And Joe did. They slipped to the floor and he forgot all about being mad at her, and how all of a sudden he seemed to be able to figure the odds on everything from baseball games to horse races to golf matches in the wink of an eye. He slid into her and she moaned and Joe even forgot the tenebrous whispering sound those wires made as they sifted the first-class mail into the row of flour-sifters.
When Joe entered the living room, “Becka was sitting in her rocker, pretending to read the latest issue of The Upper Room. Just ten minutes before Joe came in, she had finished wiring the gadget Jesus had shown her how to make into the back of the Sony TV. She followed His instructions to the letter, because He said you had to be careful when you were fooling around inside the back of a television.
“You could fry yourself,” Jesus advised. “More juice back there than there is in a Bird's Eye warehouse, even when it's turned off.”
The TV was off now and Joe said ill-temperedly, “I thought you'd have this all wa'amed up for me.”
“I guess you know how to turn on the damned TV,” “Becka said, speaking to her husband for the last time.
Joe raised his eyebrows. Damned anything was damned odd, coming from “Becka. He thought about calling her on it, and decided to let it ride. Could be there was one fat old mare who'd find herself keeping house by herself before much of a longer went by.
“Guess I do,” Joe said, speaking to his wife for the last time.
He pushed the button that turned the Sony on, and better than two thousand volts of current slammed into him, AC which had been boosted, switched over to lethal DC, and then boosted again. His eyes popped wide open, bulged, and then burst like grapes in a microwave. He had started to set the quart of beer on top of the TV next to Jesus. When the electricity hit, his hand clenched tightly enough to break the bottle. Spears of brown glass drove into his fingers and palm. Beer foamed and ran. It hit the top of the TV (its plastic casing already blistering) and turned to steam that smelled like yeast.
“EEEEEOOOOOOARRRRHMMMMMMM!'Joe Paulson screamed. His face began to turn black. Blue smoke poured out of his hair and his ears. His finger was nailed to the Sony's On button.
A picture popped on the TV. It was Dwight Gooden throwing the wild pitch that let in two runs and chased him, making Joe Paulson forty dollars richer. It flipped and showed him and Nancy Voss screwing on the post office floor in a litter of catalogues and Congressional Newsletters and ads from insurance companies saying you could get all the coverage you needed even if you were over sixty-five, no salesman would call at your door, no physical examination would be required, your loved ones would be protected at a cost of pennies a day.
“No!” “Becka screamed, and the picture flipped again. Now she saw Moss Harlingen behind a fallen pine, notching his father in the sight of his. 30-. 30 and murmuring Not you, Em, not tonight. It flipped and she saw a man and a woman digging in the woods, the woman behind the controls of something that looked a little bit like a payloader and a little bit like something out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon, the man looping a chain around a stump. Beyond them, a vast dish-shaped object jutted out of the earth. It was silvery, but dull; the sun struck it in places but did not twinkle.
Joe Paulson's clothes burst into flame.
The living room was filled with the smell of electricity and cooking beer. The 3-D picture of Jesus jittered around and then exploded.
“Becka shrieked, understanding that, like it or not, it had been her all along, her, her, her, and she was murdering her husband.
She ran to him, seized his looping, spasming hand… and was herself galvanized.
Jesus oh Jesus save him, save me, save us both, she thought as the current slammed into her, driving her up on her toes like the world's heftiest ballerina en pointe. And a mad, cackling voice, the voice of her father, rose in her brain: Fooled you, “Becka, didn't I? Fooled you good! Teach you to lie! Teach you for good and all!
The back of the television, which she had screwed back on after she had finished adding her alterations, blew back against the wall with a mighty blue flash of light. “Becka tumbled to the carpet, pulling Joe with her. Joe was already dead.
By the time the smoldering wallpaper behind the TV had ignited the chintz curtains, “Becka Paulson was dead, too.
Chapter 3
Hilly Brown
The day Hillman Brown did the most spectacular trick of his career as an amateur magician-the only spectacular trick of his career as an amateur magician, actually -was Sunday, July 17th, exactly one week before the Haven town hall blew up. That Hillman Brown had never managed a really spectacular trick before was not so surprising. He was only ten, after all.
His given name had been his mother's maiden name. There had been Hillmans in Haven going back to the time when it had been Montgomery, and although Marie Hillman had no regrets about becoming Marie Brown-after all, she loved the guy! -she had wanted to preserve the name, and Bryant had agreed. The new baby wasn't home a week before everyone was calling him Hilly.
Hilly grew up nervous. Marie's father Ev said he had cat whiskers for nerves and would spend his whole life on the jump. It wasn't news Bryant and Marie Brown wanted to hear, but after their first year with Hilly, it wasn't really news at all; just a fact of life. Some babies attempt to comfort themselves by rocking in their cribs or cradles; some by sucking a thumb. Hilly rocked in his crib almost constantly (crying angrily at the same time, more often than not), and sucked both thumbs-sucked them so hard that he had painful blisters on them by the time he was eight months old.
“He'll stop now,” Dr Lester in Derry told them confidently, after examining the nasty blisters that ringed Hilly's thumbs… blisters Marie had wept over as if they had been her own. But Hilly hadn't stopped. His need for comfort was apparently greater than whatever pain his hurt thumbs gave him. Eventually the blisters turned to hard calluses.
“He'll always be on the jump,” the boy's grandfather prophesied whenever anyone asked him (and even when no one did; at sixty-three, Ev Hillman was garrulous-going-on-tiresome). “Cat whiskers for nerves, ayuh! He'll keep his mom “n” dad on the hop, Hilly will.”
Hilly kept them hopping, all right. Lining both sides of the Brown driveway were stumps, placed there by Bryant, at Marie's instigation. Upon each she put a planter, and in each planter was a different sort of plant or bunch of flowers. At age three, Hilly one day climbed out of his crib where he was supposed to be taking a nap ('Why do I have to have a nap, Mom?” Hilly asked. “Because I need the rest, Hilly,” his exhausted mother replied), wriggled out the window, and knocked over all twelve of the planters, stumps and all. When Marie saw what Hilly had done, she wept as inconsolably as she had wept over her boy's poor thumbs. Seeing her cry, Hilly had also burst into tears (around his thumbs; he was attempting to suck both of them at once). He hadn't knocked over the stumps and the planters to be mean; it had just seemed a good idea at the time.
“You don't count the cost, Hilly,” his father said on that occasion. He would say it a good many times before Sunday, July 17th, 1988.
At the age of five, Hilly got on his sled and shot down the ice-coated Brown driveway one December day and out into the road. It never occurred to him, he told his ashy-faced mother later, to wonder if something might be coming down Derry Road; he had gotten up, seen the glaze of ice that had fallen, and had only wondered how fast his Flexible Flyer would go down their driveway. Marie saw him, saw the fuel tanker lumbering down Route 9, and shrieked Hilly's name so loudly that she could barely talk above a whisper for the next two days. That night, trembling in Bryant's arms, she told him she had seen the boy's tombstone in Homeland-had actually seen it: Hillman Richard Brown, 1978-1983, Taken Too Soon.