David Carver saw it while the woman in the blue shirt and faded jeans was finally giving up, huddling back against the bars of the drunk-tank and holding her fore arms protectively against her breasts as the cop pulled the desk away so he could get at her.

Don't touch it, the white-haired man had said when the woman threw the shotgun down and it came clattering across the hardwood floor to bang off the bars of David s cell. Don't touch it, it's empty, just leave it alone!

He had done what the man said, but he had seen some- thing else on the floor when he looked down at the shotgun: one of the shells that had fallen off the desk. It was lying on its side against the far lefthand vertical bar of his cell. Fat green shotgun shell, maybe one of a dozen that had gone rolling every whichway when the crazy cop had started battering the woman, Mary, with the desk and the chair in order to make her drop the gun.

The old guy was right, it would make no sense to go grabbing for the shotgun. Even if he could also get the shell, it would make no sense to do that. The cop was big - tall as a pro basketball player, broad as a pro foot ball player - and the cop was also fast. He'd be on David who had never held a real gun in his life, before David could even figure out what hole the shell went in. But if he should get a chance to pick up the shell. ., maybe. . . well, who knew?

"Can you walk?" the cop was asking the woman named Mary. His tone was grotesquely solicitous. "Is anything broken?"

"What difference does it make?" Her voice was trem-bling, but David thought it was rage making that tremble, not fear. "Kill me if you're going to, get it over with."

David glanced at the old guy who was in the cell with him, wanting to see if the old guy had also noticed the shell. So far as David could tell, he hadn't, although he had finally gotten off the bunk and come to the cell bars.

Instead of yelling at the woman who had tried her very best to blow his head off, or maybe hurting her for it, the cop gave her a brief one-armed hug. A pal's hug. In a way, David found this seemingly sincere little gesture of affection more unsettling than all the violence which had gone before it. "I'm not going to kill you, Mare!"

The cop looked around, as if to ask the remaining three Carvers and the white-haired guy if they could believe this crazy lady. His bright gray eyes met David's blue ones, and the boy took an unplanned step back from the bars. He felt suddenly weak with horror. And vulnerable. How he could feel more vulnerable than he already was he didn't know, but he did.

The cop's eyes were empty - so empty that it was almost as if he were unconscious with them open. This made David think of his friend Brian, and his one memo-rable visit to Brian's hospital room last November. But it wasn't the same, because at the same time the cop's eyes were empty, they weren't. There was something there, yes, something, and David didn't know what it was, or how it could be both something and nothing. He only knew he had never seen anything like it.

The cop looked back at the woman called Mary with an expression of exaggerated astonishment. "Gosh, no!" he said. "Not when things are just getting interesting." He reached into his right front pocket, brought out a ring of keys, and selected one that hardly looked like a key at all - it was square, with a black strip embedded in the center of the metal. To David it looked a little like a hotel key-card. He poked this into the lock of the big cell and opened it. "Hop in, Mare," he said. "Snug as a bug in a rug, that's what you'll be."

She ignored him, looking instead at David's parents. They were standing together at the bars of the little cell directly across from the one David was sharing with white-haired Mr. Silent. "This man - this maniac - killed my husband. Put. . ." She swallowed, grimacing, and the big cop looked at her benignly, seeming almost to smile encouragement: Get this out, Mary, sick it up, you'll feel better when you do. "Put his arm around him like he did me just now, and shot him four times.

"He killed our little girl," Ellen Carver told her, and something in her tone struck David with a moment of utter dreamlike unreality. It was as if the two of them were playing Can You Top This. Next the woman named Mary would say, Well, he killed our dog and then his mother would say -

"We don't know that," David's father said. He looked horrible, face swollen and bloody, like a heavyweight boxer who has taken twelve full rounds of punishment. "Not for sure." He looked at the cop, a terrible expression of hope on his swollen face, but the cop ignored him. It was Mary he was interested in.

"That's enough chit-chat," he said. He sounded like the world's kindliest grandpa. "Hop into your room Mary-mine. Into your gilded cage, my little blue-eyed parakeet."

"Or what? You'll kill me?"

"I already told you I won't," he said in that same Kind Old Gramps voice, "but you don't want to forget the world-renowned fate worse than death." His voice hadn't changed, but she was now looking up at him raptly, like a staked goat at an approaching boa constrictor. "I can hurt you, Mary," he said. "I can hurt you so badly you'll wish I had killed you. Now, you believe that, don't you?"

She looked at him a moment longer, then tore her eyes away - and that was just what it felt like to David from his place twenty feet away, her pulling free, the way you'd pull a piece of tape off the flap of a letter or a package - and walked into the cell. Her face shivered as she went, then broke apart as the cop slammed the cell s barred door behind her. She threw herself onto one of the four bunks at the rear, put her face into her arms, and began to sob. The cop stood watching her for a moment head lowered. David had time to look down at the shotgun shell again and think about grabbing it. Then the big cop jerked and kind of shook himself, like someone waking from a doze, and turned away from the cell with the sob-bing woman in it. He walked across to where David was standing.

