by Stephen King
“A thousand stars in the sky . . . make me realize . . . you are the one love that I’ll adore ... tell me you love me . . . tell me you’re mine, all mine . .
There were a lot more than a thousand stars in his sky tonight, but they weren’t lovers’ stars. No soft caul of Milky Way here. Here, a mile above sea-level they were as sharp and cruel as a billion holes in black velvet, a piece of black velvet with some unknowable Light shining behind it. They were haters’ stars, and because they were, Harold felt well qualified to wish on them. Wish-I-may, wish-I-might, have-the-wish-I-wish-tonight.
Harold’s hair was longer than ever, but it was no longer dirty and clotted and tangled. He no longer smelled like a shoot-off in a haymow. Even his blemishes were clearing up, now that he had laid off the candy. And with the hard work and all the walking, he was losing some weight. He was starting to look pretty good.
He shifted in his chair. There was a book in his lap, a tall volume with a marbled blue binding and imitation leather covers. He kept it hidden under a loose hearthstone in the house when he was away. If anyone found the book, that would be the end of him in Boulder. There was one word stamped in gold leaf on the book’s cover, and the word was LEDGER. It was the journal he had started after reading Fran’s diary. Already he had filled the first sixty pages with his close, margin-to-margin handwriting. There were no paragraphs, only a solid block of writing, an outpouring of hate like pus from a skin abscess. He hadn’t thought he had so much hate in him. It seemed he should have exhausted the flow by now, yet it seemed he had only tapped it. It was like that old joke. Why was the ground all white after Custer’s Last Stand? Because the Indians kept coming and coming and . . .
And why did he hate?
That was a hard question to answer, except maybe to a few, a chosen few. Hadn’t Einstein said there were only six people in the world who understood all the implications of E=mc2? What about the equation inside his own skull? The relativity of Harold. The speed of blight. Oh, he could fill twice as many pages as he had already written about that, becoming more obscure, more arcane, until he finally became lost in the clockwork of himself and still nowhere near the mainspring at all. He was perhaps . . . raping himself. Was that it? It was close, anyway. An obscene and ongoing act of buggery. The Indians just kept on coming and coming.
He would be leaving Boulder soon anyway. A month or two, no more. When he finally settled on a method of settling his scores. Then he would head out west. And when he got there he would open his mouth and spill his guts about this place. He would tell them what went on at the public meetings, and much more important, what went on at the private meetings. He was sure to be on the Free Zone Committee. He would be well rewarded by the fellow in charge over there . . . not by an end to hate but by the perfect vehicle for it, a Hate Cadillac, a Fearderado, long and darkly shining. He would climb into it and it would bear him and his hate down on them. He and Flagg would kick this miserable settlement apart like an anthill. But first he would settle with Redman, who had lied to him and stolen his woman.
Yes, Harold, but why do you hate?
There had been a time, an hour or an instant, when he had contemplated jettisoning the hate. That had been after he had finished reading Fran’s diary and had discovered she was irrevocably committed to Stu Redman. That sudden knowledge had acted upon him the way a dash of cold water acts on a slug, causing it to contract into a tight little ball instead of a spread-out, loosely questing organism. In that hour or instant, he became aware that he could simply accept what was, and that knowledge had both exhilarated and terrified him. For that space of time he knew he could turn himself into a new person, a fresh Harold Lauder cloned from the old one by the sharp intervening knife of the superflu epidemic. He sensed, more clearly than any of the others, that that was what the Boulder Free Zone was all about. People were not the same. This small-town society was like no other in American pre-plague society. They didn’t see it because they didn’t stand outside the boundaries as he did. Men and women were living together with no apparent desire to reinstitute the ceremony of marriage. Whole groups of people were living together in small subcommunities like communes. There wasn’t much fighting. People seemed to be getting along. And strangest of all, none of them seemed to be questioning the profound theological implications of the dreams . . . and of the plague itself. Boulder itself was a cloned society, a tabula so rasa that it could not sense its own novel beauty.
Harold sensed it, and hated it.
Far away over the mountains was another cloned creature. A cutting from the dark malignancy, a single wild cell taken from the dying corpus of the old body politic, a lone representative of the carcinoma that had been eating the old society alive. One single cell, but it had already begun to reproduce itself and spawn other wild cells. For society it would be the old struggle, the effort of healthy tissue to reject the malignant incursion. But for each individual cell there was the old, old question, the one that went back to the Garden—that of free will. Over there, in the west, all the old hates and fears were spawning themselves. The assassins of Eden were there, the dark fusilliers.
And he himself, when faced with the knowledge that he was free to accept what was, had, of his own free will, rejected the new opportunity. To seize it would have been to murder himself. The ghost of every humiliation he had ever suffered cried out against it. His murdered dreams and ambitions came back to eldritch life and asked if he could forget them so easily. In the new Free Zone society he could only be Harold Lauder, Citizen. Over there he could be a prince.
The malignancy drew him. It was a dark carnival—Ferris wheels with their lights out revolving above a black landscape, a never-ending sideshow filled with freaks like himself, and in the main tent the lions ate the spectators. What called to him was this discordant music of chaos.
