The Stand (Original Edition) (72 page)

“As best I can,” he said. “What’s your thought, Harold?”

“Well, look. I see Nick and Glen’s point They recognize that the

Free Zone sees her as a theocratic symbol . . . and they’re pretty close to speaking for the Zone now, aren’t they?”

Stu sipped his coffee. “What do you mean, theocratic symbol?”

“I’d call it an earthly symbol of a covenant made with God,” Harold said, and his eyes veiled a little. “Like Holy Communion, or the Sacred Cows of India.”

Stu kindled a little at that. “Yeah, pretty good. Those cows . . . they let em walk the streets and cause traffic jams, right? They can go in and out of the stores, or decide to leave town altogether.” “Yes,” Harold agreed. “But most of those cows are sick, Stu. They’re always near the point of starvation. Some are tubercular. And all because they’re an aggregate symbol. The people are convinced God will take care of them, just as our people are convinced God will take care of Mother Abagail. But I have my own doubts about a God that says it’s right to let a poor dumb cow wander around in pain.”

Ralph looked momentarily uncomfortable, and Stu knew what he was feeling. He felt it himself, and it gave him a measure of his feelings about Mother Abagail. He felt that Harold was edging into blasphemy.

“Anyway,” Harold said briskly, dismissing the Sacred Cows of India. “We can’t change the way people feel about her—”

“And wouldn’t want to,” Ralph added quickly.

“Right!” Harold exclaimed. “After all, she brought us together. But my idea was that we mount our trusty cycles and spend the afternoon reconnoitering the west side of Boulder. If we stay fairly close, we can keep in touch with each other by walkie-talkie.”

Stu was nodding. This was the sort of thing he had wanted to do all along. Sacred Cows or not, God or not, it just wasn’t right to leave her to wander around on her own.

“And if we find her,” Harold said, “we can ask her if she wants anything.”

“Like a ride back to town,” Ralph chipped in.

“At least we can keep tabs on her,” Harold said.

“Okay,” Stu said. “I think it’s a helluva good idea, Harold. Just let me leave a note for Fran.”

Harold had asked for and gotten the twisting stretch of road between Boulder and Nederland, because he considered it to be the least likely area. He didn’t think
he
could walk from Boulder to

Nederland in one day, let alone that crazy old cunt. But it made a pleasant ride and gave him a chance to think.

Now, at quarter to seven, he was on his way back. His Honda was parked in a rest area and he was sitting at a picnic table, having a Coke and a few Slim Jims. The walkie-talkie that hung over the Honda’s handlebars crackled faintly with Ralph Brentner’s voice.

“. . . Sunrise Amphitheater ... no sign of her . . . storm’s over up here.”

Then Stu’s voice, stronger and closer. He was in Chautauqua Park, only four miles from Harold’s location. “Say again, Ralph.”

Ralph’s voice came again, really bellowing. Maybe he would give himself a stroke. That would be a lovely way to end the day. “No sign of her up here! I’m coming down before it gets dark! Over!” “Ten-four,” Stu said, sounding discouraged. “Harold, you there?” Harold got up, wiping Slim Jim grease on his jeans. “Harold? Calling Harold Lauder! You copy, Harold?”

Harold pointed his middle finger—yer fuckfinger, as the high school Neanderthals back in Ogunquit had called it—at the walkie-talkie; then he depressed the talk button and said pleasantly, but with just the right note of discouragement: “I’m here. I was off to one side . . . thought I saw something down in the ditch. It was just an old jacket. Over.”

“Yeah, okay. Why don’t you come down to Chautauqua, Harold? We’ll wait there for Ralph.”

Love to give orders, don’t you, suckhole? I might have something for you. Yes, I just might.

“Harold, you copy?”

“Sorry, I was woolgathering. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“You copying this, Ralph?”
Stu bellowed, making Harold wince. He gave Stu’s voice the finger again, grinning furtively as he did so.

“I’m on my way,” Ralph’s voice came faintly through the roar of static. “Over and out.”

Harold turned off the walkie-talkie, collapsed the antenna, and hung the radio on the handlebars again, but he sat astride the Honda for a moment without operating the kick-starter. He was wearing an army surplus flak jacket; the heavy padding was good when you were riding a cycle above six thousand feet, even in August. But the jacket served another purpose. It had a great many zippered pockets and in one of these was a Smith & Wesson .38. Harold took the pistol out and turned it over and over in his hands.

