The Stand Read online

  "If he is," she said, "he's not here."

  "No," Stu agreed, "I wouldn't expect him to be here. I saw his eyes, you see."

  She put her hand on his arm. "That's some story."

  "Yeah, and there's probably twenty million people in this country with one just like it ... only about Elvis Presley or Howard Hughes."

  "Not anymore."

  "No--not anymore. Harold was something tonight, wasn't he?"

  "I believe that's called changing the subject."

  "I believe you're right."

  "Yes," she said, "he was."

  He smiled at her worried tone and the slight frown which had puckered her brow. "Bothered you a little, didn't it?"

  "Yes, but I won't say so. You're in Harold's corner now."

  "Now, that's not fair, Fran. It bothered me, too. There we had those two advance meetings ... hashed everything over to a fare-thee-well ... at least we thought so ... and along comes Harold. He takes a whack-whack here and a whack-whack there and says, 'Ain't that what you really meant?' And we say, 'Yeah, thanks, Harold. It was.' " Stu shook his head. "Putting everybody up for blanket election, how come we never thought of that, Fran? That was sharp. And we never even discussed it."

  "Well, none of us knew for sure what kind of mood they'd be in. I thought--especially after Mother Abagail walked off--that they'd be glum, maybe even mean. With that Impening talking to them like some kind of deathcrow--"

  "I wonder if he should be shut up somehow," Stu said thoughtfully.

  "But it wasn't like that. They were so ... exuberant just to be together. Did you feel that?"

  "Yeah, I did."

  "It was like a tent revival, almost. I don't think it was anything Harold had planned. He just seized the moment."

  "I just don't know how to feel about him," Stu said. "That night after we hunted for Mother Abagail, I felt real bad for him. When Ralph and Glen turned up, he looked downright horrible, like he was going to faint, or something. But when we were talking out on the lawn just now and everybody was congratulating him, he seemed puffed up like a toad. Like he was smiling on the outside and on the inside he was saying, 'There, you see what your committee's worth, you stupid bunch of fools.' He's like one of those puzzles you could never figure out when you were a kid. The Chinese finger-pullers or those three steel rings that would come apart if you pulled them just the right way."

  Fran stuck out her feet and looked at them. "Speaking of Harold, do you see anything funny about my feet, Stuart?"

  Stu looked at them judiciously. "Nope. Just that you're wearing those funny-looking Earth Shoes from up the street. And they're almighty big, o course."

  She slapped at him. "Earth Shoes are very good for your feet. All the best magazines say so. And I happen to be a size seven, for your information. That's practically petite."

  "So what have your feet got to do with anything? It's late, honey." He began to push his bike again and she fell in beside him.

  "Nothing, I guess. It's just that Harold kept looking at my feet. After the meeting when we were sitting out on the grass and talking things over." She shook her head, frowning a little. "Now why would Harold Lauder be interested in my feet?" she asked.

  When Larry and Lucy got home, they were by themselves, walking hand in hand. Sometime before, Leo had gone into the house where he stayed with "Nadine-mom."

  Now, as they walked toward the door, Lucy said: "It was quite a meeting. I never thought--" Her words caught in her throat as a dark form unfolded itself from the shadows of their porch. Larry felt hot fear leap up in his throat. It's him, he thought wildly. He's come to get me ... I'm going to see his face.

  But then he wondered how he could have thought that, because it was Nadine Cross, that was all. She was wearing a dress of some soft bluish-gray material, and her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders and down her back, dark hair shot with skeins of purest white.

  She sort of makes Lucy look like a used car on a scalper's lot, he thought before he could help himself, and then hated himself for thinking it. That was the old Larry talking ... old Larry? You might as well say old Adam.

  "Nadine," Lucy was saying shakily, with one hand pressed to her chest. "You gave me the fright of my life. I thought ... well, I don't know what I thought."

  She took no notice of Lucy. "Can I talk to you?" she asked Larry.

  "What? Now?" He looked sideways at Lucy, or thought he did ... later he was never able to remember what Lucy had looked like in that moment. It was as if she had been eclipsed, but by a dark star rather than by a bright one.

