The Stand

  The darkness had come on her at the intersection of Baseline and Broadway. Now she was far out on Twenty-eighth Street, almost over the town line to ... Longmont, wasn't it?

  There was a taste of him in her still, far back in her mind, like cold slime on a floor.

  She was surrounded by poles, steel poles like sentries, each of them five feet high, each bearing a matched set of drive-in speakers. There was gravel underfoot, but grass and dandelions were growing up through it. She guessed the Holiday Twin hadn't been doing much business since the middle of June or so. You could say that it had been kind of a dead summer for the entertainment biz.

  "Why am I here?" she whispered.

  It was only talking aloud, talking to herself; she expected no answer. So when she was answered, a shriek of terror pealed from her throat.

  All the speakers fell off the speaker poles at once and onto the weed-strewn gravel. The sound they made was a huge, amplified CHUNK!-- the sound of a dead body striking gravel.

  "NADINE," the speakers blared, and it was his voice, and how she shrieked then! Her hands flew to her head, her palms clapped themselves over her ears, but it was all the speakers at once and there was no hiding from that giant voice, which was full of fearful hilarity and dreadful comic lust.

  "NADINE, NADINE, OH HOW I LOVE TO LOVE NADINE, MY PET, MY PRETTY--"

  "Stop it!" she shrieked back, straining her vocal cords with the force of her cry, and still her voice was so small compared with that giant's bellow. And yet, for a moment the voice did stop. There was silence. The fallen speakers looked up at her from the gravel like the rugose eyes of giant insects.

  Nadine's hands slowly came down from her ears.

  You've gone insane, she comforted herself. That's all it is. The strain of waiting... and Harold's games ... finally planting the explosive ... all of it has finally driven you over the edge, dear, and you've gone crazy. It's probably better this way.

  But she hadn't gone crazy, and she knew it.

  This was far worse than being crazy.

  As if to prove this, the speakers now boomed out in the stern yet almost prissy voice of a principal reprimanding the student body over the high school intercom for some prank they had all played together. "NADINE. THEY KNOW."

  "They know," she parroted. She wasn't sure who they were, or what they knew, but she was quite sure it was inevitable.

  "YOU'VE BEEN STUPID. GOD MAY LOVE STUPIDITY; I DO NOT."

  The words crackled and rolled away into the late afternoon. Her clothes clung soddenly to her skin, her hair lay lankly against her pallid cheeks, and she began to shiver.

  Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid. I know what that word means. I think. I think it means death.

  "THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ... EXCEPT THE SHOEBOX. THE DYNAMITE. "

  Speakers. Speakers everywhere, staring up at her from the white gravel, peeking at her from clusters of dandelions closed against the rain.

  "GO TO SUNRISE AMPHITHEATER. STAY THERE. UNTIL TOMORROW NIGHT. UNTIL THEY MEET. AND THEN YOU AND HAROLD MAY COME. COME TO ME."

  Now Nadine began to feel a simple, shining gratitude. They had been stupid ... but they had also been granted a second chance. They were important enough to have warranted intervention. And soon, very soon, she would be with him ... and then she would go crazy, she was quite sure of it, and all this would cease to matter.

  "Sunrise Amphitheater may be too far," she said. Her vocal cords had been hurt somehow; she could only croak. "It may be too far for the ..." For the what? She pondered. Oh! Oh yes! Right! "For the walkie-talkie. The signal."

  No answer.

  The speakers lay on the gravel, staring at her, hundreds of them.

  She pushed the Vespa's starter and the little engine coughed to life. The echo made her wince. It sounded like rifle fire. She wanted to get out of this awful place, away from those staring speakers.

  Had to get out.

  She overbalanced the motor-scooter going around the concession stand. She might have held it if she'd been on a paved surface, but the Vespa's rear wheel skidded out from under her in the loose gravel and she fell with a thump, biting her lip bloody and cutting her cheek. She got up, her eyes wide and skittish, and drove on. She was trembling all over.

  Now she was in the alley the cars drove through to get into the drive-in and the ticket stand, looking like a small toll-booth, was just ahead of her. She was going to get out. She was going to get away. Her mouth softened in gratitude.

