Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.

Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura Tremaine

We are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)

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Mentioned in this episode:

* Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rølvaag

* The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

* How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

* Contagion (film, 2011)

Living Inside the Book

Laura: And after a few hundred pages of peaceful community building, some stuff really happens in this section finally.

Sarah: I’d say so. I found myself traveling recently to Vegas of all places. And I was driving and I looked up at the moon and it was like fully half. And I’m like, oh, we’re not to the full moon for Tom Cullen. As if I have to wait for the full moon in my life for him to come back. I’m like real in it. I noticed every mention of Boulder. I noticed every mention when I was walking around Vegas. It feels like almost at the pace it’s happening. I’m a little stressed and I’m just in it. The anticipation of what’s going to happen next, especially after this section, is very, very high.

Laura: I am having a similar experience by doing this so slowly. I’m reading it so differently than I would read any other novel, which changes your relationship to the character. Of course it’s a reread for me. Where if you’re mildly irritated by a character, you’re just reading so fast that you don’t really sit with those emotions. You’re like, well, that’s sort of annoying, and you just keep it moving because you’re propelled by the plot or by finishing or whatever. By doing it slowly, it really changes the way I think about the characters because, like you said, we’re kind of in it real time, like they’re friends.

In the past, when I didn’t have much sympathy for Larry Underwood because he just seemed very narcissistic, on this read, doing it slowly, I’m sort of seeing the fullness of his character differently—and having a lot of sympathy for him until we get to this section and he wore me slick.

Sarah: This is always my experience with slow reads. I read War and Peace last year and I just felt like I lived about 20 percent of my life in Russia all year long. When you do a slow read, you also live a little bit in the book. You’re not hopping in and out. You’re not speeding through. You’re just existing there and soaking up all the slow changes and the atmosphere and the annoying people and the people you like and everybody’s choices. That’s why I like it so much.

Laura: Because when you read quickly, you get the high level of what an author is doing with a character. You understand if they’re meant to be manipulative or the hero. But when you go slowly, you just feel like you know them. You can sort of think about this book when you’re driving around town doing your errands, like you would think about people you know in real life. It’s just really a different experience, but I’m loving that part.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s the best. I love hanging with characters like that. Even when they’re all dying. Even when they’re all dying.

Laura: Which brings us to the bummer of this section.

Chapter 56: Babies, Bombs, and Bad News

Laura: Chapter 56, we start out — are the babies dying? This is rough. I feel like this theme is going to hit the mothers among us. The beginning of this chapter, Ralph stops Stu and tells him that a new group is coming in to join the Free Zone. There’s about 40 of them. Wonderful news. There’s a doctor among them. But not so great news is that one of them, Mrs. Wentworth, was pregnant with twins. She delivered on the road as they were walking. And both of her twins die under mysterious circumstances. Everyone’s mind immediately goes to: did the babies breathe air and immediately get the super flu?

Sarah: That doesn’t make sense virology-wise, because I’m an amateur virologist now. It would not hang out that long with no host for months and months in the hot summer sun.

Laura: But you don’t think the immune people might carry it, but they’re immune to it?

Sarah: I mean, I guess, but it has to have something to live off of. There are real virologists listening right now being like, hey, this is why you’re an amateur.

Laura: But I wonder if — was there something to what they were trying to say about because the babies were conceived before the flu hit? Is there something then, or if their biological dad had it, does that make a difference?

Sarah: Yeah, that seems to be their theory. The smaller story of Mrs. Wentworth is so much like a story in a book I read for Well-Read Mom called Giants in the Earth, which is about Swedish pioneers in like Minnesota, 1800s. This woman along the way loses a child and she kind of loses her mind a little bit, doesn’t want anybody to have the bodies. It really, really reminded me of that story. The idea that if you were traveling to what you perceived as safety with your children or while pregnant and then to lose one of them — I think it’s just a really unique psychological trauma.

And with this, the whole conversation got me thinking about with the “no more babies” — this is what I always say about Handmaid’s Tale. Like, people are like, it would never get that bad. I’m like, I don’t think you understand how quickly people would go crazy if there were no babies. I 100% believe people would lose their ever-loving minds and would be able to look past or accept any manner of horror and abuses if they thought it would get them babies.

