"That boy," the cop said, looking up toward the second floor of the Municipal Building, where there were a number of opaque windows with bars outside them. "That boy troubles my mind. I wonder if I shouldn't talk to you about him. Perhaps you could counsel me."
The cop folded his arms against his body, raised his hands, and began to tap his fingers lightly against his collarbones, much as he'd tapped them against the steering wheel earlier. He stared at Johnny as he did this.
"Or maybe I should just kill you, Johnny. Maybe it would be the best thing--once you're dead they might award you that Nobel you've always lusted after. What do you think?"
The cop raised his head to the buzzard-lined roofline of the Municipal Building and began to laugh. They cried harsh cawing sounds back down at him, and Johnny was not able to stifle the thought which came to him then. It was horrible because it was so convincing.
They are laughing with him. Because it's not his joke; it's their joke.
A gust of air snapped across the parking lot, making Johnny stagger on his feet, blowing the torn-off buzzard wing across the pavement like a featherduster. The light was fading out of the day--fading too fast. He looked to the west and saw that rising dust had blurred the mountains in that direction and might soon erase them completely. The sun was still above the dust, but wouldn't be for long. It was a windstorm, and headed their way.
5
The five people in the holding cells--the Carvers, Mary Jackson, and old Mr. White Hair--listened to the man screaming and to the sounds that accompanied the screams--harsh bird-cries and flapping wings. At last they stopped. David hoped no one else was dead down there, but when you got right to it, what were the chances?
"What did you say his name was?" Mary asked.
"Collie Entragian," the old man said. He sounded as if listening to the screams had pretty much tired him out. "Collie's short for Collier. He come here from one of those mining towns in Wyoming, oh, fifteen-sixteen years ago. Little more than a teenager then, he was. Wanted police work, couldn't get it, went to work for the Diablo Company up to the pit instead. That was around the time Diablo was gettin ready to pack up and go home. Collie was part of the close-down crew, as I remember."
"He told Peter and me the mine was open," Mary said.
The old man shook his head in what might have been weariness or exasperation. "There's some thinks old China ain't played out, but they're wrong. It's true they been bustling around up there again, but they won't take doodley-squat out of it--just lose their investors' money and then shut her down. Won't be nobody any happier about it than Jim Reed, either. He's tired of barroom fights. All of us'll be glad when they leave old China alone again. It's haunted, that's what the ignorant folks round these parts think." He paused. "I'm one of em."
"Who's Jim Reed?" Ralph asked.
"Town Safety Officer. What you'd call Chief of Police in a bigger burg, but there's only two hundred or so people in Desperation these days. Jim had two full-time deputies--Dave Pearson and Collie. Nobody expected Collie to stay around after Diablo folded, but he did. He wasn't married, and he had workman's comp. He floated along for awhile, odd-jobbin, and eventually Jim started to throw work his way. He was good enough so that the town officers took Jim's recommendation and hired him on full-time in '91."
"Three guys seems like a lot of law for a town this small," Ralph said.
"I reckon. But we got some money from Washin'un, Rural Law Enforcement Act, plus we landed a contract with Sedalia County to keep school on the unincorporated lands round here--pop the speeders, jug the drunks, all such as that."
More coyote wails from outside; they sounded shimmery in the rising wind.
Mary asked, "What did he get workman's comp for? Some kind of mental problem?"
"No'm. Pickup he was ridin in turned turtle on its way down into the pit yonder--the China. Just before the Diablo people gave it up as a bad job, this was. Blew out his knee. Boy was fit enough after, but he had a limp, no question about that."
"Then it's not him," Mary said flatly.
The old man looked at her, shaggy eyebrows raised.
"The man who killed my husband does not limp."
"No," the old man agreed. He spoke with a weird kind of serenity. "No, he don't. But it's Collie, all right. I been seein him most every day for fifteen years, have bought him drinks in The Broken Drum and had him buy me a few in return over at Bud's Suds. He was the one came to the clinic, took pictures, and dusted for prints the time those fellows broke in. Probably looking for drugs, they were, but I don't know. They never caught em."
