Desperation (55 page)

Fix your eyes, Johnny,
Terry said.
Fix your eyes so you can look at him without a single blink. You know how to do that, don't you?

Yes, he certainly did. He remembered something an old literature prof of his had said, back when dinosaurs still walked the earth and Ralph Houk still managed the New York Yankees. Lying is fiction, this crusty old reptile had proclaimed with a dry and cynical grin, fiction is art, and therefore all art is a lie.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, stand back as I prepare to practice art on this unsuspecting young prophet.

He turned to David and met David's concerned gaze with a rueful little smile. “No God-bombs, David. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Then what just happened?”

“I had a seizure. Everything just came down on me at once and I had a seizure. As a young man, I used to have one every three or four months.
Petit mal.
Took medication and they went away. When I started drinking heavily around the age of forty—well, thirty-five, and there was a little more involved than just booze, I guess—they came back. Not so
petit
by then, either. The seizures are the main reason I keep trying to go on the wagon. What you just saw was the first one in almost”—he paused, pretending to count back—“eleven months. No booze or cocaine involved this time, either. Just plain old stress.”

He got rolling again. He didn't want to look around now; if he did he would be looking to see how much of it David was buying, and the kid might pick up on
that.
It sounded crazy, paranoid, but Johnny knew it wasn't. The kid was amazing and spooky . . . like an Old Testament prophet who has just come striding out of an Old Testament desert, skinburned by the sun and brainburned by God's inside information.

Better to tuck his gaze away, keep it to himself, at least for the time being.

From the corner of his right eye he could see David studying him uncertainly. “Is that really the truth, Johnny?” he asked finally. “No bullshit?”

“Really the truth,” Johnny said, still not looking directly at him. “Zero bullshit.”

David asked no more questions . . . but he kept glancing over at him. Johnny discovered he could actually feel that glance, like soft, skilled fingers patting their way along the top of a window, feeling for the catch that would unlock it.

Chapter 5

1

Tak sat on
the north
side of the rim, talons digging into the rotted hide of an old fallen tree. Now literally eagle-eyed, it had no trouble picking out the vehicles below. It could even see the two people in the ATV: the writer behind the wheel, and, next to him, the boy.

The shitting prayboy.

Here after all.

Both
of them here after all.

Tak had met the boy briefly in the boy's vision and had tried to divert him, frighten him, send him away before he could find the one that had summoned him. It hadn't been able to do it.
My God is strong,
the boy had said, and that was clearly true.

It remained to be seen, however, if the boy's God was strong
enough.

The ATV stopped short of the yellow truck. The writer and the boy appeared to be talking. The boy's
dama
started walking toward them, a rifle in one hand, then stopped as the open vehicle began moving forward again. Then they were together once more, all those who remained, joined again in spite of its efforts.

Yet all was not lost. The eagle's body wouldn't last long—an hour, two at the most—but right now it was strong and hot and eager, a honed weapon which Tak grasped in the most intimate way. It ruffled the bird's wings and rose into the air as the
dama
embraced his
damane.
(It was losing its human language rapidly now, the eagle's small
can toi
brain incapable of holding it, and reverting back to the simple but powerful tongue of the unformed.)

It turned, glided out over the well of darkness which was the China Pit, turned again, and spiraled down toward the black square of the drift. It landed, uttering a single loud
quowwwk!
as its talons sorted the scree for a good grip. Thirty yards down the drift, pallid reddish-pink light glowed. Tak looked at this for a moment, letting the light of the
an tak
fill and soothe the bird's primitive marble of a brain, then hopped a short distance into the tunnel. Here was a little niche on the left side. The eagle worked its way into it and then stood quiet, wings tightly folded, waiting.

Waiting for all of them, but mostly for Prayboy. It would rip Prayboy's throat out with one of the golden eagle's powerful talons, his eyes with the other; Prayboy would be dead before any of them knew what had happened. Before the
os dam
himself knew what had happened, or even realized he was dying blind.

2

Steve had brought a blanket—an
old faded plaid thing—along to cover the boss's scoot with in the event that he
did
end up having to transport the Harley to the West Coast in the back of the truck. When Johnny and David pulled up in the ATV, Mary Jackson had this blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a tartan shawl. The truck's rear door had been run up and she was sitting there with her feet on the bumper, holding the blanket together in front of her. In her other hand was one of the few remaining bottles of Jolt. She thought she had never tasted anything sweeter in her whole life. Her hair was plastered flat against her head in a sweaty helmet. Her eyes were huge. She was shivering in spite of the blanket, and felt like a refugee in a TV newsclip. Something about a fire or an earthquake. She watched Ralph give his son a fierce one-armed hug, the Ruger .44 in his other hand, actually lifting David up off his feet and then setting him down again.

Mary slid to the ground, and staggered a little. The muscles of her legs were still trembling from her run.
I ran for my life,
she thought,
and that's something I'll never be able to explain, not by talking, probably not even in a poem—how it is to run not for a meal or a medal or a prize or to catch a train but for your very fucking
life.

Cynthia put a hand on her arm. “You okay?”

“I'll be fine,” she said. “Give me five years and I'll be in the goddam pink.”

