The Stand, Page 75

  There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit or the broken of skull than a good strong dose of "Thy will be done."

  On August 7, Lloyd Henreid came to the room in which the dehydrated and semidelirious Trashcan Man had been installed the day before. It was a fine room, on the thirtieth floor of the MGM Grand. There was a round bed with silk sheets, and a round mirror which looked to be the exact same size as the bed, mounted on the ceiling.

  Trashcan Man looked at Lloyd.

  "How you feeling, Trash?" Lloyd asked, looking back.

  "Good," Trashcan Man said. "Better."

  "Some food and water and rest, that's all you needed," Lloyd said. "I brought you some clean clothes. Had to guess at the sizes."

  "They look fine." Trash had never really been able to remember his sizes. He took the jeans and the workshirt Lloyd offered.

  "Come on down to breakfast when you're dressed," Lloyd said. He spoke almost deferentially. "Most of us eat in the deli."

  "Okay. Sure."

  The deli hummed with conversation, and he paused outside and around the corner, suddenly overcome with fright. They would look up at him when he came in. They would look up and laugh. Someone would start giggling in the back of the room, someone else would join in, and then the whole place would be an uproar of laughter and pointing fingers.

  Hey, put away ya matches, here comes the Trashcan Man!

  Hey, Trash! What did ole lady Semple say when you torched her pension check?

  Wet the bed much, Trashy?

  Sweat popped out on his skin, making him feel slimy in spite of the shower he'd taken after Lloyd left. He remembered his face in the bathroom mirror, covered with slowly healing scabs, his body, too gaunt, his eyes, too small for their yawning sockets. Yes, they would laugh. He listened to the hum of conversation, the clink of silverware, and thought he should just slink away.

  Then he thought of the way the wolf had taken his hand, so gently, and had led him away from The Kid's metal tomb, and Trash squared his shoulders and walked inside.

  A few people looked up briefly, then went back to their meals and their conversations. Lloyd, at a big table in the middle of the room, raised an arm and waved him over. Trash threaded his way among the tables and under a darkened electronic Keno toteboard. There were three other people at the table. They were all eating ham and scrambled eggs.

  "Serve yourself," Lloyd said. "It's a steam-table kinda thing."

  Trashcan Man got a tray and served himself. The man behind the counter, large and dressed in dirty cook's whites, watched him.

  "Are you Mr. Horgan?" Trashcan Man asked timidly.

  Horgan grinned, exposing gapped teeth. "Yeah, but we won't get nowhere with you callin me that, boy. You call me Whitey. You feelin a little better? When you came in, you looked like the wratha God."

  "Much better, sure."

  "Dig in those aigs. All you want. Go light on the home fries, though. I would, at least. Them taters is old and tough. Good to have you here, boy."

  "Thanks," Trash said.

  He went back to Lloyd's table.

  "Trash, this here is Ken DeMott. The fella with the bald spot is Hector Drogan. And this kid tryin to grow on his face what springs up wild in his asshole calls himself Ace High."

  They all nodded at him.

  "This is our new boy," Lloyd said. "Name's Trashcan Man."

  Hands were shaken all around. Trash started to dig into his eggs. He looked up at the young man with the scraggly beard and said in a low, polite voice: "Would you pass the salt, please, Mr. High?"

  There was a moment of surprise as they looked at each other, and then they all burst into laughter. Trash stared at them, feeling the panic rise in his chest, and then he heard the laughter, really heard it, with his mind as well as his ears, and understood that there was no meanness in it. No one here was going to ask him why he hadn't burned down the school instead of the church. No one here was going to dun him about old lady Semple's pension check. He could smile too, if he wanted. And he did.

  "Mr. High, " Hector Drogan was giggling. "Oh, Ace, you just been had. Mr. High, I love it. Meeestair Haaaaah. Man, that is so fuckin rich."

  Ace High handed Trashcan the salt. "Just Ace, my man. That'll get me every time. You don't call me Mr. High and I won't call you Mr. Man, that a deal?"

  "Okay," Trashcan Man said, still smiling. "That's fine."

