1.
On June the 23rd, 1977, Chuck graduated from high school. Johnny, dressed in his best suit, sat in the hot auditorium with Roger and Shelley Chatsworth and watched as he graduated forty-third in his class. Shelley cried.
Afterward, there was a lawn party at the Chatsworth home. The day was hot and humid. Thunderheads with purple bellies had formed in the west; they dragged slowly back and forth across the horizon, but seemed to come no closer. Chuck, flushed with three screwdrivers, came over with his girl friend, Patty Strachan, to show Johnny his graduation present from his parents - a new Pulsar watch.
'I told them I wanted that R2D2 robot, but this was the best they could do,' Chuck said, and Johnny laughed.
They talked a while longer and then Chuck said with almost rough abruptness: 'I want to thank you, Johnny. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't be graduating today at all.'
'No, that isn't true,' Johnny said. He was a little alarmed to see that Chuck was on the verge of tears. 'Class always tells, man.
'That's what I keep telling him,' Chuck's girl said. Behind her glasses, a cool and elegant beauty was waiting to come out.
'Maybe,' Chuck said. 'Maybe it does. But I think I know which side my diploma is buttered on. Thanks a hell of a lot.' He put his arms around Johnny and gave him a hug.
It came suddenly - a hard, bright bolt of image that made Johnny straighten up and dap his hand against the side of his head as if Chuck had struck him instead of hugging him. The image sank into his mind like a picture done by electroplate.
'No,' he said. 'No way. You two stay right away from there.'
Chuck drew back uneasily. He had felt something. Something cold and dark and incomprehensible. Suddenly he didn't want to touch Johnny; at that moment he never wanted to touch Johnny again. It was as if he had found out what it would be like to lie in his own coffin and watch the lid nailed down.
'Johnny,' he said, and then faltered. 'What's what's
Roger had been on his way over with drinks, and now he paused, puzzled. Johnny was looking over Chuck's shoulder, at the distant thunderheads. His eyes were vague and hazy.
He said: 'You want to stay away from that place. There are no lightning rods.'
'Johnny ...' Chuck looked at his father, frightened. 'It's like he's having some kind of ... fit, or something.'
'Lightning,' Johnny proclaimed in a carrying voice. People turned their heads to look at him. He spread his hands. 'Flash fire. The insulation in the walls. The doors ... jammed. Burning people smell like hot pork.'
'What's he talking about?' Chuck's girl cried, and conversation trickled to a halt. Now everyone was looking at Johnny, as they balanced plates of food and glasses.
Roger stepped over. 'John! Johnny I What's wrong? Wake up!' He snapped his fingers in front of Johnny's vague eyes. Thunder muttered in the west, the voice of giants over gin rummy. perhaps. 'What's wrong?'
Johnny's voice was clear and moderately loud, carrying to each of the fifty-some people who were there - businessmen and their wives, professors and their wives, Durham's upper middle class. 'Keep your son home tonight or he's going to burn to death with the rest of them. There is going to be a fire, a terrible fire. Keep him away from Cathy's. It's going to be struck by lightning and it will burn flat before the first fire engine can arrive. The insulation will burn. They will find charred bodies six and seven deep in the exits and there will be no way to identify them except by their dental work. It... it...,
Patty Strachan screamed then, her hand going to her mouth, her plastic glass tumbling to the lawn, the ice cubes spilling out onto the grass and gleaming there like diamonds of improbable size. She stood swaying for a moment and then she fainted. going down in a pastel billow of party dress, and her mother ran forward, crying at Johnny as she passed: 'What's wrong with you? What in God's name is wrong with you?'
Chuck stared at Johnny. His face was paper-white.
Johnny's eyes began to clear. He looked around at the staring knots of people. 'I'm sorry,' he muttered.
Patty's mother was on her knees, holding her daughter's head in her arms and patting her cheeks lightly. The girl began to stir and moan.
'Johnny?' Chuck whispered, and then, without waiting for an answer, went to his girl.
It was very still on the Chatsworth back lawn. Everyone was looking at him. They were looking at him because it had happened again. They were looking at him the way the nurses had. And the reporters. They were crows strung out on a telephone line. They were holding their drinks and their plates of potato salad and looking at him as if he were a bug, a freak. They were looking at him as if he had suddenly opened his pants and exposed himself to them.
He wanted to run, he wanted to hide. He wanted to puke.
