FALL

"I met the walking dude, religious, in his wom down cowboy boots / He walked liked no man on earth / I swear he had no name / I swear he had no name."
—from "The Stand" by The Alarm

"He walked rapidly, rundown bootheels clocking against the paved surface of the road, and if car lights showed on the horizon he faded back and back, down over the soft shoulder to the high grass where the night bugs made their homes..."
—page 180, The Stand by Stephen King

The Puyallup Fair ended yesterday. The furnace kicked on multiple times this morning to fight against the overnight chill that gathered in the corners of our home. The smell of onion rings and hamburgers from Johnny's and the aroma of sweet-and-sour chicken from Happy Teriyaki is wafting through the cooling air, stronger due to the drop in temperature, a punctuation of sorts.

It is early evening on the first day of autumn. The child and I are walking on a paved trail alongside the Puyallup River, beneath a canopy of cottonwood leaves in ochre, olive, and orange. The leaves rustle in the chilly breeze, an occasional flash of gold against the Fabergé blue of the dusk sky.

I am wearing boots this evening and peer down at my feet as I walk, catching their steady rhythm in my ears, my mind. I think of Randall Flagg, the dark man, the walking dude of Stephen King's The Stand. I am not quite sure why. It frightens me a little, this identification with Flagg.

Nevertheless, I can picture him walking through the wild places along the highway from Idaho into Nevada. I imagine the dreams of those he calls to him in their fitful attempts at sleep—Trashcan Man and Lloyd and the collection of other misfits and criminals and miscreants. In some sense, I know these people, these characters.

I wrestle with my pace, to keep it mine, rather than Flagg's.

I can hear the song by The Alarm, inspired by the story: "Come on down and meet your Maker..."

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I find that I cannot recall the names of the "good guys." I have to go and grab my copy of The Stand off its bookshelf in my library and scan for their names—Stu, Glen, Nick, Nadine, Frannie, Harold, Tom (M-O-O-N), and Mother Abigail—as well as the city they meet in. (It is Boulder, Colorado.)

Does this speak something of me?

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The Stand was one of my favorite novels growing up. I read it many times. I was intrigued by the devastation delivered by the human-engineered superflu Captain Trips. I was enamored by the Manichean dualism and "cosmic" mythology of post-apocalyptic America that King envisioned. I saw the sprawling mess of the novel, with its vast expanse in the middle of the book, as a metaphor for America in its own right—a contemporary Moby Dick or The Grapes of Wrath.

It may be time to read it again.