The Tommyknockers (67 page)

Just before he pushed it, he heard a high, thin cry coming from that other place. He looked up, thinking:
That ain't Pits.

It came again.

“. . .
hilly
 . . .”

Hank frowned. It was a kid's voice. A
kid's
voice, and there was something familiar about it. Something—

“. . . over yet? I want to come ho-oome . . .”

There was a bright, toneless jingle as the window in Cooder's market, which had blown inward in the town-hall explosion the previous Sunday, was now sucked outward. A glass-storm flew all around Hank, leaving him miraculously untouched.

“. . . please, it's hard to breeeeeeathe . . .”

Now the B&M beans on special which had been pyramided in the market's front window began to fly around Hank as they were sucked through the doorway in reality he had somehow opened. Five-pound bags of lawn food and ten-pound bags of charcoal slithered across the pavement with dry, papery sounds.

Gotta shut the sucker up,
Hank thought, and as if to confirm this judgment, a can of beans slammed into the
back of his head, bounced high in the air, then zoomed into that purple-black bruise.

“Hilleeeeee—”

Hank hit the Stop button. The doorway disappeared at once. There was a woody crunch as the chair lodged in the opening was cut in two, on an almost perfect diagonal. Half of the chair lay on the asphalt. The other half was nowhere to be seen.

Randy Kroger, the German who had owned Cooder's since the late fifties, grabbed Hank and turned him around. “You're payin' for that display window, Buck,” he said.

“Sure, Randy, whatever you say,” Hank agreed, dazedly rubbing the lump that was rising on the back of his head.

Kroger pointed at the strange slanting half-chair lying on the asphalt. “You're paying for the chair too,” he announced, and strode back inside.

That was how July ended.

Monday, August 1st:

John Leandro finished talking, knocked back the rest of his beer, and asked David Bright: “So what do you think he'll say?”

Bright thought for a moment. He and Leandro were in the Bounty Tavern, a wildly overdecorated Bangor pub with only two real marks in its favor—it was almost directly across the street from the editorial offices of the Bangor
Daily News,
and on Mondays you could get Heineken for a buck a bottle.

“I think he'll start by telling you to hurry over to Derry and finish getting the rest of the Community Calendar,” Bright said. “Then I think he might ask you if you've thought about psychiatric help.”

Leandro looked absurdly crushed. He was only twenty-four, and the last two stories he had covered—the disappearance (read: presumed murder) of the two state troopers and the suicide of a third—had whetted his appetite for the high-voltage stuff. When stacked up against being in on a grim midnight hunt for the bodies of two state troopers, reporting on the Derry Amvets' covered-dish supper wasn't much. He didn't want the heavy stuff
to end. Bright felt almost sorry for the little twerp—trouble was, that was what Leandro was. Being a twerp at twenty-four was acceptable. He was pretty sure, however, that Johnny Leandro was still going to be a twerp at forty-four . . . sixty-four . . . at eighty-four, if he lived that long.

A twerp of eighty-four was a slightly awesome and wholly frightening idea. Bright decided to order another beer after all.

“I was just joking,” Bright said.

“Then you think he
will
let me follow it up?”

“No.”

“But you just said—”

“I was joking about the psychiatric-help part,” Bright said patiently. “
That's
what I was joking about.”

“He” was Peter Reynault, the city editor. Bright had learned a good many years ago that city editors had one thing in common with God Himself, and he suspected that Johnny Leandro was about to learn it himself very soon now. Reporters might propose, but it was city editors like Peter Reynault who eventually disposed.

“But—”

“You have nothing to follow up,” Bright said.

If Haven's inner circle—those who had made the trip into Bobbi Anderson's shed—could have heard what Leandro said next, his life expectancy might well have sunk to days . . . maybe mere hours.

“I've got
Haven
to follow up,” was what he said, and quaffed the rest of his Heineken Dark in three long swallows. “Everything starts there. The kid disappears in Haven, the woman dies in Haven, Rhodes and Gabbons are coming back from Haven. Dugan commits suicide. Why? Because he loved the McCausland woman, he says. The McCausland woman from Haven.”

“Don't forget lovable old Gramps,” Bright said. “He's running around saying his grandson's disappearance was a conspiracy. I kept expecting him to start whispering about Fu Manchu and white slavery.”

“So what is it?” Leandro asked dramatically. “
What's going on in Haven?”

“It
is
the insidious doctor,” Bright said. His beer arrived. He no longer wanted it. He only wanted to get out of here. Bringing up lovable old Gramps had been a mistake. Thinking about lovable old Gramps made him feel a
trifle uneasy. Gramps was obviously off his rocker, but there had been something about his eyes . . .

“What?”

“Dr. Fu Manchu. If you see Nayland Smith hanging around, I think you've got the story of the century.” Bright leaned forward and whispered hoarsely: “White slavery. Remember who you heard it from when you get the call from the New York
Times.”

“I don't think that's very funny, David.”

An eighty-four-year-old twerp,
Bright thought again.
Imagine it.

“Or, here's one,” Bright said. “Little green men. The invasion of earth is already under way, see, only no one knows it. And—
TA-DA
!
No One Will Believe This Heroic Young News-Hawk! Robert Redford Stars as John Leandro in This Nail-Biting Saga of
—”

The bartender wandered down and said, “You want to turn it down?”

Leandro got up, his face stiff. He dropped three dollar bills on the bar. “Your sense of humor is adolescent, David.”

“Or try this,” Bright said dreamily. “It's
both
Fu Manchu
and
green men from space. An alliance formed in hell. And no one knows but you, Johnny.
Klaatu barada nictu!
”

“Well, I don't care if Reynault lets me follow it up or not,” Leandro said, and Bright saw that he might have twanged Johnny's strings just a little too hard; the twerp was furious. “My vacation starts next Friday. I may just go down to Haven. Follow it up on my own time.”