"Are you a doctor, mister?" David asked.
"Vet," the old man said. "Tom Billingsley is my name." He held out a big, worn hand that shook a little. David took it gingerly.
Downstairs, a door smashed open. "Here we are, Big John!" the cop said. His voice rolled jovially up the stairs. "Your room awaits! Room? Hell, a regular efficiency apartment! Up you go! We forgot the word processor, but we left you some great walls and a few little Hallmark sentiments like SUCK MY COCK and I FUCKED YOUR SISTER to get you started!"
Tom Billingsley glanced toward the door which gave upon the stairs, then looked back at David. He spoke loud enough for the others to hear but it was David he looked at, David he seemed to want to tell. "Tell you something else," he said. "He's bigger."
"What do you mean?" But David thought he knew.
"What I said. Collie was never a midget--stood about six-four, I'd judge, and probably weighed about two hundred and thirty. But now ..."
He glanced toward the doorway to the stairs again-- toward the sound of approaching, clumping footsteps. Two sets. Then he looked back at David.
"Now I'd say he's at least three inches more'n that, wouldn't you? And maybe sixty pounds heavier."
"That's crazy!" Ellen cried. "Absolutely nuts!"
"Yessum," the white-haired vet agreed. "But it's true."
The door to the stairs flew all the way open and a man with a bloody face and shoulder-length gray hair--it was also streaked and clumped with blood--flew into the room. He didn't cross it with Mary Jackson's balletic grace but stumbled at the halfway point and fell to his knees, holding his hands out in front of him to keep from crashing into the desk. The man who followed him through the door was the man who had brought them all to this place, and yet he wasn't--he was a kind of blood-gorgon, a creature who appeared to be disintegrating before their very eyes.
He surveyed them from the melting ramparts of his face, and his mouth spread in a wide, lip-splitting grin. "Look at us," he said in a thick, sentimental voice. "Look at us, would you? Gosh! Just one big happy family!"
PART II
DESPERATION: IN THESE SILENCES SOMETHING MAY RISE
CHAPTER 1
1
"Steve?"
"What?"
"Is that what I think it is?"
She was pointing out her window. pointing west.
"What do you think it is?"
"Sand," she said. "Sand and wind."
"Yep. I'd say that's what it is."
"Pull over a minute, would you?"
He looked at her, questioning.
"Just for a minute."
Steve Ames pulled the Ryder van over to the side of the road which led south from Highway 50 to the town of Desperation. They had found it with no trouble at all. Now he sat behind the wheel and looked at Cynthia Smith, who had tickled him even in his unease by calling him her nice new friend. She wasn't looking at her nice new friend now; she was looking down at the bottom of her funky Peter Tosh shirt and plucking at it nervously.
"I'm a hard-headed babe," she said without looking up. "A little psychic, but hard-headed just the same. Do you believe that?"
"I guess."
"And practical. Do you believe that?"
"Sure."
"That's why I made fun of your intuition, or whatever. But you thought we'd find something out there by the road, and we did."
"Yes. We did."
"So it was a good intuition."
"Would you get to the point? My boss--"
"Right. Your boss, your boss, your boss. I know that's what you're thinking about and practically all you're thinking about, and that's what's got me worried. Because I have a bad feeling about this, Steve. A bad intuition."
He looked at her. Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her head and looked back at him. What he saw in her eyes startled him badly--it was the flat shine of fear.
"What is it? What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know."
"Look, Cynthia ... all we're going to do is find a cop--lacking that, a phonebooth--and report Johnny missing. Also a bunch of people named Carver."
"Just the same--"
"Don't worry, I'll be careful. Promise."
"Would you try 911 on your cellular again?" She asked this in a small, meek voice that was not much like her usual one.
He did, to please her, expecting nothing, and nothing was what he got. Not even a recording this time. He didn't know for sure, but he thought the oncoming windstorm, or duststorm, or whatever they called them out here, might be screwing things up even worse.
"Sorry, no go," he said. "Want to give it a try yourself? You might have better luck. The woman's touch, and all that."
