Under the Dome

“That’s right.” Chef stood up. “It’s a medicine for melancholy. That’s from Ray Bradbury. You ever read Ray Bradbury?”

“No.”

“He’s a fucking head. He knew. He wrote the motherfucking book, say hallelujah. Come with me. I’m going to change your life.”

18

The First Selectman of Chester’s Mill took to meth like a frog to flies.

There was a ratty old couch behind the ranked cookers, and here Andy and Chef Bushey sat under a picture of Christ on a motorcycle (title: Your Unseen Road Buddy), passing a pipe back and forth. While burning, meth smells like three-day-old piss in an uncovered thunderjug, but after his first tentative puff, Andy felt positive that the Chef was right: selling it might be Satan’s work, but the stuff itself had to be God’s. The world jumped into an exquisite, delicately trembling focus he had never seen before. His heart rate spiked, the blood vessels in his neck swelled to throbbing cables, his gums tingled, and his balls crawled in the most delightfully adolescent way. Better than any of these things, the weariness that had lain on his shoulders and muddled up his thinking disappeared. He felt he could move mountains in a wheelbarrow.

“In the Garden of Eden there was a Tree,” Chef said, passing him the pipe. Tendrils of green smoke drifted from both ends. “The Tree of Good and Evil. Dig that shit?”

“Yes. It’s in the Bible.”

“Bet your jackdog. And on that Tree was an Apple.”

“Right, right.” Andy took a puff so small it was actually a sip. He wanted more—he wanted it all—but feared that if he helped himself to a deep lungful, his head would explode off his neck and fly around the lab like a rocket, shooting fiery exhaust from its stump.

“The flesh of that Apple is Truth, and the skin of that Apple is Meth,” Chef said.

Andy looked at him. “That’s amazing.”

Chef nodded. “Yes, Sanders. It is.” He took back the pipe. “Is this good shit or what?”

“Amazing shit.”

“Christ is coming back on Halloween,” Chef said. “Possibly a few days earlier; I can’t tell. It’s already the Halloween season, you know. Season of the motherfucking witch.” He handed Andy the pipe, then pointed with the hand holding the garage door opener. “Do you see that? Up at the end of the gallery. Over the door to the storage side.”

Andy looked. “What? That white lump? Looks like clay?”

“That’s not clay,” Chef said. “That’s the Body of Christ, Sanders.”

“What about those wires coming out of it?”

“Vessels with the Blood of Christ running through em.”

Andy considered this concept and found it quite brilliant. “Good.” He considered some more. “I love you, Phil. Chef, I mean. I’m glad I came out here.”

“Me too,” Chef said. “Listen, do you want to go for a ride? I’ve got a car here somewhere—I think—but I’m a little shaky.”

“Sure,” Andy said. He stood up. The world swam for a moment or two, then steadied. “Where do you want to go?”

Chef told him.

19

Ginny Tomlinson was asleep at the reception desk with her head on the cover of a People magazine—Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie frolicking in the surf on some horny little island where waiters brought you drinks with little paper parasols stuck in them. When something woke her up at quarter of two on Wednesday morning, an apparition was standing before her: a tall, scrawny man with hollow eyes and hair that stuck out in all directions. He was wearing a WCIK tee-shirt and jeans that floated low on his meager hips. At first she thought she was having a nightmare about walking corpses, but then she caught a whiff of him. No dream had ever smelled that bad.

“I’m Phil Bushey,” the apparition said. “I’ve come for my wife’s body. I’m gonna bury her. Show me where it is.”

Ginny didn’t argue. She would have given him all the bodies, just to get rid of him. She led him past Gina Buffalino, who stood next to a gurney, watching Chef with pale apprehension. When he turned to look at her, she shrank back.

“Got your Halloween costume, kid?” Chef inquired. “Yes…”

“Who you gonna be?”

“Glinda,” the girl said faintly. “Although I guess I won’t be going to the party, after all. It’s in Motton.”

“I’m coming as Jesus,” Chef said. He followed Ginny, a dirty ghost in decaying Converse Hi-Tops. Then he turned back. He was smiling. His eyes were empty. “And am I pissed.”

20

Chef Bushey came out of the hospital ten minutes later bearing Sammy’s sheet-wrapped body in his arms. One bare foot, the toenails painted with chipped pink polish, nodded and dipped. Ginny held the door for him. She didn’t look to see who was behind the wheel of the car idling in the turnaround, and for this Andy was vaguely grateful. He waited until she’d gone back inside, then got out and opened one of the back doors for Chef, who handled his burden easily for a man who now looked like no more than skin wrapped on an armature of bone. Perhaps, Andy thought, meth conveys strength, too. If so, his own was flagging. The depression was creeping back in. The weariness, too.