The Stand

and terror had come over her. The old woman could… could what?

Could see.

Yes. She was afraid that the old woman could see inside her, to where the darkness was already planted and growing well. She was afraid the old woman would rise from her place on the porch and denounce her, demand that she leave Joe and go to those (to him) for whom she was intended.

The two of them, each with their own murky fears, looked at each other. They measured each other. The moment was short, but it seemed very long to the two of them.

He’s in her—the Devil’s Imp, Abby Freemantle thought.

All of their power is right here, Nadine thought in her own turn. She’s all they’ve got, although they may think differently.

Joe was growing restive beside her, tugging at her hand.

“Hello,” she said in a thin, dead voice. “I’m Nadine Cross.”

The old woman said: “I know who you are.”

The words hung in the air, cutting suddenly through the other chatter. People turned, puzzled, to see if something was happening.

“Do you?” Nadine said softly. Suddenly it seemed that Joe was her protection, her only one.

She moved the boy slowly in front of her, like a hostage. Joe’s queer seawater eyes looked up at Mother Abagail.

Nadine said: “This is Joe. Do you know him as well?”

Mother Abagail’s eyes remained locked on the eyes of the woman who called herself Nadine Cross, but a thin shine of perspiration had broken out on the back of her neck.

“I don’t think Joe’s his name any more than mine’s Cassandra,” she said, “and I don’t think you’re his mom.” She dropped her eyes to the boy with something like relief, unable to suppress a queer feeling that the woman had somehow won—that she had put the little chap between them, used him to keep her from doing whatever her duty was… ah, but it had come so sudden, and she hadn’t been ready for it!

“What’s your name, chap?” she asked the boy.

The boy struggled as if a bone were caught in his throat. “He won’t tell you,” Nadine said, and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He can’t tell you. I don’t think he remem—”

Joe threw it off and that seemed to break the block. “Leo! ” he said with sudden force and great clarity. “Leo Rockway, that’s me! I’m Leo!” And he sprang into Mother Abagail’s arms, laughing. That generated laughter and some applause from the crowd. Nadine became virtually unnoticed, and Abby felt again that some vital focus, some vital chance, had ebbed away.

“Joe,” Nadine called. Her face was remote, under control again.

The boy drew away a bit from Mother Abagail and looked at her.

“Come away,” Nadine said, and now she looked unflinchingly at Abby, speaking not to the boy but directly at her. “She’s old. You’ll hurt her. She’s very old and… not very strong.”

“Oh, I think I’m strong enough to love a chap like him a bit,” Mother Abagail said, but her voice sounded oddly uncertain in her own ears. “He looks like he’s had a hard road.”

“Well, he’s tired now. And you are, too, from the look. Come on, Joe.”

“I love her,” the boy said, not moving.

Nadine seemed to flinch at that. Her voice sharpened. “Come away, Joe!”

“That’s not my name! Leo! Leo! That’s my name! ”

The little crowd of new pilgrims quieted again, aware that something unexpected had happened, might be happening still, but unable to know what.

The two women locked eyes again like sabers.

I know who you are, Abby’s eyes said.

Nadine’s answered: Yes. And I know you.

But this time it was Nadine who dropped her eyes first.

“All right,” she said. “Leo, or whatever you like. Just come away before you tire her any more.”

He left Mother Abagail’s arms, but reluctantly.

“You come back and see me whenever you want,” Abby said, but she did not raise her eyes to include Nadine.

“Okay,” the boy said, and blew her a kiss. Nadine’s face was stony. She didn’t speak. As they went back down the porch steps, the arm Nadine had around his shoulders seemed more like a dragchain than a comfort. Mother Abagail watched them go, aware that she was losing the focus again. With the woman’s face out of her sight, the sense of revelation began to grow fuzzy. She became unsure of what she had felt. She was only another woman, surely… wasn’t she?

The young man, Underwood, was standing at the base of the steps, and his face was like a thundercloud.

“Why were you like that?” he asked the woman, and although he’d lowered his voice, Mother Abagail could still hear perfectly well.

The woman paid no attention. She went by him without a word. The boy looked at Underwood in a beseeching way, but the woman was in charge, at least for the time being, and the little boy let her bear him along, bear him away.

There was a moment of silence, and she suddenly felt at a loss to fill it, although it needed to be filled—

–didn’t it?

Wasn’t it her job to fill it?

And a voice asked softly, Is it? Is that your job? Is that why God brought you here, woman? To be the Official Greeter at the gates of the Free Zone?

I can’t think, she protested. The woman was right: I AM tired.

He comes in more shapes than his own, the small interior voice persisted. Wolf, crow, snake… woman.

What did it mean? What had happened here? What, in God’s name?

I was sitting here complacently, waiting to be kowtowed to—yes, that’s what I was doing, no use denying it—and now that woman has come and something has happened and I’m losing what it was. But there was something about that woman… wasn’t there? Are you sure? Are you sure?

There was an instant of silence, and in it they all seemed to be looking at her, waiting for her to prove herself. And she wasn’t doing it. The woman and the boy were gone from sight; they had left as if they were the true believers and she nothing but a shoddy, grinning Sanhedrin they had seen through immediately.

Oh, but I’m old! It’s not fair!

And on the heels of that came another voice, small and low and rational, a voice that was not her own: Not too old to know the woman is —

Now another man had approached her in hesitant, deferential fashion. “Hi, Mother Abagail,” he said. “The name’s Zellman. Mark Zellman. From Lowville, New York. I dreamed about you.”

And she was faced with a sudden choice that was clearcut for only an instant in her groping mind. She could acknowledge this man’s hello, banter with him a little to set him at his ease (but not too much at ease; that was not precisely what she wanted), and then go on to the next and the next and the next, receiving their homage like new palm leaves, or she could ignore him and the rest. She could follow the thread of her thought down into the depths of herself, searching for whatever it was that the Lord meant her to know.

The woman is —

–what?

Did it matter? The woman was gone.

“I had me a great-nephew lived in upstate New York one time,” she said easily to Mark Zellman. “Town named Rouse’s Point. Backed right up against Vermont on Lake Champlain, it is. Probably never heard of it, have you?”

Mark Zellman said he sure had heard of it; just about everyone in New York State knew that town. Had he ever been there? His face broke tragically. No, never had. Always meant to.

“From what Ronnie wrote in his letters, you didn’t miss much,” she said, and Zellman went away beaming