Laura: Well, and it makes King’s choice to have Franny be pregnant such a stroke of genius to this particular story. It really came together in this section because it raises the stakes. Not just Franny’s pregnancy, but like all of humanity’s pregnancy. And it just makes it all more emotional. I’m a little worried — she hasn’t felt the baby move but one time. I keep thinking that too, but she’s not due till January and it’s August. And you don’t feel them as early with your first baby.

Sarah: I lost a pregnancy at 20 weeks and then got pregnant way too soon afterwards with Felix. And just that obsession — like all-consuming obsession with feeling the baby move and making sure everything is okay. I remember my doctor being like, come in anytime, anytime. And Felix — he was such a jerk. Anytime they would do an ultrasound, he’d be asleep. I’d be like, move, you jerk. Don’t you understand my stress level? And the doctor’s like, no, he doesn’t. And he doesn’t care.

Laura: With your first one, you really don’t know. Eventually it becomes unmistakable that the baby is moving. But there are so many twinges and little flutters, and you want it so badly to feel it that you sometimes will it to happen.

Franny being pregnant is really becoming an important part of this story. And story-wise, it also really matters that Stu is not the biological dad. There’s a lot happening here.

Sarah: That feels... Mary and Joseph.

Laura: Biblical, yes. This whole book has so many biblical things. Well, and we find out later in this section that Nadine’s going to get impregnated by the dark man, which sounds unpleasant to me, personally.

Sarah: Cold. Ew.

Nadine, Leo, and the Question of Loyalty

Laura: So at the beginning of Chapter 56, Nadine is back in her original house, packing up. And she doesn’t even realize that in the corner, Leo — formerly known as Joe — her little savage companion, is sitting in the corner in his underpants. Are we supposed to love him or what? Because I’m creeped out by him.

Sarah: I mean, Stephen King plays around a lot with powerful, psychic kids. And I don’t think they’re supposed to be deeply comforting. Because there is something about when it’s coming from someone who fundamentally doesn’t understand the world yet and isn’t mature enough to have a prefrontal cortex, it just hits different. It reminds me of Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind — he talks about what happened in the ‘60s and why people got so freaked out by psychedelics. In traditional cultures, when you’re expanding your consciousness, it’s like your guide is old. But in the ‘60s it was teenagers, and everyone was like, whoa, everything’s upside down, this is no good. That’s what Leo reminds me of. I’m interested in what he has to say, but it’s in a container that feels like it’s not capable of containing it.

Laura: Well, and also it’s interesting that Nadine has a real moment of self-awareness here where she realized she preferred him as Joe, when he was nonverbal and violent and she was the one keeping him in check. Once he meets Mother Abigail and becomes Leo, remembers his name, starts speaking — he chooses to be in a more traditional situation with Larry and Lucy more often and didn’t have as much attachment to Nadine. She discards him, which she realizes about herself. And it’s just telling you a lot about Nadine. She keeps trying to distract herself from what her mission is. She is being called to the dark man and she keeps trying to find reasons not to go. She’s trying to self-sabotage, but she stays on the path ultimately.

Sarah: What confuses me is that Leo has this advanced perception of what’s going on. He has some sort of psychic connection. He understood that Mother Abigail was going to make it across the river. So why is he drawn to Nadine? He won’t enter the house with Harold, but he’s so sad Nadine is gone. I’m like, dude, either you understand who’s on the light or the dark or you don’t.

Laura: I know. You can’t even argue that it’s because she’s wishy-washy about it all, because so is Harold. Back and forth they kind of go. And I don’t know why Leo has this relationship with Nadine.

Sarah: You’re right. It doesn’t really make any sense. I do like that Harold gets so mean to her in this chapter. Like he’s just over her. I think that is good and accurate and interesting — if a relationship is built only on everything but.