“Sure,” Bright said, excited. He knew he should let up—pretty soon Leandro was probably going to try to punch him in the mouth—but the guy just kept giving him openings. “Sure, that's gotta be part of it! Redford wouldn't take the part unless he could go it alone. The Lone Wolf!
Klaatu barada nictu!
Wow! Just remember to wear your special watch when you go down there.”

“What watch?” Leandro asked, his face still angry. Oh, he was pissed, all right, but he kept leading with his chin just the same.

“You know, the one that sends out an ultrasonic signal that only Superman can hear when you pull out the stem,” Bright said, demonstrating with his own watch (and spilling a fair amount of beer into his crotch). “It goes
zeeeeeeeee
—”

“I don't care what Peter Reynault thinks, and I don't care how many stupid jokes you make,” Leandro said. “You both just might get a big surprise.”

He started out, then turned back.

“And for the record, I think you're a cynical shithead with no imagination.”

Having delivered this valedictory, Johnny Leandro turned on his heel and stalked grandly out.

Bright lifted his glass and tipped it toward the bartender. “Let's drink to the cynical shitheads of the world,” he said. “We have no imagination, but we're remarkably resistant to twerpism.”

“Whatever you say,” the bartender said. He believed he had seen it all before . . . but then, he had never tended bar in Haven.

Tuesday, August 2nd:

There were six of them who met late that afternoon in Newt Berringer's office. It was going on five
P.M.,
but the clock in the tower—a tower that looked real but which a bird could easily have flown through, if there had been any birds left in Haven Village—still read five past three. All six had spent some time in Bobbi's shed; Adley McKeen was the most recent addition to their number. The others included Newt, Dick Allison, Kyle, Hazel, and Frank Spruce.

They discussed the few things they had to discuss without talking aloud.

Frank Spruce asked how Bobbi was.

Still alive, Newt responded; no one knew any more. She might come out of the shed again. More likely she would not. Either way, they would know when it happened.

Discussion turned briefly to what Hank Buck had done the day before, and what Hank said he'd heard coming from that other world. None of them were much concerned with the late and not-so-great Pits Barfield. Perhaps the punishment had suited the crime; perhaps it had been a little too extreme. It didn't matter. It was over. Nothing had happened to Hank as a result of what he had done; he had given Randy Kroger a personal check for the
broken display window and the goods that had been sucked through the hole Hank had spiked into reality. Kroger called Northern National in Bangor to verify the check. He found it was good, and that was all
he
cared about.

There was little they could have done about Hank even if they'd had a mind to; the town's one jail cell was in the town hall's basement, a converted storeroom where Ruth had jugged a few weekend drunks, and it might hold Hank Buck for all of ten minutes. A strong fourteen-year-old could have broken out of it. And they couldn't very well have sent Hank up to county jail. The charge would have looked pretty
odd.
The alternatives available to them were simple—let him alone or pack him off to Altair-4. Luckily, they were able to look closely into Hank's mind and motivations. They saw that his anger and confusion were subsiding, as they were all over town. He was not apt to do anything radical again, so they took away his converted radio, asked him not to make another, and moved on to what concerned them a bit more . . . the voice he claimed to have heard.

It was David Brown, all right, Frank Spruce said now. Anybody doubt it?

No one did.

David Brown was on Altair-4.

No one knew exactly where Altair-4
was,
or
what
it was, and they didn't much care. The words themselves came from some old movie and meant no more than the name Tommyknockers, which came from some old rhyme. What mattered (and even this didn't, much) was that Altair-4 was a kind of cosmic warehouse, a place where all sorts of things were stored. Hank had sent Pits there, but first he had put the smelly old son of a bitch through some half-assed sort of disintegration process.

This had apparently not been the case with David Brown.

Long, thoughtful silence.

(yes probably yes)

This last was not ascribable to any one person; it was group-think, hivelike, and complete in itself.

(but why why bother)

They looked at each other with no emotion. They could
feel
emotion, but not over such a minor matter as this.

Bring him back, Hazel said indifferently. It'll please Bryant and Marie. And Ruth. She would have wanted it. And we all did love her, you know. Her thought had the tone of a woman suggesting that a friend buy her son a soft drink as a treat for being good.

No, Adley said, and they all looked toward him. It was the first time he had entered their conversation. He looked embarrassed but pushed on anyway. Every paper and TV station in the state'd be down here to get a story on the “miracle return.” They think he must be dead, only four and gone over two weeks now. If he shows up, it'll make too much whoop-de-doo.

They were nodding now.

And what would
he
say? Newt put in. When they asked him where he'd been, what would
he
say?

We could blank his memories, Hazel said. That would be no problem at all, and the press people would accept amnesia as perfectly natural. Under the circumstances.

(yes but that's not the problem)

It was the many voices again, as one voice. They came together in a strange combination of words and images. The problem was that things had now gone too far to allow
anyone
in town except for the most transient through-travelers . . . and even most of them could be discouraged with fake road construction and detour signs. The last people they wanted in Haven were a bunch of reporters and TV camera crews. And the clock-tower wouldn't show up on film; it was a mind-slide, really no more than a hallucination. No, David Brown was best left alone, all things considered. He would be all right for yet a while. They knew little about Altair-4, but they did know that time ran at a different speed there—on Altair-4, less than a year had passed since earth had been flung out of the sun. So David Brown had in fact just gotten there. Of course he still might die; strange microbes might invade his system, some strange Altair-4 warehouse-rat might gobble him up, or he might die of simple shock. But he probably wouldn't, and if he did, it really wasn't very important.

I've a feeling the boy might come in handy, Kyle said.

(how)

As a diversion.

(what do you mean)