The Stand (Original Edition) (54 page)

And there he would be, dressed in some dark stuff like a hooded monk’s robe, nothing visible of his features save his huge and happy grin. And in one hand he held the bent and twisted coathanger. That was when the horror struck her like a padded fist and she struggled up from sleep, her skin clammy with sweat, her heart thudding, wanting never to sleep again.

Because it wasn’t the dead body of her father that he wanted; it was the living child in her womb.

She rolled over again. If she didn’t go to sleep soon she really would take her diary out and write in it. She had been keeping the journal since July 5. In a way she was keeping it for the baby. It was an act of faith—faith that the baby would live. She wanted it to know what it had been like. How the plague had come to a place called Ogunquit, how she and Harold had escaped, what became of them. She wanted the child to know how things had been.

If she
had
to exist in a world like this, with a biological clock inside her set to go off in six months, she wanted someone like Stu Redman to be her man—no, not someone like. She wanted
him.
There it was, stated with complete baldness.

With civilization gone, all the chrome and geegaws had been stripped from the engine of human society. Glen Bateman held forth on this theme often, and it always seemed to please Harold inordinately.

Women’s lib, Frannie had decided, was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society. Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn’t get with child, but a woman could—every four-year-old knows it. And a pregnant woman is a vulnerable human being. Civilization had provided an umbrella of sanity that both sexes could stand beneath. And the Women’s Credo, which should have been hung in the offices of
Ms.
magazine, preferably in needlepoint:
Thank you, Men, for the railroads. Thank you, Men, for inventing the automobile and killing the red Indians who thought it might be nice to hold onto America for a while longer, since they were here first. Thank you, Men, for the hospitals, the police, the schools. Now I’d like to vote, please, and the right to set my own course and make my own destiny. Once I was chattel, but now that is obsolete. Thank you, Men.

And what was there to say? Nothing. The rednecks could grunt about burning bras, the reactionaries could play intellectual little games, but the truth only smiles. Now all that had changed, in a matter of weeks it had changed—how much only time would tell. But lying here in the night, she knew that she needed a man. Oh God, she badly needed a man.

Nor was it all a matter of preserving herself and her baby. Stu attracted her, especially after Jess Rider. Stu was calm, capable, and most of all he was not what her father would have called “twenty pounds of bullshit in a ten-pound bag.”

He was attracted to her as well. She knew that perfectly well, had known it since that first lunch together on the Fourth of July in that deserted restaurant. For a moment—just one moment—their eyes had met and there had been that instant of heat, like a power surge when all the needles swing over to overload. She guessed Stu knew how things were, too, but he was waiting on her, letting her make her decision in her own time. She had been with Harold first, therefore she was Harold’s chattel. A stinking macho idea, but she was afraid this was going to be a stinking macho world again, at least for a while.

If only there was someone else, someone for Harold, but there wasn’t, and she was afraid she could not wait long. She thought of the day Harold, in his clumsy way, had tried to make love to her. How long ago? Two weeks? It seemed longer. All the past seemed longer now. It had pulled out like warm Bonomo’s Turkish taffy. Between her worry of what to do about Harold—and what he might do if she did go to Stuart—and her fear of the dreams, she would never get to sleep.

So thinking, she drifted off.

From Fran Goldsmith’s Diary

July 6, 1980

After some persuasion Mr. Bateman has agreed to come along with us. So tomorrow we’re off for Stovington and I know Stu doesn’t like the idea much. He’s scared of that place. I like Stu very much, only wish Harold liked him more. Harold is making everything very hard, but I suppose he can’t help his nature.

G.B. has decided to leave Kojak behind. He is sorry to have to do that, even though Kojak will have no trouble finding forage. Still there is nothing else for it unless we could find a motorcycle with a sidecar, and even then poor Kojak might get scared and jump out. Hurt or kill himself.

Anyway tomorrow we’ll be going.

