The Stand (Original Edition) (85 page)

Brad Kitchner, looking pale, fidgety, and a little ridiculous in a suit and tie, approached the podium, dropped his prepared remarks, picked them up in the wrong order, and contented himself by saying they hoped and expected to have the electricity back on by the second or third of September.

This remark was greeted with such a storm of cheering that he gained enough confidence to finish in style and actually strut a little as he left the podium.

Chad Norris was next, and Stu told Frannie later that he had approached the thing in just the right way: They were burying the dead out of common decency, none of them would feel really good until that was done and life could go on, and if it was finished by the fall rainy season they would all feel so much the better. He asked for a couple of volunteers and could have had three dozen if he wanted them. He finished by asking each member of the current Burial Committee to stand and take a bow.

Harold Lauder barely popped up and then sat back down again, and there were those who left the meeting remarking on what a smart but very modest fellow he was. Actually, Nadine had been whispering things in his ear and he was afraid to do much more than bob and nod. He had an erection.

When Norris left the podium, Ralph Brentner took his place. He told them that they at last had a doctor, had George Richardson stand up (to loud applause; Richardson flipped the peace sign with both hands, and the applause turned to cheers), and then told them that, as far as he could tell, they had another sixty people joining them over the next couple of days.

“Well, that’s the agenda,” Stu said. He looked out over the gathered people. “I want Sandy DuChiens to come up here again and tell us how many we are, but before I do that, is there other business we should take up tonight?”

He waited. He could see Glen’s face in the crowd, and Sue Stem’s, Larry’s, Nick’s, and of course, Frannie’s. They all looked a bit strained. If someone was going to bring up Flagg, ask what the committee was doing about him, this would be the time. But there was silence. After fifteen seconds of it, Stu turned the meeting over to Sandy, who ended things in style. As people began to file out, Stu thought:
Well, we got by it again.

Several people came up to congratulate him after the meeting, one of them the new doctor. “You handled that very well, Marshal,” Richardson said, and for a moment Stu almost looked over his shoulder to see who Richardson was talking to. Then he remembered, and suddenly felt scared. Lawman? He was an imposter.

A year, he told himself. A year and no more. But he still felt scared.

Stu, Fran, Sue Stem, and Nick walked back together, their feet clicking hollowly on the cement sidewalk as they crossed the C.U. campus toward Broadway. Around them, other people were streaming away, talking quietly, headed home. It was nearly eleven-thirty.

“It’s chilly,” Fran said. “I wish I’d worn my jacket.”

Nick nodded. He also felt the chill. The Boulder evenings were always cool, but tonight it could be no more than fifty degrees. It served to remind that this strange and terrible summer was nearing its end. Not for the first time he wished that Mother Abagail’s God or Muse or whatever It was had been more in favor of Miami or New Orleans. But that might not have been so great, now that he stopped to think about it. High humidity, lots of rain . . . and lots of bodies.

“They jumped the shit out of me, wanting the Judge for the Law Committee,” Sue said. “We should have expected that.”

“Think people will be suspicious, Nick?” Stu asked.

Nick nodded. “They’ll wonder if he did go west. For real.”

They all considered this as Nick took out his butane match and burned the scrap of paper.

“That’s tough,” Stu said finally. “You really think—?”

“Sure, he’s right,” Sue said glumly. “What else have they got to think? That he went to Far Rockaway to ride the Monster Coaster?” “We were lucky to get away tonight without a big discussion of what’s going on in the west,” Fran said.

Nick wrote: “Sure were. That’s why I want to postpone another big meeting as long as possible. Three weeks, maybe. September 15?”

Sue said, “We can hold off that long if Brad gets the power on.”

“I think he will,” Stu said.

“I’m going home,” Sue told them. “Big day tomorrow. Dayna’s off. I’m going with her as far as Colorado Springs.”

“How did she take it?” Fran asked her.

“Well, she’s a funny sort of girl. She was a jock in college, you know. Tennis and swimming were her biggies, although she played them all. She went to some small community college down in Georgia, but for the first two years she kept on going with her high school boyfriend. He was a big leather jacket type, me Tarzan, you Jane, so get out in the kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Then she got dragged along to a couple of female consciousness meetings by her roomie, who was this big libber type.”

