"What?"
"I said, you may have to change that idea."
A sharp retort came to mind, but I didn't let it out. Harold's eyes had gone far away, and his face was very still and open. He said: "I've seen that guy before. You better believe it, Frannie. He's the guy that's the quarterback on the football team but who just sits there in class throwing spitballs and flipping people the bird because he knows the teacher's got to pass him with at least a C so he can keep on playing. He's the guy who goes steady with the prettiest cheerleader and she thinks he's Jesus Christ with a bullet. The guy who farts when the English teacher asks you to read your composition because it's the best one in the class.
"Yeah, I know fuckers like him. Good luck, Fran."
Then he just walked off. It wasn't the GRAND, TRAMPLING EXIT that he'd meant to make, I feel quite sure. It was more like he'd had some secret dream, and I'd just shot it full of holes-the dream being that things had changed, the reality being that nothing really had. I felt terrible for him, God's truth, because when he walked off he wasn't playing at jaded cynicism but feeling REAL cynicism, not jaded but as sharp & hurtful as a knife-blade. He was whipped. Oh, but what Harold will never see is that his head head has got to change a little first, he's got to see that the world is going to stay the same as long as has got to change a little first, he's got to see that the world is going to stay the same as long as he he does. He stores up rebuffs the way pirates were supposed to store up treasure... does. He stores up rebuffs the way pirates were supposed to store up treasure...
Well. Now everyone is back, supper eaten, smokes smoked, Veronal handed out (mine is in my pocket instead of dissolving in my stomach), people settling down. Harold and I have gone through a painful confrontation which has left me with the feeling that nothing has really been resolved, except that he is watching Stu and me to see what happens next. It makes me feel sick and pointlessly angry to write that. What right does he have to watch us? What right does he have to complicate this miserable situation we are in?
Things to Remember: I'm sorry, diary. It must be my state of mind. I can't remember a single thing. I'm sorry, diary. It must be my state of mind. I can't remember a single thing.
When Frannie came upon him, Stu was sitting on a rock and smoking a cigar. He had scraped a small round circle of bare earth with his boot heel and was using it for an ashtray. He was facing west, where the sun was just going down. The clouds had rifted enough to allow the red sun to poke its head through. Although they had met the four women and taken them into their party only yesterday, it already seemed distant. They had gotten one of the station wagons out of the ditch easily enough and now, with the motorcycles, they made quite a caravan as they moved slowly west on the turnpike.
The smell of his cigar made her think of her father and her father's pipe. What came with the memory was sorrow that had almost mellowed into nostalgia. I'm getting over losing you, Daddy, she thought. I don't think you'd mind.
Stu looked around. "Frannie," he said with real pleasure. "How are you?"
She shrugged. "Up and around."
"Want to share my rock and watch the sun go down?"
She joined him, her heartbeat quickening a little. But after all, why else had she come out here? She had known which way he left camp, just as she knew that Harold and Glen and two of the girls had gone into Brighton to look for a CB radio (Glen's idea instead of Harold's for a change). Patty Kroger was back in camp babysitting their two combat-fatigue patients. Shirley Hammet showed some signs of coming out of her daze, but she had awakened them all around one this morning, shrieking in her sleep, her hands clawing at the air in warding-off gestures. The other woman, the one with no name, seemed to be going in the other direction. She sat. She would eat if she was fed. She would perform the functions of elimination. She would not answer questions. She only really came alive in her sleep. Even with a heavy dose of Veronal, she often moaned and sometimes shrieked. Frannie thought she knew what the poor woman was dreaming of.
"It seems like a long way still to go, doesn't it?" she said.
He didn't answer for a moment, and then he said: "It's further than we thought. That old woman, she's not in Nebraska anymore."
"I know-" she began, and then bit down on her words.
He glanced at her with a faint grin. "You've been skippin your medication, ma'am."
"My secret's out," she said with a lame smile.
"We're not the only ones," Stu said. "I was talkin to Dayna this afternoon" (she felt that interior dig of jealousy-and fear-at the familiar way he used her name) "and she said neither she nor Susan wanted to take it."
Fran nodded. "Why did you stop? Did they drug you... in that place?"
He tapped ashes into his bare earth ashtray. "Mild sedatives at night, that was all. They didn't need to drug me. I was locked up nice and tight. No, I stopped three nights ago because I felt... out of touch." He meditated for a moment and then expanded. "Glen and Harold going to get that CB radio, that was a real good idea. What's a two-way for? To put you in touch. This buddy of mine back in Arnette, Tony Leominster, he had one in his Scout. Great gadget. You could talk to folks, or you could holler for help if you got in a jam of trouble. These dreams, they're almost like having a CB in your head, except the transmit seems to be broken and we're only receiving."
