Renfrew: We are now approaching the hour of adjournment, Dr. Weizak, and on behalf of the Committee, I would like to thank you for the last four long hours of testimony. You have offered a great deal of light on the situation.
Weizak: That is quite all right.
R: I have one final question for you, Dr. Weizak, one which seems to me to be of nearly ultimate importance; it speaks to an issue which John Smith himself raised in the letter to his father which has been entered into evidence. That question is…
W: No.
R: I beg your pardon?
W: You are preparing to ask me if Johnny's tumor pulled the trigger that day in New Hampshire, are you not?
R: In a manner of speaking, I suppose…
W: The answer is no. Johnny Smith was a thinking, reasoning human being until the end of his life. The letter to his father shows this; his letter to Sarah Hazlett also shows this. He was a man with a terrible, Godlike power perhaps a curse, as my colleague Dr. Vann has called it-but he was neither unhinged nor acting upon fantasies caused by cranial pressure-if such a thing is even possible.
R: But isn't it true that Charles Witman, the so-called “Texas Tower Sniper”, had…
W: Yes, yes, he had a tumor. So did the pilot of the Eastern Airlines airplane that crashed in Florida some years ago. And it has never been suggested that the tumor was a precipitating cause in either case. I would point out to you that other infamous creatures -Richard Speck; the so-called “Son of Sam”, and Adolf Hitler-needed no brain tumors to cause them to act in a homicidal manner. Or Frank Dodd, the murderer Johnny himself uncovered in the town of Castle Rock. However misguided this Committee may find Johnny's act to have been, it was the act of a man who was sane. In great mental agony, perhaps-but sane.
…and most of all, don't believe that I did this without the longest and most agonizing reflection. If by killing him I could be sure that the human race was gaining another four years, another two, even another eight months in which to think it over, it would be worth it. It's wrong, but it may turn out right. I don't know. But I won't play
Hamlet any longer. I know how dangerous Stillson is. Daddy, I love you very much. Believe it.
Your Son,
Johnny
Excerpt from testimony given before the socalled “Stillson Committee”, chaired by Senator William Cohen of Maine. The questioner is Mr. Albert Renfrew, the Committee's Deputy Counsel. The witness is Mr. Stuart Clawson, of the Blackstrap Road in Jackson, New Hampshire.
Renfrew: And you say you just happened to grab your camera, Mr. Clawson?
Clawson: Yeah! Just as I went out the door. I almost didn't even go that day, even though I like Greg Stillson-well, I did like him before all of this, anyway. The town hall just seemed like a bummer to me, you know?”
R: Because of your driver's exam.
C: You got it. Flunking that permit test was one colossal bummer. But at the end, I said what the hell. And I got the picture. Wow! I got it. That picture's going to make me rich, I guess. Just like the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
R: I hope you don't get the idea that the entire thing was staged for your benefit, young man.
C: Oh, no! Not at all! I only meant… well… I don't know what I meant. But it happened right in front of me, and… I don't know. Jeez, I was just glad I had my Nikon, that's all.
R: You just snapped the photo when Stillson picked up the child?
C: Matt Robeson, yessir.
R: And this is a blowup of that photo?
C: That's my picture, yes.
R: And after you took it, what happened?
C: Two of those goons ran after me. They were yelling “Give us the camera, kid! Drop it. “Shi-uh, stuff like that.
R: And you ran.
C: Did I run? Holy God, I guess I ran. They chased me almost all the way to the town garage. One of them almost had me, but he slipped on the ice and fell down.
Cohen: Young man, I'd like to suggest that you won the most important footrace of your life when you outran those two thugs.
C: Thank you, Sir. What Stillson did that day… maybe you had to be there, but… holding a little kid in front of you, that's pretty low. I bet the people in New Hampshire wouldn't vote for that guy for dog-catcher. Not for…
R: Thank you, Mr. Clawson. The witness is excused.
October again.
Sarah had avoided this trip for a very long time, but now the time had come and it could be put off no longer. She felt that. She had left both children with Mrs. Ablanap-they had house-help now, and two cars instead of the little red Pinto; Walt's income was scraping near thirty thousand dollars a year-and had come by herself to Pownal through the burning blaze of late autumn.
Now she pulled over on the shoulder of a pretty little country road, got out, and crossed to the small cemetery on the other side. A small, tarnished plaque on one of the stone posts announced that this was THE BIRCHES. It was enclosed by a rambling rock wall, and the grounds were neatly kept. A few faded flags remained from Memorial Day five months ago. Soon they would be buried under snow.
She walked slowly, not hurrying, the breeze catching the hem of her dark green skirt and fluttering it. Here were generations of BOWDENS; here was a whole family of MARSTENS; here, grouped around a large marble memorial, were PILLSBURYS going back to 1750.
And near the rear wall, she found a relatively new stone, which read simply JOHN SMITH. Sarah knelt
beside it, hesitated, touched it. She let her fingertips skate thoughtfully over its polished surface.
Dear Sarah,
January 23, 1979
I've just written my father a very important letter, and it took me nearly an hour and a half to work my way through it. I just don't have the energy to repeat the effort, so I am going to suggest that you call him as soon as you receive this, Go do it now, Sarah, before you read the rest of this.
So now, in all probability, you know. I just wanted to tell you that I've been thinking a lot about our date at the Esty Fair just recently. If I had to guess the two things that you remember most about it, I'd guess the run of luck I had on the Wheel of Fortune (remember the kid who kept saying “I love to see this guy take a beatin”?), and the mask I wore to fool you. That was supposed to be a big joke, but you got mad and our date damn near went right down the drain. Maybe if it had, l wouldn't be here now and that taxi driver would still be alive. On the other hand, maybe nothing at all of importance changes in the future, and I would have been handed the same bullet to eat a week or a month or a year later.
Well, we had our chance and it came up on one of the house numbers-double zero, I guess. But I wanted you to know that I think of you, Sarah. For me there really hasn't been anyone else, and that night was the best night for us…
“Hello, Johnny,” she murmured, and the wind walked softly through the trees that burned and blazed; a red leaf flipped its way across the bright blue sky and landed, unnoticed, in her hair. “I'm here. I finally came.”
Speaking out loud should have also seemed wrong, speaking to the dead in a graveyard was the act of a crazy person, she would have said once. But now emotion surprised her, emotion of such force and intensity that it caused her throat to ache and her hands to suddenly clap shut. It was all right to speak to him, maybe; after all, it had been nine years, and this was the end of it. After this there would be Walt and the children and lots of smiles from one of the chairs behind her husband's speaking podium; the endless smiles from the background and an occasional feature article in the Sunday supplements, if Walt's political career skyrocketed as he so calmly expected it to do. The future was a little more gray in her hair each year, never going braless because of the sag, becoming more careful about makeup; the future was exercise classes at the YWCA in Bangor and shopping and taking Denny to the first grade and Janis to nursery school; the future was New Year's Eve parties and funny hats as her life rolled into the science-fictiony decade of the 1980s and also into a queer and almost unsuspected state-middle age.