The Dead Zone (62 page)

Ve: Did she call him?

Va: Yes, she did. They had a very nice chat.

Ve: And was Mr. Richards—your brother-in-law—was he all right?

Va: Yes, he was fine. But the following week he fell from a ladder while painting his house and broke his back.

Ve: Dr. Vann, do you believe John Smith saw that happen? Do you believe that he had a precognitive vision concerning your wife's brother?

Va: I don't know. But I believe . . . that it may have been so.

Ve: Thank you, Dr.

Va: May I say one more thing?

Ve: Of course.

Va: If he did have such a curse—yes, I would call it a curse—I hope God will show pity to that man's tortured soul.

 . . . and I know, Dad, that people are going to say that I did what I am planning to do because of the tumor, but Daddy, don't believe them. It isn't true. The tumor is only the accident finally catching up with me, the accident which I now believe never
stopped happening. The tumor lies in the same area that was injured in the crash, the same area that I now believe was probably bruised when I was a child and took a fall one day while skating on Runaround Pond. That was when I had the first of my “flashes,” although even now I cannot remember exactly what it was. And I had another just before the accident, at the Esty Fair. Ask Sarah about that one; I'm sure she remembers. The tumor lies in that area which I always called “the dead zone.” And that turned out to be right, didn't it? All too bitterly right. God . . . destiny . . . providence . . . fate . . . whatever you want to call it, seems to be reaching out with its steady and unarguable hand to put the scales back in balance again. Perhaps I was meant to die in that car-crash or even earlier, that day on the Runaround. And I believe that when I've finished what I have to finish, the scales will come completely back into balance again.

Daddy, I love you. The worst thing, next to the belief that the gun is the only way out of this terrible deadlock I find myself in, is knowing that I'll be leaving you behind to bear the grief and hate of those who have no reason to believe Stillson is anything but a good and just man . . .

Excerpt from testimony given before the so-called “Stillson Committee,” chaired by Senator William Cohen of Maine. The questioner is Mr. Albert Renfrew, the Committee's Deputy Counsel. The witness is Dr. Samuel Weizak, of 26 Harlow Court, Bangor, Maine.

Date of testimony: August 23, 1979.

Renfrew: We are now approaching the hour of adjournment, Dr. Weizak, and on behalf of the Committee, I would like to thank you for the last four long hours of testimony. You have offered a great deal of light on the situation.

Weizak: That is quite all right.

R: I have one final question for you. Dr. Weizak, one which seems to me to be of nearly ultimate importance; it speaks to an issue which John Smith himself raised in the letter to his father which has been entered into evidence. That question is . . .

W: No.

R: I beg your pardon?

W: You are preparing to ask me if Johnny's tumor pulled the trigger that day in New Hampshire, are you not?

R: In a manner of speaking, I suppose . . .

W: The answer is no. Johnny Smith was a thinking, reasoning human being until the end of his life. The letter to his father shows this; his letter to Sarah Hazlett also shows this. He was a man with a terrible, Godlike power—perhaps a curse, as my colleague Dr. Vann has called it—but he was neither unhinged nor acting upon fantasies caused by cranial pressure—if such a thing is even possible.

R: But isn't it true that Charles Witman, the so-called “Texas Tower Sniper,” had . . .

W: Yes, yes, he had a tumor. So did the pilot of the Eastern Airlines airplane that crashed in Florida some years ago. And it has never been suggested that the tumor was a precipitating cause in either case. I would point out to you that other infamous creatures—Richard Speck; the so-called “Son of Sam,” and Adolf Hitler—needed no brain tumors to cause them to act in a homicidal manner. Or Frank Dodd, the murderer Johnny himself uncovered in the town of Castle Rock. However misguided this Committee may find Johnny's act to have been, it was the act of a man who was sane. In great mental agony, perhaps . . . but sane.

 . . . and most of all, don't believe that I did this without the longest and most agonizing reflection. If by killing him I could be sure that the human race was gaining another four years, another two, even another eight months in which to think it over, it would be worth it. It's wrong, but it may turn out right. I don't know. But I won't play Hamlet any longer. I
know
how dangerous Stillson is.

Daddy, I love you very much. Believe it.

Your son,

Johnny

Excerpt from testimony given before the so-called “Stillson Committee,” chaired by Senator William Cohen of Maine. The questioner is Mr. Albert Renfrew, the Committee's Deputy Counsel. The witness is Mr. Stuart Clawson, of the Blackstrap Road in Jackson, New Hampshire.

Renfrew: And you say you just happened to grab your camera, Mr. Clawson?

Clawson: Yeah! Just as I went out the door. I almost didn't even go that day, even though I like Greg Stillson—well, I did like him before all of this, anyway. The town hall just seemed like a bummer to me, you know?

R: Because of your driver's exam.

C: You got it. Flunking that permit test was one colossal bummer. But at the end, I said what the hell. And I got the picture. Wow! I got it. That picture's going to make me rich, I guess. Just like the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

R: I hope you don't get the idea that the entire thing was staged for your benefit, young man.

C: Oh, no! Not at all! I only meant . . . well . . . I don't know what I meant. But it happened right in front of me, and . . . I don't know. Jeez, I was just glad I had my Nikon, that's all.

R: You just snapped the photo when Stillson picked up the child?

C: Matt Robeson, yessir.

R: And this is a blowup of that photo?

C: That's my picture, yes.

R: And after you took it, what happened?

C: Two of those goons ran after me. They were yelling “Give us the camera, kid! Drop it.” Shi—uh, stuff like that.

R: And you ran.

C: Did I run? Holy God, I guess I ran. They chased me almost all the way to the town garage. One of them almost had me, but he slipped on the ice and fell down.

