The Stand

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“Probably because I am telling you exactly what you want to hear,” the Judge said serenely. And then he added: “There are a great many ways to commit suicide, you know.”

And before too much time had passed, Larry had occasion to recall that remark in bitter circumstances.

At quarter past eight the next morning, Harold’s truck was leaving the Greyhound depot to go back to the Table Mesa area. Harold, Weizak, and two others were sitting in the back of the truck. Norman Kellogg and another man were in the cab. They were at the intersection of Arapahoe and Broadway when a brand-new Land- Rover drove slowly toward them.

Weizak waved and shouted, “Where ya headed, Judge?”

The Judge, looking rather comic in a woolen shirt and a vest, pulled over. “I believe I might go to Denver for the day,” he said blandly.

“Will that thing get you there?” Weizak asked.

“Oh, I believe so, if I steer clear of the main-traveled roads.”

“Well, if you go by one of those X-rated bookstores, why don’t you bring back a trunkful?”

This sally was greeted with a burst of laughter from everyone—the Judge included—but Harold. He looked sallow and haggard this morning, as if he had rested ill. In fact, he had hardly slept at all. Nadine had been as good as her word; he had fulfilled quite a few dreams the night before. Dreams of the damp variety, let us say. He was already looking forward to tonight, and Weizak’s sally about pornography was only good for a ghost of a smile now that he had had a little first-hand experience. Nadine had been sleeping when he left. Before they dropped off around two, she had told him she wanted to read his ledger. He had told her to go ahead if she wanted to. Perhaps he was putting himself at her mercy, but he was too confused to know for sure. But it was the best writing he had ever done in his life and the deciding factor was his want—no, his need. His need to have someone else read, experience, his good work.

Now Kellogg was leaning out of the dump truck’s cab toward the Judge. “You be careful, Pop. Okay? There’s funny folks on the roads these days.”

“Indeed there are,” the Judge said with a strange smile. “And indeed I will. A good day to you, gentlemen. And you too, Mr. Weizak.”

That brought another burst of laughter, and they parted.

The Judge did not head toward Denver. When he reached Route 36, he proceeded directly across it and out along Route 7. The morning sun was bright and mellow, and on this secondary route, there was not enough stalled traffic to block the road. The town of Brighton was worse; at one point he had to leave the highway and drive across the local high school football field to avoid a colossal traffic jam. He continued east until he reached I-25. A right turn here would have taken him into Denver. Instead he turned left—north—and nosed onto the feeder ramp. Halfway down he put the transmission in neutral and looked left again, west, to where the Rockies rose serenely into the blue sky with Boulder lying at their base.

He had told Larry he was too old for adventure, and God save him, but that had been a lie. His heart hadn’t beat with this quick rhythm for twenty years, the air had not tasted this sweet, colors had not seemed this bright. He would follow I-25 to Cheyenne and then move west toward whatever waited for him beyond the mountains. His skin, dry with age, nonetheless crawled and goosebumped a little at the thought. I-80 west, into Salt Lake City, then across Nevada to Reno. Then he would head north again, but that hardly mattered. Because somewhere between Salt Lake and Reno, maybe even sooner, he would be stopped, questioned, and probably sent somewhere else to be questioned again. And at some place or other, an invitation might be issued.

It was not even impossible to think that he might meet the dark man himself.

“Get moving, old man,” he said softly.

He put the Rover in gear and crept down to the turnpike. There were three lanes northbound, all of them relatively clear. As he had guessed, traffic jams and multiple accidents back in Denver had effectively dammed the flow of traffic. The traffic was heavy on the other side of the median strip—the poor fools who had been headed south, blindly hoping that south would be better—but here the going was good. For a while at least.

Judge Farris drove on, glad to be making his start. He had slept poorly last night. He would sleep better tonight, under the stars, his old body wrapped firmly in two sleeping bags. He wondered if he would ever see Boulder again and thought the chances were probably against it. And yet his excitement was very great.

