The Stand, Page 88

  She wriggled in the window, getting her blouse dirty, and dropped to the floor. Now the cellar window was on a level with her eyes. She was no more a gymnast than she was a lockpicker, and she would have to stand on something to get back out.

  Fran looked around. The basement had been finished off into a playroom/rumpus room. The kind of thing her own dad had always talked about but never quite got around to doing, she thought with a little pang of sadness. The walls were knotty pine with quadraphonic speakers embedded in them, there was an Armstrong suspended ceiling overhead, a large case filled with jigsaw puzzles and books, an electric train set, a slotcar racing set. There was also an air-hockey game on which Harold had indifferently set a case of Coke. It had been the kids' room, and posters dotted the walls--the biggest, now old and frayed, showed George Bush coming out of a church in Harlem, hands raised high, a big grin on his face. The caption, in huge red letters, said: YOU DON'T WANT TO LAY NO BOOGIE-WOOGIE ON THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL!

  She suddenly felt sadder than she had since ... well, since she couldn't remember, to tell the truth. She had been through shocks, and fear, and outright terror, and a perfect numbing savagery of grief, but this deep and aching sadness was something new. With it came a sudden wave of homesickness for Ogunquit, for the ocean, for the good Maine hills and pines. For no reason at all she suddenly thought of Gus, the parking lot attendant at the Ogunquit public beach, and for a moment she thought her heart would break with loss and sorrow. What was she doing here, poised between the plains and the mountains that broke the country in two? It wasn't her place. She didn't belong here.

  One sob escaped her and it sounded so terrified and lonely that she clapped both hands over her mouth for the second time that day. No more, Frannie old kid old sock. You don't get over anything this big so quickly. A little at a time. If you have to have a cry, have it later, not here in Harold Lauder's basement. Business first.

  She walked past the poster on her way to the stairs, and a bitter little smile crossed her face as she passed George Bush's grinning and tirelessly cheerful face. They sure laid some boogie-woogie on you, she thought. Someone did, anyhow.

  As she got to the top of the cellar stairs, she became certain that the door would be locked, but it opened easily. The kitchen was neat and shipshape, the luncheon dishes done up and drying in the drainer, the little Coleman gas stove washed off and sparkling ... but a greasy smell of frying still hung in the air, like a ghost of Harold's old self, the Harold who had introduced himself into this part of her life by motoring up to her house behind the wheel of Roy Brannigan's Cadillac as she was burying her father.

  Sure would be in a fix if Harold picked right now to come back, she thought. The idea made her look suddenly over her shoulder. She half expected to see Harold standing by the door which led into the living room, grinning at her. There was no one there, but her heart had begun to knock unpleasantly against her ribcage.

  There was nothing in the kitchen, so she went into the living room.

  It was dark, so dark it made her uneasy. Harold not only kept his doors locked, he kept his shades pulled. Again she felt as if she were witnessing an unconscious outward manifestation of Harold's personality. Why would anyone keep their shades pulled down in a small city where that was the way the living came to know and mark the houses of the dead?

  The living room, like the kitchen, was astringently neat, but the furniture was stodgy and a little seedy-looking. The room's nicest feature was the fireplace, a huge stone job with a hearth wide enough to sit on. She did sit down for a moment, looking around thoughtfully. As she shifted, she felt a loose hearthstone under her fanny, and she was about to get up and look at it when someone knocked on the door.

  Fear drifted down on her like a smothering weight of feathers. She was paralyzed with sudden terror. Her breath stopped, and she would not be aware until later that she had wet herself a little.

  The knock came again, half a dozen quick, firm raps.

  My God, she thought. The shades are down at least, thank heaven for that.

  That thought was followed by a sudden cold certainty that she had left her bike out where anyone could see it. Had she? She tried desperately to think, but for a long moment she could summon nothing to mind except a babble of gibberish that was unsettlingly familiar: Before removing the mote from thy neighbor's eye, remove the pie from thine own --

  The knock came again, and a woman's voice: "Anybody home?"

