Under the Dome

Another night is falling on the little town of Chester’s Mill; another night under the Dome. But there is no rest for us; we have two meetings to attend, and we also ought to check up on Horace the Corgi before we sleep. Horace is keeping Andrea Grinnell company tonight, and although he is for the moment biding his time, he has not forgotten the popcorn between the couch and the wall.

So let us go then, you and I, while the evening spreads out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. Let us go while the first discolored stars begin to show overhead. This is the only town in a four-state area where they’re out tonight. Rain has overspread northern New England, and cable-news viewers will soon be treated to some remarkable satellite photographs showing a hole in the clouds that exactly mimics the sock-shape of Chester’s Mill. Here the stars shine down, but now they’re dirty stars because the Dome is dirty.

Heavy showers fall in Tarker’s Mills and the part of Castle Rock known as The View; CNN’s meteorologist, Reynolds Wolf (no relation to Rose Twitchell’s Wolfie), says that while no one can as yet be entirely sure, it seems likely that the west-to-east airflow is pushing the clouds against the western side of the Dome and squeezing them like sponges before they can slide away to the north and south. He calls it “a fascinating phenomenon.”

Suzanne Malveaux, the anchor, asks him what the long-term weather under the Dome might be like, if the crisis continues.

“Suzanne,” Reynolds Wolf says, “that’s a great question. All we know for sure is that Chester’s Mill isn’t getting any rain tonight, although the surface of the Dome is permeable enough so that some moisture may be seeping through where the showers are heaviest. NOAA meteorologists tell me the long-term prospects of precip under the Dome aren’t good. And we know their principal waterway, Prestile Stream, has pretty much dried up.” He smiles, showing a great set of TV teeth. “Thank God for artesian wells!”

“You bet, Reynolds,” Suzanne says, and then the Geico gekko appears on the TV screens of America.

That’s enough cable news; let us float through certain half-deserted streets, past the Congo church and the parsonage (the meeting there hasn’t started yet, but Piper has loaded up the big coffee urn, and Julia is making sandwiches by the light of a hissing Coleman lamp), past the McCain house surrounded by its sad sag of yellow police tape, down Town Common Hill and past the Town Hall, where janitor Al Timmons and a couple of his friends are cleaning and sprucing up for the special town meeting tomorrow night, past War Memorial Plaza, where the statue of Lucien Calvert (Norrie’s great-grandfather; I probably don’t have to tell you that) keeps his long watch.

We’ll stop for a quick check on Barbie and Rusty, shall we? There’ll be no problem getting downstairs; there are only three cops in the ready room, and Stacey Moggin, who’s on the desk, is sleeping with her head pillowed on her forearm. The rest of the PD is at Food City, listening to Big Jim’s latest stemwinder, but it wouldn’t matter if they were all here, because we are invisible. They would feel no more than a faint draft as we glide past them.

There’s not much to see in the Coop, because hope is as invisible as we are. The two men have nothing to do but wait until tomorrow night, and hope that things break their way. Rusty’s hand hurts, but the pain isn’t as bad as he thought it might be, and the swelling isn’t as bad as he feared. Also, Stacey Moggin, God bless her heart, snuck him a couple of Excedrin around five PM.

For the time being, these two men—our heroes, I suppose—are sitting on their bunks and playing Twenty Questions. It’s Rusty’s turn to guess.

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” he asks.

“None of them,” Barbie replies.

“How can it be none of them? It has to be one.”

“It’s not,” Barbie says. He is thinking of Poppa Smurf.

“You’re jacking me up.”

“I’m not.”

“You have to be.”

“Quit bitching and start asking.”

“Can I have a hint?”

“No. That’s your first no. Nineteen to go.”

“Wait a goddam minute. That’s not fair.”

We’ll leave them to shift the weight of the next twenty-four hours as best they can, shall we? Let us make our way past the still-simmering heap of ashes that used to be the Democrat (alas, no longer serving “The Little Town That Looks Like A Boot”), past Sanders Hometown Drug (scorched but still standing, although Andy Sanders will never pass through its doors again), past the bookstore and LeClerc’s Maison des Fleurs, where all the fleurs are now dead or dying. Let us pass under the dead stoplight marking the intersection of Routes 119 and 117 (we brush it; it sways slightly, then stills again), and cross the Food City parking lot. We are as silent as a child’s sleeping breath.