.

At 2:30 P.M. On December 26, 1978, Bud Prescott waited on a tall and rather haggard-looking young man with graying hair and badly bloodshot eyes. Bud was one of three clerks working in the 4th Street Phoenix Sporting Goods Store on the day after Christmas, and most of the business was exchanges - but this fellow was a paying customer.

He said he wanted to buy a good rifle, light-weight, bolt-action. Bud showed him several. The day after Christmas was a slow one on the gun-counter; when men got guns for Christmas, very few of them wanted to exchange them for something else.

This fellow looked them all over carefully and finally settled on a Remington 700, .243 caliber, a very nice gun with a light kick and a flat trajectory. He signed the gun-book John Smith and Bud thought, If I never saw me an alias before in my life, there's one there. 'John Smith' paid cash - took the twenties right out of a wallet that was bulging with them. Took the rifle right over the counter. Bud, thinking to poke him a little, told him he could have his initials burned into the stock, no extra charge. 'John Smith' merely shook his head.

When 'Smith' left the store, Bud noticed that he was limping noticeably. Would never be any problem identifying that guy again, he thought, not with that limp and those scars running up and down his neck.

2.

At 10: 30 AM. on December 27, a thin man who walked with a limp came into Phoenix Office Supply, Inc., and approached Dean Clay, a salesman there. Clay said later that he noticed what his mother had always called a 'fire-spot' in one of the man's eyes. The customer said he wanted to buy a large attache case, and eventually picked out a handsome cowhide item, top of the line, priced at $149.95. And the man with the limp qualified for the cash discount by paying with new twenties. The whole transaction, from looking to paying; took no more than ten minutes. The fellow walked out of the store, and turned right toward the downtown area, and Dean Clay never saw him again until he saw his picture in the Phoenix Sun.

3.

Late that same afternoon a tall man with graying hair approached Bonita Alvarez's window in the Phoenix Amtrak terminal and inquired about traveling from Phoenix to New York by train. Bonita showed him the connections. He followed them with his finger and then carefully jotted them all down. He asked Bonnie Alvarez if she could ticket him to depart on January 3. Bonnie danced her fingers over her computer console and said that she could.

'Then why don't you ...' the tall man began, and then faltered. He put one hand up to his head.

'Are you all right, sir?'

'Fireworks,' the tall man said. She told the police later on that she was quite sure that was what he said. Fire-works.

'Sir? Are you all right?'

'Headache,' he said. 'Excuse me.' He tried to smile, but the effort did not improve his drawn, young-old face much.

'Would you like some aspirin? I have some.'

'No, thanks. It'll pass.'

She wrote the tickets and told him he would arrive at New York's Grand Central Station on January 6, at midafternoon.

'How much is that?'

She told him and added: 'Will that be cash or charge,. Mr. Smith?'

'Cash,' he said, and pulled it right out of his wallet -a whole handful of twenties and tens.

She counted it, gave him his change, his receipt, his tickets. 'Your train leaves at 10: 30 A.M., Mr. Smith,' she said. 'Please be here and ready to entrain at 10: 10.

'All right,' he said. 'Thank you.'

Bonnie gave him the big professional smile, but Mr. Smith was already turning away. His face was very pale, and to Bonnie he looked like a man who was in a great deal of pain.

She was very sure that he had said fireworks.

4.

Elton Curry was a conductor on Amtrak's Phoenix-Salt Lake run. The tall man appeared promptly at 10:00 A.M. on January 2, and Elton helped him up the steps and into the car because he was limping quite badly. He was carrying a rather old tartan traveling bag with scuffmarks and fraying edges in one hand. In the other he carried a brand-new cowhide attache case. He carried the attache case as if it were quite heavy.

'Can I help you with that, sir?' Elton asked, meaning the attache case, but it was the traveling bag that the passenger handed him, along with his ticket.

'No, I'll take that when we're underway, sir.'

'All right. Thank you.'

A very polite sort of fellow, Elton Curry told the FBI agents who questioned him later. And he tipped well.