Cohen: Young man, I'd like to suggest that you won the most important footrace of your life when you outran those two thugs.

C: Thank you, Sir. What Stillson did that day . . . maybe you had to be there, but . . . holding a little kid in front of you, that's pretty low. I bet the people in New Hampshire wouldn't vote for that guy for dog-catcher. Not for . . .

R: Thank you, Mr. Clawson. The witness is excused.

October again.

Sarah had avoided this trip for a very long time, but now the time had come and it could be put off no longer. She felt that. She had left both children with Mrs. Ablanap—they had
house-help now, and two cars instead of the little red Pinto; Walt's income was scraping near thirty thousand dollars a year—and had come by herself to Pownal through the burning blaze of late autumn.

Now she pulled over on the shoulder of a pretty little country road, got out, and crossed to the small cemetery on the other side. A small, tarnished plaque on one of the stone posts announced that this was THE BIRCHES. It was enclosed by a rambling rock wall, and the grounds were neatly kept. A few faded flags remained from Memorial Day five months ago. Soon they would be buried under snow.

She walked slowly, not hurrying, the breeze catching the hem of her dark green skirt and fluttering it. Here were generations of BOWDENS; here was a whole family of MARSTENS; here, grouped around a large marble memorial were PILLSBURYS going back to 1750.

And near the rear wall, she found a relatively new stone, which read simply JOHN SMITH. Sarah knelt beside it, hesitated, touched it. She let her fingertips skate thoughtfully over its polished surface.

January 23, 1979

Dear Sarah,

I've just written my father a very important letter, and it took me nearly an hour and a half to work my way through it. I just don't have the energy to repeat the effort, so I am going to suggest that you call him as soon as you receive this. Go do it now, Sarah, before you read the rest of this . . . .

So now, in all probability, you know. I just wanted to tell you that I've been thinking a lot about our date at the Esty Fair just recently. If I had to guess the two things that you remember most about it, I'd guess the run of luck I had on the Wheel of Fortune (remember the kid who kept saying “I love to see this guy take a beatin”?), and the mask I wore to fool you. That was supposed to be a big joke, but you got mad and our date damn near went right down the drain. Maybe if it had, I wouldn't be here now and that taxi driver would still be alive. On the other hand, maybe nothing at all of importance
changes in the future, and I would have been handed the same bullet to eat a week or a month or a year later.

Well, we had our chance and it came up on one of the house numbers—double zero, I guess. But I wanted you to know that I think of you, Sarah. For me there really hasn't been anyone else, and that night was the best night for us . . .

“Hello, Johnny,” she murmured and the wind walked softly through the trees that burned and blazed; a red leaf flipped its way across the bright blue sky and landed, unnoticed in her hair. “I'm here. I finally came.”

Speaking out loud should have also seemed wrong; speaking to the dead in a graveyard was the act of a crazy person, she would have said once. But now emotion surprised her, emotion of such force and intensity that it caused her throat to ache and her hands to suddenly clap shut. It was all right to speak to him, maybe; after all, it had been nine years, and this was the end of it. After this there would be Walt and the children and lots of smiles from one of the chairs behind her husband's speaking podium; the endless smiles from the background and an occasional feature article in the Sunday supplements, if Walt's political career skyrocketed as he so calmly expected it to do. The future was a little more gray in her hair each year, never going braless because of the sag, becoming more careful about makeup; the future was exercise classes at the YWCA in Bangor and shopping and taking Denny to the first grade and Janis to nursery school; the future was New Year's Eve parties and funny hats as her life rolled into the science-fictiony decade of the 1980s and also into a queer and almost unsuspected state—middle age.

She saw no county fairs in her future.

The first slow, scalding tears began to come. “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Everything was supposed to be different, wasn't it? It wasn't supposed to end like this.”

She lowered her head, her throat working painfully—and to no effect. The sobs came anyway, and the bright sunlight broke into prisms of light. The wind, which had seemed so warm and Indian summery, now seemed as chill as February on her wet cheeks.

“Not
fair!”
she cried into the silence of BOWDENS and
MARSTENS and PILLSBURYS, that dead congregation of listeners who testified to nothing more or less than life is quick and dead is dead. “Oh God, not
fair!”

And that was when the hand touched her neck.

 . . . and that night was the best night for us, although there are still times when it's hard for me to believe there ever was such a year as 1970 and upheaval on the campuses and Nixon was president, no pocket calculators, no home video tape recorders, no Bruce Springsteen or punk-rock bands either. And at other times it seems like that time is only a handsbreadth away, that I can almost touch it, that if I could put my arms around you or touch your cheek or the back of your neck, I could carry you away with me into a different future with no pain or darkness or bitter choices.

Well, we all do what we can, and it has to be good enough . . . and if it isn't good enough, it has to do. I only hope that you will think of me as well as you can, dear Sarah. All my best,

and all my love,

Johnny

She drew her breath in raggedly, her back straightening, her eyes going wide and round. “Johnny . . . ?”

It was gone.

Whatever it had been, it was gone. She stood and turned around and of course there was nothing there. But she could see him standing there, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, that easy, crooked grin on his pleasant-rather-than-hand-some face, leaning lanky and at ease against a monument or one of the stone gateposts or maybe just a tree gone red with fall's dying fire. No big deal, Sarah—you still sniffin that wicked cocaine?

Nothing there but Johnny; somewhere near, maybe everywhere.

We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough . . .
and if it isn't good enough, it has to do. Nothing is ever lost, Sarah. Nothing that can't be found.

“Same old Johnny,” she whispered, and walked out of the cemetery and crossed the road. She paused for a moment, looking back. The warm October wind gusted strongly and great shades of light and shadow seemed to pass across the world. The trees rustled secretly.