CHAPTER 54 Excerpts from the Minutes of the

CHAPTER 54

Excerpts from the Minutes of the Permanent Free Zone Committee Meeting August 19, 1990

This meeting was held at the apartment of Stu Redman and Fran Goldsmith. All members of the Free Zone Committee were present. Stu Redman offered congratulations to all of us, including himself, on being elected to the Permanent Committee. He made a motion that a letter of thanks to Harold Lauder be drafted and signed by each member of the Committee. It passed unanimously. Stu: "Once we get the old business taken care of, Glen Bateman has a couple of items. I don't know what they are any more than you do, but I suspect one of them has to do with the next public meeting. Right, Glen?" Glen: "I'll wait my turn." Stu: "That's baldy for you. The main difference between an old drunk and an old bald college professor is the professor waits his turn before he starts talkin the ears off your head." Glen: "Thank you for those pearls of wisdom, East Texas." Fran said she could see Stu and Glen were having a wonderful time but wanted to know if they could get down to business, as all her favorite TV shows started at nine. This comment was greeted with more laughter than it probably deserved. The first real item of business was our scouts in the West. To recap, the committee has decided to ask Judge Farris, Tom Cullen, and Dayna Jurgens to go. Stu suggested that the people who nominated each of them be the ones to broach the subject to their own nominees-that is, Larry Underwood asks the Judge, Nick will have to talk to Tomwith Ralph Brentner's help-and Sue will talk to Dayna. Nick said that working with Tom might take a few days, and Stu said that brought up the point of when to send them. Larry said they couldn't be sent together or they might all get caught together. He went on to say that both the Judge and Dayna would probably suspect that we had sent more

368 than one spy, but as long as they didn't know the actual names, they couldn't tattle. Fran said that tattle was hardly the word, considering what the man in the West might do to them-if he is a man. Glen: "I wouldn't be so gloomy, if I were you, Fran. If we give our Adversary credit for even a modicum of intelligence, he'll know we wouldn't give ouroperatives, I guess one could call them-any information we considered vital to his interests. He'll know that torture could do him very little good." Fran: "You mean he'll probably pat them on the head and tell them not to do it anymore? I have an idea he might torture them just because torture is one of the things he likes. What do you say to that?" Glen: "I guess there's not much I can say." Stu: "That decision's been made, Frannie. We've all agreed that we're sending our people into a dangerous situation, and we all know that making the decision sure wasn't any fun." Glen suggested that we agree tentatively to this schedule: The Judge would go out on August twenty-sixth, Dayna on the twenty-seventh, and Tom on the twentyeighth, none of them to know about the others and each to leave on a different road. That would allow the time necessary to work with Tom, he added. Nick said that, with the exception of Tom Cullen, who will be told when to come back by means of a posthypnotic suggestion, the other two must be told to come back when their own discretion advises them to, but that the weather could become a factor-there can be heavy snow in the mountains by the first week of October. Nick suggested that each of them should be advised to spend no more than three weeks in the West. Fran said they could swing around to the south if the snow came early in the mountains but Larry disagreed, pointing out that the Sangre de Cristo chain would be in the way, unless they swung all the way down to Mexico. And if they had to do that, we probably wouldn't see them again until spring. Larry said if that was the case, perhaps we ought to give the Judge a headstart. He suggested August 21, day after tomorrow. That closed the subject of the scouts... or spies, if you prefer. Glen was then recognized, and I am now quoting from the taped record: Glen: "I want to move that we call another public meeting on August twentyfifth, and I'm going to suggest a few things that we might cover at that meeting. "I'd like to start by pointing out something that may surprise you. We've been assuming that we've got about six hundred people in the Zone, and Ralph has kept admirable, accurate records of the number of large groups that have come in, and we've based our population assumption on those figures. But there have also been people coming in by dribs and drabs, maybe as many as ten a day. So earlier today I went over to Chautauqua Park auditorium with Leo Rockway, and we counted the seats in the hall. There are six hundred and seven of them. Now does that tell you anything?" Sue Stern said that couldn't be right, because people had been standing in the back and sitting in the aisles when they couldn't get seats. Then we all saw what Glen was getting at, and I guess it would be appropriate to say the committee was thunderstruck. Glen: "We don't have any way of accurately estimating how many standees and sittees we had, but my memory of the gathering is fairly clear and I'd have to say that one hundred would be a terribly conservative estimate. So you see, we really have better than seven hundred people here in the Zone. As a result of Leo's and my findings, I motion that one of the items to go on the big meeting agenda is a Census Committee." Ralph: "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch! That's one on me." Glen: "No, it's not your fault. You've got about a dozen irons in the fire, Ralph, and I think we'd all agree you've kept them turning nicely—" Larry: "Boy, I'll say." Glen: "—but even if we've only been getting four loners a day, that still adds up to almost thirty a week. And my guess is we're getting more like twelve or fourteen. They don't lust run up to one of us and announce themselves, you know, and with Mother Abagail gone, there's no one place where you can count on them going after they arrive." Fran Goldsmith then seconded Glen's motion that the committee put a Census Committee on the agenda for the meeting on August 25, said committee to be responsible for keeping a roll of every Free Zone member. Larry: "I'm all for that if there's some good, practical reason for doing it. But..." Nick: "But what, Larry?" Larry: "Well... don't we have enough other things to worry about without hacking around with a bunch of diddlyshit bureaucracy?" Fran: "I can see one valid reason right now, Larry." Larry: "What's that?"

