Page 107 of The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand

HE’S A RIGHTEOUS MAN

Ronald Malfi

“Zarah.”

She turned away from the window and saw Benjamin standing there in the doorway, haggard in the face and dressed in his cruddy, sun-faded overalls.

He was clutching the handle of an aluminum bucket filled with water from the well, like some sort of peace offering.

Despite his attire, Zarah knew he hadn’t been out working in the field all afternoon, but day-drinking with that Pelham fellow down by the river.

She could smell the booze coming off him in waves from across the room.

“He ain’t due till late tonight,” Benjamin said. “You gonna stare out the window till then?”

She crossed the room to where a table had been dressed in smooth, white linen, and set with good china and polished silverware.

There was a cluster of unlit candles at the table’s center, a mismatched assortment of whatever Zarah could find—short, squat ivory candles; tall, spear-like ones the color of blood; a hefty black stump that looked like it might have served a purpose in some dark, unspeakable ritual in the not-too-distant past.

There was a book on the table, as well—incongruous among the place settings and the collection of candles.

A hardcover, bound in plastic film like how they used to wrap books in libraries.

From where it lay on the table, Zarah could see the tobacco-colored stain of the page edges, and the way one corner of the book cover bent inward toward those pages.

Benjamin was staring at the book, too.

“Are you still angry?” she asked him.

“This whole thing is a mistake. You know my position on that.”

“The village took a vote.”

“Don’t make it right.” He came into the room, the bucket dripping little plinks of water across the hardwood floor. “These people have gone blind, Zarah. They’re all sheep. They’re all a bunch of empty shells desperate to be filled.”

“You used to think this was a good place. A safe place.”

“Don’t tell me what I think.”

“Benjamin, if you’d just—”

“I said don’t tell me what to think.” He took the bucket over to an empty glass pitcher on the counter and poured the water from the bucket into it. “Quit trying to needle around in my head.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just thinking of the baby. That’s all.”

She watched his gaze tick down to the subtle swell of her abdomen.

When she’d first told him she was pregnant, he’d argued that it wasn’t his—that it could belong to any of the men in Calvary, including Clyde Pelham, Benjamin’s drinking buddy and all-around lout.

Because Benjamin possessed such little comprehension of human biology, he had claimed the differences in their age—she was nineteen, he was thirty-seven—only added to the improbability.

Zarah had sworn that she hadn’t been with anyone but him—and this was true—but Benjamin hadn’t wanted to hear it.

Like some obstinate child, he’d fled the house and stayed gone for several days.

Not even Pelham knew where he’d gone (or if he did, he hadn’t said).

Zarah cried about it the entire time, but then, just as she grew determined to not shed another tear on old Benjamin Lewis, he had returned.

Yes, reeking of alcohol, but proffering a bouquet of freshly picked wildflowers, and with something akin to an apology on his lips.

“You know how concerned I’ve been,” she said, running a hand along the slight protrusion of her abdomen. “With everything we’ve seen this past year.” And she turned and glanced back out the window.

“You want to believe in some voodoo witchcraft magic nonsense, that’s on you.” He dragged the bucket off the counter so that it made an unpleasant scraping sound. “But that fella coming here tonight, he’s just a man, regular as me.”

“Will you at least meet with us? Hear him speak?”

He carried the bucket back across the room, his heavy boots thudding mutely on the hardwood floor. The spilled droplets of water, to Zarah, looked like some celestial constellation. Or maybe a coded message for her to decipher.

“I won’t be part of it,” he said, and a moment later, he was out of the house.

Zarah drifted back toward the window in time to see him moving down the road with his bucket.

He walked with his head down, as if he needed to keep an eye on his feet to make sure they took him where he needed to go.

Did she love Benjamin Lewis? She thought she had, back when they’d started.

Or maybe it was just a lack of available men in Calvary that had made him seem so appealing at the time.

But love or not, his presence in her life—as cursory as it could be sometimes—would make raising a baby easier.

If the baby comes , she thought, and her gaze drifted from the road to the field behind the house.

To the rows upon rows of tiny wooden crosses.

