The Dead Zone(137)

The passenger answered, 'I'm fine. I was ... thinking of another taxi ride. Several years ago.

'Oh, right,' George said sagely, exactly as if he knew what the man was talking about. Well, New York was full of kooks, there was no denying that. And after this brief pause for reflection, he went on talking about his brother-in-law.

6.

'Mommy, is that man sick?'

'Shhh.'

'Yeah, but is he?'

'Danny, be quiet.'

She smiled at the man on the other side of the Greyhound's aisle, an apologetic, kids-will-say-anything-won't-they smile, but the man appeared not to have heard. The poor guy did look sick. Danny was only four, but he was right about that. The man was looking listlessly out at the snow that had begun to fall shortly after they crossed the Connecticut state line. He was much too pale, much too thin, and there was a hideous Frankenstein scar running up out of his coat collar to just under his jaw. It was as if someone had tried taking his head clean off at sometime in the not-too-distant past - tried and almost succeeded.

The Greyhound was on its way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they would arrive at 9 30 tonight if the snow didn't slow things down too much. Julie Brown and her son were going to see Julie's mother-in-law, and as usual the old bitch would spoil Danny rotten - and Danny didn't have far to go.

'I wanna go see him.'

'No, Danny.'

'I wanna see if he's sick.'

'No!'

'Yeah, but what if he's dine, ma?' Danny's eyes positively glowed at this entrancing possibility. 'He might be dine right now!'

'Danny, shut up.'

'Hey, mister!' Danny cried. 'You dine, or anything?'

'Danny, you shut your mouth! ' Julie hissed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Danny began to cry then, not real crying but that snotty, I-can't-get-my-own-way whining that always made her want to grab him and pinch his arms until he really had something to cry about. At times like this, riding the bus into evening through another cruddy snowstorm with her son whining beside her, she wished her own mother had sterilized her several years before she had reached the age of consent.

That was when the man across the aisle turned his head and smiled at her - a tired, painful smile, but rather sweet for all that. She saw that his eyes were terribly bloodshot, as if he had been crying. She tried to smile back, but it felt false and uneasy on her lips. That red left eye - and the scar running up his neck - made that half of his face look sinister and unpleasant.

She hoped that the man across the aisle wasn't going all the way to Portsmouth, but as it turned out, he was.

She caught sight of him in the terminal as Danny's gram swept the boy, giggling happily, into her arms. She saw him limping toward the terminal doors, a scuffed traveling bag in one hand, a new attache case in the other. And for just a moment, she felt a terrible chill cross her back. It was really worse than a limp - it was very nearly a head-long lurch. But there was something implacable about it, she told the New Hampshire state police later. It was as if he knew exactly where he was going and nothing was going to stop him from getting there.

Then he passed out into the darkness and she lost sight of him.

7.

Timmesdale, New Hampshire, is a small town west of Durham, just inside the third congressional district. It is kept alive by the smallest of the Chatsworth Mills, which hulks like a soot-stained brick ogre on the edge of Timmesdale Stream. Its one modest claim to fame (according to the local Chamber of Commerce) is that it was the first town in New Hampshire to have electric streetlights.

One evening in early January, a young man with prematurely graying hair and a limp walked into the Timmesdale Pub, the town's only beer joint. Dick O'Donnell, the owner, was tending the bar. The place was almost empty because it was the middle of the week and another norther was brewing. Two or three inches had piled up out there already, and more was on the way.

The man with the limp stamped off his shoes, came to the bar, and ordered a Pabst. O'Donnell served him. The fellow had two more, making them last, watching the TV over the bar. The color was going bad, had been for a couple of months now, and The Fonz looked like an aging Rumanian ghoul. O'Donnell couldn't remember having seen this guy around.

'Like another?' O'Donnell asked, coming back to the bar after serving the two old bags in the corner.

'One more won't hurt,' the fellow said. He pointed to a spot above the TV. 'You met him, I guess.'

It was a framed blowup of a political cartoon. It showed Greg Stilison, his construction helmet cocked back on his head, throwing a fellow in a business suit down the Capitol steps. The fellow in the business suit was Louis Quinn, the congressman who had been caught taking kickbacks in the parking-lot scam some fourteen months ago. The cartoon was titled GIVING EM THE BUM'S RUSH, and across the corner it had been signed in a scrawling hand: For Dick O'Donnell, who keeps the best damn saloon in the third district! Keep drawing them, Dick - Greg Stillson.

'Betcha butt I did,' O'Donnell said. 'He gave a speech in here the last time he canvassed for the House. Had signs out all over town, come on into the Pub at two o'clock Saturday afternoon and have one on Greg. That was the best damn day's business I've ever done. People was only supposed to have one on him, but he ended up grabbing the whole tab. Can't do much better than that, can you?'