Under the Dome

'They're probably busy with...' She trailed off.

Rorneo nodded. 'Right. Busy wit what? You don't know and neither do I. But whatever they're busy wit, I'm not sure I like it. Or think it's wort bein busy wit. There's gonna be a town meeting Thursday night, and if this is still goin on, I think there should be some changes.' He paused. 'I could be gettin out of my place here, but I think maybe you ought to stand for Chief of Fire n Police.'

Bfenda considered it, considered the file she had found marked VADER, then shook her head slowly. 'It's too soon for anything like that.'

'What about just Fire Chief? How bout dat one?'The Lewiston on park coming on stronger in his voice now.

Brenda looked around at the smoldering brush and charred trashwood trees. Ugly, granted, like something out of a World War I battlefield photo, but no longer dangerous.The people who had shown up here had seen to that. The crew. Her crew.

She smiled. 'That I might consider.'

12

The first time Ginny Tomlinson came down the hospital hallway she was running, responding to a loud beeping that sounded like bad news, and Piper didn't have a chance to speak to her. Didn't even try. She had been in the waiting room long enough to get the picture: three people - two nurses and a teenage candy striper named Gina Buffalino - in charge of an entire hospital. They were coping, but barely. When Ginny came back, she was walking slowly. Her shoulders were slumped. A medical chart dangled from one hand.

'Ginny?' Piper asked. 'Okay?'

Piper thought Ginny might snap at her, but she offered a tired smile instead of a snarl. And sat down next to her. 'Fine. Just tired.' She paused. 'Also, Ed Canty just died.'

Piper took her hand. 'I'm very sorry to hear that.'

Ginny squeezed her fingers. 'Don't be. You know how women talk about having babies? This one had an easy delivery, this one had it hard?'

Piper nodded.

'Death is like that, too. Mr Carty was in labor a long time, but now he's delivered.'

To Piper the idea seemed beautiful. She thought she could use it in a sermon... except she guessed that people wouldn't want to hear a sermon on death this coming Sunday. Not if the Dome was still in place.

They sat for a while, Piper trying to think of the best way to ask what she had to ask. In the end, she didn't have to.

'She was raped,' Ginny said. 'Probably more than once. I was afraid Twitch was going to have to try his suturing, but I finally got it stopped with a vaginal pack.' She paused. 'I was crying. Luckily, the girl was too stoned to notice.'

'And the baby?'

'Your basic healthy eighteen-month-old, but he gave us a scare. He had a mini-seizure. It was probably exposure to the sun. Plus dehydration... hunger... and he has a wound of his own.' Ginny traced a line across her forehead.

Twitch came down the hall and joined them. He looked light-years from his usual jaunty self.

'Did the men who raped her also hurt the baby?' Piper's voice remained calm, but a thin red fissure was opening in her mind.

'Little Walter? I think he just fell,'Twitch said.'Sammy said something about the crib collapsing. It wasn't completely coherent, but I'm pretty sure it was an accident. That part, anyway'

Piper was looking at him, bemused. 'That was what she was saying. I thought it was "little water".'

'I'm sure she wanted water,' Ginny said,'but Sammy's baby really is Little, first name, Walter, second name. They named him after a blues harmonica player, I believe. She and Phil - ' Ginny mimed sucking a joint and holding in the smoke.

'Oh, Phil was a lot more than a smokehound,'Twitch said.'When it came to drugs, Phil Bushey was a multitasker.'

'Is he dead?' Piper asked.

Twitch shrugged. 'I haven't seen him around since spring. If he is, good riddance.'

Piper looked at him reproachfully.

Twitch ducked his head a little.'Sorry, Rev.' He turned to Ginny. 'Any sign of Rusty?'

'He needed some time off,' she said, 'and I told him to go. He'll be back soon, I'm sure.'

Piper sat between them, outwardly calm. Inside, the red fissure was widening. There was a sour taste in her mouth. She remembered a night when her father had forbidden her to go out to Skate Scene at the mall because she'd said something smart to her mother (as a teenager, Piper Libby had been an absolute font of smart things to say). She had gone upstairs, called the friend she had expected to meet, and told that friend - in a perfectly pleasant, perfectly even voice - that something had come up and she wouldn't be able to meet her after all. Next weekend? For sure, uh-huh, you bet, have a good time, no, I'm fine, b'bye. Then she had trashed her room. She finished by yanking her beloved Oasis poster off the wall and tearing it up. By then she had been crying hoarsely, not in sorrow but in one of those rages that had blown through her teenage years like force-five hurricanes. Her father came up at some point during the festivities and stood in the doorway, regarding her. When she finally saw him there she stared back defiantly, panting, thinking how much she hated him. How much she hated them both. If they were dead, she could go live with her aunt Ruth in New York. Aunt Ruth knew how to have a good time. Not like some people. He had held his hands out to her, open, extended. It had been a somehow humble gesture, one that had crushed her anger and almost crushed her heart.

If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you, he had said, and then left her, walking down the hallway with his head bent. She hadn't slammed the door behind him. She had closed it, very quietly.

That was the year she had made her often vile temper her number one priority. Killing it completely would be killing part of herself, but she thought if she did not make some fundamental changes, an important part of her would remain fifteen for a long, long time. She had begun working to impose control, and mostly she had succeeded. When she felt that control slipping, she would remember what her father had said, and that open-handed gesture, and his slow walk along the upstairs hall of the house she had grown up in. She had spoken at his funeral service nine years later, saying My father told me the most important thing I've ever heard. She hadn't said what that thing was, but her mother had known; she had been sitting in the front pew of the church in which her daughter was now ordained.