  Behind her, hundreds of speakers blared into life all at once, and now the voice was singing, a horrid, tuneless singing: "I'LL BE SEEING YOU ... IN ALL THE OLD FAMILIAR PLACES... THAT THIS HEART OF MINE EMBRACES ... ALL DAY THROOOOO ... "

  Nadine screamed in her newly cracked voice.

  Huge, monstrous laughter came then, a dark and sterile cackling which seemed to fill the earth.

  "DO WELL, NADINE," the voice boomed. "DO WELL, MY FANCY, MY DEAR ONE."

  Then she gained the road and fled back toward Boulder at the Vespa's top speed, leaving the disembodied voice and staring speakers behind ... but carrying them with her in her heart, for then, for always.

  She was waiting for Harold around the comer from the bus station. When he saw her, his face froze and drained of color. "Nadine--" he whispered. The lunch bucket dropped from his hand and clacked on the pavement.

  "Harold," she said. "They know. We've got to--"

  "Your hair, Nadine, oh my God, your hair -- His face seemed to be all eyes.

  "Listen to me!"

  He seemed to gain some of himself back. "A-all right. What?"

  "They went up to your house and found your book. They took it away."

  Emotions at war on Harold's face: anger, horror, shame. Little by little they drained away and then, like some terrible corpse coming up from deep water, a frozen grin resurfaced on Harold's face. "Who? Who did that?"

  "I don't know all of it, and it doesn't matter anyway. Fran Goldsmith was one of them, I'm sure of that. Maybe Bateman or Underwood. I don't know. But they'll come for you, Harold."

  "How do you know?" He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, remembering that she had put the ledger back under the hearthstone. He shook her like a ragdoll, but Nadine faced him without fear. She had been face-to-face with more terrible things than Harold Lauder on this long, long day. "You bitch, how do you know?"

  "He told me."

  Harold's hands dropped away.

  "Flagg?" A whisper. "He told you? He spoke to you? And it did that?" Harold's grin was ghastly, the grin of the Reaper on horseback.

  "What are you talking about?"

  They were standing next to an appliance store. Taking her by the shoulders again, Harold turned her to face the glass. Nadine looked at her reflection for a long time.

  Her hair had gone white. Entirely white. There was not a single black strand left.

  Oh how I love to love Nadine.

  "Come on," she said. "We have to leave town."

  "Now?"

  "After dark. We'll hide until then, and pick up what camping gear we need on the way out."

  "West?"

  "Not yet. Not until tomorrow night."

  "Maybe I don't want to anymore," Harold whispered. He was still looking at her hair.

  She put his hand on it. "Too late, Harold," she said.

  CHAPTER 58

  Fran and Larry sat at the kitchen table of Stu and Fran's place, sipping coffee. Downstairs, Leo was stretching out on his guitar, one that Larry had helped him pick out at Earthly Sounds. It was a nice $600 Gibson with a hand-rubbed cherry finish. As an afterthought he had gotten the boy a battery-powered phonograph and about a dozen folk/blues albums. Now Lucy was with him, and a startlingly good imitation of Dave van Ronk's "Backwater Blues" drifted up to them.

  "Well it rained five days

  and the sky turned black as night ...

  There's trouble takin place,

  on the bayou tonight."

  Through the arch that gave on t
he living room, Fran and Larry could see Stu, sitting in his favorite easy chair, Harold's ledger open on his lap. He had been sitting that way since four in the afternoon. It was now nine, and full dark. He had refused supper. As Frannie watched him, he turned another page.

  Down below, Leo finished "Backwater Blues" and there was a pause.

  "He plays well, doesn't he?" Fran said.

  "Better than I do or ever will," Larry said. He sipped his coffee.

  From below there suddenly came a familiar chop, a swift running down the frets to a not-quite-standard blues progression that made Larry's coffee cup pause. And then Leo's voice, low and insinuating, adding the vocal to the slow, driving beat:

  "Hey baby I come down here tonight

  And I didn't come to get in no fight,

  I just want you to say if you can,

  Tell me once and I'll understand,

  Baby, can you dig your man?

  He's a righteous man,

  Baby, can you dig your man?"

  Larry spilled his coffee.

  "Whoops," Fran said, and got up to get a dishcloth.

