Under the Dome

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.

13

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.”

Lester did not keep it short, but Big Jim hardly noticed. He listened with growing dismay that was close to horror. The Reverend’s narrative was disjointed and peppered with Biblical quotations, but the gist was clear: he had decided that their little business had displeased the Lord enough for Him to clap a big glass bowl over the whole town. Lester had prayed on what to do about this, scourging himself as he did so (the scourging might have been metaphorical—Big Jim certainly hoped so), and the Lord had led him to some Bible verse about madness, blindness, smiting, etc., etc.

“The Lord said he would shew me a sign, and—”

“Shoe?” Big Jim raised his tufted eyebrows.

Lester ignored him and plunged on, sweating like a man with malaria, his eyes still following the golden ball. Back… and forth.

“It was like when I was a teenager and I used to come in my bed.”

“Les, that’s… a little too much information.” Tossing the ball from hand to hand.

“God said He would shew me blindness, but not my blindness. And this afternoon, out in that field, He did! Didn’t he?”

“Well, I guess that’s one interpretation—”

“No!” Coggins leaped to his feet. He began to walk in a circle on the rug, his Bible in one hand. With the other he tugged at his hair. “God said that when I saw that sign, I had to tell my congregation exactly what you’d been up to—”