The Stand

been if things had gone on in their normal course, Harold.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true,” Harold said.

Peri turned back to Mark and began to sponge his forehead again, gently, with love. Frannie was reminded of a color plate in their family Bible, a picture that showed three women making the body of Jesus ready for burial— they were anointing him with oils and spices.

“Frannie was studying English, Glen was a teacher of sociology, Mark was getting his doctorate in American history, Harold, you’d be in English, too, wanting to be a writer. We could sit around and have some wonderful bull sessions. We did, as a matter of fact, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” Harold agreed. His voice, normally penetrating, was almost too low to hear.

“A liberal arts education teaches you how to think—I read that somewhere. The hard facts you learn are secondary to that. The big thing you take away from school with you is how to induct and deduct in a constructive way.”

“That’s good,” Harold said. “I like that.”

Now his hand did drop on Fran’s shoulder. She didn’t shrug it away, but she was unhappily conscious of its presence.

“But it isn’t good,” Peri said fiercely, and in his surprise, Harold took his hand off Fran’s shoulder. She felt lighter immediately.

“No?” he asked, rather timidly.

“He’s dying!” Peri said, not loudly but in an angry, helpless way. “He’s dying because we’ve all been spending our time learning how to bullshit each other in dorms and the living rooms of cheap apartments in college towns. Oh, I could tell you about the Midi Indians of New Guinea, and Harold could explain the literary technique of the later English poets, but what good does any of that do my Mark?”

“If we had somebody from med school—” Fran began tentatively.

“Yes, if we did. But we don’t. We don’t even have a car mechanic with us, or someone who went to ag college and might have at least watched once when a vet was working on a cow or a horse.” She looked at them, her indigo eyes growing even darker. “Much as I like you all, I think at this point I’d trade the whole bunch of you for Mr. Goodwrench. You’re all so afraid to touch him, even though you know what’s going to happen if you don’t. And I’m the same way—I’m not excluding myself.”

“At least the two…” Fran stopped. She had been about to say At least the two men went, then decided that might be unfortunate phrasing, with Harold still here. “At least Stu and Glen went. That’s something, isn’t it?”

Peri sighed. “Yes—that’s something. But it was Stu’s decision to go, wasn’t it? The only one of us who finally decided it would be better to try anything than to just stand around wringing our hands.” She looked at Frannie. “Did he tell you what he did for a living before?”

“He worked in a factory,” Fran said promptly. She did not notice that Harold’s brow clouded at how quickly she was able to come up with this information. “He put circuits in electronic calculators. I guess you could say he was a computer technician.”

“Ha!” Harold said, and smiled sourly.

“He’s the only one of us who understands taking things apart,” Peri said. “What he and Mr. Bateman do will kill Mark, I’m almost sure it will, but it’s better that he be killed while somebody is trying to make him well than it would be for him to die while we just stand around watching… as if he were a dog that had been run over in the street.”

Neither Harold nor Fran could find a reply to that. They only stood behind her and watched Mark’s pale, still face. After a while Harold put his sweaty hand on Fran’s shoulder again. It made her feel like screaming.

Stu and Glen got back at quarter to four. They had taken one of the cycles. Tied behind it was a doctor’s black bag of instruments and several large black books.

“We’ll try,” was all Stu said.

Peri looked up. Her face was white and strained, her voice calm. “Would you? Please. We both want you to,” she said.

“Stu?” Perion said.

It was ten minutes past four. Stu was kneeling on a rubber sheet that had been spread under the tree. Sweat was pouring from his face in rivers. His eyes looked bright and haunted and frantic. Frannie was holding a book open in front of him, switching back and forth between two colored plates whenever Stu raised his eyes and nodded at her. Beside him, horribly white, Glen Bateman held a spool of fine white thread. Between them was an open case of stainless steel instruments. The case was now splashed with blood.

“It’s here!” Stu cried. His voice was suddenly high and hard and exultant. His eyes had narrowed to two points. “Here’s the little bastard! Here! Right here!”

“Stu?” Perion said.

“Fran, show me that other plate again! Quick! Quick!”

“Can you take it out?” Glen asked. “Jesus, East Texas, do you really think you can?”

Harold was gone. He had left the party early, holding one hand cupped over his mouth. He had been standing in a small grove of trees to the east, his back to them, for the last fifteen minutes. Now he turned back, his large round face hopeful.

“I don’t know,” Stu said, “but I might. I just might.”

He stared at the color plate Fran was showing him. He was wearing blood up to his elbows, like scarlet evening gloves.

“Stu?” Perion said.

“It’s self-containing above and below,” Stu whispered. His eyes glittered fantastically. “The appendix. It’s its own little unit. It… wipe my forehead, Frannie, Jesus, I’m sweating like a fucking pig… thanks… God, I don’t want to cut his doins any worse than I have to… that’s his everfucking intestines… but Christ, I gotta. I gotta.”

“Stu?” Perion said.

“Give me the scissors, Glen. No—not those. The small pair.”

“Stu.”

He looked at her at last.

“You don’t need to.” Her voice was calm, soft. “He’s dead.”

Stu looked at her, his narrowed eyes slowly widening.

She nodded. “Almost two minutes ago. But thank you. Thank you for trying.”

Stu looked at her for a long time. “You’re sure?” he whispered at last.

She nodded again. Tears were spilling silently down her face.

Stu turned away from them, dropping the small scalpel he had been holding, and put his hands over his eyes in a gesture of utter despair. Glen had already gotten up and walked off, not looking back, his shoulders hunched, as if from a blow.

Frannie put her arms around Stu and hugged him.

“That’s that,” he said. He said it over and over again, speaking in a slow and toneless way that frightened her. “That’s that. All over. That’s that. That’s that.”

“You did the best you could,” she said, and hugged him even tighter, as if he might fly away.

“That’s that,” he said again, with dull finality.

Frannie hugged him. Despite all her thoughts of the last three and a half weeks, despite her “crushable crush,” she had not made a single overt move. She had been almost painfully careful not to show the way she felt. The situation with Harold was just too much on a hair trigger. And she was not showing the true way she felt about Stu even now, not really. It was not a lover’s hug she was bestowing on him. It was simply one survivor clinging to another. Stu seemed to understand this. His hands came up to her shoulders and pressed them firmly, leaving bloody handprints on her khaki shirt, marking her in a way which seemed to make them partners in some unhappy crime. Somewhere a jay cawed harshly, and closer at hand Perion began to weep.

Harold Lauder, who did not know the difference between the hugs survivors and lovers may bestow on each other, gazed at Frannie and Stu with dawning suspicion and fear. After a long moment he crashed furiously off into the brush and didn’t come back until long after supper.

She woke up early the next morning. Someone was shaking her. I’ll open my eyes and it’ll be Glen or Harold, she thought sleepily. We’re going to go through it again, and we’ll keep going through it