by Stephen King
Harold left, and Larry sat down in the green chair. He heard a door open and then Harold’s heavy tread descending a flight of stairs. He looked around. Nope, not one of the world’s great living rooms, but with a shag rug and some nice modern furniture, it could be fine. The best feature of this room was the stone fireplace and chimney. Lovely work, carefully done by hand. But there was one loose stone on the hearth. It looked to Larry as if it had come out and had been put back a little carelessly. Leaving it like that would be like leaving one piece out of the jigsaw puzzle or a picture hanging crooked on the wall.
He got up and picked the stone out of the hearth. Harold was still rummaging around downstairs. Larry was about to put it back in when he saw there was a book down in the hole, its front now lightly powdered with rockdust, not enough to obscure the single word stamped there in gold leaf: LEDGER.
Feeling slightly ashamed, as if he had been prying intentionally, he put the rock back in just as Harold’s footfalls began to ascend the stairs again. This time the fit was perfect, and when Harold came back into the living room with a balloon glass in each hand, Larry was seated in the green chair again.
“I took a minute to rinse them out in the downstairs sink,” Harold said. “They were a bit dusty.”
“They look fine,” Larry said. “Look, I can’t swear that Bordeaux hasn’t gone over. We might be helping ourselves to vinegar.”
“Nothing ventured,” Harold said, grinning, “nothing gained.”
That grin made him feel uncomfortable, and Larry suddenly found himself thinking about the ledger—was it Harold’s, or had it belonged to the house’s previous owner? And if it was Harold’s, what in the world might be written in there?
They cracked the bottle of Bordeaux and found, to their mutual pleasure, that it was just fine. Half an hour later they were both pleasantly squiffed, Harold a little more so than Larry. Even so, Harold’s grin remained; broadened, in fact.
His tongue loosened a bit by wine, Larry said: “Those posters The big meeting on the eighteenth. How come you didn’t get on that committee, Harold? I would have thought a guy like you would have been a natural.”
Harold’s smile became large, beatific. “Well, I’m awfully young. I suppose they thought I didn’t have experience enough.”
“I think it’s a goddam shame.” But did he? The grin. The dark, barely glimpsed expression of suspicion. Did he? He didn’t know.
“Well, who knows what lies in the future?” Harold said, grinning broadly. “Every dog has its day.”
Larry left around five o’clock. His parting from Harold was friendly; Harold shook his hand, grinned, told him to come back often. But Larry had somehow gotten the feeling that Harold could give a shit if he never came back.
He walked slowly down the cement path to the sidewalk and turned to wave, but Harold had already gone back inside. The door was shut. It had been very cool in the house because the Venetian blinds were drawn, and inside that had seemed all right, but standing outside it occurred to him suddenly that it was the only house he’d been inside in Boulder where the blinds and curtains were drawn. But of course he thought there were still plenty of houses in Boulder where the shades were drawn. They were the houses of the dead. When they got sick, they had drawn their curtains against the world. They had drawn them and died in privacy, like any animal in its last extremity prefers to do. The living—maybe in subconscious acknowledgment of that fact of death—threw their curtains wide.
Thank God for tunnel vision, he thought. Thank God for selective perception. Because without it, we might as well all be in a Lovecraft story.
His thoughts became confused. He became suddenly convinced that Harold was peering at him from between the slats of his blinds, his hands opening and closing in a strangler’s grip, his grin turned into a leer of hatred . . . every dog has its day.
Stop it. Stop freaking yourself out.
Boot Hill, his mind free-associated. Chrissake, just stop it, wish I’d never thought about the dead people, the dead people behind all those closed blinds and pulled drapes and shut curtains, in the dark, like in the tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, Christ, what if they all started to move, to stir around, Holy God, cut it out—
“Larry? Are you okay?”
He was so startled that a little noise—"Yike!”—squeaked out of his throat and he jumped. It was Leo, sitting on the curb about three blocks down from Harold’s. He had a Ping-Pong ball and was bouncing it up and down on the pavement.
“What are you doing here?” Larry asked.
