Under the Dome

Not shouting. Screaming.

His cheap alarm clock was ticking away on the little table beside his bed. He grabbed it. Quarter of six and no sound of his father moving around in the kitchen. More telling, no smell of coffee. His father was always up and dressed by five fifteen at the very latest ('Cows won't wait' was Alden Dinsmore's favorite scripture), and there was jalways coffee brewing by five thirty.

Not this morning.

Ollie got up and pulled on yesterday's jeans. 'Dad?'

No answer. Nothing but the tick of the clock, and - distant - the lowing of one disaffected bossy. Dread settled over the boy. He told himself there was no reason for it, that his family - all together and perfectly happy only a week ago - had sustained all the tragedies God would allow, at least for awhile. He told himself, but himself didn't believe it.

'Daddy?'

The generator out back was still running and he could see the green digital readouts on both the stove and the microwave when he went into the kitchen, but the Mr Coffee stood dark and empty. The living room was empty, too. His father had been watching TV when Ollie turned in last night, and it: was still on, although muted. Some crooked-looking guy was demonstrating the new and improved ShamWow. 'You're spending forty bucks a month on paper towels and throwing your money away,' the crooked-looking guy said from that other world where such things might matter.

He's out feeding the cows, that's all.

Except wouldn't he have turned off the TV to save electricity? They had a big tank of propane, but it would only last so long.

'Dad?'

Still no answer. Ollie crossed to the window and looked out at the barn. No one there. With increasing trepidation, he went down the back hall to his parents' room, steeling himself to knock, but there was no need. The door was open. The big double bed was messy (his father's eye for mess seemed to fall blind once he stepped out of the barn) but empty. Ollie started to turn away, then saw something that scared him. A wedding portrait of Alden and Shelley had hung on the wall in here for as long as Ollie could remember. Now it was gone, with only a brighter square of wallpaper to mark where it had been.

That's nothing to be scared of.

But it was.

Ollie continued on down the hall. There was one more door, and this one, which had stood open for the last year, was now closed. Something yellow had been tacked to it. A note. Even before he was close enough to read it, Ollie recognized his father's handwriting. He should have; there had been enough notes in that big scrawl waiting for him and Rory when they came home from school, and they always ended the same way.

Sweep the barn, then go play. Weed the tomatoes and beans, then go play. Take in your mother's washing, and mind you don't drag it in the mud. Then go play.

Playtime's over, Ollie thought dismally.

But then a hopeful thought occurred to him: maybe he was dreaming. Wasn't it possible? After his brother's death by ricochet and his mother's suicide, why wouldn't he dream of waking to an empty house?

The cow lowed again, and even that was like a sound heard in a dream.

The room behind the door with the note on it had been Grampy Tom's. Suffering the slow misery of congestive heart failure, he had come to live with them when he could no longer do for himself. For a while he'd been able to hobble as far as the kitchen to take meals with the family, but in the end he'd been bedridden, first with a plastic thingie jammed up his nose - it was called a candelabra, or something like that - and then with a plastic mask over his face most of the time. Rory once said he looked like the world's oldest astronaut, and Mom had smacked his face for him.

At the end they had all taken turns changing his oxygen tanks, and one night Mom found him dead on the floor, as if he'd been trying to get up and had died of it. She screamed for Alden, who came, looked, listened to the old man's chest, then turned off the oxy. Shelley Dinsmore began to cry. Since then, the room had mostly been closed.

Sorry was what the note on the door said. Go to town Ollie. The Morgans or Dentons or Rev Libby will take you in.

Ollie looked at the note for a long time, then turned the knob with a hand that didn't seem to be his own, hoping it wouldn't be messy.

It wasn't. His father lay on Grampy's bed with his hands laced together on his chest. His hair was combed the way he combed it when he was going to town. He was holding the wedding picture. One of Grampy s old green oxygen tanks still stood in the corner; Alden had hung his Red Sox cap, the one that said WORLD SERIES CHAMPS, over the valve.

Ollie shook his father's shoulder. He could smell booze, and for a few seconds hope (always stubborn, sometimes hateful) lived in his heart again. Maybe he was only drunk.

'Dad? Daddy? Wake up!'

Ollie could feel no breath against his cheek, and now saw that his jfafher's eyes weren't completely closed; little crescents of white peeped out between the upper and lower lids. There was a smell of what his mother called eau de pee.

His father had combed his hair, but as he lay dying he had, like his late wife, pissed his pants. Ollie wondered if knowing that might happen would have stopped him.

He backed slowly away from the bed. Now that he wanted to feel like he was having a bad dream, he didn't. He was having a bad reality, and that was something from which you could not wake. His stomach clenched and a column of vile liquid rose up his throat. He ran for the bathroom, where he was confronted by a glare-eyed intruder. He almost screamed before recognizing himself in the mirror over the sink.

He knelt at the toilet, grasping what he and Rory had called Grampy's crip-rails, and vomited. When it was out of him, he flushed (thanks to the gennie and a good deep well, he could flush), lowered the lid, and sat on it, trembling all over. Beside him, in the sink, were two of Grampy Tom's pill bottles and a bottle of Jack Daniels. All the bottles were empty. Ollie picked up one of the pill bottles. PERCOCET, the label said. He didn't bother with the other one.