Things to Remember:
The California Angels (baseball team) had a pitcher named Nolan Ryan who pitched all kinds of no-hitters and things with his famous fastball, and a no-hitter is very good. There were TV comedies with laugh-tracks, and a laugh-track was people on tape laughing at the funny parts, and they were supposed to make you have a better time watching. You used to be able to get frozen cakes and pies at the supermarket and just thaw them out and eat them. Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake was my personal favorite.

July 7,1980

Can’t write long. Cycled all day. My fanny feels like hamburger & my back feels like there’s a rock in it. I had that bad dream again last night. Harold has also been dreaming about that—?man?—and it upsets the hell out of him because he can’t explain how both of us can be having what is essentially the same dream.

Stu sez he is still having that dream about Nebraska and the old black woman there. She keeps saying he should come and see her anytime. Stu thinks she lives in a town called Holland Home or Hometown or something like that. Sez he thinks he could find it. Harold sneered at him and went into a long spiel about how dreams were psycho-Freudian manifestations of things we didn’t dare think about when we were awake. Stu was angry, I think, but kept his temper. I’m so afraid that the bad feeling between them may break out into the open, I WISH IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!

Anyway, Stu said “So how come you and Frannie are having the same dream?” Harold muttered something about coincidence and just stalked off.

Stu told Glen and I that he would like us to go to Nebraska after Stovington. Glen shrugged and said, “Why not? We have to go somewhere.”

Things to Remember:
There were gasoline shortages because we had used up most of our oil supplies and the Arabs had us by the short hairs. The Arabs had so much money they literally couldn’t spend it. There was a rock and roll group called The Who that sometimes used to finish their live performances by smashing their guitars and amplifiers. This was known as “conspicuous consumption.”

July 8,1980

Harold finished his sign about an hour ago (with much bad grace I must say) and put it on the front lawn of the Stovington installation. Stu helped him put it up and held his peace in spite of all Harold’s mean little jibes.

I had tried to prepare myself for the disappointment. I never believed Stu was lying, and I really don’t think Harold believed he was, either. So I was sure everyone was dead, but still it was an upsetting experience and I cried. I couldn’t help myself.

After we went in and looked around a little (Stu wouldn’t come in —he won’t talk about it much, but I’m sure something
really bad
happened to him in there, diary), Stu told us again that he wanted to go to Nebraska. He had a stubborn, sort of embarrassed look on his face, as if he knew he was going to have to take some more patronizing shit from Harold, but Harold was too unnerved from our “tour” of the Stovington facility to offer much more than token resistance. And even that stopped when Glen said, in a very reticent way, that he had dreamed of the old woman the night before.

Stu and Glen’s dreams of the old woman are very similar. The points of similarity are almost too many to go into (which is my “literary” way of saying my fingers are going numb). Anyway, they both agree she is in Polk County, Nebraska, altho they couldn’t get together on the actual name of the town—Stu says Hollingford Home, Glen says Hemingway Home. Close either way. They both seemed to feel they could find it. (Note Well, diary: My guess is “Hemingford Home.”)

Glen said, “This is really remarkable. We all seem to be sharing an authentic psychic experience.” Harold pooh-poohed, of course, but he looked like he’d been given lots of food for thought. He would only agree to go on the basis of “we have to go somewhere.” We leave in the morning. I’m scared, excited, and mostly happy to be leaving Stovington, which is a death-place.

July 19, 1980

Oh Lord. The worst has happened. At least in the books when it happens it’s over, something at least
changes,
but in real life it just seems to go on and on, like a soap opera where nothing ever comes to a head. Maybe I should move to clear things up, take a chance, but I’m so afraid something might happen between them.

Let me tell you everything, dear diary, even though it’s no great treat to write it down. I even hate to think about it.

Glen and Stu went into town (which happens to be Girard, Ohio, tonight) near dusk to look for some food, hopefully concentrates and freeze-dried stuff. They’re easy to carry and some of the concentrates are really tasty, but as far as I am concerned all the freeze-dried food has the same flavor, namely dried turkey turds. And when have you ever had dried turkey turds to serve as your basis for comparison? Never mind, diary, some things will never be told, ha-ha.

