The Stand (Original Edition) (69 page)

Stu shook his head slowly. “Nor talk to her about it. We want to keep some of this stuff close for a while.”

Larry’s smile evaporated. “I’m not much on cloak-and-dagger, Stu. I better get that up front because it might save a hassle later. I think what happened in June happened because too many people were playing it a little too close. That wasn’t any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”

“That’s one you don’t want to get into with Mother,” Stu said. He was still smiling, relaxed. “As it happens, I agree with you. But would you feel the same way if it was wartime?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“That man we dreamed about. I doubt if he’s just gone away.” Larry looked startled, considering.

“Glen says he can understand why nobody’s talking about that,” Stu went on, “even though we’ve all been warned. The people here are still shellshocked. They feel like they’ve been through hell to get here. All they want to do is lick their wounds and bury their dead. But if Mother Abagail’s here, then
he’s
there,” Stu said. He jerked his head toward the window, which gave on a view of the Flatirons rising in the high summer haze. “And most of the people here may not be thinking about him, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that he’s thinking about us.”

Larry glanced at the doorway to the kitchen, but Lucy had gone outside to talk to Jane Hovington from next door.

“That’s a nice thought to have just before dinner,” he said to Stu in a low voice. “Good for the appetite.”

“Mother Abagail says it won’t be over, one way or the other, until he’s got us or we’ve got him.”

“I hope she’s not saying that around. These people would be headed for fucking Australia.”

“Thought you didn’t hold much with secrets.”

“Yeah, but this—” Larry stopped. Stu was smiling kindly, and Larry smiled back, rather sourly. “Okay. Your point. We talk it out and keep our mouths shut.”

“Fine. See you at seven?”

“Sure thing.”

They walked to the door together. “Thank Lucy for the invite again,” Stu said. “Frannie and I’ll take her up on it before long.”

“Okay.” As Stu reached the door, Larry said, “Hey.”

Stu turned back, questioning.

“There’s a boy,” Larry said slowly, “that came across from Maine with us. His name is Leo Rockway. He’s had his problems. Lucy and I sort of share him with a woman named Nadine Cross. Nadine’s a little out of the ordinary herself, you know?”

Stu nodded. There had been some talk about a peculiar little scene between Mother Abagail and the Cross woman when Larry brought his party in.

“Nadine was taking care of Leo before I ran across them. Leo kind of sees into people. He’s not the only one, either. Maybe there were always people like that, but there seems to be a little bit more of it around since the flu. And Leo ... he wouldn’t go into Harold’s house. Wouldn’t even stay on the lawn. That’s . . . sort of funny, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Stu agreed.

They looked at each other thoughtfully for a moment and then Stu left to go home and get his supper. Fran seemed preoccupied herself during the meal, and didn’t talk much. And while she was still doing the last of the dishes in a plastic bucket full of warm water, people began arriving for the first meeting of the Free Zone Ad Hoc Committee.

After Stu had gone over to Larry’s, Frannie rushed upstairs to the bedroom. In the corner of the closet was the sleeping bag she had carried across the country, strapped to the back of her motorcycle. She had kept her personal belongings in a small zipper bag. Most of those belongings were now distributed through the apartment she and Stu shared, but a few still hadn’t found a home and rested at the foot of the sleeping bag. There were several bottles of cleansing cream—she had suffered a sudden rash of skin outbreaks after the deaths of her mother and father, but that had now subsided—a box of Stay-Free Mini Pads in case she started spotting (she had heard that pregnant women sometimes did), two boxes of cheap cigars, one marked
ITS A BOY!
and the other marked
IT’S A GIRL!
The last item was her diary.

She drew it out and looked at it speculatively. She had entered in it only eight or nine times since their arrival in Boulder, although she intended to keep it more fully when things settled down a little. For the baby.

The way people get when they convert to religion ... or read something that changes their lives . . . like intercepted love letters . . .

Suddenly it seemed to her that the book had gained weight, and that the very act of turning back the pasteboard cover would cause sweat to pop out on her brow and . . . and . . .

She suddenly looked back over her shoulder, her heart beating wildly. Had something moved in here?

A mouse, scuttering behind the wall, maybe. Surely no more than that. More likely just her imagination. There was no reason, no reason at all for her to suddenly be thinking of the man in the black robe, the man with the coathanger. Her baby was alive and safe and this was just a book and anyhow there was no way to tell if a book had been read, and even if there was a way, there would be no way to tell if the person who had read it had been Harold Lauder.

Still, she opened the book and began to turn slowly through its pages, getting shutterclicks of the recent past like black-and-white photographs taken by an amateur. Home movies of the mind.

Tonight we were admiring them and Harold was going on about color & texture & tone and Stu gave me a very sober wink. Evil me, I winked back . .
.

Harold will object on general principles, of course. Damn you, Harold, grow up!

. . .
and I could see him getting ready with one of his Patented Harold Lauder Smartass Comments . .
.

(my God, Fran, why did you ever say all those things about him? to what
purpose?)

Well, you know Harold .
. .
his swagger ... all those pompous words & pronouncements ... an insecure little boy . . .

That was July 12. Wincing, she turned past it rapidly, fluttering through the pages now, in a hurry to get to the end. Phrases still leaped up, seeming to slap at her:
Anyway, Harold smelled pretty clean for a change . . . Harold’s breath would have driven away a dragon tonight . . .
And another, seeming almost prophetic:
He stores up rebuffs like pirate treasure.
But to what purpose? To feed his own feelings of secret superiority and persecution? Or was it a matter of retribution?

Oh, he’s making a list . . . and checking it twice . . .

Then, on August 1, only two weeks ago. The entry started at the bottom of a page.
No entry last night, I was too happy. Have I ever been this happy? I don’t think so. Stu and I are together. We

End of the page. She turned to the next one. The first words at the top of the page were
made love twice.
But they barely caught her eye before her glance dropped halfway down the page. There, beside some blathering about the maternal instinct, was something that caught her eyes and froze her almost solid.

It was a large, smeary thumbprint.

She thought wildly: I was riding on a motorcycle all day long, every day. Sure, I took care to clean up every chance I got, but your hands get dirty and . . .

She put out her hand, not at all surprised to see that it was shaking badly. She put her thumb on the smudge. The smudge was a lot bigger. And it wasn’t grease or oil, there was no use even kidding herself that it was.

It was dried chocolate.

Paydays
, Frannie thought sickly.

For a moment she was afraid to do so much as turn around— afraid that she might see Harold’s grin hanging over her shoulder like the grin of the Cheshire cat in
Alice.
Harold’s thick lips moving as he said solemnly:
Every dog has his day, Frannie. Every dog has his day.

But even if Harold had sneaked a glance into her diary, did it have to mean he was contemplating some secret vendetta against her or Stu or any of the others? Of course not.

But Harold’s changed,
an interior voice whispered.

“Goddammit, he hasn’t changed that much!” she cried to the empty room. She flinched a little at the sound of her own voice, then laughed shakily. She went downstairs and began to get supper. They would be eating early because of the meeting ... but suddenly the meeting didn’t seem as important as it had earlier.

Excerpts from the Minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee Meeting August 13,1980

The meeting was held in the apartment of Stu Redman and Frances Goldsmith. All members of the ad hoc committee were present, those being: Stuart Redman, Frances Goldsmith, Nick Andros, Glen Bateman, Ralph Brentner, Susan Stem, and Larry Underwood . . .

Stu Redman was elected moderator of the meeting. Frances Goldsmith was elected recording secretary . . .

These notes (plus complete coverage of every burp, gurgle, and aside, all recorded on Memorex cassettes for anyone crazy enough to want to listen to them) will be placed in a safe deposit box of the First Bank of Boulder . . .

