The Stand

The jeep drew up in front of Larry’s house at ten minutes past three. The place was blazing with light—not gaslamps now, but good electric lights. Every second streetlamp was on, too, not just here but all over town, and Stu had stared at them all the way over in Glen’s jeep, fascinated. The last of the summer bugs, sluggish with the cold, were beating lackadaisically against the sodium globes.

They got out of the jeep just as headlights swung around the corner. It was Ralph’s clattering old truck, and it pulled up nose to nose with the jeep. Ralph got out, and Stu went quickly around to the passenger side, where Frannie sat with her back resting against a plaid sofa cushion.

“Hey, babe,” he said softly.

She took his hand. Her face was a pale disk in the darkness.

“Bad pain?” Stu asked.

“Not so bad. I took some Advil. Just don’t ask me to do the hustle.”

He helped her out of the truck and Ralph took her other arm. They both saw her wince as she stepped away from the cab.

“Want me to carry you?”

“I’ll be fine. Just keep your arm around me, huh?”

“Sure will.”

“And walk slow. Us grammies can’t go very fast.”

They crossed behind Ralph’s truck, more shuffling than walking. When they reached the sidewalk, Stu saw Glen and Larry standing in the doorway, watching them. Against the light they looked like figures cut from black construction paper.

“What is it, do you think?” Frannie murmured.

Stu shook his head. “I don’t know.”

They got up the walk, Frannie very obviously in pain now, and Ralph helped Stu get her in. Larry, like Glen, looked pale and worried. He was wearing faded jeans, a shirt that was untucked and buttoned wrong at the bottom, and expensive mocs on bare feet.

“I’m sorry like hell to have to get you out,” he said. “I was in with her, dozing off and on. We’ve been keeping watch. You understand?”

“Yes. I understand,” Frannie said. For some reason the phrase keeping watch made her think of her mother’s parlor… and in a kinder, more forgiving light than she had ever thought of it before.

“Lucy had been in bed about an hour. I snapped out of my doze, and—Fran, can I help you?”

Fran shook her head and smiled with an effort. “No, I’m fine. Go on.”

“—and she was looking at me. She can’t talk above a whisper, but she’s perfectly understandable.” Larry swallowed. All five of them were now standing in the hallway. “She told me the Lord was going to take her home at the sunrise. But that she had to talk to those of us God hadn’t taken first. I asked her what she meant and she said God had taken Nick and Susan. She knew.” He let out a ragged breath and ran his hands through his long hair.

Lucy appeared at the end of the hall. “I made coffee. It’s here when you want it.”

“Thank you, love,” Larry said.

Lucy looked uncertain. “Should I come in with you folks? Or is it private, like the committee?”

Larry looked at Stu, who said quietly, “Come on along. I got an idea that stuff don’t cut ice anymore.”

They went up the hall to the bedroom, moving slowly to accommodate Fran.

“She’ll tell us,” Ralph said suddenly. “Mother will tell us. No sense fretting.”

They went in together, and Mother Abagail’s bright, dying gaze fell upon them.

Fran knew about the old woman’s physical condition, but it was still a nasty shock. There was nothing left of her but a pemmican-tough membrane of skin and tendon binding her bones. There was not even a smell of putrescence and oncoming death in the room; instead there was a dry attic smell… no, a parlor smell. Half the length of the IV needle hung out of her flesh, simply because there was nowhere for it to go.

Yet the eyes had not changed. They were warm and kind and human. That was a relief, but Fran still felt a kind of terror… not strictly fear, but perhaps something more sanctified—awe. Was it awe? An impending feeling. Not doom, but as though some dreadful responsibility was poised above their heads like a stone.

Man proposes—God disposes.

“Little girl, sit down,” Mother Abagail whispered. “You’re in pain.”

Larry led her to an armchair and Fran sat down with a thin, whistling sigh of relief, although she knew even sitting would pain her after a while.

Mother Abagail was still watching her with those bright eyes.

“You’re quick with child,” she whispered.

“Yes… how…”

“Shhhhh…”

Silence fell in the room, deep silence. Fascinated, hypnotized, Fran looked at the dying old woman who had been in their dreams before she had been in their lives.

“Look out the window, little girl.”

Fran turned, her face to the window, where Larry had stood and looked out at the gathered people two days before. She saw not pressing darkness but a quiet light. It was not a reflection of the room; it was morning light. She was looking at the faint, slightly distorted reflection of a bright nursery with ruffled check curtains. There was a crib—but it was empty. There was a playpen—empty. A mobile of bright plastic butterflies—moved only by the wind. Dread clapped its cold hands around her heart. The others saw it on her face but did not understand it; they saw nothing through the window but a section of lawn lit by a streetlight.

“Where’s the baby?” Fran asked hoarsely.

“Stuart is not the baby’s father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart’s hands, and in God’s. This chap will have four fathers. If God lets him draw breath at all.”

“If he draws—”

“God has hidden that from my eyes,” she whispered.

The empty nursery was gone. Fran saw only darkness. And now dread closed its hands into fists, her heart beating between them.

Mother Abagail whispered: “The Imp has called his bride, and he means to put her with child. Will he let your child live?”

“Stop it,” Frannie moaned. She put her hands over her face.

Silence, deep silence like snow in the room. Glen Bateman’s face was an old dull searchlight. Lucy’s right hand worked slowly up and down the neck of her bathrobe. Ralph had his hat in his hands, picking absently at the feather in the band. Stu looked at Frannie, but could not go to her. Not now. He thought fleetingly of the woman at the meeting, the one who had put her hands rapidly over her eyes, ears, and mouth at the mention of the dark man’s name.

“Mother, father, wife, husband,” Mother Abagail whispered. “Set against them, the Prince of High Places, the lord of dark mornings. I sinned in pride. So have you all, all sinned in pride. Ain’t you heard it said, put not your faith in the lords and princes of this world?”

They watched her.

“Electric lights ain’t the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain’t it, either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won’t end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin penance for a life that’s long since a closed book won’t stop it from coming, Larry Underwood. And your boy-child won’t stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. The bad moon has risen. You propose nothing in the sight of God.”

She looked at each of them in turn. “God will dispose as He sees fit. You are not the potter but the potter’s clay. Mayhap the man in the West is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know.”

A tear, amazing in that dying desert, stole from her left eye and rolled down her cheek.

“Mother, what should we do?” Ralph asked.

“Draw near, all of you. My time is short. I’m going home to glory, and there’s never been no human more ready than I am now. Get close to me.”

Ralph sat on the edge of the bed. Larry and Glen stood at the foot of it. Fran got up with a grimace, and Stu