'Johnny,' Roger said, putting an arm around him. 'Come on in the house. You need to get off your feet for...
Thunder rumbled, far off.
'What's Cathy's?' Johnny said harshly, resisting the pressure of Roger's arm over his shoulders. 'It isn't someone's house, because there were exit signs. What is it? Where is it?'
'Can't you get him out of here?' Patty's mother nearly screamed. 'He's upsetting her all over again!'
'Come on, Johnny.'
'But...'
'Come on.'
He allowed himself to be led away toward the guest house. The sound of their shoes on the gravel drive was very loud. There seemed to be no other sound. They got as far as the pool, and then the whispering began behind them.
'Where's Cathy's?' Johnny asked again.
'How come you don't know?' Roger asked. 'You seemed to know everything else. You scared poor Patty Strachan into a faint.'
'I can't see it. It's in the dead zone. What is it?'
'Let's get you upstairs first.'
'I'm not sick!'
'Under strain, then,' Roger said. He spoke softly and soothingly, the way people speak to the hopelessly mad. The sound of his voice made Johnny afraid. And the headache started to come. He willed it back savagely. They went up the stairs to the guest house.
2.
'Feel any better?' Roger asked.
'What's Cathy's?'
'It's a very fancy steakhouse and lounge in Somersworth. Graduation parties at Cathy's are something of a tradition. God knows why. Sure you don't want these aspirin?'
'No. Don't let him go, Roger. It's going to be hit by lightning. It's going to burn flat.'
'Johnny,' Roger Chatsworth said, slowly and very kindly, 'you can't know a thing like that.'
Johnny drank ice water a small sip at a time and set the glass back down with a hand that shook slightly. 'You said you checked into my background. I thought...'
'Yes, I did. But you're drawing a mistaken conclusion. I knew you were supposed to be a psychic or something, but I didn't want a psychic. I wanted a tutor. You've done a fine job as a tutor. My personal belief is that there isn't any difference between good psychics and bad ones, because I don't believe in any of that business. It's as simple as that. I don't believe it.'
'That makes me a liar, then.'
'Not at all,' Roger said in that same kind, low voice. 'I have a foreman at the mill in Sussex who won't light three on a match, but that doesn't make him a bad foreman. I have friends who are devoutly religious, and although I don't go to church myself, they're still my friends. Your belief that you can see into the future or sight things at a distance never entered into my judgment of whether or not to hire ......... that isn't quite true. It never entered into it once I'd decided that it wouldn't interfere with your ability to do a good job with Chuck. It hasn't. But I no more believe that Cathy's is going to burn down tonight than I believe the moon is green cheese.'
'I'm not a liar, just crazy,' Johnny said. In a dull sort of way, it was interesting. Roger Dussault and many of the people who wrote Johnny letters had accused him of trickery, but Chatsworth was the first to accuse him of having a Jeanne d'Arc complex.
'Not that, either,' Roger said. 'You're a young man who was involved in a terrible accident and who has fought his way back against terrible odds at what has probably been a terrible price. That isn't a thing I'd ever flap my jaw about freely, Johnny, but if any of those people out there on the lawn - including Patty's mother - want to jump to a lot of stupid conclusions they'll be invited to shut their mouths about things they don't understand.'
'Cathy's,' Johnny said suddenly. 'How did I know the name, then? And how did I know it wasn't someone's house?'
'From Chuck. He's talked about the party a lot this week.'
'Not to me.'
Roger shrugged. 'Maybe he said something to Shelley or me while you were in earshot. Your subconscious happened to pick it up and file it away...
'That's right,' Johnny said bitterly. 'Anything we don't understand, anything that doesn't fit into our scheme of the way things are, we'll just file it under S for subconscious, right? The twentieth-century god. How many times have you done that when something ran counter to your pragmatic view of the world, Roger?'
Roger's eyes might have flickered a little - or it might have been imagination.
'You associated lightning with the thunderstorm that's coming,' he said. 'Don't you see that? It's perfectly sim . -.
'Listen,' Johnny said. 'I'm telling you this as simply as I can. That place is going to be struck by lightning. It's going to burn down. Keep Chuck home.'
Ah, God, the headache was coming for him. Coming like a tiger. He put his hand to his forehead and rubbed it unsteadily.
'Johnny, you've been pushing much too hard.'
'Keep him home,' Johnny repeated.