Steve joined them. “No sign of her,” he said—meaning Ellen, Mary supposed. Then he went over to David and Marinville. “David? All right?”

“Yes,” David said. “So's Johnny.”

Steve looked at the man he had been hired to shepherd, his face noncommittal. “That so?”

“I think so,” Marinville said. “I had . . .” He glanced at David. “You tell him, cabbage. You got the head on you.”

David smiled wanly at that. “He had a change of heart. And if it was my mother you were looking for . . . the thing that was inside my mother . . . you can stop. She's dead.”

“You're sure?”

David pointed. “We'll find her body about halfway up the embankment.” Then, in a voice which struggled to be matter-of-fact and failed, he added: “I don't want to look at her. When you move her out of the way, I mean. Dad, I don't think you should, either.”

Mary walked over to them, rubbing the backs of her thighs, where the ache was the worst. “The Ellen-body is finished, and it couldn't quite catch me. So it's stuck in its hole again, isn't it?”

“Ye-es . . .”

Mary didn't like the doubtful sound of David's voice. There was more guessing than knowing in it.

“Did it have anyone else it
could
get into?” Steve asked. “
Is
there anyone else up here? A hermit? An old prospector?”

“No,” David said. More certain now.

“It's fallen and it can't get up,” Cynthia said, and pumped her fist at the star-littered sky. “
Yesss!
”

“David?” Mary asked.

He turned to her.

“We're not done, even if it
is
stuck in there. Are we? We're supposed to close the drift.”

“First the
an tak,
” David said, nodding, “then the drift, yeah. Seal it in, like it was before.” He glanced at his father.

Ralph put an arm around him. “If you say so, David.”

“I'm up for it,” Steve said. “I can't wait to see where this guy takes his shoes off and puts his feet up on the hassock.”

“I was in no particular hurry to get to Bakersfield, anyway,” Cynthia said.

David looked at Mary.

“Of course. It was God that showed me how to get out, you know. And there's Peter to think about. It killed my husband. I think I owe it a little something for Peter.”

David looked at Johnny.

“Two questions,” Johnny said. “First, what happens when this is over? What happens here? If the Desperation Mining Corporation comes back in and starts working the China Pit again, they'll most likely reopen the China Shaft. Won't they? So what good is it?”

David actually grinned. To Mary he looked relieved, as if he had expected a much tougher question. “That's not our problem—that's
God's
problem. Ours is to close the
an tak
and the tunnel from there to the outside. Then we ride away and never look back. What's your other question?”

“Could I take you out for an ice cream when this is over? Tell you some high school war stories?”

“Sure. As long as I can tell you to stop when they get, you know, boring.”

“Boring stories are not in my repertoire,” Johnny said loftily.

The boy walked back to the truck with Mary, slipping his arm around her waist and leaning his head against her arm as if she were his mother. Mary guessed she could be that for awhile, if he needed her to be. Steve and Cynthia took the cab; Ralph and Johnny Marinville sat on the floor of the box a across from Mary and David.

When the truck stopped halfway up the grade, Mary felt David's grip on her waist tighten and put an arm around his shoulders. They had come to the place where his mother—her shell, anyway—had finished up. He knew it as well as she did. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly through his mouth. Mary put a hand on the side of his head and urged him wordlessly with it. He came willingly enough, putting his face against her breast. The light, rapid mouth-breathing went on, and then she felt the first of his tears wetting her shirt. Across from her, David's father was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands over his face.

“That's all right, David,” she murmured, and began stroking his hair. “That's all right.”

Doors slammed. Feet crunched on the gravel. Then, faintly, Cynthia Smith's voice, full of horror: “Oh jeez,
look
at her!”

Steve: “Be quiet, stupid, they'll hear you.”

Cynthia: “Oh sugar. Sorry.”

Steve: “Come on. Help me.”

Ralph took his hands away from his face, wiped a sleeve across his eyes, then came across to Mary's side of the truck and put his arm around David. David groped for his father's hand and took it. Ralph's stricken, streaming eyes met Mary's, and she began to cry herself.

She could now hear shuffling steps from outside as Steve and Cynthia carried Ellen out of the road. There was a pause, a little grunt of effort from the girl, and then the footsteps came back to the truck. Mary was suddenly sure that Steve would walk around to the back and tell the boy and his father some outrageous lie—foolishness about how Ellen looked peaceful, like she was maybe just taking a nap out here in the middle of nowhere. She tried to send him a message:
Don't do it, don't come back here and tell well-meaning lies, you can only make things worse. They've been in Desperation, they've seen what's there, don't try to kid them about what
's out here.

The steps paused. Cynthia murmured. Steve said something in return. Then they got back into the truck, the doors slammed, the engine revved, and they started off again. David kept his face pressed against her a moment or two longer, then raised his head. “Thanks.”

She smiled, but the truck's rear door was still up and she supposed enough light was getting in for David to see that she had also wept. “Any time,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “Really.”

