The Stand, Page 87

  And oh, there were scales on her eyes and would they ever be shaken free?

  The only sounds in the room were the faint hiss of the oil lamp, the tick of her windup Westclox, and her low, muttering voice.

  "Show me my sin, Lord. I don't know. I know I've gone and missed something You meant for me to see. I can't sleep, I can't take a crap, and I don't feel You, Lord. I feel like I'm prayin into a dead phone, and this is a bad time for that to happen. How have I offended Thee? I'm listenin, Lord. Listenin for the still, small voice in my heart."

  And she did listen. She put her arthritis-bunched fingers over her eyes and leaned forward even farther and tried to clear her mind. But all was dark there, dark like her skin, dark like the fallow earth that waits for the good seed.

  Please my Lord, my Lord, please my Lord--

  But the image that rose was of a lonely stretch of dirt road in a sea of corn. There was a woman with a gunnysack full of freshly killed chickens. And the weasels came. They darted forward and made snatches at the bag. They could smell the blood--the old blood of sin and the fresh blood of sacrifice. She heard the old woman raise her voice to God, but her tone was weak and whining, a petulant voice, not begging humbly that God's will be done, whatever her place in that will's scheme of things might be, but demanding that God save her so she could finish the work ... her work ... as if she knew the Mind of God and could suborn His will to hers. The weasels grew bolder still; the croker sack began to fray as they twitched and pulled it. Her fingers were too old, too weak. And when the chickens were gone the weasels would still be hungry and they would come for her. Yes. They would--

  And then the weasels were scattering, they had run squeaking into the night, leaving the contents of the sack half-devoured, and she thought exultantly: God has saved me after all! Praise His Name! God has saved His good and faithful servant.

  Not God, old woman. Me.

  In her vision, she turned, fear leaping hotly into her throat with a taste like fresh copper. And there, shouldering its way out of the corn like a ragged silver ghost, was a huge Rocky Mountain timberwolf, its jaws hanging open in a sardonic grin, its eyes burning. There was a beaten silver collar around its thick neck, a thing of handsome, barbarous beauty, and from it dangled a small stone of blackest jet ... and in the center was a small red flaw, like an eye. Or a key.

  She crossed herself and forked the sign of the evil eye at this dreadful apparition, but its jaws only grinned wider, and between them lolled the naked pink muscle of its tongue.

  I'm coming for you, Mother. Not now, but soon. We'll run you like dogs run deer. I am all the things you think, but I'm more. I'm the magic man. I'm the man who speaks for the latter age. Your own people know me best, Mother. They call me John the Conqueror.

  Go! Leave me in the name of the Lord God Almighty!

  But she was so terrified! Not for the people around her, which were represented in her dream by the chickens in the sack, but for herself. She was afraid in her soul, afraid for her soul.

  Your God has no power over me, Mother. His vessel is weak.

  No! Not true! My strength is the strength of ten, I shall mount up with wings as eagles--

  But the wolf only grinned and drew closer. She shrank from its breath, which was heavy and savage. This was the terror at noonday and the terror which flieth at midnight, and she was afraid. She was in her extremity of fear. And the wolf, still grinning, began to speak in two voices, asking and then answering itself.

  "Who brought water from the rock when we were thirsty?"

  "I did," the wolf answered in a petulant, half-crowing, half-cowering voice.

  "Who saved us when we did faint?" asked the grinning wolf, its muzzle now only bare inches from her, its breath that of a living abattoir.

  "I did," the wolf whined, drawing closer still, its grinning muzzle full of sharp death, its eyes red and haughty. "Oh fall down and praise my name, I am the bringer of water in the desert, praise my name, I am the good and faithful servant who brings water in the desert, and my name is also the name of my Master--"

  The mouth of the wolf opened wide to swallow her.

  "... my name," she muttered. "Praise my name, praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him ye creatures here below ..."

  She raised her head and looked around the room in a kind of stupor. Her Bible had fallen to the floor. There was dawnlight in the eastward-facing window.

  "O my Lord!" she cried in a great and quavering voice.

  Who brought water from the rock when we were thirsty?

