Desperation (35 page)

“What are you
talking
about?” Audrey sounded close to tears. “Isn't what's happening bad enough without turning it into some kind of a . . . a campfire story?”

“Yes,” Johnny said, speaking in a low, compassionate voice that he hardly recognized. “But that doesn't change things.”

“I listen and talk better when I'm not starving to death,” Mary remarked. “I don't suppose there's anything to eat in this place, is there?”

Tom Billingsley shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “Well, no, not a whole lot, ma'am. Mostly we came here in the evenings to drink and talk over the old days.”

She sighed. “That's what I thought.”

He pointed vaguely across toward the stage-right entrance. “Marty Ives brought in a little bag of somethin a couple of nights ago. Probably sardines. Marty loves sardines and crackers.”

“Yuck,” Mary said, but she looked interested almost in spite of herself. Johnny supposed that in another two or three hours even anchovies would look good to her.

“I'll take a peek, maybe he brought in something else,” Billingsley said. He didn't sound hopeful.

David got up. “I'll do it, if you want.”

Billingsley shrugged. He was looking at Audrey again and seemed to have lost interest in Marty Ives's sardines. “There's a light-switch to the left just as you get offstage. Straight ahead you'll see some shelves. Anything people brought to eat, they most generally put it on those. You might find some Oreos, too.”

“You guys might've drunk a tad too much, but at least you kept the minimum nutrition needs in mind,” Johnny said. “I like that.” The vet gave him a glance, shrugged, and went back to Audrey Wyler's legs. She seemed not to notice his interest in them. Or to care.

David started across the stage, then went back and picked up the .45. He glanced at his father, but Ralph was staring vacantly out into the house again, at red plush seats which faded back into the gloom. The boy put the gun carefully into the pocket of his jeans so that only the handle stuck out, then started offstage. As he passed Billingsley he said, “Is there running water?”

“This is the desert, son. When a building goes vacant, they turn the water off.”

“Crud. I've still got soap all over me. It itches.”

He left them, crossed the stage, and leaned into the opening over there. A moment later the light came on. Johnny relaxed slightly—only realizing as he did that part of his mind had expected something to jump the boy—and realized Billingsley was looking at him.

“What that kid did back there—the way he got out of that cell—that was impossible,” Billingsley said.

“Then we must still be back there, locked up,” Johnny said. He thought he sounded all right—pretty much like himself—but what the old veterinarian was saying had already occurred to him. Even a phrase to describe it had occurred to him—
unobtrusive miracles.
He would have written it down in his notebook, if he hadn't dropped it beside Highway 50. “Is that what you think?”

“No, we're here, and we saw him do what he did,” Billingsley said. “Greased himself up with soap and squeezed out through the bars like a watermelon seed. Looked like it made sense, didn't it? But I tell you, friend, not even Houdini could have done it that way. Because of the head. He shoulda stuck at the head, but he didn't.” He looked them over, one by one, finishing with Ralph. Ralph was looking at Billingsley now instead of at the seats, but Johnny wasn't sure he understood what the old guy was saying. And maybe that was for the best.

“What are you driving at?” Mary asked.

“I'm not sure,” Billingsley replied. “But I think we'd do well to kind of gather 'round young Master Carver.” He hesitated, then added: “The oldtimers say that any campfire does on a cold night.”

2

It picked the dead coyote
up and examined it. “
Soma
dies;
pneuma
departs; only
sarx
remains,” it said in a voice that was a paradox: both sonorous and entirely without tone. “So it has always been; so shall it always be; life sucks, then you die.”

It carried the animal downstairs, paws and shattered head dangling, body swaying like a bloody fur stole. The creature holding it stood for a moment inside the main doors of the Municipal Building, looking out into the blowy dark, listening to the wind.

“So cah set!”
it exclaimed, then turned away and took the animal into the Town Office. It looked at the coathooks to the right of the door and saw immediately that the girl—Pie, to her brother—had been taken down and wrapped in a drape.