  Fran sat stockstill. She suddenly remembered that she had parked her bike around back, under Harold's clothesline. Not visible from the front of the house. But if Harold's visitor decided to try the back door--

  The knob of the front door--Frannie could see it down the short length of hall--began to turn back and forth in frustrated half-circles.

  Whoever she is, I hope she's no better at locks than I am, Frannie thought, and then had to squeeze both hands over her mouth to stop an insane bray of laughter. That was when she looked down at her cotton slacks and saw how badly she had been frightened. At least she didn't scare the shit out of me, Fran thought. At least, not yet. The laughter bubbled up again, hysterical and frightened, just below the surface.

  Then, with an indescribable sense of relief, she heard footfalls clicking away from the door and down Harold's concrete path.

  What Fran did next she did with no conscious decision at all. She ran quietly down the hall to the front door and put her eye to the small crack between the shade and the edge of the window. She saw a woman with long dark hair that was streaked with white. She climbed onto a small Vespa motorscooter that was parked at the curb. As the motor burped into life, she tossed her hair back and clipped it.

  It's the Cross woman -- the one who came over with Larry Underwood! Does she know Harold?

  Then Nadine had the scooter in gear. She started off with a little jerk and was soon out of sight. Fran uttered a huge sigh, and her legs turned to water. She opened her mouth to let out the laugh that had been bubbling below the surface, knowing already how it would sound-- shaky and relieved. Instead, she burst into tears.

  Five minutes later, too nervous now to search any further, she was boosting herself back through the cellar window from the seat of a wicker chair she had pulled over. Once out, she was able to push the chair far enough so that it wouldn't be obvious someone had used it to climb out. It was still out of position, but people rarely noticed things like that ... and it didn't look as if Harold used the basement at all, except to store his Coca-Cola.

  She reclosed the window and got her bike. She still felt weak and stunned and a little nauseated from her scare. At least my pants are drying, she thought. Next time you go housebreaking, Frances Rebecca, remember to wear your continence pants.

  She pedaled out of Harold's yard and left Arapahoe as soon as she could, coming back to the downtown area on Canyon Boulevard. She was back in her own apartment fifteen minutes later.

  The place was utterly silent.

  She opened her diary and looked down at the muddy chocolate fingerprint and wondered where Stu was.

  She wondered if Harold was with him.

  Oh Stu please come home. I need you.

  After lunch, Stu had left Glen and had come home. He had been sitting blankly in the living room, wondering where Mother Abagail was and also wondering if Nick and Glen could possibly be right about just letting the matter be, when there was a knock.

  "Stu?" Ralph Brentner called. "Hello, Stu, you home?"

  Harold Lauder was with him. Harold's smile was muted today but not entirely gone; he looked like a jolly mourner trying to be serious for the graveside service.

  Ralph, heartsick over Mother Abagail's disappearance, had met Harold half an hour ago, Harold being on his way home after helping with a water-hauling party at Boulder Creek. Ralph liked Harold, who always seemed to have time to listen and commiserate with whoever had a sad tale to tell ... and Harold never seemed to want anything in return. Ralph had poured out the whole story o
f Mother Abagail's disappearance, including his fears that she might suffer a heart attack or break one of her brittle bones or die of exposure if she stayed out overnight.

  "And you know it showers just about every damn afternoon," Ralph finished as Stu poured coffee. "If she gets soaked, she'd be sure to take a cold. Then what? Pneumonia, I guess."

  "What can we do about it?" Stu asked them. "We can't force her to come back if she doesn't want to."

  "Well, no," Ralph conceded. "But Harold had a real good idea."

  Stu's eyes shifted. "How you doing, Harold?"

  "Pretty good. You?"

  "Fine."

  "And Fran? You watching out for her?" Harold's eyes didn't waver from Stu's, and they kept their slightly humorous, pleasant light, but Stu had a momentary feeling that Harold's smiling eyes were like sunshine on the water of Brakeman's Quarry back home--the water looked so pleasant, but it went down and down to black depths where the sun had never reached, and four boys had lost their lives in pleasant-looking Brakeman's Quarry over the years.

  "As best I can," he said. "What's your thought, Harold?"

