Where Ollie was, less than three yards from the southern boy, it was hot. Also stinky.
The Army guy pointed beyond Ollie. 'Why don't y'all quit on the rocks and do somethin about those cows?' He said it cay-ows. 'Herd em into the barn and milk em or rub soothin shit on their udders; somethin like at.'
'We don't need to herd them. They know where to go. Only now they don't need to be milked, and they don't need any Bag Balm, either. Their udders are dry'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah. My dad says something's wrong with the grass. He says the grass is wrong because the air's wrong. It doesn't smell good in here, you know. It smells like crap.'
'Yeah?' The Army guy looked fascinated. He gave the tops of the back-to-back signs a tap or two with his hammer, although they already looked well seated.
'Yeah. My mother killed herself this morning.'
The Army guy had raised his hammer for another hit. Now he just dropped it to his side. 'Are you shittin me, kid?'
'No. She shot herself at the kitchen table. I found her.'
'Oh f**k, that's rough.' The Army guy approached the Dome.
'We took my brother to town when he died last Sunday, because he was still alive - a little - but my mom was dead as dead can be, so we buried her on the knoll. My dad and me. She liked it there. It was pretty there before everything got so middy!
'Jesus, kid! You been through hell!'
'Still there,' Ollie said, and as if the words had turned a valve somewhere inside, he began to weep. He got up and went to the Dome. He and the young soldier faced each other, less than a foot apart. The soldier raised his hand, wincing a little as the transient shock whipped through him and then out of him. He laid his hand on the Dome, fingers spread. Ollie lifted his own and pressed it against the Dome on his side. Their hands seemed to be touching, finger to finger and palm to palm, but they weren't. It was a futile gesture that would be repeated over and over the following day: hundreds of times, thousands.
'Kid - '
'Private Ames!' someone bawled. 'Get your sorry ass away from there!'
Private Ames jumped like a kid who's been caught stealing jam.
'Get over here! Double time!'
'Hang in there, kid,' Private Ames said, and ran off to get his scolding. Ollie imagined it had to be a scolding, since you couldn't very well demote a private. Surely they wouldn't put him in the stockade or whatever for talking to one of the animals in the zoo. J didn't] even get any peanuts, Ollie thought.
For a moment he looked up at the cows that no longer gave milk - that hardly even cropped grass - and then he sat down by his pack. He searched tor and found another nice round rock. He thought about the chipped polish on the nails of his dead mother's outstretched hand, the one with the still-smoking gun beside it. Then he threw the rock. It hit the Dome and bounced back.
BONK. Silence.
10
At four o'clock on that Thursday afternoon, while the overcast held over porthern New England and the sun shone down on Chester's Mill like a bleary spotlight through the sock-shaped hole in the clouds, Ginny Tomlinson went to check on junior. She asked if he needed something for headache. He said no, then changed his mind and asked for some Tylenol or Advil. When she came back, he walked across the room to get it. On his chart she wrote, Limp is still present but seems improved.
When Thurston Marshall poked his head in forty-five minutes later, the room was empty. He assumed Junior had gone down to the lounge, but when he checked there it was empty except for Emily Whitehouse, the heart attack patient. Emily was recovering nicely. Thurse asked her if she'd seen a young man with dark blond hair and a limp. She said no. Thurse went back to Junior's room and looked in the. closet. It was empty. The young man with the probable brain tumor had dressed and checked himself out without benefit of paperwork.
11
Junior walked home. His limp seemed to clear up entirely once his muscles were warm. In addition, the dark keyhole shape floating on the left side of his vision had shrunk to a ball the size of a marble. Maybe he hadn't gotten a full dose of thallium after all. Hard to tell. Either way, he had to keep his promise to God. If he took care of the Appleton kids, then God would take care of him.