The Stand (Original Edition) (48 page)

Bless im, he plays good. Me, I’m too old. Can’t make my fingers go that fast nohow. It’s the rheumatiz.

Nadine asked who she was. They were in a kind of forever place where the sun seemed to stand still one hour from darkness and the shadow of the swing Joe had set in motion would always travel back and forth across the weedy yard. Larry wished he could stay here forever, he and his family. This was a
good
place. The man with no face could never get him here, or Joe
(Leo)
, or Nadine.

Mother Abagail is what they call me. I’m the oldest woman in eastern Nebraska, I guess, and I still make my own biscuit. You come see me as quick as you can. We got to go on to the Free Zone and get settled before he gets wind of us. Things are gonna happen awful fast, I reckon.

A cloud came over the sun. The swing’s arc had decreased to nothing. Joe stopped playing with a jangle of strings, and Larry felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck. The old woman seemed not to notice.

Before who gets wind of us?
Nadine asked coldly, and Larry wished he could speak, cry out for her to take the question back before it could leap free and hurt them.

I guess you know, don’t you, woman?

No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You do, but I reckon you don’t know what he means for you
—
no, you don’t know that. We got the Rockies between us and him, praise God, but the mountains won’t keep him back long. That’s why we got to knit together. Out in Colorado. God came to me in a dream and showed me where.

No,
Nadine said in that same cold, fearful voice,
we’re going to Vermont, and that’s all. Just a short trip.

Your trip will be longer than ours, if’n you don’t fight off his power,
the old woman in Larry’s dream replied. She was looking at Nadine with great sadness.
This could be a good man you got here, woman. He wants to make something out of himself. Why don’t you cleave to him instead of using him?

No! We’re going to Vermont, to VERMONT!

The old woman looked at Nadine pityingly.
You’ll go straight to hell if you don’t watch close, woman. And when you get there you’ll find that hell is cold. Cold.

The dream broke up then, splitting into cracks of darkness that swallowed him. But something in that darkness was stalking him. It was cold and merciless, and soon he would see its grinning teeth.

But before that could happen he was awake. It was dawn, and the world was swaddled in a thick white groundfog that would burn off when the sun got up a bit more. Someone was next to him, and he saw that it wasn’t Nadine who had joined him in the night but Joe (in the dream Joe’s name had been something else but now he couldn’t remember what). The boy lay next to him, thumb corked in his mouth, shivering in his sleep, as if his own nightmare had gripped him. Larry wondered if Joe’s dreams were so different from his own . . . and he lay on his back, staring up into the white fog and thinking about that until the others woke up an hour later.

The fog had burned off by the time they had finished breakfast and packed their gear. As Nadine had said, Joe showed no qualms about riding behind Larry; in fact, he climbed on Larry’s bike without waiting to be asked.

“Slow,” Larry said for the fourth time. “We’re not going to hurry and have an accident.”

“Fine,” Nadine said. “Larry, I’m excited enough just to be going.”

They stopped for lunch under the tree by the brook where Larry had fallen asleep. He was relieved to find that cycling wasn’t nearly as bad as he had thought it might be; they were making fairly decent time, even though it was necessary to putt along the sidewalks at walking speed in the villages they came to along the way. Nadine was being extremely careful going around blind curves, and even on the open road she didn’t urge Larry to go any faster than the steady thirty-five-miles-an-hour pace he was setting. He thought that, barring bad weather, they would be in Stovington by July 19.

They stopped for supper west of Concord, where Nadine said they could save time on Lauder and Goldsmith’s route by taking 1-89.

“There’ll be a lot of stalled traffic,” Larry said doubtfully.

“We can weave in and out,” she said. “And use the breakdown lanes. The worst that can happen is we’ll have to backtrack to the nearest exit and go around on a secondary road.”

They went on for two hours after supper, and did indeed come upon a block that was impossible to skirt. A car-and-trailer combination had struck a gigantic Winnebago camper. The three of them, working together, were able to hoist the bikes over the highway guardrails, trundle them past the wreck, and then hoist them back onto the turnpike. It was exhausting work, and when the block was at last behind them, there was no question of going on. They spread their blankets near the two Hondas and slept. There were no dreams that night.

