Under the Dome

“Barbie didn’t put me up to anything,” Rusty said. “He’s in jail.”

“Pretty soon he’ll be in hell,” Junior said with dry matter-offactness. “We’re going to try him and execute him. My dad said so. There’s no death penalty in Maine, but he says these are wartime conditions. Egg salad has too many calories.”

“That’s true,” Rusty said. He had brought a stethoscope, a blood-pressure cuff, and ophthalmoscope. Now he wrapped the cuff around Junior’s arm. “Can you name the last three presidents in order, Junior?”

“Sure. Bush, Push, and Tush.” He laughed wildly, but still with no facial expression.

Junior’s bp was 147 over 120. Rusty had been prepared for worse. “Do you remember who came in to see you before I did?”

“Yeah. The old guy me and Frankie found at the Pond just before we found the kids. I hope those kids are all right. They were totally cute.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Aidan and Alice Appleton. We went to the club and that girl with the red hair jerked me off under the table. Thought she was gonna fair it right off before she was fun.” A pause. “Done.”

“Uh-huh.” Rusty employed the ophthalmoscope. Junior’s right eye was fine. The optic disc of the left was bulging, a condition known as papilledema. It was a common symptom of advanced brain tumors and the attendant swelling.

“See anything green, McQueen?”

“Nope.” Rusty put the ophthalmoscope down, then held his index finger in front of Junior’s face. “I want you to touch my finger with your finger. Then touch your nose.”

Junior did so. Rusty began to move his finger slowly back and forth. “Keep going.”

Junior succeeded in going from the moving finger to his nose once. Then he hit the finger but touched his cheek instead. The third time he missed the finger and touched his right eyebrow. “Booya. Want more? I can do it all day, you know.”

Rusty pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’m going to send Ginny Tomlinson in with a prescription for you.”

“After I get it, can I go roam? Home, I mean?”

“You’re staying overnight with us, Junior. For observation.”

“But I’m all right, aren’t I? I had one of my headaches before—I mean a real blinder—but it’s gone. I’m okay, right?”

“I can’t tell you anything right now,” Rusty said. “I want to talk with Thurston Marshall and look at some books.”

“Man, that guy’s no doctor. He’s an English teacher.”

“Maybe so, but he treated you okay. Better than you and Frank treated him, is my understanding.”

Junior waved a dismissing hand. “We were just playin. Besides, we treated those rids kite, didn’t we?”

“Can’t argue with you there. For now, Junior, just relax. Watch some TV, why don’t you?”

Junior considered this, then asked, “What’s for supper?”

6

Under the circumstances, the only thing Rusty could think of to reduce the swelling in what passed for Junior Rennie’s brain was IV mannitol. He pulled the chart out of the door and saw a note attached to it in an unfamiliar looping scrawl:

Dear Dr. Everett: What do you think about manitol for this patient? I cannot order, have no idea of the correct amount.

Thurse

Rusty jotted down the dose. Ginny was right; Thurston Marshall was good.

7

The door to Big Jim’s room was open, but the room was empty. Rusty heard the man’s voice coming from the late Dr. Haskell’s favorite snoozery. Rusty walked down to the lounge. He did not think to take Big Jim’s chart, an oversight he would come to regret.

Big Jim was fully dressed and sitting by the window with his phone to his ear, even though the sign on the wall showed a bright red cell phone with a red X over it for the reading-impaired. Rusty thought it would give him great pleasure to order Big Jim to terminate his call. It might not be the most politic way to start what was going to be a combination exam-discussion, but he meant to do it. He started forward, then stopped. Cold.

A clear memory arose: not being able to sleep, getting up for a piece of Linda’s cranberry-orange bread, hearing Audrey whining softly from the girls’ room. Going down there to check the Js. Sitting on Jannie’s bed beneath Hannah Montana, her guardian angel.

Why had this memory been so slow in coming? Why not during his meeting with Big Jim, in Big Jim’s home study?

Because then I didn’t know about the murders; I was fixated on the propane. And because Janelle wasn’t having a seizure, she was just in REM sleep. Talking in her sleep.

He has a golden baseball, Daddy. It’s a bad baseball.

Even last night, in the mortuary, that memory hadn’t resur-faced. Only now, when it was half-past too late.