The Dead Zone(119)

Ngo wrinkled his nose. 'Sorry, yes. Mr. Chatsworth is loving them. I tell him, but they are junk trees. Every-where there are these trees in New England. His face goes like this ...' Now Ngo's whole face wrinkled and he looked like a caricature. of some late show monster. ... and he says to me, "Just plant them."'

Johnny laughed. That was Roger Chatsworth, all right.

He liked things done his way. 'How did you enjoy the rally?'

Ngo smiled gently. 'Very instructive,' he said. There was no way to read his eyes. He might not have noticed the sunrise on the side of Johnny's face. 'Yes, very instructive, we are all enjoying ourselves.'

'Good.'

'And you?'

'Not so much,' Johnny said, and touched the bruise lightly with his fingertips. It was very tender.

'Yes, too bad, you should put a beefsteak on it,' Ngo said, still smiling gently.

What did you think about him, Ngo? What did your class think? Your Polish friend? Or Ruth Chen and her sister?'

'Going back we did not talk about it, at our instructors' request. Think about what you have seen, they say. Next Tuesday we will write in class, I think. Yes, I am thinking very much that we will. A class composition.'

'What will you say in your composition?'

Ngo looked at the blue summer sky. He and the sky smiled at each other. He was a small man with the first threads of gray in his hair. Johnny knew almost nothing about him; didn't know if he had been married, had fathered children, if he had fled before the Vietcong, if he had been from Saigon or from one of the rural provinces. He had no idea what Ngo's political leanings were.

'We talked of the game of the Laughing Tiger,' Ngo said. 'Do you remember?'

'Yes,' Johnny said.

'I will tell you of a real tiger. When I was a boy there was a tiger who went bad near my village. He was being le manger d'homme, eater of men, you understand, except he was not that, he was an eater of boys and girls and old women because this was during the war and there were no men to eat. Not the war you know of, but the Second World War. He had gotten the taste for human meat, this tiger. Who was there to kill such an awful creature in a humble village where the youngest man is being sixty and with only one arm, and the oldest boy is myself, only seven years of age? And one day this tiger was found in a pit that had been baited with the body of a dead woman. It is a terrible thing to bait a trap with a human being made in the image of God, I will say in my composition, but it is more terrible to do nothing while a bad tiger carries away small children. And I will say in my composition that this bad tiger was still alive when we found it. It was having a stake pushed through its body but it was still alive. We beat it to death with hoes and sticks. Old men and women and children, some children so excited and frightened they are wetting themselves in their pants. The tiger fell in the pit and we beat it to death with our hoes because the men of the village had gone to fight the Japanese. I am thinking that this Stillson is like that bad tiger with its taste for human meat. I think a trap should be made for him, and I think he should be falling into it. And if he still lives, I think he should be beaten to death.'

He smiled gently at Johnny in the clear summer sunshine.

'Do you really believe that?' Johnny asked.

'Oh, yes,' Ngo said. He spoke lightly, as if it were a matter of no consequence. 'What my teacher will say when I am handing in such a composition, I don't know.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Probably he will say, "Ngo, you are not ready for the American Way." But I will say the truth of what I feel. What did you think, Johnny?' His eyes moved to the bruise, then moved away.

'I think he's dangerous,' Johnny said. 'I... I know lie's dangerous.'

'Do you?' Ngo remarked. 'Yes, I believe you do know it. Your fellow New Hampshires, they see him as an engaging clown. They set him the way many of this world are seeing this black man, Idi Amin Dada. But you do not.

'No,' Johnny said. 'But to suggest he should be killed ..

'Politically killed,' Ngo said, smiling. 'I am only suggesting he should be politically killed.'

'And if he can't be politically killed?'

Ngo smiled at Johnny. He unfolded his index finger, cocked his thumb, and then snapped it down. 'Bam,' he said softly. 'Bam, bam, ham.'

'No,' Johnny said, surprised at the hoarseness in his own voice. 'That's never an answer. Never'

'No? I thought it was an answer you Americans used quite often.' Ngo picked up the handle of the red wagon. 'I must be planting these weeds, Johnny. So long, man.

Johnny watched him go, a small man in suntans and moccasins, pulling a wagonload of baby pines. He disappeared around the corner of the house.

No. Killing only sows more dragon's teeth. I believe that. I believe it with all my heart.

3.

On the first Tuesday in November, which happened to be the second day in the month, Johnny Smith sat slumped in the easy chair of his combined kitchen-living room and watched the election returns. Chancellor and Brinkley were featuring a large electronic map that showed the results of the presidential race in a color-code as each state came in. Now, at nearly midnight, the race between Ford and Carter looked very cl6se. But Carter would win; Johnny had no doubt of it.

Greg Stillson had also won.

His victory had been extensively covered on the local newsbreaks, but the national reporters had also taken some note of it, comparing his victory to that of James Longley, Maine's independent governor, two years before.