Under the Dome

The crowd is intent upon breaking and entering. They smash against the doors with their stickers reading IN and OUT and EVERYDAY LOW PRICES. The doors hold at first, then the lock snaps under the crowd’s combined weight. The first to arrive are crushed against the doors and suffer injuries: two people with broken ribs, one sprained neck, two broken arms.

Toby Whelan starts to raise the bullhorn again, then just sets it down, with exquisite care, on the hood of the car in which he and Rupe arrived. He picks up his DEPUTY cap, brushes it off, puts it back on. He and Rupe walk toward the store, then stop, helpless. Linda and Marty Arsenault join them. Linda sees Marta and leads her back to the little cluster of cops.

“What happened?” Marta asks, dazed. “Did someone hit me? The side of my face is all hot. Who’s watching Judy and Janelle?”

“Your sister took them this morning,” Linda says, and hugs her. “Don’t worry.”

“Cora?”

“Wendy.” Cora, Marta’s older sister, has been living in Seattle for years. Linda wonders if Marta has suffered a concussion. She thinks that Dr. Haskell should check her, and then remembers that Haskell is either in the hospital morgue or the Bowie Funeral Home. Rusty is on his own now, and today he is going to be very busy.

Carter is half-carrying Georgia toward unit Two. She is still howling those eerie mooseblower cries. Mel Searles has regained some soupy semblance of consciousness. Frankie leads him toward Linda, Marta, Toby, and the other cops. Mel tries to raise his head, then drops it back to his chest. His split forehead is pouring blood; his shirt is soaked.

People stream into the market. They race along the aisles, pushing shopping carts or grabbing baskets from a stack beside the charcoal briquets display (HAVE YOURSELF A FALL COOKOUT! the sign reads). Manuel Ortega, Alden Dinsmore’s hired man, and his good friend Dave Douglas go straight to the checkout cash registers and start punching NO SALE buttons, grabbing money and stuffing it into their pockets, laughing like fools as they do so.

The supermarket is full now; it is sale day. In frozen foods, two women are fighting over the last Pepperidge Farm Lemon Cake. In deli, one man baffs another man with a kielbasa, telling him to leave some of that goddam lunchmeat for other folks. The lunchmeat shopper turns and biffs the kielbasa wielder in the nose. Soon they are rolling on the floor, fists flying.

Other brawls are breaking out. Rance Conroy, proprietor and sole employee of Conroy’s Western Maine Electrical Service & Supplies (“Smiles Our Specialty”), punches Brendan Ellerbee, a retired University of Maine science teacher, when Ellerbee beats him to the last large sack of sugar. Ellerbee goes down, but he holds onto the ten-pound bag of Domino’s, and when Conroy bends to take it, Ellerbee snarls “Here, then!” and smacks him in the face with it. The sugarsack bursts wide open, enveloping Rance Conroy in a white cloud. The electrician falls against one of the shelves, his face as white as a mime’s, screaming that he can’t see, he’s blind. Carla Venziano, with her baby goggling over her shoulder from the carrier on her back, pushes Henrietta Clavard away from the display of Texmati Rice—Baby Steven loves rice, he also loves to play with the empty plastic containers, and Carla means to make sure she has plenty. Henrietta, who was eighty-four in January, goes sprawling on the hard knot of scrawn that used to be her butt. Lissa Jamieson shoves Will Freeman, who owns the local Toyota dealership, out of her way so she can get the last chicken in the coldcase. Before she can grab it, a teenage girl wearing a PUNK RAGE tee-shirt snatches it, sticks out her pierced tongue at Libby, and hies gaily away.

There’s a sound of shattering glass followed by a hearty cheer made up mostly (but not entirely) of men’s voices. The beer cooler has been breached. Many shoppers, perhaps planning on HAVING THEMSELVES A FALL COOKOUT, stream in that direction. Instead of Oh-pun UP, the chant is now “Beer! Beer! Beer!”

Other folks are streaming into the storerooms below and out back. Soon men and women are packing wine out by the jug and the case. Some carry cartons of vino on their heads like native bearers in an old jungle movie.

Julia, her shoes crunching on crumbles of glass, shoots shoots shoots.

Outside, the rest of the town cops are pulling up, including Jackie Wettington and Henry Morrison, who have abandoned their post at the Gas & Grocery by mutual consent. They join the other cops in a huddled worry-cluster off to one side and simply watch. Jackie sees Linda Everett’s stricken face and folds Linda into her arms. Ernie Calvert joins them, yelling “So unnecessary! So completely unnecessary!” with tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.