The Stand (Original Edition) (34 page)

He looked at her for a moment, then dropped his eyes. A red blush was creeping up his neck.

“Because the police and courts are gone and you’re a woman and you’re pretty and some people . . . some men . . . might not be . . . be gentlemen. That’s why.”

His blush was so red now it was almost purple.

He’s talking about rape, she thought.
Rape.
But how could anybody want to rape me,
I’m-pregnant.
But no one knew that, not even Harold. And even if you spoke up, said to the intended rapist:
Will you please not do that because I'm-pregnant,
could you reasonably expect the rapist to reply,
Jeez, lady, I’m sorry, I’ll go rape some other girl?

“All right,” she said. “Guns. But we could still get as far as Wells today.”

“There’s something else I want to do here,” Harold said.

The cupola atop Moses Richardson’s barn was explosively hot. Sweat had been trickling down her body by the time they got to the hayloft, but by the time they reached the top of the rickety flight of stairs leading from the loft to the cupola it was rivering down her, darkening her blouse and molding it to her breasts.

“Do you really think this is necessary, Harold?”

“I don’t know.” He was carrying a bucket of white paint and a wide brush with the protective cellophane still on it. “But the barn overlooks US 1, and that’s the way most people would come, I think. Anyway, it can’t hurt.”

“It will hurt if you fall off and break your bones.” The heat was making her head ache, and her lunchtime Coke was sloshing around her stomach in a way that was extremely nauseating. “In fact, it would be the end of you.”

“I won’t fall,” Harold said nervously. He glanced at her. “Fran, you look sick.”

“It’s the heat,” she said faintly.

“Then go downstairs, for goodness’ sake. Lie under a tree. Watch the human fly as he does his death-defying act on the preciptious 10° slope of Moses Richardson’s barn roof.”

“Don’t joke. I still think it’s silly. And dangerous.”

“Yes, but I’ll feel better if I go through with it. Go on, Fran.”

She thought:
Why, he’s doing it for me.

He stood there, sweaty and scared, old cobwebs clinging to his naked, blubbery shoulders, his belly cascading over the waistband of his tight bluejeans, determined to not miss a bet, to do all the right things.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth lightly. “You be careful,” she said, and then went quickly down the stairs with the Coke sloshing in her belly, up-down-all-around, yeeeeccchh, she went quickly, but not so quickly that she didn’t see the stunned happiness come up in his eyes. She went down the nailed rungs from the hayloft to the straw-littered barn floor even faster because she knew she was going to puke now, and while she knew that it was the heat and the Coke and the baby, what might Harold think if he heard? So she wanted to get outside where he couldn’t hear. And she made it. Just.

Harold came down at quarter to four, his sunburn now flaming red, his arms splattered with white paint. Fran had napped uneasily under an elm in Richardson’s dooryard while he worked, never quite going under completely, listening for the rattle of shingles giving way and poor fat Harold’s despairing scream as he fell the ninety feet from the barn’s roof to the hard ground below. But it never came— thank God—and now he stood proudly before her—lawn-green feet, white arms, red shoulders.

They both gazed up at the barn roof. The fresh paint gleamed out sharp contrast to the faded green shingles, and the words painted there reminded Fran of the signs you sometimes came upon down South, painted across barn roofs—JESUS SAVES or CHEW RED INDIAN. Harold’s read:

HAVE GONE TO STOVINGTON, VT. PLAGUE CENTER 

US 1 TO WELLS

INTERSTATE 95 TO PORTLAND 

US 302 TO BARRE 

INTERSTATE 89 TO STOVINGTON 

LEAVING OGUNQUIT JULY 2, 1980

HAROLD EMERY LAUDER 

FRANCES GOLDSMITH

“I didn’t know your middle name,” Harold said apologetically. “That’s fine,” Frannie said, still looking up at the sign. The first line had been written just below the cupola window; the last, her name, just above the rain-gutter. “How did you get that last line on?” She asked.

“It wasn’t hard,” he said self-consciously. “I had to dangle my feet over a little, that’s all.”

“Oh, Harold. Why couldn’t you have just signed for yourself?” “Because we’re a team,” he said, and then looked at her a little apprehensively. “Aren’t we?”

“I guess we are . . . as long as you don’t kill yourself. Hungry?”

He beamed. “Hungry as a bear.”