Laura: A lot of things are happening there. They’re both realizing that they’re about to have to leave the Free Zone and they both have complicated feelings about it. Which is what makes this book better than just everybody in Vegas is bad, everybody in the Free Zone is good. A lot of humanity is going to fall somewhere in the middle. Nadine and Harold are doing some exceptionally odd things, but they’re still having some sadness and regret. They’re sort of attached to the Free Zone despite their own mission. They’re not just one-dimensional evil people.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think Harold still loves Franny. Shows you the knife’s edge of love and hate that he’s planning to kill her. But I think he still kind of feels connected to her in some way. It’s also revealed in Chapter 56 that Harold is building a bomb.

Spies, Consent, and Tom Cullen’s Mission

Laura: We find out Dana is a lesbian.

Sarah: Could you blame her after the time in the harem? That might put you off men.

Laura: I know, but before that — Sue gives a little backstory to Dana. She had a real brute of a husband back in the day and then just realized, you know what, maybe I like girls. But it’s funny — not like funny haha, because I’m not insulting anyone here — but why in the world would Stu be just shocked that Dana is a lesbian? He’s really bothered by this.

Sarah: I bought it even in the ‘90s. I think people were still — and also he was living in teeny tiny Arnett, Texas. How many lesbians do you think there are in Arnett, Texas?

Laura: Not that many.

Laura: But then they all go to set Tom off on his mission. And listen, I’m sorry. I find this cruel. I do.

Sarah: I’m just too interested in what’s going to happen to be wrapped up in the ethics of it. Is there some ableist assumptions in seeing it as cruel? You’re assuming that he’s not up for it. What Nick is arguing, and what I buy to a certain extent, is that he is uniquely suited for this. Not ill-equipped — uniquely suited.

Sarah: So it’s not necessarily... Now, is there some consent issues? I feel like he feels coerced.Absolutely. But I mean, I think you could also argue that hypnosis is not mind control, right? It’s a little bit in a gray area.

Laura: Except you’re potentially sending him to his own death. It’s not like they’re coercing him to be the local PE teacher.

Sarah: Tom has — he loves his house. He loves his whole situation. He is not in the mood for this. But you have to think about what Stephen King is telling you in the scenes way back in the beginning with the tornado. When push comes to shove, he has instincts and capacity that others do not, and can save lives. I can see the case they’re making. I’m not saying I would do it. I’m just saying I don’t think they’re evil and completely cruel to do it. I understand how they got there.

Laura: I can see objectively how they got there, but it does feel like they’re taking advantage of someone who is pretty incapable of saying no to them. That said — he also can’t understand his own capacity, and they can.

Chapter 57: Destiny, Free Will, and the Drive-In

Sarah: We both underlined “this is a job for a weasel, not a lion.” I underlined that so much. It’s an interesting quote because you would usually think the opposite — except who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here? The weasels are supposed to be Flagg and his people. We’ve had literal weasel scenes where it’s Flagg. Now suddenly the good guys are the weasels. Because it’s a David and Goliath situation. They’re not going to battle him strength to strength, obviously.

Laura: David and Goliath. The ones who do consent well — the judge, Dana — they both seemed like they are fulfilling their destiny, which is the whole book to me. The whole book is asking these questions of destiny, fate, our path, our soul’s mission. Every single character is walking through that in all their different ways.

Sarah: Don’t you feel like that happens in real life all the time? Those hard moments where something intercedes and really changes the direction?

Laura: I think life is more of a soft merge than a hard right. Almost always.

Sarah: Well, I think things happen daily that are nudging us. Like last night I dreamed about a person I hadn’t thought of in years. And I was like, oh, should I reach out to them? I used the term “the Holy Spirit at work” all the time — because something happens or I bring up something and someone’s reading the same book. To me, that is the connective energetic exchange that leads us in directions. But in this book it’s dialed up to like 15. This is not a small child reading your thoughts and telling you to talk to somebody.

Laura: If that happened to me, I’d be freaked all the way out.

Sarah: Definitely. And may I remind you — in a couple of chapters — literal pushes. Literal “get out of the house” pushes.

