the stand: chapters 6-8

i think i'm going to try to blog a little differently. as the chapters are getting longer, i think it's going to be harder to do a separate synopsis and commentary so i am just going to combine the two. let me know which you like better, reader.

chapter six puts us back with frannie goldsmith. remember her? she's the "little bit preggers" chick from chapter 2. frannie is 21 and in college in new hampshire but she's back in ogunquit, maine with her parents for the summer. right now, she comes home to find her father gardening and her mother gone shopping. i get the impression that her parents are well-to-do; her mother is in portland shopping for white gloves for a wedding. now i grew up poor and i never went out of town to shop for gloves, lol, so this is mainly what gives me the impression that they are indeed well-off financially. fran goes to see her father and tell him about the baby but before she does we learn a bit about carla, frannie's mother. she's an old-fashioned woman who finds it hard to believe that frannie's not at college husband-hunting. she also has a sharp tongue and apparently having that unleashed on you would be a bad idea. i think frannie is afraid of telling her mother about the baby but she's more afraid of telling her father, because his disapproval would be more devastating. she's probably had a lot of disapproval from mom over the years but dad is the one who's always "had her back."  i can relate to frannie because i've got people in my life who i dont want to let down and then there's people i love who i know i cannot please no matter what i do and anything i do will always be a bit of a disappointment. peter goldsmith has learned over the years to bite his tongue and i guess frannie has learned to do the same thing. so frannie tells her dad she's pregnant and jess (babydaddy) has offered to marry her or pay for an abortion, whichever frannie chooses to do. peter assures her he's not disappointed in her and he doesnt blame her but her mom will have a lot to say about blame.

all in all we learn more about frannie and her personality. she gets the giggles too much and apparently her mom used to too. frannie finds it hard to believe her mom ever giggled or drank beer or ever had a good time. peter explains that the death of fred, frannie's older brother, changed carla and she basically shut off when he died. fred was her favorite and frannie is peter's. frannie decides an abortion wouldn't be cool and that she wants to keep the baby. frannie is still a young woman and the world has been good to her, for the most part. but frannie's about to fall on hard times and the fate of her and the baby are hanging in the balance. ooh the plot thickens!!

let's travel down the eastern shoreline to georgia for chapter 7. remember vic palfrey? he was keeping bill hapscomb company at the texaco when the state patrolman came to give them the heads-up about the pathologists. well, vic is in a hospital bed somewhere in atlanta but not just a regular hospital, mind you; this one has steel doors and doctors in spacesuits. so we know vic is very sick and he's being treated and observed by an arsenal doctors and scientists but vic is delirious and his "magic hour" is over. the whole texaco crew and their families are in atlanta, including norm "jerk" bruett, lila, and the kids.

woowee i loves me some stu redman, he's my fav character in the whole story. not to mention the fact that every time i read it now i see gary sinise, who played stu in the movie version. and i loves me some gary sinise. lol. anyway, back to the story....chapter 7 concludes in a hospital room with stu. he's not sick and the scientists and doctors want to keep testing him to find out why. however, stu is fed up with being kept in the dark and refuses to cooperate any more.  he recalls being taken into custody and the ride down to atlanta with several of his fellow citizens, all of whom appeared in some way or another to be sick, from a case of the sniffles all the way to a bad case of fever and fainting (norm bruett). oh and mix in a little bit of hysteria on the part of lila and it was a plane ride made in heaven! stu remembers the ride to the airport and remembers seeing soldiers cordoning off the entire town with barbed wire. so the town's in quarantine but it hasnt made it on the news yet. stu knows this because he has a tv in his hospital room. he's definitely getting scared but he's keeping his poker face on. let them see your weakness and your fear and they'll never give you any answers, that's stu's thoughts.

by now the story is starting to get good, it's digging it's claws into my brain and doesnt want to let go. will stu get sick? if not, why?? he's locked up in a steel hospital room while the world is dying. surely nothing good can come of this. **bites fingernails** oh, and on the ride to the airport from arnette, stu noticed that one of the soldiers became sick. it's implied that he wasnt sick before the ride. so in the short period of time that the solider was exposed to the sick texaco crew, he developed a sneeze. holy cow, it's incubating faster now! ooh this cannot be good!!

chapter 8: the captain trips chain letter. it basically outlines how project blue, captain trips, the virus in question, made it from one state patrolman (joe bob, bill hapscomb's cousin/messenger man) to a speeding driver, to a diner full of people in east texas. all those folks carried it away to their families, friends, coworkers, and any strangers they passed along the way. we see the virus splinter and go its many ways, like a firework exploding in the night sky; too many sparks to count, going too many ways to follow at once, or to even comprehend. ripples on the surface of the water....starts out tiny and grows and grows until it's not even discernible.

 chapters 9 and 10 tomorrow. they're getting longer so i think we're probably gonna have to stick to 2 a day, otherwise this is going to become more like a chore than a project of fun. thanks for reading, and comment if you want!