The following afternoon they came to a colossal smashup—there was no question of getting around this one. Over a dozen cars had been involved. They were only two miles beyond the Enfield exit and so they didn’t have far to backtrack, but all three of them were tired and discouraged. Nadine was particularly snappish, because her turnpike idea hadn’t worked very well. They stopped in the Enfield town park to rest.

“What did you do before, Nadine?” Larry asked. “Did you teach?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Little kids?”

“First and second grades.”

That explained a lot about her attachment to Joe, and her calm, efficient handling of him.

“How did you guess that, Larry?”

“I used to date a speech therapist from Oakland,” he said. “I know that sounds like the start of some weird dirty joke, but it’s the truth. She worked for the Oakland school system. Younger grades. Kids with harelips, cleft palates, deaf kids, the works. She used to say that correcting speech defects in children was just showing them alternate ways of getting certain sounds. Show them, say the word. Over and over, until something in the kid’s head clicked. And when she talked about the click happening, she looked the way you did when Joe said ‘You’re welcome.’ ”

“Did I?” She smiled a little wistfully. “I love the little ones. Some of my kids were bruised, but none of them were spoiled, not irrevocably. The little ones are the only good human beings.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Children
are
good. If you work with them, you get to be a romantic. That’s not so bad. Wasn’t your speech therapist friend happy in her work?”

“Yeah. She liked it. Were you married, Nadine?”

“Married? No. Never married.” She looked down at her hands, which were plucking grass nervously. “I’m the original old maid schoolteacher, younger than I look but older than I feel. Thirty-seven.” She touched her white-streaked hair. “Premature. My grandmother’s hair was completely white by the time she was forty. I think I’m going to last five years longer.”

“Where did you teach?”

“Pittsfield. A small private school. Very exclusive. Ivy-covered walls, all the latest playground equipment. The car pool was two Thunderbirds—one of them a 1957—three Mercedes, a couple of Lincolns and a Chrysler Imperial. Damn the energy crisis, full speed ahead.” “You must have been good.”

“I was,” she said, and smiled. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

He put an arm around her and she stiffened. “I wish you wouldn’t.” “You don’t want me to?”

“No. I don’t.”

He drew his arm back, baffled. She
did
want him to, that was the thing; he could feel her wanting coming off her in waves. Her color was very high now, and she was looking desperately down at her hands, which had uprooted a drift of grass. Her eyes were shiny, on the verge of tears.

“Nadine—”
(honey is that you?)

She looked up and he saw she was past the verge; she was crying. She was about to speak when Joe strolled up, carrying his guitar case. They looked at him guiltily, as if they had been discovered doing something rather more personal than talking.

“Lady,” Joe said conversationally.

“What?” Larry asked, startled and not tracking very well.

“Lady.” Joe jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

Larry and Nadine looked at each other. Suddenly there was a new voice, highpitched and choking with emotion, almost as startling as the voice of God.

“Thank heaven!” it cried. “Oh, thank heaven!”

They stood up and saw a woman half-running up the street toward them. She was smiling and crying at the same time.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “Thank heaven—”

She swayed and might have fainted if Larry hadn’t been there to steady her until her dizziness passed. Larry guessed her age at twenty-five. She was dressed in jeans and a plain white cotton blouse. Her blue eyes stared desperately at Larry, as if trying to convince the brain behind them that this was not a hallucination, that the three people she saw were really here.

“I’m Larry Underwood. The lady is Nadine Cross. The boy is Joe. We’re all very happy to meet you.”

The woman continued to stare at him wordlessly for a moment, and then walked slowly away from him and toward Nadine. “I’m so pleased,” she began, “so pleased to meet you.” She stumbled a little. “Oh my God, are you really people?”

“Yes,” Nadine said.

The woman put her arms around Nadine and sobbed. Nadine held her. Joe stood in the street by a stalled pickup truck, his guitar case

in one hand, his thumb in his mouth. At last he went to Larry and Larry held his hand. The two of them watched the women solemnly.