2

They had come for him like cowboys in an old Western: on horseback, carrying long guns, and with some half-assed Conestoga wagon hitched to a pair of piebald thoroughbreds.

Jacob Cree stood from the railway station bench where he’d been sitting for over an hour and raised a hand above his head in a wave.

The horses and wagon drew to a stop, and a couple of men dropped down from their steeds and ambled over to greet him.

Jacob shook both their hands.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Cree.”

“Please, call me Jacob.”

“Well, I’m Ted Lomm,” said the fellow with the large, white, push-broom mustache. He jerked a thumb at his companion, a scarecrow-thin gentleman with bloodshot eyes and a bad complexion. “This here’s Mitchell Detroit.”

An odd name , Jacob mused. He had heard of people changing their surnames to reflect where they’d once come from, but also, he knew, in an effort to obfuscate who they’d once been. These men both had long guns propped on their shoulders.

“Those are some beautiful horses,” Jacob said, looking past the guns.

Ted glanced over his shoulder at the horses, as if just noticing them for the first time, then turned back to Jacob. “We got cars, of course, but we’re stingy with the gasoline.”

“We got power, too,” Mitchell said, and not without a boastful tone to his voice. “Hooked into a local substation, and we’re fortunate to have folks who know how to make it work.”

“Wonderful,” Jacob said, smiling at the men.

“Anyway,” said Ted, “I’m sorry about the wait. Few of the fellas ate some bad egg salad or something and caught a case of the oopsies, if you know what I mean.”

Mitchell hung his head, giving himself up as one of the unfortunates.

Ted pointed to the suitcase at Jacob’s feet—a simple black clamshell covered in scuffs and scratches. “That all you’re taking?”

“I travel light,” said Jacob.

Ted reached down to pick up the suitcase for him, but Jacob quickly said, “That won’t be necessary,” and snatched up the suitcase by its handle before the man could touch it.

They helped him up into the wagon, and then they were off, traveling first through a sodden field, then an expanse of blacktop, where the horses’ hooves clopped sharply on the asphalt, then finally across a rutted dirt roadway that ran parallel to a large body of water, which Jacob understood to be the Chesapeake Bay.

Jacob’s only companion in the back of the wagon during this journey was a very large man with the smooth, hairless face of a child. He was seated on a bench opposite Jacob. His age was indeterminable, and when he spoke, it was in a volume just barely above a whisper.

“Everything they say about you true, sir?” asked the man, who hadn’t introduced himself by name.

“Depends on what’s being said,” Jacob replied, smiling. His suitcase sat upright on the floor of the wagon, between his knees.

“That you’re a prophet. That you predicted this whole thing. The end of the world, and all that.”

“Oh…” Jacob turned his head so that he could look out beyond the canopy of the wagon and at the horizon, where the sun was setting in a multitude of hues. “Doesn’t look like the world has ended to me.”

The large man shifted uncomfortably on the wagon’s wooden bench.

“Have you read my book?” Jacob asked him.

The man shook his head, then averted his eyes so that he didn’t have to meet Jacob’s gaze.

“Do I frighten you?”

This time, the man did not respond at all—just kept his eyes trained on the floor of the wagon.

Jacob reached over and placed a hand on the fellow’s left knee.

Quietly, the man began to sob.

So be it , Jacob thought, removing his hand and closing his eyes as darkness filled the interior of the wagon.

3

Zarah Smith was among those chosen to greet Jacob Cree upon his arrival, so when the horses’ hooves were heard echoing throughout Calvary, she rushed out into the waning daylight and scurried mouse-like past the field of tiny crosses, to where a dais decorated in balloons and lit with kerosene lanterns stood empty and anticipatory.

It had been decided that only a select few women would greet the prophet, with the townsmen watching from the sides of the road like sentries.

Zarah had wanted so badly to be selected, but feared she wouldn’t be chosen because of her pregnancy, even though she was barely showing.

Yet she had been selected, and she’d lain awake that night in bed (next to Benjamin, who’d been snoring like a locomotive) and, staring at the ceiling, imagined what it would be like to finally meet Jacob Cree in person.

Later, when the town council chose her for the induction—the dinner, the candles—she felt like God Himself was smiling down upon her.