  "I'll do it," he said. "Jiggled when I should have joggled, I guess."

  "No, sit still." She got the dishcloth and wiped up the stain quickly. "I remember that one. It was big just before the flu. He must have picked up the single downtown."

  "I guess so."

  "What was that guy's name? The guy that did it?"

  "I can't remember," Larry said. "Pop music came and went so fast."

  "Yes, but it was something familiar," she said, wringing the dishcloth out at the sink. "It's funny how you get something like that on the tip of your tongue, isn't it?"

  "Yeah," Larry said.

  Stu closed the ledger with a soft snap, and Larry was relieved to see her look at him as he came into the kitchen. Her eyes went first to the gun on his hip. He had been wearing it since his election as marshal, and he made a lot of jokes about shooting himself in the foot. Fran didn't think the jokes were all that funny.

  "Well?" Larry asked.

  Stu's face was deeply troubled. He put the ledger on the table and sat down. Fran started to get him a cup of coffee and he shook his head and put a hand on her forearm. "No thanks, honey." He looked at Larry in an absent, distracted sort of way. "I read it all, and now I've got a damn headache. Not used to reading so much. Last book I just sat down and read all the way through like that was this rabbit story. Watership Down. I got it for a nephew of mine and just started to read it ..."

  He trailed off for a moment, thinking.

  "I read that one," Larry said. "Great book."

  "There was this one bunch of rabbits," Stu said, "and they had it soft. They were big and well fed and they always lived in one place. There was something wrong there, but none of the rabbits knew what it was. Seemed like they didn't want to know. Only ... only, see, there was this farmer ..."

  Larry said, "He left the warren alone so he could take a rabbit for the stewpot whenever he wanted one. Or maybe he sold them. Either way, he had his own little rabbit farm."

  "Yeah. And there was this one rabbit, Silverweed, and he made up poems about the shining wire--the snare the farmer caught the rabbits in, I guess. The snare the farmer used to catch them and strangle them. Silverweed made up poems about that. "He shook his head in slow, tired incredulity. "And that's what Harold reminds me of. Silverweed the rabbit."

  "Harold's ill," Fran said.

  "Yeah." Stu lit a cigarette. "And dangerous."

  "What should we do? Arrest him?"

  Stu tapped the ledger. "He and the Cross woman are planning to do something so they'll be made to feel welcome when they go west. But this book doesn't say what."

  "It mentions a lot of people he's not too crazy about," Larry said.

  "Are we going to arrest him?" Fran asked again.

  "I just don't know. I want to talk it over with the rest of the committee first. What's on for tomorrow night, Larry?"

  "Well, the meeting's going to be in two halves, public business and then private business. Brad wants to talk about his Turning-Off Crew. Al Bundell wants to present a preliminary report from the Law Committee. Let's see ... George Richardson on clinic hours at Dakota Ridge, then Chad Norris. After that, they leave and it's just us."

  "If we get Al Bundell to stay after and fill him in on this Harold business, can we be sure he'll keep his lip zipped?"

  "I'm sure we can," Fran said.

  Stu said fretfully, "I wish the Judge was here. I cottoned to that man".

  They were quiet for a moment, thinking about the Judge, wondering where he might be tonight. From below came the sound of Leo playing "Sister Kate" like Tom Rush.

  "But if it's got to be Al, it's got to be. I only see two choices anyway. We have to take the pair of them out of circulation. But I don't want to put them in jail, goddammit."

  "What does that leave?" Larry asked.

  It was Fran who answered. "Exile."

  Larry turned to her. Stu was nodding slowly, looking at his cigarette.

  "Just drive him out?" Larry asked.

  "Him and her both," Stu said.

  "But will Flagg take them like that?" Frannie asked.

  Stu looked up at her then. "Honey, that ain't our problem."

  She nodded and thought: Oh, Harold, I didn't want it to come out like this. Never in a million years did I want it to come out this way.

  "Any idea what they might be planning?" Stu asked.

  Larry shrugged. "You'd have to get the whole committee's thoughts on that, Stu. But I can think of some things."

  "Such as?"

  "The power plant. Sabotage. An assassination attempt on you and Frannie. Those are just the first two things that occur to me."

