Under the Dome

“I don’t have a husband,” Jackie said—quite reasonably, Julia thought, and lucky for her; husbands were so often a complicating factor. “But I do know a place we can go. It’s private, and always unlocked.” She considered. “At least it was. Since the Dome, I dunno.”

Julia, who had just been considering whom to interview first, had no intention of letting these two slip away. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk on opposite sides of the street until we’re past the police station, shall we?”

At this, Linda managed a smile. “What a good idea,” she said.

2

Piper Libby lowered herself carefully in front of the altar of the First Congo Church, wincing even though she had put down a pew-pad for her bruised and swollen knees. She braced herself with her right hand, holding her recently dislocated left arm against her side. It seemed okay—less painful than her knees, in fact—but she had no intention of testing it unnecessarily. It would be all too easy to get it out of joint again; she had been informed of that (sternly) after her soccer injury in high school. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Immediately her tongue went to the hole where there had been a tooth up until yesterday. But there was a worse hole in her life.

“Hello, Not-There,” she said. “It’s me again, back for another helping of Your love and mercy.” A tear trickled from beneath one swollen eyelid and ran down one swollen (not to mention colorful) cheek. “Is my dog anywhere around? I only ask because I miss him so much. If he is, I hope you’ll give him the spiritual equivalent of a chewbone. He deserves one.”

More tears now, slow and hot and stinging.

“Probably he’s not. Most major religions agree that dogs don’t go to heaven, although certain offshoot sects—and The Reader’s Digest, I believe—disagree.”

Of course if there was no heaven, the question was moot, and the idea of this heavenless existence, this heavenless cosmology, was where what remained of her faith seemed more and more at home. Maybe oblivion; maybe something worse. A vast trackless plain under a white sky, say—a place where none was always the hour, nowhere the destination, and nobody your companions. Just a big old Not-There, in other words: for bad cops, lady preachers, kids who accidentally shot themselves, and galoot German shepherds who died trying to protect their mistresses. No Being to sort the wheat from the chaff. There was something histrionic about praying to such a concept (if not downright blasphemous), but occasionally it helped.

“But heaven’s not the point,” she resumed. “The point right now is trying to figure out how much of what happened to Clover was my fault. I know I have to own some of it—my temper got the best of me. Again. My religious teaching suggests You put that short fuse in me to begin with, and it’s my job to deal with it, but I hate that idea. I don’t completely reject it, but I hate it. It makes me think of how, when you take your car to get repaired, the guys in the shop always find a way to blame the problem on you. You ran it too much, you didn’t run it enough, you forgot to release the handbrake, you forgot to close your windows and the rain got in the wiring. And you know what’s worse? If You’re Not-There, I can’t shove even a little of the blame off on You. What does that leave? Fucking genetics?”

She sighed.

“Sorry about the profanity; why don’t You just pretend it Wasn’t-There? That’s what my mother always used to do. In the meantime, I have another question: What do I do now? This town is in terrible trouble, and I’d like to do something to help, only I can’t decide what. I feel foolish and weak and confused. I suppose if I was one of those Old Testament eremites, I’d say I need a sign. At this point, even YIELD or REDUCE SPEED IN SCHOOL ZONE would look good.”

The moment she finished saying this, the outside door opened, then boomed shut. Piper looked over her shoulder, half-expecting to see an angel, complete with wings and blazing white robe. If he wants to wrestle, he’ll have to heal my arm first, she thought.

It wasn’t an angel; it was Rommie Burpee. Half his shirt was untucked, hanging down his leg almost to mid-thigh, and he looked almost as downcast as she felt. He started down the center aisle, then saw her and stopped, as surprised to see Piper as she was him.

“Oh, gee,” he said, only with his Lewiston on parle accent, it came out Oh, shee. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you was dere. I’ll come back later.”

“No,” she said, and struggled to her feet, once more using just her right arm. “I’m done, anyway.”