The Stand

Heads turned, necks craned to see Harold better.

“I’d like to move that we accept the slate of ad hoc committee members in toto as the Permanent Committee. If they’ll serve, that is.” Harold sat down.

There was a moment of silence. Stu thought crazily: Toto? Toto? Wasn’t that the dog in The Wizard of Oz?

Then the applause swelled out again, filling the room, and dozens of cries of “I second!” rang out. Harold was sitting placidly in his seat again, smiling and talking to the people who were thumping him on the back.

Stu brought his gavel doyen half a dozen times for order.

He planned this, Stu thought. These people are going to elect us, but it’s Harold they’ll remember. Still, he got to the root of the thing in a way none of us thought of, not even Glen. It was pretty damn near a stroke of genius. So why should he be so upset? Was he jealous, maybe? Were his good resolutions about Harold, made only the day before yesterday, already going by the boards?

“There’s a motion on the floor,” he blared into the mike, ignoring the feedback whine this time. “Motion on the floor, folks!” He pounded the gavel and they quieted to a low babble. “It’s been moved and seconded that we accept the ad hoc committee just as it stands as the Permanent Free Zone Committee. Before we go to a discussion of the motion or to a vote, I ought to ask if anyone now serving on the committee has an objection or would like to step down.”

Silence from the floor.

“Very well,” Stu said. “Discussion of the motion?”

“I don’t think we need any, Stu,” Dick Ellis said. “It’s a grand idea. Let’s vote!”

Applause greeted this, and Stu needed no further urging. Charlie Impening was waving his hand to be recognized, but Stu ignored him—a good case of selective perception, Glen Bateman would have said—and called the question.

“Those in favor of Harold Lauder’s motion please signify by saying aye.”

“Aye!! ” they bellowed, sending the barnswallows into another frenzy.

“Opposed?”

But no one was, not even Charlie Impening—at least, vocally. There was not a nay in the chamber. So Stu pushed on to the next item of business, feeling slightly dazed, as if someone—namely, Harold Lauder—had crept up behind him and clopped him one on the head with a large sledgehammer made out of Silly Putty.

“Let’s get off and push them awhile, want to?” Fran asked. She sounded tired.

“Sure.” He got off his bike and walked along beside her. “You okay, Fran? The baby bothering?”

“No. I’m just tired. It’s quarter of one in the morning, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Yeah, it’s late,” Stu agreed, and they pushed their bikes side by side in companionable silence. The meeting had gone on until an hour ago, most of the discussion centering on the search-party for Mother Abagail. The other items had all passed with a minimum of discussion, although Judge Farris had provided a fascinating piece of information that explained why there were so relatively few bodies in Boulder. According to the last four issues of the Camera, Boulder’s daily newspaper, a wild rumor had swept the community, a rumor that the superflu had originated in the Boulder Air Testing facility on Broadway. Spokesmen for the center— the few still on their feet—protested that it was utter nonsense, and anyone who doubted it was free to tour the facility, where they would find nothing more dangerous than air pollution indicators and wind-vectoring devices. In spite of this, the rumor persisted, probably fed by the hysterical temper of those terrible days in late June. The Air Testing Center had been either bombed or burned, and much of Boulder’s population had fled.

Both the Burial Committee and the Power Committee had been passed with an amendment from Harold Lauder—who had seemed almost awesomely prepared for the meeting—to the effect that each committee be increased by two for each increase of one hundred in the total Free Zone population.

The Search Committee was also voted with no opposition, but the discussion of Mother Abagail’s disappearance had been a protracted one. Glen had advised Stu before the meeting not to limit discussion on this topic unless absolutely necessary; it was worrying all of them, especially the idea that their spiritual leader believed she had committed some sort of sin. Best to let them get it off their chests.

On the back of her note, the old woman had scrawled two biblical references: Proverbs II: 1–3, and Proverbs 21:28-31. Judge Farris had searched these out with the careful diligence of a lawyer preparing a brief, and at the beginning of the discussion, he rose and read them in his cracked and apocalyptic old man’s voice. The verses in the eleventh chapter of Proverbs stated, “A false balance is an abomination of the Lord: but a just weight is his delight. When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom. The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.” The quotation from the twenty-first chapter was in a similar vein: “A false witness shall perish, but the man that heareth speaketh constantly. A wicked man hardeneth his face, but as for the upright, he directeth his way. There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord. The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the Lord.”

The talk following the Judge’s oration (it could be called nothing else) of these two Scriptural tidbits had ranged over far-reaching—and often comical—ground. One man stated ominously that if the chapter numbers were added, you came out with thirty-one, the number of chapters in the Book of Revelations. Judge Farris rose again to say that the Book of Revelations had only twenty-two chapters, at least in his Bible, and that, in any case, twenty-one and eleven added up to thirty-two, not thirty-one. The aspiring numerologist muttered but said no more.

Another fellow stated that he had seen lights in the sky the night before Mother Abagail’s disappearance and that the Prophet Isaiah had confirmed the existence of flying saucers… so they’d better put that in their collective pipe and smoke it, hadn’t they? Judge Farris rose once more, this time to point out that the previous gentleman had mistaken Isaiah for Ezekiel, that the exact reference was not to flying saucers but to “a wheel within a wheel,” and that the Judge himself was of the opinion that the only flying saucers yet proven were those that sometimes flew during marital spats.

Much of the other discussion was a rehash of the dreams, which had ceased altogether, as far as anyone knew, and now seemed rather dreamlike themselves. Person after person rose to protest the charge that Mother Abagail had laid upon herself, that of pride. They spoke of her courtesy and her ability to put a person at ease with just a word or a sentence. Ralph Brentner, who looked awed by the size of the crowd and was nearly tongue- tied—but determined to speak his piece—rose and spoke in that vein for nearly five minutes, adding at the end that he had not known a finer woman since his mother had died. When he sat down, he seemed very near tears.

When taken together, the discussion reminded Stu uncomfortably of a wake. It told him that in their hearts, they had already come halfway to giving her up. If she did return now, Abby Freemantle would find herself welcomed, still sought after, still listened to… but she would also find, Stu thought, that her position was subtly changed. If a showdown between her and the Free Zone Committee came, it was no longer a foregone conclusion that she would win, veto power or not. She had gone away and the community had continued to exist. The community would not forget that, as they had already half forgotten the power the dreams had once briefly held over their lives.

After the meeting, more than two dozen people had sat for a while on the lawn behind Chautauqua Hall; the rain had stopped, the clouds were tattering, and the evening was pleasantly cool. Stu and Frannie had sat with Larry, Lucy, Leo, and Harold.

“You darn near knocked us out of the ballpark this evening,” Larry told Harold. He nudged Frannie with an elbow. “I told you he was ace high, didn’t I?”

Harold had merely smiled and shrugged modestly. “A couple of ideas, that’s all. You seven have started things moving again. You should at least have the privilege of seeing it through to the end of the beginning.”

Now, fifteen minutes after the two of them had left that impromptu gathering and still ten minutes from home, Stu repeated: “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Yes. My legs are a little tired, that’s all.”

“You want to take it easy, Frances.”

“Don’t call me that, you know I hate it.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Frances.”

“All men are bastards.”

“I’m going to try and improve my act, Frances—honest I am.”