  "Oh, Mr. Hiiiigh?" Heck Drogan said in a coy falsetto. Then he burst into laughter again. "Ace, you never gonna live that down. I swear you won't."

  "Maybe not, but I'm sure-God gonna live it up," Ace High said, and got up with his plate for more eggs. His hand closed for a moment on Trashcan Man's shoulder as he went. The hand was warm and solid. It was a friendly hand that did not squeeze or pinch.

  Trashcan Man dug into his eggs, feeling warm and good inside. This warmth and goodness was so foreign to his nature that it almost felt like a disease. As he ate he tried to isolate it, understand it. He looked up, looked at the faces around him, and thought he might understand what it was.

  Happiness.

  What a good bunch of people, he thought.

  And on the heels of that: I'm home.

  That day he was left on his own to sleep, but the next day he was bussed up to Boulder Dam with a lot of other people. There they spent the day wrapping copper core wire around the spindles of burned-out motors. He worked at a bench with a view of the water--Lake Mead-- and no one supervised him. Trashcan Man assumed that there was no foreman or anyone like that around because everyone was as in love with what they were doing as he was himself.

  He learned differently the next day.

  It was quarter past ten in the morning. Trashcan Man was sitting on his bench, wrapping copper wire, his mind a million miles away as his fingers did their work. He was composing a psalm of praise to the dark man in his mind. It had occurred to him that he should get a large book (a Book, actually) and begin to write some of his thoughts about him down. It would be the sort of Book people might want to read someday. People who felt about him as Trash did.

  Ken DeMott came to his bench, and Ken looked pale and frightened under his desert tan. "Come on," he said. "Work's over. We're going back to Vegas. Everyone. The buses are outside."

  "Huh? Why?" Trashcan blinked up at him.

  "I don't know. It's his order. Lloyd passed it along. Get your ass in gear, Trashy. It's best not to ask questions when the hardcase is involved."

  So he didn't. Outside, on Hoover Drive, three Las Vegas Public School buses were parked with their engines idling. Men and women were climbing aboard. There was little talk; the midmorning ride back to Vegas was the antithesis of the usual commutes to and from work. There was no horseplay, little conversation, and none of the usual light banter that passed between the twenty or so women and the thirty or so men. Everyone had drawn into himself or herself.

  As they neared the city, Trashcan Man heard one of the men sitting across the aisle from him say quietly to his seatmate: "It's Heck. Heck Drogan. Goddammit, how does that spook find things out?"

  "Shut up," the other said, and gave Trashcan Man a mistrustful glance.

  Trash averted his gaze and looked out the window at the passing desert. He was once again troubled in his mind.

  "Oh Jesus," one of the women said as they filed off the bus, but hers was the only comment.

  Trashcan looked around, puzzled. Everyone was here, it looked like, everyone in Cibola. They had all been called back, with the exception of a few scouts that might be anywhere from the Mexican peninsula to West Texas. They were gathered in a loose semicircle around the fountain, six and seven deep, more than four hundred in all. Some of those in the back were standing on hotel chairs so they could see, and until Trashcan drew closer, he thought it was the fountain they were looking at. Craning his neck, he could see there was something lying on the lawn in front of the fountain, but he couldn't see what it was.

  A hand grasped his elbow. It was Lloyd
. His face looked white and strained. "I been lookin for you. He wants to see you later. Meantime, we got this. God, I hate these. Come on. I need help and you're elected."

  Trashcan Man's head was whirling. He wanted to see him! Him! But in the meantime there was this ... whatever this was.

  "What, Lloyd? What is it?"

  Lloyd didn't answer. Still holding lightly to Trashcan Man's arm, he led him toward the fountain. The crowd parted before them, almost shrank from them. The narrow corridor they passed through seemed to be insulated with a still cold layer of loathing and fear.

  Standing at the front of the crowd was Whitney Horgan. He was smoking a cigarette. One of his Hush Puppies was propped on the object Trash hadn't been quite able to make out before. It was a wooden cross. Its vertical piece was about twelve feet long. It looked like a crude lowercase t.

  "Everyone here?" Lloyd asked.

  "Yeah," Whitey said, "I guess they are. Winky took roll-call. We got nine guys out of state. Flagg said never mind about them. How are you holding up, Lloyd?"

