The Stand (Original Edition) (41 page)

He stood there, empty of face, like a robot whose plug has been pulled. Then, little by little, animation seeped back into his face. His whiskey-reddened eyes began to twinkle. He smiled. He had remembered again what this situation called for.

“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble. Didn’t you just? My laws!” He blinked at the amount of blood on Nick’s forehead.

Nick had a pad of paper and a Bic in his shirt pocket; neither had been jarred loose by the fall. He wrote: “You just scared me. I saw two people east of here but no one since then. Thought you were dead until you sat up. I’m okay. Is there a drugstore in town?”

He showed the pad to the man in the bib-alls. The man took it. Looked at what was written there. Handed it back. Smiling, he said, ‘Tm Tom Cullen. But I can’t read. I only got to third grade but then I was sixteen and my daddy made me quit. He said I was too big.”

Retarded, Nick thought. I can’t talk and he can’t read. For a moment he was utterly nonplussed.

“Holy gee, mister, but you took a tumble!” Tom Cullen exclaimed. In a way, it was the first time for both of them. “My laws, didn’t you just!”

Nick nodded. Replaced the pad and pen. Put a hand over his mouth and shook his head. Cupped his hands over his ears and shook his head. Placed his left hand against his throat and shook his head.

Cullen grinned, puzzled. “Got a toothache? I had one once. Gee, it hurt. Didn’t it just? My laws!”

Nick shook his head and went through his dumbshow again. Cullen guessed earache this time. Nick threw his hands up and went over to his bike. The paint was scraped, but it didn’t seem hurt. He got on and pedaled a little way up the street. Yes, it was all right. Cullen jogged alongside, smiling happily. His eyes never left Nick. He hadn’t seen anyone for most of a week.

“Don’t you feel like talkin?” He asked, but Nick didn’t look around or appear to have heard. Tom tugged at his sleeve and repeated his question.

The man on the bike put his hand over his mouth again and shook his head. Tom frowned. Now the man had put his bike on its kickstand and was looking at the storefronts. He seemed to see what he wanted, because he went over to the sidewalk and then to Mr. Norton’s drugstore. If he wanted to go in there it was just too bad, because the drug was locked up. Mr. Norton had left town. Just about everybody had locked up and left town, it seemed like, except for Mom and her friend Mrs. Blakely, and they were both dead.

Now the no-talking-man was trying the door. Tom could have told him it was no use even though the OPEN sign was on the door. The OPEN sign was a liar. Too bad, because Tom would dearly have loved an ice cream soda. It was a lot better than the whiskey, which had made him feel good at first and then made him sleepy and then had made his head ache fit to split. He had gone to sleep to get away from the headache but he had had a lot of crazy dreams about a man in a black suit like the one that Revrunt Deiffenbaker always wore. The man in the black suit chased him through the dreams. He seemed like a very bad man to Tom. The only reason he had gone to drinking in the first place was because he wasn’t supposed to, his daddy had told him that, and mom too, but now everyone was gone, so what? He would if he wanted to.

But what was the no-talking-man doing now? Picked up the litter basket from the sidewalk and he was going to . . . what? Break Mr. Norton’s window?
CRASH!
By God and by damn if he didn’t! And now he was reaching through, unlocking the door . . .

“Hey mister, you can’t do that!” Tom cried, his voice throbbing with outrage and excitement. “That’s illegal! M-O-O-N and that spells //-legal! Don’t you know—”

But the man was already inside and he never turned around.

“What are you, anyway, deaf?” Tom called indignantly. “My laws! Are you . .

He trailed off. The animation and excitement left his face. He was the robot with the pulled plug again. In May it had not been an uncommon sight to see Feeble Tom like this. He would be walking along the street, looking into shopwindows with that eternally happy expression on his slightly rounded Scandahoovian face, and all of a sudden he would stop dead and go blank. Someone might shout,
"There goes Tom!”
and there would be laughter. If Tom’s daddy was with him he would scowl and elbow Tom, perhaps even sock him repeatedly on the shoulder or the back until Tom came to life. But Tom’s daddy had been around less and less over the first half of 1979, because he was stepping out with a redheaded waitress who worked at Boomer’s Bar & Grille. Her name was DeeDee Packalotte (and weren’t there some jokes about that name), and about a year ago she and Don Cullen had run off together.

