The Stand Read online

  "No, Jess," she said, and her voice was quite calm.

  "I mean it!" he said with startling vehemence, as if he had seen her struggling with laughter.

  "I know you do," she said. "But I'm not ready to get married. I know that about me, Jess. It has nothing to do with you."

  "What about the baby?"

  "I'm going to have it."

  "And give it up?"

  "I haven't decided."

  For a moment he was silent and she could hear other voices in other rooms. They had their own problems, she supposed. Baby, the world is a daytime drama. We love our lives, and so we look for the guiding light as we search for tomorrow.

  "I wonder about that baby," Jesse said finally. She really doubted if he did, but it was maybe the only thing he could have said that would cut her. It did.

  "Jess--"

  "So where are you going?" he asked briskly. "You can't stay at the Harborside all summer. If you need a place, I can look around in Portland. "

  "I've got a place."

  "Where, or am I not supposed to ask?"

  "You're not supposed to," she said, and bit her tongue for not finding a more diplomatic way of saying it.

  "Oh," he said. His voice was queerly flat. Finally he said cautiously, "Can I ask you something and not piss you off, Frannie? Because I really want to know. It's not a rhetorical question or anything."

  "You can ask," she agreed warily. Mentally she did gird herself not to be pissed off, because when Jess prefaced something like that, it was usually just before he came out with some hideous and totally unaware piece of chauvinism.

  "Don't I have any rights in this at all?" Jess asked. "Can't I share the responsibility and the decision?"

  For a moment she was pissed off, and then the feeling was gone. Jess was just being Jess, trying to protect his image of himself to himself, the way all thinking people do so they can get to sleep at night. She had always liked him for his intelligence, but in a situation like this, intelligence could be a bore. People like Jess--and herself, too--had been taught all their lives that the good thing to do was commit and be active. Sometimes you had to hurt yourself--and badly--to find out it could be better to lie back in the tall weeds and procrastinate. His toils were kind, but they were still toils. He didn't want to let her get away.

  "Jesse," she said, "neither of us wanted this baby. We agreed on the pill so the baby wouldn't happen. You don't have any responsibility."

  "But--"

  "No, Jess," she said, quite firmly.

  He sighed.

  "Will you get in touch when you get settled?"

  "I think so."

  "Are you still planning to go back to school?"

  "Eventually. I'm going to take the fall semester off. Maybe with something CED."

  "If you need me, Frannie, you know where I'll be. I'm not running out."

  "I know that, Jesse."

  "If you need dough--"

  "Yes."

  "Get in touch. I won't press you, but... I'll want to see you."

  "All right, Jess."

  "Goodbye, Fran."

  "Goodbye."

  When she hung up the goodbyes had seemed too final, the conversation unfinished. It struck her why. They had not added "I love you," and that was a first. It made her sad and she told herself not to be, but the telling didn't help.

  The last call had come around noon, and it was from her father. They had had lunch the day before yesterday, and he told her he was worried about the effect this was having on Carla. She hadn't come to bed last night; she had spent it in the parlor, poring over the old genealogical records. He had gone in around eleven-thirty to ask her when she was coming up. Her hair had been down, flowing over her shoulders and the bodice of her nightgown, and Peter said she looked wild and not strictly in touch with things. That heavy book was on her lap and she hadn't even looked up at him, only continued to turn the pages. She said she wasn't sleepy. She would be up in a while. She had a cold, Peter told her as they sat in a booth at the Comer Lunch, more looking at hamburgers than eating them. The sniffles. When Peter asked her if she would like a glass of hot milk, she didn't answer at all. He had found her yesterday morning asleep in the chair, the book on her lap.

  When she finally woke up she had seemed better, more herself, but her cold was worse. She dismissed the idea of having Dr. Edmonton in, saying it was just a chest cold. She had put Vicks on her chest, and a flannel square of cloth, and she thought her sinuses were clearing already. But Peter hadn't cared for the way she looked, he told Frannie. Although she refused to let him take her temperature, he thought she was running a couple of degrees of fever.

