The Stand:BOOK I(74)

But she would have to think soon about what to do next, and she supposed that thinking would have to include Harold Lauder. Not just because she and Harold were now the last two people in the area, but because she had no idea what would become of Harold without someone to watch out for him. She didn't suppose that she was the world's most practical person, but since she was here she would have to do. She still didn't particularly like him, but at least he had tried to be tactful and had turned out to have some decency. Quite a bit, even, in his own queer way.

Harold had left her alone since their meeting four days ago, probably respecting her wish to grieve for her parents. But she had seen him from time to time in Roy Brannigan's Cadillac, cruising aimlessly from place to place. And twice, when the wind was right, she had been able to hear the clacking of his typewriter from her bedroom window-the fact that it was quiet enough to hear that sound, although the Lauder house was nearly a mile and a half away, seemed to underline the reality of what had happened. She was a little amused that although Harold had latched on to the Cadillac, he hadn't thought of replacing his manual typewriter with one of those quiet humming electric torpedoes.

Not that he could have it now, she thought as she stood up and brushed off the seat of her shorts. Ice cream and electric typewriters were things of the past. It made her feel sadly nostalgic, and she found herself wondering again with a sense of deep bewilderment how such a cataclysm could have taken place in only a couple of weeks.

There would be other people, no matter what Harold said. If the system of authority had temporarily broken down, they would just have to find the scattered others and re-form it. It didn't occur to her to wonder why "authority" seemed to be such a necessary thing to have, any more than it occurred to her to wonder why she had automatically felt responsible for Harold. It just was. Structure was a necessary thing.

She left the park and walked slowly down Main Street toward the Lauder house. The day was warm already, but the air was freshened by a sea breeze. She suddenly wanted to go down to the beach, find a nice piece of kelp, and nibble on it.

"God, you're disgusting," she said aloud. Of course she wasn't disgusting; she was just pregnant. That was it. Next week it would be Bermuda onion sandwiches. With creamy horseradish on top.

She stopped on the corner, still a block from Harold's, surprised at how long it had been since she had thought of her "delicate condition." Before, she had always been discovering that I'm-pregnant thought around odd corners, like some unpleasant mess she kept forgetting to clean up: I ought to be sure and get that blue dress to the cleaners before Friday (a few more months and I can hang it in the closet because I'm-pregnant); I guess I'll take my shower now (in a few months it'll look like there's a whale in the shower stall because I'm-pregnant). I ought to get the oil changed in the car before the pistons fall right out of their sockets or whatever (and I wonder what Johnny down at the Citgo would say if he knew I'm-pregnant). But maybe now she had become accustomed to the thought. After all, she was nearly three months along, nearly a third of the way there.

For the first time she wondered with some unease who would help her have her baby.

From behind the Lauder house there came a steady ratcheting clickclickclick of a hand mower, and when Fran came around the corner, what she saw was so strange that only her complete surprise kept her from laughing out loud.

Harold, clad only in a tight and skimpy blue bathing suit, was mowing the lawn. His white skin was sheened with sweat; his long hair flopped against his neck (although to do Harold credit it did appear to have been washed in the not-too-distant past). The rolls of fat above the waistband of his trunks and below the legbands jounced up and down wildly. His feet were green with cut grass to above the ankle. His back had gone reddish, although with exertion or incipient sunburn she couldn't tell.

But Harold wasn't just mowing; he was running. The Lauders' back lawn sloped down to a picturesque, rambling stone wall, and in the middle of it was an octagonal summerhouse. She and Amy used to hold their "teas" there when they were little girls, Frannie remembered with a sudden stab of nostalgia that was unexpectedly painful, back in the days when they could still cry over the ending of Charlotte's Web and moan happily over Chuckie Mayo, the cutest boy in school. The Lauders' lawn was somehow English in its greenness and peace, but now a dervish in a blue bathing suit had invaded this pastoral scene. She could hear Harold panting in a way that was alarming to listen to as he turned the northeast corner where the Lauders' back lawn was divided from the Wilsons' by a row of mulberry bushes. He roared down the slope of the lawn, bent over the mower's T-handle. The blades whirred. Grass flew in a green jet, coating Harold's lower legs. He had mowed perhaps half of the lawn; what was left was a diminishing square with the summerhouse in the middle. He turned the corner at the bottom of the hill and then roared back, for a moment obscured from view by the summerhouse, and then reappearing, bent over his machine like a Formula One race driver. About halfway up, he saw her. At exactly the same instant Frannie said timidly: "Harold?" And she saw that he was in tears.