He opened his journal and by starlight wrote firmly:
August 12,1980 (early morning).
It is said that the two great human sins are pride and hate. Are they? I elect to think of them as the two great virtues. To give away pride and hate is to say you will change for the good of the world. To embrace them, to vent them, is more noble; that is to say that the world must change for the good of you. I am on a great adventure.
HAROLD EMERY LAUDER
He closed the book. He went into the house, put the book in its hole in the hearth, and carefully replaced the hearthstone. He went into the bathroom, set his Coleman lamp on the sink so that it illuminated the mirror, and for the next fifteen minutes he practiced smiling. He was getting very good at it.
Chapter 41
Ralph’s posters announcing the August 18 meeting went up all over Boulder. There was a great deal of excited conversation, most of it having to do with the good and bad qualities of the seven-person ad hoc committee.
Mother Abagail went to bed exhausted before the light was even gone from the sky. The day had been a steady stream of callers, all of them wanting to know what her opinion was. She allowed as how she thought most of the choices for the committee were pretty good. The people who came to call were anxious to know if she would serve on a more permanent committee, if one should be formed at the big meeting. She replied that that would be a spot too tiring, but she sure would give a committee of elected representatives whatever help she could, if people wanted her to help out. She was assured again and again that any permanent committee that refused her help would be turned out en masse, and that right early. Mother Abagail went to bed tired but satisfied.
So did Nick Andros that night. In one day, by virtue of a single poster turned out on a hand-crank mimeograph machine, the Free Zone had been transformed from a loose group of refugees into potential voters. They liked it; it gave them the sense of a place to stand after a long period of free fall.
That afternoon Ralph drove him out to the power plant. He, Ralph, and Stu agreed to hold a preliminary meeting at Stu and Frannie’s place the day after next. It would give all seven of them another two day
s to listen to what people were saying.
Nick smiled and cupped his own useless ears.
“Lipreading’s even better,” Stu said. “You know, Nick, I’m starting to think we’re really going to get somewhere with those blown motors. That Brad Kitchner’s a regular bear for work. If we had ten
like him, we’d have this whole town running perfect by the first of September.”
Nick gave him a thumb-and-forefinger circle and they walked inside together.
That afternoon Larry Underwood and Leo Rockway walked west on Arapahoe Street toward Harold’s house. Larry was wearing the knapsack he had worn all the way across the country, but all that was in it now was the bottle of wine and half a dozen Paydays.
Lucy was out with a party of half a dozen people who were beginning on their own to clear the streets and roads in and around Boulder of stalled vehicles. Trouble was, it was a sporadic operation that only ran when a few people felt like getting together and doing it—a wrecking bee instead of a quilting bee, Larry thought, and his eye caught one of the posters headed MASS MEETING, this one nailed to a telephone pole. Maybe that would be the answer. Hell, people around here wanted to work; what they needed was somebody to coordinate things and tell them what to do.
A tinkle of glass made him turn. Leo had lobbed a large stone from someone’s rock garden through the rear window of an old Ford. A bumper sticker on the back deck of the Ford’s trunk read: GET YO’ ASS UP THE PASS—COLD CREEK CANYON.
“Don’t do that, Joe.”
“I’m Leo.”
“Leo,” he corrected. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?” Leo asked complacently, and for a long time Larry couldn’t think of a satisfactory answer.
“Because it makes an ugly sound,” he said finally.
“Okay.”
They walked on. Larry put his hands in his pockets. Leo did likewise. Larry kicked a beercan. Leo swerved out of his way to kick a stone. Larry began to whistle a tune. Leo made a whispering chuffing sound in accompaniment. Larry ruffled the kid’s hair and Leo looked up at him with those odd Chinese eyes and grinned. And Larry thought: For Christ's sake, I’m falling in love with him. Pretty far out.
They came to the park Frannie had mentioned, and across from it was a green house with white shutters. There was a wheelbarrow full of bricks on the cement path leading up to the front door, and next to it was a garbage can lid filled with that do-it-yourself mortar-mix to which you just add water. Squatting beside it, his back to the street, was a broadshouldered guy with his shirt off and the peeling remnants of a bad sunburn. He had a trowel in one hand. He was building a low and curving brick wall around a flower bed.
Larry thought of Fran saying: He’s changed ... I don’t know how or why or even if it’s for the best. . . and sometimes I’m afraid.
Then he stepped forward, saying it just the way he had planned on his long days crossing the country: “Harold Lauder, I presume.”
Harold jerked with surprise, then turned with a brick in one hand and his mortar-dripping trowel in the other, half-raised, like a weapon. Out of the corner of his eye, Larry thought he saw Leo flinch backward. His first thought was, sure enough, Harold didn’t look at all as he had imagined. His second thought had to do with the trowel: My God, is he going to let me have it with that thing? Harold’s face was grimly set, his eyes narrow and dark. His hair fell in a lank wave across his sweaty forehead. His lips were pressed together and almost white.
And then there was a transformation so sudden and complete that Larry was never quite able to believe afterward that he had seen that tense, unsmiling Harold, the face of a man more apt to use a trowel to wall someone up in a basement niche than to construct a garden wall.
