"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. Watership Down. I got it for a nephew of mine and just started to read it ..." 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. " 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. Al Bundell wants to present a preliminary report from the Law Committee. Let's see ... George Richardson on clinic hours at Dakota Ridge, then Chad Norris. After that, they leave and it's just us."

"If we get Al Bundell to stay after and fill him in on this Harold business, can we be sure he'll keep his lip zipped?"

"I'm sure we can," Fran said.

Stu said fretfully, "I wish the Judge was here. I cottoned to that man".

They were quiet for a moment, thinking about the Judge, wondering where he might be tonight. From below came the sound of Leo playing "Sister Kate" like Tom Rush.

"But if it's got to be Al, it's got to be. I only see two choices anyway. We have to take the pair of them out of circulation. But I don't want to put them in jail, goddammit."

"What does that leave?" Larry asked.

It was Fran who answered. "Exile."

Larry turned to her. Stu was nodding slowly, looking at his cigarette.

"Just drive him out?" Larry asked.

"Him and her both," Stu said.

"But will Flagg take them like that?" Frannie asked.

Stu looked up at her then. "Honey, that ain't our problem."

She nodded and thought: Oh, Harold, I didn't want it to come out like this. Never in a million years did I want it to come out this way. Oh, Harold, I didn't want it to come out like this. Never in a million years did I want it to come out this way.

"Any idea what they might be planning?" Stu asked.

Larry shrugged. "You'd have to get the whole committee's thoughts on that, Stu. But I can think of some things."

"Such as?"

"The power plant. Sabotage. An assassination attempt on you and Frannie. Those are just the first two things that occur to me."

Fran looked pale and dismayed.

Larry went on: "Although he doesn't come right out and say it, I think he went hunting for Mother Abagail with you and Ralph that time in hopes of getting you alone and killing you."

Stu said, "He had his chance."

"Maybe he chickened."

"Stop it, can't you?" Fran asked dully. "Please."

Stu got up and went back into the living room. There was a CB in there hooked up to a Die-Hard battery. After some tinkering, he got Brad Kitchner.

"Brad, you dog! Stu Redman. Listen. Can you round up some guys to stand watch at the power station tonight?"

"Sure," Brad's voice came, "but what in God's name for?"

"Well, this is kind of delicate, Bradley. I heard one way and another that somebody might try doing some mischief up there."

Brad's reply was blue with profanity.

Stu nodded at the mike, smiling a little. "I know how you feel. This is just for tonight and maybe tomorrow night, so far as I know. Then I guess things'll be ironed out."

Brad told him he could muster twelve men from the Power Committee without going two blocks, and any one of them would be happy to geld any would-be mischief-maker. "This something Rich Moffat's up to?"

"No, it ain't Rich. Listen, I'll be talking to you, okay?"

"Fine, Stu. I'll have them on watch."

Stu turned off the CB and walked back to the kitchen. "People let you be just as secret as you want to be. It scares me, you know? The old bald-headed sociologist is right. We could set ourselves up like kings here if we wanted to."

Fran put her hand over his. "I want you to promise me something. Both of you. Promise me we'll settle this once and for all at the meeting tomorrow night. I just want it to be over."

Larry was nodding. "Exile. Yeah. It never crossed my mind, but it might be the best solution. Well, I'm going to collect Lucy and Leo and get home."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Stu said.

"Yeah." He went out.

In the hour before dawn on September 2, Harold stood on the edge of Sunrise Amphitheater, looking down. The town was in a ditch of blackness. Nadine slept behind him in the small two-man tent they had picked up along with a few other camping supplies as they crept out of town.

We'll come back, though. Driving chariots.

But in his secret heart, Harold doubted that. The darkness was upon him in more ways than one. The vile bastards had stolen everything from him-Frannie, his self-respect, then his ledger, now his hope. He felt that he was going down.