5.

January 6, 1979, was a gray, overcast day in New York -snow threatened but did not fall. George Clements' taxi was parked in front of the Biltmore Hotel, across from Grand Central.

The door opened and a fellow with graying hair got in, moving carefully and a little painfully. He placed a traveling bag and an attache case beside him on the seat, dosed the door, then put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he was very, very tired.

'Where we goin, my friend?' George asked.

His fare looked at a slip of paper. 'Port Authority Terminal,' he said.

George got going. 'You look a little white around the gills, my friend. My brother-in-law looked like that when he was havin his gallstone attacks. You got stones?

'No.'

'My brother-in-law, he says gallstones hurt worse than anything. Except maybe kidney stones. You know what I told him? I told him he was full of shit. Andy, I says, you're a great guy, I love ya, but you're full of shit. You ever had cancer, Andy? I says. I asks him that, you know, did he ever have cancer. I mean, everybody knows cancer's the worst.' George took a long look in his rear-view mirror. 'I'm asking y6u sincerely, my friend ... are you okay? Because, I'm telling you the truth, you look like death warmed over.'

The passenger answered, 'I'm fine. I was ... thinking of another taxi ride. Several years ago.

'Oh, right,' George said sagely, exactly as if he knew what the man was talking about. Well, New York was full of kooks, there was no denying that. And after this brief pause for reflection, he went on talking about his brother-in-law.

6.

'Mommy, is that man sick?'

'Shhh.'

'Yeah, but is he?'

'Danny, be quiet.'

She smiled at the man on the other side of the Greyhound's aisle, an apologetic, kids-will-say-anything-won't-they smile, but the man appeared not to have heard. The poor guy did look sick. Danny was only four, but he was right about that. The man was looking listlessly out at the snow that had begun to fall shortly after they crossed the Connecticut state line. He was much too pale, much too thin, and there was a hideous Frankenstein scar running up out of his coat collar to just under his jaw. It was as if someone had tried taking his head clean off at sometime in the not-too-distant past - tried and almost succeeded.

The Greyhound was on its way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they would arrive at 9 30 tonight if the snow didn't slow things down too much. Julie Brown and her son were going to see Julie's mother-in-law, and as usual the old bitch would spoil Danny rotten - and Danny didn't have far to go.

'I wanna go see him.'

'No, Danny.'

'I wanna see if he's sick.'

'No!'

'Yeah, but what if he's dine, ma?' Danny's eyes positively glowed at this entrancing possibility. 'He might be dine right now!'

'Danny, shut up.'

'Hey, mister!' Danny cried. 'You dine, or anything?'

'Danny, you shut your mouth! ' Julie hissed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Danny began to cry then, not real crying but that snotty, I-can't-get-my-own-way whining that always made her want to grab him and pinch his arms until he really had something to cry about. At times like this, riding the bus into evening through another cruddy snowstorm with her son whining beside her, she wished her own mother had sterilized her several years before she had reached the age of consent.

That was when the man across the aisle turned his head and smiled at her - a tired, painful smile, but rather sweet for all that. She saw that his eyes were terribly bloodshot, as if he had been crying. She tried to smile back, but it felt false and uneasy on her lips. That red left eye - and the scar running up his neck - made that half of his face look sinister and unpleasant.

She hoped that the man across the aisle wasn't going all the way to Portsmouth, but as it turned out, he was.

She caught sight of him in the terminal as Danny's gram swept the boy, giggling happily, into her arms. She saw him limping toward the terminal doors, a scuffed traveling bag in one hand, a new attache case in the other. And for just a moment, she felt a terrible chill cross her back. It was really worse than a limp - it was very nearly a head-long lurch. But there was something implacable about it, she told the New Hampshire state police later. It was as if he knew exactly where he was going and nothing was going to stop him from getting there.

Then he passed out into the darkness and she lost sight of him.

7.

