The Stand, Page 92

  That preliminary taken care of, Stu felt tension worm into his muscles. Now, he thought, we'll see if there are any nasty surprises waiting for us.

  "The third item on your agenda reads," he began, and then he had to clear his throat again. Feedback whined at him, making him sweat even more. Fran was looking calmly up at him, nodding for him to go on. "It reads, 'To see if the Free Zone will nominate and elect a slate of seven Free Zone representatives.' That means--"

  "Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman!"

  Stu looked up from his jotted notes and felt a real jolt of fear, accompanied by something like a premonition. It was Harold Lauder. Harold was dressed in a suit and a tie, his hair was neatly combed, and he was standing halfway up the middle aisle. Once Glen had said he thought the opposition might coalesce around Harold. But so soon? He hoped not. For just a moment he thought wildly of not recognizing Harold-- but both Nick and Glen had warned him of the dangers inherent in making any part of this look like a railroad job. He wondered if he had been wrong about Harold turning over a new leaf. It looked as if he was going to find out right here.

  "Chair recognizes Harold Lauder."

  Heads turned, necks craned to see Harold better.

  "I'd like to move that we accept the slate of ad hoc committee members in toto as the Permanent Committee. If they'll serve, that is." Harold sat down.

  There was a moment of silence. Stu thought crazily: Toto? Toto? Wasn't that the dog in The Wizard of Oz?

  Then the applause swelled out again, filling the room, and dozens of cries of "I second!" rang out. Harold was sitting placidly in his seat again, smiling and talking to the people who were thumping him on the back.

  Stu brought his gavel down half a dozen times for order.

  He planned this, Stu thought. These people are going to elect us, but it's Harold they'll remember. Still, he got to the root of the thing in a way none of us thought of, not even Glen. It was pretty damn near a stroke of genius. So why should he be so upset? Was he jealous, maybe? Were his good resolutions about Harold, made only the day before yesterday, already going by the boards?

  "There's a motion on the floor," he blared into the mike, ignoring the feedback whine this time. "Motion on the floor, folks!" He pounded the gavel and they quieted to a low babble. "It's been moved and seconded that we accept the ad hoc committee just as it stands as the Permanent Free Zone Committee. Before we go to a discussion of the motion or to a vote, I ought to ask if anyone now serving on the committee has an objection or would like to step down."

  Silence from the floor.

  "Very well," Stu said. "Discussion of the motion?"

  "I don't think we need any, Stu," Dick Ellis said. "It's a grand idea. Let's vote!"

  Applause greeted this, and Stu needed no further urging. Charlie Impening was waving his hand to be recognized, but Stu ignored him--a good case of selective perception, Glen Bateman would have said--and called the question.

  "Those in favor of Harold Lauder's motion please signify by saying aye."

  "Aye!!" they bellowed, sending the barnswallows into another frenzy.

  "Opposed?"

  But no one was, not even Charlie Impening--at least, vocally. There was not a nay in the chamber. So Stu pushed on to the next item of business, feeling slightly dazed, as if someone--namely, Harold Lauder-- had crept up behind him and clopped him one on the head with a large sledgehammer made out of Silly Putty.

  "Let's get off and push them awhile, want to?" Fran asked. She sounded tired.

  "Sure." He got off his bike and walked along beside her. "You okay, Fran? The baby bothering?"

  "No. I'm just tired. It's quarter of one in the morning, or hadn't you noticed?"

  "Yeah, it's late," Stu agreed, and they pushed their bikes side by side in companionable silence. The meeting had gone on until an hour ago, most of the discussion centering on the search-party for Mother Abagail. The other items had all passed with a minimum of discussion, although Judge Farris had provided a fascinating piece of information that explained why there were so relatively few bodies in Boulder. According to the last four issues of the Camera, Boulder's daily newspaper, a wild rumor had swept the community, a rumor that the superflu had originated in the Boulder Air Testing facility on Broadway. Spokesmen for the center--the few still on their feet--protested that it was utter nonsense, and anyone who doubted it was free to tour the facility, where they would find nothing more dangerous than air pollution indicators and wind-vectoring devices. In spite of this, the rumor persisted, probably fed by the hysterical temper of those terrible days in late June. The Air Testing Center had been either bombed or burned, and much of Boulder's population had fled.

