Under the Dome

At no point did the Motton Road actually run through Motton; it ran just inside the Chester’s Mill town line. Here were new residential homes, in an area that had been called Eastchester since 1975 or so. The owners were thirty- and fortysomethings who commuted to Lewiston-Auburn, where they worked for good wages, mostly in white-collar jobs. All of these homes were in The Mill, but many of their backyards were in Motton. This was the case with Jack and Myra Evans’s home at 379 Motton Road. Myra had a vegetable garden behind their house, and although most of the goodies had been harvested, there were still a few fat Blue Hubbard squashes beyond the remaining (and badly rotted) pumpkins. She was reaching for one of these when the Dome came down, and although her knees were in Chester’s Mill, she happened to be reaching for a Blue Hubbard that was growing a foot or so across the Motton line.

She didn’t cry out, because there was no pain—not at first. It was too quick and sharp and clean for that.

Jack Evans was in the kitchen, whipping eggs for a noontime frittata. LCD Soundsystem was playing—“North American Scum”—and Jack was singing along when a small voice spoke his name from behind him. He didn’t at first recognize the voice as belonging to his wife of fourteen years; it sounded like the voice of a child. But when he turned he saw it was indeed Myra. She was standing inside the doorway, holding her right arm across her middle. She had tracked mud onto the floor, which was very unlike her. Usually she took her garden shoes off on the stoop. Her left hand, clad in a filthy gardening glove, was cradling her right hand, and red stuff was running through the muddy fingers. At first he thought Cranberry juice, but only for a second. It was blood. Jack dropped the bowl he’d been holding. It shattered on the floor.

Myra said his name again in that same tiny, trembling childvoice.

“What happened? Myra, what happened to you?”

“I had an accident,” she said, and showed him her right hand. Only there was no muddy right gardening glove to match the left one, and no right hand. Only a spouting stump. She gave him a weak smile and said “Whoops.” Her eyes rolled up to whites. The crotch of her gardening jeans darkened as her urine let go. Then her knees also let go and she went down. The blood gushing from her raw wrist—an anatomy lesson cutaway—mixed with the eggy batter splattered across the floor.

When Jack dropped to his knees beside her, a shard from the bowl jabbed deep into his knee. He hardly noticed, although he would limp on that leg for the rest of his life. He seized her arm and squeezed. The terrible bloodgush from her wrist slowed but didn’t stop. He tore his belt free of its loops and noosed it around her lower forearm. That did the job, but he couldn’t notch the belt tight; the loop was far beyond the buckle.

“Christ,” he told the empty kitchen. “Christ.”

It was darker than it had been, he realized. The power had gone out. He could hear the computer in the study chiming its distress call. LCD Soundsystem was okay, because the little boombox on the counter was battery-powered. Not that Jack cared any longer; he’d lost his taste for techno.

So much blood. So much.

Questions about how she’d lost her hand left his mind. He had more immediate concerns. He couldn’t let go of the belt-tourniquet to get to the phone; she’d start to bleed again, and she might already be close to bleeding out. She would have to go with him. He tried pulling her by her shirt, but first it yanked out of her pants and then the collar started to choke her—he heard her breathing turn harsh. So he wrapped a hand in her long brown hair and hauled her to the phone caveman style.

It was a cell, and it worked. He dialed 911 and 911 was busy.

“It can’t be!” he shouted to the empty kitchen where the lights were now out (although from the boombox, the band played on). “911 cannot be fucking busy!”

He punched redial.

Busy.

He sat in the kitchen with his back propped up against the counter, holding the tourniquet as tightly as he could, staring at the blood and the batter on the floor, periodically hitting redial on the phone, always getting the same stupid dah-dah-dah. Something blew up not too far distant, but he barely heard it over the music, which was really cranked (and he never heard the Seneca explosion at all). He wanted to turn the music off, but in order to reach the boombox he would have to lift Myra. Lift her or let go of the belt for two or three seconds. He didn’t want to do either one. So he sat there and “North American Scum” gave way to “Someone Great” and “Someone Great” gave way to “All My Friends,” and after a few more songs, finally the CD, which was called Sound of Silver, ended. When it did, when there was silence except for police sirens in the distance and the endlessly chiming computer closer by, Jack realized that his wife was no longer breathing.