She clasped her arms around her knees and looked out the back of the truck, watching the dust spume up. She could still see the blinker-light, a yellow spark in the wide sweep of the dark, but now it was going in the wrong direction, drawing away from them. The world—the one she had always thought to be the
only
world—also seemed to be drawing away from her now. Malls, restaurants, MTV, Gold's Gym workouts, and occasional hot sex in the afternoon, all drawing away.

And it's all so easy,
she thought.
As easy as a penny slipping through a hole in your pocket.

“David?” Johnny asked. “Do you know how Tak got into Ripton in the first place?”

David shook his head.

Johnny nodded as if that was what he had expected and sat back, resting his head against the side of the truck. Mary realized that, as exasperating as Marinville could be, she sort of liked him. And not just because he had come back with David; she had sort of liked him ever since . . . well, since they were looking for guns, she guessed. She'd scared him, but he had bounced back. She guessed he was the kind of guy who had made a second career out of bouncing back from stuff. And when he wasn't concentrating on being an asshole, he could be amusing.

The .30-.06 was lying beside him. Johnny felt around for it without raising his head, picked it up, and laid it across his knees. “I suspect I may miss a lecture tomorrow evening,” he said to the ceiling. “It was to be on the subject ‘Punks and Post-literates: American Writing in the Twenty-first Century.' I shall have to return the advance. ‘Sad, sad, sad, George and Martha.' That's from—”

“Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,”
Mary said. “Edward Albee. We're not
all
bozos on this bus.”

“Sorry,” Johnny said, sounding startled.

“Just be sure to put the apology in your journal,” she said, without the slightest idea of what she was talking about. He lowered his head to look at her, frowned for a moment, then started laughing. After a moment, Mary joined him. Then David was also laughing, and Ralph joined in. His was surprisingly high-pitched for a big man, a kind of cartoon tee-hee, and thinking that made Mary laugh even harder. It hurt her scraped stomach, but the hurt didn't stop her.

Steve pounded on the back of the cab. It was impossible to tell if his muffled voice was amused or alarmed. “What's going on?”

In his best lion's voice, Johnny Marinville roared back: “Be quiet, you Texas longhorn! We're discussing
literature
back here!”

Mary screamed with laughter, one hand pressed to the base of her throat, the other curled against her throbbing belly. She wasn't able to stop until the truck reached the crest of the embankment, crossed the rim, and started down the far side. Then all the humor went out of her at once. The others stopped at about the same time.

“Do you feel it?” David asked his father.

“I feel
something.
”

Mary started shivering. She tried to remember if she had been shivering before, while she was laughing, and couldn't. They felt something, yes, she had no doubt that they did. They might have felt even more if they had been out here earlier, if they'd had to get up this same road before the bleeding thing just behind could—

Push it out of your head, Mare. Push it out and lock the door.

“Mary?” David asked.

She looked at him.

“It won't be much longer.”

“Good.”

Five minutes later—very long minutes—the truck stopped and the cab doors opened. Steve and Cynthia came around to the back. “Hop out, you guys,” Steve said. “Last stop.”

Mary worked herself out of the truck, wincing at every move. She hurt all over, but her legs were the worst. If she had sat in the back of the truck much longer, she reckoned she probably wouldn't have been able to walk at all.

“Johnny, do you still have those aspirin?”

He handed them over. She took three, washing them down with the last of her Jolt. Then she walked around to the front of the truck.

They were at the bottom of the China Pit, first time for the others, second for her. The field office was near; looking at it, thinking of what was inside and of how close she had probably come to ending her existence in there, made her feel like screaming. Then her eyes fixed on the cruiser, the driver's door still open, the hood still raised, the air-cleaner still lying by the left front tire.

“Put your arm around me,” she told Johnny.

He did, looking down at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Now walk me over to that car.”

“Why?”

“There's something I have to do.”

“Mary, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish,” David said.

“This'll only take a second. Come on, Shakespeare. Let's go.”

He walked her over to the car, his arm around her waist, the .30-.06 in his free hand. She supposed he could feel her trembling, but that was all right. She nerved herself, gnawing at her lower lip, remembering the ride into town in the back of this car. Sitting with Peter behind the mesh. Smelling Old Spice and the metallic scent of her own fear. No doorhandles. No window-cranks. And nothing to look at but the back of Entragian's sunburned neck and that stupid blank-eyed bear stuck to the dashboard.

She leaned into Entragian's stink—except it was really
Tak's
stink, she knew that now—and ripped the bear off the dashboard. Now its blank
can toi
eyes stared directly up at hers, as if asking her what all this foolishness could possibly be about, what good it could possibly accomplish, what evil it could possibly change.

“Well,” she told it, “
you'
re
gone, motherfucker, and that's step one.” She dropped it to the rough surface of the pit and then stamped down on it. Hard. She felt it crunch under her sneaker. It was, in some fundamental way, the most satisfying moment of the whole miserable nightmare.

“Don't tell me,” Johnny said. “It's some new variation of est therapy. A symbolic affirmation expressly designed for stressful life-passages, sort of an ‘I'm okay, you're stomped to shit' kind of thing. Or—”

“Shut up,” she said, not unkindly. “And you can let loose of me now.”

“Do I have to?” His hand moved on her waist. “I was just getting familiar with the topography.”