Its pale face twisted in anger as it looked at the child's covered form.

“Took her down!” it told the dead coyote in its arms. “Rotten boy took her down! Stupid, troublemaking boy!”

Yes. Feckless boy. Rude boy.
Foolish
boy. In some ways that last was the best, wasn't it? The truest. Foolish prayboy trying to make at least some part of it come right, as if any part of a thing like this ever
could
be, as if death were an obscenity that could be scrubbed off life's wall by a strong arm. As if the closed book could be reopened and read again, with a different ending.

Yet its anger was twisted through with fear, like a yellow stitch through red cloth, because the boy was not giving up, and so the rest of them were not giving up. They should not have dared to run from

(Entragian her it them)

even if their cell doors had been standing wide open. Yet they had. Because of the boy, the wretched overblown prideful praying boy, who had had the insolence to take down his little cunt of a sister and try to give her something approximating a decent burial—

A kind of dull warmth on its fingers and palms. It looked down and saw that it had plunged Ellen's hands into the coyote's belly all the way to the wrists.

It had intended to hang the coyote on one of the hooks, simply because that was what it had done with some of the others, but now another idea occurred. It carried the coyote across to the green bundle on the floor, knelt, and pulled the drape open. It looked down with a silent snarling mouth at the dead girl who had grown inside this present body.

That he should have covered her!

It pulled Ellen's hands, now dressed in lukewarm blood-gloves, out of the coyote and laid the animal down on top of Kirsten. It opened the coyote's jaws and placed them around the child's neck. There was something both grisly and fantastic about this
tableau de la mort;
it was like a woodcut illustration from a black fairy-tale.

“Tak,”
it whispered, and grinned. Ellen Carver's lower lip split open when it did. Blood ran down her chin in an unnoticed rill. The rotten, presumptuous little boy would probably never view this revision of his revision, but how nice it was to imagine his reaction to it if he did! If he saw how little his efforts had come to, how easily respect could be snatched back, how naturally zero reasserted itself in the artificially concocted integers of men.

It pulled the drape up to the coyote's neck. Now the child and the beast almost seemed to be lovers. How it wished the boy were here! The father, too, but especially the boy. Because it was the boy who so badly needed instruction.

It was the boy who was the dangerous one.

There was scuttering from behind it, a sound too low to be heard . . . but it heard it anyway. It pivoted on Ellen's knees and saw the recluse spiders returning. They came through the Town Office door, turned left, then streamed up the wall, over posters announcing forthcoming town business and soliciting volunteers for this fall's Pioneer Days extravaganza. Above the one announcing an informational meeting at which Desperation Mining Corporation officials would discuss the resumption of copper mining at the so-called China Pit, the spiders re-formed their circle.

The tall woman in the coverall and the Sam Browne belt got up and approached them. The circle on the wall trembled, as if expressing fear or ecstasy or perhaps both. The woman put bloody hands together, then opened them to the wall, palms out.
“Ah lah?”

The circle dissolved. The spiders scurried into a new shape, moving with the precision of a drill-team putting on a halftime show. T, they made, then broke up, scurried, and made an H. An E followed, an A, another T, another E—

It waved them off while they were still scrambling around up there, deciding how to fall in and make an R.

“En tow,”
it said.
“Ras.”

The spiders gave up on their R and resumed their faintly trembling circle.

“
Ten ah?”
it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the
ini.
The woman with Ellen Carver's fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen's fingers against Ellen's collarbones, then waved Ellen's hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.

It walked back out into the hall, not looking at the spiders streaming about its feet. The spiders would be available if it needed them, and that was all that mattered.

It stood at the double doors, once more looking out into the night. It couldn't see the old movie house, but that was all right; it knew where The American West was, about an eighth of a mile north of here, just past the town's only intersection. And, thanks to the fiddlebacks, she now knew where
they
were, as well.

Where
he
was. The shitting little prayboy.