"Huh!" Harold said-squeaked, actually. She had startled him out of some private world, and for a moment she feared that the startle on top of his exertion would give him a heart attack.

Then he ran for the house, his feet kicking through drifts of mown grass, and she was peripherally aware of the sweet smell it made on the hot summer air.

She took a step after him. "Harold, what's wrong?"

Then he was bounding up the porch steps. The back door opened, Harold ran inside, and it slammed behind him with a jarring crash. In the silence that descended afterward, a jay called stridently and some small animal made rattling noises in the bushes behind the stone wall. The mower, abandoned, stood with cut grass behind it and high grass before it a little way from the summerhouse where she and Amy had once drunk their Kool-Aid in Barbie's kitchen cups with their little fingers sticking elegantly off into the air.

Frannie stood indecisive for a while and at last walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer, but she could hear Harold crying somewhere inside.

"Harold?"

No answer. The weeping went on.

She let herself into the Lauders' back hall, which was dark, cool, and fragrant-Mrs. Lauder's cold-pantry opened off the hall to the left, and for as long as Frannie could remember there had been the good smell of dried apples and cinnamon back here, like pies dreaming of creation.

"Harold?"

She walked up the hall to the kitchen and Harold was there, sitting at the table. His hands were clutched in his hair, and his green feet rested on the faded linoleum that Mrs. Lauder had kept so spotless.

"Harold, what's wrong?"

"Go away!" he yelled tearfully. "Go away, you don't like me!"

"Yes I do. You're okay, Harold. Maybe not great, but okay." She paused. "In fact, considering the circumstances and all, I'd have to say that right now you're one of my favorite people in the whole world."

This seemed to make Harold cry harder.

"Do you have anything to drink?"

"Kool-Aid," he said. He sniffed, wiped his nose, and still looking at the table, added: "It's warm."

"Of course it is. Did you get the water at the town pump?" Like many small towns, Ogunquit still had a common pump in back of the town hall, although for the last forty years it had been more of an antiquity than a practical source of water. Tourists sometimes took pictures of it. This is the town pump in the little seaside town where we spent our vacation. Oh, isn't that quaint.

"Yeah, that's where I got it."

She poured them each a glass and sat down. We should be having it in the summerhouse, she thought. We could drink it with our little fingers sticking off into the air. "Harold, what's wrong?"

Harold uttered a strange, hysterical laugh and fumbled his Kool-Aid to his mouth. He drained the glass and set it down. "Wrong? Now what could be wrong?"

"I mean, is it something specific?" She tasted her Kool-Aid and fought down a grimace. It wasn't that warm, Harold must have drawn the water only a short time ago, but he had forgotten the sugar.

He looked up at her finally, his face tear-streaked and still wanting to blubber. "I want my mother," he said simply.

"Oh, Harold-"

"I thought when it happened, when she died, ‘Now that wasn't so bad.'" He was gripping his glass, staring at her in an intense, haggard way that was a little frightening. "I know how terrible that must sound to you. But I never knew how I would take it when they passed away. I'm a very sensitive person. That's why I was so persecuted by the cretins at that house of horrors the town fathers saw fit to call a high school. I thought it might drive me mad with grief, their passing, or at least prostrate me for a year …  my interior sun, so to speak, would …  would …  and when it happened, my mother …  Amy …  my father …  I said to myself, ‘Now that wasn't so bad.' I …  they … " He brought his fist down on the table, making her flinch. "Why can't I say what I mean?" he screamed. "I've always been able to say what I meant! It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone, so why can't I say what it feels like? "