Under the Dome

Julia dropped her hands and looked at him with something like wonder. “Yes. I did, we all did. Them. Horrible.”

“The leatherheads,” Rusty said.

“What?” Piper said. Then she nodded. “Yes, I suppose you could call them that. Faces without faces. High faces.”

High faces, Rusty thought. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was true. He thought again of his daughters and their friend Deanna exchanging secrets and snacks. Then he thought of his best childhood friend—for a while, anyway; he and Georgie had fallen out violently in second grade—and horror rolled over him in a wave.

Barbie grabbed him. “What?” He was almost shouting. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Only… I had this friend when I was little. George Lathrop. One year he got a magnifying glass for his birthday. And sometimes… at recess we…”

Rusty helped Julia to her feet. Horace had come back to her, as if whatever had scared him was fading like the glow had faded on the van.

“You did what?” Julia asked. She sounded almost calm again. “Tell.”

“This was at the old Main Street Grammar. Just two rooms, one for grades one to four, the other for five to eight. The playground wasn’t paved.” He laughed shakily. “Hell, there wasn’t even running water, just a privy the kids called—”

“The Honey House,” Julia said. “I went there, too.”

“George and I, we’d go past the monkey bars to the fence. There were anthills there, and we’d set the ants on fire.”

“Don’t take on about it, Doc,” Ernie said. “Lots of kids have done that, and worse.” Ernie himself, along with a couple of friends, had once dipped a stray cat’s tail in kerosene and put a match to it. This was a memory he would share with the others no more than he would tell them about the details of his wedding night.

Mostly because of how we laughed when that cat took off, he thought. Gosh, how we did laugh.

“Go on,” Julia said.

“I’m done.”

“You’re not,” she said.

“Look,” said Joanie Calvert. “I’m sure this is all very psychological, but I don’t think this is the time—”

“Hush, Joanie,” Claire said.

Julia had never taken her eyes from Rusty’s face.

“Why does it matter to you?” Rusty asked. He felt, at that moment, as though there were no onlookers. As if it were only the two of them.

“Just tell me.”

“One day while we were doing… that… it occurred to me that ants also have their little lives. I know that sounds like sentimental slop—”

Barbie said, “Millions of people all over the world believe that very thing. They live by it.”

“Anyway, I thought ‘We’re hurting them. We’re burning them on the ground and maybe broiling them alive in their underground houses.’ About the ones who were getting the direct benefit of Georgie’s magnifying glass there was no question. Some just stopped moving, but most actually caught fire.”

“That’s awful,” Lissa said. She was twisting her ankh again.

“Yes, ma’am. And this one day I told Georgie to stop. He wouldn’t. He said, ‘It’s jukular war.’ I remember that. Not nuclear but jukular. I tried to take the magnifying glass away from him. Next thing you know, we were fighting, and his magnifying glass got broken.”

He stopped. “That’s not the truth, although it’s what I said at the time and not even the hiding my father gave me could make me change my story. The one George told his folks was the true one: I broke the goddam thing on purpose.” He pointed into the dark. “The way I’d break that box, if I could. Because now we’re the ants and that’s the magnifying glass.”

Ernie thought again of the cat with the burning tail. Claire McClatchey remembered how she and her third-grade best friend had sat on a bawling girl they both hated. The girl was new in school and had a funny southern accent that made her sound like she was talking through mashed potatoes. The more the new girl cried, the harder they laughed. Romeo Burpee remembered getting drunk the night Hillary Clinton cried in New Hampshire, toasting the TV screen and saying, “Dat’s it for you, you goddam baby, get out the way and let a man do a man’s job.”

Barbie remembered a certain gymnasium: the desert heat, the smell of shit, and the sound of laughter.

“I want to see it for myself,” he said. “Who’ll go with me?” Rusty sighed. “I will.”

5

While Barbie and Rusty were approaching the box with its strange symbol and brilliant pulsing light, Selectman James Rennie was in the cell where Barbie had been imprisoned until earlier this evening.

Carter Thibodeau had helped him lift Junior’s body onto the bunk. “Leave me with him,” Big Jim said.

“Boss, I know how bad you must feel, but there are a hundred things that need your attention right now.”

“I’m aware of that. And I’ll take care of them. But I need a little time with my son first. Five minutes. Then you can get a couple of fellows to take him to the funeral parlor.”

“All right. I’m sorry for your loss. Junior was a good guy.”