Tonight? Why not?

He had initiated this expedition on the chance that he might be alone with Stu long enough to do it. Now it looked as though he was going to have that chance in Chautauqua Park.

He hadn’t meant to go all the way to Nederland, a miserable little town nestled high above Boulder, a town whose only claim to fame was that Patty Hearst had once allegedly stayed there as a fugitive. But as he drove up and up, the Honda purring smoothly between his legs, the air as cold as a blunt razorblade against his face, something had happened—there had been a frightening yet exhilarating sense of magnetic attraction.

And parked on his cycle at the end of Nederland’s cheesy main street with the Honda’s neutral light glowing like a cat’s eye, listening to the winterwhine of the wind in the pines and the aspens, he had felt something more than mere magnetic attraction. He had felt a stupendous, irrational power coming out of the west, an attraction so great that he felt to closely contemplate it now would be to go mad. He felt that, if he ventured much further out on the arm of balance, any selfwill would be lost. He would go just as he was, emptyhanded.

And for that, although he could not be blamed, the dark man would kill him.

So he had turned away feeling the cold relief of a pre-suicidal man coming away from a long period of regarding a long drop. But he could go tonight, if he liked. Yes. He could kill Redman with a single bullet fired at pointblank range. Then just stay put, stay cool, until the Oklahoma sodbuster showed up. Another shot to the temple. No one would take alarm at the gunshots; game was plentiful, and lots of people had taken to banging away at the deer who wandered down into town.

It was ten to seven now. He could waste them both by seven-thirty. Fran would not raise an alarm until ten-thirty or later, and by then he could be well away, working his way west on his Honda, with his ledger in his knapsack. But it wouldn’t happen if he just sat here on his bike, letting time pass.

The Honda started on the second kick. It was a good bike. Harold smiled. Harold grinned. Harold positively radiated good cheer. He drove off toward Chautauqua Park.

Dusk was starting to close down when Stu heard Harold’s bike coming into the park. A moment later he saw the Honda’s headlamp flashing in and out between the trees that lined the climbing sweep of the drive. Then he could see Harold’s helmeted head turning right and left, looking for him.

Stu, who was sitting on the edge of a rock barbecue pit, waved and shouted. After a minute Harold saw him, waved back, and began to putt over in second gear.

After the afternoon the three of them had put in, Stu felt considerably better about Harold. Harold’s idea had been a damn good one even if it hadn’t panned out. And Harold had insisted on taking the Nederland road . . . must have been pretty cold in spite of his heavy jacket. As he pulled up, Stu saw that Harold’s perpetual grin looked more like a grimace; his face was strained and too white. Disappointed that things hadn’t worked out better, Stu guessed.

“Nothing at all, huh?” He asked Harold, jumping down nimbly from the top of the barbecue pit.

"Da nada **
Harold said. The grin reappeared, but it was automatic, without strength, like a rictus. His face still looked strange and deadly pale. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

“Never mind. It was a good idea. For all we know, she’s back in her house right now. If not, we can look again tomorrow.”

“That might be like looking for a body.”

Stu sighed. “Maybe . . . yeah, maybe. Why don’t you come back to supper with me, Harold?”

“What?” Harold seemed to flinch back in the gathering gloom under the trees. His grin looked more strained than ever.

“Supper,” Stu said patiently. “Look, Frannie’d be glad to see you, too.”

“Well, maybe,” Harold said. “But I’m . . . well, I had a thing for her, you know. Maybe it’s best if we . . . just let it go for now. Nothing personal. The two of you go well together. I know that.” His smile shone forth with renewed sincerity. It was infectious; Stu answered it.

“Your choice, Harold. But the door’s open, anytime.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I got to thank you,” Stu said seriously.

Harold blinked. “Me?”

“For helping us hunt when everybody else decided to let nature take her course. Even if it didn’t come to nothing. Will you shake with me?” Stu put his hand out. Harold stared at it blankly for a moment, and Stu didn’t think his gesture was going to be accepted.

