The Stand, Page 82

  "Who's the Judge?"

  "Judge Farris. An old guy from Peoria. I guess he really was a judge at one time back in the early fifties, circuit judge or something, but he'd been retired a long time when the flu hit. He's plenty sharp, though. When he looks at you, you'd swear he has X-ray eyes. Anyhow, Harold was important to me. He got to be more important as there got to be more people. In direct ratio, you might say." He chuckled a little. "That barn. Man! The last line of that sign, the one with your name, was so low I figured he really must have been hanging ass out to the wind when he painted it on."

  "Yes. I was sleeping when he did that. I would have made him stop."

  "I started to get a sense of him," Larry said. "I found a Payday wrapper in the cupola of that barn in Ogunquit, and then the carving on the beam--"

  "What carving?"

  She felt that Larry was studying her in the dark, and she pulled her robe a little closer around her ... not a gesture of modesty, because she felt no threat from this man, but one of nervousness.

  "Just his initials," Larry said casually. "H.E.L. If that had been the end of it, I wouldn't be here now. But then at the motorcycle dealership in Wells--"

  "We were there!"

  "I know you were. I saw a couple of bikes gone. What made an even bigger impression was that Harold had siphoned some gas from the underground tank. You must have helped him, Fran. I damn near lost my fingers."

  "No, I didn't have to. Harold hunted around until he found something he called a plug-vent--"

  Larry groaned and slapped his forehead. "Plug-vent! Jesus! I never even looked for where they were venting the tank! You mean he just hunted around ... pulled a plug ... and put his hose in?"

  "Well ... yes."

  "Oh, Harold," Larry said in a tone of admiration that she had never heard before, at least not in connection with Harold Lauder's name. "Well, that's one of his tricks I missed. Anyway, we got to Stovington. And Nadine was so upset she fainted."

  "I cried," Fran said. "I bawled until it seemed I'd never stop. I just had my mind made up that when we got there, someone would welcome us in and say, 'Hi! Step inside, delousing on the right, cafeteria's on your left.' " She shook her head. "That seems so silly now."

  "I was not dismayed. Dauntless Harold had been there before me, left his sign, and gone on. I felt like a tenderfoot Easterner following that Indian from The Pathfinder."

  His view of Harold both fascinated and amazed her. Hadn't Stu really been leading the party by the time they left Vermont and struck out for Nebraska? She couldn't honestly remember. By then they had all been preoccupied with the dreams. Larry was reminding her of things she had forgotten ... or worse, taken for granted. Harold risking his life to put that sign on the barn--it had seemed like a foolish risk to her, but it had done some good after all. And getting gas from that underground tank ... it had apparently been a major operation for Larry, but Harold had seemed to take it purely as a matter of course. It made her feel small and made her feel guilty. They all more or less assumed that Harold was nothing but a grinning supernumerary. But Harold had turned quite a few tricks in the last six weeks. Had she been so much in love with Stu that it took this total stranger to point out some home truths about Harold? What made the feeling even more uncomfortable was the fact that, once he had gotten his feet under him, Harold had been completely adult about herself and Stuart.

  Larry said, "So here's another neat sign, complete with route numbers, at Stovington, right? And fluttering in the grass next to it, another Payday candy wrapper. I felt like instead of following broken sticks and bent grasses, I was following Harold's trail of chocolate Paydays. Well, we didn't follow your route the whole way. We bent north near Gary, Indiana, because there was one hell of a fire, still burning in places. It looked like every damn oiltank in the city went up. Anyhow, we picked up the Judge on the detour, stopped by Hemingford Home--we knew she was gone by then, the dreams you know, but we all wanted to see that place just the same. The corn ... the tire-swing ... you know what I mean?"

  "Yes," Frannie said quietly. "Yes, I do."

  "And all the time I'm going crazy, thinking that something is going to happen, we're going to get attacked by a motorcycle gang or something, run out of water, I don't know.