  "I'll be fine," Lloyd said. "Well ... not fine, but you know--I'll get through it."

  Whitey cocked his head toward Trashcan Man. "How much does the kid know?"

  "I don't know anything," Trashcan said, more confused than ever. Hope, awe, and dread were all in dubious battle within him. "What is this? Someone said something about Heck--"

  "Yeah, it's Heck," Lloyd said. "He's been freebasing. Fucking blow, don't I hate the goddam fucking blow. Go on, Whitey, tell em to bring him out."

  Whitey moved away from Lloyd and Trash, stepping over a rectangular hole in the ground. The hole had been throated with cement. It looked just the right size and depth to take the butt end of the cross. As Whitney "Whitey" Horgan trotted up the wide steps between the gold pyramids, Trashcan Man felt all the spit in his mouth dry up. He suddenly turned, first to the silent crowd, waiting in its crescent formation under the blue sky, then to Lloyd, who stood pale and silent, looking at the cross and picking the white head of a pimple on his chin.

  "You ... we ... nail him up?" Trashcan managed at last. "Is that what this is about?"

  Lloyd reached suddenly into the pocket of his faded shirt. "You know, I got something for you. He gave it to me to give to you. I can't make you take it, but it's a goddam good thing for me that I remembered to at least make the offer. Do you want it?"

  From his breast pocket he drew a fine gold chain with a black jet stone on the end of it. The stone was flawed with a tiny red spot, as was Lloyd's own. He dangled it before Trashcan Man's eyes like a hypnotist's amulet.

  The truth was in Lloyd's eyes, too clear not to be recognized, and Trashcan Man knew he could never weep and grovel--not before him, not before anybody, but especially not before him -- and claim he hadn't understood. Take this and you take everything, Lloyd's eyes said. And what's a part of everything? Why, Heck Drogan, of course. Heck and the cement-lined hole in the ground, the hole just big enough to take the butt end of Heck's crosstree.

  He reached for it slowly. His hand paused just before the outstretched fingers could touch the gold chain.

  This is my last chance. My last chance to be Donald Merwin Elbert.

  But another voice, one which spoke with greater authority (but with a certain gentleness, like a cool hand on a fevered brow), told him that the time of choices had long since passed. If he chose Donald Merwin Elbert now, he would die. He had sought the dark man of his own free will (if there is such a thing for the Trashcan Men of the world), had accepted the dark man's favors. The dark man had saved him from dying at the hands of The Kid (that the dark man might have sent The Kid for just that purpose never crossed Trashcan Man's mind), and surely that meant his life was now a debt he owed to that same dark man ... the man some of them here called the Walkin Dude. His life! Had he not himself offered it again and again?

  But your soul ... did you offer your soul as well?

  In for a penny, in for a pound, the Trashcan Man thought, and gently put one hand around the gold chain and the other around the dark stone. The stone was cold and smooth. He held it in his fist for a moment just to see if he could warm it up. He didn't think he would be able to, and he was right. So he put it around his neck, where it lay against his skin like a tiny ball of ice.

  But he didn't mind that icy feeling.

  That icy feeling counterbalanced the fire which was always in his mind.

  "Just tell yourself you don't know him," Lloyd said. "Heck, I mean. That's what I always do. It makes it easier. It--"

  Two of the wide hotel doors banged open. Frantic, terrified screams floated across to them. The crowd sighed.

  A party of nine came down the steps. Hector Drogan was in the center. He was fighting like a tiger caught in a net. His face was dead pale except for two hectic blots of color riding high up on his cheekbones. Sweat was pouring off every inch of skin in rivers. He was mother-naked. Five men were holding on to him. One of them was Ace High, the kid Heck had been ribbing about his name.

  "Ace!" Hector was babbling. "Hey, Ace, what do you say? Little help for the kid, okay? Tell them to quit this, man-I can get clean, I swear to God I can clean up my act. What do you say? Little help here! Please, Ace!"

  Ace High said nothing; simply tightened his grip on Heck's thrashing arm. It was answer enough. Hector Drogan began to scream again. He was dragged relentlessly across the pavilion and toward the fountain.

