The Stand

who always somehow ended up on relief when rimes were flush for lust about everyone else. He could put the right sort of valve on your bicycle pump when it wouldn’t mate to a tire bigger than the kind that went on a bike and he’d know what was making that funny buzzing noise in your oven just by looking at it, but when he had to deal with a company timeclock, he’d somehow always end up punching in late and punching out early and get fired for it before very long. He’d know you could fertilize corn with pigshit if you mixed it right, and he’d know how to pickle cukes, but he would never be able to understand a car loan agreement, or to figure out how the dealers managed to rook him every time. A job application form filled out by Ralph Brentner would look as if it had been through a Hamilton-Beach blender… misspelled, dog-eared, dotted with blots of ink and greasy fingerprints. His employment history would look like a checkerboard which had been around the world on a tramp steamer. But when the very fabric of the world began to tear open, it was the Ralph Brentners who were not afraid to say, “Let’s slap a little epoxy in there and see if that’ll hold her.” And more often than not, it did.

“You’re a good fella, Ralph, you know it? You’re a one.”

“Why, you are too, Mother. Not that you’re a fella, but you know what I mean. Anyhow, that fella Redman came by while we were workin. Wanted to talk to Nick about being on some kind of committee.”

“And what did Nick say?”

“Aw, he wrote a couple of pages. But what it came down to was fine by me if it’s fine by Mother Abagail. Is it?”

“Well now, what would an old lady like myself have to say about such doings?”

“A lot,” Ralph said in a serious, almost shocked manner. “You’re the reason we’re here. I guess we’ll do whatever you want.”

“What I want is to go on livin free like I always have, like an American. I just want my say when it’s time for me to have it. Like an American.”

“Well, you’ll have all of that.”

“The rest feel that way, Ralph?”

“You bet they do.”

“Then that’s fine.” She rocked serenely. “Time everyone got going. There’s people lollygaggin around. Mostly just waitin for somebody to tell em where to squat and lean.”

“Then I can go ahead?”

“With what?”

“Well, Nick and Stu ast me if I could find a printing press and maybe get her going, if they got me some electricity to run it. I said I didn’t need any electricity, I’d just go down to the high school and find the biggest hand-crank mimeograph I could lay my hands on. They want some fliers.” He shook his head. “Do they! Seven hundred. Why, we only got four hundred and some here.”

“And nineteen out by the gate, probably getting heatstroke while you and me chin. You go bring them in.”

“I will.” Ralph started away.

“And Ralph?”

He turned back.

“Print a thousand,” she said.

They filed in through the gate that Ralph opened and she felt her sin, the one she thought of as the mother of sin. The father of sin was theft; every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to “Thou shalt not steal.” Murder was the theft of a life, adultery the theft of a wife, covetousness the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God’s name, swiped from the House of the Lord and sent out to—walk the streets like a strutting whore. She had never been much of a thief, a minor pilferer from time to time at worst.

The mother of sin was pride.

Pride was the female side of Satan in the human race, the quiet egg of sin, always fertile. Pride had kept Moses out of Canaan, where the grapes were so big the men had to carry them in slings. Who brought the water from the rock when we were thirsty? the Children of Israel asked, and Moses had answered, I did it.

She had always been a proud woman. Proud of the floor she washed on her hands and knees (but Who had provided the hands, the knees, the very water she washed with?), proud that all her children had turned out all right—none in jail ever, none caught by dope or the bottle, none of them frigging around on the wrong side of the sheets—but the mothers of children were the daughters of God. She was proud of her life, but she had not made her life. Pride was the curse of will, and like a woman, pride had its wiles. At her great age she had not learned all its illusions yet, or mastered its glamors.

And when they filed through the gate she thought: It’s me they’ve come to see. And on the heels of that sin, a series of blasphemous metaphors, rising unbidden in her mind: how they filed through one by one like communicants, their young leader with his eyes mostly cast down, a light-haired woman by his side, a little boy just behind him with a dark-eyed woman whose black hair was shot with twists of gray. The others behind them in a line.

The young man climbed the porch steps, but his woman stopped at the foot. His hair was long, as Ralph had said, but it was clean. He had a considerable growth of reddish-gold beard. He had a strong face with freshly etched lines of care in it, around the mouth and across the forehead.

“You’re really real,” he said softly.

“Why, I have always thought so,” she said. “I am Abagail Freemantle, but most folks round here just call me Mother Abagail. Welcome to our place.”

“Thank you,” he said thickly, and she saw he was struggling with tears. “I’m… we’re glad to be here. My name’s Larry Underwood.”

She held her hand out and he took it lightly, with awe, and she felt that twinge of pride again, that stiffneckedness. It was as if he thought she had a fire in her that would burn him.

“I… dreamed of you,” he said awkwardly.

She smiled and nodded and he turned stiffly, almost stumbling. He went back down the steps, shoulders hunched. He would unwind, she thought. Now that he was here and when he found out he didn’t have to take the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. A man who doubts himself shouldn’t have to try too hard for too long, not until he’s seasoned, and this man Larry Underwood was still a little green and apt to bend. But she liked him.

His woman, a pretty little thing with eyes like violets, came next. She looked boldly at Mother Abagail, but not scornfully. “I’m Lucy Swann. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” And although she was wearing pants, she sketched a little curtsy.

“Glad you could come by, Lucy.”

“Would you mind if I asked… well…” Now her eyes dropped and she began to blush furiously.

“A hundred and eight at last count,” she said kindly. “Feels more like two hundred and sixteen some days.”

“I dreamed about you,” Lucy said, and then retired in some confusion.

The woman with the dark eyes and the boy came next. The woman looked at her gravely and unflinchingly; the boy’s face showed frank wonder. The boy was all right. But something about the woman made her feel grave-cold. He’s here, she thought. He’s come in the shape of this woman… for behold he comes in more forms than his own… the wolf… the crow… the snake.

She was not above feeling fear for herself, and for one instant she felt this strange woman with the white in her hair would reach out, almost casually, and snap her neck. For the one instant the feeling held, Mother Abagail actually fancied that the woman’s face was gone and she was looking into a hole in time and space, a hole from which two eyes, dark and damned, stared out at her—eyes that were lost and haggard and hopeless.

But it was just a woman, and not him. The dark man would never dare come to her here, even in a shape that was not his own. This was just a woman—a very pretty one, too—with an expressive, sensitive face and one arm about her little boy’s shoulders. She had only been daydreaming for a moment. Surely that was all.

For Nadine Cross, the moment was a confusion. She had been all right when they came in through the gate. She had been all right until Larry had begun talking to the old lady. Then an almost swooning sense of revulsion