Laura: That’s what I think the book is doing for us, though. Like, that’s why I read fiction. It’s not because I anticipate a little Mowgli character telling me to go have a certain conversation. It’s because I feel like, oh gosh, this happens in life. You can’t even deny your own path, even if you want to, even if you try.

Sarah: I like to think I’m more in control of my path than that. The choice to move home was my choice. Nobody was pushing me to do that. My husband didn’t want to do that. It was me taking the reins and saying, no, I want to go this direction.

Laura: Because that was your path.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, maybe. I didn’t think it was at the time. I wanted a certain life, and so I chose a path that would get me to the life I wanted. It’s like a balance. And I think that’s kind of what he’s playing with — we’re dealing with psychic children, and also, can everybody go turn all the appliances off, please? So the place doesn’t burn to the ground. I just like that real balance of pragmatic and psychic going on through all these chapters.

Laura: Then we get my favorite scene. Nadine is tasked by Harold with leaving the bomb in the closet at Ralph’s house — that’s where they’re going to have the committee meeting. She breaks into the house, leaves it in the closet. She keeps thinking, should I go in and take that out? Should I dismantle this bomb? But then I love this scene where she is sort of transported by — the dark man enters her. Like possesses her.

Sarah: And he was cold. Which is scary because until then he’s been sort of warm and loving to her. She’s drawn to him. He’s attractive. But now suddenly he’s cold. He sort of possesses her, drives her Vespa as her, to the drive-in movie theater.

Laura: You like this scene because you clearly don’t go to drive-in movie theaters, because now I’m going to freak out next time I go to our drive-in movie theater.

Sarah: I’ve never been to a drive-in movie theater.

Laura: What? It’s so fun. It’s the best.

Sarah: Well, this scene is so Stephen King. It is so cinematic. It’s obviously an empty drive-in movie theater. And all of the speakers — all of the speakers in the parking spots — fall down onto the ground and start emitting a message. Randall Flagg’s voice. And there’s no power yet when this happens. So it’s just so cinematic. This is my favorite kind of horror. And I got chills. The speaker is the dark man being like, Nadine, Nadine. Talking to her.

He communicates with Nadine so differently than anyone else. It’s very dramatic. Even before all this, when she was in college. He is communicating with her in a totally different way. I don’t know if that’s because she won’t hear him otherwise, or because she’s meant for such an important mission that he has to get through to her. But he’s also scaring her.

Laura: Wild. Especially the singing at the end. A creepy song really is the cherry on the sundae for me. I thought when he starts singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” — the weirdest. And she is fighting it, but she really can’t, because he’s like half-occupied her body. And then her hair goes totally white.

Sarah: Totally white. Wild. So when she goes back and tells Harold — he is so cruel to her. He’s like done with Nadine. D-O-N-E.

Laura: Not quite yet. When he sees her white hair, he’s a little freaked out and gets a little hesitant. Like, I don’t know that we should be doing this. And she’s like, it’s too late. Emotions at war on Harold’s face. Anger, horror, shame. Little by little, they drained away. And then like some terrible corpse coming up from deep water, a frozen grin resurfaced on Harold’s face.

Sarah: They are back and forth playing with who is hesitating. Maybe we shouldn’t do this. And then the other one is like, it’s too late. That’s something they both said several times. And you kind of want to be like, no, ding-dongs, it’s never too late to do the right thing.

The Twins Motif and Twin Flames

Laura: Another thing I want to mention — it keeps coming up in this section — from the beginning with Mrs. Wentworth, but then multiple times things are mentioned about twins. Not just her twins, but I circled a few different references to twins. Which made me think immediately — hashtag Taylor Swift — it made me think of twin flames.

Sarah: Well, the drive-in is called Welcome to the Holiday Twin.

Laura: That’s one of the things I circled. Twins in all kinds of traditions, mythology, even current traditions — twins and twin flames represent a conjoined connection, a soul connection, a mirror. And it’s different than a soulmate because it can also be a dark and a light. It can be like a mirror. And I feel like he’s playing with that sort of balancing — new way, old way, the choices we make, destiny. There’s definitely this balance beam that feels like it’s constantly happening within the story.

