The Dead Zone(23)

Dr. Strawns hesitated, puffed nervously on his cigarette. 'No, I can't do that,' he said finally.

5.

The three of them waited another hour and then left. It was dark. A cold and gusty wind had come up and it whistled across the big parking lot. Sarah's long hair streamed out behind her. Later, when she got home, she would find a crisp yellow oak leaf caught in it. Overhead, the moon rode the sky, a cold sailor of the night.

Sarah pressed a scrap of paper into Herb's hand. Written on it was her address and phone number. 'Would you call me if you hear something? Anything at all?'

'Yes, of course.' He bent suddenly and kissed her cheek, and Sarah held his shoulder for a moment in the blowing dark.

'I'm very sorry if I was stiff with you earlier, dear,' Vera said, and her voice was surprisingly gentle. 'I was upset.'

'Of course you were,' Sarah said.

'I thought my boy might die. But I've prayed. I've spoken to God about it. As the song says, "Are we weak and heavy-laden? Cumbered with a load of care? We must never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in 'prayer."'

'Vera, we ought to go along,' Herb said. 'We ought to get some sleep and see how things look in the...'

'But now I've heard from my God,' Vera said, looking dreamily up at the moon. 'Johnny isn't going to die. It isn't in God's plan for Johnny to die. I listened and I heard that still, small voice speaking in my heart, and I am comforted.'

Herb opened the car door. 'Come on, Vera.'

She looked back at Sarah and smiled. In that smile Sarah suddenly saw Johnny's own easy, devil-may-care grin - but at the same time she thought it was the most ghastly smile she had ever seen in her life.

'God has put his mark on my Johnny,' Vera said, 'and I rejoice.'

'Good night, Mrs. Smith,' Sarah said through numb lips.

'Good night, Sarah,' Herb said. He got in and started the car. It pulled out of its space and moved across the parking lot to State Street, and Sarah realized she hadn't asked where they were staying. She guessed they might not know themselves yet.

She turned to go to her own car and paused, struck by the river that ran behind the hospital, the Penobscot. It flowed like dark silk, and the reflected moon was caught in its center. She looked up into the sky, standing alone in the parking lot now. She looked at the moon.

God has put his mark on my Johnny and I rejoice.

The moon hung above her like a tawdry carnival toy, a Wheel of Fortune in the sky with the odds all slugged in favor of the house, not to mention the house numbers - zero and double zero. House numbah, house numbah,

y'all pay the house, hey-hey-hey.

The wind blew rattling leaves around her legs. She went to her car and sat behind the wheel. She felt suddenly sure she was going to lose him. Terror and loneliness woke in her. She began to shiver. At last she started her car and drove home.



6.

There was a great outpouring of comfort and good wishes from the Cleaves Mill student body in the following week; Herb Smith told her later that Johnny received better than three hundred cards. Almost all of them contamed a hesitant personal note saying they hoped Johnny would be well soon. Vera answered each of them with a thank-you note and a Bible verse.

Sarah's discipline problem in her classes disappeared. Her previous feeling that some returning jury of class consciousness was bringing in an unfavorable verdict changed to just the opposite. Gradually she realized that the kids were viewing her as a tragic heroine, Mr. Smith's lost love. This idea struck her in the teacher's room during her free period on the Wednesday following the accident, and she went off into sudden gales of laughter that turned into a crying jag. Before she was able to get herself under control she had frightened herself badly. Her nights were made restless with incessant dreams of Johnny - Johnny in the Halloween Jekyll-and-Hyde mask, Johnny standing at the Wheel of Fortune concession while some disembodied voice chanted, 'Man, I love to watch this guy get a beatin,' over and over. Johnny saying, 'It's all right now, Sarah, everything's fine,' and then coming into the room with his head gone above the eyebrows.

Herb and Vera Smith spent the week in the Bangor House, and Sarah saw them every afternoon at the hospital, waiting patiently for something to happen. Nothing did. Johnny lay in a room on the intensive care ward on the sixth floor, surrounded by life-support equipment, breathing with the help of a machine. Dr. Strawns had grown less hopeful. On the Friday following the accident, Herb called Sarah on the phone and told her he and Vera were going home.

'She doesn't want to,' he said, 'but I've gotten her to see reason. I think.'

'Is she all right?' Sarah asked.

There was a long pause, long enough to make Sarah

think she had overstepped the bounds. Then Herb said, 'I don't know. Or maybe I do and I just don't want to say right out that she isn't. She's always had strong ideas about religion and they got a lot stronger after her operation. Her hysterectomy. Now they've gotten worse again. She's been talking a lot about the end of the world. She's connected Johnny's accident with the Rapture, somehow. Just before Armageddon, God is supposed to take all the faithful up to heaven in their actual bodies.'

Sarah thought of a bumper sticker she had seen somewhere: IF THE RAPTURE'S TODAY, SOMEBODY GRAB MY STEERING WHEEL ! 'Yes, I know the idea,' she said.