  He had called Fran today just after the first thunderstorm had begun. The clouds, purple and black, had piled up silently over the harbor, and the rain began, at first gentle and then torrential. As they talked she could look out her window and see the lightning stab down at the water beyond the breakwater, and each time it happened there would be a little scratching noise on the wire, like a phonograph needle digging a record.

  "She's in bed today," Peter said. "She finally agreed to let Tom Edmonton take a look at her."

  "Has he been yet?"

  "He just left. He thinks she's got the flu."

  "Oh, Lord," Frannie said, closing her eyes. "That's no joke for a woman her age."

  "No, it isn't." He paused. "I told him everything, Frannie. About the baby, about the fight you and Carla had. Tom's taken care of you since you were a baby yourself, and he keeps his lip buttoned. I wanted to know if that could have caused this. He said no. Flu is flu."

  "Flu made who," Fran said bleakly.

  "Pardon?"

  "Never mind," Fran said. Her father was amazingly broad-minded, but an AC/DC fan he was not. "Go on."

  "Well, there's not much further to go, hon. He said there's a lot of it around. A particularly nasty breed. It seems to have migrated out of the south, and New York is swamped with it."

  "But sleeping in the parlor all night--" she began doubtfully.

  "Actually, he said being in an upright position was probably better for her lungs and her bronchial tubes. He didn't say anything else, but Alberta Edmonton belongs to all the organizations Carla belongs to, so he didn't have to. Both of us knew she's been inviting something like this, Fran. She's president of the Town Historical Committee, she's spending twenty hours a week in the library, she's secretary of the Women's Club and the Lovers of Literature Club, she's been running the March of Dimes here in town since before Fred died, and last winter she took on the Heart Fund, for good measure. On top of all that she's been trying to drum up interest in a Southern Maine Genealogical Society. She's run down, worn out. And that's part of the reason she blew up at you. All Edmonton said was that she had the welcome mat out for the first evil germ that passed her way. That's all he had to say. Frannie, she's getting old and she doesn't want to. She's been working harder than I have."

  "How sick is she, Daddy?"

  "She's in bed, drinking juice and taking the pills that Tom prescribed. I took the day off, and Mrs. Halliday is going to come in and sit with her tomorrow. She wants Mrs. Halliday so they can work out an agenda for the July meeting of the Historical Society." He sighed windily and lightning scratched the wire again. "I sometimes think she wants to die in harness."

  Timidly, Fran said: "Do you think she'd mind if I--"

  "Right now she would. But give her time, Fran. She'll come around."

  Now, four hours later, tying her rain scarf over her hair, she wondered if her mother would come around. Maybe if she gave up the baby, no one in town would ever get wind of it. That was unlikely, though. In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness. And of course if she kept the baby... but she wasn't really thinking of that, was she? Was she?

  She could feel guilt working in her as she pulled on her light coat. Her mother was run down, of course she was. Fran had seen that when she came home from college and the two of them exchanged kisses
on the cheek. Carla had bags under her eyes, her skin looked too yellow, and the gray in her hair, which was always beauty-shop-neat, had progressed visibly in spite of the thirty-dollar rinses. But still...

  She had been hysterical, absolutely hysterical. And Frannie was left asking herself exactly how she was going to assess responsibility if her mother's flu developed into pneumonia, or if she had some kind of breakdown. Or even died. God, what an awful thought. That couldn't happen, please God no, of course not. The drugs she was taking would knock it out, and once Frannie was out of her line of visibility and incubating her little stranger quietly in Somersworth, her mother would recover from the knock she had been forced to take. She would--

  The phone began to ring.

  She looked at it blankly for a moment, and outside more lightning flickered, followed by a clap of thunder so close and vicious that she jumped, wincing.

  Jangle, jangle, jangle.

  But she had had her three calls, who else could it be? Debbie wouldn't need to call her back, and she didn't think Jess would, either. Maybe it was "Dialing for Dollars." Or a Saladmaster salesman. Maybe it was Jess after all, giving it the old college try.