  "There used to be a book my mom had, she got it from her grandmother or something. In His Steps, that was the name of it. And there were all these little stories about guys with horrible problems. Ethical problems, most of them. And the guy who wrote the book said that to solve the problems, all you had to do was ask, 'What would Jesus do?' It always cleared the trouble right up. You know what I think? It's a Zen question, not really a question at all but a way to clear your mind, like saying Om and looking at the tip of your nose."

  Fran smiled. She knew what her mother would have said about something like that.

  "So when I really started to get wound up, Lucy--that's my girl, did I tell you?--Lucy would say, 'Hurry up, Larry, ask the question.' "

  "What would Jesus do?" Fran said, amused.

  "No, what would Harold do?" Larry answered seriously. Fran was nearly dumbfounded. She could not help wishing to be around when Larry actually met Harold. Whatever in the world would his reaction be?

  "We camped in this farmyard one night and we really were almost out of water. The place had a well, but no way of drawing it up, naturally, because the power was off and the pump wouldn't work. And Joe--Leo, I'm sorry, his real name is Leo--Leo kept walking by and saying, 'Firsty, Larry, pwetty firsty now.' And he was driving me bugshit. I could feel myself tightening up, and the next time he came by I probably would have hit him. Nice guy, huh? Getting ready to hit a disturbed child. But a person can't change all at once. I've had plenty of time to work that out for myself."

  "You brought them all across from Maine intact," Frannie said. "One of ours died. His appendix burst. Stu tried to operate on him, but it was no good. All in all, Larry, I'd say you did pretty well."

  "Harold and I did pretty well," he corrected. "Anyway, Lucy said, 'Quick, Larry, ask the question.' So I did. There was a windmill on the place that ran water up to the barn. It was turning pretty good, but there wasn't any water coming out of the barn faucets either. So I opened the big case at the foot of the windmill, where all the machinery was, and I saw that the main driveshaft had popped out of its hole. I got it back in and bingo! All the water you could want. Cold and tasty. Thanks to Harold."

  "Thanks to you. Harold wasn't really there, Larry."

  "Well, he was in my head. And now I'm here and I brought him the wine and the candybars." He looked at her sideways. "You know, I kind of thought he might be your man."

  She shook her head and looked down at her clasped fingers. "No. He ... not Harold."

  He didn't say anything for a long time, but she felt him looking at her. At last he said, "Okay, how have I got it wrong? About Harold?"

  She stood up. "I ought to go in now. It's been nice to meet you, Larry. Come by tomorrow and meet Stu. Bring your Lucy, if she's not busy."

  "What is it about him?" he insisted, standing with her.

  "Oh, I don't know," she said thickly. Suddenly the tears were very close. "You make me feel as if ... as if I've treated Harold very shabbily and I don't know ... why or how I did it ... can I be blamed for not loving him the way I do Stu? Is that supposed to be my fault?"

  "No, of course not." Larry looked taken aback. "Listen, I'm sorry. I barged in on you. I'll go."

  "He's changed!" Frannie burst out. "I don't know how or why, and sometimes I think it might be for the better ... but I don't ... don't really know. And sometimes I'm afraid."

  "Afraid of Harold?"

  She didn't answer; only looked down at her feet. She thought she had already said too much.

  "You were going to tell me how I could get there?" he asked gently.

  "It's easy. Just go straight out Arapahoe until you come to the little park ... the Eben G. Fine Park, I think it is. The park's on the right. Harold's li
ttle house is on the left, just across from it."

  "All right, thanks. Meeting you was a pleasure, Fran, busted vase and all."

  She smiled, but it was perfunctory. All of the dizzy good humor had gone out of the evening.

  Larry raised the bottle of wine and offered his slanted little smile. "And if you see him before I do ... keep a secret, huh?"

  "Sure."

  "Night, Frannie."

  He walked back the way he had come. She watched him out of sight, then went upstairs and slipped into bed next to Stu, who was still out like a light.

