The Stand

possibility that someone might get cut over a card game or decide to shoot someone else over a woman.

Authority. Organization. He circled the words again and now they were like prisoners behind a triple stockade. How well they went together… and what a sorry sound they made.

Not long after, Ralph came in. “We got some more folks coming in tomorrow, Nicky, and a whole parade the day after. Over thirty in that second one.”

“Good,” Nick wrote. “We’ll get a doc before long, I bet. Law of averages says so.”

“Yeah,” Ralph said. “We’re turnip into a regular by-God city.”

Nick nodded.

“I had a talk with the fella leadin the party that came in today. His name’s Larry Underwood. Smart man, Nick. Sharp as a tack.”

Nick raised his eyebrows and drew a ? in the air.

“Well, let’s see,” Ralph said. He knew what the question mark meant: give more information, if you can. “He’s six or seven years older’n you, I think, and maybe eight or nine younger than Redman. But he’s the kind of man you said we ought to be on the lookout for. He asks the right questions.”

?

“Who’s in charge, for one,” Ralph said. “What comes next, for another. Who does it, for a third.”

Nick nodded. Yes—the right questions. But was he the right man? Ralph might be right. He also might not be.

“I’ll try to meet up with him tomorrow & say hello,” he wrote on a fresh sheet of paper.

“Yeah, you oughtta. He’s all right.” Ralph shuffled his feet. “And I talked to Mother a little bit before this Underwood and his folks came up to be innerduced. Talked to her like you wanted me to.”

?

“She says we ought to go ahead. Get moving. She says there’s people lollygaggin, and they need some folks to be in charge and tell em where to squat and lean.”

Nick leaned back in his chair and laughed silently. Then he wrote, “I was pretty sure she’d feel that way. I’ll talk to Stu & Glen tomorrow. Did you print the handbills?”

“Oh! Those! Shit, yeah,” Ralph said. “That’s where I been most of the afternoon, for Christ’s sake.” He showed Nick a sample poster. Still smelling strongly of mimeograph ink, the print was large and eyecatching. Ralph had done the graphics himself:

MASS MEETING!!!

REPRESENTATIVE BOARD

TO BE NOMINATED AND ELECTED!

8:30 P.M., August 18, 1990

Place: Canyon Boulevard Park & Bandshell if FINE

Chautauqua Hall in Chautauqua Park if FOUL

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

FOLLOWING THE MEETING

Below this were two rudimentary street maps for newcomers and those who hadn’t spent much time exploring Boulder. Below, in rather fine print, were the names he and Stu and Glen had agreed upon after some discussion earlier in the day:

Ad Hoc Committee

Nick Andros

Glen Bateman

Ralph Brentner

Richard Ellis

Fran Goldsmith

Stuart Redman

Susan Stern

Nick pointed to the line on the flier about refreshments and raised his eyebrows.

“Oh yeah, well, Frannie came by and said we’d be more apt to get everybody if we had something. She and her friend there, Patty Kroger, they’re going to see to it. Cookies and Za-Rex.” Ralph made a face. “If it came down to a choice between drinking Za-Rex and bullpiss, I’d have to sit down and think her over. You c’n have mine, Nicky.”

Nick grinned.

“The only thing about this,” Ralph went on more seriously, “is you guys putting me on this committee. I know what that word means. It means ‘Congratulations, you get to do all the hard work.’ Well, I don’t really mind that, I been workin hard all my life. But committees are supposed to have idears, and I ain’t much of an idear man.”

On his pad, Nick quickly sketched a big CB setup, and in the background a radio tower with bolts of electricity coming from its top.

“Yeah, but that’s a lot different,” Ralph said glumly:

“You’ll be fine,” Nick wrote. “Believe it.”

“If you say so, Nicky. I’ll give her a try. I still think you’d be better off with this Underwood fella, though.”

Nick shook his head and clapped Ralph on the shoulder. Ralph bid him goodnight and went upstairs. When he was gone, Nick looked thoughtfully at the handbill for a long time. If Stu and Glen had seen copies—and he was sure they had by now—they knew that he had unilaterally stricken Harold Lauder’s name from their list of ad hoc committee members. He didn’t know how they might be taking it, but the fact that they hadn’t shown up at his door yet was probably a good sign. They might want him to do some horsetrading of his own, and if he had to, he would do it, just to keep Harold out at the top. If he had to, he would give them Ralph. Ralph didn’t really want the position anyway, although, goddammit, Ralph had great native wit and the nearly priceless ability to think around the corners of problems. He would be a good man to have on the permanent committee, and he felt that Stu and Glen had already packed the committee with their friends. If he, Nick, wanted Lauder out, they would just have to go along. To pull off this leadership coup smoothly, there had to be no dissension at all among them. Say, Ma, how did that man get a rabbit to come out of that hat? Well, son, I’m not sure, but I think he might have used the old “misdirect em with cookies and Za-Rex” trick. It works just about every time.

He turned back to the page he had been doodling on when Ralph came in. He stared at the words he had circled not just once but three times, as if to keep them in. Authority. Organization. He suddenly wrote another one below them—there was just room. Now the words in the triple circle read:

Authority. Organization. Politics.

But he wasn’t trying to knock Lauder out of the picture just because he felt Stu and Glen Bateman were trying to hog what was really his football. He felt a certain amount of pique, sure. It would have been odd if he hadn’t. In a way, he, Ralph, and Mother Abagail had founded the Boulder Free Zone.

There’s hundreds of people here now and thousands more on their way if Bateman’s right, he thought, tapping his pencil against the circled words. The longer he looked at them, the uglier they seemed. But when Ralph and I and Mother and Tom Cullen and the rest in our party got here, the only living things in Boulder were the cats and the deer that had come down here from the state park to forage in people’s gardens… and even in the stores. Remember that one that got into the Table Mesa Supermarket somehow and then couldn’t get out? It was crazy, running up and down the aisles, knocking things over, falling down, then getting up and running again.

We’re Johnny-come-latelies, sure, we haven’t even been here a month yet, but we were first! So there’s a little pique, but pique isn’t the reason I want Harold out. I want him out because I don’t trust him. He smiles all the time, but there’s a watertight

(smiletight?)

compartment between his mouth and his eyes. There was some friction between him and Stu at one time, over Frannie, and all three of them say it’s over, but I wonder if it really is over. Sometimes I see Frannie looking at Harold, and she looks uneasy. She looks as if she’s trying to figure out how “over” this over really is. He’s bright enough, but he strikes me as unstable.

Nick shook his head. That wasn’t all. On more than one occasion he had wondered if Harold Lauder might not be crazy.