I am surrounded outside by sociopaths.
http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
Chapter 58
Fran and Larry sat at the kitchen table of Stu and Fran’s place, sipping coffee. Downstairs, Leo was stretching out on his guitar, one that Larry had helped him pick out at Earthly Sounds. It was a nice $600 Gibson with a hand-rubbed cherry finish. As an afterthought he had gotten the boy a battery-powered phonograph and about a dozen folk/blues albums. Now Lucy was with him, and a startlingly good imitation of Dave van Ronk’s “Backwater Blues” drifted up to them.
Well it rained five days
and the sky turned black as night…
There’s trouble takin place,
on the bayou tonight.
Through the arch that gave on the living room, Fran and Larry could see Stu, sitting in his favorite easy chair, Harold’s ledger open on his lap. He had been sitting that way since four in the afternoon. It was now nine, and full dark. He had refused supper. As Frannie watched him, he turned another page.
Down below, Leo finished “Backwater Blues” and there was a pause.
“He plays well, doesn’t he?” Fran said.
“Better than I do or ever will,” Larry said. He sipped his coffee.
From below there suddenly came a familiar chop, a swift running down the frets to a not-quite-standard blues progression that made Larry’s coffee cup pause. And then Leo’s voice, low and insinuating, adding the vocal to the slow, driving beat:
Hey baby I come down here tonight
And I didn’t come to get in no fight,
I just want you to say if you can,
Tell me once and I’ll understand,
Baby, can you dig your man?
He’s a righteous man,
Baby, can you dig your man?
Larry spilled his coffee.
“Whoops,” Fran said, and got up to get a dishcloth.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Jiggled when I should have joggled, I guess.”
“No, sit still.” She got the dishcloth and wiped up the stain quickly. “I remember that one. It was big just before the flu. He must have picked up the single downtown.”
“I guess so.”
“What was that guy’s name? The guy that did it?”
“I can’t remember,” Larry said. “Pop music came and went so fast.”
“Yes, but it was something familiar,” she said, wringing the dishcloth out at the sink. “It’s funny how you get something like that on the tip of your tongue, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Larry said.
Stu closed the ledger with a soft snap, and Larry was relieved to see her look at him as he came into the kitchen. Her eyes went first to the gun on his hip. He had been wearing it since his election as marshal, and he made a lot of jokes about shooting himself in the foot. Fran didn’t think the jokes were all that funny.
“Well?” Larry asked.
Stu’s face was deeply troubled. He put the ledger on the table and sat down. Fran started to get him a cup of coffee and he shook his head and put a hand on her forearm. “No thanks, honey.” He looked at Larry in an absent, distracted sort of way. “I read it all, and now I’ve got a damn headache. Not used to reading so much. Last book I just sat down and read all the way through like that was this rabbit story. Watership Down. I got it for a nephew of mine and just started to read it…”
He trailed off for a moment, thinking.
“I read that one,” Larry said. “Great book.”
“There was this one bunch of rabbits,” Stu said, “and they had it soft. They were big and well fed and they always lived in one place. There was something wrong there, but none of the rabbits knew what it was. Seemed like they didn’t want to know. Only… only, see, there was this farmer…”
Larry said, “He left the warren alone so he could take a rabbit for the stewpot whenever he wanted one. Or maybe he sold them. Either way, he had his own little rabbit farm.”
“Yeah. And there was this one rabbit, Silverweed, and he made up poems about the shining wire—the snare the farmer caught the rabbits in, I guess. The snare the farmer used to catch them and strangle them. Silverweed made up poems about that.” He shook his head in slow, tired incredulity. “And that’s what Harold reminds me of. Silverweed the rabbit.”
“Harold’s ill,” Fran said.
“Yeah.” Stu lit a cigarette. “And dangerous.”
“What should we do? Arrest him?”
Stu tapped the ledger. “He and the Cross woman are planning to do something so they’ll be made to feel welcome when they go west. But this book doesn’t say what.”
“It mentions a lot of people he’s not too crazy about,” Larry said.
“Are we going to arrest him?” Fran asked again.
“I just don’t know. I want to talk it over with the rest of the committee first. What’s on for tomorrow night, Larry?”
“Well, the meeting’s going to be in two halves, public business and then private business. Brad wants to talk about his Turning-Off Crew.