  As she went to pick it up, she felt sure it was her father and that the news would be worse. It's a pie, she told herself. Responsibility is a pie. Some of the responsibility goes with all the charity work she does, but you're only kidding if you think you're not going to have to cut a big, juicy, bitter piece for yourself. And eat every bite.

  "Hello?"

  There was nothing but silence for a moment and she frowned, puzzled, and said hello again.

  Then her father said, "Fran?" and made a strange, gulping sound. "Frannie?" That gulping sound again and Fran realized with dawning horror that her father was fighting back tears. One of her hands crept to her throat and clutched at the knot where the rain-scarf was tied.

  "Daddy? What is it? Is it Mom?"

  "Frannie, I'll have to pick you up. I'll ... just swing by and pick you up. That's what I'll do."

  "Is Mom all right?" she screamed into the phone. Thunder whacked over the Harborside again and frightened her and she began to cry. "Tell me, Daddy!"

  "She got worse, that's all I know," Peter said. "About an hour after I talked to you she got worse. Her fever went up. She started to rave. I tried to get Tom... and Rachel said he was out, that a lot of people were really sick... so I called the Sanford Hospital and they said their ambulances were out on calls, both of them, but they'd add Carla to the list. The list, Frannie, what the hell is this list, all of a sudden? I know Jim Warrington, he drives one of the Sanford ambulances, and unless there's a car wreck on 95 he sits around and plays gin rummy all day. What's this list?" He was nearly screaming.

  "Calm down, Daddy. Calm down. Calm down." She burst into tears again and her hand left the knot in her scarf and went to her eyes. "If she's still there, you better take her yourself."

  "No... no, they came about fifteen minutes ago. And Christ, Frannie, there were six people in the back of that ambulance. One of them was Will Ronson, the man who runs the drugstore. And Carla... your mother... she came out of it a little as they put her in and she just kept saying, 'I can't catch my breath, Peter, I can't catch my breath, why can't I breathe?' Oh, Christ," he finished in a breaking, childish voice that frightened her.

  "Can you drive, Daddy? Can you drive over here?"

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, sure." He seemed to be pulling himself together.

  "I'll be on the front porch."

  She hung up and went down the stairs quickly, her knees trembling. On the porch she saw that, although it was still raining, the clouds of this latest thundershower were already breaking up and late afternoon sun was beaming through. She looked automatically for the rainbow and saw it, far out over the water, a misty and mystic crescent. Guilt gnawed and worried at her, furry bodies inside her belly, in where that other thing was, and she began to cry again.

  Eat your pie, she told herself as she waited for her father to come. It tastes terrible, so eat your pie. You can have seconds, even thirds. Eat your pie, Frannie, eat every bite.

  CHAPTER 21

  Stu Redman was frightened.

  He looked out the barred window of his new room in Stovington, Vermont, and what he saw was a small town far below, miniature gas station signs, some sort of mill, a main street, a river, the turnpike, and beyond the turnpike the granite backbone of far western New England--the Green Mountains.

  He was frightened because this was more like a jail cell than a hospital room. He was frightened because Denninger was gone. He hadn't seen Denninger since the whole crazy three-ring circus moved from Atlanta to here. Deitz was gone, too. Stu thought that maybe Denninger and Deitz were sick, perhaps dead already.

  Somebody had slipped. Either that, or the disease that Charles D. Campion had brought to Arnette was a lot more communicable than anyone had guessed. Either way, the integrity of the Atlanta Plague Center had been breached, and Stu thought that everyone who had been there was now getting a chance to do a little firsthand research on the virus they called A-Prime or the superflu.

  They still did tests on him here, but they seemed desultory. The schedule had become slipshod. Results were scrawled down and he had a suspicion that someone looked at them cursorily, shook his head, and dumped them in the nearest shredder.

  That wasn't the worst, though. The worst was the guns. The nurses who came in to take blood or spit or urine were now always accompanied by a soldier in a white-suit, and the soldier had a gun in a plastic Baggie. The Baggie was fastened over the wrist of the soldier's right gauntlet. The gun was an army-issue .45, and Stu had no doubt that, if he tried any of the games he had tried with Deitz, the .45 would tear the end of the Baggie into smoking, burning shreds and Stu Redman would become a Golden Oldie.

