INTERVENTION (33 page)

LUCILLE
: But not with him.

SAMPSON
: Not if you don't want to.

LUCILLE
: He'll want me to join his group. He'll coerce me.

SAMPSON
: [laughing] Over my dead body! And I played middle linebacker for the Big Green in '56!

LUCILLE
: [admiringly] It figures. And you have the perfect name.

SAMPSON
: Uh ... well, that was long ago and far away. But you can rest assured that no one will coerce you into anything. Now, our time is up for today. Can you come again at the same time next Wednesday?

LUCILLE
: Will the Center authorize more than one free therapy session a week for me? I mean, I can't afford—

SAMPSON
: That's all right. Your case is unusual. As a matter of fact, it's the most unusual one I've ever encountered ... But you will sleep with a fire extinguisher nearby, won't you?

LUCILLE
: Yes, Doctor Bill. Goodbye.

SAMPSON
: Goodbye, Lucille.

BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

20
MAY
1989

D
ON REMILLARD DIDN'T
go to the Blue Ox on Saturday nights much anymore, it being a lot cheaper to drink at home. But with Sunny waiting tables on the late shift at the Androscoggin Kitchen this week and Victor gone up to Pittsburg on some mystery errand, the younger brats would be running wild around the place. He'd end up belting a couple of them for sure, and then there'd be a row when Sunny got back—and God knows he had enough trouble with her already.

So he went down to the Ox, settled in at his usual spot on the far end of the bar, and started working through his quota of Seagram's. A few of his old buddies greeted him, but none stuck around to interfere seriously with his drinking. Little by little the place filled up and the tunes played by the jukebox got louder. By ten o'clock Don was almost deafened by the music and the racket made by the roistering mill-hands and loggers and their exuberant ladies. He had downed enough whiskey to be more or less skunk-bit and incapable—and it hadn't done a damn bit of good.

He could still hear the obscene voices inside his head. The goddam telepaths. The ones who were out to get him.

Just look at that pathetic fucker! Can't hardly hold a glass without it sloppin' over. Eyes like poached eggs in ketchup! Skritch-jawed and grubby and wearin' a week-old shirt.

Crazy as an outhouse rat, too. Brains so pickled his power's petered away t'zilch. Won't be long now, he won't be able to shut us out. We'll nail him!

May not have to bother, he screws up again like he did today. You see the way he tried to clear the throat of the whole-tree hog he let jam up!

Hell, yes. Goddam jeezly bar-toad almost got chopped to red-flannel hash!...Hey, stupid! Finish the job next time. Do us all a favor!

Do Victor a favor. What's he need a drunken old fart like you on the operation!

"I taught him everything, dammit. Everything."

Pig's ass. Kid got the outfit percolatin' despite you.

Yeah. That's right!

"I taught him everything! How to use his powers. Never woulda done it without me. Green kid! Shit—I
made
that kid."

You made him what he is.

Whatever that is! Haw haw haw ...

"Damn right ... damn right. You tell 'im that."

Hey, Vic! How long you gonna put up with your drag-ass old man! How long you gonna let the old stumblebum bollix up your show! Listen, Vic. Bright kid like you don't hafta put up with shit like he pulls. Lookit today. Feedin' the new Omark the wrong kinda stems. Coulda broke the christlyrig! Family loyalty can be mighty expensive. Take our advice. Tie a can to the old asshole. Hire somebody who knows what he's doin'!

I'm considering it
...

"The hell you are!" Don muttered viciously.

Old Ducky Duquette, who was nursing a bottle of Labatt's a little way down the bar, looked at him with an expression of mild surprise.

Haw haw haw! You think Vic wouldn't get rid of you! Think again!

Tell him, Vic. Tell him why you went up to Pittsburg tonight.

Tell him!

... I'm putting it up to Howie Durant to come in with us. He's an experienced hand with whole-tree chippers.

Way to go, Vic! Demote the old man to brush-piler. Better yet, get him off the operation altogether. He's an accident waitin' to happen, drinkin' on the job the way he does.

Maybe the sooner the accident happens, the better!

Wipe him out yourself, kid. Tip him over the edge. You don't hafta wait for us. Be our guest!

...It might be for the best. Easy enough to rig an accident with programmed incitement. His defenses are negligible now and his farspeech no longer has the range to alert Denis or Uncle Rogi.

