The Stand (Original Edition) Read online

  A conspiratorial whisper wafted its way up from below: “Hey, you . . . you on the balcony . . . psssst!”

  “Pssst,” Frannie whispered to herself. “Pssst, oh great.”

  She had to get out before she started hee-hawing away like a donkey. She had never been able to hold in her laughter once it got hold of her. She ran fleetly across the darkened bedroom, snatched a more substantial—and demure—wrapper from the back of the bathroom door, and went down the hall struggling it on, her face working like a rubber mask. She let herself out onto the landing and got down one flight before the laughter escaped her and flew free. She went down the lower two flights laughing wildly.

  The man—a young man, she saw now—had picked himself up and was brushing himself off. He was slim and well built, most of his face covered with a beard that might be blond or possibly sandy-red by daylight. There were dark circles under his eyes, but he was smiling a rueful little smile.

  “What did you knock over?” he asked. “It sounded like a piano.”

  “It was a vase,” she said. “It . . . it . . .” But then the giggles caught her again and she could only point a finger at him and laugh quietly and shake her head and then hold her aching belly again. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You really looked funny ... I know that’s a hell of a thing to say to somebody you just met, but. . . oh my! you did!”

  “If this was the old days,” he said, grinning, “my act would be to sue you for at least a quarter of a million. Whiplash. Judge, I looked up and this young woman was peering down at me. Yes, I believe she was making a face. Her face was on, at any rate. We find for the plaintiff, this poor boy. Also for the bailiff. There will be a ten-minute recess.”

  They laughed together a little. The young man was wearing clean faded jeans and a dark blue shirt. The summer night was warm and kind, and Frannie was beginning to be glad she had come out.

  “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Fran Goldsmith, would it?”

  “It so happens. But I don’t know you.”

  “Larry Underwood. We just came in today. Actually, I was looking for a fellow named Harold Lauder. They said he was living at 261 Pearl along with Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith and some other people.”

  That dried her giggles up. “Harold was in the building when we first got to Boulder, but he split quite a while ago. He’s on Arapahoe now, on the west side of town. I can give you his address if you want it, and directions.”

  “I’d appreciate that. But I’ll wait until tomorrow to go over, I guess. I’m not risking this action again.”

  “Do you know Harold?” she asked.

  “I do and I don’t,” Larry said. “The same way I do and don’t know you. Although I have to be honest and say you don’t look the way I pictured you. In my mind I saw you as a Valkyrie-type blonde right out of a Frank Frazetta painting, probably with a .45 on each hip. But I’m pleased to meet you anyway.” He stuck out his hand and Frannie shook it with a bewildered little smile.

  ‘‘I’m not getting you.”

  “Sit down on the curb a minute and I’ll tell you.”

  She sat. A ghost of a breeze riffled up the street, shuffling scraps of paper and making the old elms move on the courthouse lawn.

  He held up the long-barreled gun and it wasn’t a gun at all; it was a wine bottle with a long neck. She tilted the label to the starlight and could just barely read the large print—BORDEA UX at the top, and at the bottom, the date: 1947.

  “The best vintage Bordeaux in this century,” he said. “At least that’s what an old friend of mine used to say. His name was Rudy. God love his soul.”

  “That’s for Harold?”

  “That and something else,” he said. He took something out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She didn’t have to turn this up to the starlight to read the print, large orange letters outlined with blue. She burst out laughing. “A Payday candybar!” she exclaimed. “Harold’s . . . but how would you know that?”

  “That’s the story.”

  “Then tell me!”

  “Well, then. Once upon a time there was a fellow named Larry Underwood who, for various reasons, had to leave California in a hurry. He came to New York where his mother lived. And behold, the Wicked Witch of the West, or some Pentagon assholes, visited the country with a great plague, and before you could say ‘Here comes Captain Trips,’ just about everyone in New York was dead. Now, Larry was one of the lucky ones. He made it out of the city with a lady named Rita who wasn’t very well equipped to deal with what had happened. And, unfortunately, Larry wasn’t very well equipped to help her deal with it.”

  “No one had the equipment.”

