Under the Dome

Junior looked at him with an expression of distant contempt Big Jim had never seen before. It came to him that his son now had a great deal of power over him. But surely his own son…

“We’ll have to bury your rug. Thank God it’s not the wall-to-wall carpet you used to have in here. And the upside is it caught most of the mess.” Then he lifted the big burrito and bore it down the hall. A few minutes later Rennie heard the camper start up.

Big Jim considered the golden baseball. I should get rid of that, too, he thought, and knew he wouldn’t. It was practically a family heirloom.

And besides, what harm? What harm, if it was clean?

When Junior returned an hour later, the golden baseball was once again gleaming in its Lucite cradle.

MISSILE STRIKE IMMINENT

1

“ATTENTION! THIS IS THE CHESTER’S MILL POLICE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED! IF YOU HEAR ME, COME TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED!”

Thurston Marshall and Carolyn Sturges sat up in bed, listening to this weird blare and looking at each other with wide eyes. They were teachers at Emerson College, in Boston—Thurston a full professor of English (and guest editor for the current issue of Ploughshares), Carolyn a graduate assistant in the same department. They had been lovers for the last six months, and the bloom was far from off the rose. They were in Thurston’s little cabin on Chester Pond, which lay between Little Bitch Road and Prestile Stream. They had come here for a long “fall foliage” weekend, but most of the foliage they had admired since Friday afternoon had been of the pubic variety. There was no TV in the cabin; Thurston Marshall abominated TV. There was a radio, but they hadn’t turned it on. It was eight thirty in the morning on Monday, October twenty-third. Neither of them had any idea anything was wrong until that blaring voice startled them awake.

“ATTENTION! THIS IS THE CHESTER’S MILL POLICE! THE AREA—” Closer. Moving in.

“Thurston! The dope! Where did you leave the dope?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, but the quaver in his voice suggested he was incapable of taking his own advice. He was a tall, reedy man with a lot of graying hair that he usually tied back in a ponytail. Now it lay loose, almost to his shoulders. He was sixty; Carolyn was twenty-three. “All these little camps are deserted at this time of year, they’ll just drive past and back to the Little Bitch R—”

She pounded him on the shoulder—a first. “The car is in the driveway! They’ll see the car!”

An oh shit look dawned on his face.

“—EVACUATED! IF YOU HEAR ME, COME TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!” Very close now. Thurston could hear other amplified voices, as well—people using loudhailers, cops using loudhailers—but this one was almost on top of them. “THE AREA IS BEING EVAC—” There was a moment of silence. Then: “HELLO, CABIN! COME OUT HERE! MOVE IT!”

Oh, this was a nightmare.

“Where did you leave the dope?” She pounded him again.

The dope was in the other room. In a Baggie that was now half empty, sitting beside a platter of last night’s cheese and crackers. If someone came in, it would be the first goddam thing they saw.

“THIS IS THE POLICE! WE ARE NOT SCREWING AROUND HERE! THE AREA IS BEING EVACUATED! IF YOU’RE IN THERE, COME OUT BEFORE WE HAVE TO DRAG YOU OUT!”

Pigs, he thought. Smalltown pigs with smalltown piggy minds. Thurston sprang from the bed and ran across the room, hair flying, skinny buttocks flexing.

His grandfather had built the cabin after World War II, and it had only two rooms: a big bedroom facing the pond and the living room/kitchen. Power was provided by an old Henske generator, which Thurston had turned off before they had retired; its ragged blat was not exactly romantic. The embers of last night’s fire—not really necessary, but très romantic—still winked sleepily in the fireplace.

Maybe I was wrong, maybe I put the dope back in my attaché—

Unfortunately, no. The dope was there, right next to the remains of the Brie they had gorged on before commencing last night’s fuckathon.

He ran to it, and there was a knock on the door. No, a hammering on the door.

“Just a minute!” Thurston cried, madly merry. Carolyn was standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a sheet, but he hardly noticed her. Thurston’s mind—still suffering residual paranoia from the previous evening’s indulgences—tumbled with unconnected thoughts: revoked tenure, 1984 thought-police, revoked tenure, the disgusted reaction of his three children (by two previous wives), and, of course, revoked tenure. “Just a minute, just a sec, let me get dressed—”