The Dead Zone (54 page)

“I don't think he believes any of this,” Johnny said.

Roger stood up and smiled. “Well, let's take a ride over to Somersworth and talk to the manager of the place,” he said. “It was a dull lawn party, anyway. And if you two still feel the same coming back, we can have everyone over here tonight.”

He glanced at Johnny.

“Only condition being that you have to stay sober and help chaperon, fellow.”

“I'll be glad to,” Johnny said. “But why, if you don't believe it?”

“For your peace of mind,” Roger said, “and for Chuck's. And so that, when nothing happens tonight, I can say I told you so and then just
laaaugh
my ass off.”

“Well, whatever, thanks.” He was trembling worse than ever now that the relief had come, but his headache had retreated to a dull throb.

“One thing up front, though,” Roger said. “I don't think we stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting the owner to cancel on your unsubstantiated word, Johnny. This is probably one of his big business nights each year.”

Chuck said, “Well, we could work something out . . .”

“Like what!”

“Well, we could tell him a story . . . spin some kind of yarn . . .”

“Lie, you mean? No, I won't do that. Don't ask me, Chuck.”

Chuck nodded. “All right.”

“We better get going,” Roger said briskly. “It's quarter of five. We'll take the Mercedes over to Somersworth.”

Bruce Carrick, the owner-manager, was tending bar when the three of them came in at five-forty. Johnny's heart sank a little when he read the sign posted outside the lounge doors: PRIVATE PARTY THIS EVENING ONLY 7 PM TO CLOSING SEE YOU TOMORROW.

Carrick was not exactly being run into the ground. He was serving a few workmen who were drinking beer and watching the early news, and three couples who were having cocktails. He listened to Johnny's story with a face that grew ever more incredulous. When he had finished, Carrick said: “You say Smith's your name?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“Mr. Smith, come on over to this window with me.”

He led Johnny to the lobby window, by the cloakroom door.

“Look out there Mr. Smith and tell me what you see.”

Johnny looked out, knowing what he would see. Route 9 ran west, now drying from a light afternoon sprinkle. Above, the sky was perfectly clear. The thunderheads had passed.

“Not much. At least, not now. But . . .”

“But nothing,” Bruce Carrick said. “You know what I think? You want to know frankly? I think you're a nut. Why you picked me for this royal screwing I don't know or care. But if you got a second, sonny, I'll tell you the facts of life. The senior class has paid me six hundred and fifty bucks for this bash. They've hired a pretty good rock 'n' roll band, Oak, from up in Maine. The food's out there in the freezer, all ready to go into the microwave. The salads are on ice. Drinks are extra, and most of these kids are over eighteen and can drink all they want . . . and tonight they will, who can blame them, you only graduate from high school once. I'll take in two thousand dollars in the lounge tonight, no sweat. I got two extra barmen coming in. I got six waitresses and a hostess. If I should cancel this thing now, I lose the whole night, plus
I got to pay back the six-fifty I already took for the meal. I don't even get my regular dinner crowd because that sign's been there all week. Do you get the picture?”

“Are there lightning rods on this place?” Johnny asked.

Carrick threw his hands up. “I tell this guy the facts of life and he wants to discuss lightning rods! Yeah, I got lightning rods! A guy came in here, before I added one, must be five years ago now. He gave me a song-and-dance about improving my insurance rates. So I bought the goddam lightning rods! Are you happy? Jesus
Christ!”
He looked at Roger and Chuck. “What are you two guys doing? Why are you letting this asshole run around loose? Get out, why don't you? I got a business to run.”

“Johnny . . .” Chuck began.

“Never mind,” Roger said. “Let's go. Thank you for your time, Mr. Carrick, and for your polite and sympathetic attention.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Carrick said. “Bunch of nuts!” He strode back toward the lounge.

The three of them went out. Chuck looked doubtfully at the flawless sky. Johnny started toward the car, looking only at his feet, feeling stupid and defeated. His headache thudded sickly against his temples. Roger was standing with his hands in his back pockets, looking up at the long, low roof of the building.

“What are you looking at, Dad?” Chuck asked.

