cowt 11 sett 2 M2: out of season (the stand, larry & ralph, pg13)

[janie_tangerine]

 “That was a nice song, you know.”

 

Larry shakes his head, breaking out of his doze. They still haven’t come to get them and he had drifted off and Ralph just woke him up and for a moment he doesn’t get what’s happening, but —

 

“Wait, what?”

 

“Yours. Baby Can You Dig Your Man. Don’t know if I ever told you.”

 

Larry wishes he remembered. Right now he can’t remember shit.

 

“A lot of people did. Can’t remember if you did, but thanks. Not that I’m ever going to play that one number again.”

 

Ralph laughs, bitterly, as he nods and shrugs his shoulders.

 

“I can see why,” Ralph says. “But would you have, if — if things had gone differently?”

 

Good fucking question. Larry has no single clue of that. He tries to imagine a world in which Randall Flagg doesn’t exist, people rebuild and he gets to write songs and play music again for way smaller venues than he had dreamed once, but as it is he has a feeling he wouldn’t sell out the Madison Square Garden.

 

Did enough people even survive, he thinks morbidly, but — well. No, okay, he’s an idiot. Even if only one percent of the US population survived, it’d still be at least a million people, so he could sell out the Garden.

 

He just has a feeling that even if he was going to survive the next twenty-four hours, concerts at the Garden are not a thing of this world anymore.

 

“I mean,” he says, “used to be my dream. At the moment I'd have been glad to play the damned Stone Pony. But I have a feeling that I ain't going to end up there either."

 

Ralph nods, then scoffs, glancing at the door leading towards the hallway out of the prison.

 

“Wish I was Glen, you know.”

 

“Why? Because he’s dead and he most likely didn’t suffer?”

 

“A gunshot seems like a good option right now. In comparison to, well. Whatever’s happening tomorrow.”

 

Fair point, Larry thinks, fair enough point.

 

“I’d like to play again,” Larry said. “I know I would. Just, not that. Maybe I could have written an entire album about this. Songs from the apocalypse, how do you like that?”

 

“I say I’d love to hear it,” Ralph says, “except none of us ever will, right?”

 

Larry shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says, meaning it, "think we’re both out of season in that sense. It’s going to be for the next generation. Maybe Leo can play the Stone Pony in a few years. If anyone ever goes back to New Jersey.”

 

“You do have a point,” Ralph sighs. “It — it doesn't sound outright bad, you know. Just, I don’t know if I was ready for that yet. But it was never up to us, was it?”

 

“No,” Larry says. “Pal, I’m really sorry about that, and fucking believe me I would like to go back home to see my kid whenever he's born more than anything, but I have a feeling that’s really not going to fucking happen. And — I thought we were leaving Stu to die, you know.”

 

“I thought so, too. But maybe — maybe we didn't, did we?”

 

“I have a feeling he’s the only one of us who won’t. What did Mother Abigail say anyway? It could’ve meant that we would go back, or that he would. Think it's going to be him. But that’s all right, I suppose. As long as one of us does.” He tries to not cry. One of them should get to meet their child. If it can't be him, might as well be East Texas.

 

“Would you sing now? I haven’t been to a gig in ages. Think that if I’ve got to die, I’d like to hear some music before I go.”

 

“Just not that one,” Larry says.

 

“Sure," Ralph nods, “whatever you want.”

 

He doesn’t know if he has any song of his he’d like to sing.

 

Except —

 

Except maybe he has someone else’s, and it’s hardly the most appropriate choice, on paper... but maybe it actually is, at the end of it.

 

He clears his throat. “I hear a train a’ comin’, it's going ‘round the bend, and I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when —”

 

“Oh, seriously?”

 

“I’m stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps dragging’ on… but the train keeps a rollin’, on down to San Antone —”

 

“You’re such a bastard, fuck, how did you even think about that?”

 

“Come on, what else should I be even singing now? When I was just a baby, my mother told me son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns, but these bastards shot a man in Vegas, just to watch him die, that was for Glen you bastards!, when I hear that whistle blowing’, I hang my head and cry —”

 

Ralph scoffs, reaching up and wiping at his eyes. He’s half-laughing and half-crying. Someone outside the door tells him to shut up, but what can they even do? They can’t kill them now or Flagg is going to have their head, won’t he?

 

Larry grins. “I bet there’s the dark man eating in his fancy dining car, he’s probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars, well I know I had it coming, I know I can't be free, but my people keep on moving, and that's what tortures him —”

 

“You’re completely fucking insane,” Ralph laughs, and more people keep on screaming to shut up from outside their cell, and Larry is suddenly very, very happy to realize that he can't give a single fuck about that.

 

“Well if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine, I bed I’d move on a little farther down the line, far from Las fucking Vegas, that's where I want to stay, and I let that lonesome whistle blow that bastard away —”

 

“Shut the fuck up already!” Some other guard shots.

 

“Fuck you,” Larry spits back, grinning in spite of himself. "So," he asks Ralph, “bit out of season choice, too, but I liked that. Did you?”

 

“Best gig I ever attended,” Ralph laughs.

 

Larry laughs back.

 

Maybe they're dying tomorrow.

 

Maybe they’re both out of season.

 

Maybe they’ll leave the world for better people.

 

But he's going to fear no evil and they're going to go with their head head high and that's all he cares about now.

 

 

End.