  “But some developed it quicker than others. Anyhow, Larry and Rita headed for the coast of Maine. They made it as far as Vermont, and the lady OD’d on sleeping pills.”

  “Oh Larry, that is too bad.”

  “Larry took it very personally. In fact, he took it as a personal judgment on his strength of character. In fact, he had been told by one or two people who should have known that his most incorruptible character trait was a splendid streak of self-interest, which came shining through like a Day-Glo madonna sitting on the dashboard of a ’59 Cadillac.”

  Frannie shifted a bit on the curb.

  “I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable, but all of this has been sloshing around inside for a long time. Larry continued on to Maine because there didn’t seem to be anyplace else to go. He was having very bad dreams by then, but since he was alone he had no way of knowing that other people were having them, too. He simply assumed it was another symptom of his continuing mental breakdown. But eventually he made it to a small coastal town named Wells, where he met a woman named Nadine Cross and a boy whose name turns out to be Leo Rockway.”

  “Wells,” she marveled softly.

  ‘‘Anyway, the three travelers sort of flipped a coin to see which way they should head on US 1, and since it came up tails, they headed down south where they eventually came to—”

  “Ogunquit!” Frannie said, delighted.

  “Just so. And there, on a barn, in huge letters, I made my first acquaintance with Harold Lauder and Frances Goldsmith.”

  “Harold’s sign! Oh Larry, he will be pleased!”

  “We followed the directions on the barn to Stovington, and the directions at Stovington to Nebraska and the directions at Mother Abagail’s house to Boulder. We met people along the way. One of them was a girl named Lucy Swann, who’s my woman. I’d like you to meet her sometime. I think you’d like her.

  “By then something had happened that Larry didn’t really want. His little party of four grew to six. The six met four more in upstate New York, and our party absorbed theirs. By the time we made it to Harold’s sign in Mother Abagail’s dooryard there were sixteen of us, and we picked up another three just as we were leaving. Larry was in charge of this brave band. There was no vote or anything like that. It just was. And he really didn’t want the responsibility. It was a drag. It was keeping him awake nights. He started popping Turns and Rolaids. But it’s funny the way your mind boxes your mind. I couldn’t let it go. And I—he—was always afraid he was going to fuck it up righteously, that he’d get up some morning and someone would be dead in their sleeping bag the way Rita was that time in Vermont and everyone would be standing around pointing their fingers and saying, ‘It’s your fault. You didn’t know any better and it’s your fault.’ And that was something I couldn’t talk about, not even to the Judge—”

  “Who’s the Judge?”

  “Judge Farris. An old guy from Peoria. I guess he really was a judge at one time back in the early fifties, circuit judge or something, but he’d been retired a long time when the flu hit. He’s plenty sharp, though. When he looks at you, you’d swear he has X-ray eyes. Anyhow, Harold was important to me. He got to be more important as there got to be more people. In direct ratio, you might say.” He chuckled a little. “That barn. Man! The last line of that sign, the one with your name, wa
s so low I figured he really must have been hanging ass out to the wind when he painted it on.”

  “Yes. I was sleeping when he did that. I would have made him stop.”

  “I started to get a sense of him,” Larry said. “I found a Payday wrapper in the cupola of that barn in Ogunquit, and then the carving on the beam—”

  “What carving?”

  She felt that Larry was studying her in the dark, and she pulled her robe a little closer around her . . . not a gesture of modesty, because she felt no threat from this man, but one of nervousness.

  “Just his initials,” Larry said casually. “H.E.L. If that had been the end of it, I wouldn’t be here now. But then at the motorcycle dealership in Wells—”

  “We were there!”

  “I know you were. I saw a couple of bikes gone. What made an even bigger impression was that Harold had siphoned some gas from the underground tank. You must have helped him, Fran. I damn near lost my fingers.”

  “No, I didn’t have to. Harold hunted around until he found something he called a plug-vent—”

  Larry groaned and slapped his forehead. “Plug-vent! Jesus! I never even looked for where they were venting the tank! You mean he just hunted around . . . pulled a plug . . . and put his hose in?” “Well . . . yes.”