  Both the Burial Committee and the Power Committee had been passed with an amendment from Harold Lauder--who had seemed almost awesomely prepared for the meeting--to the effect that each committee be increased by two for each increase of one hundred in the total Free Zone population.

  The Search Committee was also voted with no opposition, but the discussion of Mother Abagail's disappearance had been a protracted one. Glen had advised Stu before the meeting not to limit discussion on this topic unless absolutely necessary; it was worrying all of them, especially the idea that their spiritual leader believed she had committed some sort of sin. Best to let them get it off their chests.

  On the back of her note, the old woman had scrawled two biblical references: Proverbs 11: 1-3, and Proverbs 21: 28-31. Judge Farris had searched these out with the careful diligence of a lawyer preparing a brief, and at the beginning of the discussion, he rose and read them in his cracked and apocalyptic old man's voice. The verses in the eleventh chapter of Proverbs stated, "A false balance is an abomination of the Lord: but a just weight is his delight. When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom. The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them." The quotation from the twenty-first chapter was in a similar vein: "A false witness shall perish, but the man that heareth speaketh constantly. A wicked man hardeneth his face, but as for the upright, he directeth his way. There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord. The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the Lord."

  The talk following the Judge's oration (it could be called nothing else) of these two Scriptural tidbits had ranged over far-reaching--and often comical--ground. One man stated ominously that if the chapter numbers were added, you came out with thirty-one, the number of chapters in the Book of Revelations. Judge Farris rose again to say that the Book of Revelations had only twenty-two chapters, at least in his Bible, and that, in any case, twenty-one and eleven added up to thirty-two, not thirty-one. The aspiring numerologist muttered but said no more.

  Another fellow stated that he had seen lights in the sky the night before Mother Abagail's disappearance and that the Prophet Isaiah had confirmed the existence of flying saucers ... so they'd better put that in their collective pipe and smoke it, hadn't they? Judge Farris rose once more, this time to point out that the previous gentleman had mistaken Isaiah for Ezekiel, that the exact reference was not to flying saucers but to "a wheel within a wheel," and that the Judge himself was of the opinion that the only flying saucers yet proven were those that sometimes flew during marital spats.

  Much of the other discussion was a rehash of the dreams, which had ceased altogether, as far as anyone knew, and now seemed rather dreamlike themselves. Person after person rose to protest the charge that Mother Abagail had laid upon herself, that of pride. They spoke of her courtesy and her ability to put a person at ease with just a word or a sentence. Ralph Brentner, who looked awed by the size of the crowd and was nearly tongue-tied--but determined to speak his piece--rose and spoke in that vein for nearly five minutes, adding at the end that he had not known a finer woman since his mother had died. When he sat down, he seemed very near tears.

  When taken together, the discussion reminded Stu uncomfortably of a wake. It told him that in thei
r hearts, they had already come halfway to giving her up. If she did return now, Abby Freemantle would find herself welcomed, still sought after, still listened to ... but she would also find, Stu thought, that her position was subtly changed. If a showdown between her and the Free Zone Committee came, it was no longer a foregone conclusion that she would win, veto power or not. She had gone away and the community had continued to exist. The community would not forget that, as they had already half forgotten the power the dreams had once briefly held over their lives.

  After the meeting, more than two dozen people had sat for a while on the lawn behind Chautauqua Hall; the rain had stopped, the clouds were tattering, and the evening was pleasantly cool. Stu and Frannie had sat with Larry, Lucy, Leo, and Harold.

  "You darn near knocked us out of the ballpark this evening," Larry told Harold. He nudged Frannie with an elbow. "I told you he was ace high, didn't I?"

  Harold had merely smiled and shrugged modestly. "A couple of ideas, that's all. You seven have started things moving again. You should at least have the privilege of seeing it through to the end of the beginning. "

  Now, fifteen minutes after the two of them had left that impromptu gathering and still ten minutes from home, Stu repeated: "You sure you're feeling okay?"