  "Well, look. I see Nick's point. Glen's, too. They recognize that the Free Zone sees Mother Abagail as a theocratic symbol ... and they're pretty close to speaking for the Zone now, aren't they?"

  Stu sipped his coffee. "What do you mean, 'theocratic symbol'?"

  "I'd call it an earthly symbol of a covenant made with God," Harold said, and his eyes veiled a little. "Like Holy Communion, or the Sacred Cows of India."

  Stu kindled a little at that. "Yeah, pretty good. Those cows ... they let em walk the streets and cause traffic jams, right? They can go in and out of the stores, or decide to leave town altogether."

  "Yes," Harold agreed. "But most of those cows are sick, Stu. They're always near the point of starvation. Some are tubercular. And all because they're an aggregate symbol. The people are convinced God will take care of them, just as our people are convinced God will take care of Mother Abagail. But I have my own doubts about a God that says it's right to let a poor dumb cow wander around in pain."

  Ralph looked momentarily uncomfortable, and Stu knew what he was feeling. He felt it himself, and it gave him a way to measure how he felt about Mother Abagail himself. He felt that Harold was edging into blasphemy.

  "Anyway," Harold said briskly, dismissing the Sacred Cows of India, "we can't change the way people feel about her--"

  "And wouldn't want to," Ralph added quickly.

  "Right!" Harold exclaimed. "After all, she brought us together, and not exactly by shortwave, either. My idea was that we mount our trusty cycles and spend the afternoon reconnoitering the west side of Boulder. If we stay fairly close, we can keep in touch with each other by walkie-talkie. "

  Stu was nodding. This was the sort of thing he had wanted to do all along. Sacred Cows or not, God or not, it just wasn't right to leave her to wander around on her own. That didn't have anything to do with religion; something like that was just callous disregard.

  "And if we find her," Harold said, "we can ask her if she wants anything."

  "Like a ride back to town," Ralph chipped in.

  "At least we can keep tabs on her," Harold said.

  "Okay," Stu said. "I think it's a helluva good idea, Harold. Just let me leave a note for Fran."

  But as he scribbled the note, he kept feeling an urge to look back over his shoulder at Harold--to see what Harold was doing while Stu wasn't looking, and what expression might be in Harold's eyes.

  Harold had asked for and gotten the twisting stretch of road between Boulder and Nederland, because he considered it to be the least likely area. He didn't think he could walk from Boulder to Nederland in one day, let alone that crazy old cunt. But it made a pleasant ride and gave him a chance to think.

  Now, at a quarter to seven, he was on his way back. His Honda was parked in a rest area and he was sitting at a picnic table, having a Coke and a few Slim Jims. The walkie-talkie that hung over the Honda's handlebars with its antenna at full extension crackled faintly with Ralph Brentner's voice. They were short-range radios only, and Ralph was somewhere up on Flagstaff Mountain.

  "... Sunrise Amphitheater ... no sign of her ... storm's over up here."

  Then Stu's voice, stronger and closer. He was in Chautauqua Park, only four miles from Harold's location. "Say again, Ralph."

  Ralph's voice came back, really bellowing. Maybe he would give himself a stroke. That would be a lovely way to end the day. "No sign of her up here! I'm going down before it gets dark! Over!"

  "Ten-four," Stu said, sounding discouraged. "Harold, you there?" Harold got up, wiping Slim Jim grease on his jeans. "Harold? Calling Harold Lauder! You copy, Harold?"

  Harold pointed his middle finger--yer fuckfinger, as the high school Neanderthals back in Ogunquit had called it--at the walkie-talkie; then he depressed the talk button and said pleasantly, but with just the right note of discouragement: "I'm here. I was off to one side ... thought I saw something down in the ditch. It was just an old jacket. Over."

  "Yeah, okay. Why don't you come down to Chautauqua, Harold? We'll wait there for Ralph."

  Love to give orders, don't you, suckhole? I might have something for you. Yes, I just might.

  "Harold, you copy?"

  "Yes. Sorry, Stu, I was woolgathering. I can be there in fifteen minutes. "

  "You copying this, Ralph?" Stu bellowed, making Harold wince. He gave Stu's voice the finger again, grinning furtively as he did so. Copy this, you Wild West motherfucker.