The white-haired man retreated rapidly from the bars as the cop came, until the backs of his knees struck the edge of the bunk and he folded down to a sitting position. Then he put his hands over his eyes again. Before, that had seemed like a gesture of despair to David, but now it seemed to echo the horror he himself had felt when the cop's stare had fallen upon him - not despair but the instinctive hiding gesture of someone who will not look at a thing unless absolutely forced to look.

"How's it going, Tom?" the cop asked the man on the bunk. "How they hanging, old-timer?"

Mr. White Hair shrank away from the sound of the voice without taking his hands away from his eyes. The cop looked at him a moment longer, then turned his gray gaze on David again. David found he couldn't look away - now it was his eyes that had been taped. And there was something else, wasn't there. A sense of being called.

"Having fun, David?" the big blond cop asked. His eyes seemed to be expanding, turning into bright gray ponds filled with light. "Are you filling this interlude, measure for measure?"

"I - " It came out a dusty croak. He licked his lips and tried again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you? I wonder about that. Because I see He raised one hand to the corner of his mouth, touched it, then dropped it again. The expression on his face seemed to be one of genuine puzzlement. "I don't know what I see. It's a question, yes sir, it is. Who are you, boy?"

David glanced quickly at his mother and father and could not look for long at what he saw on their faces. They thought the cop was going to kill him, as he had killed Pie and Mary's husband.

He turned his eyes back at the cop. "I'm David Carver," he said. "I live at 248 Poplar Street, in Wentworth, Ohio."

"Yes, I'm sure that's true, but little Dave, who made thee? Canst thou say who made thee? Tak!"

He's not reading my mind, David thought, hut I think maybe he could. If he wanted to.

An adult would likely have admonished himself for such a thought, told himself not to be silly, not to succumb to fear-driven paranoia. That's just what he wants you to believe, that he's a mind-reader, the adult would think. But David wasn't a man, he was a boy of eleven. Not just any boy of eleven, either; not since last November. There had been some big changes since then. He could only hope they would help him deal with what he was seeing and experiencing now.

The cop, meanwhile, was looking at him with nar-rowed, considering eyes.

"I guess my mother and father made me," David said. 'Isn't that the way it works?"

"A boy who understands the birds and bees! Won-derful! And what about my other question, Trooper - are you having any fun?"

"You killed my sister, so don't ask stupid questions."

"Son, don't provoke him!" his father called in a high scared voice. It didn't really sound like his father at all

"Oh, I'm not stupid," the cop said, bending that horrid gray gaze even more closely on David. The irises actually seemed to be in motion, turning and turning like pin wheels. Looking at them made David feel nauseated close to vomiting, but he couldn't look away. "1 may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. I know a lot Trooper. I do. I know a lot."

"Leave him alone!" David's mother screamed. David couldn't see her; the cop's bulk blocked her out entirely "Haven't you done enough to our family? If you touch him, I'll kill you!"

The cop paid no notice. He raised his index fingers to his lower lids and pulled them down, making the eyeballs themselves bulge out grotesquely. "I've got eagle eyes, David, and those are eyes that see the truth from afar. You just want to believe that. Eagle eyes, yes sir." The cop continued to stare through the bars, and now it was almost as if eleven-year-old David Carver had hypnotized him.

"You're quite a one, aren't you?" the cop breathed. 'You're quite a one indeed. Yes, I think so."

Think whatever you want, just don't think about me thinking about the shotgun shell.

The cop's eyes widened slightly, and for a hideous moment David thought that was exactly what the cop was thinking about, that be had tuned into David's mind as if it were a radio signal. Then a coyote howled outside, a outside the door of the room Brian was in. David had shaken his head. He was still powerfully in the grip of the feeling which had more or less swallowed him since his pallid mother had given him the news about the accident: that feeling of being guided by someone more experienced than he was, someone who would be brave for him if his own courage faltered.

He had gone into the room. Mr. and Mrs. Ross were there, sitting in red vinyl chairs. They had books in their hands that they weren't reading. Brian was in the bed by the window, surrounded by equipment that beeped and sent green lines rolling across video screens. A light blanket was pulled up to his waist. Above it, a thin white hospital shirt lay open like cheesy school-play angel's wings on either side of his chest. There were all sorts of rubber suckers on him down there, and more attached to his head, below a vast white cap of bandage. From beneath this cap, one long cut descended Brian's left cheek to the corner of his mouth, where it curved up like a fishhook. The cut had been sutured with black thread. To David it had looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie, one of the old ones with Boris Karloff they showed on Saturday nights. Sometimes, when he slept over at Brian's, the two of them stayed up and ate pop-corn and watched those movies. They loved the old black- and-white monsters. Once, during The Mummy, Brian had turned to David and said, "Oh shit, the mummy's after us, let's all walk a little faster." Stupid, but at quarter to one in the morning, anything can strike eleven-year-olds funny, and the two of them had laughed like fiends.