That's right, Vic. Be just another logging fatality. Happens all the time.

Don slammed his shot glass down on the bar and yelled, "Oh no you don't, punk! I'll fry your fuckin' brains out first!"

Ralph Pelletier, the Ox's owner, who was tending bar as usual, called out over the din, "Anything wrong down there?"

Don forced a big grin and shook his head. "All I need's another double, double-quick!" He waved his glass.

Pelletier brought the bottle and poured. Don downed the whiskey and immediately demanded more. The tavern-keeper said quietly, "You've had about enough for tonight, Don. Finish this and then give your liver a rest."

"Don't need your lectures, bonhomme. Just your booze. Un p'tit coup." Don tossed money onto the mahogany. The bills fell into a puddle of spilled liquor.

Pelletier scooped them up with a grimace of distaste. "Drink up and go home, Don. You hear what I'm saying?" He filled the double shot glass again. "I mean it. Hors d'ici." He went away.

Don mouthed silent curses after him. Pelly wanted to get rid of him.
Everybody
wanted to get rid of him! He sipped from the glass and groaned. All around him the Blue Ox patrons laughed and the voices inside his head recited fresh indecencies.

Ducky Duquette edged closer, a tentative smile of sympathy creasing his weathered old chops. "£a va, Don? Had a rough week?"

Don could only laugh helplessly.

"Trouble out at the chantier, maybe? The logging outfit has growing pains?"

The mental voices chortled at the joke. Don pressed knuckles to his temples until pain submerged them, then lifted his glass with a trembling hand. "My damn kid's gettin' too big for his fuckin' britches. Throwing his weight around."

"Ah!" Ducky looked wise. "Such a clever boy, your Victor. But perhaps impatient? That's the way of the young. Still, he's doing very well, isn't he? I heard about the big new contract he landed with Saint William. Amazing that they accepted the bid of such a youthful entrepreneur, eh?"

"Fuckin' fantastic," Don muttered.

"You can be proud, Don. What sons! First Denis le Mirobolant—and now Victor, with his own logging company at the age of nineteen."

"And I'm such a lucky bastard, Ducky. I get to work for my own wiseacre kid! I taught him everything. And now he wants to kick me out." His face lit up in a sour smile. "But he won't get away with it. I know where a few bodies are buried ... like how a shoestring operation like his is able to field so much expensive rolling stock."

Fold youi face, you drunken blabbermouth!

Vic—you gonna let him keep this up!

Ducky had gone wary. He lowered his voice. "Tell you the truth, Don, there
has
been some talk. Lot of people wondered how Vic could afford that new Omark chip machine so soon after getting the second feller-buncher. Equipment like that don't grow on trees."

"Lemme tell you something, Ducky." Don draped an arm around the old man's neck and spoke in a coarse whisper. "Any ol' wood rat knows that logging machinery does, too, grow on trees. All you hafta do is know what trees to look under. And when."

Will you shut up, you peasoupin' lush!

He's
gonna
squeal, Vic. Don't say we didn't warn you. It's his fuckin' conscience, see. Confession's good for the soul, he thinks. Go ahead and confess, Don—we got the final absolution all ready!

We'll show him what happens to finks!...Give him to us, Vic. Come on! What're you waitin' for—a posse of county mounties goin' over your stuff with a magnifying glass and an electronic sniffer!

Don tittered. "Wouldn't find diddly. Got every damn ID number and beeper-trace fixed. Told you my Vic was smart. And I taught him everything." The injustice of it all overwhelmed him and his voice broke. "Everything, Ducky. Not just the mind-powers but the business, too. Vic was nothin' but a high school punk when they pink-slipped me at the mill. It was my idea to go into the woods and start cuttin' pulpwood."

And you'd still be a low-bore stump-jumper operatin' with two chain saws and a pick-em-up if it wasn't for Vic!

You taught him! He taught you!

Who coerced the first big contract! Who rounded up the gear! Who found the right men, the ones who know how to keep zipped lips! Who keeps the whole show chargin' ahead in the black! Not you, you washed-up alcoholic cuntlapper.

"No gratitude," Don moaned. "From any of my children."

Ducky blinked and began drawing away. "Tough luck..."

