Read Online The Stand (Original Edition) by Stephen King - Free Book Online Page B

he could see the dead cat, lying half in and half out of the garbage can. When she pulled away, her eyes were dry.
    “Come on, I’ll make you some breakfast. Have you been driving all night?”
    “Yes,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse with emotion.
    “Well, come on. Elevator’s broken, but it’s only two floors. It’s worse for Mrs. Halsey with her arthritis. She’s on five. Don’t forget to wipe your feet. If you track in, Mr. Freeman will be on me like a shot. I swear Goshen he can smell dirt. Dirt’s his enemy, all right.” They were on the stairs now. “Come on. Can you eat three eggs? I’ll make toast, too, if you don’t mind Roman Meal. Come on.”
    He followed her past the vanished stone dogs and looked at where they had been a little wildly, just to reassure himself that they were really gone, that he had not shrunk two feet, that the whole decade of the 1970s had not vanished back into time. She pushed the doors open and they went in. Even the dark brown shadows and the smells of cooking were the same.
    Alice Underwood fixed him three eggs, bacon, toast, juice, coffee. When he had finished all but the coffee, he lit a cigarette and pushed back from the table. She flashed the cigarette a disapproving look but said nothing. That restored some of his confidence—but not much. She had always been good at biding her time. '
    She dropped the iron spider skillet into the gray dishwasher and it hissed a little. She hadn’t changed much, Larry was thinking. A little older—she would be fifty-one now—a little grayer, but there was still plenty of black left in that sensibly netted head of hair. She was wearing a plain gray dress, probably the one she worked in. Her bosom was still the same large comber blooming out the bodice of the dress—a little larger, if anything. Mom, tell me the truth, has your bosom gotten bigger? Is that the fundamental change?
    He started to tap cigarette ashes into his coffee saucer; she jerked it away and replaced it with the ashtray she always kept in the cupboard. The saucer had been sloppy with coffee and it had seemed okay to tap in it. This ashtray was clean, reproachfully spotless, and he tapped into it with a slight pang. She could bide her time and she could keep springing small traps on you until your ankles were all bloody and you were ready to start gibbering.
    “So you came back,” Alice said, taking a used Brillo from a Table Talk pie dish and putting it to work on the skillet. “What brought you?”
    Well, Ma, this friend of mine clued me in to the facts of life—the assholes travel in packs and this time they were after me. I don’t know if friend is the right word for him. He respects me musically about as much as I respect The 1910 Fruitgum Company. But he got me to put on my traveling shoes and wasn’t it Robert Frost who said home is a place that when you go there they have to take you in?
    Aloud he said, “I guess I got missing you, Mom.”
    She snorted. “That’s why you wrote me often?”
    “I’m not much of a letter-writer.” He pumped his cigarette slowly up and down. Smoke rings formed from the tip and drifted off.
    “You can say that again.”
    Smiling, he said: “I’m not much of a letter-writer.”
    “But you’re still smart to your mother. That hasn’t changed.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “How have you been, Mom?”
    She put the skillet in the drainer, pulled the sink stopper, and wiped the lace of soapsuds from her reddened hands. “Not so bad,” she said, coming over to the table and sitting down. “My back pains me some, but I got my pills. I make out all right.”
    “You haven’t thrown it out of whack since I left?”
    “Oh, once. But Dr. Holmes took care of it.”
    “Mom, those chiropractors are—” just frauds. He bit his tongue. “Are what?”
    He shrugged uncomfortably in the face of her hooked smile. “You’re free, white, and twenty-one. If he helps you, fine.”
    She sighed and took a roll of