The wind was strong, rippling his hair, making the tight canvas of the tent snap back and forth with a steady machine-gun popping sound. Behind him, Nadine moaned in her sleep. It was a scary sound. Harold thought she was as lost as he was, maybe worse. The sounds she made in her sleep were not the sounds of a person having happy dreams.

But I can keep sane. I can do that. If I can go down to whatever's waiting for me with my mind intact, that will be something. Yes, something.

He wondered if they were down there now, Stu and his friends, surrounding his little house, if they were waiting for him to come home so they could arrest him and throw him in the cooler. He would go down in the history books-if any of those sorry slobs were left to write them, that was-as the Free Zone's first jailbird. Welcome to hard times. HAWK CAGED HAWK CAGED, wuxtry, wuxtry, read all about it. Well, they would wait a long time. He was on his adventure, and he remembered all too clearly Nadine putting his hand on her white hair and saying, Too late, Harold. Too late, Harold. How like a corpse's her eyes had been. How like a corpse's her eyes had been.

"All right," Harold whispered. "We're going through with it."

Around and above him, the dark September wind drummed through the trees.

The Free Zone Committee meeting was rapped to order some fourteen hours later in the living room of the house Ralph Brentner and Nick Andros shared. Stu was sitting in an easy chair, tapping an end table with the rim of his beer can. "Okay, folks, we better get started here."

Glen sat with Larry on the curving lip of the freestanding fireplace, their backs to the modest fire Ralph had kindled there. Nick, Susan Stern, and Ralph himself sat on the couch. Nick held the inevitable pen and pad of notepaper. Brad Kitchner was standing just inside the doorway with a can of Coors in his hand, talking to Al Bundell, who was working a Scotch and soda. George Richardson and Chad Norris were sitting by the large window-wall watching the sunset over the Flatirons.

Frannie was sitting with her back propped comfortably against the door of the closet where Nadine had planted the bomb. Her pack, with Harold's ledger inside it, was between her folded legs.

"Order, I say, order!" Stu said, rapping harder. "That tape recorder working, baldy?"

"It's fine," Glen said. "I see your mouth is in good working order, too, East Texas."

"I oil her a little and she do just fine," Stu said, smiling. He glanced around at the eleven people spotted around the big combination living room/dining room area. "Okay ... we've got a right smart of business, but first I'd like to thank Ralph for providing the roof over our heads and the booze and the crackers-"

He's really getting good at it, Frannie thought. She tried to judge just how much Stu had changed since the day she and Harold had met him, and couldn't do it. You get too subjective about the behavior of the people you're close to, she decided. But she knew that when she had first met him, Stu would have been stricken at the thought of having to chair a meeting of almost a dozen people ... and he probably would have jumped straight up to heaven at the thought of chairing a mass Free Zone meeting of over a thousand people. She was now watching a Stu that never would have been without the plague.

It's released you, my darling, she thought. I can cry for the others and still be so proud of you and love you so much- She shifted a little, propping her back more firmly against the closet door.

"We'll have our guests speak first," Stu said, "and after that we'll have a short closed meeting. Any objections to that?"

There were none.

"Okay," Stu said. "I'll turn the floor over to Brad Kitchner, and you folks want to listen close because he's the guy that's going to put the rocks back in your bourbon in about three days."

This generated a hearty round of spontaneous applause. Blushing furiously, tugging at his tie, Brad walked to the center of the room. He came very close to tripping over a hassock on his way.

"I'm. Real. Happy. To be. Here," Brad began in a trembling monotone. He looked as if he would have been happier anywhere else, even at the South Pole, addressing a penguin convention. "The ... ah ..." He paused, examining his notes, and then brightened. "The power!" he exclaimed with the air of a man making a great discovery. "The power is almost on. Right."

He fumbled with his notes some more and then went on.

"We had two of the generators going yesterday, and as you know, one of them overloaded and blew its cookies. So to speak. What I mean is that it overlooked. Overloaded, rather. Well ... you know what I mean".

A chuckle ran through them, and it seemed to put Brad a little more at ease.