Most folks took Tom’s sudden blankouts as a further sign of retardation, but they were actually instances of nearly normal thinking. Tom Cullen was not severely retarded, and he was capable of making simple connections. Every now and then—during his blankouts —he would be capable of making a more sophisticated inductive or deductive connection. He would feel the possibility of making such a connection the way a normal person will sometimes feel a name dancing “right on the tip of his tongue.” When it happened, Tom would dismiss his real world, which was nothing more or less than an instant-by-instant flow of sensory input, and go into his mind. He would be like a man in a dark and unfamiliar room who holds the plug-end of a lampcord in one hand and who is crawling around on the floor, bumping into things and feeling with his free hand for the electrical socket. And if he found it—he didn’t always—there would be a burst of illumination and he would see the room (or the idea) plain. Tom was a sensory creature. A list of his favorite things would have included the taste of an ice cream soda at Mr. Norton’s fountain, watching a pretty girl in a short dress waiting on the comer to cross the street, the smell of lilac, the feel of silk. But more than any of these things he loved the intangible, he loved that moment when the connection would be made, the switch cleared (at least momentarily), the light would go on in the dark room. It didn’t always happen; often the connection eluded him. This time it didn’t.

He had said,
What are you, anyway, deaf?

The man hadn’t acted like he heard what Tom was saying except for those times he had been looking right at him. And the man hadn’t said anything to him, not even hi. Sometimes people didn’t answer Tom when he asked questions because something in his face told them he was soft upstairs. But this man didn’t act like that was the reason. He had given Tom a circle made of his thumb and forefinger and Tom knew that meant Okey Dokey . . . but still he didn’t talk.

Hands over his ears and a shake of his head.

Hands over his mouth and the same.

Hands over his neck and the same again.

“My laws!” Tom said, and the animation came back into his face. His bloodshot eyes glowed. He rushed into Norton’s Drugstore, forgetting that it was illegal to do so. The bike-man was squirting something that smelled like Bactine onto cotton and then wiping the cotton on his forehead.

“Hey mister!” Tom said, rushing up. The bike-man didn’t turn around. Tom was momentarily puzzled, and then he remembered. He tapped Nick on the shoulder and Nick turned. “You’re deaf n dumb, right? Can’t hear! Can’t talk! Right?”

Nick nodded. And to him, Tom’s reaction was nothing short of amazing. He jumped into the air and clapped his hands wildly.

“I thought of it! Hooray for me! I thought of it myself! Hooray for Tom Cullen!”

Nick had to grin. He couldn’t remember when his disability had brought someone so much pleasure.

Nick slept in the park that night. He didn’t know where Tom slept, but when he woke up the next morning, slightly dewy but feeling pretty good otherwise, the first thing he saw when he crossed the town square was Tom, crouched over a fleet of toy Corgi cars and a large plastic Texaco station. He walked across the street and tapped Tom on the arm. Tom jumped and looked over his shoulder. A large and guilty smile stretched his lips, and a blush climbed out of his shirt collar.

“I know it’s for little boys and not for grown men,” he said. “I know that, laws yes, Daddy tole me.”

Nick shrugged, smiled, spread his hands. Tom looked relieved.

“It’s mine now. Mine if I want it. If you could go in the drug and get something, so could 1.1 don’t have to put it back, do I?”

Nick shook his head.

“Mine,” Tom said happily, and turned back to the garage. Nick tapped him again and Tom looked back. “What?”

Nick tugged his sleeve and Tom stood up willingly enough. Nick led him down the street to where his bike leaned on its kickstand. He pointed to himself. Then at the bike. Tom nodded.

“Sure. That bike is yours. That Texaco garage is mine. I won’t take your bike and you won’t take my garage. Laws, no!”

Nick shook his head. He pointed at himself. At the bike. Then down Main Street. He waved his fingers: byebye.

Tom became very still. Nick waited. Tom said hesitantly: “You movin on, mister?”

Nick nodded.

“I don’t want you to!” Tom burst out. His eyes were wide and very blue, sparkling with tears. “I like you! I don’t want you to go!” Nick nodded. He pulled Tom next to him and put an arm around him. Pointed to himself. To Tom. To the bike. Out of town.

“I don’t getcha,” Tom said.

Patiently, Nick went through it again. This time he added the byebye wave, and in a burst of inspiration he lifted Tom’s hand and made it wave byebye, too.

“Want me to go with you?” Tom asked. A smile of disbelieving delight lit up his face.

Relieved, Nick nodded.