3

Johnny Marinville told his story
again—all of it, this time. For the first time in a good many years he tried to keep it short—there were critics all over America who would have applauded, partly in disbelief. He told them about stopping to take a leak, and how Entragian had planted the pot in his saddlebag while he was doing it. He told them about the coyotes—the one Entragian had seemed to talk to and the others, posted along the road at intervals like a weird honor guard—and about how the big cop had beaten him up. He recounted the murder of Billy Rancourt, and then, with no appreciable change in his voice, about how the buzzard had attacked him, seemingly at Collie Entragian's command.

There was an expression of frank disbelief on Audrey Wyler's face at this, but Johnny saw Steve and the skinny little girl he'd picked up somewhere along the way exchange a look of sick understanding. Johnny didn't glance around to see how the others were taking it, but instead looked down at his hands on his knees, concentrating as he did when he was trying to work through a tough patch of composition.

“He wanted me to suck his cock. I think that was supposed to start me gibbering and begging for mercy, but I didn't find the idea as shocking as Entragian maybe expected. Cocksucking's a pretty standard sexual demand in situations where authority's exceeded its normal bounds and restrictions, but it's not what it looks like. On the surface, rape is about dominance and aggression. Underneath, though, it's about fear-driven anger.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ruth,” Audrey said. “Next ve vill be discussink ze imberdence.”

Johnny looked at her without rancor. “I did a novel on the subject of homosexual rape.
Tiburon.
Not a big critical success, but I talked to a lot of people and got the basics down pretty well, I think. The point is, he made me mad instead of scaring me. By then I'd decided I didn't have a lot to lose, anyway. I told him that I'd take his cock, all right, but once it was in my mouth I'd bite it off. Then . . . then . . .”

He thought harder than he had in at least ten years, nodding to himself as he did.

“Then I threw one of his own nonsense-words back at him. At least it
seemed
like nonsense to me, or something in a made-up language. It had a guttural quality . . .”

“Was it
tak
?” Mary asked.

Johnny nodded. “And it didn't seem to be nonsense to the coyotes, or to Entragian, either. When I said it he kind of recoiled . . . and that's when he called the buzzard bombing-strike down on me.”

“I don't believe that happened,” Audrey said. “I guess you're a famous writer or something, and you've got the look of a guy who isn't used to having doubt cast, so to speak, but I just don't believe it.”

“It's what happened, though,” he said. “You didn't see anything like that? Strange, aggressive animal behavior?”

“I was hiding in the
town laundrymat,
” she said. “I mean, hello? Are we talking the same language here?”

“But—”

“Listen, you want to talk about strange and aggressive animal behavior?” Audrey asked. She leaned forward, eyes bright and fixed on Marinville's. “That's
Collie
you're talking about. Collie as he is now. He killed everyone he saw, everyone who crossed his path. Isn't that enough for you? Do we have to have trained buzzards, as well?”

“What about spiders?” Steve asked. He and the skinny girl were in the chair instead of sitting on the arms now, and Steve had his arm around her shoulders.

“What about them?”

“Did you see any spiders kind of . . . well . . . flocking together?”

“Like birds of a feather?” She was favoring him with a gaze that said
CAUTION, LUNATIC AT WORK
.

“Well, no. Wrong word.
Travelling
together. In packs. Like wolves. Or coyotes.”

She shook her head.

“What about snakes?”

“Haven't seen any of them, either. Or coyotes in town. Not even a dog riding a bike and wearing a party hat. This is all news to me.”

David came back onto the stage with a brown bag in his hands, the kind that convenience-store clerks put small purchases in—Twinkies and Slim Jims, cartons of milk, single cans of beer. He also had a box of Ritz crackers under his arm. “Found some stuff,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Steve said, eyeing the box and the little bag. “That should certainly take care of hunger in America. What does it come to, Davey? One sardine and two crackers apiece, do you think?”

“Actually, there's quite a lot,” David said. “More than you'd think. Um . . .” He paused, looking at them thoughtfully, and a little anxiously. “Would anybody mind if I said a prayer before I hand this stuff around?”