'It's his decision, and I wouldn't presume to make it for him. He's free, white, and eighteen.'
There was a tap at the door. 'Johnny?'
'Come in,' Johnny said, and Chuck himself came in. He looked worried.
'How are you?' Chuck asked.
'I'm all right,' Johnny said. 'I've got a headache, that's all. Chuck ... please stay away from that place tonight. I'm asking you as a friend. Whether you think like your dad or not. Please.'
'No problem, man,' Chuck said cheerfully, and whumped down on the sofa. He hooked a hassock over with one foot. 'Couldn't drag Patty within a mile of that place with a twenty-foot towin chain. You put a scare into her.'
'I'm sorry,' Johnny said. He felt sick and chilly with relief. 'I'm sorry but I'm glad.'
'You had some kind of a flash, didn't you?' Chuck looked at Johnny, then at his father, and then slowly back to Johnny. 'I felt it. It was bad.'
'Sometimes people do. I understand it's sort of nasty.'
'Well, I wouldn't want it to happen again,' Chuck said. 'But hey... that place isn't really going to burn down, is it?'
'Yes,' Johnny said. 'You want to just keep away.'
'But...' He looked at his father, troubled. 'The senior class reserved the whole damn place. The school encourages that, you know. It's safer than twenty or thirty different parties and a lot of people drinking on the back roads: There's apt to be ...' Chuck fell silent for a moment and then began to look frightened. 'There's apt to be two hundred couples there,' he said. 'Dad...'
'I don't think he believes any of this,' Johnny said.
Roger stood up and smiled. 'Well, let's take a ride over to Somersworth and talk to the manager of the place,' he said. 'It was a dull lawn party, anyway. And if you two still feel the same coming back, we can have everyone over here tonight.'
He glanced at Johnny.
'Only condition being that you have to stay sober and help chaperon, fellow.'
'I'll be glad to,' Johnny said. 'But why, if you don't believe it?'
'For your peace of mind,' Roger said, 'and for Chuck's And so that, when nothing happens tonight, I can say I told you so and then just laaaugh my ass off.'
'Well, whatever, thanks.' He was trembling worse than ever now that the relief had come, but his headache had retreated to a dull throb.
'One thing up front, though,' Roger said. 'I don't think we stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting the owner to cancel on your unsubstantiated word, Johnny. This is probably one of his big business nights each year.'
Chuck said, 'Well, we could work something out...'
'Like what?'
'Well, we could tell him a ....... spin some kind of yarn ...
'Lie, you mean? No, I won't do that. Don't ask me, Chuck.'
Chuck nodded. 'All right.'
'We better get going,' Roger said briskly. 'It's quarter of five. We'll take the Mercedes over to Somersworth.'
3.
Bruce Carrick, the owner-manager, was tending bar when the three of them came in at five-forty. Johnny's heart sank a little when he read the sign posted outside the lounge doors: PRIVATE PARTY THIS EVENING ONLY 7 PM TO CLOSING SEE YOU TOMORROW.
Carrick was not exactly being run into the ground. He was serving a few workmen who were drinking beer and watching the early news, and three couples who were having cocktails. He listened to Johnny's story with a face that grew ever more incredulous. When he had finished, Carrick said: 'You say Smith's your name?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'Mr. Smith, come on over to this window with me.'
He led Johnny to the lobby window, by the cloakroom door.
'Look out there, Mr. Smith, and tell me what you see.
Johnny looked out, knowing what he would see. Route 9 ran west, now drying from a light afternoon sprinkle. Above, the sky was perfectly clear. The thunderheads had passed.
'Not much. At least, not now. But...
'But nothing.' Bruce Carrick said. 'You know what I think? You want to know frankly? I think you're a nut. Why you picked me for this royal screwing I don't know or care. But if you got a second, sonny, I'll tell you the facts of life. The senior class has paid me six hundred and fifty bucks for this bash. They've hired a pretty good rock 'n roll band, Oak, from up in Maine. The food's out there in the freezer, all ready to go into the microwave. The salads are on ice. Drinks are extra, and most of these kids are over eighteen and can drink all they want ... and tonight they will, who can blame them, you only graduate from a high school once. I'll take in two thousand dollars in the lounge tonight, no sweat. I got two extra barmen coming in. I got six waitresses and a hostess. If I should cancel this thing now, I lose the whole night. plus I got to pay back the six-fifty I already took for the meal. I don't even get my regular dinner crowd because that sign's been there all week. Do you get the picture?'