  If they were just going through the motions now, then he had become expendable. Being under detention was bad. Being under detention and being expendable... that was very bad.

  He watched the six o'clock news very carefully every night now. The men who had attempted the coup in India had been branded "outside agitators" and shot. The police were still looking for the person or persons who had blown a power station in Laramie, Wyoming, yesterday. The Supreme Court had decided 63 that known homosexuals could not be fired from civil service jobs. And for the first time, there had been a whisper of other things.

  AEC officials in Miller County, Arkansas, had denied there was any chance of a reactor meltdown. The atomic power plant in the small town of Fouke, about thirty miles from the Texas border, had been plagued with minor circuitry problems in the equipment that controlled the pile's cooling cycle, but there was no cause for alarm. The army units in that area were merely a precautionary measure. Stu wondered what precautions the army could take if the Fouke reactor did indeed go China Syndrome. He thought the army might be in southwestern Arkansas for other reasons altogether. Fouke wasn't all that far from Arnette.

  Another item reported that an East Coast flu epidemic seemed to be in the early stages--the Russian strain, nothing to really worry about except for the very old and the very young. A tired New York City doctor was interviewed in a hallway of Brooklyn's Mercy Hospital. He said the flu was exceptionally tenacious for Russian-A, and he urged viewers to get flu boosters. Then he suddenly started to say something else, but the sound cut off and you could only see his lips moving. The picture cut back to the newscaster in the studio, who said: "There have been some reported deaths in New York as a result of this latest flu outbreak, but contributing causes such as urban pollution and perhaps even the AIDS virus have been present in many of those fatal cases. Government health officials emphasize that this is Russian-A flu, not the more dangerous Swine flu. In the meantime, old advice is good advice, the doctors say: stay in bed, get lots of rest, drink fluids, and take aspirin for the fever."

  The newscaster smiled reassuringly... and off-camera, someone sneezed.

  The sun was touching the hori
zon now, tinting it a gold that would turn to red and fading orange soon. The nights were the worst. They had flown him to a part of the country that was alien to him, and it was somehow more alien at night. In this early summer season the amount of green he could see from his window seemed abnormal, excessive, a little scary. He had no friends; as far as he knew all the people who had been on the plane with him when it flew from Braintree to Atlanta were now dead. He was surrounded by automatons who took his blood at gunpoint. He was afraid for his life, although he still felt fine and had begun to believe he wasn't going to catch It, whatever It was.

  Thoughtfully, Stu wondered if it would be possible to escape from here.

  CHAPTER 22

  When Creighton came in on June 24, he found Starkey looking at the monitors, his hands behind his back. He could see the old man's West Point ring glittering on his right hand, and he felt a wave of pity for him. Starkey had been cruising on pills for ten days, and he was close to the inevitable crash. But, Creighton thought, if his suspicion about the phone call was correct, the real crash had already occurred.

  "Len," Starkey said, as if surprised. "Good of you to come in."

  "De nada, " Creighton said with a slight smile.

  "You know who that was on the phone."

  "It was really him, then?"

  "The President, yes. I've been relieved. The dirty alderman relieved me, Len. Of course I knew it was coming. But it still hurts. Hurts like hell. It hurts coming from that grinning, gladhanding sack of shit."

  Len Creighton nodded.

  "Well," Starkey said, passing a hand over his face. "It's done. Can't be undone. You're in charge now. He wants you in Washington as soon as you can get there. He'll have you on the carpet and he'll chew your ass to a bloody rag, but you just stand there and yessir him and take it. We've salvaged what we can. It's enough. I'm convinced it's enough."

  "If so, this country ought to get down on its knees to you."

  "The throttle burned my hand, but I ... I held it as long as I could, Len. I held it." He spoke with quiet vehemence, but his eyes wandered back to the monitor, and for a moment his mouth quivered infirmly. "I couldn't have done it without you."