“I wanted to walk home with you,” Leo said diffidently, “but I didn’t want to go into that guy’s house.”
“Why not?” Larry asked. He sat down on the curb beside Leo.
Leo shrugged and turned his eyes back to the Ping-Pong ball. It made a small whock! whock! sound as it struck the pavement and bounced back up to his hand.
“I don’t know.”
“Leo?”
“What.”
“This is very important to me. Because I like Harold . . . and don’t like him. I feel two ways about him. Have you ever felt two ways about a person?”
“I only feel one way about him.” Whock! Whock!
“How?”
“Scared,” Leo said simply. “Can we go home and see my Nadine-mom and my Lucy-mom?”
“Sure.”
They continued down Arapahoe for a while without speaking, Leo still bouncing the Ping-Pong ball and catching it deftly.
“Sorry you had to wait so long,” Larry said.
“Aw, that’s okay.”
“No, really, if I’d known I would have hurried up.”
“I had something to do. I found this on a guy’s lawn. It’s a Pong-Ping ball.”
“Ping-Pong,” Larry corrected absently. “Why do you think Harold would keep his shades down?”
“So nobody can see in, I guess,” Leo said. “So he can do secret things. It’s like the dead people, isn’t it?” Whock! Whock!
They walked on, reached the comer of Broadway, and turned south. They saw other people on the streets now; women looking in windows at dresses, a man with a pickaxe returning from somewhere, another man casually sorting through fishing tackle in the broken display window of a sporting goods store.
“Secret things,” Larry mused aloud, not really trying to draw the boy out anymore.
“Maybe he’s praying to the dark man,” Leo said casually, and Larry jerked as if brushed by a live wire. Leo didn’t notice. He was double-bouncing his Ping-Pong ball, first off the sidewalk and then catching it on the rebound from the brick wall they were passing . . . whock-whap!
“Do you really think so?” Larry asked, making an effort to sound casual.
“I don’t know. But he’s not like us. He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him, making him smile. Big white worms eating up his brain. Like maggots.”
“Joe . . . Leo, I mean—”
Leo’s eyes, dark, remote, and Chinese, suddenly cleared. He smiled. “Look, there’s Dayna. I like her. Hey, Dayna!” he yelled, waving. “Got any gum?”
Dayna, who had been oiling the sprocket of a spidery-thin ten-speed bike, turned and smiled. She reached into her shirt pocket and spread out five sticks of Juicy Fruit like a poker hand. With a happy laugh, Leo ran toward her, his long hair flying, Ping-Pong ball clutched in one hand, leaving Larry to stare after him. That idea of white worms behind Harold’s smile . . . where had Joe (no, Leo, he’s Leo, at least I think he is) gotten an idea as sophisticated—and as horrible—as that? The boy had been in a semitrance. And he wasn’t the only one; how many times in the few days he had been here had Larry seen someone just stop dead on the street, looking blankly at nothing for a moment, and then going on? Things had changed. The whole range of human perception seemed to have stepped up a notch.
It was scary as hell.
Larry got his feet moving and walked over to where Leo and Dayna were sharing out the chewing gum.
That afternoon Stu found Frannie washing clothes in the small yard behind their building. She had filled a low washtub with water, had shaken in nearly half a box of Tide, and had stirred everything with a mop-handle until a sickly suds had resulted. She doubted if she was going about this in the right way, but she was damned if she was going to go to Mother Abagail and expose her ignorance. She dumped their clothes into the water, which was stone cold, then grimly jumped in and began to stomp and slosh around, like a Sicilian mashing grapes. Your new model Maytag 5000, she thought. The Double-Foot Agitation Method, perfect for all your bright colors, fragile underthings, and—
She turned around and beheld her man, standing just inside the backyard gate and watching with an expression of amusement. Frannie stopped, a little out of breath.
“Ha-ha, very funny. How long have you been there, smartypants?” “Couple of minutes. What do you call that, anyway? The mating dance of the wild wood duck?”
“Again, ha-ha.” She looked coolly at him. “One more crack and you can spend the night on the couch, or up on Flagstaff with your friend Glen Bateman.”