“Then let’s go eat. And I’ll put some baby oil on your sunburn. You’re just going to have to wear your shirt, Harold. You won’t be able to sleep on that tonight.”

“I’ll sleep fine,” he said, and smiled at her. Frannie smiled back. They ate a supper of canned food and Kool-Aid (Frannie made it, and added sugar), and later, when it had begun to get dark, Harold came over to Fran’s house with something under his arm.

“It was Amy’s,” he said. “I found it in the attic. I think Mom and Dad gave it to her when she graduated from junior high. I don’t even know if it still works, but I got some batteries from the hardware store.” He patted his pockets, which were bulging with EverReady batteries.

It was a portable phonograph, the kind with the plastic cover, invented for teenage girls of thirteen or fourteen to take to beach and lawn parties. The kind of phonograph constructed with 45 singles in mind—the ones made by the Osmonds, Leif Garrett, John Travolta, Shaun Cassidy. She looked at it closely, and felt her eyes filling with tears.

“Well,” she said. “Let’s see.”

It did work. And for almost four hours they sat at the opposite ends of the couch, the portable phonograph on the coffee table before them, their faces waxed with silent and sorrowful fascination, listening as the music of a dead world filled the summer night.

At first Stu accepted the sound without question; it was such a typical part of a bright summer morning. He had just passed through South Ryegate, New Hampshire, and now the highway wound through a pretty country of overhanging elms that dappled the road with coins of moving sunlight. The underbrush on either side was thick—bright sumac, blue-gray juniper, lots of bushes he couldn’t name. The profusion of them was still a wonder to his eyes. On the left, an ancient rock wall meandered in and out of the brush, and on the right a small brook gurgled cheerily east. Every now and then small animals would move in the underbrush (yesterday he had been transfixed by the sight of a large doe standing on the white line of 302, scenting the morning air), and birds called raucously. And against that background of sound, the barking dog sounded like the most natural thing in the world.

He walked almost another mile before it occurred to him that the dog—closer now, by the sound—might be out of the ordinary after all. He had seen a great many dead dogs since leaving Stovington, but no live ones. Well, he supposed, the flu had killed most but not all of the people. Apparently it had killed most but not all of the dogs, as well. Probably it would be extremely people-shy by now. When it scented him, it would most likely crawl back into the bushes and bark hysterically at him until Stu left its territory.

He adjusted the straps of the Day-Glo pack he was wearing and refolded the handkerchiefs that lay under the straps at each shoulder. He was wearing a pair of Georgia Giants, and three days of walking had rubbed most of the new from them. On his head was a jaunty, wide-brimmed red felt hat, and there was an army carbine slung across his shoulder. He did not expect to run across marauders, but he had a vague idea that it might be a good idea to have a gun.

Fresh meat, maybe. Although when he had seen the deer yesterday, he had been too amazed and pleased to even think about shooting it.

The pack riding easily again, he went on .up the road. The dog sounded like it was just beyond the next bend. Maybe I’ll see him after all, Stu thought.

He had picked up 302 going east because he supposed that sooner or later it would take him to the ocean. He had made a kind of compact with himself: When I get to the ocean, I’ll decide what I’m going to do. Until then, I won’t think about it at all. His walk, now in its fourth day, had been a kind of healing process. He had thought about taking a ten-speed bike or maybe a motorcycle that he could push around the occasional crashes that blocked the road, but instead had decided to walk. He had always enjoyed hiking, and his body cried out for exercise. Until his escape from Stovington he had been cooped up for nearly two weeks, and he felt flabby and out of shape. He supposed that sooner or later his slow progress would make him impatient and he would get the bike or motorcycle, but for now he was content to hike east on this road, looking at whatever he wanted to look at, taking five when he wanted to, or, in the afternoon, dropping off for a snooze during the hottest part of the day. It was good for him to be doing this. Little by little the lunatic search for a way out was fading into memory, just something that had happened instead of a thing so vivid it brought cold sweat out onto his skin. The memory of that feeling of someone following him had been the hardest to shake. The first two nights on the road he had dreamed again and again of his final encounter with Elder, when Elder had come to carry out his orders. In the dreams Stu was always too slow with the chair. Elder stepped back out of its arc, pulled the trigger of his pistol, and Stu felt a heavy but painless thump in the middle of his chest, as if he had been hit by a thrown boxing glove weighted with lead shot. Over and over until he woke unrested in the morning, but so glad to be alive that he hardly realized it. Last night the dreams hadn’t come. He doubted if they would stop all at once, but he thought he might be walking the poison out of his system, little by little.