“Sure!” Tom shouted. “Tom Cullen’s gonna go! Tom’s—” He halted, some of the happiness dying out of his face. '“Can I take my garage?” Nick thought about it a moment and then nodded his head. “Okay.” Tom’s grin reappeared like the sun from behind a cloud. “Tom Cullen’s going.”

Nick led him to the bike. He pointed at Tom, then at the bike.

“I never rode one like that,” Tom said doubtfully, eying the bike’s gearshift and the high, narrow seat. “I guess I better not. Tom Cullen would fall off a fancy bike like that.”

But Nick was provisionally encouraged.
I never rode one like that
meant that he had ridden some sort of bike. It was only a question of finding a nice simple one. Tom was going to slow him down, that was inevitable, but perhaps not too much after all. And what was the hurry, anyway? Dreams were only dreams. But he did feel an inner urge to hurry, something so strong yet indefinable that it amounted to a subconscious command.

He led Tom back to his filling station. He pointed at it, then smiled and nodded at Tom. Tom squatted down eagerly, and then

his hands paused in the act of reaching for a couple of cars. He looked up at Nick, his face troubled and transparently suspicious. “You ain’t gonna go without Tom Cullen, are you?”

Nick shook his head firmly.

“Okay,” Tom said, and turned confidently to his toys. Before he could stop himself, Nick had ruffled the man’s hair. Tom looked up and smiled shyly at
him
. Nick smiled back. No, he couldn’t just leave him. That was sure.

It was almost noon before he found a bike which he thought would suit Tom. He hadn’t expected it to take anywhere near as long as it did, but a surprising majority of people had locked their houses, garages, and outbuildings. In most cases he was reduced to peering into shadowy garages through dirty, cobwebby windows, hoping to spot the right bike. At one point he had gone back to recheck the Western Auto, but that was no good; the two bikes in the show window were his-and-hers three-speeds and everything else was unassembled.

In the end he found what he was looking for in a small detached garage at the southern end of town. The garage was locked, but it had one window big enough to crawl through. Nick broke the glass with a rock and carefully picked the remaining slivers out of the old, crumbling putty. Inside the garage was explosively hot and furry with a thick oil-and-dust smell. The bike, an old-fashioned boy’s Schwinn, stood next to a ten-year-old Merc station wagon.

The way my luck’s running the damn bike’ll be busted, Nick thought. No chain, flat tires, something. But this time his luck was in. The bike rolled easily. The tires were up and had good tread; all the bolts and sprockets seemed tight. There was no bike basket, he would have to remedy that, but there was a chainguard and hung neatly on the wall, an unexpected bonus—a nearly new Briggs hand-pump.

He tied the bike-pump to the package carrier on the Schwinn’s back fender with a hank of hayrope, then unlocked the garage door and ran it up. Fresh air had never smelled so sweet. He closed his eyes and inhaled it deeply, then wheeled the bike out to the road, got on, and pedaled slowly down Main Street. The bike rode fine. It would be just the ticket for Tom . . . assuming he really could ride it.

He parked it beside his Raleigh and went into the five-and-dime. He found a good-sized wire bike basket in a jumble of sporting goods near the back of the store and was turning to leave with it under his arm when something else caught his eye: a klaxon horn with a chrome bell and a large red rubber bulb. Grinning, Nick put the horn in the basket and then went over to the hardware section for a screwdriver and an adjustable wrench. He went back outside. Tom was sprawled peacefully in the shade of the World War II Marine in the town square, napping.

He put the basket on the Schwinn’s handlebars and attached the klaxon horn beside it. He went back into the five-and-dime and came out with a good-sized tote bag.

He took it up to the A&P and filled it with canned meat, fruit, and vegetables. He was pausing over some canned chili beans when he saw a shadow flit by on the aisle facing him. If he had been able to hear, he would already have been aware that Tom had discovered his bike. The klaxon’s hoarse and drawn-out cry of
Howww-OOO-Gah!
floated up and down the street, punctuated by Tom Cullen’s giggles.

Nick pushed out through the supermarket’s doors and saw Tom speeding grandly down Main, his blond hair and his shirttail whipping out behind him, squeezing the bulb of the klaxon horn for all it was worth. At the Arco station that marked the end of the business section he whirled around and pedaled back. There was a huge and triumphant grin on his face. The Fisher-Price garage sat in the bike basket. His pants pockets and the flap pockets of his khaki shirt bulged with scale-model Corgi cars. The sun flashed bright, revolving circles in the wheelspokes. A little wistfully Nick wished he could hear the sound of the horn, just to see if it pleased him as much as it was pleasing Tom.