Chapter 58: The Bomb, the Committee Meeting, and RIP Nick

Sarah: Chapter 58, Stu reads Harold’s ledger and they’re like, oh, no.

Laura: But they don’t know exactly. They don’t know he’s going to bomb the committee meeting. They go to the damn committee meeting. There’s a few things that they really misjudge.

Sarah: Also, this is the first inkling I have that I’m like, I don’t love Stu right now.

Laura: Why? I love Stu.

Sarah: I know we’re meant to love Stu. I’m just like, I’m going to need a little bit more from you. Also, I’m impressed with the burial subcommittee. I mean — 25,000 corpses and better than 8,000 a week. Holy crap. They’re not individually digging graves, but that’s a lot of corpses to move.

Laura: I mean, listen, that is the Lord’s work right there. That’s rough. From a storytelling point of view, I love that King is doing this. Not only do you have the committee members, but you also have these subcommittee people — the burial guy, the power guy — basically the main leaders of anything good happening in the Free Zone.

Sarah: And then Franny’s like, we got to get out of here. I think the implication is that she also has — something is going on. Everybody has the dreams. And she’s fighting it more than a small child would or an old woman would or a Tom Cullen would. It has to be a very intense, very pivotal moment for her to not be able to deny that energetic connection.

There are also some themes here of women in particular — but really anybody — denying their own instincts or defaulting to politeness instead of safety. She doesn’t want to look hysterical. She doesn’t want to interrupt the meeting. They’re saying important things. Like, after everything y’all have lived through, you should feel comfortable being like, I don’t know how to explain this, guys, but we got to get out of the room. You’re having drinks about the dark man. This is a safe space in which to exclaim, I think we should go.

Laura: I agree. But it’s really hard to shake off the old ways of being.

Sarah: There’s a seeding of control when you acknowledge that these messages come through and you don’t understand them, but you have to listen to something you don’t understand and follow instructions you might not understand. I think that’s a lot for a human mind. I want to feel like I’m still more in control than maybe I am. I want to feel like I have my hands on the reins and I’m not just riding a horse with no idea where it’s heading.

Laura: Well, Franny in particular is really powerless in this section. She’s feeling a lot of fear around Mrs. Wentworth’s babies dying. She didn’t get a say on Tom Cullen being sent on his mission. She didn’t get much of a say in making Stu her partner as marshal. She has no power right now.

Sarah: It’s about to get worse before it gets better, Franny. But she did have the instincts. She has the ethics. But she’s not being listened to, and that dampens your voice. That makes you not want to shout to the committee, we’ve got to run. But she did. And saved her life, and saved Larry’s life, and saved Stu’s life.

Maybe not Nick.

Laura: So the bomb goes off. Nick is in the closet trying to get it. But listen, RIP. So sad Nick died. Also, we were really reaching the limits of having a deaf-mute involved in the plot. You understand? Like, there’s only so many times you can say, well, he had to read out loud what he wrote down.

Sarah: No, I disagree. It felt so different to me, the earlier parts of the book where we were with Nick and we were in his head. Now, when he’s just a participant in all these committee meetings and we have to wait for him to communicate through Ralph or Glenn — no. That was getting a little awkward.

Laura: Did you call me ableist at the beginning of this episode? And now I’m going to call you ableist.

Sarah: I’m not ableist. Nick is the reason I’m standing by Tom Cullen getting sent off. I like him. I’m just saying, story-wise, plot-wise, it was getting a little tedious. I did like how his sixth sense — not his intuitive sixth sense, but because of his lack of abilities, he can hear or sense things differently. He’s the one who felt like there was a bomb. He gets into the closet, he’s trying to dismantle it. But it ends up being the end. And we’re really out of luck because the burial guy also got killed. Who’s going to bury all the pieces of Nick? Ultimately, nine people die in Harold’s explosion.

Laura: Could have been worse. He killed two of the guys that were nice to him on the freaking burial committee. Nick, we lose. Sue, we lose. Four random townspeople. Two more die later. But here comes Mother Abigail. She’s back.

