If you come back this way and renew your invitation to "jine up," Stu, I'll probably agree. That is the curse of the human race. Sociability. What Christ should have said was "Yea, verily, whenever two or three of you are gathered together, some other guy is going to get the living shit knocked out of him." Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call "society." Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
Was that true? If it was, then God help them. Just lately Stu had been thinking a great deal about old friends and acquaintances. In his memory there was a great tendency to downplay or completely forget their unlovable characteristics-the way Bill Hapscomb used to pick his nose and wipe the snot on the sole of his shoe, Norm Bruett's heavy hand with his kids, Billy Verecker's unpleasant method of controlling the cat population around his house by crushing the thin skulls of the new kittens under the heels of his Range Rider boots.
The thoughts that came wanted to be wholly good. Going hunting at dawn, bundled up in quilted jackets and Day-Glo orange vests. Poker games at Ralph Hodges's house and Willy Craddock always complaining about how he was four dollars in the game, even if he was twenty ahead. Six or seven of them pushing Tony Leominster's Scout back onto the road that time he went down into the ditch drunk out of his mind, Tony staggering around and swearing to God and all the saints that he had swerved to avoid a U-Haul full of Mexican wetbacks. Jesus, how they had laughed. Chris Ortega's endless stream of ethnic jokes. Going down to Huntsville for whores, and that time Joe Bob Brentwood caught the crabs and tried to tell everybody they came from the sofa in the parlor and not from the girl upstairs. They had been goddam good times. Not what your sophisticates with their nightclubs and their fancy restaurants and their museums would think of as good times, maybe, but good times just the same. He thought about those things, went over them and over them, the way an old recluse will lay out hand after hand of solitaire from a greasy pack of cards. Mostly he wanted to hear other human voices, get to know someone, be able to turn to someone and say, Did you see that? when something happened like the meteor shower he had watched the other night. He was not a talkative man, but he did not care much for being alone, and never had.
So he sat up a little straighter when the motorcycles finally swept around the bend, and he saw they were a couple of Honda 250s, ridden by a boy of about eighteen and a girl who was maybe older than the boy. The girl was wearing a bright yellow blouse and light blue Levi's.
They saw him sitting on the rock, and both Hondas swerved a little as their drivers' surprise caused control to waver briefly. The boy's mouth dropped open. For a moment it was unclear whether they would stop or just speed by heading west.
Stu raised an empty hand and said "Hi!" in an amiable voice. His heart was beating heavily in his chest. He wanted them to stop. They did.
For a moment he was puzzled by the tenseness in their postures. Particularly the boy; he looked as if a gallon of adrenaline had just been dumped into his blood. Of course Stu had a rifle, but he wasn't holding it on them and they were armed themselves; he was wearing a pistol and she had a small deer-rifle slung across her back on a strap, like an actress playing Patty Hearst with no great conviction.
"I think he's all right, Harold," the girl said, but the boy she called Harold continued to stand astride his bike, looking at Stu with an expression of surprise and considering antagonism.
"I said I think-" she began again.
"How are we supposed to know that?" Harold snapped without taking his eyes off Stu.
"Well, I'm glad to see you, if that makes any difference," Stu said.
"What if I don't believe you?" Harold challenged, and Stu saw that he was scared green. Scared by him and by his responsibility to the girl.
"Well, then, I don't know." Stu climbed off the rock. Harold's hand jittered toward his holstered pistol.
"Harold, you leave that alone," the girl said. Then she fell silent and for a moment they all seemed helpless to proceed further-a group of three dots which, when connected, would form a triangle whose exact shape could not yet be foreseen.
"Ouuuu," Frannie said, easing herself down on a mossy patch at the base of an elm beside the road. "I'm never going to get the calluses off my fanny, Harold."
Harold uttered a surly grunt.
She turned to Stu. "Have you ever ridden a hundred and seventy miles on a Honda, Mr. Redman? Not recommended."
Stu smiled. "Where are you headed?"
"What business is it of yours?" Harold asked rudely.
"And what kind of attitude is that?" Fran asked him. "Mr. Redman is the first person we've seen since Gus Dinsmore died! I mean, if we didn't come looking for other people, what did we come for?"
"He's watching out for you, is all," Stu said quietly. He picked a piece of grass and put it between his lips.
"That's right, I am," Harold said, unmollified.
"I thought we were watching out for each other," she said, and Harold flushed darkly.
Stu thought: Give me three people and they'll form a society. But were these the right two for his one? He liked the girl, but the boy impressed him as a frightened blowhard. And a frightened blowhard could be a very dangerous man, under the right circumstances … or the wrong ones.
"Whatever you say," Harold muttered. He shot Stu a lowering look and took a box of Marlboros from his jacket pocket. He lit one. He smoked on it like a fellow who had only recently taken up the habit. Like maybe the day before yesterday.
"We're going to Stovington, Vermont," Frannie said. "To the plague center there. We-what's wrong? Mr. Redman?" He had gone pale all of a sudden. The stem of grass he had been chewing fell onto his lap.
"Why there?" Stu asked.
"Because there happens to be an installation there for the studying of communicable diseases," Harold said loftily. "It was my thought that, if there is any order left in this country, or any persons in authority who escaped the late scourge, they would likely be at Stovington or Atlanta, where there is another such center."
"That's right," Frannie said.
Stu said: "You're wasting your time."
Frannie looked stunned. Harold looked indignant; the red began to creep out of his collar again. "I hardly think you're the best judge of that, my man."
"I guess I am. I came from there."
Now they both looked stunned. Stunned and astonished.
"You knew about it?" Frannie asked, shaken. "You checked it out?"
"No, it wasn't like that. It-"
"You're a liar!" Harold's voice had gone high and squeaky.
Fran saw an alarming cold flash of anger in Redman's eyes, then they were brown and mild again. "No. I ain't."
"I say you are! I say you're nothing but a-"
"Harold, you shut up! "
Harold looked at her, wounded. "But Frannie, how can you believe-"
"How can you be so rude and antagonistic?" she asked hotly. "Will you at least listen to what he has to say, Harold?"
"I don't trust him."
Fair enough, Stu thought, that makes us even.
"How can you not trust a man you just met? Really, Harold, you're being disgusting!"
"Let me tell you how I know," Stu said quietly. He told an abridged version of the story that began when Campion had crashed into Hap's pumps. He sketched his escape from Stovington a week ago. Harold glared dully down at his hands, which were plucking up bits of moss and shredding them. But the girl's face was like an unfolding map of tragic country, and Stu felt bad for her. She had set off with this boy (who, to give him credit, had had a pretty good idea), hoping against hope that there was something of the old taken-for-granted ways left. Well, she had been disappointed. Bitterly so, from her look.
"Atlanta too? The plague got both of them?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, and she burst into tears.
He wanted to comfort her, but the boy would not take to that. Harold glanced uncomfortably at Fran, then down at the litter of moss on his cuffs. Stu gave her his handkerchief. She thanked him distractedly, without looking up. Harold glared sullenly at him again, the eyes those of a piggy little boy who wants the whole cookie jar to himself. Ain't he going to be surprised, Stu thought, when he finds out a girl isn't a jar of cookies.
When her tears had tapered down to sniffles, she said, "I guess Harold and I owe you our thanks. At least you saved us a long trip with disappointment at the end."
"You mean you believe him? Just like that? He tells you a big story and you just … you buy it?"
"Harold, why would he lie? For what gain?"
"Well, how do I know what he's got on his mind?" Harold asked truculently. "Murder, could be. Or rape."
"I don't believe in rape myself," Stu said mildly. "Maybe you know something about it I don't."