“And as an upshot, she got to be an even bigger libber than the roomie,” Fran guessed.

“First a libber, then a lesbian,” Sue said.

Stu stopped as if thunderstruck. Frannie looked at him with guarded amusement. “Come on, splendor in the grass,” she said. “See if you can’t fix the hinge on your mouth.”

Stu shut his mouth with a snap.

Sue went on: “She dropped both rocks on the caveman boyfriend at the same time, and he came after her with a gun. She disarmed him. She says it was the major turning point of her life. She told me she always knew she was stronger and more agile than he was—she knew it
intellectually.
But it took doing it to put it in her guts.”

“You sayin she hates men?” Stu asked, looking at Sue closely.

Susan shook her head. “She’s bi now.”

“Bye now?” Stu said doubtfully.

“She’s happy with either sex, Stuart. And I hope you’re not going to start leaning on the committee to institute the blue laws along with thou shalt not kill.”

“I got enough to worry about without worryin about who sleeps with who,” he mumbled, and they all laughed. “I only asked because I don’t want anyone goin into this thing as a crusade. We need eyes over there, not guerrilla fighters.”

“She knows that,” Susan said, and said no more. What else Dayna Jurgens had said was between the two of them, something not even the other members of the committee were to know—as was the fact that Dayna was going west with a ten-inch switchblade strapped to her arm in a spring-loaded clip.

If he’s a big enough dictator, then maybe he’s all that's holding them together. If he was gone, maybe they’d start fighting and squabbling among themselves. It might be the end of them, if he dies. And if I get close to him, Susie, he better have his guardian devil with him.

They’ll kill you, Dayna.

Maybe. Maybe not. It might be worth it just to have the pleasure of watching his guts fall out on the floor.

She could have stopped her, maybe, but she hadn’t tried. She had contented herself with extracting a promise from Dayna that she would stick to the original script unless a near-perfect opportunity came up. To that Dayna had agreed, and Sue didn’t think her friend would get that chance. Flagg would be well guarded.

“Well,” she said to the rest of them. “I’m home to bed. Really. Night, folks.”

She walked off, hands in the pockets of her fatigue jacket.

“She looks older,” Stu said.

Nick wrote and offered the open pad to both of them.

We all do
was written there.

Stu was on his way up to the power station the next morning when he saw Susan and Dayna headed down Canyon Boulevard on a pair of cycles. He waved and they pulled over. He thought he had never seen Dayna looking prettier. Her hair was tied behind her with a bright green silk scarf, and she was wearing a rawhide coat open over jeans and a chambray shirt. A bedroll was strapped on behind her. “Stuart!” She said.

Lesbian?
he thought doubtfully.

“I understand you’re off on a little trip,” he said.

“For sure. And you never saw me.”

“Nope,” Stu said. “I never did. Have a smoke?”

Dayna took one of Stu’s Marlboros and cupped her hands over his match.

“You be careful, girl.”

“I will.”

“And get back.”

“I hope to.”

They looked at each other in the bright late-summer morning.

“You take care of Frannie, big fella.”

“I will.”

“And go easy on the marshaling.”

“That I know I can do.”

She cast the cigarette away. “What do you say, Suze?”

Susan nodded and put her bike in gear, smiling a strained smile. “Dayna?”

She looked at him, and Stu planted a soft kiss on her mouth.

“Good luck.”

She offered him a slow smile. “You have to do it twice for good luck. Didn’t you know that?”

He kissed her again.

“Frannie’s a lucky woman,” Dayna said. “And you can quote me.” Smiling, not really knowing what to say, Stu stepped back and said nothing at all. Two blocks up, one of the lumbering orange Burial Committee trucks rumbled through the intersection and the moment was broken.

“Let’s go, kid,” Dayna said.

They drove off, and Stu stood on the curbing and watched them.

Sue Stem was back two days later. She had watched Dayna moving west from Colorado Springs, she said, had watched her until she was nothing but a speck that merged with the great still landscape. Then she had cried a little. That first night Sue had made camp at Monument, and had awakened in the small hours, chilled by a low

whining sound that seemed to be coming from a culvert that traveled beneath the farm road she had camped by.