'Are there lightning rods on this place?' Johnny asked.
Carrick threw his hands up. 'I tell this guy the facts of life and he wants to discuss lightning rods! Yeah, I got lightning rods! A guy came in here, before I added on, must be five years ago now. He gave me a song-and-dance about improving my insurance rates. So I bought the goddam lightning rods! Are you happy? Jesus Christ!' He looked at Roger and Chuck. 'What are you two guys doing? Why are you letting this asshole run around loose? Get out, why don't you? I got a business to run.
'Johnny...' Chuck began.
'Never mind,' Roger said. 'Let's go. Thank you for your time, Mr. Carrick, and for your polite and sympathetic attention.'
'Thanks for nothing,' Carrick said. 'Bunch of nuts!' He strode back toward the lounge.
The three of them went out. Chuck looked doubtfully at the flawless sky. Johnny started toward the car, looking only at his feet, feeling stupid and defeated. His headache thudded sickly against his temples. Roger was standing with his hands in his back pockets, looking up at the long, low roof of the building.
'What are you looking at, Dad?' Chuck asked.
'There are no lightning rods up there,' Roger Chatsworth said thoughtfully. 'No lightning rods at all.'
4.
The three of them sat in the living room of the big house, Chuck by the telephone. He looked doubtfully at his father. 'Most of them won't want to change their plans this late,' he said.
'They've got plans to go out, that's all,' Roger said. 'They can just as easily come here.'
Chuck shrugged and began dialing.
They ended up with about half the couples who had been planning to go to Cathy's that graduation evening, and Johnny was never really sure why they came. Some probably came simply because it sounded like a more interesting party and because the drinks were on the house. But word traveled fast, and the parents of a good many of the kids here had been at the lawn party that afternoon - as a result, Johnny spent much of the evening feeling like an exhibit in a glass case. Roger sat in the corner on a stool, drinking a vodka martini. His face was a studied mask.
Around quarter of eight he walked across the big bar/ playroom combination that took up three-quarters of the basement level, bent close to Johnny and bellowed over the roar of Elton John, 'You want to go upstairs and play some cribbage?'
Johnny nodded gratefully.
Shelley was in the kitchen, writing letters. She looked up when they came in, and smiled. 'I thought you two masochists were going to stay down there all night. It's not really necessary, you know.'
'I'm sorry about all of this,' Johnny said. 'I know how crazy it must seem.'
'It does seem crazy,' Shelley said. 'No reason not to be candid about that. But having them here is really rather nice. I don't mind.'
Thunder rumbled outside. Johnny looked around. Shelley saw it and smiled a little. Roger had left to hunt for the cribbage board in the dining room welsh dresser.
'It's just passing over, you know,' she said. 'A little thunder and a sprinkle of rain.'
'Yes,' Johnny said.
She signed her letter in a comfortable sprawl, folded it, sealed it, addressed it, stamped it. 'You really experienced something, didn't you, Johnny?'
'Yes.'
'A momentary faintness,' she said. 'Possibly caused by a dietary deficiency. You're much too thin, Johnny. It might have been a hallucination, mightn't it?'
'No, I don't think so.'
Outside, thunder growled again, but distantly. 'I'm just as glad to have him home. I don't believe in astrology and palmistry and clairvoyance and all of that, but ... I'm just as glad to have him home. He's our only chick... a pretty damned big chick now, I suspect you re thinking, but it's easy to remember him riding the little kids' merry-go-round in the town park in his short pants. Too easy, perhaps. And it's nice to be able to share the the last rite of his boyhood with him.'
'It's nice that you feel that way,' Johnny said. Suddenly he was frightened to find himself close to tears. In the last six or eight months it seemed to him that his emotional control had slipped several notches.
'You've been good for Chuck. I don't mean just teaching him to read. In a lot of ways.'
'I like Chuck.'
'Yes,' she said quietly. 'I know you do.'
Roger came back with the cribbage board and a transistor radio tuned to WMTQ, a classical station that broadcast from the top of Mount Washington.
'A little antidote for Elton John, Aerosmith, Foghat, et al,' he said. 'How does a dollar a game sound, Johnny?'
'It sounds fine.'
Roger sat down, rubbing his hands. 'Oh, you're goin home poor,' he said.
