Tom awoke that night at eight o'clock, but there was still too much light to move. He waited. Nick had come to him again in his sleep, and they had talked. It was so good to talk to Nick.
He lay in the shade of the big rock and watched the sky darken. The stars began to peep out. He thought about Pringle's Potato Chips and wished he had some. When he got back to the Zone - if he did get back to the Zone - he would have all of them he wanted. He would gorge on Pringle's chips. And bask in the love of his friends. That was what was missing back there in Las Vegas, he decided - simple love. They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn't much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark.
Only mushrooms and toadstools grew big and fat in the dark, even he knew that, laws, yes.
"I love Nick and Frannie and Dick Ellis and Lucy," Tom whispered. It was his prayer. "I love Larry Underwood and Glen Bateman, too. I love Stan and Rona. I love Ralph. I love Stu. I love - "
It was odd, how easily their names came to him. Why, back in the Zone he was lucky if he could remember Stu's name when he came to visit. His thoughts turned to his toys. His garage, his cars, his model trains. He had played with them by the hour. But he wondered if he would want to play with them so much when he got back from this... if he got back. It wouldn't be the same. That was sad, but maybe it was also good.
"The Lord is my shepherd," he recited softly. "I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen."
It was dark enough now, and he pushed on. By eleven-thirty that night he had reached God's Finger, and he paused there for a little lunch. The ground was high here, and looking back the way he had come, he could see moving lights. On the turnpike, he thought. They're looking for me.
Tom looked northeast again. Far ahead, barely visible in the dark (the moon, now two nights past full, had already begun to sink), he saw a huge rounded granite dome. He was supposed to go there next.
"Tom's got sore feet," he whispered to himself, but not without some cheeriness. Things could have been much worse than a case of sore feet. "M-O-O-N, that spells sore feet."
He walked on, and the night things skittered away from him, and when he laid himself down at dawn, he had come almost forty miles. The Nevada-Utah border was not far to the east of him.
By eight that morning he was hard asleep, his head pillowed on his jacket. His eyes began to move rapidly back and forth behind his closed lids.
Nick had come, and Tom talked with him.
A frown creased Tom's sleeping brow. He had told Nick how much he was looking forward to seeing him again.
But for some reason he could not understand, Nick had turned away.
BOOK III THE STAND Chapter 68
Oh, how history repeats itself: Trashcan Man was once again being broiled alive in the devils frying pan - but this time there was no hope of Cibola's cooling fountains to sustain him.
It's what I deserve, no more than what I deserve.
His skin had burned, peeled, burned, peeled again, and finally it had not tanned but blackened. He was walking proof that a man finally takes on the look of what he is. Trash looked as if someone had doused him in #2 kerosene and struck a match to him. The blue of his eyes had faded in the constant desert glare, and looking into them was like looking into weird, extra-dimensional holes in space. He was dressed in a strange imitation of the dark man - an open-throated red-checked shirt, faded jeans, and desert boots that were already scratched and mashed and folded and sprung. But he had thrown away his red-flawed amulet. He didn't deserve to wear it. He had proved unworthy. And like all imperfect devils, he had been cast out.
He paused in the broiling sun and passed a thin and shaking hand across his brow. He had been meant for this place and time - all his life had been preparation. He had passed through the burning corridors of hell to get here. He had endured the father-killing sheriff, he had endured that place at Terre Haute, he had endured Carley Yates. After all his strange and lonely life, he had found friends. Lloyd. Ken. Whitney Horgan.
And ah God, he had f**ked it all up. He deserved to burn out here in the devil's frying pan. Could there be redemption for him? The dark man might know. Trashcan did not.