369 Fran: "Well, if Glen's right, it means we're going to need to hire a bigger hall for the next meeting. That's one thing. If there are going to be eight hundred people here by the twenty-fifth, we'll never cram them all into Chautauqua Auditorium." Ralph: "Jesus, I never thought of that. I told you guys I wasn't cut out for this work." Stu: "Relax, Ralph, you're doing fine." Sue: "So where are we going to hold the goddam meeting?" Glen: "Wait a minute, wait a minute. One thing at a time. There's a goddam motion on the goddam floor!" It was voted 7–0 to put the Census Committee on the agenda of the next public meeting. Stu then moved that we hold the meeting on August 25 in Munzinger Auditorium at C. U., which had a bigger capacityprobably over a thousand. Glen then asked for and received the floor again. Glen: "Before we move on, I'd like to point out that there's another good reason to have a Census Committee, one that's a little more serious than knowing how much dip and how many bags of chips to bring to the party. We should know who's coming in... but we should also know who is leaving. I think people are, you know. Maybe it's just paranoia, but I could swear that there have been faces I've gotten used to seeing that just aren't around anymore. Anyhow, after we went out to the Chautauqua Auditorium, Leo and I went over to Charlie Impening's house. And guess what? The house is empty, Charlie's things are gone, and so is Charlie's BSA." Some uproar from the committee, also profanity which, while colorful, does not have any place in this record. Ralph then asked what good it would do for us to know who is leaving. He suggested that if people like Impening wanted to go over to the dark man, then we should look at it as a case of good riddance. Several of the committee applauded Ralph, who blushed like a schoolboy, if I may add that. Sue: "No, I see Glen's point. It would be like a constant drain of information." Ralph: "Well, what could we do? Put them in jail?" Glen: "Ugly as it sounds, I think we have to consider that very strongly." Fran: "No, sir. Sending spies... I can stomach that. But locking up people who come here because they don't like the way we're doing things? Jesus, Glen! That's secret police stuff!" Glen: "Yes, that's about what it comes down to. But our position here is extremely precarious. You're putting me in the position of having to advocate repression, and I think that's very unfair. I'm asking you if you want to allow a brain-drain to go on, in light of our Adversary." Fran: "I still hate it. In the 1950s, Joe McCarthy had Communism. We've got our dark man. How wonderful for us." Glen: "Fran, are you prepared to take the chance that someone may leave here with a key piece of information in his pocket? That Mother Abagail is gone, for instance?" Fran: "Charlie Impening can tell him that. What other key pieces of information do we have, Glen? For the most part, aren't we just wandering around without a clue?" Glen: "Do you want him to know our strength of numbers? How we're getting along on the technical side? That we don't even have a doctor yet?" Fran said she'd rather have it that way than start locking people up because they didn't like the way we were running things. Stu then motioned that we table the whole idea of locking people up for contrary views. This motion was passed, with Glen voting against. Glen: "You better get used to the idea that you're going to have to deal with this sooner or later, and probably sooner. Charlie Impening spilling his guts to Flagg is bad enough. You just have to ask yourself if you want to multiply what Impening knows by some theoretical x-factor. Well, never mind, you've voted to table. But here's another thing... we're elected indefinitely, did any of you think of that? We don't know if we're serving six weeks, six months, or six years. My suggestion would be one year... that ought to take us to the end of the beginning, in Harold's phrase. I'd like to see the one-year thing on the agenda for our next public meeting. "One last item and I'm done. Government by town meeting-which is essentially what we have, with ourselves as town selectmen-is going to be fine for a while, until we've got about three thousand people or so, but when things get too big, most of the people who show up at the public meetings are going to be cliques and folks with axes to grind... fluoridation makes you sterile, people who want one sort of flag, things like that. My suggestion would be that we all think very hard about how to turn Boulder into a Republic by late next winter or early spring." There was some informal discussion of Glen's last proposal, but no action was taken at this meeting. Nick was recognized and gave Ralph something to read. Nick: "I'm writing this on the morning of the nineteenth, in preparation for the meeting tonight, and will get Ralph to read it as the last order of business. Being mute is very difficult sometimes, but I have tried to think of all the possible ramifications of what I'm about to propose. I'd like to see this