  Was that it? Dear God, was that it? Was that why the scales had covered her eyes, making her blind to the things she should know?

  Bitter tears began to fall from her eyes and she got slowly and painfully to her feet and walked to the window. Arthritis jabbed blunt darning needles into the joints of her hips and knees.

  She looked out and knew what she had to do now.

  She went back to the closet and pulled the white cotton nightgown over her head. She dropped it on the floor. Now she stood naked, revealing a body so lapped with wrinkles that it might have been the bed of time's great river.

  "Thy will be done," she said, and began to dress.

  An hour later she was walking slowly west on Mapleton Avenue toward the wooded tangles and narrow-throated defiles beyond town.

  Stu was at the power plant with Nick when Glen burst in. Without preamble he said, "Mother Abagail. She's gone."

  Nick looked at him sharply.

  "What are you talking about?" Stu asked, at the same time drawing Glen away from the crew wrapping copper wire on one of the blown turbines.

  Glen nodded. He had ridden a bike the five miles out here, and he was still trying to catch his breath.

  "I went over to tell her a little about the meeting last night, and to play her the tape, if she wanted to hear it. I wanted her to know about Tom, because I was uneasy about the whole idea ... what Frannie had to say kind of worked on me in the wee hours, I guess. I wanted to do it early because Ralph said there's another two parties coming in today and you know she likes to greet them. I went over around eight-thirty. She didn't answer my knock, so I went on in. I thought if she was asleep I'd just leave ... but I wanted to make sure she wasn't ... wasn't dead or anything ... she's so old."

  Nick's gaze never left Glen's lips.

  "But she wasn't there at all. And I found this on her pillow." He handed them a paper towel. Written on it in large and trembling strokes was this message:

  I must be gone a bit now. I've sinned and presumed to know the Mind of God. My sin has been PRIDE, and He wants me to find my place in His work again.

  I will be with you again soon if it is God's will.

  Abby Freemantle

  "I'll be a son of a bitch," Stu said. "What do we do now? What do you think, Nick?"

  Nick took the note and read it again. He handed it back to Glen. The fierceness had died out of his face and he only looked sad.

  "I guess we'll have to move up that meeting to tonight," Glen said.

  Nick shook his head. He took out his pad, wrote, tore it off, and handed it to Glen. Stu read it over his shoulder.

  "Man proposes, God disposes. Mother A. was fond of that one, used to quote it frequently. Glen, you yourself said she was other-directed; God or her own mind or her delusions or whatever. What's to do? She's gone. We can't change it."

  "But the uproar--" Stu began.

  "Sure, there's going to be an uproar," Glen said. "Nick, shouldn't we at least have a meeting of the committee and discuss it?"

  Nick jotted, "What purpose? Why have a meeting that can't accomplish anything?"

  "Well, we could get up a search party. She can't have gone far."

  Nick double-circled the phrase Man proposes, God disposes. Below it he wrote, "If you found her, how would you bring her back? Chains?"

  "Jesus, no!" Stu exclaimed. "But we can't just let her wander around, Nick! She's got some crazy idea she's offended God. What if she
feels like she has to go off into the frigging wilderness, like some Old Testament guy?"

  Nick wrote, "I'm almost positive that's just what she's done."

  "Well, there you go!"

  Glen put a hand on Stu's arm. "Slow down a minute, East Texas. Let's look at the implications of this."

  "To hell with the implications! I don't see no implications in leaving an old woman to wander around day n night until she dies of exposure!"

  "She is not just any old woman. She is Mother Abagail and around here she's the Pope. If the Pope decides he has to walk to Jerusalem, do you argue with him if you're a good Catholic?"

  "Goddammit, it's not the same thing and you know it!"

  "Yes, it is the same thing. It is. At least, that's how the people in the Free Zone are going to see it. Stu, are you prepared to say for sure that God didn't tell her to go out into the bushes?"

  "No-oo ... but ..."

  Nick had been writing and now he showed the paper to Stu, who had to puzzle out some of the words. Nick's handwriting was usually impeccable, but this was hurried, perhaps impatient.