  Harold, she thought, pulling the covers up to her chin. How was she supposed to tell this Larry, who seemed so nice in his strangely lost way (but weren't they all lost now?), that Harold Lauder was fat and juvenile and lost himself? Was she supposed to tell him that one day not so long ago she had happened upon wise Harold, resourceful Harold, what-would -Jesus-do Harold, mowing the back lawn in his bathing suit and weeping? Was she supposed to tell him that the sometimes sulky, often frightened Harold that had come to Boulder from Ogunquit had turned into a stout politician, a backslapper, a hail-fellow-well-met type of guy who nonetheless looked at you with the flat and unsmiling eyes of a gila monster?

  She thought her wait for sleep might be very long tonight. Harold had fallen hopelessly in love with her and she had fallen hopelessly in love with Stu Redman, and it certainly was a tough old world. And now every time I see Harold I get such a case of the creeps. Even though he looks like he's lost ten pounds or so and he doesn't have quite so many pimples, I get the--

  Her breath caught audibly in her throat and she sat up on her elbows, eyes wide in the dark.

  Something had moved inside her.

  Her hands went to the slight swelling of her middle. Surely it was too early. It had only been her imagination. Except--

  Except it hadn't been.

  She lay back down slowly, her heart beating hard. She almost woke Stu up and then didn't. If only he had put the baby inside her, instead of Jess. If he had, she would have awakened him and shared the moment with him. The next baby she would. If there was a next baby, of course.

  And then the movement came again, so slight it might only have been gas. Except she knew better. It was the baby. And the baby was alive.

  "Oh glory," she murmured to herself, and lay back. Larry Underwood and Harold Lauder were forgotten. Everything that had happened to her since her mother had fallen ill was forgotten. She waited for it to move again, listening for that presence inside herself and fell asleep listening. Her baby was alive.

  Harold sat in a chair on the lawn of the little house he had picked out for himself, looking up at the sky and thinking of an old rock and roll song. He hated rock, but he could remember this one almost line-for-line and even the name of the group that had sung it: Kathy Young and the Innocents. The lead singer, songstress, whatever, had a high, yearning, reedy voice that had somehow caught his full attention. A golden goody, the DJs called it. A Blast from the Past. A Platter that Matters. The girl singing lead sounded sixteen years old, pallid, blond, and plain. She sounded as if she might be singing to a picture that spent most of its time buried in a dresser drawer, a picture that was taken out only late at night when everyone else in the house was asleep. She sounded hopeless. The picture she sang to had perhaps been clipped from her big sister's yearbook, a picture of the local Big Jock--captain of the football team and president of the Student Council. The Big Jock would be slipping it to the head cheerleader on some deserted lovers' lane while far away in suburbia this plain girl with no breasts and a pimple in the corner of her mouth sang:

  "A thousand stars in the sky...make me realize...you are the one love that I'll adore...tell me you love me...tell me you're mine, all mine..."

  There were a lot more than a thousand stars in his sky tonight, but they weren't lovers' stars. No soft caul of Milky Way here. Here, a mile above sea-level they were as sharp and cruel as a billion holes in black velvet, stabs from God's icepick. They were haters' stars, and because they were, Harold felt well qualified to wish on them. Wish-I-may, wish-I-might, have-the-wish-I-wish-tonight. Drop dead, folks.

  He sat silently with his head cocked back, a brooding astronomer. Harold's hair was longer than ever, but it was no longer dirty and clotted and tangled. He no longer smelled like a shootoff in a haymow. Even his blemishes were clearing up, now that he had laid off the candy. And with the hard work and all the walking, he was losing some weight. He was starting to look pretty good. There had been times in the last few weeks when he had strode past some reflective surface only to glance back over his shoulder, startled, as if he had caught a glimpse of a total stranger.

