The Stand (Original Edition) (70 page)

Nick then made his original motion, that we keep Mother Abagail informed of all public and private business transacted by the committee.

That motion was also passed, 7-0.

Having disposed of the Mother Abagail business for the time being, the committee then moved on to the question of the dark man himself at Nick’s request. He proposed that we send three volunteers west to join the dark man’s people, the purpose being to gain intelligence about what’s really going on over there.

Sue Stem immediately volunteered. After some hot discussion of
that,
Glen Bateman was recognized by Stu and put this motion on the floor:
Resolved,
that no one from our ad hoc committee or from the permanent committee be eligible to volunteer for this reconnaissance. Sue Stem wanted to know why not.

Glen: “Everyone respects your honest desire to help, Susan, but the fact is, we simply don’t know if the people we send will ever come back, or when, or in what shape. In the meantime, we have the not-so-inconsiderable job of getting things in Boulder on a paying basis, if you’ll pardon the slang. If you go, we’ll have to fill your seat with someone who would have to be briefed on the ground we’ve already covered. I just don’t think we can afford all that lost time.”

With some reluctance, Sue went along with Glen’s motion, which was carried—gloomily—by a 7-0 vote. Fran Goldsmith then asked Nick what sort of qualifications we should look for in prospective undercover agents, and what we should expect them to find out.

Nick: “We won’t know what there is to be learned until they come back. If they do come back. The point is, we have absolutely no idea what he’s up to over there. We’re more or less like fishermen using human bait.”

Stu said he thought the committee should pick the people it wanted to ask, and there was general agreement on this. The nominations of our three potential spies occupied the rest of the committee’s time . . .

“Coming to bed, Stu?”

“Yeah. Is it late?”

“Almost midnight. Late enough.”

Stu came in from the balcony. He was wearing jockey shorts and nothing else; their whiteness was nearly dazzling against his tanned skin. She found herself amazed again by the confident depth of her love for him.

“Thinking about the meeting?” she asked him.

“Yes. I was.” He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the night-table and grimaced at the flat, boiled taste.

“I thought you made a wonderful moderator. Glen asked you if you’d do it at the public meeting, didn’t he? Is it bothering you? Did you decline?”

“No, I said I would. I guess I can do that. I was thinking about sending those three across the mountains. It’s a dirty business, sending out spies. You were right, Frannie. Only trouble is, Nick was right, too. In a case like that, what you gonna do?”

“Vote your conscience and then get the best night’s sleep you can, I guess.” She reached out to touch the Coleman lamp switch. “Ready for the light?”

“Yeah.” She put it out and he swung into bed beside her. “Good night, Frannie,” he said. “I love you.”

She lay looking at the ceiling. The smudged chocolate thumbprint stayed on her mind.

Every dog has its day, Fran.

Maybe I ought to tell Stu right now, she thought. But if there was a problem, it was her problem. She would just have to wait . . . watch . . . and see if anything happened.

It was a long time before she slept.

In the early hours of the morning, Mother Abagail lay sleepless in her bed. She was trying to pray.

She got up without making a light and knelt down in her white cotton nightgown. She pressed her forehead to her Bible, which was open to the Acts of the Apostles. The conversion of dour old Saul on the Damascus road. He had been blinded by the light, and on the Damascus road the scales had fallen from his eyes.

And oh, there were scales on her eyes and would they ever be shaken free?

The only sound in the room was the tick of her windup Westclox and her low, muttering voice.

“Show me my sin, Lord. I don’t know. I know I’ve gone and missed something You meant for me to see. I can’t sleep, I can’t take a crap, and I don’t feel You, Lord. I feel like I’m prayin into a dead phone, and this is a bad time for that to happen. How have I offended Thee? I’m listenin, Lord. Listenin for the still, small voice in my heart.”

And she did listen. But all was dark, dark like her skin, dark like the fallow earth that waits for the good seed.