Brian's eyes had looked up at him from the hospital bed. And through him. They were open and as empty as school classrooms in August.

Feeling more than ever as if he were not moving but being moved, David had walked into the magic circle of the machines. He observed the suction cups on Brian's chest and temples. He observed the wires coming out of the suction cups. He observed the oddly misshapen look of the helmet-sized bandage on the left side of Brian's head, as if the shape beneath it had been radically changed. David supposed it had been. When you hit the side of a brick house, something had to give. There was a tube in Brian's right arm and another coming out of his chest. The tubes went to bags of liquid hanging off poles There was a plastic doodad in Brian's nose and a band on, his wrist.

David thought, These are the machines that are keeping him alive. And when they turn them off when they pull out the needles -

Disbelief filled him at the idea, buds of wonder which were only grief rolled tight. He and Brian squirted each other at the waterfountain outside their home room at school whenever they thought they could get away with it They rode their bikes in the fabled Bear Street Woods pretending they were commandos. They swapped books and comics and baseball cards and sometimes just sat on David's back porch, playing with Brian's Gameboy or reading and drinking David's mom's lemonade. They slapped each other high fives and called each other "bad boy." (Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, they called each other "fuckhead" or "dickweed.") In the second grade they'd pricked their fingers with pins and smooshed them together and sworn themselves blood brothers. In August of this year they had made, with Mark Ross's help, a bottlecap Parthenon from a picture in a book. It turned out so well that Mark kept it in the down stairs hail and showed it to company. At the first of the year the bottlecap Parthenon was slated to travel the block and a half to the Carver house.

It was the Parthenon that David's mind had fixed upon most firmly as he stood by his comatose friend's bed They had built it - him, Brian, Brian's dad - out in the Ross garage while the tape player endlessly recycled Rattle and Hum on the shelf behind them. A silly thing because it was just bottlecaps, a cool thing because it looked like what it was supposed to look like, you could tell what it was. Also a cool thing because they had made it with their own hands. And soon Brian's hands would be picked up and scrubbed by an undertaker who would use a special brush and pay particular attention to the finger nails. No one would want to look at a corpse with dirty nails, David supposed. And after Bri's hands were clean and he was in the coffin his folks would pick out for him the undertaker would lace his fingers together like they were a pair of sneakers. And that was how they'd stay head somberly, as if the rest was too awful to be spoken aloud.

You lie, you liar, David thought . . . but then another howl drifted through the open window in the stairwell, and he wondered.

"In any case," the cop said, "these are good locks and good cells. They were built by hardasses for roughneck miners, and escape's not an option. If that's been in your mind, send it home to its momma. You mind me, now. That's the best thing to do. Believe me, it is." Then he was gone, this time for real - David could hear his booted feet thudding down the stairs, shaking the whole building.

The boy stood where he was for a moment, knowing what he had to do now - absolutely had to do-but reluc-tant to do it in front of his parents. Still, there was no choice, was there? And he had been right about the cop. The big man hadn't exactly been reading his mind like it was a newspaper, but he'd been getting some of it - he'd been getting the God stuff. But maybe that was good. Better the cop should see God than the shotgun shell, maybe.

He turned and took two slow steps to the foot of the bunk. He could feel the weight of the shell in his pocket as he went. That weight was very clear, very distinct. It was as if he had a lump of gold hidden in there.

No, more dangerous than gold. A chunk of something radioactive, maybe.

He stood where he was for a moment, back to the room, and then, very slowly, sank down on his knees. He took a deep breath, pulling in air until his lungs would absolutely hold no more, then let it out again in a long silent whoosh. He folded his hands on the rough woolen blanket, dropped his forehead softly onto them.

"David, what's wrong with you?" his mother called.

"David!"

"There isn't anything wrong with him," his father said, and David smiled a little as he closed his eyes.

"What do you mean, nothing wrong?" Eilie screamed. "Look at him, he fell down, he's fainting! David!"

Their voices were distant now, fading, but before they went out entirely, he heard his dad say, "Not fainting. Praying."

No God in Desperation? Well, let's just see about that.

Then he was gone, no longer concerned about what his parents might be thinking, no longer worried that old Mr. White Hair might have seen him filch the shotgun shell and might tell the monster cop what he had seen, no longer grieving for sweet little Pie, who had never hurt anyone in her life and hadn't deserved to die as she had He was not, in fact, precisely even inside his own head anymore. He was in the black now, blind but not deaf in the black and listening for his God.

2

Like most spiritual conversions, David Carver s was dramatic only on the outside; on the inside it was quiet, almost mundane. Not rational, perhaps - matters of the spirit may never be strictly rational - but possessed of its own clarity and logic. And to David, at least, its genuineness was beyond question. He had found God, that was all. And (this he considered probably more important) God had found him.

In November of the previous year, David's best friend had been struck by a car while riding his bike to school Brian Ross was thrown twenty feet, into the side of a house. On any other morning David would have been with him, but on that particular day he had stayed home sick, nursing a not-too-serious virus. The phone had rung at eight-thirty and his mother had come into the living room ten minutes later, pale and trembling. "David, some thing's happened to Brian. Please try not to be too upset" After that he didn't remember much of the conversation only the words not expected to live.