370 go on the agenda for our next public meeting: `To see if the Free Zone will create a Department of Law and Order with Stu Redman at its head. '" Stu: "That's a hell of a thing to spring on me, Nick." Glen: "Interesting. Goes back to what we were just talking about, too. Let him finish, Stuart— you'll get your innings." Nick: "The headquarters of this Department of Law and Order would be in the Boulder County Courthouse. Stu would have the power to deputize men on his own up to thirty, over thirty on a majority vote of the Free Zone Committee, and over seventy on a majority vote of the Free Zone in public session. That's the resolution I'd like to see on the next agenda. Of course we can approve until we're black in the face and it will do no good unless Stu goes along." Stu: "Damn right!" Nick: "We've gotten big enough to really need some law. Things are going to get flaky without it. There's the case of the Gehringer boy racing that fast car up and down Pearl Street. He finally crashed it and was lucky to walk away with nothing worse than a gash on his forehead. He could have killed himself or someone else. Now everybody who saw him doing that knew it was nothing but trouble, M-O-O-N, that spells trouble, as Tom would say. But nobody felt they could stop him, because they just didn't have the authority. That's one thing. Then there's Rich Moffat. Probably some of you know who Rich is, but for those of you who don't, he's probably the Zone's only practicing alcoholic. He's a halfdecent guy when he's sober, but when he's drunk, he's just not accountable for what he does, and he spends a lot of time drunk. Three or four days ago he got a load on and decided he was going to break every plate-glass window on Arapahoe. Now I talked to him about that after he sobered off a little-in my way of talking, you know, by note-and he was pretty ashamed. He pointed back the way he come and said, `Look at that. Look at what I done. Glass all over the sidewalk! What if some kid gets hurt in that? I'll be to blame. '" Ralph: "I got no sympathy. None." Fran: "Come on, Ralph. Everybody knows alcoholism's a disease." Ralph: "Disease, my ass. It's getting sloppo, that's what it is." Stu: "And you're both out of order. Come on, you two, pipe down." Ralph: Sorry, Stu. I'll stick to reading Nick's letter here." Fran: "And I'll be quiet for at least two minutes, Mr. Chairman. I promise." Nick: "To make a long story short, I found Rich a broom and he swept up most of the mess he'd made. Did a pretty good job, too. But he was right to ask why someone didn't stop him. In the old days a guy like Rich couldn't get anywhere near all the high-tension booze he wanted; guys like Rich were just winos. But now there are incredible amounts of booze just waiting around to be lifted off the shelves. And furthermore, I really do believe that Rich never should have been allowed to get past his second window, but he broke every window on the south side of the street for three blocks. He finally stopped because he got tired. And here is one more example: We had a case where a man whose name I won't mention found out that his woman, who I also won't name, was spending her afternoon sack-time with a third party. I guess we all know who I'm talking about." Sue: "Yeah, I guess we do. Big man with his fists." Nick: "Anyway, the man in question beat up the third party and then the woman in the case. Now I don't think it matters to any of us here who was right and who was wrong—" Glen: "You are mistaken there, Nick." Stu: "Let the man finish, Glen." Glen: "I'm going to, but it's a point I want to come back to. Stu: "Fine. Go ahead, Ralph." Ralph: "Yep—getting toward the end now." Nick: "—because what matters is that the man in question committed a felony crime, assault and battery, and he is walking around free. Of the three cases, this one worries ordinary citizens the most. We've got a melting-pot society, a real hodge-podge, and there are going to be all kinds of conflicts and abrasions. I don't think any of us want a frontier society here in Boulder. Think of the situation we'd have if the man in question had gotten a . 45 out of a pawnshop and had shot them both dead instead of just beating them up. Then we'd have a murderer walking around free." Sue: "My God, Nicky, what's that? The thought for the day?" Larry: "Yeah, it's ugly, but he's right. There's an old saying, Navy, I think, that goes, `Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. '" Nick: "Stu's already our public and private moderator, which means people already see him as an authority figure. And personally, I think Stu is a good man." Stu: "Thanks for the kind words, Nick. I guess you never noticed that I wear elevator shoes. Seriously, though—I'll accept the nomination, if that's what you want. I don't really want the goddam job—from what I've seen down in Texas, police work is mostly cleaning puke off your shirt when guys like Rich Moffat barf on you, or scraping dummies like that Gehringer boy off the roads. All I ask is that when we put it up to the public meeting, we set the same one-year time limit on it

371 that we're setting on our committee jobs. And I intend to make it clear that I'm stepping down at the end of that year. If that's acceptable, okay." Glen: "I think I can speak for all of us in saying that it is. I want to thank Nick for his motion, and get it on the record that I think it's a stroke of genius. And I second the motion." Stu: "Okay, the motion is on the floor. Any discussion?" Fran: "Yes, there's some discussion. I have a question. What if somebody blows your head off?" Stu: "I don't think—" Fran: `No, you don't think. You don't think so. Well, what's Nick going to tell me if what you all think is wrong? `Oh, I'm sorry, Fran?' Is that what he's going to say? `Your man is down in the county courthouse with a bullet hole in his head and I guess we made a mistake?' Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'm going to have a baby and you people want him to be Pat Garrett!" There was another ten minutes of discussion, most of which is irrelevant; and Fran, your ob'nt recording secretary, had herself a good cry and then got herself under control. The vote on nominating Stu to be Free Zone Marshal was 6–1, and this time Fran would not change her vote. Glen asked to be recognized for one last thing before we closed the meeting. Glen: "This is middle-think again, not a motion, nothing to vote on, but something we ought to chew over. Going back to Nick's third example of law-andorder problems. He described the case and finished by saying we didn't have to be concerned with who was right and who was wrong. I think he was mistaken. I believe Stu is one of the fairest men I've ever met. But law enforcement without a court system isn't justice. It's just vigilantism, rule by the fist. Now suppose that fellow we all know had gotten a . 45 and killed his woman and her lover. And further suppose that Stu, as our marshal, went out and collared him and put him in the calaboose. Then what? How long do we keep him there? Legally, we couldn't keep him at all, at least according to the Constitution we adopted at our meeting last night, because under that document a man's innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now, as a matter of fact, we all know we'd keep him locked up. We wouldn't feel safe with him walking the streets! So we'd do it even though it would be patently unconstitutional, because when safety and constitutionality are at swords' points, safety must win out. But it behooves us to make safety and constitutionality synonymous as quickly as we can. We need to think about a court system." Fran: "That's very interesting, and I agree that it's something we ought to think about, but right now I'm going to move that we adjourn. It's late, and I'm very tired." Ralph: "Boy, I second that motion. Let's talk about courts next time. My head's got so much in it right now that it's going round and round. This reinventing the country is a lot tougher than it looked at first." Larry: "Amen." Stu: "There's a motion to adjourn on the floor. Do you like it, people?" The motion to adjourn was voted, 7–0. Frances Goldsmith, Secretary

She lay awake long into the night, thinking that warmth can only come from a burning- Prometheus got his eyes pecked out on that one-and that love always comes due in blood. And a queer certainty stole over her, as numbing as some creeping anesthesia, that they would finish by wading in blood. The thought made her place her hands protectively over her belly, and

372 she found herself thinking for the first time in weeks of her dream: the dark man with his grin... and his twisted coathanger.

