The Stand

But in the meantime there was this… whatever this was.

“What, Lloyd? What is it?”

Lloyd didn’t answer. Still holding lightly to Trashcan Man’s arm, he led him toward the fountain. The crowd parted before them, almost shrank from them. The narrow corridor they passed through seemed to be insulated with a still cold layer of loathing and fear.

Standing at the front of the crowd was Whitney Horgan. He was smoking a cigarette. One of his Hush Puppies was propped on the object Trash hadn’t been quite able to make out before. It was a wooden cross. Its vertical piece was about twelve feet long. It looked like a crude lowercase t.

“Everyone here?” Lloyd asked.

“Yeah,” Whitey said, “I guess they are. Winky took roll-call. We got nine guys out of state. Flagg said never mind about them. How are you holding up, Lloyd?”

“I’ll be fine,” Lloyd said. “Well… not fine, but you know—I’ll get through it.”

Whitey cocked his head toward Trashcan Man. “How much does the kid know?”

“I don’t know anything,” Trashcan said, more confused than ever. Hope, awe, and dread were all in dubious battle within him. “What is this? Someone said something about Heck—”

“Yeah, it’s Heck,” Lloyd said. “He’s been freebasing. Fucking blow, don’t I hate the goddam fucking blow. Go on, Whitey, tell em to bring him out.”

Whitey moved away from Lloyd and Trash, stepping over a rectangular hole in the ground. The hole had been throated with cement. It looked just the right size and depth to take the butt end of the cross. As Whitney “Whitey” Horgan trotted up the wide steps between the gold pyramids, Trashcan Man felt all the spit in his mouth dry up. He suddenly turned, first to the silent crowd, waiting in its crescent formation under the blue sky, then to Lloyd, who stood pale and silent, looking at the cross and picking the white head of a pimple on his chin.

“You… we… nail him up?” Trashcan managed at last. “Is that what this is about?”

Lloyd reached suddenly into the pocket of his faded shirt. “You know, I got something for you. He gave it to me to give to you. I can’t make you take it, but it’s a goddam good thing for me that I remembered to at least make the offer. Do you want it?”

From his breast pocket he drew a fine gold chain with a black jet stone on the end of it. The stone was flawed with a tiny red spot, as was Lloyd’s own. He dangled it before Trashcan Man’s eyes like a hypnotist’s amulet.

The truth was in Lloyd’s eyes, too clear not to be recognized, and Trashcan Man knew he could never weep and grovel—not before him, not before anybody, but especially not before him —and claim he hadn’t understood. Take this and you take everything, Lloyd’s eyes said. And what’s apart of everything? Why, Heck Drogan, of course. Heck and the cement-lined hole in the ground, the hole just big enough to take the butt end of Heck’s cross-tree.

He reached for it slowly. His hand paused just before the outstretched fingers could touch the gold chain.

This is my last chance. My last chance to be Donald Merwin Elbert.

But another voice, one which spoke with greater authority (but with a certain gentleness, like a cool hand on a fevered brow), told him that the time of choices had long since passed. If he chose Donald Merwin Elbert now, he would die. He had sought the dark man of his own free will (if there is such a thing for the Trashcan Men of the world), had accepted the dark man’s favors. The dark man had saved him from dying at the hands of The Kid (that the dark man might have sent The Kid for just that purpose never crossed Trashcan Man’s mind), and surely that meant his life was now a debt he owed to that same dark man… the man some of them here called the Walkin Dude. His life! Had he not himself offered it again and again?

But your soul… did you offer your soul as well?

In for a penny, in for a pound, the Trashcan Man thought, and gently put one hand around the gold chain and the other around the dark stone. The stone was cold and smooth. He held it in his fist for a moment just to see if he could warm it up. He didn’t think he would be able to, and he was right. So he put it around his neck, where it lay against his skin like a tiny ball of ice.

But he didn’t mind that icy feeling.

That icy feeling counterbalanced the fire which was always in his mind.

“Just tell yourself you don’t know him,” Lloyd said. “Heck, I mean. That’s what I always do. It makes it easier. It—”

Two of the wide hotel doors banged open. Frantic, terrified screams floated across to them. The crowd sighed.

A party of nine came down the steps. Hector Drogan was in the center. He was fighting like a tiger caught in a net. His face was dead pale except for two hectic blots of color riding high up on his cheekbones. Sweat was pouring off every inch of skin in rivers. He was mother-naked. Five men were holding on to him. One of them was Ace High, the kid Heck had been ribbing about his name.

“Ace!” Hector was babbling. “Hey, Ace, what do you say? Little help for the kid, okay? Tell them to quit this, man—I can get clean, I swear to God I can clean up my act. What do you say? Little help here! Please, Ace!”

Ace High said nothing; simply tightened his grip on Heck’s thrashing arm. It was answer enough. Hector Drogan began to scream again. He was dragged relentlessly across the pavilion and toward the fountain.

Behind him, walking in line like a solemn undertaker’s party, were three men: Whitney Horgan, carrying a large carpetbag; a man named Roy Hoopes, with a stepladder; and Winky Winks, a bald man whose eyes twitched constantly. Winky was carrying a clipboard with a typed sheet of paper on it.

Heck was dragged to the foot of the cross. A horrible yellow smell of fear was radiating out from him; his eyes rolled, showing the muddy whites, like the eyes of a horse left out in a thunderstorm.

“Hey, Trashy,” he said hoarsely as Roy Hoopes set up the stepladder behind him. “Trashcan Man. Tell em to cut it out, buddy. Tell them I can get clean. Tell them a scare like this is better’n all the fuckin rehabs in the world. Tell em, man.”

Trashcan stared down at his feet. As he bent his neck, the black stone swung out from his chest and into his field of vision. The red flaw, the eye, seemed to be staring up at him fixedly.

“I don’t know you,” he mumbled.

From the tail of his eye he saw Whitey down on one knee, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his left eye squinted against the smoke. He opened the carpetbag. He was taking out sharp wooden nails. To Trashcan Man’s horrified gaze, they looked almost as big as tentpegs. He laid the nails on the grass and then removed a large wooden mallet from the carpetbag.

In spite of the murmuring voices all around them, Trashcan Man’s words seemed to have penetrated the panicky haze in Hector brogan’s mind. “What do you mean, you don’t know me?” he cried wildly. “We had breakfast together just two days ago! You called the kid there Mr. High. What do you mean you don’t know me, you chickenshit little liar? ”

“I don’t know you at all,” Trash repeated, a little more clearly this time. And what he felt was almost a sense of relief. All he saw here in front of him was a stranger, a stranger who looked a bit like Carley Yates. His hand went to the stone and curled around it. Its coolness reassured him further.

“You liar! ” Heck screamed. He began to struggle again, his muscles flexing and pumping, the sweat trickling down his bare chest and arms. “You liar! You do so know me! You do so, you liar! ”

“No I don’t. I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you.”

Heck began to scream again. The four men holding him bore down, panting and out of breath.

“Go ahead,” Lloyd said.

Heck was dragged backward. One of the men holding him stuck out a leg and tripped him. He landed half on the cross and half off it. Meanwhile, Winky had begun to read the typed sheet on his clipboard in a high voice that sliced through Heck’s screams like the howl of a buzz-saw.

“Attention attention attention! By the order of Randall Flagg, Leader of the People and First Citizen, this man, Hector Alonzo Drogan by name, is ordered executed by an act of crucifixion, this penalty so ordered for the crime of drug use.”

“No! No! No! ” Heck screamed in frenzied counterpoint. His left arm, greasy with