The Stand

“That’s right,” he said. “How’s Nadine-mom, Leo?”

“She calls me Joe. I’m Joe to her.”

“Oh.” A cold chill was weaving its slow way up Larry’s back.

“It’s bad now.”

“Bad?”

“It’s bad with both of them.”

“Nadine and—”

(Harold?)

“Yes, him.”

“They’re not happy?”

“He’s got them fooled. They think he wants them.”

“He?”

“Him.”

The word hung on the still summer air.

Thok-thok-thok.

“They’re going to go west,” Leo said.

“Jesus,” Larry muttered. He was very cold now. The old fear swept him. Did he really want to hear any more of this? It was like watching a tomb door swing slowly open in a silent graveyard, seeing a hand emerge—

Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to know it.

“Nadine-mom wants to think it’s your fault,” Leo said. “She wants to think you drove her to Harold. But she waited on purpose. She waited until you loved Lucy-mom too much. She waited until she was sure. It’s like he’s rubbing away the part of her brain that knows right from wrong. Little by little he’s rubbing that part away. And when it’s gone she’ll be as crazy as everyone else in the West. Crazier maybe.”

“Leo—” Larry whispered, and Leo answered immediately:

“She calls me Joe. I’m Joe to her.”

“Shall I call you Joe?” Larry asked doubtfully.

“No.” There was a note of pleading in the boy’s voice. “No, please don’t.”

“You miss your Nadine-mom, don’t you, Leo?”

“She’s dead,” Leo said with chilling simplicity.

“Is that why you stayed out so late that night?”

“Yes.”

“And why you wouldn’t talk?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re talking now.”

“I have you and Lucy-mom to talk to.”

“Yes, of course—”

“But not for always!” the boy said fiercely. “Not for always, unless you talk to Frannie! Talk to Frannie! Talk to Frannie! ”

“About Nadine?”

“No!”

“About what? About you?”

Leo’s voice rose, became even shriller. “It’s all written down! You know! Frannie knows! Talk to Frannie! ”

“The committee—”

“Not the committee! The committee won’t help you, it won’t help anyone, the committee is the old way, he laughs at your committee because it’s the old way and the old ways are his ways, you know, Frannie knows, if you talk together you can—”

Leo brought the ball down hard—THOK! —and it rose higher than his head and came down and rolled away. Larry watched it, his mouth dry, his heart thudding nastily in his chest.

“I dropped my ball,” Leo said, and ran to get it.

Larry sat watching him.

Frannie, he thought.

The two of them sat on the edge of the bandshell stage, their feet dangling. It was an hour before dark, and a few people were walking through the park, some of them holding hands. The children’s hour is also the lovers’ hour, Fran thought disjointedly. Larry had just finished telling her everything Leo had said in his trance, and her mind was whirling with it.

“So what do you think?” Larry asked.

“I don’t know what to think,” she said softly, “except I don’t like any of the things that have been happening. Visionary dreams. An old woman who’s the voice of God for a while and then walks off into the wilderness. Now a little boy who seems to be a telepath. It’s like life in a fairy tale. Sometimes I think the superflu left us alive but drove us all mad.”

“He said I should talk to you. So I am.”

She didn’t reply.

“Well,” Larry said, “if anything comes to you—”

“Written down,” Frannie said softly. “He was right, that kid. It’s the whole root of the problem, I think. If I hadn’t been so stupid, so conceited, as to write it all down… oh goddam me!”

Larry stared at her, amazed. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s Harold,” she said, “and I’m afraid. I haven’t told Stu. I’ve been ashamed. Keeping the diary was so dumb … and now Stu… he actually likes Harold… everybody in the Free Zone likes Harold, including you.” She uttered a laugh which was choked with tears. “After all, he was your… your spirit-guide on the way out here, wasn’t he?”

“I’m not tracking this very well,” Larry said slowly. “Can you tell me what it is you’re afraid of?”

“That’s just it—I don’t really know.” She looked at him, her eyes wet with tears. “I think I’d better tell you what I can, Larry. I have to talk to someone. God knows I just can’t keep it inside anymore, and Stu… Stu’s maybe not the person who should hear. At least, not the first one.”

“Go ahead, Fran. Shoot.”

So she told him, beginning with the day in June that Harold had driven into the driveway of her Ogunquit home in Roy Brannigan’s Cadillac. As she talked, the last bright daylight changed to a bluish shade. The lovers in the park began to drift away. A thin rind of moon rose. In the high-rise condominium on the far side of Canyon Boulevard, a few Coleman gaslamps had come on. She told him about the sign on the barn roof and how she had been sleeping when Harold risked his life to put her name on the bottom. About meeting Stu in Fabyan, and about Harold’s shrill get-away-from-my-bone reaction to Stu. She told him about her diary, and about the thumbprint in it. By the time she finished, it was past nine o’clock and the crickets were singing. A silence fell between them and Fran waited apprehensively for Larry to break it. But he seemed lost in thought.

At last he said, “How sure are you about that fingerprint? In your own mind are you positive it was Harold’s?”

She only hesitated a moment. “Yes. I knew it was Harold’s print the first time I saw it.”

“That barn he put the sign on,” Larry said. “You remember the night I met you I said I’d been up in it? And that Harold had carved his initials on a beam in the loft?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t just his initials. It was yours, too. In a heart. The kind of thing a lovesick little boy would do on his school desk.”

She put her hands over her eyes and wiped them. “What a mess,” she said huskily.

“You’re not responsible for Harold Lauder’s actions, keed.” He took her hand in both of his and held it tightly. He looked at her. “Take it from me, the original dipstick, oilslick, and drippy dick. You can’t hold it against yourself. Because if you do…” His grip tightened to a degree where it became painful, but his face remained soft. “If you do, you really will go mad. It’s hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else’s.”

He took his hand away and they were quiet for a time.