  "Now. It has to be now."

  "In the morning would--"

  "It has to be now, Larry. Or never."

  He looked at Lucy again and this time he did see her, saw the resignation on her face as she looked from Larry to Nadine and back again. He saw the hurt.

  "I'll be right in, Lucy."

  "No you won't," she said dully. Tears had begun to sparkle in her eyes. "Oh no, I doubt it."

  "Ten minutes."

  "Ten minutes, ten years," Lucy said. "She's come to get you. Did you bring your dog collar and your muzzle, Nadine?"

  For Nadine, Lucy Swann did not exist. Her eyes were fixed only on Larry, those dark, wide eyes. For Larry, they would always be the strangest, most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, the eyes that come back to you, calm and deep, when you're hurt or in bad trouble or maybe just about out of your mind with grief.

  "I'll be in, Lucy," he said automatically.

  "She--"

  "Go on."

  "Yes, I guess I will. She's come. I'm dismissed."

  She ran up the steps, stumbling on the top one, regaining her balance, pulling the door open, closing it behind her with a slam, cutting off the sound of her sobs even as they started.

  Nadine and Larry looked at each other for a long time as if entranced. This is how it happens, he thought. When you catch someone's eyes across a room and never forget them, or see someone at the far end of a crowded subway platform that could have been your double, or hear a laugh on the street that could have been the laugh of the first girl you ever made love to--

  But something in his mouth tasted so bitter.

  "Let's walk down to the corner and back," Nadine said in a low voice. "Would you do that much?"

  "I better go in to her. You picked one hell of a bad time to come here."

  "Please? Just down to the corner and back? If you want, I'll get down on my knees and beg. If that's what you want. Here. See?"

  And to his horror she did get down on her knees, pulling her skirt up a little so she could do it, showing him her bare legs, making him curiously certain that everything else was bare as well. Why should he think that? He didn't know. Her eyes were on him, making his head spin, and there was a sickening feeling of power involved here someplace, involved with having her on her knees before him, her mouth on a level with--

  "Get up!" he said roughly. He took her hands and yanked her to her feet, trying not to see the way the skirt rode up even more before falling back into place; her thighs were the color of cream, that shade of white that is not pale and dead but vigorous and healthy and enticing.

  "Come on," he said, almost totally unnerved.

  They walked west, in the direction of the mountains, which were a negative presence far ahead, triangular patches of darkness blotting out the stars that had come out after the rain. Walking toward those mountains at night always made him feel queerly uneasy but somehow adventurous, and now, with Nadine by his side, her hand resting lightly in the crook of his elbow, those feelings seemed heightened. He had always had vivid dreams, and three or four nights ago about those mountains; he had dreamed there were trolls in them, hideous creatures with bright green eyes, the oversized heads of hydrocephalic cretins, and short-fingered, powerful hands. Strangler's hands. Idiot trolls, guarding the passes through the mountains. Waiting until his time came around--the time of the dark man.

  A soft breeze meandered down the street, b
lowing papers before it. They passed King Sooper's, a few shopping carts standing in the big parking lot like dead sentinels, making him think of the Lincoln Tunnel. There had been trolls in the Lincoln Tunnel. They had been dead, but that didn't mean all the trolls in their new world were dead.

  "It's hard," Nadine said, her voice still low. "She made it hard because she's right. I want you now. And I'm afraid I'm too late. I want to stay here."

  "Nadine--"

  "No!" she said fiercely. "Let me finish. I want to stay here, can't you understand that? And if we're with each other, I'll be able to. You're my last chance," she said, her voice breaking. "Joe's gone now."

  "No, he hasn't," Larry said, feeling slow and stupid and bewildered. "We dropped him off at your place on the way home. Isn't he there?"

  "No. There's a boy named Leo Rockway asleep in his bed."

  "What are you--"

  "Listen," she said. "Listen to me, can't you listen? As long as I had Joe, I was all right. I could ... be as strong as I had to be. But he doesn't need me anymore. And I need to be needed."