Sarah: She’s back. She’s eating herself, which is information I did not need from Dr. Richardson. Did you need to know that her poop had sticks in it?

Laura: I didn’t need to know that either. We wanted a doctor, but I’m not sure everybody was hungry for this level of information.

The Second Community Meeting: Mob Mentality vs. Leadership

Sarah: I say that like I did not enjoy his vibe at the house — but I thought his vibe when they all go to see that she’s barely alive was really beautiful. How everybody was just intuitively gathering outside Lucy and Larry’s house. And at the second committee meeting, the big meeting with everybody, his vibe was good. It was a little bit giving Dr. Fauci. Just like, I’m going to show up, I’m going to tell you what you need to know, and you can get mad at me or not. I didn’t create the situation. I’m just reporting on it, friends.

Laura: Well, you see the community itself — the whole Free Zone community — go from kumbaya, we were all drawn here by our dreams, we love each other, to being ready to defend themselves at all costs. And I feel like we’ve lived through this. We lived through this with 9/11. We went through a week of kumbaya before we were ready to go to war. We lived through this with COVID, where we went through a month of kumbaya, we’re all in the same boat, to a deeper divide than we’ve ever had.

Sarah: And I feel like King captured it pretty well here. Going from kumbaya to how are we going to defend ourselves against the dark man mob mentality. I really liked Glenn’s approach so much better than Stu’s. Stu was just sort of freaked out and disappointed. Glenn’s approach of having a little plant that could shout something and kind of ease some of the tension — let some steam out of the kettle — I thought that was such a smarter approach. Just accept that this is a natural human tendency in a group to leave the kumbaya moment. But that doesn’t mean we just go, oh, no, what do we do. Let’s exhibit some leadership.

Laura: I thought that part was really good. And also I loved this Glenn quote: they talked like people who have kept the huddled-up secrets of their guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things, when verbalized, were only life-sized after all.

My friend calls this the parasite theory. You just put the parasite on the table, and then we can go, ooh, you might need more medicine for that one. Or, see, look, it’s not that bad. I got a parasite about that size too.

Sarah: You call it manipulation. I call it leadership.

Laura: Wait, that’s merch.

Sarah: They’re not saying you don’t have a right to feel or talk or think about all these things you’ve bottled up. They’re just saying, let’s do this first before we take a vote. Let’s not take the committee vote from a place of bottled-up fear. They’re afraid, and before they can get it all out — if someone had nominated someone they liked, they would have accepted it. They didn’t like Ted Frampton. You get a Ted Frampton from a scarcity mindset. Those are the people that exploit scarcity. You have to let people process and get it out and be a little less afraid in order to really weigh their options.

Laura: I think it’s so condescending to be like, you can have your feelings, but we’re really going to do what we want to do behind the scenes.

Sarah: No, it’s not condescending. Feelings are relevant, but they are not always reality. Listen, you’re talking like somebody who’s never run for office, so I’m going to pull that card right now. I have run and served in office. And you get in a meeting where people are just spilling their stuff all over the table and you’re like, what is the point of this? And I’m supposed to empower these people to make decisions right now when all they really want to do is just be mad? It’s just acknowledging how humans are. It’s inevitable that they go from kumbaya to let’s eat the young. You don’t want to empower people in those moments. You want to use a process to direct them to a more reasonable state of mind. It’s not that you’re going to cheat them out of their vote. The founding fathers spent a lot of time on this — let’s slow the process way down with checks and balances so that it’s not easy in these passionate moments to do a lot of dramatic things.

Laura: It’s anti-populist.

Sarah: Yeah, a little bit. And you know what? Fine with it. Sounds good to me. This particular moment in America’s history.

Mother Abigail’s Final Instructions

Laura: But then before she does, Mother Abigail has some things to say. And in like the span of 12 hours, the power comes back on. The day after the committee meeting, Mother Abigail summons the committee to her bedside where they are shocked at how bad she looks.

Sarah: How do you feel about the great, god-ordained character being so weakened?

