Stephen King - Sleeping Beauties

When they left the road and started up the moth-lined path through the woods, the fox appeared to conduct them the rest of the way.

Once Evie’s terms had been re-explained for those who needed to be caught up, Michaela Coates stood on a milk crate, donned her reporter’s hat (perhaps for the last time, perhaps not), and told them all what had happened on the outside.

“Dr. Norcross convinced the vigilantes to stand down,” she said. “A number of men gave their lives before reason prevailed.”

“Who died?” one woman shouted out. “Please say my Micah wasn’t one of them!”

“What about Lawrence Hicks?” asked another.

There was a babble of questioning voices.

Lila raised her hands. “Ladies, ladies!”

“I ain’t no lady,” grumbled an ex-inmate named Freida Elkins. “Speak for yourself, Sheriff.”

“I can’t tell you who’s dead,” Michaela resumed, “because during most of the fighting I was stuck in the prison. I know that Garth Flickinger is dead, and…” She was about to mention Barry Holden, then saw his wife and remaining daughters looking at her expectantly, and lost her nerve. “… and that’s about all I know. But I can tell you that all the boy children and infants in Dooling are fine and well.” Praying with all her heart that this was so.

The audience erupted in cheers, whoops, and applause.

When Michaela was finished, Janice Coates took her place, and explained that everyone would be given a turn to make her choice known.

“For myself,” she said, “I vote, with some regret, to return. This is a much better place than the one we left, and I believe the sky is the limit. Without men, we make decisions fairly, and with less fuss. We share resources with less argument. There has been very little in the way of violence among the members of our community. Women have irritated me my entire life, but they have nothing on men.” Her personal irony, that her own husband, poor Archie, bounced from life by that early heart attack, was such an equable, sensible man, she did not mention. Exceptions were not the point. The point was the general case. The point was history.

Where Janice’s features had once been lean, now they were burned down to the bone. Her white hair flowed down her back. Plunged in their sockets, her eyes had a distant shine. It struck Michaela that her mother, no matter how straight she stood or how clearly she spoke, had become ill. You need a doctor, Mom .

“However,” Janice went on, “I also believe I owe it to Dr. Norcross to go back. He risked his life, and the others risked theirs, for the women of the prison when I doubt many others would have. Related to that, I want to make it known to you women who were inmates at the prison that I will do whatever I can to see your sentences commuted, or at the very least lessened. And if you want to double-time it for the hills, I will inform the authorities in Charleston and Wheeling that I believe you were killed in the attack.”

Those former prisoners came forward in a bloc. There were fewer than there had been that morning. Kitty McDavid, among others, had vanished without a trace (except for a brief flurry of moths). No doubt remained about what that might mean—those women were dead in both worlds. Men had killed them.

And yet every single inmate voted to go back. This might have surprised a man, but it didn’t surprise Warden Janice Coates, who knew a telling statistical fact: when women escaped prison, most were recaptured almost immediately, because they did not usually double-time it for the hills, as men were wont to do. What women did was go home. First on the minds of the former inmates who spoke at that final meeting were the male children in that other world.

For example, Celia Frode: Celia said Nell’s boys would need mothering, and even if Celia had to go back to lockup, Nell’s sister could be counted on to stand for them. “But Nell’s sister won’t be much use to them if she’s asleep, will she?”

Claudia Stephenson spoke to the ground so softly that the crowd called for her to repeat herself. “I don’t want to hold anybody down,” she repeated. “I’ll go along with the majority.”

The First Thursdays also voted to return. “It’s better here,” Gail said, speaking for all of them, “Janice is right about that. But it’s not really Our Place. It’s someplace else. And who knows, maybe all that’s apparently happened over there will make that place better.”

Michaela thought she was probably right, but likely just in the short term. Men promised never to raise another hand to their wives or children often enough, and meant it at the time, but were only able to keep their promises for a month or two, if that. The rage came around again, like a recurring bout of malaria. Why would this be different?

Large, cool gusts rippled through the high grass. V-shaped flocks of geese, returning from the uninhabited south, crossed the blue pane above the crowd.

It feels like a funeral, Mary Pak thought. It was so undeniable—like death was—bright enough to scald your eyes, cool enough to go through your coat and your sweater and raise goosebumps along your skin.

When it was her turn, she said, “I want to find out what it feels like to really fall in love with a boy.” This confession surely would have sundered Jared Norcross’s heart, had he been present to hear it. “I know the world’s easier for men, and it’s lousy, and it’s stacked, but I want a chance at a regular life like I always expected to have, and maybe that’s selfish, but that’s what I want, okay? I might even want to have a baby. And… that’s all I got.” These last words broke apart into sobs and Mary stepped down, waving away the women who tried to comfort her.

Magda Dubcek said that of course she had to go back. “Anton needs me.” Her smile was terrible in its innocence. Evie saw that smile, and her heart broke.

(From a spot a few yards distant, scraping his back against a pin oak, the fox eyed the blue bundle that was Andy Jones, nestled in the rear of the golf cart. The baby was fast asleep, unguarded. There it was, the dream of dreams. Forget the hen, forget the whole fucking henhouse, forget all the henhouses that had ever been. The sweetest of all morsels, a human baby. Did he dare? Alas, he did not. He could only fantasize—but, oh, what a fantasy! Pink and aromatic flesh like butter!)

One woman spoke of her husband. He was a great guy, he really, really was, did his share, pulled for her, all that. Another woman talked about her songwriting partner. He was nobody’s idea of a picnic, but there was a connection they had, a way they were in tune. He was words; she was music.

Some just missed home.

Carol Leighton, the civics teacher at the high school, said she wanted to eat a Kit Kat that wasn’t stale and sit on her couch and watch a movie on Netflix and pet her cat. “My experiences with men have been one hundred percent lousy, but I am not cut out for starting over in a new world. Maybe I’m a coward for that, but I can’t pretend.” She was not alone in her wish for ordinary creature comforts left behind.

Mostly it was the sons, though, that drew them back. A new start for every woman in the world was goodbye forever to their precious sons and they couldn’t bear that. This also made Evie’s heart break, too. Sons killed sons. Sons killed daughters. Sons left guns out where other sons could find them and accidentally shoot themselves or their sisters. Sons burned forests and sons dumped chemicals into the earth as soon as the EPA inspectors left. Sons didn’t call on birthdays. Sons didn’t like to share. Sons hit children, choked girlfriends. Sons figured out they were bigger and never forgot it. Sons didn’t care about the world they left for their sons or for their daughters, although they said they did when the time came to run for office.