It had been his idea to go and see Brian in the hospital the next day, after calling the hospital all on his own that evening and ascertaining that his friend was still alive.

"Honey, I understand how you feel, but that's a really bad idea," his father had said. His use of "honey," a term of endearment long since retired along with David s stuffed toys, indicated how upset Ralph Carver was. He had looked at Ellen, but she only stood by the sink wringing a dishcloth nervously back and forth in her hands. Obviously no help there. Not that Ralph had felt very helpful himself, God knew, but who had ever expected such a conversation? My God, the boy was only eleven, Ralph hadn't even gotten around to telling him the facts of life, let alone those of death. Thank God Kirstie was in the other room, watching cartoons on TV.

"No," David had said. "It's a good idea. In fact, it's the only idea." He thought of adding something heroically modest like Besides, Brian 'd do it for me, and decided not to. He didn't think Brian would do it for him, actually. That didn't change anything, though. Because he had vaguely understood, even then, before what had happened in Bear Street Woods, that he'd be going not for Brian but for himself.

His mother had advanced a few hesitant steps from her bastion by the sink. "David, you've got the dearest heart in the world. . . the kindest heart in the world. . . but Brian. . . he was. ., well . . . thrown. .

"What she's trying to say is that he hit a brick wall head-first," his father said. He had reached across the table and taken one of his son's hands. "There was exten-sive brain-damage. He's in a coma, and there are no good vital signals. Do you know what that means?"

"That they think his brain turned into a cabbage."

Ralph had winced, then nodded. "He's in a situation where the best thing that could happen would be for it to end fast. If you went to see him, you wouldn't be seeing the friend you know, the one you used to have sleepovers with..

His mother had gone into the living room at that point, had swept the bewildered Pie into her lap and begun to cry again.

David's father glanced after her as if he'd like to join her, then turned back to David again. "It's best if you remember Bri the way he was when you saw him the last time. Understand?"

"Yes, but I can't do that. I have to go see him. If you don't want to take me, that's okay, though. I'll take the bus after school."

Ralph had sighed heavily. "Shit, kid, I'll take you. You won't have to wait until after school, either. Just don't for

God's sake say anything about this to - "

He lifted his chin toward the living room.

"To Pie? Gosh, no." He didn't add that Pie had already been into his room to ask him what had happened to Brian, and had it hurt, and what did David think it was like to die, did you go somewhere, and about a hundred other questions. Her face had been so solemn, so attentive. She had been . . . well, she had been absolutely Pie eyed. But it was often best if you didn't tell your parents everything. They were old, and stuff got on their nerves

"Brian's parents won't let you in," Ellie had said, corning back into the room. "I've known Mark and Debbie for years. They're grief-stricken - sure they are, if it had been you I'd be insane - but they'll know better than to let a little boy look at. . . at another little boy who's dying."

"I called them after I called the hospital and asked if I could come see him," David said quietly. "Mrs. Ross said okay." His dad was still holding his hand. That was okay He loved his mom and dad very much, and had been sorry this was distressing for them, but there was no question in his mind about what he was supposed to do. It had been as if some other power, one from outside, were guiding him even then. The way an older, smarter person might guide a little kid's hand, to help him make a picture of a dog or a chicken or a snowman.

"What's the matter with her?" Ellen Carver asked in a distraught voice. "Just what in hell is the matter with her that's what I'd like to know."

"She said she was glad I could come say goodbye. She said they're going to turn off the life-support stuff this weekend, after his grandparents come to say goodbye, and she was glad I could come first."

The following day, Ralph took the afternoon off from work and picked his son up at school. David had been standing at the curb with his blue EXCUSED EARLY pass sticking out of his shirt pocket. When they got to the hos-pital, they rode up to the fifth floor, ICU, in the world s slowest elevator. On the way, David tried to prepare him self for what he was going to see. Don't be shocked David, Mrs. Ross had said on the phone. He doesn't look very nice. We're sure he doesn't feel any pain - he's down much too deep for that - but he doesn't look very nice.

"Want me to come in with you?" his father had asked long, lonely sound, and the cop glanced in that direction. The thread between them - maybe telepathy, maybe just a combination of fear and fascination - snapped.

The cop bent to pick up the shotgun. David held his breath, fully expecting him to see the shell lying on the floor off to his right, but the cop did not glance in that direction. He stood up, flipping a lever on the side of the shotgun as he did so. It broke open, the barrels lying over his arm like an obedient animal. "Don't go away, David," he said in a confidential, just-us-guys voice. "We've got a lot to talk about. That's a conversation I'm looking for-ward to, believe me, but just now I'm a little busy."