  He shifted in his chair. There was a book in his lap, a tall volume with a marbled blue binding and imitation leather covers. He kept it hidden under a loose hearthstone in the house when he was away. If anyone found the book, that would be the end of him in Boulder. There was one word stamped in gold leaf on the book's cover, and the word WAS LEDGER. It was the journal he had started after reading Fran's diary. Already he had filled the first sixty pages with his close, margin-to-margin handwriting. There were no paragraphs, only a solid block of writing, an outpouring of hate like pus from a skin abscess. He hadn't thought he had so much hate in him. It seemed he should have exhausted the flow by now, yet it seemed he had only tapped it. It was like that old joke. Why was the ground all white after Custer's Last Stand? Because the Indians kept coming and coming and ...

  And why did he hate?

  He sat up straight, as if the question had come from the outside. It was a hard question to answer, except maybe to a few, a chosen few. Hadn't Einstein said there were only six people in the world who understood all the implications of E=mc2? What about the equation inside his own skull? The relativity of Harold. The speed of blight. Oh, he could fill twice as many pages as he had already written about that, becoming more obscure, more arcane, until he finally became lost in the clockwork of himself and still nowhere near the mainspring at all. He was perhaps ... raping himself. Was that it? It was close, anyway. An obscene and ongoing act of buggery. The Indians just kept on coming and coming.

  He would be leaving Boulder soon. A month or two, no more. When he finally settled on a method of settling his scores. Then he would head out west. And when he got there he would open his mouth and spill his guts about this place. He would tell them what went on at the public meetings, and much more important, what went on at the private meetings. He was sure to be on the Free Zone Committee. He would be welcomed, and he would be well rewarded by the fellow in charge over there ... not by an end to hate but by the perfect vehicle for it, a Hate Cadillac, a Fearderado, long and darkly shining. He would climb into it and it would bear him and his hate down on them. He and Flagg would kick this miserable settlement apart like an anthill. But first he would settle with Redman, who had lied to him and stolen his woman.

  Yes, Harold, but why do you hate?

  No; there was no satisfactory answer to that, only a kind of ... of endorsement for the hate itself. Was it even a fair question? He thought not. You might as well ask a woman why she gave birth to a defective baby.

  There had been a time, an hour or an instant, when he had contemplated jettisoning the hate. That had been after he had finished reading Fran's diary and had discovered she was irrevocably committed to Stu Redman. That sudden knowledge had acted upon him the way a dash of cold water acts on a slug, causing it to contract into a tight little ball instead of a spread-out, loosely questing organism. In that hour or instant, he became aware that he could simply accept what was, and that knowledge had both exhilarated and terrified him. For that space of time he knew he could turn himself into a new person, a fresh Harold Lauder cloned from the old one by the sharp intervening knife of the superflu epidemic. He sensed, more clearly than any of the others, that that was what the Boulder Free Zone was all about. People were not the same as they had been. This small-town society was like no other in American
pre-plague society. They didn't see it because they didn't stand outside the boundaries as he did. Men and women were living together with no apparent desire to reinstitute the ceremony of marriage. Whole groups of people were living together in small subcommunities like communes. There wasn't much fighting. People seemed to be getting along. And strangest of all, none of them seemed to be questioning the profound theological implications of the dreams ... and of the plague itself. Boulder itself was a cloned society, a tabula so rasa that it could not sense its own novel beauty.

  Harold sensed it, and hated it.

  Far away over the mountains was another cloned creature. A cutting from the dark malignancy, a single wild cell taken from the dying corpus of the old body politic, a lone representative of the carcinoma that had been eating the old society alive. One single cell, but it had already begun to reproduce itself and spawn other wild cells. For society it would be the old struggle, the effort of healthy tissue to reject the malignant incursion. But for each individual cell there was the old, old question, the one that went back to the Garden--did you eat the apple or leave it alone? Over there, in the West, they were already eating them a mess of apple pie and apple cobbler. The assassins of Eden were there, the dark fusiliers.

  And he himself, when faced with the knowledge that he was free to accept what was, had rejected the new opportunity. To seize it would have been to murder himself. The ghost of every humiliation he had ever suffered cried out against it. His murdered dreams and ambitions came back to eldritch life and asked if he could forget them so easily. In the new Free Zone society he could only be Harold Lauder. Over there he could be a prince.