She shook her head. "Do you feel anything? Anything at all?"
He sighed. Yes, he felt something. It reminded him of the way he had sometimes felt in early puberty, back in Texas. The summer he turned thirteen had been the longest, sweetest, strangest summer of his life. Toward the end of August, evening thunderstorms had often moved through the area--brief but hellacious convulsions the old cowboys called "benders." And in that year (a year when it seemed that every other pop song on the radio was by The Bee Gees), the hushed minutes before these storms--black sky, still air, sharpening thunder, lightning jabbing at the prairie like forks into tough meat--had somehow turned him on in a way he had never experienced since. His eyes felt like globes of electricity in chrome sockets, his stomach rolled, his penis filled with blood and stood up hard as a skillet-handle. A feeling of terrified ecstasy came in those hushes, a sense that the world was about to give up some great secret, to play it like a special card. In the end, of course, there had never been a revelation (unless his discovery of how to masturbate a year or so later had been it), only rain. That was how he felt now, only there was no hardon, no tingling armhairs, no ecstasy, and no sense of terror, not really. What he had been feeling ever since she had uncovered the boss's motorcycle helmet was a sense of low foreboding, a sense that things had gone wrong and would soon go wronger. Until she had spoken up just now, he'd pretty much written that feeling off. As a kid, he'd probably just been responding to changes in the air-pressure as the storm approached, or electricity in the air, or some other damned thing. And a storm was coming now, wasn't it? Yes. So it was probably the same thing, deja vu all over again, as they said, perfectly understandable. Yet--
"Yeah, okay, I do feel something. But what in the hell can I do about it? You don't want me to turn back, do you?"
"No. We can't do that. Just be careful. 'Kay?"
A gust of wind shook the Ryder truck. A cloud of tawny sand blew across the road, turning it into a momentary mirage.
"Okay, but you've got to help."
He got the truck moving again. The setting sun had touched the rising membrane of sand in the west now, and its bottom arc had gone as red as blood.
"Oh yeah," she said, grimacing as a fresh blast of wind hit the truck. "You can count on that."
2
The bloodsoaked cop locked the newcomer into the cell next to David Carver and Tom Billingsley. That done, he turned slowly on his heels in a complete circle, his half-peeled, bleeding face solemn and contemplative. Then he reached into his pocket and brought out the keyring again. He selected the same one as before, David noticed--square, with a black mag-strip on it--so it was probably a master.
"Eeenie-meenie-miney-moe," he said. "Catch a tourist by the toe." He walked toward the cell which held David's mother and father. As he approached they drew back, arms around each other again.
"You leave them alone!" David cried, alarmed. Billingsley took his arm above the elbow, but David shook it off. "Do you hear me? Leave them alone!"
"In your dreams, brat," Collie Entragian said. He poked the key into the cell's lock and there was a little thump as the tumblers turned. He pulled the door open. "Good news. Ellie--your parole came through. Pop on out here."
Ellen shook her head. Shadows had begun to gather in the holding area now and her face swam in them, pale as paper. Ralph put his other arm around her waist and drew her back even farther. "Haven't you done enough to our family?" he asked.
"In a word, no." Entragian drew his cannon-sized gun, pointed it at Ralph, and cocked it. "You come out of here right now, little lady, or I'll shoot this no-chin pecker-checker spang between the eyes. You want his brains in his head or drying on the wall? It's all the same to me either way."
God, make him quit it, David prayed. Please make him quit it. If you could bring Brian back from wherever he was, you can do that. You can make him quit it. Dear God, please don't let him take my mother.
Ellen was pushing Ralph's hands down, pushing them off her.
"Ellie, no!"
"I have to. Don't you see that?"
Ralph let his hands fall to his sides. Entragian dropped the hammer on his gun and slid it back into his holster. He held one hand out to Ellen, as if inviting her to take a spin on the dance floor. And she went to him. When she spoke, her voice was very low. David knew she was saying something she didn't want him to hear, but his ears were good.
"If you want ... that, take me where my son won't have to see."
