The Stand

“They look fine.” Trash had never really been able to remember his sizes. He took the jeans and the workshirt Lloyd offered.

“Come on down to breakfast when you’re dressed,” Lloyd said. He spoke almost deferentially. “Most of us eat in the deli.”

“Okay. Sure.”

The deli hummed with conversation, and he paused outside and around the corner, suddenly overcome with fright. They would look up at him when he came in. They would look up and laugh. Someone would start giggling in the back of the room, someone else would join in, and then the whole place would be an uproar of laughter and pointing fingers.

Hey, put away ya matches, here comes the Trashcan Man!

Hey, Trash! What did ole lady Semple say when you torched her pension check?

Wet the bed much, Trashy?

Sweat popped out on his skin, making him feel slimy in spite of the shower he’d taken after Lloyd left. He remembered his face in the bathroom mirror, covered with slowly healing scabs, his body, too gaunt, his eyes, too small for their yawning sockets. Yes, they would laugh. He listened to the hum of conversation, the clink of silverware, and thought he should just slink away.

Then he thought of the way the wolf had taken his hand, so gently, and had led him away from The Kid’s metal tomb, and Trash squared his shoulders and walked inside.

A few people looked up briefly, then went back to their meals and their conversations. Lloyd, at a big table in the middle of the room, raised an arm and waved him over. Trash threaded his way among the tables and under a darkened electronic Keno toteboard. There were three other people at the table. They were all eating ham and scrambled eggs.

“Serve yourself,” Lloyd said. “It’s a steam-table kinda thing.”

Trashcan Man got a tray and served himself. The man behind the counter, large and dressed in dirty cook’s whites, watched him.

“Are you Mr. Horgan?” Trashcan Man asked timidly.

Horgan grinned, exposing gapped teeth. “Yeah, but we won’t get nowhere with you callin me that, boy. You call me Whitey. You feelin a little better? When you came in, you looked like the wratha God.”

“Much better, sure.”

“Dig in those aigs. All you want. Go light on the home fries, though. I would, at least. Them taters is old and tough. Good to have you here, boy.”

“Thanks,” Trash said.

He went back to Lloyd’s table.

“Trash, this here is Ken DeMott. The fella with the bald spot is Hector Drogan. And this kid tryin to grow on his face what springs up wild in his asshole calls himself Ace High.”

They all nodded at him.

“This is our new boy,” Lloyd said. “Name’s Trashcan Man.”

Hands were shaken all around. Trash started to dig into his eggs. He looked up at the young man with the scraggly beard and said in a low, polite voice: “Would you pass the salt, please, Mr. High?”

There was a moment of surprise as they looked at each other, and then they all burst into laughter. Trash stared at them, feeling the panic rise in his chest, and then he heard the laughter, really heard it, with his mind as well as his ears, and understood that there was no meanness in it. No one here was going to ask him why he hadn’t burned down the school instead of the church. No one here was going to dun him about old lady Semple’s pension check. He could smile too, if he wanted. And he did.

“Mr. High,” Hector Drogan was giggling. “Oh, Ace, you just been had. Mr. High, I love it. Meeestair Haaaaah. Man, that is so fuckin rich.”

Ace High handed Trashcan the salt. “Just Ace, my man. That’ll get me every time. You don’t call me Mr. High and I won’t call you Mr. Man, that a deal?”

“Okay,” Trashcan Man said, still smiling. “That’s fine.”

“Oh, Mr. Hiiiigh?” Heck Drogan said in a coy falsetto. Then he burst into laughter again. “Ace, you never gonna live that down. I swear you won’t.”

“Maybe not, but I’m sure-God gonna live it up,” Ace High said, and got up with his plate for more eggs. His hand closed for a moment on Trashcan Man’s shoulder as he went. The hand was warm and solid. It was a friendly hand that did not squeeze or pinch.

Trashcan Man dug into his eggs, feeling warm and good inside. This warmth and goodness was so foreign to his nature that it almost felt like a disease. As he ate he tried to isolate it, understand it. He looked up, looked at the faces around him, and thought he might understand what it was.

Happiness.

What a good bunch of people, he thought.

And on the heels of that: I’m home.

That day he was left on his own to sleep, but the next day he was bussed up to Boulder Dam with a lot of other people. There they spent the day wrapping copper core wire around the spindles of burned-out motors. He worked at a bench with a view of the water—Lake Mead—and no one supervised him. Trashcan Man assumed that there was no foreman or anyone like that around because everyone was as in love with what they were doing as he was himself.

He learned differently the next day.

It was quarter past ten in the morning. Trashcan Man was sitting on his bench, wrapping copper wire, his mind a million miles away as his fingers did their work. He was composing a psalm of praise to the dark man in his mind. It had occurred to him that he should get a large book (a Book, actually) and begin to write some of his thoughts about him down. It would be the sort of Book people might want to read someday. People who felt about him as Trash did.

Ken DeMott came to his bench, and Ken looked pale and frightened under his desert tan. “Come on,” he said. “Work’s over. We’re going back to Vegas. Everyone. The buses are outside.”

“Huh? Why?” Trashcan blinked up at him.

“I don’t know. It’s his order. Lloyd passed it along. Get your ass in gear, Trashy. It’s best not to ask questions when the hardcase is involved.”

So he didn’t. Outside, on Hoover Drive, three Las Vegas Public School buses were parked with their engines idling. Men and women were climbing aboard. There was little talk; the midmorning ride back to Vegas was the antithesis of the usual commutes to and from work. There was no horseplay, little conversation, and none of the usual light banter that passed between the twenty or so women and the thirty or so men. Everyone had drawn into himself or herself.

As they neared the city, Trashcan Man heard one of the men sitting across the aisle from him say quietly to his seatmate: “It’s Heck. Heck Drogan. Goddammit, how does that spook find things out?”

“Shut up,” the other said, and gave Trashcan Man a mistrustful glance.

Trash averted his gaze and looked out the window at the passing desert. He was once again troubled in his mind.

“Oh Jesus,” one of the women said as they filed off the bus, but hers was the only comment.

Trashcan looked around, puzzled. Everyone was here, it looked like, everyone in Cibola. They had all been called back, with the exception of a few scouts that might be anywhere from the Mexican peninsula to west Texas. They were gathered in a loose semicircle around the fountain, six and seven deep, more than four hundred in all. Some of those in the back were standing on hotel chairs so they could see, and until Trashcan drew closer, he thought it was the fountain they were looking at. Craning his neck, he could see there was something lying on the lawn in front of the fountain, but he couldn’t see what it was.

A hand grasped his elbow. It was Lloyd. His face looked white and strained. “I been lookin for you. He wants to see you later. Meantime, we got this. God, I hate these. Come on. I need help and you’re elected.”

Trashcan Man’s head was whirling. He wanted to see him! Him!