The Stand:BOOK III(50)

"He tried to crawl and bumped his nose," Lucy said, handing Peter to Fran. "Poor baby."

"Poor baby," Fran agreed, and put Peter on her shoulder. He laid his head familiarly against her neck, looked at Stu, and smiled. Stu smiled back.

"Peek, baby," he said, and Peter laughed.

Lucy looked from Fran to Stu and back to Fran again. "You're going, aren't you? You talked him into it."

"I guess she did," Stu said. "We'll stick around long enough to see which flavor you get, though."

"I'm glad," Lucy said.

From far off, a bell began to clang in strong musical notes which seemed to beat themselves into the day.

"Lunch," Lucy said, getting up. She patted her gigantic belly. "Hear that, junior? We're going to eat. Ow, don't kick, I'm going."

Stu and Fran got up, too. "Here, you take the boy," Fran said.

Peter had gone to sleep. The three of them walked up the hill to Sunrise Amphitheater together.

Dusk, of a Summer Evening

They sat on the porch as the sun went down and watched Peter as he crawled enthusiastically through the dust of the yard. Stu was in a chair with a caned seat; the caning had been belled downward by years of use. Sitting at his left was Fran, in the rocker. In the yard, to Peter's left, the doughnut-shaped shadow of the tire swing printed its depthless image on the ground in the day's kind last light.

"She lived here a long time, didn't she?" Fran asked softly.

"Long and long," Stu agreed, and pointed at Peter. "He's gettin all dirty."

"There's water. She had a hand-pump. All it takes is priming. All the conveniences, Stuart."

He nodded and said no more. He lit his pipe, taking long puffs. Peter turned around to make sure they were still there.

"Hi, baby," Stu said, and waved.

Peter fell over. He got back up on his hands and knees and began to creep around in a large circle again. Standing at the end of the dirt road that cut through the wild corn was a small Winnebago camper with a winch attachment on the front. They were sticking to secondary roads, but the winch had still come in handy again and again.

"Are you lonely?" Fran asked.

"No. I may be, in time."

"Scared about the baby?" She patted her stomach, which was still perfectly flat.

"Nope."

"It's going to put a scab on Pete's nose."

"It'll fall off. And Lucy had twins." He smiled at the sky. "Can you imagine it?"

"I saw them. Seeing's believing, they say. When do you think we'll be in Maine, Stu?"

He shrugged. "Near the end of July. In plenty of time to start getting ready for winter, anyhow. You worried?"

"Nope," she said, mocking him. She stood up. "Look at him, he's getting filthy."

"Told you."

He watched her go down the porch steps and gather up the baby. He sat there, where Mother Abagail had sat often and long, and thought about the life that was ahead of them. He thought it would be all right. In time they would have to go back to Boulder, if only so their children could meet others their own age and court and marry and make more children. Or perhaps part of Boulder would come to them. There had been people who had questioned their plans closely, almost cross-examining them …  but the look in their eyes had been one of longing rather than contempt or anger. Stu and Fran weren't the only ones with a touch of the wanderlust, apparently. Harry Dunbarton, the former spectacles salesman, had talked about Minnesota. And Mark Zellman had spoken of Hawaii, of all places. Learning how to fly a plane and going to Hawaii.

"Mark, you'd kill yourself!" Fran had scolded indignantly.

Mark had only smiled slyly and said, "Look who's talkin, Frannie."

And Stan Nogotny had begun to talk thoughtfully about going south, perhaps stopping at Acapulco for a few years, then maybe going on down to Peru. "I tell you what, Stu," he said. "All these people make me nervous as a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest. I don't know one person in a dozen anymore. People lock their houses at night …  don't look at me that way, it's a fact. Listenin to me, you'd never think I lived in Miami, which I did for sixteen years, and locked the house every night. But damn! That was one habit I liked losing. Anyway, it's just getting too crowded. I think about Acapulco a lot. Now if I could just convince Janey-"

It wouldn't be such a bad thing, Stu thought, watching Fran pump water, if the Free Zone did fall apart. Glen Bateman would think so, he was quite sure. Its purpose has been served, Glen would say. Best to disband before-

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.