As well as hunting for Mother Abagail with a picked group of volunteers in his spare time, Harold Lauder was on the Burial Committee, and on August 21 he spent the day in the back of a dump truck with five other men, all of them wearing boots and protective clothing and heavy-duty Playtex rubber gloves. The head of the Burial Committee, Chad Norris, was out at what he referred to, with an almost grisly calm, as Burial Site #1. It was ten miles southwest of Boulder in an area that had once been stripmined for coal. The site lay as bleak and barren as the mountains of the moon under the burning August sun. Chad had accepted the post reluctantly because he had once been an undertaker's assistant in Morristown, New Jersey. "There's no undertaking about this," he had said this morning at the Greyhound Bus Terminal between Arapahoe and Walnut, which was the Burial Committee's base of operations. He lit a Winston with a wooden match and grinned at the twenty men sitting around. "That is, it's an undertaking but not an undertaking undertaking, if you get my meaning." There were a few strained smiles, Harold's largest among them. His belly had been rumbling constantly because he hadn't dared eat breakfast. He hadn't been sure he could keep it down, considering the nature of the work. He could have stuck with finding Mother Abagail and no one would have murmured a word of protest, even though it had to be obvious to every thinking man in the Zone (if there were any thinking men in the Free Zone besides himself-a debatable question) that looking for her with fifteen men was an exercise in comic relief when you considered the thousands of square miles of empty forest and plain around Boulder. And, of course, she might never have left Boulder, none of them seemed to have thought of that (which didn't surprise Harold at all). She could be set up in a house just about anywhere beyond the center of town and they'd still never find her without a house-to-house search. Redman and Andros hadn't raised a word of protest between them when Harold suggested that the Search Committee be a weekend and evening sort of thing, which told Harold that they accepted it as a closed case, too. He could have stuck with it, but who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do. "It's going to be like burying cordwood," Chad told them. "If you can keep it on that level in your mind, you'll be okay. Some of you may have to vomit here at the start. There's no shame in that; just try to go someplace where the rest won't have to look at you do it. Once you've puked, you'll find it easier to think that way: cordwood. Nothing but cordwood." The men were eyeing each other uncomfortably. Chad broke them up into three six-man crews. He and the two odd men out went to prepare a place for those who were brought. Each of the three crews were given a specific area of town to work. Harold's truck had spent the day in the Table Mesa area, working their way slowly west from the Denver-Boulder Turnpike exit ramp. Up Martin Drive to the Broadway intersection. Down Thirty- ninth Street and then back up Fortieth, suburban houses in a tract area now about thirty years old, dating back to the start of Boulder's population boom, houses with one floor aboveground and a second below. Chad had provided gas masks from the local National Guard armory, but they didn't have to use them until after lunch (lunch? what lunch? Harold's consisted of a can of Berry's apple pie filling; it was all he could bring himself to eat), when they entered the Church of Latter-Day Saints on lower Table Mesa Drive. They had come here, filled with the plague, and they had died there, over seventy of them, and the stink was enormous. "Cordwood," one of Harold's mates had said in a high, revolted, laughing voice, and Harold had turned and stumbled out past him. He went around the corner of the handsome brick building that had once been a polling place in election years and up came the Berry's apple pie filling and he discovered that Norris had been right: He really felt better without it. It took them two trips and most of the afternoon to empty the church. Twenty men, Harold thought, to get rid of all the corpses in Boulder. It's almost funny. A goodly number of Boulder's previous population had run like rabbits because of the Air Testing Center scare, but still... Harold supposed that, as the Burial Committee grew with the population, it was just barely possible that they might get most of the bodies in the ground by the first heavy snowfall (not that he himself expected to be around by then), and most of the people would never know how real the danger of some new epidemic-one they weren't immune to-had been. The Free Zone Committee was full of bright ideas, he thought with contempt. The committee would be just fine.. as long as they had good old Harold Lauder to make sure their shoelaces were tied, of course. Good old Harold's good enough for that, but not quite good enough to serve on their fucking Permanent Committee. Heavens, no. He had never been quite good enough, not even quite good enough to get a date for the Class Dance at Ogunquit High School, even with a scag. Good