  Behind him, walking in line like a solemn undertaker's party, were three men: Whitney Horgan, carrying a large carpetbag; a man named Roy Hoopes, with a stepladder; and Winky Winks, a bald man whose eyes twitched constantly. Winky was carrying a clipboard with a typed sheet of paper on it.

  Heck was dragged to the foot of the cross. A horrible yellow smell of fear was radiating out from him; his eyes rolled, showing the muddy whites, like the eyes of a horse left out in a thunderstorm.

  "Hey, Trashy," he said hoarsely as Roy Hoopes set up the stepladder behind him. "Trashcan Man. Tell em to cut it out, buddy. Tell them I can get clean. Tell them a scare like this is better'n all the fuckin rehabs in the world. Tell em, man."

  Trashcan stared down at his feet. As he bent his neck, the black stone swung out from his chest and into his field of vision. The red flaw, the eye, seemed to be staring up at him fixedly.

  "I don't know you," he mumbled.

  From the tail of his eye he saw Whitey down on one knee, a cigarette dangling from the comer of his mouth, his left eye squinted against the smoke. He opened the carpetbag. He was taking out sharp wooden nails. To Trashcan Man's horrified gaze, they looked almost as big as tentpegs. He laid the nails on the grass and then removed a large wooden mallet from the carpetbag.

  In spite of the murmuring voices all around them, Trashcan Man's words seemed to have penetrated the panicky haze in Hector Drogan's mind. "What do you mean, you don't know me?" he cried wildly. "We had breakfast together just two days ago! You called the kid there Mr. High. What do you mean you don't know me, you chickenshit little liar?"

  "I don't know you at all," Trash repeated, a little more clearly this time. And what he felt was almost a sense of relief. All he saw here in front of him was a stranger, a stranger who looked a bit like Carley Yates. His hand went to the stone and curled around it. Its coolness reassured him further.

  "You liar!" Heck screamed. He began to struggle again, his muscles flexing and pumping, the sweat trickling down his bare chest and arms. "You liar! You do so know me! You do so, you liar!"

  "No I don't. I don't know you and I don't want to know you."

  Heck began to scream again. The four men holding him bore down, panting and out of breath.

  "Go ahead," Lloyd said.

  Heck was dragged backward. One of the men holding him stuck out a leg and tripped him. He landed half on the cross and half off it. Meanwhile, Winky had begun to read the typed sheet on his clipboard in a high voice that sliced through Heck's screams like the howl of a buzz-saw.

  "Attention
attention attention! By the order of Randall Flagg, Leader of the People and First Citizen, this man, Hector Alonzo Drogan by name, is ordered executed by an act of crucifixion, this penalty so ordered for the crime of drug use."

  "No! No! No!" Heck screamed in frenzied counterpoint. His left arm, greasy with sweat, escaped Ace High's hold, and instinctively Trash knelt and pinned the arm back down, forcing the wrist against an arm of the cross. A second later, Whitey was kneeling beside Trashcan with the wooden mallet and two of the crude nails. The cigarette still hung from the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man about to do a little job of carpentering in his back yard.

  "Yeah, good, hold him just like that, Trash. I'll staple him. Won't take a minute."

  "Drug use is not allowed in this Society of the People because it impairs the user's ability to contribute fully to the Society of the People," Winky was proclaiming. He spoke fast, like an auctioneer, and his eyes bunched and scrunched and wiggled. "Specifically in this case, the accused Hector Drogan was found with freebasing paraphernalia and a large supply of cocaine."

  Now Heck's screams had reached a pitch that might well have shattered crystal, if there had been any crystal around to shatter. His head lashed from side to side. There was foam on his lips. Ribbons of blood coursed down his arms as six of them, Trashcan Man included, lifted the cross into the cement pit. Now Hector Drogan was silhouetted against the sky with his head thrown back in a rictus of pain.

  "--is done for the good of this Society of the People," Winky screamed relentlessly. "This communication ends with a solemn warning and greetings to the People of Las Vegas. Let this bill of true facts be nailed above the miscreant's head, and let it be marked with the seal of the First Citizen, RANDALL FLAGG by name."