He came around the bend and there was the dog, an auburn-colored Irish setter. It barked joyously at the sight of Stu and ran up the road, toenails clicking on the composition surface, tail wagging frantically back and forth. It jumped up, placing its forepaws on Stu’s belly, and its forward motion made him stagger back a step.

“Whoa, boy,” he said, grinning.

The dog barked happily at the sound of his voice and leaped up again.

“Kojak!” a stem voice said, and Stu jumped and stared around. “Get down! Leave that man alone! You’re going to track all over his shirt! Miserable dog!”

Kojak put all four feet on the road again and walked around Stu with his tail between his legs. The tail was still wagging in suppressed joy, however, and Stu decided this one would never make much of a canine put-on artist.

Now he could see the owner of the voice—and of Kojak, it seemed like. A man of about sixty wearing a ragged sweater, old gray pants . . . and a beret. He was sitting on a piano stool and holding a palette. An easel with a canvas on it stood before him.

Now he stood up, placed the palette on the piano stool (under his breath Stu heard him mutter, “Now don’t forget and sit on that”), and walked toward Stu with his hand extended. Beneath the beret his fluffy grayish hair bounced in a small and mellow breeze.

“I hope you intend no foul play with that rifle, sir. Glen Bateman, at your service.”

Stu took the outstretched hand. “Stuart Redman. Don’t worry about the gun.”

“Do you like caviar?”

“Never tried it.”

“Then it’s time you did. And if you don’t care for it, there’s plenty of other things. Kojak, don’t jump. I know you’re thinking of renewing your crazed leaps—I can read you like a book—but control yourself. Always remember, Kojak, that control is what separates the higher orders from the lower. Control!”

His better nature thus appealed to, Kojak shrank down on his haunches and began to pant.

“I’m inviting you to lunch,” Bateman said. “You’re the first human being I’ve seen in nearly a week. Will you stay?”

“I’d be glad to.”

“Southerner, aren’t you?”

“East Texas.”

Bateman nodded and turned back to his picture, an indifferent watercolor of the woods across the road. He headed toward the piano stool.

“I wouldn’t sit there,” Stu said hastily.

“No, it wouldn’t do, would it? Thank you.” He changed course and headed toward the back of the small clearing. Stu saw there was an orange and white cooler chest in the shade back there, with what looked like a white lawn tablecloth folded on top of it. When Bateman fluffed it out, Stu saw that was what it was.

“Used to be part of the communion set at the Grace Baptist Church in Woodsville,” Bateman said. “I liberated it. I don’t think the Baptists will miss it. They’ve all gone home to Jesus. At least all the Woodsville Baptists have. What we have here is one old pagan communing with nature instead. Kojak, don’t step on the tablecloth. Control, always remember that, Kojak. In all you do, make control your watchword. Shall we step across the road and have a wash, Mr. Redman?”

“Make it Stu.”

“All right, I win.”

They went across the road and washed in the cold, clear water. Downstream from them Kojak lapped at the water and then bounded off into the woods, barking happily. He flushed a wood pheasant and Stu watched it explode up from the brush and thought with some surprise that just maybe everything would be all right. Somehow all right.

He didn’t care much for the caviar—it tasted like cold fish jelly— but Bateman also had a pepperoni, a salami, two tins of sardines, some slightly mushy apples, and a large box of Keebler fig bars. Stu ate hugely.

During the meal, which was eaten largely on saltines, Bateman told Stu he had been an assistant professor of sociology at Woodsville Community College. His wife had been dead ten years. They had been childless. Most of his colleagues had not cared for him, he said, and the feeling had been heartily mutual. “They thought I was a lunatic,” he said. “The strong possibility that they were right did nothing to improve our relations.”

As he divided the dessert (a Sara Lee poundcake) and handed Stu his half on a paper plate, he said, “I’m a horrible painter, horrible. But I simply tell myself that this July there is no one on earth painting better landscapes than Glendon Pequod Bateman, B.A., M.A., M.F.A. A cheap ego trip but mine own.”