373 God, no, not Harold. Let's remember, folks, when we get right down to the proverbial place where the ursine mammal evacuated his bowels in the buckwheat, that this is no analytical, logical matter, not even a matter of common sense. When we get right down to it, what we end up with is a frigging beauty contest. Well, somebody remembers. Somebody is keeping score, kids. And the name of that someone i&- could we have a drum-roll, please maestro?-Harold Emery Lauder.. So he came back into the church, wiping his mouth and grinning as best he could, nodding that he was ready to go on. Someone clapped him on the back and Harold's grin widened and he thought: Someday you're going to lose your hand for that, shitheap. They made their last run at 4:15 P. m., the body of the dump truck filled with the last of the Latter-Day corpses. In town the truck had to weave laboriously in and out of stalled traffic, but on Colorado 119, three tow trucks had been out all day, latching on to stalled cars and depositing them into the ditches on both sides of the road. They lay there like the overturned toys of some giantchild. At the burial site, the other two orange trucks were already parked. Men stood around with their rubber gloves off, their fingers white and pruney at the tips from a day of sweating inside rubber. They smoked and talked desultorily. Most of them were very pale. Norris and his two helpers had it down to a science now. They shook out a huge piece of plastic sheeting on the rocky ground. Norman Kellogg, the Louisianian who was driving Harold's truck, backed up to the edge of the plastic. The tailgate slammed down and the first bodies fell out onto the plastic crawsheet like partially stiffened ragdolls. Harold wanted to turn away but was afraid that the others might construe it as weakness. He did not mind watching them fall out too much; it was the sound that got him. The sound they made when they hit what was going to become their shroud. The note of the dumper's engine deepened and there was a hydraulic whine as the truck's body began to go up. Now the bodies tumbled out in a grotesque human rain. Harold felt an instant of pity, a feeling so deep it was an ache. Cordwood, he thought. How right he was. That's all that's left. Just... cordwood. "Ho!" Chad Norris shouted, and Kellogg pulled the dump truck ahead and shut it off. Chad and his helpers stepped onto the plastic carrying rakes and now Harold did turn away, pretending to scan the sky for rain, and he was not alone-but he heard a sound that would haunt him in his dreams, and that was the sound of change falling from the pockets of the dead men and women as Chad and his helpers worked with their rakes, spreading the corpses evenly. The coins falling on the plastic made a sound that reminded Harold absurdly of tiddledywinks. The sickly-sweet stench of corruption drifted up in the warm air. When he looked back, the three of them were pulling the edges of the plastic shroud together, grunting with the strain, arms bulging. A few of the other men, Harold among them, pitched in. Chad Norris produced a huge industrial stapling gun. Twenty minutes later that part of the job was done, and the plastic lay on the ground like a giant gelatin capsule. Norris climbed into the cab of a bright yellow bulldozer and keyed the engine. The scarred blade thudded down. The dozer rolled forward. A man named Weizak, also on Harold's truck, walked away from the scene with the jerky steps of a badly controlled puppet. A cigarette jittered between his fingers. "Man, I can't watch that," he said as he passed Harold. "It's really kind of funny. I never knew I was Jewish until today." The bulldozer shoved and rolled the large plastic package into a long rectangular cut in the ground. Chad backed away, shut down, climbed off. Motioning the men to gather around, he walked over to one of the Public Works trucks and put one booted foot up on the running board. "No football cheers," he said, "but you did damned good. We put away close to a thousand units today, I guess." Units, Harold thought. "I know this kind of work takes something out of a man. Committee's promising us another two men before the end of the week, but I know that don't change the way you guys feel-or the way I feel, for that matter. All I'm saying is that if you've had enough, don't feel like you can take another day of it, you don't have to worry about avoiding me on the street. But if you feel like you can't cut it, its awful-damn important that you find someone to take your place tomorrow. So far as I'm concerned, this is the most important job in the Zone. 'It isn't too bad now, but if we've still got twenty thousand corpses in Boulder next month when it gets to be wet weather, people are going to get sick. If you feel like you can make it, I'll see you tomorrow morning at the bus station." "I'll be there," someone said. "Me too," Norman Kellogg said. "After a six-hour bath tonight." There was laughter. "Count me in," Weizak chimed in. "Me too," Harold said quietly.

374 "It's a dirty job," Norris said in a low, emotional voice. "You're good men. I doubt if the rest of them will ever know just how good." Harold felt a sense of drawing-together, a camaraderie, and he fought against it, suddenly afraid. This was no part of the plan. "See you tomorrow, Hawk," Weizak said, and squeezed his shoulder. Harold's grin was startled and defensive. Hawk? What kind of joke was that? A bad one, of course. Cheap sarcasm. Calling fat, pimply Harold Lauder Hawk. He felt the old black hate rise, directed at Weizak this time, and then it subsided in sudden confusion. He wasn't fat anymore. He couldn't even properly be called stout. His pimples had vanished over the last seven weeks. Weizak didn't know he had once been a school joke. Weizak didn't know that Harold's father had once asked him if he was a homosexual. Weizak didn't know that Harold had been his popular sister's cross to bear. And if he had known, Weizak probably wouldn't have given a sweet shit. Harold climbed into the back of one of the trucks, his mind churning helplessly. All of a sudden the old grudges, the old hurts, and the unpaid debts seemed as worthless as the paper money choking all the cash registers of America. Could that be true? Could it possibly be true? He felt panicked, alone, scared. No, he decided at last. It couldn't possibly be true. Because, consider. If you were strongwilled enough to be able to resist the low opinions of others, when they thought you were a queer, or an embarrassment, or just a plain old bag of shit, then you had to be strongwilled enough to resist... Resist what? Their good opinion of you? Wasn't that kind of logic... well, that kind of logic was lunacy, wasn't it? An old quote surfaced in his troubled mind, some general's defense of interning Japanese- Americans during World War II. It had been pointed out to this general that no acts of sabotage had occurred on the West Coast, where the naturalized Japanese were most heavily concentrated. The general's reply had been: "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place is an ominous development." Was that him? Was it? Their truck pulled into the bus station parking lot. Harold jumped over the side, reflecting that even his coordination had improved a thousand percent, either from the weight he had lost, his almost constant exercise, or both. The thought came to him again, stubborn, refusing to be buried: I could be an asset to this community. But they had shut him out. That doesn't matter. I've got the brains to pick the lock on the door they slammed in my face. And I believe I've found enough guts to open it once it's unlocked. But— Stop it! Stop it! You might as well be wearing handcuffs and legchains with that one word stamped all over them. But! But! But! Can't you stop it, Harold? Can't you for Christ's sake climb down off your high fucking horse? "Hey, man, you okay?" Harold jumped. It was Norris, coming out of the dispatcher's office, which he had taken over. He looked tired. "Me? I'm fine. I was just thinking." "Well; you go right along. Seems like every time you do that you coin money for this joint." Harold shook his head. "Not true." "No?" Chad let it go. "Can I drop you somewhere?" "Huh-uh. I've got my chopper." "You wanna know something, Hawk? I think most of these guys are really going to come back tomorrow." "Yes, so do L" Harold walked over to his motorcycle and climbed on. He found himself savoring his new nickname, rather against his will. Norris shook his head. "I never would have believed it. I figured that once they actually saw what the job was, they'd think of a hundred other things they had to do." "I'll tell you what I think," Harold said. "I think it's easier to do a dirty job for yourself than it is to do for somebody else. Some of these guys, it's the first time they ever really worked for themselves in their whole lives." "Yeah, there's something in that, I guess. I'll see you tomorrow Hawk." "Eight," Harold confirmed, and drove out Arapahoe to Broadway. To his right a crew comprised mostly of women was at work with a wrecker and a derrick righting a tractortrailer truck that had jackknifed, partially blocking the street. They had drawn a respectable little crowd. This place is building up, Harold thought. I don't recognize half of those people.