  "He does need you!"

  "Of course he does," Nadine said, and Larry felt afraid again. She wasn't talking about Leo anymore; he didn't know who she was talking about. "He needs me. That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I came to you." She stepped in front of him and looked up, her chin tilted. He could smell her secret clean scent, and he wanted her. But part of him turned back toward Lucy. That was the part of him he needed if he was going to make it here in Boulder. If he let it go and went with Nadine, they might as well slink out of Boulder tonight. It would be finished with him. The old Larry triumphant.

  "I have to go home," he said. "I'm sorry. You'll have to work it out on your own, Nadine." Work it out on your own--weren't they the words he had been using to people in one form or another all his life? Why did they have to rise up this way when he knew he was right and still catch him, and twist in him, and make him doubt himself?

  "Make love to me," she said, and put her arms around his neck. She pressed her body against his and he knew by its looseness, its warmth and springiness, that he had been right, she was wearing the dress and that was all. Buck naked underneath, he thought, and thinking it excited him blackly.

  "That's all right, I can feel you," she said, and began to wriggle against him--sideways, up and down, creating a delicious friction. "Make love to me and that will be the end of it. I'll be safe. Safe. I'll be safe."

  He reached up, and later he never knew how he was able to do that when he could have been inside her warmth in only three quick movements and one thrust, the way she wanted it, but somehow he reached up and unlocked her hands and pushed her away with such force that she stumbled and almost fell. A low moan came from her.

  "Larry, if you knew--"

  "Well, I don't. Why don't you try telling me instead of ... of raping me?"

  "Rape!" she repeated, laughing shrilly. "Oh, that's funny! Oh, what you said! Me! Rape you! Oh, Larry!"

  "Whatever you want from me, you could have had. You could have had it last week, or the week before. The week before that I asked you to take it. I wanted you to have it."

  "That was too soon," she whispered.

  "And now it's too late," he said, hating the brutal sound of his voice but unable to control it. He was still shaking all over from wanting her, how was he supposed to sound? "What are you gonna do, huh?"

  "All right. Goodbye, Larry."

  She was turning away. In that instant she was more than Nadine, turning her back on him forever. She was the oral hygienist. She was Yvonne, with whom he had shared an apartment in L.A.--she had pissed him off and so he had just slipped into his boogie shoes, leaving her holding the lease. She was Rita Blakemoor.

  Worst of all, she was his mother.

  "Nadine?"

  She didn't turn around. She was a black shape distinguishable from other black shapes only when she crossed the street. Then she disappeared altogether against the black background of the mountains. He called her name once again and she didn't answer. There was something terrifying in the way she had left him, the way she had just melted into that black backdrop.

  He stood in front of King Sooper's, hands clenched, brow covered with pearls of sweat in spite of the evening cool. His ghosts were with him now, and at last he knew how you pay off for not being no nice guy: never clear about your own motivations, never able to weigh hurt against help except by rule of thumb, never able to get rid of the sour taste of doubt in your mouth and--

  His head jerked up. His eyes widened until they seemed to bulge from his face. The wind had picked up again, it made a strange hooting sound in some empty doorway, and farther away he thought he could hear bootheels pacing off the night, rundown bootheels somewhere in the foothills coming to him on the chilly draft of this early morning breeze.

  Dirty bootheels clocking their way into the grave of the West.

  Lucy heard him let himself in and her heart leaped up fiercely. She told it to stop, that he was probably only coming back for his things, but it would not stop. He picked me, was the thought that hammered into her brain, driven there by her heart's triphammer beat. He picked me --

  In spite of her excitement and hope, which she was helpless to control, she lay stiffly on her back on the bed, waiting and watching nothing but the ceiling. She had only told him the truth when she had said that, for her and for girls like her friend Joline, the only fault was too much need to love. But she had always been faithful. She was no cheater. She hadn't cheated on her husband and she had never cheated on Larry, and if in the years before she had met them she hadn't exactly been a nun ... time past was time past. You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

  If you knew that past was out of reach, maybe you could forgive.