Timmesdale, New Hampshire, is a small town west of Durham, just inside the third congressional district. It is kept alive by the smallest of the Chatsworth Mills, which hulks like a soot-stained brick ogre on the edge of Timmesdale Stream. Its one modest claim to fame (according to the local Chamber of Commerce) is that it was the first town in New Hampshire to have electric streetlights.

One evening in early January, a young man with prematurely graying hair and a limp walked into the Timmesdale Pub, the town's only beer joint. Dick O'Donnell, the owner, was tending the bar. The place was almost empty because it was the middle of the week and another norther was brewing. Two or three inches had piled up out there already, and more was on the way.

The man with the limp stamped off his shoes, came to the bar, and ordered a Pabst. O'Donnell served him. The fellow had two more, making them last, watching the TV over the bar. The color was going bad, had been for a couple of months now, and The Fonz looked like an aging Rumanian ghoul. O'Donnell couldn't remember having seen this guy around.

'Like another?' O'Donnell asked, coming back to the bar after serving the two old bags in the corner.

'One more won't hurt,' the fellow said. He pointed to a spot above the TV. 'You met him, I guess.'

It was a framed blowup of a political cartoon. It showed Greg Stilison, his construction helmet cocked back on his head, throwing a fellow in a business suit down the Capitol steps. The fellow in the business suit was Louis Quinn, the congressman who had been caught taking kickbacks in the parking-lot scam some fourteen months ago. The cartoon was titled GIVING EM THE BUM'S RUSH, and across the corner it had been signed in a scrawling hand: For Dick O'Donnell, who keeps the best damn saloon in the third district! Keep drawing them, Dick - Greg Stillson.

'Betcha butt I did,' O'Donnell said. 'He gave a speech in here the last time he canvassed for the House. Had signs out all over town, come on into the Pub at two o'clock Saturday afternoon and have one on Greg. That was the best damn day's business I've ever done. People was only supposed to have one on him, but he ended up grabbing the whole tab. Can't do much better than that, can you?'

'Sounds like you think he's one hell of a guy.

'Yeah, I do,' O'Donnell said. 'I'd be tempted to put my bare knuckles on anyone who said the other way.'

'Well, I won't try you.' The fellow put down three quarters. 'Have one on me.

'Well, okay. Don't mind if I do. Thanks, mister...?'

'Johnny Smith is my name.

'Why, pleased to meet you, Johnny. Dicky O'Donnell, that's me.' He drew himself a beer from the tap. 'Yeah, Greg's done this part of New Hampshire a lotta good. And there's a lotta people afraid to come right out and say it, but I'm not. I'll say it right out loud. Some day Greg Stillson's apt to be president'

'You think so?'

'I do,' O'Donnell said, coming back to the bar. 'New Hampshire's not big enough to hold Greg. He's one hell of a politician, and coming from me, that's something. I thought the whole crew was nothin but a bunch of crooks and lollygags. I still do, but Greg's an exception to the rule. He's a square shooter. If you told me five years ago I'd be sayin somethin like that, I woulda laughed in your face. You'd be more likely to find me readin poitry than seein any good in a politician, I woulda said. But, goddammit, he's a man.'

Johnny said, 'Most of these guys want to be your buddy while they're running for office, but when they get in its fuck you, Jack, I got mine until the next election. I come from Maine myself, and the one time I wrote Ed Muskie, you know what I got? A form letter!'

'Ah, that's a Polack for you,' O'Donnell said. 'What do you expect from a Polack? Listen, Greg comes back to the district every damn weekend! Now does that sound like fuck you, Jack, I got mine, to you?'

'Every weekend, huh?' Johnny sipped his beer. 'Where? Trimbull? Ridgeway? The big towns?'

'He's got a system,' O'Donnell said in the reverent tones of a man who has never been able to work one out for himself. 'Fifteen towns, from the big places like Capital City right down to the little burgs like Timmesdale and Coorter's Notch. He hits one a week until he's gone through the whole list and then he starts at the top again. You know how big Coorter's Notch is? They got eight hundred souls up there. So what do you think about a guy who takes a weekend off from Washington and comes down to Coorter's Notch to freeze his balls off in a cold meetin hall? Does that sound like fuck you, Jack, I got mine, to you?'