He smiled, a broad and harmless grin that made deep dimples at the corners of his mouth. His eyes lost their menacing cast. He stuck the trowel blade-down into the mortar—chunk!—wiped his hands on the hips of his jeans, and advanced with his hand out. Larry thought: My God, he’s just a kid, younger than I am. If he’s eighteen yet I’ll eat the candles on his last birthday cake.
“Don’t think I know you,” Harold said, grinning, as they shook. He had a firm grip, and Larry’s hand was pumped up and down exactly three times and let go. It reminded Larry of the time he had shaken hands with Henry “Scoop” Jackson back when Jackson had been running for President. It had been at a political rally, which he had attended on the advice of his mother, given many years ago: If you can’t afford a movie, go to the zoo. If you can’t afford the zoo, go see a politician.
But Harold’s grin was contagious, and Larry grinned back. Kid or not, politician’s handshake or not, the grin impressed him as completely genuine, and after all this time, after all those candy wrappers, here was Harold Lauder, in the flesh.
“No, you don’t,” Larry said. “But I’m acquainted with you.”
“Is that so!” Harold exclaimed, and his grin escalated. If it got any broader, Larry thought with amusement, the ends would meet around at the back of his skull and the top two thirds of his head would just topple off.
“I followed you across the country from Maine,” Larry said.
“No fooling! You did, really?”
“Really did.” He unslung his packsack. “Here, I’ve got some stuff for you.” He took out the bottle of Bordeaux and put it in Harold’s hand.
“Say, you shouldn’t have,” Harold said, looking at the bottle with some astonishment. “1947?”
“A good year,” Larry said. “And these.”
He put nearly half a dozen Paydays in Harold’s other hand. One of them slipped through his fingers and onto the grass. Harold bent to pick it up and as he did, Larry caught a glimpse of that earlier expression.
Then Harold bobbed back up, smiling. “How did you know?”
“I followed your signs . . . and your candy wrappers.”
“Well I be go to hell. Come on in the house. We ought to have a jaw, as my dad was fond of saying. Would your boy drink a Coke?” “Sure. Wouldn’t you, L—”
He looked around, but Leo was no longer beside him. He was all the way back on the sidewalk and looking down at some cracks in the pavement as if they were of great interest to him.
“Hey Leo! Want a Coke?”
Leo muttered something Larry couldn’t hear.
“Talk up!” he said, irritated. “What did God give you a voice for? I asked you if you wanted a Coke.”
Barely audible, Leo said: “I think I’ll go see if Nadine-mom’s back.”
“What the hell? We just got here!”
“I want to go back!” Leo said, looking up from the cement. The sun flashed too strongly back from his eyes and Larry thought, What in God’s name is this? He’s almost crying.
“Just a sec,” he said to Harold.
“Sure,” Harold said, grinning. “Sometimes kids’re shy. I was.” Larry walked over to Leo and hunkered down, so they would be at eye-level. “What’s the matter, kiddo?”
“I just want to go back,” Leo said, not meeting his gaze. “I want Nadine-mom.”
“Well, you . . .” He paused helplessly.
“Want to go back.” He looked up briefly at Larry. His eyes flickered over Larry’s shoulder toward where Harold stood in the middle of his lawn. Then down at the cement again. “Please.”
“You don’t like Harold?”
“I don’t know . . . he’s all right... I just want to go back.”
Larry sighed. “Can you find your way?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. But I sure wish you’d come in and have a Coke with us. I’ve been waiting to meet Harold a long time. You know that, don’t you?”
“Ye-es . . .”
“And we could walk back together.”
“I’m not going in that house,” Leo hissed, and for a moment he was Joe again, the eyes going blank and savage.
“Okay,” Larry said hastily. He stood up. “Go straight home. I’ll check to see if you did. And stay out of the st
reet.”
“I will.” And suddenly Leo blurted in that small, hissing whisper: “Why don’t you come back with me? Right now? We’ll go together. Please, Larry? Okay?”
“Jeez, Leo, what—”
“Never mind,” Leo said. And before Larry could say anything more, Leo was hurrying away. Larry stood watching him until he was out of sight. Then he turned back to Harold with a troubled frown.
“Say, that’s all right,” Harold said. “Kids are funny.”
“I guess he’s got a right. He’s been through a lot.”
“I’ll bet he has,” Harold replied, and for just an instant Larry felt distrust, felt that Harold’s quick sympathy for a boy he had never met was as ersatz as powdered eggs.
“Well, come in,” Harold said. “You know, you’re just about my first company. Frannie and Stu have been out a few times, but they hardly count.” His grin became a smile, a slightly sad smile, and Larry felt sudden pity for this boy—because a boy was all he was, really. He was lonely and here stood Larry, same old Larry, never a good word for anyone.
“Glad to,” he answered.
The living room was small but comfortable. “I’m going to put in some new furniture when I get around to it,” Harold said. “Modern. Chrome and leather. As the commercial says, ‘Fuck the budget. I’ve got Master Charge.’ ”
Larry laughed heartily.
“There are some good glasses in the basement, I’ll just get them. Try that green chair. It’s the best of a bad lot.”