The Stand

would be gone in a flash of light, taken. Or they would see her spirit, transfigured in radiance, leaving by the window and going up into the sky.

But in the end, she simply died.

There was a single final breath, the last of millions. It was drawn in, held, and finally let out. Her chest just didn’t rise again.

“She’s done,” Stu muttered.

“God have mercy on her soul,” Ralph said, no longer afraid. He crossed her hands on her thin bosom, and his tears fell on them.

“I’ll go,” Glen said suddenly. “She was right. White magic. That’s all that’s left.”

“Stu,” Frannie whispered. “Please, Stu, say no.”

They looked at him—all of them.

Now you must lead, Stuart.

He thought of Arnette, of the old car carrying Charles D. Campion and his load of death, crashing into Bill Hapscomb’s pumps like some wicked Pandora. He thought of Denninger and Deitz, and how he had begun to associate them in his mind with the smiling doctors who had lied and lied and lied to him and to his wife about her condition—and maybe they had lied to themselves, as well. Most of all, he thought of Frannie. And of Mother Abagail saying, This is what God wants of you.

“Frannie,” he said. “I have to go.”

“And die.” She looked at him bitterly, almost hatefully, and then to Lucy, as if for support. But Lucy was stunned and far-off, no help.

“If we don’t go, we’ll die,” Stu said, feeling his way along the words. “She was right. If we wait, then spring comes. Then what? How are we going to stop him? We don’t know. We don’t have a clue. We never did. We had our heads in the sand, too. We can’t stop him except like Glen says. White magic. Or the power of God.”

She began to weep bitterly.

“Frannie, don’t do that,” he said, and tried to take her hand.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried at him. “You’re a dead man, you’re a corpse, so don’t touch me! ”

They stood around the bed in tableau as the sun came up.

Stu and Frannie went to Flagstaff Mountain around eleven o’clock. They parked halfway up, and Stu brought the hamper while Fran carried the tablecloth and a bottle of Blue Nun. The picnic had been her idea, but a strange and awkward silence held between them.

“Help me spread it,” she said. “And watch out for those spiny things.”

They were in a small, slanting meadow a thousand feet below Sunrise Amphitheater. Boulder was spread out below them in a blue haze. Today it was wholly summer again. The sun shone down with power and authority. Crickets buzzed in the grass. A grasshopper leaped up and Stu caught it with a quick lunge of his right hand. He could feel it inside his fingers, tickling and frightened.

“Spit n I’ll let you go,” he said, the old childhood formula, and looked up to see Fran smiling sadly at him. With quick, ladylike precision, she turned her head and spat. It hurt his heart, seeing her do that. “Fran—”

“No, Stu. Don’t talk about it. Not now.”

They spread the white lawn tablecloth, which Fran had glommed from the Hotel Boulderado, and moving with quick economy (it made him feel strange to watch her supple grace as she bent and moved, as if there had never been a whiplash injury and sprained back at all), she set out their early lunch: a cucumber and lettuce salad dressed with vinegar; cold ham sandwiches; the wine; an apple pie for dessert.

“Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat,” she said. He sat down beside her and took a sandwich and some salad. He wasn’t hungry. He hurt inside. But he ate.

When they had both finished a token sandwich and most of the salad—the fresh greens had been delicious— and a small sliver of apple pie each, she said: “When are you going?”

“Noon,” he said. He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame in his hands.

“How long will it take you to get there?”

He shrugged. “Walking? I don’t know. Glen’s not young. Neither is Ralph, for that matter. If we can make thirty miles a day, we could do it by the first of October, I guess.”

“And if there’s early snow in the mountains? Or in Utah?”

He shrugged, looking at her steadily.

“More wine?” she asked.

“No. It gives me acid indigestion. It always did.”

Fran poured herself another glass and drank it off.

“Was she God’s voice, Stu? Was she?”

“Frannie, I just don’t know.”

“We dreamed of her, and she was. This whole thing is part and parcel of some stupid game, do you know that, Stuart? Have you ever read the Book of Job?”

“I was never much on the Bible, I guess.”

“My mom was. She thought it was very important that my brother Fred and I have a certain amount of religious background. She never said why. All the good it ever did me, so far as I know, was that I was always able to answer the Bible questions on ‘Jeopardy.’ Do you remember ‘Jeopardy,’ Stu?”

Smiling a little, he said: “And now here’s your host, Alex Trebeck.”

“That’s the one. It was backward. They gave you the answer; you supplied the question. When it came to the Bible, I knew all the questions. Job was a bet between God and the Devil. The Devil said, ‘Sure he worships You. He’s got it soft. But if You piss in his face long enough, he’ll renounce You.’ So God took the wager. And God won.” She smiled dully. “God always wins. God’s a Boston Celtics fan, I bet.”

“Maybe it is a bet,” Stu said, “but it’s their lives, those folks down there. And the guy inside you. What did she call him? The chap?”

“She wouldn’t even promise about him,” Fran said. “If she could have done that… just that… it would have been at least a little bit easier to let you go.”

Stu could think of nothing to say.

“Well, it’s getting on toward noon now,” Fran said. “Help me pack up, Stuart.”

The half-eaten lunch went back into the hamper with the tablecloth and the rest of the wine. Stu looked at the spot and thought of how there were only a few crumbs to show where their picnic had been… and the birds would get those soon enough. When he glanced up, Frannie was looking at him and crying. He went to her.

“It’s all right. It’s being pregnant. I’m always running at the eyes. I can’t seem to help it.”

“It’s okay.”

“Stu, make love to me.”

“Here? Now?”

She nodded, then smiled a little. “It will be all right. If we watch out for the spiny things.”

They spread the tablecloth again.

At the foot of Baseline Road she made him stop at what had been Ralph and Nick’s house until four days ago. The entire rear of the house was blown away. The back yard was littered with debris. A shattered digital clock radio sat atop the shredded back hedge. Nearby was the sofa under which Frannie had been pinned. There was a patch of dried blood on the back steps. She looked at this fixedly.

“Is that Nick’s blood?” she asked him. “Could it be?”

“Frannie, what’s the point?” Stu asked uneasily.

“Is it?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. It could be, I suppose.”

“Put your hand on it, Stu.”

“Frannie, have you gone nuts?”

The frown-line creased her brow, the I-want line that he had first noticed back in New Hampshire.

“Put your hand on it!”

Reluctantly, Stu put his hand on the stain. He didn’t know if it was Nick’s blood or not (and believed, in fact, that it probably wasn’t), but the gesture gave him a ghastly, crawly feeling.

“Now swear you’ll come back.”