Stephen King: The Stand

“I don’t know,” she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response; and could only say it again:

I don’t know .

He woke at dawn.

He had his boots on.

He sat up and looked around himself. He was on a beach as white as bone. Above him, a ceramic sky of cloudless blue stood tall and far. Beyond him, a turquoise sea broke far out upon a reef and then came in gently, surging up and between strange boats that were—

( canoes outrigger canoes )

He knew that… but how?

He got to his feet and almost fell. He was shaky. Bad off. Felt hung over.

He turned around. Green jungle seemed to leap out at his eyes, a dark forested tangle of vines and broad leaves and lush, blooming flowers that were

( as pink as a chorus girl’s nipple )

He was bewildered again.

What was a chorus girl?

For that matter, what was a nipple?

A macaw screamed at the sight of him, flew away blindly, crashed into the thick bole of an old banyan tree, and fell dead at the foot of it with its legs sticking up.

( sat him on the table with his legs stickin up )

A mongoose looked at his flushed, beard-scruffy face and died of a brain embolism.

( in come sis with a spoon and a glass )

A beetle that had been trundling busily up the trunk of a nipa palm turned black and shriveled to a husk with tiny blue bolts of electricity frizzing for a moment between its antennae.

( and starts dippin gravy from its yass-yass-yass .)

Who am I?

He didn’t know.

Where am I?

What did it matter?

He began to walk—stagger—toward the verge of the jungle. He was light-headed with hunger. The sound of the surf boomed hollowly in his ears like the beat of crazy blood. His mind was as empty as the mind of a newborn child.

He was halfway to the edge of the deep green when it parted and three men came out. Then four. Then there were half a dozen.

They were brown, smooth-skinned folk.

They stared at him.

He stared back.

Things began to come.

The six men became eight. The eight became a dozen. They all held spears. They began to raise them threateningly. The man with the beard-stubble on his face looked at them. He was wearing jeans and old sprung cowboy boots; nothing else. His upper body was as white as the belly of a carp and dreadfully wasted.

The spears came all the way up. Then one of the brown men—the leader—choked out one word over and over again, a word that sounded like Yun-nah!

Yep, things were coming.

Righty-O.

His name, for one thing.

He smiled.

That smile was like a red sun breaking through a black cloud. It exposed bright white teeth and amazing blazing eyes. He turned his lineless palms out to face them in the universal gesture of peace.

Before the force of that grin they were lost. The spears fell to the sand; one of them struck point-down and hung there at an angle, quivering.

“Do you speak English?”

They only looked.

“ Habla español? ”

No they didn’t. They definitely did not habla fucking español .

What did that mean?

Where was he?

Well, it would come in time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor Akron, Ohio, for that matter. And the place didn’t matter.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.

“ Parlez-vous français? ”

No answer. They stared at him, fascinated.

He tried them in German, and then bellowed laughter at their stupid, sheepy faces. One of them began to sob helplessly, like a child.

They are simple folk. Primitive; simple; unlettered. But I can use them. Yes, I can use them perfectly well .

He advanced toward them, lineless palms still turned outward, still smiling. His eyes sparkled with warm and lunatic joy.

“My name is Russell Faraday,” he said in a slow, clear voice. “I have a mission.”

They stared at him, all eyes, all dismay, all fascination.

“I have come to help you.”

They began to drop on their knees and bow their heads before him, and as his dark, dark shadow fell among them, his grin widened.

“I’ve come to teach you how to be civilized!”

“ Yun-nah! ” the chief sobbed in joy and terror. And as he kissed Russell Faraday’s feet, the dark man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.

And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

February 1975

December 1988

GEORGE WASH BRIDGE TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE BROOKLYN BRIDGE LINCOLN AND HOLLAND TUNNELS PLUS LIMITED ACCESS HIGHWAYS IN THE OUTER BOROUGHS

a spasm of coughing

a spasm of sneezes

a spasm of coughs and sneezes

he lectured himself

But I’ve written it down myself, just in case he forgets. Who knows? The Shadow do, hee-hee.

A note here: We are all fantastically sick of boiled water, which tastes flat and TOTALLY DEVOID of oxygen, but both Mark and Glen say the factories, etc., have not been shut down nearly long enough for the streams & rivers to have purified themselves, especially in the industrial Northeast & what they call the Rust Belt, so we all boil to be safe. We all keep hoping we’ll find a large supply of bottled mineral water sooner or later, and should have already—so Harold says—but a lot of it seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Stu thinks that a lot of people must have decided it was the tapwater that was making them sick and used up a lot of mineral water before they died.

General laughter.