“Like grace?” Cynthia asked.

“Grace, yeah.”

“It works for me,” Johnny said. “I think we can use all the grace we can lay our hands on.”

“Amen,” Steve said.

David put the bag and the box of crackers down between his sneakers. Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid's lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty.

“God, please bless this food we are about to eat,” David began.

“Yeah, what there is of it,” Cynthia said, and immediately looked sorry that she had spoken. David didn't seem to mind, though; might not have even heard her.

“Bless our fellowship, take care of us, and deliver us from evil. Please take care of my mom, too, if it's your will.” He paused, then said in a lower voice: “It's probably not, but
please,
if it's your will. Jesus' sake, amen.” He opened his eyes again.

Johnny was moved. The kid's little prayer had touched him in the very place Entragian had tried and failed to reach.

Sure it did. Because he believes it. In his own humble way, this kid makes Pope John Paul in his fancy clothes and Las Vegas hat look like an Easter-and-Christmas Christian.

David bent over and picked up the stuff he'd found, seeming as cheerful as a soup-kitchen tycoon presiding over Thanksgiving dinner as he rummaged in the bag.

“Here, Mary.” He took out a can of Blue Fjord Fancy Sardines, and handed it to her. “Key's on the bottom.”

“Thank you, David.”

He grinned. “Thank Mr. Billingsley's friend. It's his food, not mine.” He handed her the crackers. “Pass em on.”

“Take what you need and leave the rest,” Johnny said expansively. “That's what us Friends of the Circle say . . . right, Tom?”

The veterinarian gave him a watery gaze and didn't reply.

David gave a can of sardines to Steve and another to Cynthia.

“Oh, no, honey, that's okay,” Cynthia said, trying to give hers back. “Me'n Steve can share.”

“No need to,” David said, “there's plenty. Honest.”

He gave a can to Audrey, a can to Tom, and a can to Johnny. Johnny turned his over twice in his hand, as if trying to make sure it was real, before pulling off the wrapper, taking the key off the back, and inserting it in the tab of metal at the end of the can. He opened it. As soon as he smelled the fish, he was savagely hungry. If anyone had told him he would ever have such a reaction to a lousy can of sardines, he would have laughed.

Something tapped him on the shoulder. It was Mary, holding out the box of crackers. She looked almost ecstatic. Fish-oil ran down from the corner of her mouth to her chin in a shiny little runnel. “Go on,” she said. “They're wonderful on crackers. Really!”

“Yep,” Cynthia said cheerfully, “everything tastes better when it shits on a Ritz, that's what I always say.”

Johnny accepted the box, looked in, and saw there was only a single cylinder of waxed paper left, half-f. He took three of the round dark orange crackers. His growling stomach protested this forbearance, and he found himself unable to keep from taking three more before passing the box to Billingsley. Their eyes met for a moment, and he heard the old man saying not even Houdini could have done it that way. Because of the head. And of course there was the phone—three transmission-bars showing when it had been in the kid's hands, none at all when he had held it in his own.

“This settles it once and for all,” Cynthia said, her mouth full. She sounded the way Mary looked. “Food is
way
better than sex.”

Johnny looked at David. He was sitting on one arm of his father's chair, eating. Ralph's can of sardines sat in his lap, unopened, as the man continued to look out over the rows of empty seats. David took a couple of sardines from his own can, laid them carefully on a cracker, and gave them to his dad, who began to chew mechanically, doing it as if his only goal was to clear his mouth again. Seeing the boy's expression of attentive love made Johnny uncomfortable, as if he were violating David's privacy. He looked away and saw the box of crackers on the floor. Everyone was busy eating, and no one paid Johnny any particular attention when he picked up the box and looked into it.

It had gone all the way around the group, everyone had at least half a dozen crackers (Billingsley might have taken even more; the old goat was really cramming them in), but that cylinder of waxed paper was still in there, and Johnny could have sworn that it was still half-f; that the number of crackers in it had not changed at all.