  Fran looked pale and dismayed.

  Larry went on: "Although he doesn't come right out and say it, I think he went hunting for Mother Abagail with you and Ralph that time in hopes of getting you alone and killing you."

  Stu said, "He had his chance."

  "Maybe he chickened."

  "Stop it, can't you?" Fran asked dully. "Please."

  Stu got up and went back into the living room. There was a CB in there hooked up to a Die-Hard battery. After some tinkering, he got Brad Kitchner.

  "Brad, you dog! Stu Redman. Listen. Can you round up some guys to stand watch at the power station tonight?"

  "Sure," Brad's voice came, "but what in God's name for?"

  "Well, this is kind of delicate, Bradley. I heard one way and another that somebody might try doing some mischief up there."

  Brad's reply was blue with profanity.

  Stu nodded at the mike, smiling a little. "I know how you feel. This is just for tonight and maybe tomorrow night, so far as I know. Then I guess things'll be ironed out."

  Brad told him he could muster twelve men from the Power Committee without going two blocks, and any one of them would be happy to geld any would-be mischief-maker. "This something Rich Moffat's up to?"

  "No, it ain't Rich. Listen, I'll be talking to you, okay?"

  "Fine, Stu. I'll have them on watch."

  Stu turned off the CB and walked back to the kitchen. "People let you be just as secret as you want to be. It scares me, you know? The old bald-headed sociologist is right. We could set ourselves up like kings here if we wanted to."

  Fran put her hand over his. "I want you to promise me something. Both of you. Promise me we'll settle this once and for all at the meeting tomorrow night. I just want it to be over."

  Larry was nodding. "Exile. Yeah. It never crossed my mind, but it might be the best solution. Well, I'm going to collect Lucy and Leo and get home."

  "I'll see you tomorrow," Stu said.

  "Yeah." He went out.

  In the hour before dawn on September 2, Harold stood on the edge of Sunrise Amphitheater, looking down. The town was in a ditch of blackness. Nadine slept behind him in the small two-man tent they had picked up along with a few other camping supplies as they crept
out of town.

  We'll come back, though. Driving chariots.

  But in his secret heart, Harold doubted that. The darkness was upon him in more ways than one. The vile bastards had stolen everything from him--Frannie, his self-respect, then his ledger, now his hope. He felt that he was going down.

  The wind was strong, rippling his hair, making the tight canvas of the tent snap back and forth with a steady machine-gun popping sound. Behind him, Nadine moaned in her sleep. It was a scary sound. Harold thought she was as lost as he was, maybe worse. The sounds she made in her sleep were not the sounds of a person having happy dreams.

  But I can keep sane. I can do that. If I can go down to whatever's waiting for me with my mind intact, that will be something. Yes, something.

  He wondered if they were down there now, Stu and his friends, surrounding his little house, if they were waiting for him to come home so they could arrest him and throw him in the cooler. He would go down in the history books--if any of those sorry slobs were left to write them, that was--as the Free Zone's first jailbird. Welcome to hard times. HAWK CAGED, wuxtry, wuxtry, read all about it. Well, they would wait a long time. He was on his adventure, and he remembered all too clearly Nadine putting his hand on her white hair and saying, Too late, Harold. How like a corpse's her eyes had been.

  "All right," Harold whispered. "We're going through with it."

  Around and above him, the dark September wind drummed through the trees.

  The Free Zone Committee meeting was rapped to order some fourteen hours later in the living room of the house Ralph Brentner and Nick Andros shared. Stu was sitting in an easy chair, tapping an end table with the rim of his beer can. "Okay, folks, we better get started here."

  Glen sat with Larry on the curving lip of the freestanding fireplace, their backs to the modest fire Ralph had kindled there. Nick, Susan Stern, and Ralph himself sat on the couch. Nick held the inevitable pen and pad of notepaper. Brad Kitchner was standing just inside the doorway with a can of Coors in his hand, talking to Al Bundell, who was working a Scotch and soda. George Richardson and Chad Norris were sitting by the large window-wall watching the sunset over the Flatirons.

  Frannie was sitting with her back propped comfortably against the door of the closet where Nadine had planted the bomb. Her pack, with Harold's ledger inside it, was between her folded legs.