  "Yes. My legs are a little tired, that's all."

  "You want to take it easy, Frances."

  "Don't call me that, you know I hate it."

  "I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Frances."

  "All men are bastards."

  "I'm going to try and improve my act, Frances--honest I am."

  She showed him her tongue, which came to an interesting point, but he could tell her heart wasn't in the banter, and he dropped it. She looked pale and rather listless, a startling contrast to the Frannie who had sung the National Anthem with such heart a few hours earlier.

  "Something giving you the blues, honey?"

  She shook her head no, but he thought he saw tears in her eyes.

  "What is it? Tell me."

  "It's nothing. That's what's the matter. Nothing is what's bothering me. It's over, and I finally realized it, that's all. Less than six hundred people singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' It just kind of hit me all at once. No hotdog stands. The Ferris wheel isn't going around and around at Coney Island tonight. No one's having a nightcap at the Space Needle in Seattle. Someone finally found a way to clean up the dope in Boston's Combat Zone and the chicken-ranch business in Times Square. Those were terrible things, but I think the cure was a lot worse than the disease. Know what I mean?"

  "Yeah, I do."

  "In my diary I had a little section called 'Things to Remember'. So the baby would know ... oh, all the things he never will. And it gives me the blues, thinking of that. I should have called it 'Things That Are Gone.' " She did sob a little, stopping her bike so she could put the back of her hand to her mouth and try to keep it in.

  "It got everybody the same way," Stu said, putting an arm around her. "Lot of people are going to cry themselves to sleep tonight. You better believe it."

  "I don't see how you can grieve for a whole country," she said, crying harder, "but I guess you can. These ... these little things keep shooting through my mind. Car salesmen. Frank Sinatra. Old Orchard Beach in July, all crowded with people, most of them from Quebec. That stupid guy on MTV--Randy, I think his name was. The times ... oh God, I sound like a fuh-fuh-frigging Rod Muh-McKuen poem!"

  He held her, patting her back, remembering one time when his Aunt Betty had gotten a crying fit over some bread that didn't rise--she was big with his little cousin Laddie then, seven months or so--and Stu could remember her wiping her eyes with the corner of a dishtowel and telling him to never mind, any pregnant woman was just two doors down from the mental ward because the juices their glands put out were always scrambled up into a stew.

  After a while Frannie said, "Okay. Okay. Better. Let's go."

  "Frannie, I love you," he said. They resumed pushing their bikes.

  She asked him, "What do you remember best? What's the one thing?"

  "Well, you know--" he said, and then stopped with a little laugh.

  "No, I don't know, Stuart."

  "It's crazy."

  "Tell me."

  "I don't know if I want to. You'll start looking for the guys with the butterfly nets."

  "Tell me!" She had seen Stu in many moods, but this curious, embarrassed uneasiness was new to her.

  "I never told anybody," he said, "but I have been thinking on it the last couple of weeks. Something happened to me back in 1982. I was pumping gas at Bill Hapscomb's gas station then. He used to hire me on, if he could, when I was laid off at the calculator plant in town. He had me on part-time, eleven P.M. to closing, which was three in the morning back in those days. There wasn't much business after the people getting off the three-to-eleven shift at the Dixie Paper factory stopped to get their gas ... lots of nights there wasn't a single car stopped between twelve and three. I'd sit there and read a book or a magazine, and lots of nights I'd doze off. You know?"

  "Yes." She did know. In her mind's eye she could see him, the man who would become her man in the fullness of time and the peculiarity of events, a broad-shouldered man sleeping in a plastic Woolco chair with a book open and facedown on his lap. She saw him sleeping in an island of white light, an island surrounded by a great inland sea of Texas night. She loved him in this picture, as she loved him in all the pictures her mind drew.