He walked back toward the center of the room, head down, picking up shells as he went. The first two he loaded into the gun; the rest he stuffed absently into his pockets. David dared wait no longer. He bent, snaked his hand between the two bars on the left side of the cell, and grabbed the fat green tube. He slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. The woman named Mary didn't see; she was still lying on the bunk with her face buried in her arms, sobbing. His parents didn't see; they were standing at the bars of their cell, arms around each other's waist, watching the man in the khaki uniform with horrified fascination. David turned around and saw that old Mr. White Hair - Tom - still had his hands to his face, so maybe that was okay, too. Except old Tom's watery eyes were open behind his fingers, David could see them, so maybe it wasn't okay. Either way, it was too late now to take it back. Still facing the man the cop had called Tom, David raised the side of one hand to his mouth in a brief shushing gesture. Old Tom gave no sign that he saw; his eyes, in their own prison, only continued to stare out from between the bars of his fingers.

The cop who had killed Pie picked up the last shell on the floor, took a brief look under the desk, then straightened and snapped the shotgun closed with a single flick of his wrist. David had watched him closely through the picking-up process, trying to get a sense of whether or not the cop was counting the shells. He hadn't thought so until now. Now the cop was just standing there, back-to, head down. Then he turned and strode back to David's cell, and the boy felt his stomach turn to lead.

For a moment the cop just stood there looking at him, seeming to pry at him, and David thought: He's trying to pick my brains the way a burglar tries to pick a lock.

"Are you thinking about God?" the cop asked. "Don bother. Out here, God's country stops at Indian Springs and even Lord Satan don't step his cloven feet much north of Tonopah. There's no God in Desperation, baby boy Out here there's only can de lach."

That seemed to be it. The cop walked out of the room with the shotgun now riding under his arm. There were perhaps five seconds of silence in the holding area, broken only by the muffled sobs of the woman named Mary. David looked at his parents, and they looked back at him. Standing that way, with their arms around each other, he could see how they must have looked as small children, long before they met each other at Ohio Wesleyan, and this frightened him out of all measure. He would rather have come upon them naked and fucking He wanted to break the silence, couldn't think how.

Then the cop suddenly sprang back into the room. He had to duck his head to keep from bumping it on the top of the doorway. He was grinning in a mad way that made David think of Garfield, the comic-strip cat, when Garfield did his impromptu backfence vaudeville routines. Which this was, it seemed. There was an old tele-phone hung on the wall, its beige plastic casing cracked and filthy. The cop snatched it off its hook, held it to his ear, and cried: "Room service! Send me up a room!" He slammed the phone back down and turned his mad Garfield grin on his prisoners. "Old Jerry Lewis bit," he said. "American critics don't understand Jerry Lewis, but he's huge in France. I mean he's a stud."

He looked at David.

"No God in France, either, Trooper. Take it from mat Just Cinzano and escargots and women who don't shave their armpits."

He flashed the others with his regard, the grin fading as he did so.

"You people have to stay put," he said. "I know that you're scared of me, and maybe you're right to be scared but you're locked up for a reason, believe it. This is the only safe place for miles around. There are forces out there you don't want to even think about. And when tonight comes - "

He only looked at them and shook his down in the ground. Neatly folded, the way they had been supposed to fold their hands on their desks back in the second grade. No more bottlecap buildings for those hands. No more waterfountain nozzles for those fingers. Down into the dark with them.

It was not terror this thought had called up in his mind and heart but despair, as if the image of Brian's fingers laced together in his coffin proved that nothing was worth anything, that doing never once in the world stopped dying, that not even kids were exempted from the horror-show that roared on and on behind the peppermint sitcom facade your parents believed in and wanted you to believe in.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Ross spoke to him as he stood by the bed, meditating on these things in the shorthand of children. And their silence was all right with David; he liked them just fine, especially Mr. Ross, who had a sort of interesting crazy streak, but he hadn't come here to see them. They weren't the ones with the food-tubes and breathing machinery that were going to be taken away after the grandparents got a chance to say goodbye.

He had come to see Brian.

David had taken his friend's hand. It was astoundingly cool and lax in his own, but still alive. You could feel the life in it, running like a motor. He squeezed it gently and whispered, "How you doin, bad boy?"

No response but the sound of the machine that was doing Brian's breathing for him now that his brain had blown most of its fuses. This machine was at the head of the bed, and it was the biggest. It had a clear plastic tube mounted on one side of it. Inside the tube was some-thing that looked like a white accordion. The sound this machine made was quiet - all the machines were quiet - but the accordion-thing was unsettling, just the same. It made a low, emphatic noise each time it went up. A gasping noise. It was as if part of Brian wasn't down too deep to feel pain, but that part had been taken out of his body and penned up in the plastic tube, where it was now being hurt even worse. Where it was being pressed to death by the white accordion-thing.

And then there were the eyes.

David felt his eyes drawn back to them again and again. Nobody had told him Brian's eyes would be open; until just now he hadn't known your eyes could be open when you were unconscious. Debbie Ross had told him not to be shocked, that Brian didn't look very nice, but she hadn't told him about that stuffed-moose stare. Maybe that was all right, though; maybe you could never be pre pared about the really awful things, not at any age.