Finally summoning up her courage, she had shined her flash into the corrugated pipe and had discovered a gaunt and shivering six-months puppy. It shied from her touch and she was too big to crawl into the pipe. At last she had gone into the town of Monument, had smashed her way into the local grocery, and had come back in the first cold light of false dawn with a knapsack full of Alpo and Cycle One. That did the trick. The puppy rode back with her, neatly tucked into one of the big BSA saddlebags.

Dick Ellis went into raptures over the puppy. It was an Irish setter bitch, either purebred or so close as to make no difference. When she got older, he was sure Kojak would be glad to make her acquaintance. The news swept the Free Zone, and for that day the subject of Mother Abagail was forgotten in the excitement over the canine Adam and Eve. Susan Stern became something of a heroine, and as far as any of the committee ever knew, no one even thought to wonder what she had been doing in Monument that night, far south of Boulder.

But it was the morning the two of them left Boulder that Stu remembered, watching them ride off toward the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. Because no one in the Zone ever saw Dayna Jurgens again.

Nearly dusk; Venus shining against the sky.

Nick, Ralph, Larry, and Stu sat on the steps of Tom Cullen’s house. Tom was on the lawn, whooping and knocking croquet balls through a set of wickets.

It’s time,
Nick wrote.

Speaking low, Stu asked if they would have to hypnotize him again, and Nick shook his head. Ralph called Tom, who came running over, grinning.

“Tommy, it’s time to go,” Ralph said.

Tom’s smile faltered. For the first time he seemed to notice that it was getting dark.

“Go? Now? Laws, no! When it gets dark, Tom goes to bed. M-O-O-N, that spells bed. Tom doesn’t like to be out after dark. Because of the boogies. Tom ... Tom ...” He fell silent, and the others looked at him uneasily. Tom had lapsed into dull silence. He came out of it. . . but not in the usual way. It was not a sudden reanimation, life flooding back in a rush, but a slow thing, reluctant, almost sad.

“Go west?” he said.

Stu laid a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Tom. If you can.”

“On the road.”

Ralph made a choked, muttering sound and walked around the house. Tom did not seem to notice. His gaze alternated between Stu and Nick.

“Travel at night. Sleep in the day.” Very slowly, in the dusk, Tom added: “And see the elephant.”

Nick nodded.

Larry brought Tom’s pack up from where it had rested beside the steps. Tom put it on slowly, dreamily.

“You want to be careful, Tom,” Larry said thickly.

“Careful. Laws, yes.”

Stu wondered belatedly if they should have given Tom a one-man tent as well, and rejected it. Tom would get all bollixed up trying to set up even a little tent.

“Nick,” Tom whispered. “Do I really have to do this?”

Nick put an arm around Tom and nodded slowly.

“All right.”

“Just stay on the big four-lane highway, Tom,” Larry said. “The one that says 70. Ralph is going to drive you down to the start of it on his motorcycle.”

“Yes, Ralph.” He paused. Ralph had come back around the house. He was swabbing at his eyes with his bandanna.

“You ready, Tom?” he asked gruffly.

“Nick? Will it still be my house when I get back?”

Nick nodded vigorously.

“Tom loves his house. Laws, yes.”

“We know you do, Tommy.” Stu could feel warm tears in the back of his own throat now.

“All right. I’m ready. Who am I riding with?”

“Me, Tom,” Ralph said. “Down to Route 70, remember?”

Tom nodded and began to walk toward Ralph’s cycle. After a moment Ralph followed him, his big shoulders slumped. Even the feather in his hatband seemed dejected. He climbed on the bike and kicked it alive. A moment later it pulled out onto Broadway and turned east. They stood together, watching them dwindle to a moving silhouette in the purple dusk marked by a moving headlight. Then the light disappeared behind the bulk of the Holiday Twin Drive-in and was gone.

Nick walked away, head down, hands in pockets. Stu tried to join him, but Nick shook his head and motioned him away. Stu went back to Larry.

“That’s that,” Larry said, and Stu nodded gloomily.

“You think we’ll ever see him again, Larry?”

“If we don’t, the seven of us—well, maybe not Fran, she was never for sending him—the rest of us are going to be eating and sleeping with the decision to send him for the rest of our lives. I wish sometimes I’d never heard of the motherfucking Free Zone Committee.”