  "Stu, this changes nothing, except that it will probably hurt the Free Zone's morale. Not even sure that will happen. People aren't going to scatter just because she's gone. It does mean we won't have to clear our plans with her right now. Maybe that's best."

  "I'm going crazy," Stu said. "Sometimes we talk about her as an obstacle to get around, like she was a roadblock. Sometimes you talk about her like she was the Pope, and she couldn't do anything wrong if she wanted to. And it just so happens that I like her. What do you want, Nicky? Someone stumbling over her body this fall in one of those box canyons west of town? You want us to leave her out there so she can make a ... a holy meal for the crows?"

  "Stu," Glen said gently. "It was her decision to go."

  "Oh, goddamn, what a mess," Stu said.

  By noon, the news of Mother Abagail's disappearance had swept the community. As Nick had predicted, the general feeling was more one of unhappy resignation than alarm. The sense of the community was that she must have gone off to "pray for guidance," so she could help them pick the right path to follow at the mass meeting on the eighteenth.

  "I don't want to blaspheme by calling her God," Glen said over a scratch lunch in the park, "but she is a sort of God-by-proxy. You can measure the strength of any society's faith by seeing how much that faith weakens when its empiric object is removed."

  "Run that one by me again."

  "When Moses smashed the golden calf, the Israelites stopped worshipping it. When a flood inundated the temple of Baal, the Malachites decided Baal wasn't such a hot god anyway. But Jesus has been out to lunch for two thousand years, and people not only still follow his teachings, they live and die believing he'll come back eventually, and it will be business as usual when he does. That's the way the Free Zone feels about Mother Abagail. These people are perfectly certain she is going to come back. Have you talked to them?"

  "Yeah," Stu said. "I can't believe it. There's an old woman wandering around out there and everyone says ho-hum, I wonder if she'll bring back the Ten Commandments on stone tablets in time for the meeting."

  "Maybe she will," Glen said somberly. "Anyway, not everyone is saying ho-hum. Ralph Brentner is practically tearing his hair out by the roots."

  "Good for Ralph." He looked at Glen closely. "What about you, baldy? Where are you in all of this?"

  "I wish you wouldn't call me that. It's not at all dignified. But I'll tell you ... it's a little bit funny. Ole East Texas turns out to be a lot more immune from the Godspell she's cast over this community than the agnostic old bear sociologist. I think she'll be back. Somehow I just do. What does Frannie think?"

  "I don't know. I haven't seen her at all this morning. For all I know she's out there eating locusts and wild honey with Mother Abagail." He stared at the Flatirons, rising high in the blue haze of early afternoon. "Jesus, Glen, I hope that old lady is all right."

  Fran didn't even know Mother Abagail was gone. She had spent the morning at the library, reading up on gardening. Nor was she the only student. She saw two or three people with books on farming, a bespectacled young man of about twenty-five poring over a book called Seven Independent Power Sources for Your Home, and a pretty blond girl of about fourteen with a battered paperback titled 600 Simple Recipes.

  She left the library around noon and strolled down to Walnut Street. She was halfway home when she met Shirley Hammett, the older woman that had been traveling with Dayna, Susan, and Patty Kroger. Shirley had improved strikingly since then. Now she looked like a brisk and pretty matron-about-town.

  She stopped and greeted Fran. "When do you think she'll be back? I've been asking everybody. If this town had a newspaper, I'd write it up for the People Poll. Like, 'What do you think of Senator Bunghole's stand on oil depletion?' That sort of thing."

  "When will who be back?"

  "Mother Abagail, of course. Where have you been, girl, cold storage ?"

  "What is all this?" Frannie asked, alarmed. "What's happened?"

  "That's just it. Nobody really knows." And Shirley told Fran what had been going on while Fran had been at the library.

  "She just ... left?" Frannie asked, frowning.

  "Yes. Of course she'll be back," Shirley added confidently. "The note said so."

  " 'If it is God's will'?"

  "That's just a manner of speaking, I'm sure," Shirley said, and looked at Fran with a touch of coldness.