"Maybe we are are transmitting," Fran said quietly. transmitting," Fran said quietly.
He looked at her, startled.
They sat quiet for a while. The sun peered through the clouds, as if to say a quick goodbye before sinking below the horizon. Fran could understand why primitive people worshiped it. As the gigantic quiet of the nearly empty country accumulated on her day by day, imprinting its truth on her brain by its very weight, the sun-the moon, too, for that matter-began to seem bigger and more important. More personal. Those bright skyships began to look to you as they had when you were a child.
"Anyway, I stopped," Stu said. "Last night I dreamed about that black man again. It was the worst yet. He's setting up somewhere out in the desert. Las Vegas, I think. And Frannie... I think he's crucifying people. The ones who give him trouble."
"He's doing what?" what?"
"That's what I dreamed. Lines of crosses along Highway 15 made out of barn-beams and telephone poles. People hanging off them."
"Just a dream," she said uneasily.
"Maybe." He smoked and looked west at the red-tinged clouds. "But the other two nights, just before we run on those maniacs holding the women, I dreamed about her-the woman who calls herself Mother Abigail. She was sitting in the cab of an old pickup truck parked on the shoulder of Highway 76. I was standing on the ground with one arm leaning on the window, talking to her just as natural as I'm talking to you. And she says, 'You got to move em along faster still, Stuart; if an old lady like me can do it, a big tough fella from Texas like you should be able to.' " Stu laughed, threw down his cigar, and crushed it under his heel. In kind of an absent way, as if not knowing what he was doing, he put an arm around Frannie's shoulders.
"They're going to Colorado," she said.
"Why, yes, I think they are."
"Has ... has either Dayna or Susan dreamed of her?"
"Both. And last night Susan dreamed of the crosses. Just like I did."
"There's a lot of people with that old woman now."
Stu agreed. "Twenty, maybe more. You know, we're passing people nearly every day. They just hunker down and wait for us to go by. They're scared of us, but her... they'll come to her, I guess. In their own good time."
"Or to the other one," Frannie said.
Stu nodded. "Yeah, or to him. Fran, why did you stop taking the Veronal?"
She uttered a trembling sigh and wondered if she should tell him. She wanted to, but she was afraid of what his reaction might be.
"There's no counting on what a woman will do," she said at last.
"No," he agreed. "But there are ways to find out what they're thinking, maybe."
"What-" she began, and he stopped her mouth with a kiss.
They lay on the grass in the last of the twilight. Flagrant red had given way to cooler purple as they made love, and now Frannie could see stars shining through the last of the clouds. It would be good riding weather tomorrow. With any luck they would be able to get most of the way across Indiana.
Stu slapped lazily at a mosquito hovering over his chest. His shirt was hung on a nearby bush. Fran's shirt was on but unbuttoned. Her breasts pushed at the cloth and she thought, I'm getting bigger, just a little right now, but it's noticeable... at least to me. I'm getting bigger, just a little right now, but it's noticeable... at least to me.
"I've wanted you for a pretty long time now," Stu said without looking directly at her. "I guess you know that."
"I wanted to avoid trouble with Harold," she said. "And there's something else that-"
"Harold's got a ways to go," Stu said, "but he's got the makings of a fine man somewhere inside him if he'll toughen up. You like him, don't you?"
"That's not the right word. There isn't a word in English for how I feel about Harold."
"How do you feel about me?" he asked.
She looked at him and found she couldn't say she loved him, couldn't say it right out, although she wanted to.
"No," he said, as if she'd contradicted him, "I just like to get things straight. I guess you'd just as soon not have Harold know anything about this yet. Isn't that right?"
"Yes," she said gratefully.
"It's just as well. If we lie low, it may take care of itself. I've seen him lookin at Patty. She's about his age."
"I don't know ..."
"You feel a debt of gratitude to him, don't you?"
"I suppose so. We were the only two left in Ogunquit, and-"
"That was luck, no more, Frannie. You don't want to let anyone put you in a headhold over something that was pure luck."
"I suppose."
"I guess I love you," he said. "That's not so easy for me to say."
"I guess I love you, too. But there's something else ..."
"I knew that."
"You asked me why I stopped taking the pills." She plucked at her shirt, not daring to look at him. Her lips felt unnaturally dry. "I thought they might be bad for the baby," she whispered.
"For the." He stopped. Then he grasped her and turned her to face him. "You're pregnant?" pregnant?"
She nodded.
"And you didn't tell anyone?"
"No."
"Harold. Does Harold know?"
"No one but you."
"God-almighty-damn," he said. He was peering into her face in a concentrated way that scared her. She had imagined one of two things: he would leave her immediately (as Jess undoubtedly would have done if he had discovered she was pregnant with another man's child) or he would hug her, tell her not to worry, that he would take care of everything. She had never expected this startled, close scrutiny, and she found herself remembering the night she had told her father in the garden. His look had been very much like this one. She wished she had told Stu what her situation was before they had made love. Maybe then they wouldn't have made love at all, but at least he wouldn't have been able to feel he had somehow been taken advantage of, that she was ... what was the old phrase? Damaged goods. Was he thinking that? She simply could not tell.
"Stu?" she said in a frightened voice.
"You didn't tell anyone," he repeated.
"I didn't know how." Her tears were close to the surface now.
"When are you due?"
"January," she said, and the tears came.
He held her and made her know it was all right without saying anything. He didn't tell her not to worry or that he would take care of everything, but he made love to her again and she thought that she had never been so happy.
Neither of them saw Harold, as shadowy and as silent as the dark man himself, standing in the bushes and looking at them. Neither of them knew that his eyes squinted down into small, deadly triangles as Fran cried out her pleasure at the end of it, as her good orgasm burst through her.
By the time they had finished, it was full dark.
Harold slipped away silently.
From Fran Goldsmith's Diary August 1, 1990 No entry last night, too excited, too happy. Stu and I are together.
He has agreed that I'd better keep the secret of my Lone Ranger as long as possible, hopefully until we are settled. If it's to be Colorado, that's okay with me. The way I feel tonight, the mountains of the moon would be okay with me. Do I sound like a dizzy schoolgirl? Well-if a lady can't sound like a dizzy schoolgirl in her diary, where can can she sound like one? she sound like one?
But I must say one other thing before I drop the subject of the Lone Ranger. It has to do with my "maternal instinct." Is Is there such a thing? I think yes. Probably hormonal. I have not felt my old self for some weeks now, but it's very hard to separate the changes caused by my pregnancy from the changes caused by the terrible disaster which has overtaken the world. But there IS a certain jealous feeling ("jealousy" isn't really the right word, but it's the closest I can seem to come to the right word tonight), a feeling that you have moved a little closer to the center of the universe and must protect your position there. That's why the Veronal seems a greater risk than the bad dreams, although my rational mind believes that Veronal would not hurt the baby at all-not, at least, at the low levels the others have been maintaining. And I suppose that jealous feeling is also a part of the love I feel for Stu Redman. I feel I am loving, as well as eating, for two. there such a thing? I think yes. Probably hormonal. I have not felt my old self for some weeks now, but it's very hard to separate the changes caused by my pregnancy from the changes caused by the terrible disaster which has overtaken the world. But there IS a certain jealous feeling ("jealousy" isn't really the right word, but it's the closest I can seem to come to the right word tonight), a feeling that you have moved a little closer to the center of the universe and must protect your position there. That's why the Veronal seems a greater risk than the bad dreams, although my rational mind believes that Veronal would not hurt the baby at all-not, at least, at the low levels the others have been maintaining. And I suppose that jealous feeling is also a part of the love I feel for Stu Redman. I feel I am loving, as well as eating, for two.
Otherwise, I must be quick. I need my sleep, no matter what dreams may come. We haven't made it all the way across Indiana as quickly as we had hoped-a horrible clog of vehicles near the Elkhart interchange slowed us down. A good many of the vehicles were army. There were dead soldiers. Glen, Susan Stem, Dayna, and Stu took as much firepower as they could find-about 2 dozen rifles, some grenades, and-yes, folks, it's true-a rocket launcher. As I write now, Harold and Stu are trying to figure out the rocket launcher, for which there are 17 or 18 rockets. Please God they don't blow themselves up.
Speaking of Harold, I must tell you, dear diary, that he doesn't SUSPECT A THING (sounds like a line from an old Bette Davis movie, doesn't it). When we catch up with Mother Abigail's party I suppose he will have to be told; it would not be fair to hide it any longer, come what may.
But today he was brighter & more cheerful than I have ever seen him. He grinned so much I thought his face would crack! He was the one who suggested Stu help him with that dangerous rocket launcher, and But here they come back now. Will finish later.
Frannie slept heavily and dreamlessly. So did they all, with the exception of Harold Lauder. Sometime shortly after midnight he rose and walked softly to where Frannie lay, and stood looking down at her. He was not smiling now, although he had smiled all day. At times he had felt that the smile would crack his face right up the middle and spill out his whirling brains. That might have been a relief.
He stood looking down at her, listening to the chirr of summer crickets. We're in dog days now, We're in dog days now, he thought. Dog days, from July the twenty-fifth to August twenty-eighth, according to Webster's. So named because rabid dogs were supposed to be the most common then. He looked down at Fran, sleeping so sweetly, using her sweater for a pillow. Her pack was beside her. he thought. Dog days, from July the twenty-fifth to August twenty-eighth, according to Webster's. So named because rabid dogs were supposed to be the most common then. He looked down at Fran, sleeping so sweetly, using her sweater for a pillow. Her pack was beside her.
Every dog has his day, Frannie.
He knelt, freezing at the gunshots of his bending knees, but no one stirred. He unbuckled her pack, untied the drawstring, and reached inside. He trained a small pencil flash on the pack's contents. Frannie muttered from deep down in sleep, stirred, and Harold held his breath. He found what he wanted way at the bottom, behind three clean blouses and a lap-eared pocket road atlas. A Spiral notebook. He pulled it out, opened to the first page, and shone his light on Frannie's close but extremely legible handwriting.
July 6, 1990-After some persuasion, Mr. Bateman has agreed to come along with us ... ...
Harold shut the book and crept back to his sleeping bag with it. He was feeling like the little boy he had once been, the boy with few friends (he had enjoyed a brief period of babyhood beauty until about age three, had been a fat and ugly joke ever since) but many enemies, the boy who had been more or less taken for granted by his parents-their eyes had been trained on Amy as she began her long walk down the Miss America/Atlantic City runway of her life-the boy who had turned to books for solace, the boy who had escaped never being picked for baseball or always being passed over for School Patrol Boy by becoming Long John Silver or Tarzan or Philip Kent... the boy who had become these people late at night under his covers with a flashlight trained on the printed page, his eyes wide with excitement, barely smelling his own bedfarts; this boy now crawled upside down to the bottom of his sleeping bag with Frannie's diary and his flashlight.
As he trained its beam on the front cover of the Spiral, there was a moment of sanity. For just a moment part of his mind cried out Harold! Stop! Harold! Stop! so strongly that he was shaken to his heels. And stop he almost did. For just a moment it seemed so strongly that he was shaken to his heels. And stop he almost did. For just a moment it seemed possible possible to stop, to put the diary back where he had found it, to give her up, to let them go their own way before something terrible and irrevocable happened. For that moment it seemed he could put the bitter drink away, pour it out of the cup, and refill it with whatever there was for him in this world. to stop, to put the diary back where he had found it, to give her up, to let them go their own way before something terrible and irrevocable happened. For that moment it seemed he could put the bitter drink away, pour it out of the cup, and refill it with whatever there was for him in this world. Give it over, Harold, Give it over, Harold, this sane voice begged, but maybe it was already too late. this sane voice begged, but maybe it was already too late.
At age sixteen he had given up Burroughs and Stevenson and Robert Howard in favor of other fantasies, fantasies that were both well loved and much hated-not of rockets or pirates but of girls in silk see-through pajamas kneeling before him on satin pillows while Harold the Great lolled naked on his throne, ready to chastise them with small leather whips, with silver-headed canes. They were bitter fantasies through which every pretty girl at Ogunquit High School had strolled at one time or another. These daydreams always ended with a gathering expletive in his loins, an explosion of seminal fluid that was more curse than pleasure. And then he would sleep, the sperm drying to a scale on his belly. Every doggy has his day.
And now it was those bitter fantasies, the old hurts, that he gathered around him like yellowed sheets, the old friends who never died, whose teeth never dulled, whose deadly affection never wavered.
He turned to that first page, trained his flashlight on the words, and began to read.
In the hour before dawn, he replaced the diary in Fran's pack and secured the buckles. He took no special precautions. If she woke, he thought coldly, he would kill her and then run. Run where? West. But he would not stop in Nebraska or even in Colorado, oh no.
She didn't wake.
He went back to his sleeping bag. He masturbated bitterly. When sleep came, it was thin. He dreamed he was dying halfway down a steep grade of tumbled rocks and moonscape boulders. High above, riding the night thermals, were cruising buzzards, waiting for him to make them a meal. There was no moon, no stars- And then a frightful red Eye opened in the dark: vulpine, eldritch. The Eye terrified him yet held him.