“Say, I didn’t mean—”
“They’re your clothes too, Mr. Stuart Redman. You may be a Founding Father and all that, but you still leave an occasional skidmark in your underdrawers.”
Stu grinned, the grin broadened, and finally he had to laugh. “That’s crude, darlin.”
“Right now I don’t feel particularly delicate.”
“Well, pop out for a minute. I need to talk to you.”
She was glad to, even though she would have to wash her feet before getting back in. Her heart was hurrying along, not happily but rather dolefully, like a faithful piece of machinery being misused by someone with a marked lack of good sense.
“When my wife handwashed,” Stu said, “she used a . . . what do you call it? Scrub board, I think. My mother had about three, 1 remember.”
“I know that,” Frannie said, irritated. “June Brinkmeyer and 1 walked over half of Boulder looking for one. We couldn’t find a single one. Technology strikes again.”
He was smiling again.
Frannie put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to piss me off, Stuart Redman?”
“No’m. I was just thinking I know where I can get you a scrub board, I think. Juney too, if she wants one.”
“Where?”
“You let me look and see first.” His smile disappeared, and he put his arms around her and his forehead on hers. “You know I appreciate you washing my clothes,” he said, “and I know that a woman who is pregnant knows better than her man what she should and shouldn’t be doing. But Frannie, why bother?”
“Why?” She looked at him, perplexed. “Well, what are you going to wear? Do you want to go around in dirty clothes?”
“Frannie, the stores are full of clothes. And I’m an easy size.” “What, throw out the old ones just because they’re dirty?”
He shrugged a little uneasily.
“No way, uh-uh,” she said. “That’s the old way, Stu. Like the boxes they used to put your Big Mac in or the no-deposit-no-return bottles. That’s no way to start over.”
He gave her a little kiss. “All right. Only next washday it’s my turn, you hear?”
“Sure.” She smiled a little slyly. “And how long does that last? Until I deliver?”
“Until we get the power back on,” Stu said. “Then I’m going to bring you the biggest, shiniest washer you ever saw, and hook it up myself.”
“Offer accepted.” She kissed him firmly and he kissed back, his strong hands moving restlessly in her hair. The result was a spreading warmth (hotness, let’s not be coy, I’m hot and he always gets me hot when he does that) that first peaked her nipples, then spread down into her lower belly.
“You better stop,” she said rather breathlessly, “unless you plan to do more than talk.”
“Maybe we’ll talk later.”
“The clothes—”
“Soaking’s good for that grimed-in dirt,” he said seriously. She started to laugh and he stopped her mouth with a kiss. As he lifted her, set her on her feet, and led her inside, she was struck by the warmth of the sun on her shoulders and wondered, Was it ever so hot before? So strong? It's cleared up every last blemish on my back . . . could it be the ultraviolet, I wonder, or the altitude? Is it this way every summer? Is it this hot?
And then he was doing things to her, even on the stairs he was doing things to her, making her naked, making her hot, making her love him.
“No, you sit down,” he said.
“But—”
“I mean it, Frannie.”
“Stuart, they’ll congeal or something. I put half a box of Tide in there—”
“Don’t worry.”
So she sat down in the lawn chair in the building’s shady overhang. He had set up two of them when they came back down.
Stu took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants past the knee. As he stepped into the washtub and began gravely to stomp up and down on the clothes, she began to giggle helplessly.
Stu looked over and said, “You want to spend the night on the couch?”
“No, Stuart,” she said with grave repentance, and then began to giggle again . . . until tears ran down her cheeks and the little muscles in her stomach felt rubbery and weak. When she had some control again she said, “For the third and last time, what did you come back to talk about?”
“Oh yeah.” He marched back and forth, and by now he had worked up quite a bed of lather. A pair of bluejeans floated to the surface and he stomped them back down, sending a creamy squirt of soapsuds onto the lawn. Frannie thought: It looks a little like . . . oh no, away with that, away with that unless you want to laugh your-self into a miscarriage.
“We’ve got that first ad hoc meeting tonight,” Stu said.