'No, it doesn't,' Johnny said truthfully. 'What does he do? Just shake hands?'

'No, he's got a hall in every town. Reserves it for all day Saturday. He gets in there about ten in the morning, and people can come by and talk to him. Tell him their idears, you know. If they got questions, he answers them. If he can't answer them, he goes back to Washington and finds the answer!' He looked at Johnny triumphantly.

'When was he here in Timmesdale last?'

'Couple of months ago,' O'Donnell said. He went to the cash register and rummaged through a pile of papers beside it. He came up with a dog-eared clipping and laid it on the bar beside Johnny.

'Here's the list. You just take a look at that and see what you think.'

The clipping was from the Ridgeway paper. It was fairly old now. The story was headlined STILLS ON ANNOUNCES 'FEEDBACK CENTERS'. The first paragraph looked as though it might have been lifted straight from the Stillson press kit. Below it was the list of towns where Greg would be spending his weekends, and the proposed date's. He was not due in Timmesdale again until mid-March.

'I think it looks pretty good,' Johnny said.

'Yeah, I think so. Lotta people think so.'

'By this dipping, he must have been ill Goorter's Notch just last weekend.'

'That's right,' O'Donnell said, and laughed. 'Good old Coorter's Notch. Want another beer, Johnny?'

'Only if you'll join me,' Johnny said, and laid a couple of bucks on the bar.

'Well, I don't care if I do.'

One of the two bar-bags had put some money in the juke and Tammy Wynette, sounding old and tired and not happy to be here, began singing, 'Stand By Your Man.'

'Hey Dick!' the other cawed. 'You ever hear of service in this place?'

'Shut your head! ' he hollered back.

'Fuck - YOU,' she called, and cackled.

'Goddammit, Clarice, I told you about saying the eff-word in my bar! I told you..:

'Oh get off it and let's have some beer.'

'I hate those two old cunts,' O'Donnell muttered to Johnny. 'Couple of old alky diesel-dykes, that's what they are. They been here a million years, and I wouldn't be surprised if they both lived to spit on my grave. It's a hell of a world sometimes.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Pardon me, I'll be right back. I got a girl, but she only comes in Fridays and Saturdays in the winter.'

O'Donnell drew two schooners of beer and brought them over to the table. He said something to them and Clarice replied 'Fuck - YOU!' and cackled again. The beerjoint was filled with the ghosts of dead hamburgers. Tammy Wynette sang through the popcorn-crackle of an old record. The radiators thudded dull heat into the room and outside snow spatted dryly against the glass. Johnny rubbed his temples. He had been in this bar before, in a hundred other small towns. His head ached. When he had shaken O'Donnell's hand he knew that the barkeep had a big old mongrel dog that he had trained to sic on command. His one great dream was that some night a burglar would break into his house and he would legally be able to sic that big old dog onto him, and there would be one less goddam hippie pervo junkie in the world.

Oh, his head ached.

O'Donnell came back, wiping his hands on his apron. Tammy Wynette finished up and was replaced with Red Sovine, who had a CB call for the Teddy Bear.

'Thanks again for the suds,' O'Donnell said, drawing two.

'My pleasure,' Johnny said, still studying the dipping. 'Coorter's Notch last week, Jackson this coming weekend. I never heard of that one. Must be a pretty small town, huh?'

'Just a burg,' O'Donnell agreed. 'They used to have a ski resort, but it went broke. Lotta unemployment up that way. They do some wood-pulping and a little shirttail farming. But he goes up there, by the Jesus. Talks to em. Listens to their bitches. Where you from up in Maine, Johnny?'

'Lewiston,' Johnny lied. The dipping said that Greg Stillson would meet with interested persons at the town hall.

'Guess you came down for the skiing, huh?'

'No, I hurt my leg a while back. I don't ski anymore.