One of Brian's eyes was bloodshot, with a huge black pupil that ate up all but the thinnest ring of brown. The other was clear and the pupil appeared to be normal, but nothing else was normal because there was no sign of his friend in those eyes, none. The boy who had cracked him up by saying Oh shit, the mummy's after us, let's all walk a little faster wasn't here at all . . . unless he was in the plastic tube, at the mercy of the white accordion.

David would look away - at the stitched fishhook 'cut, at the bandage, at the one waxy ear he could see below the bandage - and then his gaze would wander back to Brian's open, staring eyes with their mismatched pupils. It was the nothing that drew him, the absence, the gone- ness in those eyes. It was more than wrong. It was . . . was. . .

Evil, a voice deep in his head whispered. It was like no voice he had ever heard in his thoughts before, a total stranger, and when Debbie Ross's hand dropped on his shoulder, he'd had to clamp his lips together against a scream.

"The man who did it was drunk," she said in a husky, tear-clotted voice. Fresh tears were rolling down her cheeks. "He says he doesn't remember any of it, that he was in a blackout, and do you know the horrible thing Davey? I believe him."

"Deb - " Mr. Ross began, but Brian's mom took no notice of him.

"How could God let that man not remember hitting my son with his car?" Her voice had begun to rise. Ralph Carver had poked his head around the edge of the open door, startled, and a nurse rolling a cart up the hall stopped dead in her tracks. She looked into room 508 with a pair of big blue oh-goodness eyes. "How could God be so merciful to someone who deserves to wake up screaming with memories of the blood coming out of my son s poor hurt head every night for the rest of his life?"

Mr. Ross put his arm around her shoulders. Outside the door, Ralph Carver pulled his head back like a turtle with-drawing into its shell. David saw this and might have hated his dad a little for it. He couldn't remember for sure, one way or the other. What he remembered was looking down at Brian's pale, still face with the mis-shapen bandage seeming to bear down on it - the waxy ear, the cut with its red lips drawn together in a smooch by the black thread, and the eyes. Most of all what he remembered was the eyes. Brian's mother was right there, crying and screaming, and those eyes didn't change a bit.

But he is in there, David thought suddenly, and that thought, like so much that had happened to him since his mother had told him about Brian's accident, did not feel like something that was coming from him but only some-thing going through him . . . as if his mind and body had turned into some sort of pipe.

He is in there, I know he is. Still in there, like someone caught in a landslide. ., or in a cave. . .

Debbie Ross's control had given way entirely. She was almost howling, shaking in her husband's grip, trying to pull free. Mr. Ross got her headed back toward the red chairs, but it looked like a job. The nurse hurried in and slipped an arm around her waist. "Mrs. Ross, sit down. You'll feel better if you do."

"What sort of God lets a man forget killing a little boy?" Brian's mom had screamed. "The kind that wants that man to get loaded and do it again, that's who! A God who loves drunks and hates little boys!"

Brian, looking up with his absent eyes. Harking to his mother's sermon with a waxy ear. Not noticing. Not here. But. . .

Yes, something whispered. Yes, he is. He is. Somewhere.

"Nurse, can you give my wife a shot?" Mr. Ross had asked. By then he was having a hard time keeping her from leaping back across the room and grabbing David, her son, maybe both of them. Something in her head had broken free. It was something that had a lot to say.

"I'll get Dr. Burgoyne, he's just up the hail." She hurried out.

Brian's dad gave David a strained smile. There was sweat trickling down his cheeks and standing out on his forehead in a galaxy of fine dots. His eyes were red, and to David he looked like he had already lost weight. David didn't think such a thing was possible, but that was how he had looked. Mr. Ross now had one arm around his wife's waist and his other hand clamped on her shoulder.

"You have to go now, David," Mr. Ross said. He was trying not to pant, and panting a little anyway. "We're. . . we're not doing so good."

But I didn't say goodbye to him, David wanted to say, and then realized it wasn't sweat trickling down Mr. Ross's cheeks but tears. That got him moving. It wasn't until he got to the door and turned back and saw Mr. and Mrs. Ross had blurred into a whole crowd of parents that he realized he was shortly going to be crying himself.

"May I come back, Mr. Ross?" he asked in a cracked, shivery voice he barely recognized. "Tomorrow, maybe?"

Mrs. Ross had stopped struggling now. Mr. Ross's hands had ended up locked together just below her breasts, and her head was bent so her hair hung in her face. The way they looked made David think of the World Federation Wrestling matches he and Bri had also some-times watched, and how sometimes one guy would hug another guy like that. Oh shit, the mummy's after us, David thought for no good reason at all.

Mr. Ross was shaking his head. "I don't think so, Dayey."

"But - "

"No, I don't think so. You see, the doctors say there's no chance at all for Brian to . . . t-to-to His face began to change as David had never seen an adult's face change - it seemed to be tearing itself apart from the inside. It was only later, out in the Bear Street Woods, that he got a handle on it . . . sort of. He'd been seeing what happened when someone who hadn't cried in a long time - years, maybe - finally couldn't hold back any longer. This was what it was like when the dam burst.