“I’ve got two cases of beer, cheese crackers, cheese spread, some pepperoni that should still be—”
“That’s not it, Frannie. Dick Ellis came by today and said he wanted off the committee.”
“He did?” She was surprised.
“He said he’d be glad to serve in any capacity as soon as we get ourselves a real doctor, but just now he can’t. We had another twenty-five come in today, and one of them had a gangrenous leg. Came from a scratch she got crawling under a rusty bobwire fence, apparently.”
“Oh, that’s bad.”
“Dick saved her . . . Dick and that nurse that came in with Underwood. Tall, pretty girl. Laurie Constable, her name is. Dick said he just would have lost the woman without her. Anyway, they took her leg off at the knee, and they’re both exhausted. It took em three hours. Plus they’ve got a little boy with convulsive fits, and Dick’s driving himself crazy trying to figure out if it’s epilepsy or cranial pressure of some kind or maybe diabetes. They’ve had several cases of food poisoning from people eating stuff that’s gone over, and he says some people are going to die of it if we don’t get out a flier real soon telling people how to pick their supplies. Lucky for us, this Laurie Constable seems sort of stuck on him, even though he’s about twice her age. I guess that’s all right.” “How big of you to give them your seal of approval, Stuart.”
He smiled. “Anyhow, Dick’s forty-eight and he’s got a minor heart condition. Right now he feels that he can’t spread himself too thin . . . he’s practically studying to be a doctor, for the Lord’s sake.” He looked soberly at Fran. “I can understand how that Laurie feels. He’s the closest thing to a hero we’ve got around here. He’s just a country vet and he’s scared shitless he’s going to kill someone. And he knows there are more people coming in every day, and some of them have been banged around.”
“So we need one more for the committee.”
“Yeah. Ralph Brentner’s gung-ho for this Larry Underwood guy, and from what you say, he struck you as being pretty handy.”
“Yes. He did. J think he’d be fine. And I met his lady today downtown, Lucy Swann her name is. She’s awfully sweet, and
she thinks the world of Larry.”
“I guess every good woman feels that way. But Frannie, I got to be honest with you—I don’t like the way he spilled his life’s story to someone he just met.”
“I think it was just because I was with Harold from the start. I don’t think he understood why I was with you instead of him.”
“I wonder what he made of Harold?”
“Ask him and see.”
“I guess I will.”
“Are you going to invite him onto the committee?”
“More likely than not.” He stood up. “I’d like to have that old fellow they call the Judge. But he’s seventy, and that’s too damn old.”
“Have you talked to him about Larry?”
“No, but Nick did. Nick Andros is one sharp guy, Fran. He changed a few things around on Glen and I. Glen was a little bent out of shape about it, but even he had to admit Nick’s ideas were good ones. Anyway, the Judge told Nick that Larry’s just the kind of person we’re looking for. He said Larry was just getting around to finding out he was good for something, and that he was going to get a lot better.”
“I’d call that a pretty strong recommendation.”
“Yes,” Stu said. “But I’m going to find out what he thought of Harold before I invite him along for the ride.”
“What is it about Harold?” she asked restlessly. “He never says a mean word against you, Stu . . . or anybody.”
“No,” Stu agreed. “He smiles. That’s what I don’t like.”
“You don’t think he’s . . . plotting revenge, or anything?”
Stu smiled and stood up. “No, not Harold. Glen thinks the Opposition Party may just end up coming together around Harold. That’s okay. I just hope he doesn’t try to fuck up what we’re doing now.” “He may be feeling rejected. I think he expected to be on the ad hoc committee—”
“That was one of Nick’s unilateral—is that the word?—decisions that we all went along with. What it came down to was that none of us quite trusted him.”
“In Ogunquit,” she said, “he was the most insufferable kid you could imagine. But after the flu, he seemed to change. At least to me, he did. He seemed to be trying to be, well ... a man. Then he changed again. Like all at once. He started to smile all the time. You couldn’t really talk to him anymore. He was ... in himself. The way people get when they convert to religion or read—” She stopped suddenly, and her eyes took on a momentary startled look that seemed very like fear.