375 He went on out toward hit house, his mind worrying and gnawing at the problem he thought he had solved long ago. When he got home, there was a small white Vespa parked at the curb. And a woman sitting on his front step.

She stood up as Harold came up the walk, and put her hand out. She was one of the most striking women Harold had ever seen-he had seen her before, of course, but rarely this close up. "I'm Nadine Cross," she said. Her voice was low, close to being husky. Her grip was firm and cool. Harold's eyes dropped involuntarily to her body for a moment, a habit he knew girls hated, but one he seemed powerless to stop. This one did not seem to mind. She was wearing a pair of light cotton twill slacks that clung to her long legs and a sleeveless blouse of some light blue silky material. No bra under it, either. How old was she? Thirty? Thirty-five? Younger, maybe. She was going prematurely gray. All over? the endlessly horny (and endlessly virginal, seemingly) part of his mind inquired, and his heart beat a little faster. "Harold Lauder," he said, smiling. "You came in with Larry Underwood's party, didn't you?" "Yes, that's right." "Followed Stu and Frannie and me across the Big Empty, I understand. Larry came to see me last week, brought me a bottle of wine and some candybars." His words had a tinkling, false sound to them, and he was suddenly sure that she knew he had been cataloging her, undressing her in his mind. He fought an urge to lick his lips and won... at least temporarily. "He's a helluva nice guy." "Larry?" She laughed a little, a strange and somehow cryptic sound. "Yes, Larry's a prince." They gazed at each other for a moment, and Harold had never been looked at by a woman whose eyes were so frank and speculative. He was again aware of his excitment, and a warm nervousness in his belly. "Well," he said. "What can I do for you this afternoon, Miss Cross?" "You could call me Nadine, for a start. And you could invite me to stay for supper. That would get us a little further along." That sense of nervous excitement began to spread. "Nadine, would you like to stay for supper?" "Very much," she said, and smiled. When she laid her hand on his forearm, he felt a tingle like a low-grade electric shock. Her eyes never left his. "Thank you." He fumbled his latchkey into its slot, thinking: Now she'll ask me why I lock my door and I'll mumble and stumble around, looking for an answer, and seem like a fool. But Nadine never asked.

He didn't cook dinner; she did. Harold had gotten to the point where he considered it impossible to get even a half-decent meal out of cans, but Nadine managed nicely. Suddenly aware of and appalled by what he had spent his day doing, he asked if she could entertain herself for twenty minutes (and she was probably here on some very mundane piece of business, he cautioned himself desperately) while he cleaned up. When he came back-having splurged and taken a twobucket shower-she was bustling around in the kitchen. Water was boiling merrily away on the bottled gas stove. As he came into the kitchen, she dumped half a cup of elbow macaroni into the pot. Something mellow was being simmered in a skillet on the other burner; he got a combined aroma of French onion soup, red wine, and mushrooms. His stomach rumbled. The day's grisly work had suddenly lost its power over his appetite. "It smells fantastic," he said. "You shouldn't have, but I'm not complaining." "It's a Stroganoff casserole," she said, turning to smile at him. "Strictly makeshift, I'm afraid. Tinned beef is not one of the recommended ingredients when they make this dish in the world's finer restaurants, but—" She shrugged to indicate the limitations they all labored under. "It's nice of you to do it." "Not at all." She gave him that speculative glance again, and turned halfway toward him, the silky material of her blouse pulled taut against her left breast, molding it sweetly. He felt a hot flush creeping up his neck and willed himself not to have an erection. He suspected that his willpower would not be equal to the task. He suspected, in fact, that it wouldn't even be close. "We're going to be very good friends," she said. "We... are?" "Yes." She turned back to the stove, seeming to close the subject, leaving Harold in a thicket of possibilities. After that, their conversation consisted strictly of trivialities... Free Zone gossip, for the most part. Of this there was already a rich supply. Once, halfway through the meal, he tried again to ask her what had brought her here, but she only smiled and shook her head. "I like to see a man eat." For a moment Harold thought she must be talking about someone else and then realized she meant him. And he did eat; he had three helpings of the Stroganoff, and the tinned meat did not