"Oh, my boy!" Mr. Ross screamed. "Oh, my boy!" He let go of his wife and fell back against the wall between the two red vinyl chairs. He stood there for a moment, kind of leaning, then folded at the knees. He slid down the wall until he was sitting, hands held out toward the bed, cheeks wet, snot hanging from his nostrils, hair sticking up in the back, shirttail out, pants pulled up so you could see the tops of his socks. He sat there like that and wailed.

His wife knelt by him and took him in her arms as best she could, and that was when the doctor came in with the nurse right behind him, and when David slipped out, crying hard but trying not to sob. They were in a hospital, after all, and some people were trying to get well.

His father was as pale as his mother had been when she told him about Brian, and when he took David's hand, his skin was much colder than Brian's had been.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," his father said as they waited for the world's slowest elevator. David had an idea it was all he could think of to say. On the ride home, Ralph Carver started to speak twice, then stopped. He turned on the radio, found an oldies station, then turned it down to ask David if he wanted an ice-cream soda, or anything. David shook his head, and his father turned the music up again, louder than ever.

When they got home, David told his father he thought he'd shoot some baskets in the driveway. His father said that was fine, then hurried inside. As David stood behind the crack in the hottop that he used as a foul line, he heard his parents in the kitchen, their voices drifting out of the open window over the sink. She wanted to know what had happened, how David had taken it. "Well, there was a scene,' his father said, as though Brian's coma and approaching death were part of some play.

David tuned out. That sense of otherness had come on him again, that feeling of being small, a part instead of a whole, someone else's business. He suddenly felt very strongly that he wanted to go down to the Bear Street Woods, down to the little clearing. A path - narrow, but you could ride bikes along it if you went single-file - led into this clearing. It was here, up in the Viet Cong Lookout, that the boys had tried one of Debbie Ross's cigarettes the year before and found it awful, here that they had looked through their first copy of Penthouse (Brian had seen it lying on top of the Dumpster behind the E-Z Stop 24 down the hill from his house), here that they had hung their feet down and had their long conversations and dreamed their dreams . . . mostly about how they were going to be the kings of West Wentworth Middle School when they were ninth-graders. It was here, in the clearing you got to by way of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that the boys had most enjoyed their friendship, and it was here that David suddenly felt he had to go.

He had bounced the ball, with which he and Brian had played about a billion games of Horse, one final time, bent his knees, and shot. Swish - nothing but net. When the ball returned to him, he tossed it into the grass. His folks were still in the kitchen, their voices still droning out the open window, but David didn't even think about poking his head in and telling them where he was going They might have forbidden him.

Taking his bike never occurred to him. He walked, head down, the bright blue EXCUSED EARLY pass still sticking out of his shirt pocket, although school was over for the day by then. The big yellow buses were rolling their homeward routes; yelling flocks of little kids pounded past, waving their papers and lunchboxes. David took no notice. His mind was elsewhere. Later, Reverend Martin would tell him about "the still, small voice" of God, and David would feel a tug of recognition, but it hadn't seemed like a voice then, or a thought, or even an intuition. The idea his mind kept returning to was how, when you were thirsty, your whole body cried for water, and how you would eventually lie down and drink from a mudpuddle, if that was all you could get.

He came to Bear Street, then to the Ho Chi Minh Trail He walked slowly down it, his head still lowered, so that he looked like a scholar with his mind on some immense problem. The Ho Chi Minh hadn't been his and Brian s exclusive property, lots of kids ordinarily used it on their way to and from school, but no one had been on it that warm fall afternoon; it seemed to have been cleared especially for him. Halfway to the clearing he spotted a 3 Musketeers candybar wrapper and picked it up. It was the only kind of candybar Brian would eat - he called them 3 Muskies - and David had no doubt that Brian had dropped this one beside the path a day or two before the accident. Not that Brian was ordinarily a litterbug sort of guy; he'd stuff the wrapper in his pocket, under ordinary circumstances. But - But maybe something made him drop it. Something that knew I'd come along after that car hit him and threw him and broke his head on the bricks, something that knew I'd find it and remember him.

He told himself that was crazy, absolutely nutzoid, but maybe the nuttiest thing of all was that he didn't really think it was. Perhaps it would sound nutty if spoken aloud, but inside his head, it seemed perfectly logical.

With no thought of what he was doing, David stuck the red-and-silver wrapper into his mouth and sucked the little bits of sweet chocolate off the inside. He did this with his eyes closed and fresh tears squeezing out from under the lids. When the chocolate was all gone and there was nothing left but the taste of wet paper, he spat the wrapper out and went on his way.

