personal sidearms. As a result, several of the cops in this sleepy New England town had gone out and bought .357 Magnums, the gun immortalized by Dirty Harry Callahan. Also during Stillson’s term as mayor, the teen rec center had been closed, a supposedly voluntary but police-enforced ten o’clock curfew for people under sixteen had been instituted, and welfare had been cut by thirty-five percent.
Yes, there were lots of things about Greg Stillson that scared Johnny.
The domineering father and laxly approving mother. The political rallies that felt more like rock concerts. The man’s way with a crowd, his bodyguards -Ever since Sinclair Lewis people had been crying woe and doom and beware of the fascist state in America,
and it just didn’t happen. Well, there had been Huey Long down there in Louisiana, but Huey Long had –
Had been assassinated.
Johnny closed his eyes and saw Ngo cocking his finger. Bam, bam, bam. Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What fearful hand or eye -But you don’t sow dragon’s teeth. Not unless you want to get right down there with Frank Dodd in his hooded vinyl raincoat. With the Oswalds and the Sirhans and the Bremmers. Crazies of the world, unite. Keep your paranoid notebooks up-to-date and thumb them over at midnight and when things start to reach a head inside you, send away the coupon for the mail-order gun. Johnny Smith, meet Squeaky Fromme, Nice to meet you, Johnny,
everything you’ve got in that notebook makes perfect sense to me. Want you to meet my spiritual master. Johnny, meet Charlie. Charlie, this is Johnny. When you finish with Stillson, we’re going to get off together and off the rest of the pigs so we can save the redwoods.
His head was swirling. The inevitable headache was coming on. It always led to this.
Greg Stilison always led him to this. It was time to go to sleep and please God, no dreams.
Still: The Question.
He had written it in one of the notebooks and kept coming back to it. He had written it in neat letters and then had drawn a triple circle around it, as if to keep it in. The Question was this: If you could jump into a time machine and go back to 1932, would you kill Hitler?
Johnny looked at his watch. Quarter of one. It was November 3 now, and the
Bicentennial election was a part of history. Ohio was still undecided, but Carter was leading. No contest, baby. The hurly burly’s done, the election’s lost and won. Jerry Ford could hang up his jock, at least until 1980.
Johnny went to the window and looked out. The big house was dark, but there was a light burning in Ngo’s apartment over the garage. Ngo, who would shortly be an American citizen, was still watching the great American quadrennial ritual: Old Bums Exit There, New Bums Enter Here. Maybe Gordon Strachan hadn’t given the Watergate Committee such a bad answer at that Johnny went to bed. After a long time he slept.
And dreamed of the laughing tiger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
1.
Herb Smith took Charlene MacKenzie as his second wife on the afternoon of January 2, 1977, just as planned. The ceremony took place in the Congregational Church at Southwest Bend. The bride’s father, an eighty-year-old gentleman who was almost blind, gave her away. Johnny stood up with his dad and produced the ring flawlessly at the proper moment. It was a lovely occasion.
Sarah Hazlett attended with her husband and their son, who was leaving his babyhood behind now. Sarah was pregnant and radiant, a picture of happiness and fulfilment.
Looking at her, Johnny was surprised by a stab of bitter jealousy like an unexpected attack of gas. After a few moments it went away, and Johnny went over and spoke to them at the reception following the wedding.
It was the first time he had met Sarah’s husband. He was a tall, good-looking man with a pencil-line moustache and prematurely graying hair. His canvass for the Maine state senate had been successful, and he held forth on what the national elections had really meant, and the difficulties of working with an independent governor, while Denny pulled at the leg of his trousers and demanded more drink, Daddy, more drink, more-drink!