Well, so what? Maybe that was even good. Americans had a rather low tolerance for the fascist approach - even rock-ribbed righties like Reagan didn't go for that stuff; nothing but a pure fact no matter how many tantrums the New Left might want to throw or how many songs Joan Baez wrote. Eight years before, the fascist tactics of the Chicago police had helped lose the election for Hubert Humphrey. Johnny didn't care how clean-cut these fellows were; if they were in the employ of a man running for the House of Representatives, then Stillson couldn't be more than a few paces from overstepping himself. If it wasn't quite so weird, it really would be funny.
All the same, he wished he hadn't come.
4.
Just before three o'clock, the thud of a big bass drum impressed itself on the air, felt through the feet before actually heard by the ears. Other instruments gradually began to surround it, and all of them resolved into a marching band playing a Sousa tune. Small-town election hoopla, all of a summer's day.
The crowd came to its feet again and craned in the direction of the music. Soon the band came in sight - first a baton-twirler in a short skirt, high-stepping in white kidskin boots with pompons on them, then two majorettes, then two pimply boys with grimly set faces carrying a banner that proclaimed this was THE TRIMBULL HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND and you had by. God better not forget it. Then the band itself, resplendent and sweaty in blinding white uniforms and brass buttons.
The crowd cleared a path for them, and then broke into a wave of applause as they began to march in place. Behind them was a white Ford van, and standing spread-legged on the roof, face sunburned and split into a mammoth grin under his cocked-back construction hat, was the candidate himself. He raised a battery-powered bullhorn and shouted into it with leather-lunged enthusiasm: 'HI, Y'ALL!'
'Hi, Greg!' The crowd gave it right back.
Greg, Johnny thought a little hysterically. We're on first-name terms with the guy.
Stillson leaped down from the roof of the van, managing to make it look easy. He was dressed as Johnny had seen him on the news, jeans and a khaki shirt. He began to work the crowd on his way to the bandstand, shaking hands, touching other hands outstretched over the heads of those in the first ranks. The crowd lurched and swayed deliriously toward him, and Johnny felt an answering lurch in his own guts.
I'm not going to touch him. No way.
But in front of him the crowd suddenly parted a little and he stepped into the gap and suddenly found himself in the front row. He was close enough to the tuba player in the Trimbull High School Marching Band to have reached out and rapped his knuckles on the bell of his horn, had he wanted to.
Stillson moved quickly through the ranks of the band to shake hands on the other side, and Johnny lost complete sight of him except for the bobbing yellow helmet. He felt relief. That was all right, then. No harm, no foul. Like the pharisee in that famous story, he was going to pass by on the other side. Good. Wonderful. And when he made the podium, Johnny was going to gather up his stuff and steal away into the afternoon. Enough was enough.
The bikies had moved up on both sides of the path through the crowd to keep it from collapsing in on the candidate and drowning him in people. All the chunks of pool cue were still in the back pockets, but their owners looked tense and alert' for trouble. Johnny didn't know exactly what sort of trouble they expected - a Brownie Delight thrown in the candidate's face, maybe - but for the first time the bikies looked really interested.
Then something did happen, but Johnny was unable to tell exactly what it had been. A female hand reached for the bobbing yellow hard hat, maybe just to touch it for good luck, and one of Stillson's fellows moved in quickly. There was a yell of dismay and the woman's hand disappeared quickly. But it was all on the other side of the marching band.
The din from the crowd was enormous, and he thought again of the rock concerts he had been to. This was what it would be like if Paul McCartney or Elvis Presley decided to shake hands with the crowd.
They were screaming his name, chanting it: 'GREG ...GREG...GREG...'
The young guy who had billeted his family next to Johnny was holding his son up over his head so the kid could see. A young man with a large, puckered burn scar on one side of his face was waving a sign that read:
LIVE FREE OR DIE, HERE'S GREG IN YER EYE!
An achingly beautiful girl of maybe eighteen was waving a chunk of watermelon, and pink juice was running down her tanned arm. It was all mass confusion. Excitement was humming through the crowd like a series of high-voltage electrical cables.
And suddenly there was Greg Stillson, darting back through the band, back to Johnny's side of the crowd. He didn't pause, but still found time to give the tuba player a hearty clap on the back.