"Don't worry," Entragian said in that same low, conspirator's voice. "I don't want ... that. Especially not from ... you. Now come on."
He slammed the cell door shut, giving it a little shake to make sure it was locked, while he held onto David's mother with the other hand. Then he led her toward the door.
"Mom!" David screamed. He seized the bars and shook them. The cell door rattled a little, but that was all. "Mom, no! Leave her alone, you bastard! LEAVE MY MOTHER ALONE!"
"Don't worry, David, I'll be back," she said, but the soft, almost uninflected quality of her voice scared him badly--it was as if she were already gone. Or as if the cop had hynotized her just by touching her. "Don't worry about me."
"No!" David screamed. "Daddy, make him stop! Make him stop!" In his heart was a growing certainty: if the huge, bloody cop took his mother out of this room, they would never see her again.
"David ..." Ralph took two blundering steps backward, sat on the bunk, put his hands over his face, and began to cry.
"I'll take care of her, Dave, don't worry," Entragian said. He was standing by the door to the stairs and holding Ellen Carver's arm above the elbow. He wore a grin that would have been resplendent if not for his blood-streaked teeth. "I'm sensitive--a real Bridges of Madison County kind of guy, only without the cameras."
"If you hurt her, you'll be sorry," David said.
The cop's smile faded. He looked both angry and a little hurt. "Perhaps I will ... but I doubt it. I really do. You're a little prayboy, aren't you?"
David looked at him steadily, saying nothing.
"Yes, yes you are. You've just got that prayboy look about you, great-gosh-a'mighty eyes and a real jeeperscreepers mouth. A little prayboy in a baseball shirt! Gosh!" He put his head close to Ellen's and looked slyly at the boy through the gauze of her hair. "Do all the praying you want, David, but don't expect it to do you any help. Your God isn't here, any more than he was with Jesus when Jesus hung dying on the cross with flies in his eyes. Tak!"
Ellen saw it coming up the stairs. She screamed and tried to pull back, but Entragian held her where she was. The coyote oiled through the doorway. It didn't even look at the screaming woman with her arm pinched in the cop's fist but crossed calmly to the c
enter of the room. Then it stopped, turned its head over one shoulder, and fixed its yellow stuffed-animal stare on Entragian.
"Ah lah," he said, and let go of Ellen's arm long enough to spank his right hand across the back of his left hand in a quick gesture that reminded David of a flat stone skipping across the surface of a pond. "Him en tow."
The coyote sat down.
"This guy is fast," Entragian said. He was apparently speaking to all of them, but it was David he was looking at. "I mean the guy is fast. Faster than most dogs. You stick a hand or foot out of your cell, he'll have it off before you know it's gone. I guarantee that."
"You leave my mother alone," David said.
"Son," Entragian said regretfully, "I'll put a stick up your mother's twat and spin her until she catches fire, if I so decide, and you'll not stop me. And I'll be back for you."
He went out the door, pulling David's mother with him.
3
There was silence in the room, broken only by Ralph Carver's choked sobs and the coyote, which sat panting and regarding David with its unpleasantly intelligent eyes. Little drops of spittle fell from the end of its tongue like drops from a leaky pipe.
"Take heart, son," the man with the shoulder-length gray hair said. He sounded like a guy more used to taking comfort than giving it. "You saw him--he's got internal bleeding, he's losing his teeth, one eye's ruptured right out of his head. He can't last much longer."
"It won't take him long to kill my mom, if he decides to," David said. "He already killed my little sister. He pushed her down the stairs and broke ... broke her n-n-neck." His eyes abruptly blurred with tears and he willed them back. This was no time to get bawling.
"Yes, but ..." The grayhaired man trailed off.
David found himself remembering an exchange with the cop when they had been on their way to this town--when they had still thought the cop was sane and normal and only helping them out. He had asked the cop how he knew their name, and the cop had said he'd read it on the plaque over the table. It was a good answer, there was a plaque with their name on it over the table ... but Entragian never would have been able to see it from where he was standing at the foot of their RV's stairs. I've got eagle eyes, David, he'd said, and those are eyes that see the truth from afar.