“There are no lightning rods up there,” Roger Chatsworth said thoughtfully. “No lightning rods at all.”

The three of them sat in the living room of the big house, Chuck by the telephone. He looked doubtfully at his father. “Most of them won't want to change their plans this late,” he said.

“They've got plans to go out, that's all,” Roger said. “They can just as easily come here.”

Chuck shrugged and began dialing.

They ended up with about half the couples who had been planning to go to Cathy's that graduation evening, and Johnny was never really sure why they came. Some probably came simply because it sounded like a more interesting party and
because the drinks were on the house. But word traveled fast, and the parents of a good many of the kids here had been at the lawn party that afternoon—as a result, Johnny spent much of the evening feeling like an exhibit in a glass case. Roger sat in the corner on a stool, drinking a vodka martini. His face was a studied mask.

Around quarter of eight he walked across the big bar playroom combination that took up three-quarters of the basement level, bent close to Johnny and bellowed over the roar of Elton John, “You want to go upstairs and play some cribbage?”

Johnny nodded gratefully.

Shelley was in the kitchen, writing letters. She looked up when they came in, and smiled. “I thought you two masochists were going to stay down there all night. It's not really necessary, you know.”

“I'm sorry about all of this,” Johnny said. “I know how crazy it must seem.”

“It does seem crazy,” Shelley said. “No reason not to be candid about that. But having them here is really rather nice. I don't mind.”

Thunder rumbled outside. Johnny looked around. Shelley saw it and smiled a little. Roger had left to hunt for the cribbage board in the dining room welsh dresser.

“It's just passing over, you know,” she said. “A little thunder and a sprinkle of rain.”

“Yes,” Johnny said.

She sighed her letter in a comfortable scrawl, folded it, sealed it, addressed it, stamped it. “You really experienced something, didn't you, Johnny?”

“Yes.”

“A momentary faintness,” she said. “Possibly caused by a dietary deficiency. You're much too thin, Johnny. It might have been a hallucination, mightn't it?”

“No, I don't think so.”

Outside, thunder growled again, but distantly.

“I'm just as glad to have him home. I don't believe in astrology and palmistry and clairvoyance and all of that, but . . . I'm just as glad to have him home. He's our only chick . . . a pretty damned big chick now, I suspect you're thinking, but it's easy to remember him riding the little kids' merry-go-round in the town park in his short pants. Too easy, perhaps.
And it's nice to be able to share the . . . the last rite of his boyhood with him.”

“It's nice that you feel that way,” Johnny said. Suddenly he was frightened to find himself close to tears. In the last six or eight months it seemed to him that his emotional control had slipped several notches.

“You've been good for Chuck. I don't mean just teaching him to read. In a lot of ways.”

“I like Chuck.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know you do.”

Roger came back with the cribbage board and a transistor radio tuned to WMTQ, a classical station that broadcast from the top of Mount Washington.

“A little antidote for Elton John, Aerosmith, Foghat, et al,” he said. “How does a dollar a game sound, Johnny?”

“It sounds fine.”

Roger sat down, rubbing his hands. “Oh you're goin home poor,” he said.

They played cribbage and the evening passed. Between each game one of them would go downstairs and make sure no one had decided to dance on the pool table or go out back for a little party of their own. “No one is going to impregnate anyone else at this party if I can help it,” Roger said.

Shelley had gone into the living room to read. Once an hour the music on the radio would stop and the news would come on and Johnny's attention would falter a little. But there was nothing about Cathy's in Somersworth—not at eight, nine, or ten.

After the ten o'clock news, Roger said: “Getting ready to hedge your prediction a little, Johnny?”

“No.”

The weather forecast was for scattered thundershowers, clearing after midnight.

The steady bass signature of K.C. and the Sunshine Band came up through the floor.

“Party's getting loud,” Johnny remarked.

“The hell with that,” Roger said, grinning. “The party's getting drunk. Spider Parmeleau is passed out in the corner and somebody's using him for a beer coaster. Oh, they'll have
big heads in the morning, you want to believe it. I remember at my own graduation party . . .”