Just passing through. Thanks for letting me look at this.' Johnny handed the clipping back. 'It's quite interesting.'

O'Donnell put it carefully back with his other papers. He had an empty bar, a dog back home that would sic on command, and Greg Stillson. Greg had been in his bar.

Johnny found himself abruptly wishing himself dead. If this talent was a gift from God, then God was a dangerous lunatic who ought to be stopped. If God wanted Greg Stilison dead, why hadn't he sent him down the birth canal with the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat? Or strangled him on a piece of meat? Or electrocuted him while he was changing the radio station? Drowned him in the ole swimming hole? Why did God have to have Johnny Smith to do his dirty work? It wasn't his responsibility to save the world, that was for the psychos and only psychos would presume to try it. He suddenly decided he would let Greg Stillson live and spit in God's eye.

'You okay, Johnny?' O'Donnell asked.

'Huh? Yeah, sure.'

'You looked sorta funny for just a second there.'

Chuck Chatsworth saying: if I didn't, I'd be afraid all those people he killed would haunt me to my grave.

'Out woolgathering, I guess,' Johnny said. 'I want you to know it's been a pleasure drinking with you.'

'Well, the same goes back to you,' O'Donnell said, looking pleased. 'I wish more people passing through felt that way. They go through here headed for the ski resorts, you know. The big places. That's where they take their money. If I thought they'd stop in, I'd fix this place up like they'd like. Posters, you know, of Switzerland and Colorado. A fireplace. Load the juke up with rock 'n' roll records instead of that shitkicking music I'd... you know, I'd like that.' He shrugged. 'I'm not a bad guy, hell.'

'Of course not,' Johnny said, getting off the stool and thinking about the dog trained to sic, and the hoped-for hippie junkie burglar.

'Well, tell your friends I'm here,' O'Donnell said

'For sure,' Johnny said.

'Hey Dick!' one of the bar-bags hollered. 'Ever hear of service-with-a-smile in this place?'

'Why don't you get stuffed?' O'Donnell yelled at her, flushing.

'Fuck - YO U!' Clarice called back, and cackled. Johnny slipped quietly out into the gathering storm,

8.

He was staying at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth. When he got back that evening, he told the desk clerk to have his bill ready for checkout in the morning.

In his room, he sat down at the impersonal Holiday Inn writing desk, took out all the stationery, and grasped the Holiday Inn pen. His head was throbbing, but there were letters to be written. His momentary rebellion - if that was what it had been - had passed. His unfinished business with Greg Stillson remained.

I've gone crazy, he thought. That's really it. I've gone entirely off my chump. He could see the headlines now.

PSYCHO SHOOTS N.H. REP. MADMAN ASSASSINATES STILLS ON. HAIL OF BULLETS CUTS DOWN U.S. REPRESENTATIVE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

And Inside View, of course, would have a field day.

SELF-PROCLAIMED 'SEER' KILLS STILLSON, 12 NOTED PSYCHIATRISTS TELL WHY SMITH DID

IT. With a sidebar by that fellow Dees, maybe, telling how Johnny had threatened to get his shotgun and 'shoot me a trespasser'.

Crazy.

The hospital debt was paid, but this would leave a new bill of particulars behind, and his father would have to pay for it. He and his new wife would spend a lot of days in the limelight of his reflected notoriety. They would get the hate mail. Everyone he had known would be interviewed - the Chatsworths, Sam, Sheriff George Bannerman. Sarah? Well, maybe they wouldn't get as far as Sarah. After all, it wasn't as though he were planning to shoot the president. At least, not yet. There's a lotta people afraid to come right out and say it, but I'm not. I'll say it right out loud. Some day Greg Stillson's apt to be president.

Johnny rubbed his temples. The headache came in low, slow waves, and none of this was getting his letters written. He drew the first sheet of stationery toward him, picked up the pen, and wrote Dear Dad. Outside, snow struck the window with that dry, sandy sound that means serious business. Finally the pen began to move across the paper, slowly at first, then gaining speed.