Under the Dome

Barbie considered it. He was going to be busy tomorrow, not just cooking but asking questions. Starting the old job all over again, in the old way. On the other hand, if he went back to his place over the drugstore, would he be able to sleep?

'Okay. And I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but I have excellent office-boy skills. I also make a mean cup of coffee.'

'Mister, you are on.' She raised her right hand off the wheel and Barbie slapped her five.

'Can I ask you one more question? Strictly not for publication?'

'Sure,' he said.

'This sci-fi generator. Do you think you'll find it?'

Barbie thought it over as she pulled in beside the storefront that housed the Democrat's offices.

'No,' he said at last. 'That would be too easy.'

She sighed and nodded. Then she grasped his fingers. 'Would it help, do you think, if I prayed for your success?'

'Couldn't hurt,' Barbie said.

4

There were only two churches in Chester's Mill on Dome Day; both purveyed the Protestant brand of goods (although in very different ways). Catholics went to Our Lady of Serene Waters in Motton, and the town's dozen or so Jews attended Congregation Beth Shalom in Castle Rock when they felt in need of spiritual consolation. Once there had been a Unitarian church, but it had died of neglect in the late eighties. Everyone agreed it had been sort of hippy-dippy, anyway. The building now housed Mill New & Used Books.

Both Chester's Mill pastors were what Big Jim Rennie liked to call 'kneebound' that night, but their modes of address, states of mind, and expectations were very different.

The Reverend Piper Libby, who ministered to her flock from the pulpit of the First Congregational Church, no longer believed in God, although this was a fact she had not shared with her congregants. Lester Coggins, on the other hand, believed to the point of martyrdom or madness (both words for the same thing, perhaps).

The Rev. Libby, still wearing her Saturday grubs—and still pretty enough, even at forty-five, to look good in them—knelt in front of the altar in almost total darkness (the Congo had no generator), with Clover, her German shepherd, lying behind her with his nose on his paws and his eyes at half-mast.

'Hello, Not-There,' Piper said. Not-There was her private name for God just lately. Earlier in the fall it: had been The Great Maybe. During the summer, it had been The Omnipotent Could-Be. She'd liked that one; it had a certain ring. 'You know the situation I've been in—You should, I've bent Your ear about it enough—but that's not what I'm here to talk about tonight. Which is probably a relief to You.'

She sighed.

'We're in a mess here, my Friend. I hope You understand it, because I sure don't. But we both know this place is going to be full of people tomorrow, looking for heavenly disaster assistance:.'

It was quiet inside the church, and quiet outside. 'Too quiet,' as they said in the old movies. Had she ever heard The Mill this quiet on a Saturday night? There was no traffic, and the bass thump of whatever weekend band happened to be playing at Dippers (always advertised as being DIRECT FROM BOSTON!) was absent.

'I'm not going to ask that You show me Your will, because I'm no longer convinced You actually have a will. But on the off chance that You are there after all—always a possibility, I'm more than happy to admit that—please help me to say something helpful. Hope not in heaven, but right here on earth. Because…' She was not surprised to find that she had started to cry. She bawled so often now, although always in private. New Englanders strongly disapproved of public tears from ministers and politicians.

Clover, sensing her distress, whined. Piper told him to hush, then turned back to the altar. She often thought of the cross there as the religious version of the Chevrolet Bowtie, a logo that had come into being for no other reason than because some guy saw it on the wallpaper of a Paris hotel room a hundred years ago and liked it. If you saw such symbols as divine, you were probably a lunatic.

Nevertheless, she persevered.

'Because, as I'm sure You know, Earth is what we have. What we're sure of. I want to help my people. That's my job, and I still want to do it. Assuming You're there, and that You care—shaky assumptions, I admit—then please help me. Amen.'

She stood up. She had no flashlight, but anticipated no trouble finding her way outside with unbarked shins. She knew this place step for step and obstacle for obstacle. Loved it, too. She didn't fool herself about either her lack of faith or her stubborn love of the idea itself.

'Come on, Clove,' she said. 'President in half an hour. The other Great Not-There. We can listen on the car radio.'

Clover followed placidly, untroubled by questions of faith.

5