“Here is a bulletin from the WMTQ newsroom,” the radio said.

Johnny, who had been shuffling, sprayed cards all over the floor.

“Relax, it's probably just something about that kidnapping down in Florida.”

“I don't think so,” Johnny said.

The broadcaster said: “It appears at this moment that the worst fire in New Hampshire history has claimed more than seventy-five young lives in the border town of Somersworth, New Hampshire. The fire occurred at a restaurant-lounge called Cathy's. A graduation party was in progress when the fire broke out. Somersworth fire chief Milton Hovey told reporters they have no suspicions of arson; they believe that the fire was almost certainly caused by a bolt of lightning.”

Roger Chatsworth's face was draining of all color. He sat bolt upright in his kitchen chair, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Johnny's head. His hands lay loosely on the table. From below them came the babble of conversation and laughter, intermingled now with the sound of Bruce Springsteen.

Shelley came into the room. She looked from her husband to Johnny and then back again. “What is it? What's wrong?”

“Shut up,” Roger said.

“. . . is still blazing, and Hovey said that a final tally of the dead will probably not be known until early morning. It is known that over thirty people, mostly members of the Durham High School senior class, have been taken to hospitals in surrounding areas to be treated for burns. Forty people, also mostly graduating students, escaped from small bathroom windows at the rear of the lounge, but others were apparently trapped in fatal pile-ups at the . . .”

“Was it Cathy's?”
Shelley Chatsworth screamed.
“Was it that place?”

“Yes,” Roger said. He seemed eerily calm. “Yes, it was.”

Downstairs there had been a momentary silence. It was followed by a running thud of footsteps coming up the stairs. The kitchen door burst open and Chuck came in, looking for his mother.

“Mom? What is it? What's wrong?”

“It appears that we may owe you for our son's life,” Roger
said in that same eerily calm voice. Johnny had never seen a face that white. Roger looked like a ghastly living waxwork.

“It
burned?”
Chuck's voice was incredulous. Behind him, others were crowding up the stairs now, whispering in low, affrighted voices. “Are you saying it burned
down?”

No one answered. And then, suddenly, from somewhere behind him Patty Strachan began to talk in a high hysterical voice. “It's his fault, that guy there! He made it happen! He set it on fire by his mind, just like in that book
Carrie.
You murderer! Killer! You . . .”

Roger turned toward her.
“SHUT UP!”
he roared.

Patty collapsed into wild sobs.

“Burned?” Chuck repeated. He seemed to be asking himself now, inquiring if that could possibly be the right word.

“Roger?” Shelley whispered. “Rog? Honey?”

There was a growing mutter on the stairs, and in the playroom below, like a stir of leaves. The stereo clicked off. The voices murmured.

Was Mike there? Shannon went, didn't she? Are you sure? Yes, I was all ready to leave when Chuck called me. My mother was there when that guy freaked out and she said she felt like a goose was walking on her grave, she asked me to come here instead. Was Casey there? Was Ray there? Was Maureen On-tello there? Oh my God, was she? Was . . .

Roger stood up slowly and turned around. “I suggest,” he said, “that we find the soberest people here to drive and that we all go down to the hospital. They'll need blood donors.”

Johnny sat like a stone. He found himself wondering if he would ever move again. Outside, thunder rumbled. And followed on its heels like an inner clap, he heard his dying mother's voice:

Do your duty, John.

August 12, 1977

Dear Johnny,

Finding you wasn't much of a trick—I sometimes think if you have enough free cash, you can find anyone in this country, and the cash I got. Maybe I'm risking your resentment stating it as badly as that, but Chuck and Shelley and I owe you too much to tell you less than the truth. Money buys a lot, but it can't buy off the lightning. They found twelve boys still in the men's room opening off the restaurant, the one where the window had been nailed shut. The fire didn't reach there but the smoke did, and all twelve of them were suffocated. I haven't been able to get that out of my mind because Chuck could have been one of those boys. So I had you “tracked down,” as you put it in your letter. And for the same reason, I can't leave you alone as you requested. At least not until the enclosed check comes back canceled with your endorsement on the back.