  “Oh, Harold,” Larry said in a tone of admiration that she had never heard before, at least not in connection with Harold Lauder’s name. “Well, that’s one of his tricks I missed. Anyway, we got to Stovington. And Nadine was so upset she fainted.”

  “I cried,” Fran said. “I bawled until it seemed I’d never stop. I just had my mind made up that when we got there, someone would welcome us in and say, ‘Hi! Step right inside, cafeteria’s on your left.’ ” She shook her head. “That seems so silly now.”

  “I was not dismayed. Dauntless Harold had been there before me, left his sign, and gone on. I felt like a tenderfoot Easterner following that Indian from The Pathfinder.”

  His view of Harold both fascinated and amazed her. Hadn’t Stu really been leading the party by the time they left Vermont and struck out for Nebraska? She couldn’t honestly remember. By then they had all been preoccupied with the dreams. Larry was reminding her of things she had forgotten or worse, had taken for granted. Harold risking his life to put that sign on the barn—it had seemed like a foolish risk to her, but it had done some good after all. And getting gas from that underground tank ... it had apparently been a major operation for Larry, but Harold had seemed to take it purely as a matter of course. It made her feel small and it made her feel guilty. They all more or less assumed that Harold was nothing but a grinning supernumerary. But Harold had turned quite a few tricks in the last six weeks. Had she been so much in love with Stu that it took this total stranger to point out some home truths about Harold? What made the feeling even more uncomfortable was the fact that, once he had gotten his feet under him, Harold had been completely adult about herself and Stuart.

  Larry said, “So here’s another neat sign, complete with route numbers, at Stovington, right? And fluttering in the grass next to it, another Payday candy wrapper. I felt like instead of following broken sticks and bent grasses, I was following Harold’s trail of Paydays. Well, we didn’t follow your route the whole way. We bent north near Gary, Indiana, because there was one hell of a fire, still burning in places. It looked like every damn oiltank in the city went up. Anyhow, we picked up the Judge on the detour, stopped by Hemingford Home—we knew she was gone by then, the dreams you know, but we all wanted to see that place just the same. The corn ... the tire-swing . . . you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Frannie said quietly. “Yes, I do.”

  “And all the time I’m going crazy, thinking that something is going to happen, we’re going to get attacked by a motorcycle gang or something, run out of water, I don’t know.

  “There used to be a book my mom had, she got it from her grandmother or something. In His Steps, that was the name of it. And there were all these little stories about guys with horrible problems. Ethical problems, most of them. And the guy who wrote the book said that to solve the problems, all you had to do was ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ It always cleared the trouble right up. You know what I think? It’s a Zen question, not really a question at all but a way to clear your mind, like saying Om and looking at the tip of your nose.

  “So when I really started to get wound up, Lucy—that’s my girl, did I tell you?—Lucy would say, ‘Hurry up, Larry, ask the question.’ ”

  “What would Jesus do?” Fran said, amused.

  “No, what would Harold do?” Larry answered seriously. Fran was nearly dumbfounded. She could not help wishing to be around when Larry actually met Harold. Whatever in the world would his reaction be?

  “We camped in this farmyard one night and we really were almost out of water. The place had a well, but no way of drawing it up, naturally, because the power was off and the pump wouldn’t work. And Joe—Leo, I’m sorry, his real name is Leo—Leo kept walking by and saying, ‘Firsty, Larry, pwetty firsty now.’ And he was driving me bugshit. I could feel myself tightening up, and the next time he came by I probably would have hit him. Nice guy, huh? Getting ready to hit a disturbed child. But a person can’t change all at once. I’ve had plenty of time to work that out for myself.”

  “I’d say you’ve done pretty well,” Fran murmured.

  “Harold and I did pretty well,” he corrected. “Anyway, Lucy said, ‘Quick, Larry, ask the question.’ So I did. There was a windmill on the place that ran water up to the barn. It was turning pretty good, but there wasn’t any water coming out of the barn faucets either. So I opened the big case at the foot of the windmill, where all the machinery was, and I saw that the main driveshaft had popped out of its hole. I got it back in and bingo! All the water you could want. Thanks to Harold.” “Thanks to you. Harold wasn’t really there, Larry.”