Please my Lord, my Lord, please my Lord
—

But the image that rose was of a lonely stretch of dirt road in a sea of corn. There was a woman with a gunnysack full of freshly killed chickens. And the weasels came. They darted forward and made snatches at the bag. They could smell the blood—the old blood of sin and the fresh blood of sacrifice. She heard the old woman raise her voice to God, but her tone was weak and whining, a petulant voice, not begging humbly that God’s will be done, but demanding that God save her so she could finish the work . . . her work ... as if she knew the Mind of God and could suborn His will to hers. The weasels grew bolder still; the croker sack began to fray as they twitched and pulled it. Her fingers were too old, too weak. And when the chickens were gone the weasels would come for her. They would—

And then the weasels were scattering, running squeaking into the night, and she thought exultantly:
God has saved me after all! Praise His Name! God has saved his good and faithful servant.

Not God, old woman. Me.

In her vision, she turned, fear leaping hotly into her throat with a taste like fresh copper. And there, shouldering its way out of the corn like a ragged silver ghost, was a huge Rocky Mountain timber-wolf, its jaws hanging open in a sardonic grin, its eyes burning. There was a beaten silver collar around its thick neck, a thing of handsome, barbarous beauty, and from it dangled a small stone of blackest jet . . . and in the center was a small red flaw, like an eye, or a key.

She crossed herself and forked the sign of the evil eye at this dreadful apparition, but its jaws only grinned wider, and between them lolled the naked pink muscle of its tongue.

I
'
m coming for you, Mother. Not now, but soon. We'll run you like dogs run deer. I am all the things you think, but Vm more. I’m the magic man. I’m the man who speaks for the latter age. Your own people know me best, Mother. They call me John the Conqueror.

Go! Leave me in the name of the Lord God Almighty!

But she was so terrified! Not for the people around her, but for herself. She was afraid in her soul, afraid
for
her soul.

Your God has no power over me, Mother. His vessel is weak.

No! Not true! My strength is the strength of ten, I shall mount up with wings as eagles
—

But the wolf only grinned and drew closer. She shrank from its breath, which was heavy and savage. This was the terror at noonday and the terror which flieth at midnight, and she
was
afraid. She was in her extremity of fear. And the wolf, still grinning, began to speak in two voices, asking and then answering itself.

"Who brought water from the rock when we were thirsty?”

“I did,”
the wolf answered in a petulant, half-crowing, half-cowering voice.

“Who saved us when we did faint?”
asked the grinning wolf, its muzzle now only bare inches from her, its breath that of a living abattoir.

"I did,”
the whining voice answered.

"What must we do then, O Giver of Water?”

“Praise my name,”
the wolf whined, drawing closer still, its grinning muzzle full of sharp death, its eyes red and haughty.
“Oh fall down and praise my name, I am the bringer of water in the desert, praise my name, I am the good and faithful servant who brings water in the desert, and my name is also the name of my Master
—”

The mouth of the wolf opened wide to swallow her.

. . my name,” she muttered. “Praise my name, praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him ye creatures here below . .

She raised her head and looked around the room in a kind of stupor. Her Bible had fallen to the floor. There was dawnlight in the eastward-facing window.

“O my Lord!” She cried in a great and quavering voice.

Who brought water from the rock when we were thirsty?

Was that it? Dear God, was that it? Was that why the scales had covered her eyes, making her blind to the things she should know?

Bitter tears began to fall from her eyes and she got slowly and painfully to her feet and walked to the window. Arthritis jabbed blunt darning needles into the joints of her hips and knees.

She looked out and knew what she had to do now.

She went back to the closet and pulled the white cotton nightgown over her head. She dropped it on the floor. Now she stood naked, revealing a body so lapped with wrinkles that it might have been the bed of time’s great river.

“Thy will be done,” she said, and began to dress.

An hour later she was walking slowly west on Mapleton Avenue toward the wooded tangles and narrow-throated defiles beyond town.

Stu was up at the power plant with Nick when Glen burst in. Without preamble he said, “Mother Abagail. She’s gone.”

Nick looked at him sharply.

“What are you talking about?” Stu asked, at the same time drawing Glen away from the crew wrapping copper wire on one of the blown turbines.

Glen nodded. He had ridden a bike the five miles out here, and he was still trying to catch his breath.