  "Roger, you'll be at Chautauqua Park," Ralph's voice came faintly through the roar of static. "I'm on my way. Over and out."

  "I'm on my way, too," Harold said. "Over and out."

  He turned off the walkie-talkie, collapsed the antenna, and hung the radio on the handlebars again, but he sat astride the Honda for a moment without operating the kickstarter. He was wearing an army surplus flak jacket; the heavy padding was good when you were riding a cycle above six thousand feet, even in August. But the jacket served another purpose. It had a great many zippered pockets and in one of these was a Smith & Wesson .38. Harold took the pistol out and turned it over and over in his hands. It was fully loaded and it was heavy in his hands, as if it realized its purposes were grave ones: death, destruction, assassination.

  Tonight?

  Why not?

  He had initiated this expedition on the chance that he might be alone with Stu long enough to do it. Now it looked as though he was going to have that chance, at Chautauqua Park, in less than fifteen minutes. But the trip had served another purpose, as well.

  He hadn't meant to go all the way to Nederland, a miserable little town nestled high above Boulder, a town whose only claim to fame was that Patty Hearst had once allegedly stayed there during her time as a fugitive. But as he drove up and up, the Honda purring smoothly between his legs, the air as cold as a blunt razorblade against his face, something had happened.

  If you put a magnet on one end of a table and a steel slug on the other, nothing happens. If you move the slug closer to the magnet in slow increments of distance (he held this image in his mind for a moment, savoring it, reminding himself to put it in his diary when he entered tonight), a time will come when the shove you give the slug seems to propel it farther than it should. The slug stops, but it seems to do so reluctantly, as if it has come alive, and part of its liveliness is a resentment of the physical law which deals with inertia. Another little push or two and you can almost--or perhaps even actually--see the slug trembling on the table, seeming to jitter and vibrate slightly, like one of those Mexican jumping beans you can buy in novelty shops, the ones which look like knuckle-sized knots of wood but which actually have a live worm inside. One more push and the balance between friction/inertia and the attraction of the magnet begins to tip the other way. The slug, wholly alive now, moves on its own, faster and faster, until it finally smacks into the magnet and sticks there.

  Horrible, fascinating process.r />
  When the world had ended this June, the force of magnetism had still not been understood, although Harold thought (his mind had never been of the rational-scientific bent) that the physicists who studied such things thought it was intimately entwined with the phenomenon of gravity, and that gravity was the keystone of the universe.

  On his way to Nederland, moving west, moving up, feeling the air grow chillier, seeing the thunderheads slowly piling up around the still-higher peaks far beyond Nederland, Harold had felt that process begin in himself. He was approaching the point of balance ... and not far beyond that, he would reach the point of shift. He was the steel slug just that distance from the magnet where a little push sends it farther than the force imparted would do under more ordinary circumstances. He could feel the jittering in himself.

  It was the closest thing to a holy experience that he had ever had. The young reject the holy, because to accept it means to accept the eventual death of all empiric objects, and Harold also rejected it. The old woman was some sort of psychic, he had thought, and so was Flagg, the dark man. They were human radio stations, and no more. Their real power would lie in societies that coalesced around their signals, which were so different one from the other. So he had thought.

  But parked on his cycle at the end of Nederland's cheesy main street with the Honda's neutral light glowing like a cat's eye, listening to the winterwhine of the wind in the pines and the aspens, he had felt something more than mere magnetic attraction. He had felt a stupendous, irrational power coming out of the West, an attraction so great that he felt to closely contemplate it now would be to go mad. He felt that, if he ventured much farther out on the arm of balance, any self-will would be lost. He would go just as he was, emptyhanded.

  And for that, although he could not be blamed, the dark man would kill him.

  So he had turned away feeling the cold relief of a presuicidal man coming away from a long period of regarding a long drop. But he could go tonight, if he liked. Yes, he could kill Redman with a single bullet fired at pointblank range. Then just stay put, stay cool until the Oklahoma sodbuster showed up. Another shot to the temple. No one would take alarm at the gunshots; game was plentiful, and lots of people had taken to banging away at the deer that wandered down into town.