Laura: I think that’s great. How did Jesus die? Not in a blaze of glory. Surrounded by criminals on a cross. I think he’s really playing with these threads — Randall Flagg is all powerful and wants that power and exerts it over other people, whereas she has this power but sacrifices it because of her own pride, to empower others. They could not be in sharper contrast to each other.

Sarah: But I think it’s crazy he never tells us more about her journey in the wilderness. We never got a glimpse of her on that journey. Like, it’s just a black box. She’s coming back and pooping sticks, and that’s all we know. Except that she knows the instructions.

Laura: She did come back with some pretty hardcore instructions. Y’all are going west. One of you is not going to make it. There’s going to be a stand. I won’t be there because I’m dying.

Sarah: This is the dun-dun-dun moment of the book when she says, it is there that you will make your stand. And then: with God’s help, you will stand. So this is where we get what the book is now coming to. I kind of like that she says it so explicitly. And I think the title is so strong. It’s not standoff. It’s not standdown. You know, it’s the stand. It’s really a strong, but a little ambiguous, title. What does that even mean before you read it?

Laura: But here’s the thing — she’s telling them some things very explicitly, but then she’s leaving a lot open-ended. She tells them they have to go — and Franny, no likey this instruction. She is very upset to the point where Mother Abigail grabs her wrists and heals her of her hurt back and messed-up neck from the couch falling on her during the bombing. And she sees a vision of an empty nursery. But when Franny’s like, is the baby going to make it? Mother Abigail is like, rah, rah, rah. See you later. I’m dying now. So she doesn’t get the whole thing.

Sarah: The mission Mother Abigail has spelled out is that the four men — Larry, Stu, Ralph, and Glenn — have to start walking west. They can’t take anything with them. No food, provisions, luggage, nothing — weapons, I don’t even think. They have to wear the clothes on their back and just start walking.

Laura: But they did put on better shoes. And you know what? Kudos. Let Rita have not died for nothing. All I’m saying. Wear better shoes.

Sarah: But we’ve talked completely through this whole book about how he is treating women in this story. We killed off Sue. Franny is a hysterical, hormonal woman. Nadine has very little agency — she’s basically just a vessel apparently for Randall Flagg’s devil. I defend a lot of what King does with women and I do not think King is anti-women at all, having read so much of his work. But in this story, it feels like he always just sort of wanted to ditch the women and get down to the men making this walk.

Laura: Yeah, a little bit. I think so. The baby has to be a boy because she’s the Virgin Mary who’s not really a virgin, and the baby is Jesus. Except for — Franny being pregnant is the X factor here. I kind of respect Franny being like, this god sucks, I don’t want to follow this god. At least she tries to fight back. Then she gets healed.

Sarah: No, it does feel a little bit like that to me. Like we just had to get down to these four guys and then they start walking. And Larry says, I feel like this is the end of everything. And I’m like, me too. What the hell are these four dudes going to do? Maybe with an assist by Judge Ferris and Tom Cullen, perhaps. Fingers crossed. How the hell are they going to take on Randall Flagg?

Laura: I have concerns.

Sarah: I have concerns. I also think it’s interesting that he’s picking up the walking again. As someone who just drove three hours from Utah to Vegas going 80 miles an hour — this is a hell of a journey they’re about to take from Boulder, Colorado to Las Vegas on their feet.

Laura: He loves to walk. Larry took a walk. Stu took a walk. Stu’s walk was healing. Larry almost died. Trashcan Man was walking. Flagg is called the walking dude. There’s always walking. There’s power in walking.

Sarah: I’m just saying this is a long walk with no food and no water and just better shoes. This is my beef with Hadestown at the end. I’m like, this is just men on their bullshit. Follow the directions. It’s not that hard.

Laura: Well, we should end with Larry’s quote.

Sarah: I feel like this is the end of everything.

Laura: I hope not, because our sign-off is “see you on the other side.” So I hope there’s another side.

Sarah: There’s another book — a whole other book left.

Next Up: Book Three begins! In the meantime, Sarah and Laura are also discussing the film Contagion — watch it, binge it, rent it before the next episode so you’re ready for the conversation.

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