Under the Dome

But at Rennie’s all the RESERVED FOR EMPLOYEE slots were empty, the showroom was deserted, and there was a whiteboard bearing the message CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE hanging on the main door. Rose drove around back in a hurry. Out here were ranks of cars and trucks with signs in the windows bearing prices and slogans like GREAT VALUE and CLEAN AS A WHISTLE and HEY LOOK ME OVER (with the Os turned into sexy long-lashed girl-eyes). These were the battered workhorses in Big Jim’s stable, nothing like the snazzy Detroit and German thoroughbreds out front. At the far end of the lot, ranked against the chainlink fence separating Big Jim’s property from a trash-littered patch of second-growth woods, was a line of phone company vans, some still bearing AT&T logos.

“Those,” Ernie said, reaching behind his seat. He brought out a long thin strip of metal.

“That’s a slim jim,” Rose said, amused in spite of her nerves. “Why would you have a slim jim, Ernie?”

“From when I was still working at Food City. You’d be surprised how many people lock their keys in their cars.”

“How will you get it started, Grampa?” Norrie asked.

Ernie smiled feebly. “I’ll figure somethin out. Stop here, Rose.”

He got out and trotted to the first van, moving with surprising nimbleness for a man approaching seventy. He peered through the window, shook his head, and went to the next in line. Then the third—but that one had a flat tire. After a look into the fourth, he turned back to Rose and gave her a thumbs-up. “Go on, Rose. Buzz.”

Rose had an idea that Ernie didn’t want his granddaughter seeing him use the slim jim. She was touched by that, and drove back around to the front without any further talk. Here she stopped again. “You okay with this, sweetie?”

“Yes,” Norrie said, getting out. “If he can’t get it started, we’ll just walk back to town.”

“It’s almost three miles. Can he do that?”

Norrie’s face was pale, but she managed a smile. “Grampa could walk me right into the ground. He does four miles a day, says it keeps his joints oiled. Go on, now, before someone comes and sees you.”

“You’re a brave girl,” Rose said.

“I don’t feel brave.”

“Brave people never do, honey.”

Rose drove back toward town. Norrie watched until she was out of sight, then began to do rails and lazy diamonds in the front lot. The hottop had a slight slope, so she only had to piss-pedal one way… although she was so wired she felt like she could push the board all the way up Town Common Hill and not feel it. Hell, right now she could probably ass-knife and not feel it. And if someone came along? Well, she had walked out here with her grampa, who wanted to look at some vans. She was just waiting for him, then they’d walk back to town. Grampa loved to walk, everybody knew that. Oiling the joints. Except Norrie didn’t think that was all of it, or even most of it. He had started doing his walks when Gramma started getting confused about stuff (no one came right out and said it was Alzheimer’s, although everyone knew). Norrie thought he was walking off his sorrow. Was such a thing possible? She thought it was. She knew that when she was riding her skateboard, pulling off some sick double-kink at the skate park in Oxford, there was no room in her for anything but joy and fear, and joy ruled the house. Fear lived in the shack out back.

After a short while that felt long, the ex–phone company van rolled from behind the building with Grampa at the wheel. Norrie tucked her skateboard under her arm and jumped in. Her first ride in a stolen vehicle.

“Grampa, you are so gnarly,” she said, and kissed him.

7

Joe McClatchey was headed for the kitchen, wanting one of the remaining cans of apple juice in their dead refrigerator, when he heard his mother say Bump and stopped.

He knew that his parents had met in college, at the University of Maine, and that back then Sam McClatchey’s friends had called him Bump, but Mom hardly ever called him that anymore, and when she did, she laughed and blushed, as if the nickname had some sort of dirty subtext. About that Joe didn’t know. What he knew was that for her to slip like that—slip back like that—must mean she was upset.

He came a little closer to the kitchen door. It was chocked open and he could see his mother and Jackie Wettington, who was today dressed in a blouse and faded jeans instead of her uniform. They’d be able to see him, too, if they looked up. He had no intention of actually sneaking around; that wouldn’t be cool, especially if his mom was upset, but for the time being they were only looking at each other. They were seated at the kitchen table. Jackie was holding Claire’s hands. Joe saw that his mother’s eyes were wet, and that made him feel like crying himself.

“You can’t,” Jackie was saying. “I know you want to, but you just can’t. Not if things go like they’re supposed to tonight.”

“Can I at least call him and tell him why I won’t be there? Or e-mail him! I could do that!”