The Stand

By afternoon, the flow of traffic had mostly dried up. Gus Dinsmore, the public beach parking lot attendant, said he guessed that so many cars must be just stopped dead along the road that even those ma

Fran hadn’t been out today, hadn’t seen anyone since Gus had come by yesterday afternoon to check on her. She had heard engines a few times this morning, and once the close-together double explosions of a shotgun, but that was all. The steady, unbroken silence added to her sense of unreality.

And now there were these questions to consider. Flies… eyes… pies. Fra

She sat there for almost an hour, her plate before her, the dull, half-questioning expression on her face. Little by little another thought began to surface in her mind—two thoughts, actually, that seemed at once co

The second thought had to do with the day. It was a beautiful summer’s day, flawless, the kind that the tourists came to the Maine seacoast for. You don’t come to swim because the water’s never really warm enough for that; you come to be knocked out by the day.

The sun was bright and Fra

She frowned over it, her eyes confused and apathetic. Her mind circled the problem, then drifted away to think of other things. But it always drifted back.

It was a beautiful warm day and her father was dead.

That brought it home to her all at once and her eyes squeezed shut, as if from a blow.

At the same time her hands jerked involuntarily on the tablecloth, yanking her plate off onto the floor. It shattered like a bomb and Fra

You can’t keep a corpse in the house. Not in high summer.

The apathy began to creep back in, blurring the outlines of the thought. The full horror of it began to be obscured, cushioned. She began to listen for the clunk and drop of the icecubes again—

She fought it off. She got up, went to the sink, ran the cold water on full, and then splatted cupped handfuls against her cheeks, shocking her lightly perspiring skin.

She could drift away all she wanted, but first this thing had to be solved. It had to be. She couldn’t just let him lie in bed up there as June melted into July. It was too much like that Faulkner story that was in all the college anthologies. “A Rose for Emily.” The town fathers hadn’t known what that terrible smell was, but after a while it had gone away. It…it…

“No!” she cried out loud to the su

“Stop backing away from it!” she shouted furiously into the empty kitchen. “Who’s going to bury him?”

And at the sound of her own voice, the answer came. It was perfectly clear. She was, of course. Who else? She was.

It was two-thirty in the afternoon when she heard the car turn into the driveway, its heavy motor purring complacently, low with power. Fra

The car was a brand-new Cadillac Coupe de Ville, bottle green, and stepping out of it was fat sixteen-year-old Harold Lauder. Fra

Harold edited the Ogunquit High School literary magazine and wrote strange short stories that were told in the present tense or with the point of view in the second person, or both. You come down the delirious corridor and shoulder your way through the splintered door and look at the racetrack stars —that was Harold’s style.

“He whacks off in his pants,” Amy had once confided to Fran. “How’s that for nasty? Whacks off in his pants and wears the same pair of undershorts until they’ll just about stand up by themselves.”

Harold’s hair was black and greasy. He was fairly tall, about six-one, but he was carrying nearly two hundred and forty pounds. He favored cowboy boots with pointed toes, wide leather garrison belts that he was constantly hitching up because his belly was considerably bigger than his butt, and flowered shirts that billowed on him like staysails. Fra

He hadn’t seen her. He was looking up at the house. “Anybody home?” he shouted, then reached through the Cadillac’s window and honked the horn. The sound jagged on Fra

Stop it, she told herself, just stop it. He’s another living human being, anyway.

“Over here, Harold,” she called.

Harold jumped, his large buttocks joggling inside his tight pants. Obviously he had just been going through the motions, not really expecting to find anyone. He turned around and Fran walked to the edge of the garden, brushing at her legs, resigned to being stared at in her white gym shorts and halter. Harold’s eyes crawled over her with great avidity as he came to meet her.

“Say, Fran,” he said happily.

“Hi, Harold.”

“I’d heard that you were having some success in resisting the dread disease, so I made this my first stop. I’m canvassing the township.” He smiled at her, revealing teeth that had, at best, a nodding acquaintance with his toothbrush.

“I was awfully sorry to hear about Amy, Harold. Are your mother and father—?”

“I’m afraid so,” Harold said. He bowed his head for a moment, then jerked it up, making his clotted hair fly. “But life goes on, does it not?”

“I guess it does,” Fran said wanly. His eyes were on her beasts again, dancing across them, and she wished for a sweater.