376 detract from the recipe at all, in Harold's opinion. The conversation seemed to make itself, leaving him free to quiet the lion in his belly, and to look at her. Striking, had he thought? She was beautiful. Ripe and beautiful. Her hair, which she had pulled back into a casual horsetail in order to cook more easily, was twisted with strands of pure white, not gray as he had first thought. Her eyes were grave and dark, and when they focused unhesitatingly on his, Harold felt giddy. Her voice was low and confidential. The sound of it began to affect him in a way that was both uncomfortable and almost excruciatingly pleasant. When the meal was done, he started to get up but she beat him to it. "Coffee or tea?" "Really, I could—" "You could, but you won't. Coffee, tea... or me?" She smiled then, not the smile of someone who has offered a remark of minor risqueness ("risky talk," as his dear old mum would have said, her mouth set in a disapproving line), but a slow little smile, rich as the dollop of cream on top of a gooey dessert. And again the speculative look. His brain spinning, Harold replied with insane casualness: "The latter two," and was only able to contain a burst of adolescent giggles with a mighty effort. "Well, we'll start with tea for two," Nadine said, and went to the stove. Hot blood crashed into Harold's head the instant her back was turned, undoubtedly turning his face as purple as a turnip. Some Mr. Suave you are! he hectored himself feverishly. You misinterpreted a perfectly innocent remark like the goddam fool that you are, and you've probably spoiled a very nice occasion. And it serves you right! It serves you damned well right! By the time she brought the steaming mugs of tea back to the table, Harold's violent flush had faded somewhat and he had himself under control. Giddiness had turned just as abruptly to despair, and he felt (not for the first time) that his body and mind had been stuffed willy-nilly into the car of a huge rollercoaster made of pure emotion. He hated it but was powerless to get off the ride. If she was interested in me at all, he thought (and God knows why she would be, he added gloomily to himself), I have undoubtedly put paid to that by exposing the full range of my sophomoric wit. Well, he had done things like that before, and he supposed he could live with the knowledge that he had done it again. She looked at him over the rim of her teacup with those disconcertingly frank eyes and smiled again, and the shred of equanimity he had been able to muster up promptly vanished. "Can I help you with something?" he asked. It sounded like some lumbering double-entendre, but he had to say something, because she must have had some purpose in coming here. He felt his own protective smile faltering on his lips in his confusion. "Yes," she said, and put her teacup down decisively. "Yes, you can. Maybe we can help each other. Could you come into the living room?" "Sure." His hand was shaking; when he set his cup down and rose, some of it spilled. As he followed her into the living room, he noticed how smoothly her slacks (which aren't very slack at all, his mind gibbered) clung to her buttocks. It was the panty line that broke up the smooth look of most women's slacks, he had read that somewhere, maybe in one of the magazines he had kept in the back of his bedroom closet behind the shoeboxes, and the magazine had gone on to say that if a woman really wanted that smooth and seamless look, she should wear a G-string or no panties at all. He swallowed; tried to, at least. There seemed to be a huge blockage of some kind in his throat. The living room was dim, lit only by the glow that filtered through the drawn shades. It was past six-thirty, and outside the evening was drawing toward dusk. Harold went to one of the windows to run the shade up and let more light in, when she put her hand on his arm. He turned toward her, his mouth dry. "No. I like them down. It gives us privacy." "Privacy," Harold croaked. His voice was that, of an agerusted parrot. "So I can do this," she said, and stepped lightly into his arms. Her body was pressed frankly and completely against him, the first time in his life anything of the sort had happened, and his amazement was total. He could feel the soft and individual press of each breast through his white cotton shirt and her silky blue one. Her belly, firm but vulnerable, against his, not shying away from the feel of his erection. There was a sweet smell to her, perfume maybe, or maybe just her own smell, that seemed like a told secret that bursts, revelative, on the listener. His hands found her hair and plunged into it. At last the kiss broke but she didn't move away. Her body remained against his like soft fire. She was perhaps three inches shorter, and her face was turned up to his. It occurred to him in a dim sort of way that it was one of the most amusing ironies of his life: When love—or a reasonable facsimile-had finally found him, it was as if he had slipped sideways into the pages of a love story in a glossy women's magazine. The authors of such stories, he had once claimed in an