Her name was Lucy Swann and she was eager to go with them to Stovington and excited at the prospect of meeting Harold and Frances. Larry found a knapsack for her, and Nadine went with her to her house to help her pack . . . two changes of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a raincoat. And pictures of her late husband and daughter.

They camped that night in Quechee, now over the state line and into Vermont. Lucy told them her story; it was not much different from the others they would hear.

Her husband and daughter had died within a day of each other. She nursed them as best she could, and when they were gone she waited to catch it and die herself. By July 3, she was the only living soul in Enfield, New Hampshire.

“Wes and me, we had to get married,” Lucy said. “That was the summer of ’74, just after I graduated high school. My mom and dad didn’t want me to marry him. They wanted me to go away to have the baby and then give her up. But I wouldn’t. My mom said it would end in a divorce. My dad said Wes was just a no-account, shiftless man. I said, maybe, we’ll see. And we settled down real good, the three of us. It was more Marcy than me that settled Wes down. He thought the sun rose and set on that baby.” With a sigh that was more than half a sob, she said: “I sure never thought it would end like this.”

“No one did, Lucy,” Larry said.

“I guess I could have gotten along. I was, until I started having all those bad dreams.”

Larry’s head jerked up. “Dreams?” Joe was also looking at her. A moment before he had been nodding out, but now he was staring at Lucy, his eyes gleaming.

“Bad dreams, nightmares,” Lucy said. “They’re not always the same. Mostly it’s a man chasing me, and I can never see exactly what he looks like because he’s all wrapped up in a cloak. And he stays in the shadows and the alleys. I got so I was afraid to go to sleep. But now maybe I’ll—”

“Brrr-ack man!” Joe cried suddenly, so fiercely they all jumped. He leaped to his feet and held his arms out like a miniature Bela

Lugosi, his fingers hooked into claws. “Brrr-ack man! Bad dreams! Bad cares! Cares me!”

Scares me, that’s what he’s trying to say,
Larry thought.
Bad dreams, bad scares. Joe, I couldn’t agree more.

“This is crazy,” he said aloud, and then stopped. They were all

looking at him. Suddenly the darkness seemed very dark indeed, and Lucy looked frightened again.

“Lucy, do you ever dream about. . . well, a place in Nebraska?”

“I had a dream one night about an old Negro woman,” she said, “but it didn’t last very long. She said something like ‘You come see me.’ Then I was back in Enfield and that . . . that scary guy was chasing me. Then I woke up.”

Larry looked at her so long that she colored and dropped her eyes.

He looked at Joe. “Joe, do you ever dream about . . . uh, corn? An old woman? A guitar?” Joe only looked at him from Nadine’s encircling arm.

“Leave him alone, you’ll upset him more,” Nadine said, but she was the one who sounded upset.

“A house, Joe? A little house with the porch up on jacks?”

He thought he saw a gleam in Joe’s eyes.

“Stop it, Larry!” Nadine said.

Inspiration struck. “A swing, Joe? A swing made out of a tire?”

Joe jerked in Nadine’s arms. She tried to hold him, but he broke through. “The swing!” Joe said exultantly. “The swing! The swing!” He whirled away from them and pointed first at Nadine, then at Larry, then at Lucy. “Her! You! Lots!”

Lucy Swann looked stunned. “The swing,” she said. “I remember that, too.” She looked at Larry, scared. “Why are we all having the same dream? How can that be? Is someone using a ray on us?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at Nadine. “Have you had them too?” “I don’t dream,” she said, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Are you sure—”

“I told you I don’t dream!” Her voice was sharp, nearly hysterical. “Can’t you just leave me alone? Do you have to badger me?”

She got up and left the fire, almost running.

Lucy looked after her uncertainly for a moment and then stood up. “I’ll go after her.”

“Yeah, you better. Thanks, Lucy.”

She came back with Nadine shortly. They had both been crying, Larry saw, but they seemed to be on good terms now.

“I’m sorry,” Nadine said. “It’s just that I’m always upset. It comes out in funny ways, I guess. And I’m tired.”

The subject did not come up again. They sat and listened to Joe run through his repertoire. He was getting very good indeed now, and in with the hootings and grunts, fragments of the lyrics were coming through.