Stu Redman presented a broadside on the subject of food poisoning written by Dick Ellis and Laurie Constable (eye-catchingly titled
IF YOU EAT YOU SHOULD READ THIS!).
He said Dick wanted to see it printed and nailed up all over Boulder before the big meeting on August 18, because there have already been fifteen cases of food poisoning in Boulder, two of them quite serious. The committee voted 7-0 that Ralph should duplicate a thousand copies of Dick’s poster and get ten people to help him put them up all over town . . .

Susan Stem then presented another item that Dick and Laurie wanted to put before the meeting (we all wished one or the other of them could have been here). They both feel that there must be a Burial Committee; Dick’s idea was that it should be put on the agenda of the public meeting and that it be presented not as a health hazard—because of the possibility it might cause panic—but as “the decent thing to do.” We all know there are surprisingly few corpses in Boulder in proportion to its pre-plague population, but we don’t know why . . . not that it matters much now. But there are still thousands of dead bodies and they must be gotten rid of if we intend to stay here.

Stu asked how serious the problem was at present and Sue said she thought it would not become really serious until fall, when the dry, hot weather usually turns damp.

Larry Underwood made a motion that we add Dick’s suggestion that a Burial Committee be formed to the agenda of the August 18 meeting. The motion was carried, 7-0.

Nick Andros was then recognized, and F.alph Brentner read his prepared comments, which I am here quoting verbatim:

“One of the most important questions this committee must deal with is whether or not it will agree to take Mother Abagail into its complete confidence, and shall she be told about everything that goes on at our meetings, both open and closed? The question can also be put the other way: ‘Shall Mother Abagail agree to take this committee—and the permanent committee that will follow it—into her complete confidence, and shall the committee be told about all that goes on in her meetings with God or Whoever . . . particularly the closed ones?’

“That may sound like gibberish, but let me explain, because it’s really a pragmatic question. We have to settle Mother Abagail’s place in the community right away, because our problem is not just one of ‘getting on our feet again.’ If that was all, we wouldn’t really need her in the first place. As we all know there is another problem, that of the man we sometimes call the dark man, or, as Glen puts it, the Adversary. My proof for his existence is very simple, and I think most people in Boulder would agree with my reasoning—if they wanted to think of it at all. Here it is: ‘I dreamed of Mother Abagail and she was; I dreamed of the dark man and therefore he must be, although I have never seen him. The people here love Mother Abagail, and I love her myself. But we won’t get far—in fact, we won’t get anywhere—if we don’t start off with her approval of what we’re doing.

“So this early afternoon I went to see the lady and put the question to her directly, with all the bark on it: Will you go along? She said that she would—but not without conditions. She was perfectly blunt. She said we should be perfectly free to guide the community in all ‘worldly matters’—her phrase. Clearing the streets, allocating housing, getting the power back on.

“But she was also very clear about wanting to be consulted on
all
matters that have to do with the dark man. She believes we are all a part of a chess game between God and Satan; that Satan’s chief agent in this game is the Adversary, whose name she says is Randall Flagg (‘the name he’s using this time,’ is how she puts it); that for reasons best known to Himself, God has chosen her as
His
agent in this matter. She believes, and in this I happen to agree with her, that a struggle is coming and it’s going to be us or him. She thinks this struggle is the most important thing, and she’s adamant about being consulted.

“Now I don’t want to get into the religious implications of all this, or argue whether she’s right or wrong, but it should be obvious that all implications aside, we have a situation we
must
cope with. So I have a series of motions.”

There was some discussion of Nick’s statement.

Nick made this motion: Can we, as a committee, agree not to discuss the theological, religious, or supernatural implications of the Adversary matter during our meetings? By a 7-0 vote, the committee agreed to bar discussion on those matters, at least while we’re “in session.”

Nick then made this motion: Can we agree that the main private, secret business of the committee is the question of how to deal with this force known as the dark man, the Adversary, or Randall Flagg? Glen Bateman seconded the motion, adding that from time to time there might be other business—such as the real reason for the Burial Committee—that we should keep close to the vest. The motion carried, 7-0.