  "Well, this one night it was about quarter past two, and I was sitting behind Hap's desk with my feet up, reading some Western--Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, someone like that, and in pulls this big old Pontiac with all the windows rolled down and the tape-player going like mad, playing Hank Williams. I even remember the song--it was 'Movin' On.' This guy, not young and not old, is all by himself. He was a good-lookin man, but in a way that was a little scary-I mean, he looked like he might do scary things without thinkin very hard about em. He had bushy, curly dark hair. There was a bottle of wine snugged down between his legs and a pair of Styrofoam dice hanging from the rearview mirror. He says, 'High test,' and I said okay, but for a minute I just stood there and looked at him. Because he looked familiar. I was playin place the face."

  They were on the corner now; their apartment building was across the street. They paused there. Frannie was looking at him closely.

  "So I said, 'Don't I know you? Ain't you from up around Corbett or Maxin?' But it didn't really seem like I knew him from those two towns. And he says, 'No, but I passed through Corbett once with my family, when I was just a kid. It seems like I passed through just about everyplace in America when I was a kid. My dad was in the Air Force.'

  "So I went back and filled up his car, and all the time I'm thinkin about him, playing place the face, and all at once it came to me. All at once I knew. And I damned near pissed myself, because the man behind the wheel of that Pontiac was supposed to be dead."

  "Who was he, Stuart? Who was he?"

  "No, you let me tell it my way, Frannie. Not that it isn't a crazy story no matter what way you tell it. I went back to the window and I says, 'That'll be six dollars and thirty cents.' He gave me two five-dollar bills and told me I could keep the change. And I says, 'I think I might have you placed now.' And he says, 'Well, maybe you do,' and he gives me this weird, chilly smile, and all the time Hank Williams is singin about goin to town. I says, 'If you are who I think you are, you're supposed to be dead.' He says, 'You don't want to believe everything you read, man.' I says, 'You like Hank Williams all right?' It was all I could think of to say. Because I saw, Frannie, if I didn't say something, he was just going to roll up that power window and go tooling on down the road ... and I wanted him to go, but I also didn't want him to go. Not yet. Not until I was sure. I didn't know then that a person is never sure about a lot of things, no matter how much he wants to be.

  "He says, 'Hank Williams is one of the best. I like roadhouse music.' Then he says, 'I'm going to New Orleans, g
oing to drive all night, sleep all day tomorrow, then barrelhouse all night long. Is it the same? New Orleans?' And I say, 'As what?' And he says, 'Well, you know.' And I say, 'Well, it's all the South, you know, although there are considerable more trees down that way.' And that makes him laugh. He says, 'Maybe I'll see you again.' But I didn't want to see him again, Frannie. Because he had the eyes of a man who has been trying to look into the dark for a long time and has maybe begun to see what is there. I think, if I ever see that man Flagg, his eyes might look a little like that."

  Stu shook his head as they pushed their bikes across the road and parked them. "I've been thinking of that. I thought about getting some of his records after that, but I didn't want them. His voice ... it's a good voice, but it gives me the creeps."

  "Stuart, who are you talking about?"

  "You remember a rock and roll group called The Doors? The man that stopped that night for gas in Arnette was Jim Morrison. I'm sure of it."

  Her mouth dropped open. "But he died! He died in France! He--" And then she stopped. Because there had been something funny about Morrison's death, hadn't there? Something secret.

  "Did he?" Stu asked. "I wonder. Maybe he did, and the fellow I saw was just a guy who looked like him, but--"

  "Do you really think it was?" she asked.

  They were sitting on the steps of their building now, shoulders touching, like small children waiting for their mother to call them in to supper.

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do. And until this summer, I thought that would always be the strangest thing that ever happened to me. Boy, was I wrong."

  "And you never told anyone," she marveled. "You saw Jim Morrison years after he supposedly died and you never told anyone. Stuart Redman, God should have given you a combination lock instead of a mouth when He sent you out into the world."

  Stu smiled. "Well, the years rolled by, as they say in the books, and whenever I thought of that night--as I did, from time to time--I got surer and surer it wasn't him after all. Just someone who looked a little bit like him, you know. I had my mind pretty well at rest on the subject. But in the last few weeks, I've found myself puzzling over it again. And I think more and more that it was. Hell, he might even still be alive now. That'd be a real laugh, wouldn't it?"