Under the Dome

Sam stood there for a moment with his lower lip trembling, trying to muster more arguments. Junior observed with disgust and fascination that the old fuck’s eyes were getting wet. Sam held out his hands, which were trembling far worse than his loose mouth. He only had one more argument to make, but it was a hard one to bring out in front of an audience. Because he had to, he did.

“I really need it, Johnny. No joke. Just a little, to stop the shakes. I’ll make it last. And I won’t get up to no dickens. Swear on my mother’s name. I’ll just go home.” Home for Sloppy Sam was a shack sitting in a gruesomely bald dooryard dotted with old auto parts.

“Maybe I ought to—” Johnny Carver began.

Freddy ignored him. “Sloppy, you never made a bottle last in your life.”

“Don’t you call me that!” Sam Verdreaux cried. The tears over-spilled his eyes and slid down his cheeks.

“Your fly’s unzipped, oldtimer,” Junior said, and when Sam looked down at the crotch of his grimy chinos, Junior stroked a finger up the flabby underside of the old man’s chin and then tweaked his beak. A grammar school trick, sure, but it hadn’t lost its charm. Junior even said what they’d said back then: “Dirty clothes, gotcha nose!”

Freddy Denton laughed. So did a couple of other people. Even Johnny Carver smiled, although he didn’t look as if he really wanted to.

“Get outta here, Sloppy,” Freddy said. “It’s a nice day. You don’t want to spend it in a cell.”

But something—maybe being called Sloppy, maybe having his nose tweaked, maybe both—had relit some of the rage that had awed and frightened Sam’s mates when he’d been a lumber-jockey on the Canadian side of the Merimachee forty years before. The tremble disappeared from his lips and hands, at least temporarily. His eyes lighted on Junior, and he made a phlegmy but undeniably contemptuous throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, the slur had left his voice.

“Fuck you, kid. You ain’t no cop, and you was never much of a football player. Couldn’t even make the college B-team is what I heard.”

His gaze switched to Officer Denton.

“And you, Deputy Dawg. Sunday sales legal after nine o’clock. Has been since the seventies, and that’s the end of that tale.”

Now it was Johnny Carver he was looking at. Johnny’s smile was gone, and the watching customers had grown very silent. One woman had a hand to her throat.

“I got money, coin of the realm, and I’m takin what’s mine.”

He started around the counter. Junior grabbed him by the back of the shirt and the seat of the pants, whirled him around, and ran him toward the front of the store.

“Hey!” Sam shouted as his feet bicycled above the old oiled boards. “Take your hands off me! Take your fucking hands—”

Out through the door and down the steps, Junior holding the old man out in front of him. He was light as a bag of feathers. And Christ, he was farting! Pow-pow-pow, like a damn machine gun!

Stubby Norman’s panel truck was parked at the curb, the one with FURNITURE BOUGHT & SOLD and TOP PRICES FOR ANTIQUES on the side. Stubby himself stood beside it with his mouth open. Junior didn’t hesitate. He ran the blabbering old drunk headfirst into the side of the truck. The thin metal gave out a mellow BONNG!

It didn’t occur to Junior that he might have killed the smelly fuck until Sloppy Sam dropped like a rock, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. But it took more than a smack against the side of an old truck to kill Sam Verdreaux. Or silence him. He cried out, then just began to cry. He got to his knees. Scarlet was pouring down his face from his scalp, where the skin had split. He wiped some away, looked at it with disbelief, then held out his dripping fingers.

Foot traffic on the sidewalk had halted so completely that someone might have called a game of Statues. Pedestrians stared with wide eyes at the kneeling man holding out a palmful of blood.

“I’ll sue this whole fuckin town for police brutality!” Sam bawled. “AND I’LL WIN!”

Freddy came down the store’s steps and stood beside Junior.

“Go ahead, say it,” Junior told him.

“Say what?”

“I overreacted.”

“The fuck you did. You heard what Pete said: Take no shit from anybody. Partner, that deal starts here and now.”

Partner! Junior’s heart lifted at the word.

“You can’t throw me out when I got money!” Sam raved. “You can’t beat me up! I’m an American citizen! I’ll see you in court!”

“Good luck on that one,” Freddy said. “The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed.”