  “Well, he was in my head. And now I’m here and I brought him the wine and the candybars.” He didn’t say anything for a long time, but she felt him looking at her. At last he said, “Okay, how have I got it wrong? About Harold?”

  She stood up. “I ought to go in now. It’s been nice to meet you, Larry. Come by tomorrow and meet Stu. Bring your Lucy, if she’s not busy.”

  “What is it about him?” he insisted, standing with her.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said thickly. Suddenly the tears were very close. “You make me feel as if ... as if I’ve treated Harold very shabbily and I don’t know . . . why or how I did it . . . can I be blamed for not loving him the way I do Stu? Is that supposed to be my fault?”

  “No, of course not.” Larry looked taken aback. “Listen, I’m sorry. I barged in on you. I’ll go.”

  “He’s changed!” Frannie burst out. “I don’t know how or why, and sometimes I think it might be for the better . . . but I don’t. . . don’t really know. And sometimes I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of Harold?”

  She didn’t answer; only looked down at her feet. She thought she had already said much too much.

  “You were going to tell me how I could get there?” he asked gently.

  “It’s easy. Just go straight out Arapahoe until you come to the little park ... the Eben G. Fine Park, I think it is. The park’s on the right. Harold’s little house is on the left, just across from it.”

  “All right, thanks. Meeting you was a pleasure, Fran, busted vase and all.”

  She smiled, but it was perfunctory. All of the dizzy good humor had gone out of the evening.

  Larry raised the bottle of wine and offered his slanted little smile. “And if you see him before I do . . . keep a secret, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  “Night, Frannie.”

  He walked back the way he had come. She watched him out of sight, then went upstairs and slipped into bed next to Stu, who was still out like a light. Harold, she thought, pulling the covers up to her chin.

  How was she supposed to tell this Larry that
Harold Lauder was fat and juvenile and lost himself? Was she supposed to tell him that the sometimes sulky, often frightened Harold that had come to Boulder from Ogunquit had turned into a stout politician, a backslapper, a hail-fellow-well-met type of guy who nonetheless looked at you with the flat and unsmiling eyes of a gila monster?

  She thought her wait for sleep might be very long tonight. Harold had fallen hopelessly in love with her and she had fallen hopelessly in love with Stu Redman, and it certainly was a tough old world. And now every time I see Harold I get such a case of the creeps. Even though he looks like he’s lost ten pounds or so and he doesn’t have quite so many pimples, I get the—

  Her breath caught audibly in her throat and she sat up on her elbows, eyes wide in the dark.

  Something had moved inside her.

  Her hands went to the slight swelling of her middle. Surely it was too early. It had only been her imagination. Except—

  Except it hadn’t been.

  She lay back down slowly, her heart beating hard. She almost woke Stu up and then didn’t. If only he had put the baby inside her, instead of Jess! If he had, she would have awakened him and shared the moment with him.

  And then the movement came again, so slight it might only have been gas. Except she knew better. It was the baby. And the baby was alive.

  “Oh glory,” she murmured to herself, and lay back. Larry Underwood and Harold Lauder were forgotten. Everything that had happened to her since her mother had fallen ill was forgotten. She waited for it to move again, listening for that presence inside herself and fell asleep still listening. Her baby was alive.

  Harold sat in a chair on the lawn of the little house he had picked out for himself, looking up at the sky and thinking of an old rock and roll song. He hated rock, but he could remember this one almost line-for-line and even the name of the group that had sung it: Cathy Young and the Innocents. The lead singer, songstress, whatever, had a high, yearning, reedy voice that had somehow caught his full attention. A golden goody, the dj’s called it. The girl singing lead sounded sixteen years old, pallid, blonde, and plain. She sounded as if she might be singing to a picture that spent most of its time buried in a dresser drawer, a picture that was taken out only late at night when everyone else was asleep. She sounded hopeless. The picture she sang to had perhaps been clipped from her big sister’s yearbook, a picture of the local Big Jock—captain of the football team and president of the Student Council. The Big Jock would be slipping it to the head cheerleader on some deserted lovers’ lane while far away in suburbia this plain girl with no breasts and a pimple in the corner of her mouth sang: