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    The Stand
    The Stand
    The Stand
    Ebook1,719 pages44 hours

    The Stand

    By Stephen King

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    #1 BESTSELLER • NOW A PARAMOUNT+ LIMITED SERIES • Stephen King’s apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as riveting—and eerily plausible—as when it was first published.

    One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years! This edition includes all of the new and restored material first published in The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition.

    A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge—Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them—and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

    "A master storyteller."—Los Angeles Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 24, 2008
    ISBN9780385528856
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch, the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for The Stand

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    • 5/5
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    • 5/5
      finally read this cement block sized book and wow. this was amazing as expected.

      just some backstory about me and this book was that i tried to read this book as a teenager but it was too hard for me at the time but i was always fascinated with its story. but now after all this time i finally did it and damn was this book amazing.

      i wont go over everything as there is a ton to talk about but i will say that the most impressive part of this book for me was pacing was really good for a book with such a high page count. i was expecting it to have a few slow moments but almost nothing felt like a drag to get through and was very entertaining. love all the characters and situations that took place with many different emotions. but probably my favorite characters if i had to pick 3 would be Nick, Tom and Stu.

      anyways its considered as a classic for a reason and im happy to have finally read it after all this time
    • 5/5
      I'd read The Stand over 30 years ago and remembered virtually nothing, save for about three pages early on where we see the virus jumping from person to person, country to country. THAT was scary (little did I know...). This version is 400 pages longer than the original and the immediate impact of the virus (and its contagiousness) wasn't nearly as impactful.

      Still, this is an excellent book that was hard to put down. There's no one who writes like King; his dialogue is nearly perfect and the characters are pretty well rounded.

      Well worth it.
    • 5/5
      I couldn't tell you how many times I've read The Stand. I read the original version as a young teen and the uncut, and far superior, version when it came out. Less scary than most of his books, it is one of his best works for character development. There are some uses of language that haven't aged well, but they were true to their time period (1978) and clearly born of ignorance rather than hostility. This read was as ever a delight, but in many ways even more so as my spouse, who doesn't like scary things and is definitely the gentler spouse, asked me to pick out a Stephen King for our out-loud book. He knows how much I love the author, and just asked that I be willing to skip any bits that were too much for him. I gladly did this, there were only a couple, and enjoyed the story of Kojak more than ever because of how much my husband loves dogs and his delighted cries of "What a good boy!" throughout the book.
    • 5/5
      By far my favorite King novel. This is the second time I’ve read this, the first being back ‘08. It was even better the second time and I caught things I either missed or glossed over the first.

      I love the way King weaves multiple themes and ideals together that make not just an interesting story but one that makes the reader actually think.
    • 5/5
      So this book was crazy, but I loved it. I always have a hard time reading Stephen King because of how descriptive he can be at times and I lose focus. This book did not do that to me at all. I loved all of it. Tom is my favorite character and I had to actually ask my husband and cousin if anything bad was going to happen or I wasn't going to read the book. LOL. (They refused to tell me.)
    • 5/5
      Re-read one of my all-time favorites and still love it.

      I listened to the author's uncut version, where Stephen King restored about 400 pages of text. Mostly backgrounds for many of the characters, and I think it really did round out the story.

      An engineered super-flu escapes a military facility and kills most of the population, presumably across the earth. As the survivors start to find each other, they all seem to have the same two dreams. The first dream is an elderly black woman - at 108 years old she's certainly now the oldest woman alive. The other dream is of a cowboy-boot wearing, tall, dark man.

      Survivors set out to find either the old woman or the dark man - either drawn by good or evil. And then there is a final "stand" of good vs evil.

      Classic post apocalypse distopia, with the kind of supernatural twist that Stephen King is so well known for. Long book, but worth the time to read.
    • 5/5
      Just finished this behemoth. Read it first 30 years ago when I was a teenager and I loved it. Second read, still love it. Parts of it were especially chilling, reading it during the throes of COVID-19. Parts of it haven't aged well, namely his multiple uses of the N-word (even if only the "bad guys" are using it, still, I just don't like reading it) and the numerous pop-culture references from the 70's and 80's. Also, if I can get a little nit-picky here, he way over uses the word "trundle" and the phrase "as [some group] says" whenever he throws in something he feels is a colloquialism. (“Well, the years rolled by, as they say in the books...") It got to the point that whenever I heard either of those, I was thrown out of my reverie and my reading rhythm stumbled. I feel a good editor should have pointed that out.

      Also, knowing now (not sure if I knew this 30 years ago) that the book was originally published in 1978 after the publisher forced him to remove 400 of his original 1200 pages for financial reasons, and then reprinted in full in 1991 due to fan enthusiasm for the uncut version, but with numerous edits including updating the story's timeframe to 1990 instead of the early 80's, I noticed a lot of those pop-culture references from the 80's and marveled that he decided to include them, I guess to appeal to a "modern" audience. When one of the (aforementioned) bad guys picks up a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic book later in the book, I got a laugh out of that. He does that a lot. I swear at some point he was quoting a commercial from back in the day that I only have a twinge of recognition for, and I wonder how a younger audience even responds to something like that. Probably keeps reading and just figures he's using one of those made up colloquialisms.

      What more can I say? Probably my favorite King book. Up there with It in my opinion. Maybe because they both have a surprisingly happy ending. Not that everything works out great for everyone involved, but the ending is overall positive. And if I'm going to read 1200 pages, I don't want everybody I cared about lying dead in the end. I say "positive" but I mean "positive for a King novel." Of course he has to take what could be a happy ending and in the last couple of pages introduce a trigger-happy sheriff who could take the new world down a dark path and, oh by the way, look how Randall Flagg resurrected himself and starts over again, something I read that he added to the 1991 edition, but this was probably because, by then, he had larger plans for Flagg and couldn't have him disintegrated by a nuclear bomb.

      I'm also on my way through the entirely of The Dark Tower series and trying to read all of the connected books and stories as well, so revisiting the beginnings of Randall Flagg is important.
    • 5/5
      A virus escapes its containment are, a man realizes the problem and leaves his post. That is the start of Captain Trips which will kill 99% of the population. Dreams and nightmares of of an 108 year old lady and man who is dark and sinister begin to play a part in the survivors life. Choices must be made.
    • 4/5
      Finally crossed this off my reading list after some 20-odd years. Was well worth it. Very, very good book. Was captivated throughout the lengthy tome. Can't quite give it a 5 though as the conclusion was not the sustained pulse-pounding payoff I felt I'd earned after that many pages, and I was a little unclear on why a couple of things happened the way they did. But nonetheless, it was quite a ride, extremely vividly rendered, with indelible characters that I really came to root for and care about.
    • 3/5
      I had been thinking about reading this for years. It is such an iconic book with big themes like the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good of the group and hierarchy in society, but especially the theme of good vs. evil. There were representations for Christ and the Anti-Christ who seek to gain control over this new emerging society. Big, bold ideas. It should have been enthralling, but I was quite bored for the whole first half of the book, and with a 1400 page book - that is a lot of boredom. Things got more interesting in the second half as the survivors begin to re-build society and I was into it by the very end. I'm glad that I took the time to read it but it didn't rock my world at all and I can't even say I would recommend it. Great idea but lacking punch.
    • 4/5
      First and third book are very thrilling, absolutely enthralling, I refused to put the book down. However, the second book felt the longest and was mostly filled with politics and everyday life until near the end. Very good book though, totally worth it!
    • 5/5
      The first time I read this was during the swine flu outbreak in 2012. Not deliberately, it just worked out that way. The book synchronised very satisfyingly with real life, as events in the news just seemed like more mundane and diluted chapters. The partial immersion that ensued was effective.
    • 5/5
      I read the "Uncut" edition that was published in 1990. In addition to having about 500 additional pages the begining and ending are reported to be different as well. This is my favorite of his books to date. This is due to some extent on the length. When I get into a story I hate to see it end sometimes.
    • 5/5
      A great journey of a book; the fall, each character's personal arc, their coming together and the grand finale. An amazing book.

      "Dreams are the psyche’s way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who don’t dream—or don’t dream in a way they can often remember when they wake up—are mentally constipated in some way. After all, the only practical compensation for having a nightmare is waking up and realizing it was all just a dream."
    • 5/5
      The Stand by Stephen King is one of my favorite books by him. I have an old used copy of the uncut version (why would you read any other!?!) with Gary Sinise on the cover and a taped up spine.

      Every time i get sick i reread The Stand. Every single time. Though i will admit i don’t always finish it. I usually get through the 1st half of it and by then i’m feeling better.

      Any way, The Stand is about what happens when a superflu created by the government is accidently unleashed on the population and kills of 99.4% of the population very, very quickly. Then you see what happens to all the people who survive, how they choose sides (Mother Abigail vs Randall Flagg (the bad guy) ) and how they finally get on with their lives.

      I like reading about the superflu and how it spreads when i’m sick, it makes me feel better, i usually don’t finish my rereading because my favorite character dies and one of my less fav. survives (Stupid Stu).

      No matter what though, this will always be my go to book when sick.

      Happy Readings!

      <3

      The Book Worm
    • 4/5
      The world has been hit by a devastating plague with a mortality rate of over 90%. Those who have survived the plague, now fight to survive each other. A gathering is coming. A gathering of good and evil, of light and dark, through the deserts of the American West towards Las Vegas or to the forested natures of the American northwest towards Boulder, Colorado. What they can all feel is an imminent battle between these two groups and a confrontation of the one they all dream of: The Dark Man. Will man survive the devastating effects of the plague only to destroy each other?

      This was a really good book and made me think about it differently based on what is transpiring around us with COVID-19. Although written in the 1970s, King updated it in the 90s; However, I feel this is a book that will stand the test of time and be applicable long into the future. I read this because I joined the University of Texas at Arlington's Big Summer Read and was greatly surprised by how much we all enjoyed it and the wonderful conversations that flowed in our weekly meetings!
    • 2/5
      I wanted to love this book... I wanted to actually finish this book, but twice it stopped me and on my third attempt I threw in the towel. Perhaps reading this in the midst of my Covid-19 quarantine wasn't the best time to indulge in my first King novel, but could there be any better time? Maybe I should have read the edited version instead of the long-winded re-release. I'll never know. I lost a days worth of time reading this self indulgent rag and I'm pissed about it. Keep it. Definitely not my genre.
    • 5/5
      Original written in 1978, King was asked to drastically edit the novel. The publisher felt 1100 pages was too intimidating to the readers. So it was released with about 820 pages (400 cut out). I have read both versions of this book and find that the extra pages and little to the story. There is a new beginning which helps to set the stage, a few parts in the middle which do little for the book, and an extra chapter at the end to let the reader know where Fran and Stu have ended up.

      In the first quarter of the novel, we are introduced to some of the main players. (Stu Redman, Harold Lauder, Fran Goldsmith, Larry Underwood, And Nick Andros) We are given a little feel for how their lives were before the flu hits the country.
      Once the flu hits, we feel their worlds change. Many people die from the flu, some from after effects (such as the elderly or children with no one to care for them), and a few are immune. This is the ultimate story of good vs evil, God vs Devil.

      Randall Flagg is the dark man, the walking dude, the devil himself. Mother Abigail is an angel on earth, the positive image of all good and holy. Many survivors travel to met one or the other of these figures after seeing both in their dreams.

      This is a long book. It took me a month to read. But it is really worth it.
    • 4/5
      At 1,007 pages for the BCA edition, or 1,100+ for most other editions the uncut & complete version of The Stand is quite the tome. It regularly features near the top of end of the world or post apocalypse best of lists and whilst it was alright, I didn't think it was really that great a fit for those categories, rather books like Earth Abides, Lucifier's Hammer and Alas, Babylon are better representations of those style books.

      That's not to say the world as we know it doesn't come to an end in this book, it does, but rather I found the focus more about the paranormal aspect of Good vs Evil. The trials and tribulations of the characters as they negotiated the events after the collapse of American civilisation and the conflict of Good against Evil and Evil against Good.

      Overall, it was a decent story, a bit long in parts but that's probably why those sections were omitted in the original publication. There are some vibrant descriptions of journeys across the country and some brief overviews of the attempts to set up new societies and the contrast between the two ideals.

      Would I read it again? Probably not, but it was certainly worth reading as someone who enjoys post apocalypse books if only to see why it features so prominently in best of lists.
    • 4/5
      Nothing wrong with the extended parts. If I had read The Stand before Lost was on TV, I would have known that they wouldn't know how to end Lost either.
    • 5/5
      If he never wrote another word, Stephen King deserves to be remembered for this, his contribution to the "Disaster Novel" genre. (NOTE: This review applies to the ORIGINAL release of the novel, not the "Special Edition")
      It begins innocuously enough, with an army officer running away from his base. But he has left it too late, and he carries a new disease into the world. Over the next months people begin to die, in small numbers at first, then in their hundreds, thousands and finally millions.

      The survivors, a disparate band drawn from all walks of life, find they have to make a choice; to join with the forces of evil, personified in Flagg (one of the best fictional villains in living memory) or to take a "Stand" for good, personified by Aunt Abigail, an old wizened black woman with a fundamentalist approach to her faith.

      Soon all the survivors are lined up on one side or the other, and the final battle for their future destiny is set up when the main characters must take their own "Stand"

      The questions of faith posed by this, and how each of the protagonists make their choices, form the moral core of this book, and the rigours of basic survival when civilisation has fallen forms the backbone of the plot, but it is the characters who stick in your mind long after you've finished reading.

      King has always been good at "country" types, but here he shows a sure hand with such disparate people as a deaf-mute, a rock star, a garage worker, a pregnant teenager and her admirer-from-afar neighbour Harold (a gentleman so slimy you'll feel like taking a shower after just reading about him)

      You feel rapport with these characters, and are soon cheering them on, and King has managed to reel in his propensity for "bloat", and doesn't let any one character take over.

      The book carries a strong moral tone thoughout, and at times seems almost biblical in its "fire-and-brimstone" intensity. In typical King fashion there are some terrifying set pieces, the pick of which takes place in a tunnel which is full of dead and decomposing bodies that must be navigated without a light. Not for the squeamish.

      A lot of people have been daunted by the sheer size of this book. At over 1000 pages, it is not a quick read, and in the early chapters it is sometimes difficult to keep track of its large list of characters. Also, King seems to take delight in slowing things down and looking in great detail at some pretty unpleasant deaths as a result of the disease - a super-flu which results in particularly messy fluid expulsion.

      However once Flagg appears and starts insinuating himself into the survivors' dreams. the tension starts to crank up and King knows how to keep you hooked, cheering the good guys along to the denoument.

      I won't spoil it by giving away the ending, but the final "Stand" doesn't come quite as expected, and has some truly shocking consequences for the protagonists.

      For a jaded horror fan brought up on John Wyndham and John Christopher, this book revitalised my interest back in the late 70's. This was the book that brought me back to horror, and made me want to write it myself.

      For that alone it's got a lot to answer for.

    • 4/5
      A long story. The superflu pandemic it lose and the US does nothing but make it worse and most people die all over the world. This is the story of creation, a few survive and they form two groups; good and evil and then there is the stand off. It’s a long story, I said that already. This is the expanded version. I’m not sure that it needed expanding, maybe it needing trimming. Oh well. King is a wordy fellow. He creates a lot of characters and then he slowly trims them away. It seems like a lot of his other books are in this book and his main bad guy is found in other stories. He wrote this, then rewrote it and then updated it. This book was updated to 1990 and still is dated which will happen when there is so much pop culture in the book. Besides the Bible; this book had many other inspirations for King and King wanted to write a fantasy epic like Tolkien. I still like hobbits better than Texans.
    • 5/5
      One of the best post-apocalyptic works ever made and one of my favorite books written by Stephen King. Epic and shocking and masterfully-written - I've read it three times and it gets better with each read!
    • 3/5
      At 1,400 pages, this book is a fair slog to get through. Stephen King does a good job of keeping the reader interested however, with the narrative rolling along nicely. The one big exception to this is a very slow period about 2/3rds of the way through, during which the new residents of Boulder spend a lot of time indulging in small-town politics - who will be on what committees and whatnot. This is the only tedious part of what is otherwise a very non-tedious book.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite books of all time. Great characters, engaging plot, and exceptional immersion into this semi-fictional "hey-it-could-happen" world. Apocalyptic authors, take note! This is a near-perfect example of this genre!

      This time through, I listened to the Audible version, and the narrator did a great job, perfect for the book.
    • 4/5
      I feel like everyone should read this book, even if you're not a Stephen King fan. Why? Because this is how the world ends. Forget Nuclear Armageddon or planetary destruction from human ignorance; it'll be a little vial of deadly disease released accidentally or purposefully, and that's it for the human race. The world hits the rest button and whoever survives will have to figure out how to start over.

      So, what happens when one little mistake unleashes a deadly, manufactured, ever-changing superflu on the world? First, there's the attempt to hide the panic while the powers-that-be try to find a cure. When that doesn't work, and people start getting sick all over, panic takes hold. Then, death. And finally, the survivors, those immune to the effects of what is dubbed "Captain Trips," must figure out how to live in a world that is fast moving on.

      Using this tapestry as his background, Stephen King tells an epic tale of good versus evil in a dying world. The side of good is represented in Mother Abagail, a 108 year-old woman with the power of the White on her side who draws those with love in their hearts to her in order to rebuild society from the ruins. Meanwhile, there's a deep, dark evil drawing those with hate and fear in their hearts to Las Vegas. He's called "the dark man," "the Walkin' Dude," and even "Satan's Imp" by Mother Abagail; but he calls himself Randall Flagg, and he's Stephen King's most memorable villain next to Pennywise the Clown.

      The Stand is broken into three parts. First, we the release and spread of the superflu. Next, the survivors must choose a side, Mother Abagail or the Walkin' Dude. Finally, it's time to make a stand.

      King goes so in-depth with these characters as we follow them along throughout this story that it really feels like we know them. We feel for them, the good and the bad, especially those who might find themselves playing out a role they never would have dreamed of before Captain Trips came along.

      This is how the world ends.
      This is how the world ends.
      This is how the world ends.
      Not with a bang,
      but with an unassuming cough.
    • 5/5
      My all-time favorite book, I re-read this almost every single summer.
    • 5/5
      It's been years since I first read The Stand, and over the two weeks I just spent re-reading, its rank as my favorite book has been reaffirmed. Getting to know these characters again, and spending time with them as they made their stand, was worth every word.
    • 4/5
      One of my favourite SF books was Stephen King's 1979 "The Stand", which I read in the full unadulterated double-doorstop version released in 1990, which was considered far to voluminous to release in 1979. This is the second time I'm re-reading it. How did it fare?

      This is the sort of SF that is all too plausible, an accidental spill from a biological weapons facility releasing a plague-like virus which sweeps the planet in a matter of weeks, leaving 99% of humanity dead. King introduces a scores of protagonists, split into two camps of good and evil, the good 'uns drawn to Boulder Colorado through a shared dream of a 108 year old black woman, and the baddies under the control of supernatural drifter Randal Flagg.

      King said he had been wanting to create an American Lord of the Rings, saying he:

      “...just couldn't figure out how to do it. Then . . . after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare). I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less. That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah, that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured). I remembered a news reporter saying, 'If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City.' Only instead of a hobbit, my hero was a Texan named Stu Redman, and instead of a Dark Lord, my villain was a ruthless drifter and supernatural madman named Randall Flagg. The land of Mordor ('where the shadows lie,' according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas”

      I noticed on re-reading it that the first half of the book is dark and wickedly drawn, mining the full depths of human depravity. A gang of marauding baddies rounding up any men and women they come across and forcing them into herds of sex slaves, and as it is King writing, always managing to make the premise and dialogue believable; tugging at the reaches of the readers mind in slightly disturbing ways, causing intakes of breath at the audacity of his imagination; as the, by now unfazed members in the sex slave gang giving advice to the new, offering tips on how to keep the brutes from fully ravishing them, by making sure to give effective head, a particularly transgressive flight which spurs the pages to turn in anticipation of how much farther he is going to push the envelope. And then, in the second half, this muck and mire kind of vibe, dissipates as the goodies win out and the whole tenor and underlying tow of the book fundamentally shifts into a wholly different register, suffused with an evangelical tint. The ferocity of it, which at the time I noticed but did not think on, ebbing away into the denouement of all the baddies, who King opts to get rid of by having a pyromaniac protagonist, Trash Can Man, accidentally blow them all up after towing a nuclear bomb to the Las Vegas HQ, and all the good people living happily ever after. The creative nuts and bolts of the writer's personal psychology behind this book, were made known to me after I read King's prose how-to book: On Writing, which he wrote whilst recuperating from a serious accident after being put in a coma when a juggernaut knocked him down as he was on his daily afternoon walk; the driver of which he ominously revealed in passing, had died (I think) a violent death a few years after at the hands of an unknown killer.

      He said that when he began to write “The Stand”, his daily and prodigious writing practice was centred around sitting at the word processor, with a 12 or 24 slab of beer, drinking, smoking and ingesting lots of drugs, which explained the outrageous feats of his imagination in the earlier part of the book. Mentally loosened up by a cocktail from across the full spectrum, his mind in a cloud all of its own making, revved along in that particular frazzled frenzy conclusive to massive paranoia which conjures up all sorts of diabolical scenarios - King had harnessed this power which in most people would see them on the streets whacked out their minds, and put it to profitable use. However, half way through the book, at the insistence of his family, he reached the end of the road with this lifestyle, and suddenly found himself in a new head-space after drying out, and minus the previous crutches and creative aids (and personal wrecking balls) of drink and drugs, so the totally different register and massively toned down transgressive scenes in the second half of the book is explained. He said that due to this sudden shift in his day to day habit, he ended up, even by his standards, with a sprawling mass of characters, of which there were just too many to tie up into a denouement of set coherent scenes, so came up with the brainwave of just blowing them all up, and at a stroke unburdened himself of a massive workload.

      It is what it is.



      SF = Speculative Fiction.

    Book preview

    The Stand - Stephen King

    BOOK I

    CHAPTER 1

    Hapscomb’s Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign.

    It was Bill Hapscomb’s station, so the others deferred to him even though he was a pure fool. They would have expected the same deferral if they had been gathered together in one of their business establishments. Except they had none. In Arnette, it was hard times. In 1980 the town had had two industries, a factory that made paper products (for picnics and barbecues, mostly) and a plant that made electronic calculators. Now the paper factory was shut down and the calculator plant was ailing—they could make them a lot cheaper in Taiwan, it turned out, just like those portable TVs and transistor radios.

    Norman Bruett and Tommy Wannamaker, who had both worked in the paper factory, were on relief, having run out of unemployment some time ago. Henry Carmichael and Stu Redman both worked at the calculator plant but rarely got more than thirty hours a week. Victor Palfrey was retired and smoked stinking home-rolled cigarettes, which were all he could afford.

    Now what I say is this, Hap told them, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward. They just gotta say screw this inflation shit. Screw this national debt shit. We got the presses and we got the paper. We’re gonna run off fifty million thousand-dollar bills and hump them right the Christ into circulation.

    Palfrey, who had been a machinist until 1984, was the only one present with sufficient self-respect to point out Hap’s most obvious damfool statements. Now, rolling another of his shitty-smelling cigarettes, he said: That wouldn’t get us nowhere. If they do that, it’ll be just like Richmond in the last two years of the States War. In those days, when you wanted a piece of gingerbread, you gave the baker a Confederate dollar, he’d put it on the gingerbread, and cut out a piece just that size. Money’s just paper, you know.

    I know some people don’t agree with you, Hap said sourly. He picked up a greasy red plastic paper-holder from his desk. I owe these people. And they’re starting to get pretty itchy about it.

    Stuart Redman, who was perhaps the quietest man in Arnette, was sitting in one of the cracked plastic Woolco chairs, a can of Pabst in his hand, looking out the big service station window at Number 93. Stu knew about poor. He had grown up that way right here in town, the son of a dentist who had died when Stu was seven, leaving his wife and two other children besides Stu.

    His mother had gotten work at the Red Ball Truck Stop just outside of Arnette—Stu could have seen it from where he sat right now if it hadn’t burned down in 1979. It had been enough to keep the four of them eating, but that was all. At the age of nine, Stu had gone to work, first for Rog Tucker, who owned the Red Ball, helping to unload trucks after school for thirty-five cents an hour, and then at the stockyards in the neighboring town of Braintree, lying about his age to get twenty back-breaking hours of labor a week at the minimum wage.

    Now, listening to Hap and Vic Palfrey argue on about money and the mysterious way it had of drying up, he thought about the way his hands had bled at first from pulling the endless handtrucks of hides and guts. He had tried to keep that from his mother, but she had seen, less than a week after he started. She wept over them a little, and she hadn’t been a woman who wept easily. But she hadn’t asked him to quit the job. She knew what the situation was. She was a realist.

    Some of the silence in him came from the fact that he had never had friends, or the time for them. There was school, and there was work. His youngest brother, Dev, had died of pneumonia the year he began at the yards, and Stu had never quite gotten over that. Guilt, he supposed. He had loved Dev the best … but his passing had also meant there was one less mouth to feed.

    In high school he had found football, and that was something his mother had encouraged even though it cut into his work hours. You play, she said. If you got a ticket out of here, it’s football, Stuart. You play. Remember Eddie Warfield. Eddie Warfield was a local hero. He had come from a family even poorer than Stu’s own, had covered himself with glory as quarterback of the regional high school team, had gone on to Texas A&M with an athletic scholarship, and had played for ten years with the Green Bay Packers, mostly as a second-string quarterback but on several memorable occasions as the starter. Eddie now owned a string of fast-food restaurants across the West and Southwest, and in Arnette he was an enduring figure of myth. In Arnette, when you said success, you meant Eddie Warfield.

    Stu was no quarterback, and he was no Eddie Warfield. But it did seem to him as he began his junior year in high school that there was at least a fighting chance for him to get a small athletic scholarship … and then there were work-study programs, and the school’s guidance counselor had told him about the NDEA loan program.

    Then his mother had gotten sick, had become unable to work. It was cancer. Two months before he graduated from high school, she had died, leaving Stu with his brother Bryce to support. Stu had turned down the athletic scholarship and had gone to work in the calculator factory. And finally it was Bryce, three years’ Stu’s junior, who had made it out. He was now in Minnesota, a systems analyst for IBM. He didn’t write often, and the last time he had seen Bryce was at the funeral, after Stu’s wife had died—died of exactly the same sort of cancer that had killed his mother. He thought that Bryce might have his own guilt to carry … and that Bryce might be a little ashamed of the fact that his brother had turned into just another good old boy in a dying Texas town, spending his days doing time in the calculator plant, and his nights either down at Hap’s or over at the Indian Head drinking Lone Star beer.

    The marriage had been the best time, and it had only lasted eighteen months. The womb of his young wife had borne a single dark and malignant child. That had been four years ago. Since, he had thought of leaving Arnette, searching for something better, but small-town inertia held him—the low siren song of familiar places and familiar faces. He was well liked in Arnette, and Vic Palfrey had once paid him the ultimate compliment of calling him Old Time Tough.

    As Vic and Hap chewed it out, there was still a little dusk left in the sky, but the land was in shadow. Cars didn’t go by on 93 much now, which was one reason that Hap had so many unpaid bills. But there was a car coming now, Stu saw.

    It was still a quarter of a mile distant, the day’s last light putting a dusty shine on what little chrome was left to it. Stu’s eyes were sharp, and he made it as a very old Chevrolet, maybe a ’75. A Chevy, no lights on, doing no more than fifteen miles an hour, weaving all over the road. No one had seen it yet but him.

    Now let’s say you got a mortgage payment on this station, Vic was saying, and let’s say it’s fifty dollars a month.

    It’s a hell of a lot more than that.

    "Well, for the sake of the argument, let’s say fifty. And let’s say the Federals went ahead and printed you a whole carload of money. Well then those bank people would turn round and want a hundred and fifty. You’d be just as poorly off."

    That’s right, Henry Carmichael added. Hap looked at him, irritated. He happened to know that Hank had gotten in the habit of taking Cokes out of the machine without paying the deposit, and furthermore, Hank knew he knew, and if Hank wanted to come in on any side it ought to be his.

    That ain’t necessarily how it would be, Hap said weightily from the depths of his ninth-grade education. He went on to explain why.

    Stu, who only understood that they were in a hell of a pinch, tuned Hap’s voice down to a meaningless drone and watched the Chevy pitch and yaw its way on up the road. The way it was going Stu didn’t think it was going to make it much farther. It crossed the white line and its lefthand tires spumed up dust from the left shoulder. Now it lurched back, held its own lane briefly, then nearly pitched off into the ditch. Then, as if the driver had picked out the big lighted Texaco station sign as a beacon, it arrowed toward the tarmac like a projectile whose velocity is very nearly spent. Stu could hear the worn-out thump of its engine now, the steady gurgle-and-wheeze of a dying carb and a loose set of valves. It missed the lower entrance and bumped up over the curb. The fluorescent bars over the pumps were reflecting off the Chevy’s dirt-streaked windshield so it was hard to see what was inside, but Stu saw the vague shape of the driver roll loosely with the bump. The car showed no sign of slowing from its relentless fifteen.

    So I say with more money in circulation you’d be—

    Better turn off your pumps, Hap, Stu said mildly.

    The pumps? What?

    Norm Bruett had turned to look out the window. Christ on a pony, he said.

    Stu got out of his chair, leaned over Tommy Wannamaker and Hank Carmichael, and flicked off all eight switches at once, four with each hand. So he was the only one who didn’t see the Chevy as it hit the gas pumps on the upper island and sheared them off.

    It plowed into them with a slowness that seemed implacable and somehow grand. Tommy Wannamaker swore in the Indian Head the next day that the taillights never flashed once. The Chevy just kept coming at a steady fifteen or so, like the pace car in the Tournament of Roses parade. The undercarriage screeched over the concrete island, and when the wheels hit it everyone but Stu saw the driver’s head swing limply and strike the windshield, starring the glass.

    The Chevy jumped like an old dog that had been kicked and plowed away the hi-test pump. It snapped off and rolled away, spilling a few dribbles of gas. The nozzle came unhooked and lay glittering under the fluorescents.

    They all saw the sparks produced by the Chevy’s exhaust pipe grating across the cement, and Hap, who had seen a gas station explosion in Mexico, instinctively shielded his eyes against the fireball he expected. Instead, the Chevy’s rear end flirted around and fell off the pump island on the station side. The front end smashed into the low-lead pump, knocking it off with a hollow bang.

    Almost deliberately, the Chevrolet finished its 360-degree turn, hitting the island again, broadside this time. The rear end popped up on the island and knocked the regular gas pump asprawl. And there the Chevy came to rest, trailing its rusty exhaust pipe behind it. It had destroyed all three of the gas pumps on that island nearest the highway. The motor continued to run choppily for a few seconds and then quit. The silence was so loud it was alarming.

    Holy moly, Tommy Wannamaker said breathlessly. Will she blow, Hap?

    If it was gonna, it already woulda, Hap said, getting up. His shoulder bumped the map case, scattering Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona every whichway. Hap felt a cautious sort of jubilation. His pumps were insured, and the insurance was paid up. Mary had harped on the insurance ahead of everything.

    Guy must have been pretty drunk, Norm said.

    I seen his taillights, Tommy said, his voice high with excitement. They never flashed once. Holy moly! If he’d a been doing sixty we’d all be dead now.

    They hurried out of the office, Hap first and Stu bringing up the rear. Hap, Tommy, and Norm reached the car together. They could smell gas and hear the slow, clocklike tick of the Chevy’s cooling engine. Hap opened the driver’s side door and the man behind the wheel spilled out like an old laundry sack.

    "God-damn," Norm Bruett shouted, almost screamed. He turned away, clutched his ample belly, and was sick. It wasn’t the man who had fallen out (Hap had caught him neatly before he could thump to the pavement) but the smell that was issuing from the car, a sick stench compounded of blood, fecal matter, vomit, and human decay. It was a ghastly rich sick-dead smell.

    A moment later Hap turned away, dragging the driver by the armpits. Tommy hastily grabbed the dragging feet and he and Hap carried him into the office. In the glow of the overhead fluorescents their faces were cheesy-looking and revolted. Hap had forgotten about his insurance money.

    The others looked into the car and then Hank turned away, one hand over his mouth, little finger sticking off like a man who has just raised his wineglass to make a toast. He trotted to the north end of the station’s lot and let his supper come up.

    Vic and Stu looked into the car for some time, looked at each other, and then looked back in. On the passenger side was a young woman, her shift dress hiked up high on her thighs. Leaning against her was a boy or girl, about three years old. They were both dead. Their necks had swelled up like inner tubes and the flesh there was a purple-black color, like a bruise. The flesh was puffed up under their eyes, too. They looked, Vic later said, like those baseball players who put lampblack under their eyes to cut the glare. Their eyes bulged sightlessly. The woman was holding the child’s hand. Thick mucus had run from their noses and was now clotted there. Flies buzzed around them, lighting in the mucus, crawling in and out of their open mouths. Stu had been in the war, but he had never seen anything so terribly pitiful as this. His eyes were constantly drawn back to those linked hands.

    He and Vic backed away together and looked blankly at each other. Then they turned to the station. They could see Hap, jawing frantically into the pay phone. Norm was walking toward the station behind them, throwing glances at the wreck over his shoulder. The Chevy’s driver’s side door stood sadly open. There was a pair of baby shoes dangling from the rear-view mirror.

    Hank was standing by the door, rubbing his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. Jesus, Stu, he said unhappily, and Stu nodded.

    Hap hung up the phone. The Chevy’s driver was lying on the floor. Ambulance will be here in ten minutes. Do you figure they’re—? He jerked his thumb at the Chevy.

    They’re dead, okay. Vic nodded. His lined face was yellow-pale, and he was sprinkling tobacco all over the floor as he tried to make one of his shitty-smelling cigarettes. They’re the two deadest people I’ve ever seen. He looked at Stu and Stu nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. He had the butterflies.

    The man on the floor moaned thickly in his throat and they all looked down at him. After a moment, when it became obvious that the man was speaking or trying very hard to speak, Hap knelt beside him. It was, after all, his station.

    Whatever had been wrong with the woman and child in the car was also wrong with this man. His nose was running freely, and his respiration had a peculiar undersea sound, a churning from somewhere in his chest. The flesh beneath his eyes was puffing, not black yet, but a bruised purple. His neck looked too thick, and the flesh had pushed up in a column to give him two extra chins. He was running a high fever; being close to him was like squatting on the edge of an open barbecue pit where good coals have been laid.

    The dog, he muttered. Did you put him out?

    Mister, Hap said, shaking him gently. I called the ambulance. You’re going to be all right.

    Clock went red, the man on the floor grunted, and then began to cough, racking chainlike explosions that sent heavy mucus spraying from his mouth in long and ropy splatters. Hap leaned backward, grimacing desperately.

    Better roll him over, Vic said. He’s goan choke on it.

    But before they could, the coughing tapered off into bellowsed, uneven breathing again. His eyes blinked slowly and he looked at the men gathered above him.

    Where’s … this?

    Arnette, Hap said. Bill Hapscomb’s Texaco. You crashed out some of my pumps. And then, hastily, he added: That’s okay. They was insured.

    The man on the floor tried to sit up and was unable. He had to settle for putting a hand on Hap’s arm.

    My wife … my little girl …

    They’re fine, Hap said, grinning a foolish dog grin.

    Seems like I’m awful sick, the man said. Breath came in and out of him in a thick, soft roar. They were sick, too. Since we got up two days ago. Salt Lake City … His eyes flickered slowly closed. Sick … guess we didn’t move quick enough after all …

    Far off but getting closer, they could hear the whoop of the Arnette Volunteer Ambulance.

    Man, Tommy Wannamaker said. Oh man.

    The sick man’s eyes fluttered open again, and now they were filled with an intense, sharp concern. He struggled again to sit up. Sweat ran down his face. He grabbed Hap.

    Are Sally and Baby LaVon all right? he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips and Hap could feel the man’s burning heat radiating outward. The man was sick, half crazy, he stank. Hap was reminded of the smell an old dog blanket gets sometimes.

    They’re all right, he insisted, a little frantically. You just … lay down and take it easy, okay?

    The man lay back down. His breathing was rougher now. Hap and Hank helped roll him over on his side, and his respiration seemed to ease a trifle. I felt pretty good until last night, he said. Coughing, but all right. Woke up with it in the night. Didn’t get away quick enough. Is Baby LaVon okay?

    The last trailed off into something none of them could make out. The ambulance siren warbled closer and closer. Stu went over to the window to watch for it. The others remained in a circle around the man on the floor.

    What’s he got, Vic, any idea? Hap asked.

    Vic shook his head. Dunno.

    Might have been something they ate, Norm Bruett said. That car’s got a California plate. They was probably eatin at a lot of roadside stands, you know. Maybe they got a poison hamburger. It happens.

    The ambulance pulled in and skirted the wrecked Chevy to stop between it and the station door. The red light on top made crazy sweeping circles. It was full dark now.

    Gimme your hand and I’ll pull you up outta there! the man on the floor cried suddenly, and then was silent.

    Food poisoning, Vic said. Yeah, that could be. I hope so, because—

    Because what? Hank asked.

    Because otherwise it might be something catching. Vic looked at them with troubled eyes. I seen cholera back in 1958, down near Nogales, and it looked something like this.

    Three men came in, wheeling a stretcher. Hap, one of them said. You’re lucky you didn’t get your scraggy ass blown to kingdom come. This guy, huh?

    They broke apart to let them through—Billy Verecker, Monty Sullivan, Carlos Ortega, men they all knew.

    There’s two folks in that car, Hap said, drawing Monty aside. Woman and a little girl. Both dead.

    Holy crow! You sure?

    Yeah. This guy, he don’t know. You going to take him to Braintree?

    I guess. Monty looked at him, bewildered. What do I do with the two in the car? I don’t know how to handle this, Hap.

    Stu can call the State Patrol. You mind if I ride in with you?

    Hell no.

    They got the man onto the stretcher, and while they ran him out, Hap went over to Stu. I’m gonna ride into Braintree with that guy. Would you call the State Patrol?

    Sure.

    And Mary, too. Call and tell her what happened.

    Okay.

    Hap trotted out to the ambulance and climbed in. Billy Verecker shut the doors behind him and then called the other two. They had been staring into the wrecked Chevy with dread fascination.

    A few moments later the ambulance pulled out, siren warbling, red domelight pulsing blood-shadows across the gas station’s tarmac. Stu went to the phone and put a quarter in.

    The man from the Chevy died twenty miles from the hospital. He drew one final bubbling gasp, let it out, hitched in a smaller one, and just quit.

    Hap got the man’s wallet out of his hip pocket and looked at it. There were seventeen dollars in cash. A California driver’s license identified him as Charles D. Campion. There was an army card, and pictures of his wife and daughter encased in plastic. Hap didn’t want to look at the pictures.

    He stuffed the wallet back into the dead man’s pocket and told Carlos to turn off the siren. It was ten after nine.

    CHAPTER 2

    There was a long rock pier running out into the Atlantic Ocean from the Ogunquit, Maine, town beach. Today it reminded her of an accusatory gray finger, and when Frannie Goldsmith parked her car in the public lot, she could see Jess sitting out at the end of it, just a silhouette in the afternoon sunlight. Gulls wheeled and cried above him, a New England portrait drawn in real life, and she doubted if any gull would dare spoil it by dropping a splat of white doodoo on Jess Rider’s immaculate blue chambray workshirt. After all, he was a practicing poet.

    She knew it was Jess because his ten-speed was bolted to the iron railing that ran behind the parking attendant’s building. Gus, a balding, paunchy town fixture, was coming out to meet her. The fee for visitors was a dollar a car, but he knew Frannie lived in town without bothering to look at the RESIDENT sticker on the corner of her Volvo’s windshield. Fran came here a lot.

    Sure I do, Fran thought. In fact, I got pregnant right down there on the beach, just about twelve feet above the high tide line. Dear Lump: You were conceived on the scenic coast of Maine, twelve feet above the high tide line and twenty yards east of the seawall. X marks the spot.

    Gus raised his hand toward her, making a peace sign.

    Your fella’s out on the end of the pier, Miss Goldsmith.

    Thanks, Gus. How’s business?

    He waved smilingly at the parking lot. There were maybe two dozen cars in all, and she could see blue and white RESIDENT stickers on most of them.

    Not much trade this early, he said. It was June 17. Wait two weeks and we’ll make the town some money.

    I’ll bet. If you don’t embezzle it all.

    Gus laughed and went back inside.

    Frannie leaned one hand against the warm metal of her car, took off her sneakers, and put on a pair of rubber thongs. She was a tall girl with chestnut hair that fell halfway down the back of the buff-colored shift she was wearing. Good figure. Long legs that got appreciative glances. Prime stuff was the correct frathouse term, she believed. Looky-looky-looky-here-comes-nooky. Miss College Girl, 1990.

    Then she had to laugh at herself, and the laugh was a trifle bitter. You are carrying on, she told herself, as if this was the news of the world. Chapter Six: Hester Prynne Brings the News of Pearl’s Impending Arrival to Rev. Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale he wasn’t. He was Jess Rider, age twenty, one year younger than Our Heroine, Little Fran. He was a practicing college-student-undergraduate-poet. You could tell by his immaculate blue chambray workshirt.

    She paused at the edge of the sand, feeling the good heat baking the soles of her feet even through the rubber thongs. The silhouette at the far end of the pier was still tossing small rocks into the water. Her thought was partly amusing but mostly dismaying. He knows what he looks like out there, she thought. Lord Byron, lonely but unafraid. Sitting in lonely solitude and surveying the sea which leads back, back to where England lies. But I, an exile, may never—

    Oh balls!

    It wasn’t so much the thought that disturbed her as what it indicated about her own state of mind. The young man she assumed she loved was sitting out there, and she was standing here caricaturing him behind his back.

    She began to walk out along the pier, picking her way with careful grace over the rocks and crevices. It was an old pier, once part of a breakwater. Now most of the boats tied up on the southern end of town, where there were three marinas and seven honky-tonk motels that boomed all summer long.

    She walked slowly, trying her best to cope with the thought that she might have fallen out of love with him in the space of the eleven days that she had known she was a little bit preggers, in the words of Amy Lauder. Well, he had gotten her into that condition, hadn’t he?

    But not alone, that was for sure. And she had been on the pill. That had been the simplest thing in the world. She’d gone to the campus infirmary, told the doctor she was having painful menstruation and all sorts of embarrassing eructations on her skin, and the doctor had written her a prescription. In fact, he had given her a month of freebies.

    She stopped again, out over the water now, the waves beginning to break toward the beach on her right and left. It occurred to her that the infirmary doctors probably heard about painful menstruation and too many pimples about as often as druggists heard about how I gotta buy these condoms for my brother—even more often in this day and age. She could just as easily have gone to him and said: Gimme the pill. I’m gonna fuck. She was of age. Why be coy? She looked at Jesse’s back and sighed. Because coyness gets to be a way of life. She began to walk again.

    Anyway, the pill hadn’t worked. Somebody in the quality control department at the jolly old Ovril factory had been asleep at the switch. Either that or she had forgotten a pill and then had forgotten she’d forgotten.

    She walked softly up behind him and laid both hands on his shoulders.

    Jess, who had been holding his rocks in his left hand and plunking them into Mother Atlantic with his right, let out a scream and lurched to his feet. Pebbles scattered everywhere, and he almost knocked Frannie off the side and into the water. He almost went in himself, head first.

    She started to giggle helplessly and backed away with her hands over her mouth as he turned furiously around, a well-built young man with black hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and regular features which, to Jess’s eternal discomfort, would never quite reflect the sensitivity inside him.

    "You scared the hell out of me!" he roared.

    Oh Jess, she giggled, oh Jess, I’m sorry, but that was funny, it really was.

    We almost fell in the water, he said, taking a resentful step toward her.

    She took a step backward to compensate, tripped over a rock, and sat down hard. Her jaws clicked together hard with her tongue between them—exquisite pain!—and she stopped giggling as if the sound had been cut off with a knife. The very fact of her sudden silence—you turn me off, I’m a radio—seemed funniest of all and she began to giggle again, in spite of the fact that her tongue was bleeding and tears of pain were streaming from her eyes.

    Are you okay, Frannie? He knelt beside her, concerned.

    I do love him, she thought with some relief. Good thing for me.

    Did you hurt yourself, Fran?

    Only my pride, she said, letting him help her up. And I bit my tongue. See? She ran it out for him, expecting to get a smile as a reward, but he frowned.

    Jesus, Fran, you’re really bleeding. He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and looked at it doubtfully. Then he put it back.

    The image of the two of them walking hand in hand back to the parking lot came to her, young lovers under a summer sun, her with his handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. She raises her hand to the smiling, benevolent attendant and says: Hung-huh-Guth.

    She began to giggle again, even though her tongue did hurt and there was a bloody taste in her mouth that was a little nauseating.

    Look the other way, she said primly. I’m going to be unladylike.

    Smiling a little, he theatrically covered his eyes. Propped on one arm, she stuck her head off the side of the pier and spat—bright red. Uck. Again. And again. At last her mouth seemed to clear and she looked around to see him peeking through his fingers.

    I’m sorry, she said. I’m such an asshole.

    No, Jesse said, obviously meaning yes.

    Could we go get ice cream? she asked. You drive. I’ll buy.

    That’s a deal. He got to his feet and helped her up. She spat over the side again. Bright red.

    Apprehensively, Fran asked him: I didn’t bite any of it off, did I?

    I don’t know, Jess answered pleasantly. Did you swallow a lump?

    She put a revolted hand to her mouth. That’s not funny.

    No. I’m sorry. You just bit it, Frannie.

    Are there any arteries in a person’s tongue?

    They were walking back along the pier now, hand in hand. She paused every now and then to spit over the side. Bright red. She wasn’t going to swallow any of that stuff, uh-uh, no way.

    Nope.

    Good. She squeezed his hand and smiled at him reassuringly. I’m pregnant.

    Really? That’s good. Do you know who I saw in Port—

    He stopped and looked at her, his face suddenly inflexible and very, very careful. It broke her heart a little to see the wariness there.

    What did you say?

    I’m pregnant. She smiled at him brightly and then spat over the side of the pier. Bright red.

    Big joke, Frannie, he said uncertainly.

    No joke.

    He kept looking at her. After a while they started walking again. As they crossed the parking lot, Gus came out and waved to them. Frannie waved back. So did Jess.

    They stopped at the Dairy Queen on US 1. Jess got a Coke and sat sipping it thoughtfully behind the Volvo’s wheel. Fran made him get her a Banana Boat Supreme and she sat against her door, two feet of seat between them, spooning up nuts and pineapple sauce and ersatz Dairy Queen ice cream.

    You know, she said, D.Q. ice cream is mostly bubbles. Did you know that? Lots of people don’t.

    Jess looked at her and said nothing.

    Truth, she said. Those ice cream machines are really nothing but giant bubble machines. That’s how Dairy Queen can sell their ice cream so cheap. We had an offprint about it in Business Theory. There are many ways to defur a feline.

    Jess looked at her and said nothing.

    Now if you want real ice cream, you have to go to some place like a Deering Ice Cream Shop, and that’s—

    She burst into tears.

    He slid across the seat to her and put his arms around her neck. Frannie, don’t do that. Please.

    My Banana Boat is dripping on me, she said, still weeping.

    His handkerchief came out again and he mopped her off. By then her tears had trailed off to sniffles.

    Banana Boat Supreme with Blood Sauce, she said, looking at him with red eyes. I guess I can’t eat any more. I’m sorry, Jess. Would you throw it away?

    Sure, he said stiffly.

    He took it from her, got out, and tossed it in the waste can. He was walking funny, Fran thought, as if he had been hit hard down low where it hurts boys. In a way she supposed that was just where he had been hit. But if you wanted to look at it another way, well, that was just about the way she had walked after he had taken her virginity on the beach. She had felt like she had a bad case of diaper rash. Only diaper rash didn’t make you preggers.

    He came back and got in.

    Are you really, Fran? he asked abruptly.

    I am really.

    How did it happen? I thought you were on the pill.

    Well, what I figure is one, somebody in the quality control department of the jolly old Ovril factory was asleep at the switch when my batch of pills went by on the conveyor belt, or two, they are feeding you boys something in the UNH messhall that builds up sperm, or three, I forgot to take a pill and have since forgotten that I forgot.

    She offered him a hard, thin, sunny smile that he recoiled from just a bit.

    What are you mad about, Fran? I just asked.

    Well, to answer your question in a different way, on a warm night in April, it must have been the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth, you put your penis into my vagina and had an orgasm, thus ejaculating sperm by the millions—

    Stop it, he said sharply. You don’t have to—

    To what? Outwardly stony, she was dismayed inside. In all her imaginings of how the scene might play, she had never seen it quite like this.

    To be so mad, he said lamely. I’m not going to run out on you.

    No, she said more softly. At this point she could have plucked one of his hands off the wheel, held it, and healed the breach entirely. But she couldn’t make herself do it. He had no business wanting to be comforted, no matter how tacit or unconscious his wanting was. She suddenly realized that one way or another, the laughs and the good times were over for a while. That made her want to cry again and she staved the tears off grimly. She was Frannie Goldsmith, Peter Goldsmith’s daughter, and she wasn’t going to sit in the parking lot of the Ogunquit Dairy Queen crying her damn stupid eyes out.

    What do you want to do? Jess asked, getting out his cigarettes.

    "What do you want to do?"

    He struck a light and for just a moment as cigarette smoke raftered up she clearly saw a man and a boy fighting for control of the same face.

    Oh hell, he said.

    The choices as I see them, she said. We can get married and keep the baby. We can get married and give the baby up. Or we don’t get married and I keep the baby. Or—

    Frannie—

    "Or we don’t get married and I don’t keep the baby. Or I could get an abortion. Does that cover everything? Have I left anything out?"

    Frannie, can’t we just talk—

    "We are talking! she flashed at him. You had your chance and you said ‘Oh hell.’ Your exact words. I have just outlined all of the possible choices. Of course I’ve had a little more time to work up an agenda."

    You want a cigarette?

    No. They’re bad for the baby.

    Frannie, goddammit!

    Why are you shouting? she asked softly.

    Because you seem determined to aggravate me as much as you can, Jess said hotly. He controlled himself. I’m sorry. I just can’t think of this as my fault.

    You can’t? She looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. And behold, a virgin shall conceive.

    Do you have to be so goddam flip? You had the pill, you said. I took you at your word. Was I so wrong?

    No. You weren’t so wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact.

    I guess not, he said gloomily, and pitched his cigarette out half-smoked. So what do we do?

    You keep asking me, Jesse. I just outlined the choices as I see them. I thought you might have some ideas. There’s suicide, but I’m not considering it at this point. So pick the other choice you like and we’ll talk about it.

    Let’s get married, he said in a sudden strong voice. He had the air of a man who has decided that the best way to solve the Gordian knot problem would be to hack right down through the middle of it. Full speed ahead and get the whiners belowdecks.

    No, she said. I don’t want to marry you.

    It was as if his face was held together by a number of unseen bolts and each of them had suddenly been loosened a turn and a half. Everything sagged at once. The image was so cruelly comical that she had to rub her wounded tongue against the rough top of her mouth to keep from getting the giggles again. She didn’t want to laugh at Jess.

    Why not? he asked. Fran—

    I have to think of my reasons why not. I’m not going to let you draw me into a discussion of my reasons why not, because right now I don’t know.

    You don’t love me, he said sulkily.

    In most cases, love and marriage are mutually exclusive states. Pick another choice.

    He was silent for a long time. He fiddled with a fresh cigarette but didn’t light it. At last he said: I can’t pick another choice, Frannie, because you don’t want to discuss this. You want to score points off me.

    That touched her a little bit. She nodded. Maybe you’re right. I’ve had a few scored off me in the last couple of weeks. Now you, Jess, you’re Joe College all the way. If a mugger came at you with a knife, you’d want to convene a seminar on the spot.

    Oh for God’s sake.

    Pick another choice.

    No. You’ve got your reasons all figured out. Maybe I need a little time to think, too.

    Okay. Would you take us back to the parking lot? I’ll drop you off and do some errands.

    He gazed at her, startled. Frannie, I rode my bike all the way down from Portland. I’ve got a room at a motel outside of town. I thought we were going to spend the weekend together.

    In your motel room. No, Jess. The situation has changed. You just get back on your ten-speed and bike back to Portland and you get in touch when you’ve thought about it a little more. No great hurry.

    Stop riding me, Frannie.

    No, Jess, you were the one who rode me, she jeered in sudden, furious anger, and that was when he slapped her lightly backhand on the cheek.

    He stared at her, stunned.

    I’m sorry, Fran.

    Accepted, she said colorlessly. Drive on.

    They didn’t talk on the ride back to the public beach parking lot. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching the slices of ocean layered between the cottages just west of the seawall. They looked like slum apartments, she thought. Who owned these houses, most of them still shuttered blindly against the summer that would begin officially in less than a week? Professors from MIT. Boston doctors. New York lawyers. These houses weren’t the real biggies, the coast estates owned by men who counted their fortunes in seven and eight figures. But when the families who owned them moved in here, the lowest IQ on Shore Road would be Gus the parking attendant. The kids would have ten-speeds like Jess’s. They would have bored expressions and they would go with their parents to have lobster dinners and to attend the Ogunquit Playhouse. They would idle up and down the main street, masquerading after soft summer twilight as street people. She kept looking out at the lovely flashes of cobalt between the crammed-together houses, aware that the vision was blurring with a new film of tears. The little white cloud that cried.

    They reached the parking lot, and Gus waved. They waved back.

    I’m sorry I hit you, Frannie, Jess said in a subdued voice. I never meant to do that.

    I know. Are you going back to Portland?

    I’ll stay here tonight and call you in the morning. But it’s your decision, Fran. If you decide, you know, that an abortion is the thing, I’ll scrape up the cash.

    Pun intended?

    No, he said. Not at all. He slid across the seat and kissed her chastely. I love you, Fran.

    I don’t believe you do, she thought. Suddenly I don’t believe it at all … but I’ll accept in good grace. I can do that much.

    All right, she said quietly.

    It’s the Lighthouse Motel. Call if you want.

    Okay. She slid behind the wheel, suddenly feeling very tired. Her tongue ached miserably where she had bitten it.

    He walked to where his bike was locked to the iron railing and coasted it back to her. Wish you’d call, Fran.

    She smiled artificially. We’ll see. So long, Jess.

    She put the Volvo in gear, turned around, and drove across the lot to the Shore Road. She could see Jess standing by his bike yet, the ocean at his back, and for the second time that day she mentally accused him of knowing exactly what kind of picture he was making. This time, instead of being irritated, she felt a little bit sad. She drove on, wondering if the ocean would ever look the way it had looked to her before all of this had happened. Her tongue hurt miserably. She opened her window wider and spat. All white and all right this time. She could smell the salt of the ocean strongly, like bitter tears.

    CHAPTER 3

    Norm Bruett woke up at quarter past ten in the morning to the sound of kids fighting outside the bedroom window and country music from the radio in the kitchen.

    He went to the back door in his saggy shorts and undershirt, threw it open, and yelled: You kids shutcha heads!

    A moment’s pause. Luke and Bobby looked around from the old and rusty dump truck they had been arguing over. As always when he saw his kids, Norm felt dragged two ways at once. His heart ached to see them wearing hand-me-downs and Salvation Army giveouts like the ones you saw the nigger children in east Arnette wearing; and at the same time a horrible, shaking anger would sweep through him, making him want to stride out there and beat the living shit out of them.

    Yes, Daddy, Luke said in a subdued way. He was nine.

    Yes, Daddy, Bobby echoed. He was seven going on eight.

    Norm stood for a moment, glaring at them, and slammed the door shut. He stood for a moment, looking indecisively at the pile of clothes he had worn yesterday. They were lying at the foot of the sagging double bed where he had dropped them.

    That slutty bitch, he thought. She didn’t even hang up my duds.

    Lila! he bawled.

    There was no answer. He considered ripping the door open again and asking Luke where the hell she had gone. It wasn’t donated commodities day until next week and if she was down at the employment office in Braintree again she was an even bigger fool than he thought.

    He didn’t bother to ask the kids. He felt tired and he had a queasy, thumping headache. Felt like a hangover, but he’d only had three beers down at Hap’s the night before. That accident had been a hell of a thing. The woman and the baby dead in the car, the man, Campion, dying on the way to the hospital. By the time Hap had gotten back, the State Patrol had come and gone, and the wrecker, and the Braintree undertaker’s hack. Vic Palfrey had given the Laws a statement for all five of them. The undertaker, who was also the county coroner, refused to speculate on what might have hit them.

    But it ain’t cholera. And don’t you go scarin people sayin it is. There’ll be an autopsy and you can read about it in the paper.

    Miserable little pissant, Norm thought, slowly dressing himself in yesterday’s clothes. His headache was turning into a real blinder. Those kids had better be quiet or they were going to have a pair of broken arms to mouth off about. Why the hell couldn’t they have school the whole year round?

    He considered tucking his shirt into his pants, decided the President probably wouldn’t be stopping by that day, and shuffled out into the kitchen in his sock feet. The bright sunlight coming in the east windows made him squint.

    The cracked Philco radio over the stove sang:

    "But bay-yay-yaby you can tell me if anyone can,

    Baby, can you dig your man?

    He’s a righteous man,

    Tell me baby, can you dig your man?"

    Things had come to a pretty pass when they had to play nigger rock and roll music like that on the local country music station. Norm turned it off before it could split his head. There was a note by the radio and he picked it up, narrowing his eyes to read it.

    Dear Norm,

    Sally Hodges says she needs somebody to sit her kids this morning and says shell give me a dolar. Ill be back for luntch. Theres sassage if you want it. I love you honey.

    Lila.

    Norm put the note back and just stood there for a moment, thinking it over and trying to get the sense of it in his mind. It was goddam hard to think past the headache. Babysitting … a dollar. For Ralph Hodges’s wife.

    The three elements slowly came together in his mind. Lila had gone off to sit Sally Hodges’s three kids to earn a lousy dollar and had stuck him with Luke and Bobby. By God it was hard times when a man had to sit home and wipe his kids’ noses so his wife could go and scratch out a lousy buck that wouldn’t even buy them a gallon of gas. That was hard fucking times.

    Dull anger came to him, making his head ache even worse. He shuffled slowly to the Frigidaire, bought when he had been making good overtime, and opened it. Most of the shelves were empty, except for leftovers Lila had put up in refrigerator dishes. He hated those little plastic Tupperware dishes. Old beans, old corn, a left-over dab of chili … nothing a man liked to eat. Nothing in there but little Tupperware dishes and three little old sausages done up in Handi-Wrap. He bent, looking at them, the familiar helpless anger now compounded by the dull throb in his head. Those sausages looked like somebody had cut the cocks off’n three of those pygmies they had down in Africa or South America or wherever the fuck it was they had them. He didn’t feel like eating anyway. He felt damn sick, when you got right down to it.

    He went over to the stove, scratched a match on the piece of sandpaper nailed to the wall beside it, lit the front gas ring, and put on the coffee. Then he sat down and waited dully for it to boil. Just before it did, he had to scramble his snotrag out of his back pocket to catch a big wet sneeze. Coming down with a cold, he thought. Isn’t that something nice on top of everything else? But it never occurred to him to think of the phlegm that had been running out of that fellow Campion’s pump the night before.

    Hap was in the garage bay putting a new tailpipe on Tony Leominster’s Scout and Vic Palfrey was rocking back on a folding camp chair, watching him and drinking a Dr. Pepper when the bell dinged out front.

    Vic squinted. It’s the State Patrol, he said. Looks like your cousin, there. Joe Bob.

    Okay.

    Hap came out from beneath the Scout, wiping his hands on a ball of waste. On his way through the office he sneezed heavily. He hated summer colds. They were the worst.

    Joe Bob Brentwood, who was almost six and a half feet tall, was standing by the back of his cruiser, filling up. Beyond him, the three pumps Campion had driven over the night before were neatly lined up like dead soldiers.

    Hey Joe Bob! Hap said, coming out.

    Hap, you sumbitch, Joe Bob said, putting the pump handle on automatic and stepping over the hose. You lucky this place still standin this morning.

    Shit, Stu Redman saw the guy coming and switched off the pumps. There was a load of sparks, though.

    Still damn lucky. Listen, Hap, I come over for somethin besides a fill-up.

    Yeah?

    Joe Bob’s eyes went to Vic, who was standing in the station door. Was that old geezer here last night?

    Who? Vic? Yeah, he comes over most every night.

    Can he keep his mouth shut?

    Sure, I reckon. He’s a good enough old boy.

    The automatic feed kicked off. Hap squeezed off another twenty cents’ worth, then put the nozzle back on the pump and switched it off. He walked back to Joe Bob.

    So? What’s the story?

    Well, let’s go inside. I guess the old fella ought to hear, too. And if you get a chance, you can phone the rest of them that was here.

    They walked across the tarmac and into the office.

    A good mornin to you, Officer, Vic said.

    Joe Bob nodded.

    Coffee, Joe Bob? Hap asked.

    I guess not. He looked at them heavily. Thing is, I don’t know how my superiors would like me bein here at all. I don’t think they would. So when those guys come here, you don’t let them know I tipped you, right?

    What guys, Officer? Vic asked.

    Health Department guys, Joe Bob said.

    Vic said, "Oh Jesus, it was cholera. I knowed it was."

    Hap looked from one to the other. Joe Bob?

    I don’t know nothing, Joe Bob said, sitting down in one of the plastic Woolco chairs. His bony knees came nearly up to his neck. He took a pack of Chesterfields from his blouse pocket and lit up. Finnegan, there, the coroner—

    That was a smartass, Hap said fiercely. You should have seen him struttin around in here, Joe Bob. Just like a pea turkey that got its first hardon. Shushin people and all that.

    He’s a big turd in a little bowl, all right, Joe Bob agreed. Well, he got Dr. James to look at this Campion, and the two of them called in another doctor that I don’t know. Then they got on the phone to Houston. And around three this mornin they come into that little airport outside of Braintree.

    Who did?

    Pathologists. Three of them. They were in there with the bodies until about eight o’clock. Cuttin on em is my guess, although I dunno for sure. Then they got on the phone to the Plague Center in Atlanta, and those guys are going to be here this afternoon. But they said in the meantime that the State Health Department was to send some fellas out here and see all the guys that were in the station last night, and the guys that drove the rescue unit to Braintree. I dunno, but it sounds to me like they want you quarantined.

    Moses in the bullrushes, Hap said, frightened.

    The Atlanta Plague Center’s federal, Vic said. Would they send out a planeload of federal men just for cholera?

    Search me, Joe Bob said. But I thought you guys had a right to know. From all I heard, you just tried to lend a hand.

    It’s appreciated, Joe Bob, Hap said slowly. What did James and this other doctor say?

    Not much. But they looked scared. I never seen doctors look scared like that. I didn’t much care for it.

    A heavy silence fell. Joe Bob went to the drink machine and got a bottle of Fresca. The faint hissing sound of carbonation was audible as he popped the cap. As Joe Bob sat down again, Hap took a Kleenex from the box next to the cash register, wiped his runny nose, and folded it into the pocket of his greasy overall.

    What have you found out about Campion? Vic asked. Anything?

    We’re still checking, Joe Bob said with a trace of importance. His ID says he was from San Diego, but a lot of the stuff in his wallet was two and three years out of date. His driver’s license was expired. He had a BankAmericard that was issued in 1986 and that was expired, too. He had an army card so we’re checking with them. The captain has a hunch that Campion hadn’t lived in San Diego for maybe four years.

    AWOL? Vic asked. He produced a big red bandanna, hawked, and spat into it.

    Dunno yet. But his army card said he was in until 1997, and he was in civvies, and he was with his fambly, and he was a fuck of a long way from California, and listen to my mouth run.

    Well, I’ll get in touch with the others and tell em what you said, anyway, Hap said. Much obliged.

    Joe Bob stood up. Sure. Just keep my name out of it. I sure wouldn’t want to lose my job. Your buddies don’t need to know who tipped you, do they?

    No, Hap said, and Vic echoed it.

    As Joe Bob went to the door, Hap said a little apologetically: That’s five even for gas, Joe Bob. I hate to charge you, but with things the way they are—

    That’s okay. Joe Bob handed him a credit card. State’s payin. And I got my credit slip to show why I was here.

    While Hap was filling out the slip he sneezed twice.

    You want to watch that, Joe Bob said. Nothin any worse than a summer cold.

    Don’t I know it.

    Suddenly, from behind them, Vic said: Maybe it ain’t a cold.

    They turned to him. Vic looked frightened.

    I woke up this morning sneezin and hackin away like sixty, Vic said. Had a mean headache, too. I took some aspirins and it’s gone back some, but I’m still full of snot. Maybe we’re coming down with it. What that Campion had. What he died of.

    Hap looked at him for a long time, and as he was about to put forward all his reasons why it couldn’t be, he sneezed again.

    Joe Bob looked at them both gravely for a moment and then said, You know, it might not be such a bad idea to close the station, Hap. Just for today.

    Hap looked at him, scared, and tried to remember what all his reasons had been. He couldn’t think of a one. All he could remember was that he had also awakened with a headache and a runny nose. Well, everyone caught a cold once in a while. But before that guy Campion had shown up, he had been fine. Just fine.

    The three Hodges kids were six, four, and eighteen months. The two youngest were taking naps, and the oldest was out back digging a hole. Lila Bruett was in the living room, watching The Young and the Restless. She hoped Sally wouldn’t return until it was over. Ralph Hodges had bought a big color TV when times had been better in Arnette, and Lila loved to watch the afternoon stories in color. Everything was so much prettier.

    She drew on her cigarette and then let the smoke out in spasms as a racking cough seized her. She went into the kitchen and spat the mouthful of crap she had brought up down the drain. She had gotten up with the cough, and all day it had felt like someone was tickling the back of her throat with a feather.

    She went back to the living room after taking a peek out the pantry window to make sure Bert Hodges was okay. A commercial was on now, two dancing bottles of toilet bowl cleaner. Lila let her eyes drift around the room and wished her own house looked this nice. Sally’s hobby was doing paint-by-the-numbers pictures of Christ, and they were all over the living room in nice frames. She especially liked the big one of the Last Supper mounted in back of the TV; it had come with sixty different oil colors, Sally had told her, and it took almost three months to finish. It was a real work of art.

    Just as her story came back on, Baby Cheryl started to cry, a whooping, ugly yell broken by bursts of coughing.

    Lila put out her cigarette and hurried into the bedroom. Eva, the four-year-old, was still fast asleep, but Cheryl was lying on her back in her crib, and her face was going an alarming purple color. Her cries began to sound strangled.

    Lila, who was not afraid of the croup after seeing both of her own through bouts with it, picked her up by the heels and swatted her firmly on the back. She had no idea if Dr. Spock recommended this sort of treatment or not, because she had never read him. It worked nicely on Baby Cheryl. She emitted a froggy croak and suddenly spat an amazing wad of yellow phlegm out onto the floor.

    Better? Lila asked.

    Yeth, said Baby Cheryl. She was almost asleep again.

    Lila wiped up the mess with a Kleenex. She couldn’t remember ever having seen a baby cough up so much snot all at once.

    She sat down in front of The Young and the Restless again, frowning. She lit another cigarette, sneezed over the first puff, and then began to cough herself.

    CHAPTER 4

    It was an hour past nightfall.

    Starkey sat alone at a long table, sifting through sheets of yellow flimsy. Their contents dismayed him. He had been serving his country for thirty-six years, beginning as a scared West Point plebe. He had won medals. He had spoken with Presidents, had offered them advice, and on occasion his advice had been taken. He had been through dark moments before, plenty of them, but this …

    He was scared, so deeply scared he hardly dared admit it to himself. It was the kind of fear that could drive you mad.

    On impulse he got up and went to the wall where the five blank TV monitors looked into the room. As he got up, his knee bumped the table, causing one of the sheets of flimsy to fall off the edge. It seesawed lazily down through the mechanically purified air and landed on the tile, half in the table’s shadow and

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