Under the Dome

The growing crowd waits in the sun. The ones with weak bladders wander into the underbrush west of the road to pee. Most get scratched up before finding relief. One overweight woman (Mabel Alston; she also suffers from what she calls the dia-betties) sprains her ankle and lies there hollering until a couple of men come over and get her on remaining good foot. Lennie Meechum, the town postmaster (at least until this week, when delivery of the U.S. mail was canceled for the foreseeable future), borrows a cane for her. Then he tells Henry that Mabel needs a ride back to town. Henry says he can’t spare a car. She’ll have to rest in the shade, he says.

Lennie waves his arms at both sides of the road. “In case you didn’t notice, it’s cow-pasture on one side and brambles on the other. No shade to speak of.”

Henry points to the Dinsmore dairy barn. “Plenty of shade there.”

“It’s a quarter of a mile away!” Lennie says indignantly.

It’s an eighth of a mile at most, but Henry doesn’t argue. “Put her in the front seat of my car.”

“Awful hot in the sun,” Lennie says. “She’ll need the fac’try air.”

Yes, Henry knows she’ll need the air-conditioning, which means running the motor, which means burning gasoline. There’s no shortage of that right now—assuming they can pump it out of the tanks at the Gas & Grocery, that is—and he supposes they’ll have to worry about later later.

“Key’s in the ignition,” he says. “Turn it to low cool, do you understand?”

Lennie says he does and heads back to Mabel, but Mabel’s not ready to move, although sweat is pouring down her cheeks and her face is bright red. “I didn’t go yet!” she bawls. “I got to go!”

Leo Lamoine, one of the new officers, strolls up to Henry. This is company Henry could do without; Leo has the brain of a turnip. “How’d she get out here, sport?” he asks. Leo Lamoine is the kind of man who calls everyone “sport.”

“I don’t know, but she did,” Henry says wearily. He’s getting a headache. “Round up some women to take her behind my police car and hold her up while she piddles.”

“Which ones, sport?”

“Big ones,” Henry says, and walks away before the sudden strong urge to punch Leo Lamoine in the nose can overpower him.

“What kind of police force is this?” a woman asks as she and four others escort Mabel to the rear of unit Three, where Mabel will pee while holding onto the bumper, the others standing in front of her for modesty’s sake.

Thanks to Rennie and Randolph, your fearless leaders, the unprepared kind, Henry would like to reply, but he doesn’t. He knows his mouth got him into trouble the night before, when he spoke in favor of Andrea Grinnell’s being heard. What he says is: “The only one you’ve got.”

To be fair, most people are, like Mabel’s female honor guard, more than willing to help one another. Those who have remembered to bring water share it with those who did not, and most drink sparingly. There are idiots in every crowd, though, and those in this one pig the water freely and without thought. Some folks munch cookies and crackers that will leave them thirstier later on. Mary Lou Costas’s baby begins to cry fretfully beneath the Red Sox cap, which is much too big for her. Mary Lou has brought a bottle of water, and she now begins to dab the baby’s overheated cheeks and neck with it. Soon the bottle will be empty.

Henry grabs Pamela Chen and again points to Mary Lou. “Take that bottle and fill it from what we brought,” he says. “Try not to let too many people see you, or it’ll all be gone before noon.”

She does as told, and Henry thinks, There’s one at least who might actually make a good smalltown cop, if she ever wanted the job.

Nobody bothers to watch where Pamela is going. That’s good. When the buses come, these folks will forget all about being hot and thirsty, for a while. Of course, after the visitors go… and with a long walk back to town staring them in the face…

An idea hits him. Henry scopes out his “officers” and sees a lot of dumbbells but few people he trusts; Randolph has taken most of the halfway decent ones on some sort of secret mission. Henry thinks it has to do with the drug operation Andrea accused Rennie of running, but he doesn’t care what it is. All he knows is that they aren’t here and he can’t run this errand himself.

But he knows who could, and hails him over.

“What do you want, Henry?” Bill Allnut asks.

“Have you got your keys to the school?”

Allnut, who’s been the Middle School janitor for thirty years, nods. “Right here.” The key ring hanging from his belt glitters in the hazy sun. “Always carry em, why?”

“Take unit Four,” Henry says. “Go back to town as fast as you can without running over any latecomers. Get one of the schoolbuses and bring it out here. One of the forty-four seaters.”