Then Harold took his right hand out of his jacket pocket—it seemed to catch on something, the zipper, maybe—and shook Stu’s hand briefly. Harold’s hand was warm and a little sweaty.

Stu stepped in front of him, looking down the drive. “Ralph should be here by now. I hope he didn’t have an accident coming down that frigging mountain. He . . . there he is now.”

Stu walked out to the side of the road; a second headlamp was now flashing up the drive and playing hide-and-seek through the screening trees.

“Yes, that’s him,” Harold said in an odd flat voice behind Stu.

“Someone with him, too.”

“Wh-what?”

“There.” Stu pointed to a second motorcycle head lamp behind the first.

“Oh.” That queerly flat voice again. It caused Stu to turn around.

“You okay, Harold?”

“Just tired.”

The second vehicle belonged to Glen Bateman; it was a low-power moped, the closest to a motorcycle that he would come. And behind Ralph, Nick Andros was riding pillion. Nick had an invitation for all of them to come back to the house he and Ralph shared to have coffee and/or brandy. Stu agreed but Harold begged off, still looking strained and tired.

He’s so goddam disappointed,
Stu thought, and reflected that it was not only the first sympathy he had probably ever felt for Harold, but also that it was probably long overdue. He renewed Nick’s invitation himself, but Harold only shook his head and told Stu he’d had it for the day. He guessed he would go home and get some sleep.

By the time he got home, Harold was shaking so badly he could barely get his key in the front door. When he did get the door open, he darted in as if he suspected a maniac might be creeping up the walk behind him. He slammed the door, turned the lock, shot the bolt. Then he leaned against the door for a moment with his head back and his eyes shut, feeling on the verge of hysterical tears. When he had a grip on himself again, he felt his way down the hall to the living room and lit all three gas lanterns.

He sat in his favorite chair and closed his eyes. When his heart had slowed a little he went to the hearth, removed the loose stone, and removed his LEDGER. It soothed him. A ledger was where you kept track of debts owed, bills outstanding, accumulating interest. It was where you finally put paid to all accounts.

He sat back down, flipped to the place where he had stopped, hesitated, then wrote:
August 14,1980.
He wrote for nearly an hour and a half, his pen dashing back and forth line after line, page after page. When he was finished he read what he had written while he absently massaged his aching right hand.

He replaced the ledger and the covering stone. He was calm; he had written it all out of him; his resolve remained strong. That was good. The rage and fear and frustration had been safely transferred into the book, with a rock to hold it down while he slept.

Harold ran up one of his shades and looked out into the silent street. Looking up at the Flatirons he thought calmly about how close he had come to just going ahead anyway, just hauling out the .38 and trying to mow down all four of them. That would have fixed their reeking sanctimonious ad hoc committee. When he had finished with them they wouldn’t even have a fucking quorum left.

But at the last moment some fraying cord of sanity had held instead of giving way. He had been able? to let go of the gun and shake the betraying cracker’s hand. How, he would never know, but thank God he had. The mark of genius is its ability to bide—and so he would.

He was sleepy now; it had been a long and eventful day.

Unbuttoning his shirt, Harold turned out two of the three gas-lamps, and picked up the last to take into his bedroom. As he went through into the kitchen he stopped, frozen.

The door to the basement was standing open.

He went to it, holding the lamp aloft, and went down the first three steps. Fear came into his heart, driving the calmness out.

“Who’s here?” he called. No answer. He could see the air-hockey table. The posters. In the far corner, a set of gaily striped croquet mallets sat in their rack.

He went down another three steps. “Is someone here?”

No; he felt there was not. But that did not allay his fear.

He went the rest of the way down and held the lamp high above his head; across the room a monstrous shadow-Harold, as huge and black as the ape in the Rue Morgue, did likewise.

Was there something on the floor over there? Yes. There was.

He crossed behind the slotcar track to beneath the window where Fran had entered. On the floor was a spill of light brown grit. Harold set the light down beside the spill. In the center of it, as clear as a fingerprint, was the track of a sneaker or tennis shoe . . . not a waffle or zigzag pattern, but groups of circles and lines. He stared at it, burning it into his mind, and then kicked the dust into a light cloud, destroying the mark. His face was the face of a living waxwork in the light of the Coleman lamp.