  Tears were stealing down her cheeks.

  The door clicked open and she saw him in it, just a silhouette.

  "Lucy? You awake?"

  "Yes."

  "Can I put on the lamp?"

  "If you want."

  She heard the minute hiss of gas and then the light came on, turned down to a thread of flame, revealing him. He looked pale and shaken.

  "I have to say something."

  "No you don't. Just come to bed."

  "I have to say it. I ..." He pressed his hand against his forehead and ran it through his hair.

  "Larry?" She sat up. "Are you all right?"

  He spoke as if he hadn't heard her, and he spoke without looking at her. "I love you. If you want me, you got me. But I don't know if you're getting much. I'm never going to be your best bet, Lucy."

  "I'll take the chance. Come to bed."

  He did. And they did. And when the love was over she told him she loved him, it was true, God knew that, and it seemed to be what he wanted, needed, to hear, but she didn't think he slept for a long time. Once in the night she came awake (or dreamed she did) and it seemed to her that Larry was at the window, looking out, his head cocked in a listening posture, the lines of light and shadow giving his face the appearance of a haggard mask. But in the light of day she was more sure that it must have been a dream; in the light of day he seemed to be his old self again.

  It was only three days later that they heard from Ralph Brentner that Nadine had moved in with Harold Lauder. At that, Larry's face seemed to tighten, but it was only for a moment. And although Lucy disliked herself for it, Ralph's news made her breathe a little easier. It seemed it must be over.

  She went home only briefly after seeing Larry. She let herself in, went to the living room, and lit the lamp. Carrying it high, she went to the back of the house, pausing for just a moment to let the light spill into the boy's room. She wanted to see if she had told Larry the truth. She had.

  Leo lay asprawl in a
tangle of bedclothes, dressed only in his under-shorts ... but the cuts and scratches had faded, disappeared altogether in most cases, and the all-over tan he had gotten from going practically naked had also faded. But it was more than that, she thought. Something in his face had changed--she could see the change even though he was asleep. That expression of mute, needful savagery had gone out of it. He was not Joe anymore. This was just a boy sleeping after a busy day.

  She thought of the night she had been almost asleep and had come awake to find him gone from her side. That had been in North Berwick, Maine--most of the continent away now. She had followed him to the house where Larry lay sleeping on the porch. Larry sleeping inside, Joe standing outside, brandishing his knife with mute savagery, and nothing between them but the thin and sliceable screen. And she had made him come away.

  Hate pounced on Nadine in a surging flash, striking up brilliant sparks as if from flint and steel. The Coleman lamp trembled in her hand, making wild shadows leap and dance. She should have let him do it! She should have held the door for Joe herself, let him in so he could stab and rip and cut and puncture and gut and destroy. She should have--

  But now the boy turned over and moaned in his throat, as if waking. His hands came up and batted the air, as if warding off a black shape in a dream. And Nadine withdrew, a pulse beating thickly at her temples. There was still something strange in the boy, and she didn't like the way he had moved just now, as if he had picked up her thoughts.

  She had to go ahead now. She had to be quick.

  She went into her own room. There was a rug on the floor. There was a single narrow bed--an old maid's bed. That was all. There was not even a picture. The room was totally devoid of character. She opened the closet door and rummaged behind her hanging clothes. She was on her knees now, sweating. She drew out a brightly colored box with a photograph of laughing adults on the front, adults who were playing a party-game. A party-game that was at least three thousand years old.

  She had found the planchette in a downtown novelty shop, but she dared not use it in the house, not with the boy here. In fact, she had not dared use it at all ... until now. Something had impelled her into the shop, and when she had seen the planchette in its gay party box, a terrible struggle had gone on inside her--the sort of struggle psychologists call aversion/compulsion. She had been sweating then as now, wanting two things at the same time: to hurry out of that shop without looking back, and to snatch the box, that dreadful gay box, and carry it home with her. The latter wish frightened her the more, because it did not seem to be her own wish.