5.
They played cribbage and the evening passed. Between each game one of them would go downstairs and make sure no one had decided to dance on the pool table or go out back for a little party of their own. 'No one is going to impregnate anyone else at this party if I can help it,' Roger said.
Shelley had gone into the living room to read. Once an hour the music on the radio would stop and the news would come on and Johnny's attention would falter a little. But there was nothing about Cathy's in Somersworth - not at eight, nine, or ten.
After the ten o'clock news, Roger said: 'Getting ready to hedge your prediction a little, Johnny?'
'No.'
The weather forecast was for scattered thundershowers, clearing after midnight.
The steady bass signature of K.C. and the Sunshine Band came up through the floor.
'Party's getting loud,' Johnny remarked.
'The hell with that,' Roger said, grinning. 'The party's getting drunk. Spider Parmeleau is passed out in the corner and somebody's using him for a beer coaster. Oh, they'll have big heads in the morning, you want to believe it. I remember at my own graduation party...'
'Here is a bulletin from the WMTQ newsroom,' the radio said.
Johnny, who had been shuffling, sprayed cards all over the floor.
'Relax, it's probably just something about that kidnapping down in Florida.'
'I don't think so,' Johnny said.
The broadcaster said: 'It appears at this moment that the worst fire in New Hampshire history has claimed more than seventy-five young lives in the border town of Somersworth, New Hampshire. The fire occurred at a restaurant-lounge called Cathy's. A graduation party was in progress when the fire broke out. Somersworth fire chief Milton Hovey told reporters they have no suspicions of arson; they believe that the fire was almost certainly caused by a bolt of lightning.'
Roger Chatsworth's face was draining of all color. He sat bolt upright in his kitchen chair, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Johnny's head. His hands lay loosely on the table. From below them came the babble of conversation and laughter, intermingled now with the sound of Bruce Springsteen.
Shelley came into the room. She looked from her husband to Johnny and then back again. 'What is it? What's wrong?'
'Shut up,' Roger said.
'.... is still blazing, and Hovey said that a final tally of the dead will probably not be known until early morning. It is known that over thirty people, mostly members of the Durham High School senior class, have been taken to hospitals in surrounding areas to be treated for burns. Forty people, also mostly graduating students, escaped from small bathroom windows at the rear of the lounge, but others were apparently trapped in fatal pile-ups at the...
'Was it Cathy's?' Shelley Chatsworth screamed. 'Was it that place?'
'Yes,' Roger said. He seemed eerily calm. 'Yes, it was.'
Downstairs there had been a momentary silence. It was followed by a running thud of footsteps coming up the stairs. The kitchen door burst open and Chuck came in, looking for his mother.
'Mom? What is it? What's wrong?'
'It appears that we may owe you for our son's life,' Roger said in that same eerily calm voice. Johnny had never seen a face that white. Roger looked like a ghastly living waxwork.
'It burned?' Chuck's voice was incredulous. Behind him, others were crowding up the stairs now, whispering in low, affrighted voices. 'Are you saying it burned down?'
No one answered. And then, suddenly, from somewhere behind him, Patty Strachan began to talk in a high, hysterical voice. 'It's his fault, that guy there! He made it happen! He set it on fire by his mind, just like in that book Carrie. You murderer! Killer! You ...
Roger turned toward her. 'SHUT UP!' He roared.
Patty collapsed into wild sobs.
'Burned?' Chuck repeated. He seemed to be asking himself now, inquiring if that could possibly be the right word.
'Roger?' Shelley whispered. 'Rog? Honey?'
There was a growing mutter on the stairs, and in the playroom below, like a stir of leaves. The stereo clicked off. The voices murmured.
Was Mike there? Shannon went, didn't she? Are you sure? Yes, I was all ready to leave when Chuck called me. My mother was there when that guy freaked out and she said she felt like a goose was walking on her grave, she asked me to come here instead. Was Casey there? Was Ray there? Was Maureen Ontello there? Oh my God, was she? Was...
Roger stood up slowly and turned around. 'I suggest,' he said, 'that we find the soberest people here to drive and that we all go down to the hospital. They'll need blood donors.'
Johnny sat like a stone. He found himself wondering if he would ever move again. Outside, thunder rumbled.
And followed on its heels like an inner clap, he heard his dying mother's voice:
Do your duty, John.