"I know what Vic's planning," Don shouted. "But he won't get away with it! None of 'em will!" Heads were turning and he felt the pressure of hostile eyes delving after his dangerous secrets. Could the patrons of the Blue Ox hear the taunting voices, too? No—of course not! They were only in his head. They were only imaginary! What was wrong with Ducky, then, looking so shit-scared?... God! How much had he blabbed to the old fool?

"Where the hell you think you're going?" Don grabbed Ducky by the front of the shirt. The old fellow yelped and pulled back, and his bottle of beer tipped and burbled onto the bar.

Ralph Pelletier, his expression thunderous, called, "Goddammit, Don—what'd I tell you?"

He knows! They all know! They'll tell Vic! Tell the cops!

You spilled your guts just fine this time, fink!

Don shook Duquette until his dentures rattled. "You won't tell! I never said anything about Vic's equipment. You hear me?"

"He's crazy! He's crazy!" Ducky gibbered, hanging in Don's grip limp as a spawned-out salmon.

Choke the lyin' sonuvabitch! Shut him up!

Lute Soderstrom, who stood six-six and had once punched a hole in the radiator of a Kenwhopper, stepped up behind Don and took hold of his arms. A couple of other Blue Ox habitués pried Ducky loose.

Don's howl was agonized. "You won't get away with it! You're all in it together, aren't you? All working with Vic and the others to finish me off!"

"Ease him outside," Pelletier said.

The jukebox was pounding a raucous dirt-rock tune. Women squealed and men shouted jocose advice to Lute as he wrestled his burden toward the door.

"They're waiting for me out there!" Don screamed. "Waiting with Vic!" He tried to coerce the Swede: hopeless. He tried to trip Lute up by knocking over chairs or tables with his psychokinesis: he hadn't a glimmer. He was impotent. He was nothing. A carousel of light and noise and pain spun around him, slowly dissolving to black, and the jeering mental voices receded to a far distance. Don was a dead weight in Lute's powerful arms as they came out into the soft May night.

Lute dragged him around back to the Ox's dark parking lot, picked him up bodily, and dumped him onto a folded tarp in the bed of a little Nissan 4x4. "You gonna be okay, Don." He spoke soothingly. "You stay here, get a little air, maybe sleep. I come back in just a little bit and drive you home, okay?"

Fais un gros dodo, ordure! Haw haw haw...

Don made an inarticulate noise. Lute nodded and went off.

You can't stay here.

You dassn't go to sleep!

Vic knows what you said. You gotta get outa here!

"Je suis fichu," Don mumbled. "Pas de couilles ... mon crâne ... ah, Jésus..."

Pretty late in the game to be calling on
him,
shithead.

He can't help you. Nobody can. Nobody cares what happens to you, you drunken freak. Nobody!

Nobody ... nobody ... nobody...

"You're wrong." The words were slurred, tainted with the bile that had risen in his throat. He clutched at the side of the pickup's cargo bed, summoned strength, and heaved himself up and over. Then he lay on his face in the dirt for a long time, stunned.

Something crawled across the back of his neck and he opened his eyes, lifted his head, and grinned at the Nissan's left rear wheel. His senses were reeling but he was no longer a man without hope. The voices were wrong! Somebody did care. Somebody who would help him, who would even fend off Victor...

"Merci, mon Seigneur. Merci, doux Jésus!"

He struggled to his feet, fighting off nausea. His head seemed to be in the grip of iron tongs and he had to lean against the side of the Nissan until the pain subsided and he could see. He peered about anxiously among the parked cars and trucks for signs of the enemy. Nobody was there. Not
yet.
They were waiting for Vic, and it'd take the kid time to get back to Berlin from Pittsburg, sixty miles away via two-lane blacktop.

When he was steady he thumbed his wristwatch. The lighted read-out showed just a little past eleven. She'd have to work until one on Saturday and it was only a mile to walk, along well-lit Main Street and then Riverside Drive. She had her car. He could sit in it and wait, get coffee and sober up. It would be all right.

Pulling himself together, he shuffled onto the sidewalk and came around to the front of the tavern. The music and laughter were louder than ever. They'd forgotten all about him. Lamenting the callousness of it all, he set off north on Main, heading for the Androscoggin Kitchen restaurant and Sunny.