377 unacknowledged letter to Redbook, were one of the few convincing arguments in favor of enforced eugenics. But now her face was turned up to his, her lips were moist and half-parted, her eyes were bright and almost... almost .. yes, almost starry. The only detail not strictly compatible with a Redbook's- eye view of life was his hardon, which was truly amazing. "Now," she said. "On the couch." Somehow they got there, and then they were tangled up there, and her hair had come loose and flowed over her shoulders; her perfume seemed everywhere. His hands were on her breasts and she was not minding; in fact she was twisting and squirming around to allow his hands freer access. He did not caress her; in his frantic need what he did was plunder her. "You're a virgin," Nadine said. No question there... and it was easier not to have to lie. He nodded. "Then we do this first. Next time it will be slower. Better." She unbuttoned his jeans and they snapped open to the zipper-tab of his fly. She traced a light forefinger across his belly just below the navel. Harold's flesh shuddered and jumped at her touch. "Nadine—" "Shhh!" Her face was hidden in the fall of her hair, making it impossible to read her expression. His fly was pulled down and the Ridiculous Thing, made even more ridiculous by the white cotton in which it was swaddled (thank God he had changed clothes after his shower), popped out like Jack from his box. The Ridiculous Thing was unaware of its own comical appearance, for its business was deadly serious. The business of virgins is always deadly serious-not pleasure but experience. "My blouse—" "Can I—?" "Yes, that's what I want. And then I'll take care of you." Take care of you. The words echoed down into his mind like stones flung into a well, and then he was sucking greedily at her breast, tasting the salt and sweet of her. She drew in breath. "Harold, that's lovely." Take care of you, the words clanged and banged in his mind. Her hands slipped inside the waistband of his underpants and his jeans slid down to his ankles in a meaningless jingle of keys. "Raise up," she whispered, and he did. It took less than a minute. He cried aloud with the strength of his climax, unable to help himself. It was as if someone had touched a match to a whole network of nerves just under his skin, nerves that plunged deep to form the living webwork of his groin. He could understand why so many of the writers made that connection between orgasm and death. Then he lay back in the dimness, his head against the sofa, his chest heaving, his mouth open. He was afraid to look down. He felt that quarts of semen must have splattered all over everything. Young feller, we've struck oil! He looked at her shamefacedly, embarrassed at the hairtrigger way he had gone off. But she was only smiling at him with those calm, dark eyes that seemed to know everything, the eyes of a very young girl in a Victorian painting. A girl who knows too much, perhaps, about her father. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "Why? For what?" Her eyes never left his face. "You didn't get much out of that." "Au contraire, I got a great deal of satisfaction." But he didn't think that was exactly what he had meant. Before he had a chance to consider this, she went on: "You're young. We can go as many times as you want to." He looked at her without speaking, unable to speak. "But you must know one thing." She put a hand lightly on him. "What you told me about being a virgin? Well, I am, too." "You—" His expression of astonishment must have been comical, because she threw back her head and laughed. "Is there no room for virginity in your philosophy, Horatio?" "No ...yes ...but—" "I'm a virgin. And I'm going to stay that way. Because it's for someone else to... to make me not a virgin anymore." Who. "You know who." He stared at her, suddenly cold all over. She looked back calmly. "Him?" She half turned away and nodded. "But I can show you things," she said, still not looking at him. "We can do things. Things you've never even... no, I take that back. Maybe you have dreamed of them, but you never dreamed you'd do them. We can play. We can make ourselves drunk with it. We can wallow in it. We can..." She

378 trailed off, and then did look at him, a look so sly and sensual that he felt himself stirring again. "We can do anything-everything-but that one little thing. And that one thing really isn't so important, is it?" Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves... boots .. leather... rubber. Oh Jesus. Fantasies of a Schoolboy. A weird kind of sexual solitaire. But it was all a kind of dream, wasn't it? A fantasy begotten of fantasy, child of a dark dream. He wanted all those things, wanted her, but he also wanted more. The question was, how much would he settle for? "You can tell me everything," she said. "I'll be your mother, or your sister, or your whore, or your slave. All you have to do is tell me, Harold." How that echoed in his mind! How that intoxicated him! He opened his mouth, and the voice that emerged was as tuneless as the chiming of a cracked bell. "But for a price. Isn't that right? For a price. Because nothing is for free. Not even now, when everything is lying around, waiting to be picked up." "I want what you want," she said. "I know what's in your heart." "No one knows that." "What's in your heart is in your ledger. I could read it there—I know where it is—but I don't need to." He started and looked at her with a wild guilt. "It used to be under that loose stone there," she said, pointing to the hearth, "but you moved it. Now it's behind the insulation in the attic." "How do you know that? How do you know?" "I know because he told me. He... you could say that he wrote me a letter. And what's more important, he told me about you, Harold. How the cowboy took your woman and then kept you off the Free Zone Committee. He wants us to be together, Harold. And he's generous. From now until when we leave here, it's recess for you and me." She touched him and smiled. "From now until then it's playtime. Do you understand?" "I—" "No," she answered, "you don't. Not yet. But you will, Harold. You will." Insanely, it came to his mind to tell her to call him Hawk. "And later, Nadine? What does he want later?" "What you want. And what I want. What you almost did to Redman on the first night you went out hunting for the old woman... but on a much larger scale. And when that's done, we can go to him, Harold. We can be with him. We can stay with him." Her eyes slipped half-closed in a kind of rapture. Perhaps paradoxically, the fact that she loved the other but would give herself to himmight actually enjoy it-brought his desire up again, hot and close. "What if I say no?" His lips felt cold, ashy. She shrugged, and the movement made her breasts sway prettily. "Life will go on,. won't it, Harold? I'll try to find some way of doing the thing I have to do. You'll go on. Sooner or later you'll find a girl who will do that... one little thing for you. But that one little thing is very tiresome after a while. Very tiresome." "How would you know?" he asked, and grinned crookedly at her. "I know because sex is life in small, and life is tiresometime spent in a variety of waiting rooms. You might have your little glories here, Harold, but to what end? On the whole it will be a humdrum, slipping-down life, and you'll always remember me with my shirt off, and you'll always wonder what I would have looked like with everything off. You'll wonder what it would have been like to hear me talking dirty to you... or to have me spill honey all over your... body... and then lick it off... and you'll wonder—" "Stop it," he said. He was trembling all over. But she wouldn't. "I think you'll also wonder what it would have been like on his side of the world," she said. "That more than anything and everything else, maybe." "I—" "Decide, Harold. Do I put my shirt back on or take everything else off?" How long did he think? He didn't know. Later, he wasn't even sure he had struggled with the question. But when he spoke, the words tasted like death in his mouth: "In the bedroom. Let's go in the bedroom." She smiled at him, such a smile of triumph and sensual promise that he shuddered from it, and his own eager response to it. She took his hand. And Harold Lauder succumbed to his destiny.

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