It was one of the finest days of his life.

Early that afternoon, Nick, Ralph, and Stu biked out to North Boulder to a small stucco house where Tom Cullen lived by himself. Tom’s house had already become a landmark to Boulder’s “old” residents. Stan Nogotny said it was as if the Catholics, Baptists, and Seventh-Day Adventists had gotten together with the Democrats and the Moonies to create a religious-political Disneyland.

The front lawn of the house was a weird tableau of statues. There were a dozen Virgin Marys, some of them apparently in the act of feeding flocks of pink plastic lawn flamingos. The largest of the flamingos was taller than Tom himself and anchored to the ground on a single leg that ended in a four-foot spike. There was a giant wishing well with a large plastic glow-in-the-dark Jesus standing in the ornamental bucket with His hands outstretched… apparently to bless the pink flamingos. Beside the wishing well was a large plaster cow who was apparently drinking from a birdbath.

The front door screen slammed open and Tom came out to meet them, stripped to the waist. Seen from a distance, Nick thought, you would have supposed he was some fantastically virile writer or painter, with his bright blue eyes and that big reddish-blond beard. As he got closer you might have given up that idea in favor of one not quite so intellectual… maybe some sort of craftsman from the counterculture who had substituted kitsch for originality. And when he got very close, smiling and talking away a mile a minute, you realized for sure that a goodly chunk of Tom Cullen’s attic insulation was missing.

Nick knew that one of the reasons he felt a strong sense of empathy for Tom was because he himself had been assumed to be mentally retarded, at first because his handicap had held him back from learning to read and write, later because people just assumed that someone who was both deaf and mute must be mentally retarded. He had heard all the slang terms at one time or another. A few bricks short the load. Soft upstairs. Running on three wheels. The guy’s got a hole in his head and his brains done leaked out. This guy ain’t traveling with a full seabag. He remembered the night he had stopped for a couple of beers in Zack’s, the ginmill on the outskirts of Shoyo—the night Ray Booth and his buddies had jumped him. The bartender had stood at the far end of the bar, leaning confidentially over it to speak to a customer. His hand had been half shielding his mouth, so Nick could only make out fragments of what he had been saying. He didn’t need to make out any more than that, however. Deaf-mute… probably retarded… almost all those guys’re retarded…

But among all the ugly terms for mental retardation, there was one term that did fit Tom Cullen. It was one Nick had applied to him often, and with great compassion, in the silence of his own mind. The phrase was: The guys not playing with a full deck. That was what was wrong with Tom. That was what it came down to. And the pity in Tom’s case was that so few cards were missing, and low cards at that—a deuce of diamonds, a trey of clubs, something like that. But without those cards, you just couldn’t have a good game of anything. You couldn’t even win at solitaire with those cards missing from the deck.

“Nicky!” Tom yelled. “Am I glad to see you! Laws, yes! Tom Cullen is so glad!” He threw his arms around Nick’s neck and gave him a hug. Nick felt his bad eye sting with tears behind the black eyepatch he still wore on bright days like this one. “And Ralph too! And that one. You’re… let’s see…”

“I’m—” Stu began, but Nick silenced him with a brusque chopping gesture of his left hand. He had been practicing mnemonics with Tom, and it seemed to work. If you could associate something you knew with a name you wanted to remember, it often clicked home and stuck. Rudy had turned him on to that, too, all those long years ago.

Now he took his pad from his pocket and jotted on it. Then he handed it to Ralph to read aloud.

Frowning a little, Ralph did so: “What do you like to eat that comes in a bowl with meat and vegetables and gravy?”

Tom went stockstill. The animation died out of his face. His mouth dropped slackly open and he became the picture of idiocy.

Stu stirred uncomfortably and said, “Nick, don’t you think we ought to—”

Nick shushed him with a finger at his lips, and at the same instant Tom came alive again.

“Stew!” he said, capering and laughing. “You’re Stew!” He looked at Nick for confirmation, and Nick gave him a