New Hampshire mornings. Nothing moved. The roadway was empty. The windshields of the parked cars were blinded with cataracts of frost. Dark windows, drawn shades. To Johnny it all seemed somehow dreadful and at the same time holy. He fought the feeling. This was no holy business he was on.
He crossed Jasper Street and there was the town hall, standing white and austerely elegant behind its plowed banks of twinkling snow.
What are you going to do if the front door's locked? Smart guy?
Well, he would find a way to cross that bridge if he had to. Johnny looked around, but there was no one to see him. If this had been the president coming for one of his famous town meetings, everything would have been different, of course. The place would have been blocked off since the night before, and men would be stationed inside already. But this was only a U. S. representative, one of over four hundred, no big deal. No big deal yet.
Johnny went up the steps and tried the door. The knob turned easily and he stepped into the cold entryway and pulled the door shut behind him. Now the headache was coming back, pulsing along with the steady thick beat of his heart. He set his case down and massaged his temples with his gloved fingers.