Brenda nodded. 'I saw him out at Dinsmore's field, carrying a sign with his wife's picture on it. Poor, poor man.'
Piper went to the open driver's-side window of her car, where Clover was sitting behind the wheel and watching the departing crowd. She rummaged in her pocket, gave him a treat, then said, 'Push over, Clove - you know you flunked your last driver's test.' To Brenda, she confided: 'He can't parallel-park worth a damn.'
The shepherd hopped onto the passenger side. Piper opened the car door and looked at the smoke.'I'm sure the woods on theTarker's Mills side are burning briskly, but that needn't concern us.' She gave Brenda a bitter smile. 'We have the Dome to protect us.'
'Good luck,' Brenda said. 'Give Jack my sympathy. And my love.'
'As if I'd do that,' Piper said, and drove off. Brenda was walking out of the parking lot with her hands in the pockets of her jeans, wondering how she was going to get through the rest of the day, when Julia Shumway drove up and helped her with that.
4
The missiles exploding against the Dome didn't wake Sammy Bushey; it was the clattery wooden crash, followed by Little Walter's screams of pain, that did that.
Carter Thibodeau and his friends had taken all of her fridge-dope when they left, but they hadn't searched the place, so the shoebox with the rough skull-and-crossbones drawn on it was still in the closet. There was also this message, printed in Phil Bushey's scrawly, backslanting letters: MY SHIT! TOUCH IT AND U DIE!
There was no pot inside (Phil had always sneered at pot as a 'cocktail-party drug'), and she had no interest in the Baggie of crystal. She was sure the 'deputies' would have enjoyed smoking it, but Sammy thought crystal was crazy shit for crazy people - who else would inhale; smoke that included the residue of matchbook striker-pads maririated in acetone? There was another, smaller Baggie, however, that contained half a dozen Dreamboats, and when Carter's posse left she had swallowed one of these with warm beer from the bottle stashe|d under the bed she now slept in alone... except for when she took Little Walter in with her, that was. Or Dodee.
She had briefly considered taking all of the Dreamboats and ending her crappy unhappy life once and for all; might even have done it, if not for Little Walter. If she died, who would take care of him? He might even starve to death in his crib, a horrible thought.
Suicide was out, but she had never felt so depressed and sad and hurt in all her life. Dirty, too. She had been degraded before, God knew, sometimes by Phil (who had enjoyed drug-fueled threesomes before losing interest in sex completely), sometimes by others, sometimes by herself- Sammy Bushey had never gotten the concept of being her own best friend.
Certainly she'd had her share of one-night stands, and once, in high school, after the Wildcats basketball team had won the Class D championship, she had taken on four of the starters, one after the other, at a postgame party (the fifth had been passed out in a corner). It had been her own stupid idea. She had also sold what Carter, Mel, and Frankie DeLesseps had taken by force. Most frequently to Freeman Brown, owner of Brownie's Store, where she did most of her shopping because Brownie gave her credit. He was old and didn't smell very good, but he was randy, and that was actually a plus. It made him quick. Six pumps on the mattress in the storeroom was his usual limit, followed by a grunt and a squirt. It was never the highlight of her week, but it was comforting to know that line of credit was there, especially if she came up short at the end of the month and Little Walter needed Pampers.
And Brownie had never hurt her.
What had happened last night was different. DeLesseps hadn't been so bad, but Carter had hurt her up top and made her bleed down below. Worse had followed; when Mel Searles dropped his pants, he was sporting a tool like the ones she'd sometimes seen in the p**n o movies Phil had watched before his interest in crystal overtook his interest in sex.
Searles had gone at her hard, and although she tried to remember what she and Dodee had done two days before, it didn't work. She remained as dry as August with no rain. Until, that was, what Carter Thibodeau had only abraded ripped wide open.Then there was lubrication. She had felt it puddling under her, warm and sticky. There had been wetness on her face, too, tears' trickling down her cheeks to nestle in the hollows of her ears. During Mel Searles's endless ride, it came to her that he might actually kill her. If he did, what would happen to Little Walter?
And weaving through it all, the shrill magpie voice of Georgia Roux: Do her, do her, do that bitch! Make her holler!