  "Well ... I hope so. Thanks for telling me, Shirley. Are you still having headaches?"

  "Oh no. They're all gone now. I'll be voting for you, Fran."

  "Hmmm?" Her mind was far away, chasing this new information, and for a moment she hadn't the slightest idea what Shirley could be talking about.

  "For the permanent committee!"

  "Oh. Well, thanks. I'm not even sure I want the job."

  "You'll do fine. You and Susy both. Got to get going, Fran. See you."

  They parted. Fran hurried toward the apartment, wanting to see if Stu knew anything else. Coming so soon after their meeting last night, the old woman's disappearance struck her around her heart with a kind of superstitious dread. She didn't like not being able to pass on their major decisions--like the one to send people west--to Mother Abagail for judgment. With her gone, Fran felt too much of the responsibility on her own shoulders.

  When she got home the apartment was empty. She had missed Stu by about fifteen minutes. The note under the sugarbowl said simply: "Back by 9:30. I'm with Ralph and Harold. No worry. Stu."

  Ralph and Harold? she thought, and felt a sudden twinge of dread that had nothing to do with Mother Abagail. Now why should I be afraid for Stu? My God, if Harold tried to do something ... well, something funny ... Stu would tear him apart. Unless ... unless Harold sneaked up behind him or something and ...

  She clutched at her elbows, feeling cold, wondering what Stu could be doing with Ralph and Harold.

  Back by 9:30.

  God, that seemed a long time away.

  She stood in the kitchen a moment longer, frowning down at her knapsack, which she had put on the counter.

  I'm with Ralph and Harold.

  So Harold's little house on outer Arapahoe would be deserted until nine-thirty tonight. Unless, of course, they were there, and if they were, she could join them and satisfy her curiosity. She could bike out there in no time. If no one was there, she might find something that would set her mind at rest ... or ... but she wouldn't let herself think about that.

  Set your mind at rest? the interior voice nagged. Or just make it crazier? Suppose you DO find something funny? What then? What will you do about it?

  She didn't know. She didn't, in fact, have the least tiny smidgen of an idea.

  No worry. Stu.

  But there was worry. That thumbprint in her diary meant there was worry. Because a man who would steal your diary and pilfer your thoughts was a man without much principle or scruple. A man lik
e that might creep up behind someone he hated and give a push off a high place. Or use a rock. Or a knife. Or a gun.

  No worry. Stu.

  But if Harold did a thing like that, he would be through in Boulder. What could he do then?

  But Fran knew what then. She didn't know if Harold was the sort of man she had hypothesized--not yet, not for sure--but she knew in her heart that there was a place for people like that now. Oh yes indeedy.

  She put her knapsack back on with quick little jerks and went out the door. Three minutes later she was biking up Broadway toward Arapahoe in the bright afternoon sunshine, thinking: They'll be right in Harold's living room, drinking coffee and talking about Mother Abagail and everybody will be fine. Just fine.

  But Harold's small house was dark, deserted ... and locked.

  That in itself was something of a freak in Boulder. In the old days you locked up when you went out so no one would steal your TV, stereo, your wife's jewels. But now the stereos and TV were free, much good they would do you with no juice to run them, and as for jewels, you could go to Denver and pick up a sackful any old time.

  Why do you lock your door, Harold, when everything's free? Because nobody is as afraid of robbery as a thief? Could that be it?

  She was no lockpicker. She had resigned herself to leaving when it occurred to her to try the cellar windows. They were set just above ground level, opaque with dirt. The first one she tried slid open sideways on its track, giving way grudgingly and sifting dirt down onto the basement floor.

  Fran looked around, but the world was quiet. No one except Harold had settled in this far out on Arapahoe as yet. That was odd, too. Harold could grin until his face cracked and slap people on the back and pass the time of day with folks, he could and did gladly offer his help whenever it was asked for and sometimes when it wasn't, he could and did make people like him--and it was a fact that he was highly regarded in Boulder. But where he had chosen to live ... that was something else, now wasn't it? That displayed a slightly different aspect of Harold's view of society and his place in it ... maybe. Or maybe he just liked the quiet.