They asked Harold and I if we wanted to come, but I said I’d had enough motorcycling for one day if they could do without me, and Harold said no, he would fetch some water and get it boiled up. Probably already laying his plans. Sorry to make him sound so scheming, but the simple fact is, he is.

When he came back with the water (he’d pretty obviously stayed at the stream long enough to have a bath and wash his hair) he put it on to boil and we were sitting on a log, talking about one thing and another, when he suddenly put his arms around me and tried to kiss me. I say tried but he actually succeeded, at least at first, because I was so surprised. Then I jerked away from him—looking back it seems sorta comic altho I’m still sore—and fell backward right off the log. It rucked up the back of my blouse and scraped about a yard of skin off. I let out a yell. Talk about history repeating; that was too much like the time with Jess out on the breakwater when I bit my tongue ... too much like it for comfort.

In a second Harold’s on one knee beside me, asking if I’m all right, blushing right to the roots of his clean hair.

When he knelt beside me and said, “Are you all right, baby?” I started to giggle. Talk about history repeating itself! But it was more than the humor of the situation, you know. If that had been all, I could have held it in. No, it was more in the line of hysterics. The bad dreams, the worrying about the baby, what to do about my feelings for Stu, the traveling every day, the stiffness, the soreness, losing my parents, everything changed for good ... it came out in giggles at first, then in hysterical laughter I just couldn’t stop.

“What’s so funny?” Harold asked, getting up. I think it was supposed to come out in this terribly righteous voice, but by then I had stopped thinking about Harold and got this crazy image of Donald Duck in my head. Donald Duck waddling through the ruins of Western civilization quacking angrily:
What’s so funny, hah? What’s so funny, What’s so fucking funny,
I put my hands over my face & just giggled & sobbed & sobbed & giggled until Harold must have thought I’d gone absolutely crackers.

After a little bit I managed to stop. I wiped the tears off my face and wanted to ask Harold to look at my back and see how badly it was scraped. But I didn’t because I was afraid he might take it as a LIBERTY. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Frannie, oh-ho, that’s not so funny.

“Then maybe you better not say it,” I said.

“I have to,” he answers, and I began to see he wasn’t going to take no for an answer unless it was hollered at him. “Frannie,” he says, “I love you.”

I guess I knew all along it was just as bald as that. It would be easier if he only wanted to sleep with me. Love’s more dangerous than just balling, and I was in a spot. How to say no to Harold? I guess there’s only one way, no matter who you have to say it to.

“I don’t love you, Harold,” is what I said.

His face cracked all to pieces. “It’s him, isn’t it?” he said, and his face got an ugly grimace on it. “It’s Stu Redman, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Now I have a temper, which I have not always been able to control—a gift from my mother’s side, I think. But I have struggled womanfully with it as applies to Harold. I could feel it straining its leash, however.

“I know.” His voice had gotten shrill and self-pitying. “I know, all right. The day we met him, I knew it then. I didn’t want him to come with us, because I
knew
. And he said . . .”

“What did he say?”

“That he didn’t want you! That you could be mine!”

“Just like giving you a new pair of shoes, right, Harold?”

He didn’t answer, maybe realizing he had gone too far.

“No one owns me, Harold,” I said.

He muttered something.

“What?”

“I said, you may have to change that idea.”

A sharp retort came to mind, but I didn’t let it out. Harold’s eyes had gone far away, and his face was very still and open. He said: “I’ve seen that guy before. You better believe it, Frannie. He’s the guy that’s the quarterback on the football team but who just sits there in class throwing spitballs and flipping people the bird because he knows the teacher’s got to pass him with at least a C so he can keep on playing. He’s the guy who goes steady with the prettiest cheerleader and she thinks he’s Jesus Christ with a bullet. The guy who thinks up the initiations for the freshmen. The guy who farts when the English teacher asks you to read your composition because it’s the best one in the class.