The Stand

Before what?

Well, at the last Free Zone Committee meeting before he and Fran had left, Hugh Petrella had asked for and had been given the authorization to arm his deputies. It had been the cause in Boulder during his and Fran’s last few weeks there—everyone had taken a side. In early June a drunk had man-handled one of the deputies and had thrown him through the plate-glass window of The Broken Drum, a bar on Pearl Street. The deputy had needed over thirty stitches and a blood transfusion. Petrella had argued it never would have happened if his man had had a Police Special to point at the drunk. And so the controversy raged. There were plenty of people (and Stu was among them, although he kept his opinions mostly to himself) who believed that, if the deputy had had a gun, the incident might have ended with a dead drunk instead of a wounded deputy.

What happens after you give guns to the deputies? he asked himself. What’s the logical progression? And it seemed that it was the scholarly, slightly dry voice of Glen Bateman that spoke in answer. You give them bigger guns. And police cars. And when you discover a Free Zone community down in Chile or maybe up in Canada, you make Hugh Petrella the Minister of Defense just in case, and maybe you start sending out search-parties, because after all—

That stuff is lying around, just waiting to be picked up.

“Let’s put him to bed,” Fran said, coming up the steps.

“Okay.”

“Why are you sitting around in such a blue study, anyhow?”

“Was I?”

“You certainly were.”

He used his fingers to push the corners of his mouth up in a smile. “Better?”

“Much. Help me put him in.”

“My pleasure.”

As he followed her inside Mother Abagail’s house he thought it would be better, much better, if they did break down and spread. Postpone organization as long as possible. It was organization that always seemed to cause the problem. When the cells began to clump together and grow dark. You didn’t have to give the cops guns until the cops couldn’t remember the names… the faces…

Fran lit a kerosene lamp and it made a soft yellow glow. Peter looked up at them quietly, already sleepy. He had played hard. Fran slipped him into a nightshirt.

All any of us can buy is time, Stu thought. Peter’s lifetime, his children’s lifetimes, maybe the lifetimes of my great-grandchildren. Until the year 2100, maybe, surely no longer than that. Maybe not that long. Time enough for poor old Mother Earth to recycle herself a little. A season of rest.

“What?” she asked, and he realized he had murmured it aloud.

“A season of rest,” he repeated.

“What does that mean?”

“Everything,” he said, and took her hand.

Looking down at Peter he thought: Maybe if we tell him what happened, he’ll tell his own children. Warn them. Dear children, the toys are death—they’re flashburns and radiation sickness and black, choking plague. These toys are dangerous; the devil in men’s brains guided the hands of God when they were made. Don’t play with these toys, dear children, please, not ever. Not ever again. Please… please learn the lesson. Let this empty world be your copybook.

“Frannie,” he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes.

“What, Stuart?”

“Do you think… do you think people ever learn anything?”

She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response; and could only say it again:

I don’t know.

THE CIRCLE CLOSES

We need help, the Poet reckoned.

Edward Dorn

He woke at dawn.

He had his boots on.

He sat up and looked around himself. He was on a beach as white as bone. Above him, a ceramic sky of cloudless blue stood tall and far. Beyond him, a turquoise sea broke far out upon a reef and then came in gently, surging up and between strange boats that were—

(canoes outrigger canoes)

He knew that… but how?

He got to his feet and almost fell. He was shaky. Bad off. Felt hung over.

He turned around. Green jungle seemed to leap out at his eyes, a dark forested tangle of vines and broad leaves and lush, blooming flowers that were

(as pink as a chorus girl’s nipple)

He was bewildered again.

What was a chorus girl?

For that matter, what was a nipple?

A macaw screamed at the sight of him, flew away blindly, crashed into the thick bole of an old banyan tree, and fell dead at the foot of it with its legs sticking up.

(sat him on the table with his legs stickin up)

A mongoose looked at his flushed, beard-scruffy face and died of a brain embolism.

(in come sis with a spoon and a glass)

A beetle that had been trundling busily up the trunk of a nipa palm turned black and shriveled to a husk with tiny blue bolts of electricity frizzing for a moment between its antennae.

(and starts dippin gravy from its yass-yass-yass.)

Who am I?

He didn’t know.

Where am I?

What did it matter?

He began to walk—stagger—toward the verge of the jungle. He was light-headed with hunger. The sound of the surf boomed hollowly in his ears like the beat of crazy blood. His mind was as empty as the mind of a newborn child.

He was halfway to the edge of the deep green when it parted and three men came out. Then four. Then there were half a dozen.

They were brown, smooth-skinned folk.

They stared at him.

He stared back.

Things began to come.

The six men became eight. The eight became a dozen. They all held spears. They began to raise them threateningly. The man with the beard-stubble on his face looked at them. He was wearing jeans and old sprung cowboy boots; nothing else. His upper body was as white as the belly of a carp and dreadfully wasted.

The spears came all the way up. Then one of the brown men—the leader—choked out one word over and over again, a word that sounded like Yun-nah!

Yep, things were coming.

Righty-O.

His name, for one thing.

He smiled.

That smile was like a red sun breaking through a black cloud. It exposed bright white teeth and amazing blazing eyes. He turned his lineless palms out to face them in the universal gesture of peace.