“I went over to tell her a little about the meeting last night. I wanted to do it early because Ralph said there’s another two parties coming in today and you know she likes to greet them. I went over around eight-thirty. She didn’t answer my knock, so I went on in. I

thought if she was asleep I’d just leave ... but I wanted to make sure she wasn’t. . . wasn’t dead or anything . . . she’s so
old
Nick’s gaze never left Glen’s lips.

“But she wasn’t there at all. And I found this on her pillow.” He handed them a paper towel. Written on it was:

I must be gone a bit now. I’ve sinned and presumed to know the Mind of God. My sin has been PRIDE, and He wants me to find my place in His work again.

I will be with you again soon if it is God’s will.

Abby Freemantle

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Stu said. “What do we do now? Nick?” Nick read the note again. He handed it back to Glen.

“I guess we’ll have to move up that meeting to tonight,” Glen said. Nick shook his head. He took out his pad, wrote, tore it off, and handed it to Glen. Stu read it over his shoulder.

“Man proposes, God disposes. Mother A. was fond of that one, used to quote it frequently. Glen, you yourself said she was other-directed; God or her own mind or her delusions or whatever. What’s to do? She’s gone. We can’t change it.”

“But the uproar—” Stu began.

“Sure, there’s going to be an uproar,” Glen said. “Nick, shouldn’t we at least have a meeting of the committee and discuss it?”

Nick jotted, “What purpose? Why have a meeting that can’t accomplish anything?”

“Well, we could get up a search party. She can’t have gone far.” Nick double-circled the phrase
man proposes, God disposes.
Below it he wrote, “If you found her, how would you bring her back? Chains?”

“Jesus, no!” Stu exclaimed. “But we can’t just let her wander around, Nick! She’s got some crazy idea she’s offended God. What if she feels like she has to go off into the frigging wilderness, like some Old Testament guy?”

Nick wrote, “I’m almost positive that’s just what she’s done.” “Well, there you go!”

Glen put a hand on Stu’s arm. “Slow down a minute, east Texas. Let’s look at the implications of this.”

“To hell with the implications! I don’t see no implications in leaving an old woman to wander around day n night until she dies of exposure.”

“She is
not
just any old woman. She is Mother Abagail and around here she’s the Pope. If the Pope decides he has to walk to Jerusalem, do you argue with him if you’re a good Catholic?” “Goddammit, it’s not the same thing and you know it!”

“Yes, it
is
the same thing. It
is.
At least, that’s how the people in the Free Zone are going to see it. Stu, are you prepared to say for sure that God
didn’t
tell her to go out into the bushes?”

“No-oo . . . but. . .”

Nick had been writing, and now he showed the paper to Stu, who had to puzzle over some of the words. Nick’s handwriting was usually impeccable, but this was hurried, perhaps impatient.

“Stu, this changes nothing, except that it will probably hurt the Free Zone’s morale. Not even sure that will happen. People aren’t going to scatter just because she’s gone. It does mean we won’t have to clear our plans with her right now. Maybe that’s best.”

“I’m going crazy,” Stu said. “Sometimes we talk about her as an obstacle to get around, like she was a roadblock. Sometimes you talk about her like the Pope, like she couldn’t do anything wrong if she wanted to. And it just so happens that I
like
her. What do you want, Nicky? Someone stumbling over her body this fall in one of those box canyons west of town? You want us to leave her out there so she can make a ... a holy meal for the crows?”

“Stu,” Glen said gently. “It was her decision to go.”

“Oh, god
-damn,
what a mess,” Stu said.

By noon, the news of Mother Abagail’s disappearance had swept the community. As Nick had predicted, the general feeling was more one of unhappy resignation than alarm. The sense of the community was that she must have gone off to “pray for guidance,” so she could help them pick the right path to follow at the mass meeting on the eighteenth.

“I don’t want to blaspheme by calling her God,” Glen said over a scratch lunch in the park, “but she is sort of a God-by-proxy. You can measure the strength of any society’s faith by seeing how much that faith weakens when its empiric object is removed. These people are perfectly certain Mother Abagail is going to come back. Have you talked to them?”