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“Is it?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. It could be, I suppose.”
“Put your hand on it, Stu.”
“Frannie, have you gone nuts?”
The frown-line creased her brow, the I-want line that he had first noticed back in New Hampshire.
“Put your hand on it!”
Reluctantly, Stu put his hand on the stain. He didn’t know if it was Nick’s blood or not (and believed, in fact, that it probably wasn’t), but the gesture gave him a ghastly, crawly feeling.
“Now swear you’ll come back.”
The step seemed rather too warm here, and he wanted to take his hand away.
“Fran, how can I—”
“God can’t run all of it!” she hissed at him. “Not all of it. Swear, Stu, swear it!”
“Frannie, I swear to try.”
“I guess that will have to be good enough, won’t it?”
“We have to get down to Larry’s.”
“I know.” But she held him more tightly still. “Say you love me.”
“You know I do.”
“I know, but say it. I want to hear it.”
He took her by the shoulder. “Fran, I love you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and put her cheek against his shoulder. “Now I think I can say goodbye. I think I can let you go.”
They held each other in the shattered back yard.
Chapter 60
She and Lucy watched the undramatic start of their quest from the steps of Larry’s house. The four of them stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, no packs, no bedrolls, no special equipment… as per instructions. They had all changed into heavy walking shoes.
“ ‘Bye, Larry,” Lucy said. Her face was shiny pale.
“Remember, Stuart,” Fran said. “Remember what you swore.”
“Yes. I’ll remember.”
Glen put his fingers into his mouth and whistled. Kojak, who had been investigating a sewer grating, came running.
“Let’s go then,” Larry said. His face was as pale as Lucy’s, his eyes unusually bright, almost glittery. “Before I lose my nerve.”
Stu blew a kiss through his closed fist, something he could not remember doing since the days when his mother saw him off on the school bus. Fran waved back. The tears were coming again, hot and burning, but she did not let them fall. They began. They simply walked away. They were halfway down the block now, and somewh...
“Dear God,” she said.
“Let’s go in,” Fran said. “I want tea.”
They went inside. Fran put the teapot on. They began to wait.
The four of them moved slowly southwest during the afternoon, not talking much. They were headed toward Golden, where they would camp this first night. They passed the burial sites, three of them now, and around four o’clock, when their shadows had begun to trail out long behind them and the heat had begun to sneak out...
Glen took a bandanna out of his back pocket, whipped it into a blue paisley rope, and tied it around his head. “Chapter Forty-Three, The Bald-Headed Sociologist Dons His Sweat-Band,” he said hollowly. Kojak was up ahead, over the line into Golden, nosing his way happily through a splash of wildflowers.
“Ah, man,” Larry said, and his voice was almost a sob. “I feel like this is the end of everything.”
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “It do feel like that.”
“Anybody want to take five?” Glen asked without much hope.
“Come on,” Stu said, smiling a little. “Do you dogfaces want to live forever?”
They went on, leaving Boulder behind them. By nine that night they were camped in Golden, half a mile from where Route 6 begins its twisting, turning course along Clear Creek and into the stone heart of the Rockies.
None of them slept well that first night. Already they felt far from home, and under the shadow of death.
BOOK III
THE STAND
SEPTEMBER 7, 1990 – JANUARY 10, 1991
This land is your land
this land is my land,
from California
to the New York island,
from the redwood forests,
to the Gulf stream waters,
this land was made for you and me.
    Woody Guthrie
" Hey Trash, what did old lady Semple say when you torched her pension check? "