The Stand

station and the burial crew. And I’d like to see Harold Lauder in charge, because it was his idea in the first place.”

Glen said that he didn’t think any search-party was going to find very good news after a week or so. After all, the lady in question is a hundred and eight years old. The committee as a whole agreed with that, and then voted in favor of the motion, 7–0, as Stu had put it. To make this record as honest as possible, I should add there were several expressions of doubt over putting Harold in charge… but as Stu pointed out, it had been his idea to begin with, and not to give him command of the search-party would be a direct slap in the face.

Nick: “I withdraw my objection to Harold, but not my basic reservations. I just don’t like him very much.”

Ralph Brentner asked if either Stu or Glen would write out Stu’s motion about the search-party so he could add it to the agenda, which he plans to print at the high school tonight. Stu said he’d be glad to.

Larry Underwood then moved that we adjourn, Ralph seconded it, and it was voted, 7–0.

Frances Goldsmith, Secretary

The turnout for the meeting the next evening was almost total, and for the first time Larry Underwood, who had been in the Zone only a week, got an idea of just how large the community was becoming. It was one thing to see people coming and going on the streets, usually alone or by twos, and quite another thing to see them all gathered together in one place—Chautauqua Auditorium. The place was full, every seat taken and more people sitting in the aisles and standing at the back of the hall. They were a curiously subdued crowd, murmuring but not babbling. For the first time since he had gotten to Boulder it had rained all day long, a soft drizzle that seemed to hang suspended in the air, fogging you rather than wetting you, and even with the assemblage of close to six hundred, you could hear the quiet sound of rain on the roof. The loudest sound inside was the constant riffle of paper as people looked at the mimeographed agendas that had been piled up on two card tables just inside the double doors.

This agenda read:

THE BOULDER FREE ZONE

Open Meeting Agenda

August 18, 1990

1. To see if the Free Zone will agree to read and ratify the Constitution of the United States of America.

2. To see if the Free Zone will agree to read and ratify the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States of America.

3. To see if the Free Zone will nominate and elect a slate of seven Free Zone representatives to serve as a governing board.

4. To see if the Free Zone will agree to veto power for Abagail Freemantle on any and all matters agreed to by the Free Zone representatives.

5. To see if the Free Zone will approve a Burial Committee of at least twenty persons initially to decently inter those who died of the superflu epidemic in Boulder.

6. To see if the Free Zone will approve a Power Committee of at least sixty persons initially to get the electricity back on before cold weather.

7. To see if the Free Zone will approve a Search Committee of at least fifteen persons, its purpose to find the whereabouts of Abagail Freemantle, if possible.

Larry found that his nervous hands had been busy folding this agenda, which he knew nearly word for word, into a paper airplane. Being on the ad hoc committee was sort of fun, like a game—children playing at parliamentary process in someone’s living room, sitting around and drinking Cokes, having a piece of the cake Frannie had made, talking things over. Even the part about sending spies over the mountains and right into the dark man’s lap had seemed like a game, partly because it was a thing he couldn’t imagine doing himself. You’d have to have lost most of your marbles to face such a living nightmare. But in their closed sessions, with the room comfortably lit with Coleman gas lanterns, it had seemed okay. And if the Judge or Dayna Jurgens or Tom Cullen got caught, it seemed—in those closed sessions, at least—a thing no more important than losing a rook or a queen in a chess game.

But now, sitting halfway down the hall with Lucy on one side and Leo on the other (he had not seen Nadine all day, and Leo didn’t seem to know where she was, either; “Out” had been his disinterested response), the truth of it came home, and in his guts it felt as if a battering ram was in use. It was no game. There were five hundred and eighty people here and most of them didn’t have any idea that Larry Underwood wasn’t no nice guy, or that the first person Larry Underwood had attempted to take care of after the epidemic had died of a drug overdose.

His hands were damp and chilly. They were trying to fold the agenda into a paper plane again and he stopped them. Lucy took one of them, squeezed it, and smiled at him. He was able to respond only with something that felt like a grimace, and in his heart he heard his mother’s voice: There’s something left out of you, Larry.

Thinking of that made him feel panicky. Was there a way out of this, or had things already gone too far? He didn’t want this millstone. He had already made a motion in closed session that could send Judge Farris to his death. If he was voted out and someone else was voted into his seat, they’d have to take another vote on sending the Judge, wouldn’t they? Sure they would. And they’d vote to send someone else. When Laurie Constable nominates me, I’ll just stand up and say I decline. Sure, nobody can force me, can they? Not if I decide I want out. And who the fuck needs this kind of hassle?

Wayne Stukey on that long ago beach saying: There’s something in you that’s like biting on tinfoil.

Quietly, Lucy said: “You’ll be fine.”

He jumped. “Huh?”

“I said you’ll be fine. Won’t he, Leo?”

“Oh yes,” Leo said, bobbing his head. His eyes never left the audience, as if they had not yet been able to communicate its size to his brain. “Fine.”

You don’t understand, you numb broad, Larry thought. You’re holding my hand and you don’t understand that I could make a bad decision and wind up killing both of you. I’m well on my way to killing Judge Farris and he’s seconding my fucking nomination. What a Polish firedrill this turned out to be. A little sound escaped his throat.

“Did you say something?” Lucy asked.

“No.”

Then Stu was walking across the stage to the podium, his red sweater and bluejeans very bright and clear in the harsh glow of the emergency lights, which were running from a Honda generator that Brad Kitchner and part of his crew from the power station had set up. The applause started somewhere in the middle of the hall, Larry was never sure where, and a cynical part of him was always convinced that it had been a plot arranged by Glen Bateman, their resident expert in the art/craft of crowd management. At any rate, it didn’t really matter. The first solitary spats swelled to a thunder of applause. On the stage, Stu paused by the podium, looking comically amazed. The applause was joined by cheers and shrill whistles.

Then the entire audience rose to its feet, the applause swelling to a sound like heavy rain, and people were shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! ” Stu held up his hands, but they wouldn’t stop; if anything, the sound redoubled in intensity. Larry glanced sideways at Lucy and saw she was applauding strenuously, her eyes fixed on Stu, her mouth curved in a trembling but triumphant smile. She was crying. On his other side Leo was also applauding, bringing his hands together again and again with so much force that Larry thought they would fall off if Leo kept on much longer. In the extremity of his joy, Leo’s carefully won-back vocabulary had deserted him, the way English will sometimes desert a man or woman who has learned it as his or her second tongue. He could only hoot loudly and enthusiastically.

Brad and Ralph had also run a PA from the generator and now Stu blew into the mike and then spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen—”

But the applause rolled on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll take your seats—”

But they were not ready to take their seats. The applause roared on and on, and Larry looked down because his own hands hurt, and he saw that he was applauding as frantically as the rest.

“Ladies and gentlemen—”