At the east edge of the clearing was an oak with two thick branches spreading out in a V about twenty feet up. The boys hadn't quite dared to go whole hog and build a treehouse in this beckoning fork - someone might notice and make them tear it down again - but they had brought boards, hammers, and nails down here one summer day a year ago and made a platform that still remained. David and Brian knew that the high school kids sometimes used it (they had found cigarette butts and beer-cans on the weather-darkened old boards from time to time, and once a pair of pantyhose), but never until after dark, it seemed, and the idea of big kids using something they had made was actually sort of flattering. Also, the first handholds you had to grab in order to make the climb were high enough to discourage the little kids.

David went up, cheeks wet, eyes swollen, still tasting chocolate and wet paper in his mouth, still hearing the gasp of the accordion-thing in his ears. He felt he would find some other sign of Brian on the platform, like the 3 Muskies wrapper on the path, but there was nothing. Just the sign nailed to the tree, the one that said VIET CONG LOOKOUT, which they had put up a couple of weeks after completing the platform. The inspiration for that (and for the name they'd given the path) was some old movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, David didn't remember the name. He kept expecting to come up here someday and find that the big kids had pulled the sign down or spray-painted something like SUCK MY DICK on it, but none ever had. He guessed they must like it, too.

Abreeze soughed through the trees, cooling his hot skin. Any other day and Brian would have been sharing that breeze with him. They would have been dangling their feet, talking, laughing. David started to cry again.

Why am I here?

No answer.,

Why did I come? Did something make me come?

No answer.

If anyone 's there, please answer!

No answer for a long time . . . and then one did come, and he didn't think he was just talking to himself inside his own head, then fooling himself about what he was doing in order to gain a little comfort. As when he had stood over Brian, the thought which came seemed in no way his own.

Yes, this voice had said. I'm here.

Who are you?

Who I am, the voice said, and then fell silent, as if that actually explained something.

David crossed his legs, sitting tailor-fashion in the middle of the platform, and closed his eyes. He cupped his knees in his palms and opened his mind as best he could. He had no idea what else to do. In this fashion he waited for an unknown length of time, hearing the distant voices of the home-going children, aware of shifting red and black shapes on the insides of his eyelids as the breeze moved the branches above him and dapples of sun-light slipped back and forth on his face.

Tell me what you want, he asked the voice.

No answer. The voice didn't seem to want anything.

Tell me what to do, then.

No answer from the voice.

Distant, distant, he heard the sound of the firehouse whistle over on Columbus Broad. It was five o'clock. He had been sitting up on the platform with his eyes closed for at least an hour, probably more like two. His mom and dad would have noticed he was no longer in the driveway, would have seen the ball lying in the grass, would be worried. He loved them and didn't want to worry them - on some level he understood that Brian's impending death had struck at them as hard as it had struck at him - but he couldn't go home yet. Because he wasn't done yet.

Do you want me to pray? he asked the voice. I'll try if you want me to, but I don 't know how - we don 't go to church, and -

The voice overrode his, not angry, not amused, not impatient, not anything he could read. You're praying already, it said.

What should I pray for?

Oh shit, the mummy's after us, the voice said. Let's all walk a little fluster.

I don't know what that means.

Yes you do.

No I don't!

"Yes I do," he said, almost moaned. "Yes I do, it means ask for what none of them dare to ask for, pray for what none of them dare to pray for. Is that it?"

No answer from the voice.

David opened his eyes and the afternoon bombed him with late light, the red-gold glow of November. His legs were numb from the knees down, and he felt as if he had just awakened from a deep sleep. The day's simple unzipped loveliness stunned him, and for a moment he was very aware of himself as a part of something whole - a cell on the living skin of the world. He lifted his hands from his knees, turned them over, and held them out.

"Make him better," he said. "God, make him better. If you do, I'll do something for you. I'll listen for what you want, and then I'll do it. I promise.

He didn't close his eyes but listened carefully, waiting to see if the voice had anything more to say. At first it seemed it did not. He lowered his hands, started to stand up, then winced at the burst of pins and needles that went whooshing up his legs from the balls of his feet. He even laughed a little. He grabbed a branch to steady himself, and as he was doing this, the voice did speak again.

David listened, head cocked, still holding the branch, still feeling his muscles tingle crazily as the blood worked its way back into them. Then he nodded. They had put three nails into the trunk of the tree to hold the VIET CONG LOOKOUT sign. The wood had shrunk and warped since then, and the rusty heads of the nails stuck out. David took the blue pass with EXCUSED EARLY printed on it from his shirt pocket and poked it onto one of the nailheads. That done, he marched in place until the tingling in his legs began to subside and he trusted himself to climb back down the tree.

He went home. He hadn't even gotten to the driveway before his parents were out the kitchen door. Ellen Carver stood on the stoop, hand raised to her forehead to shade her eyes, while Ralph almost ran down to the sidewalk to meet him and grab him by the shoulders.

"Where were you? Where in hell were you, David?"

"I went for a walk. Into the Bear Street Woods. I was thinking about Brian."

"Well, you scared the devil out of us," his mom said. Kirsten joined her on the stoop. She was eating a bowl of Jell-O and had her favorite doll, Melissa Sweetheart tucked under her arm. "Even Kirstie was worried, weren't you?"

"Nope," Pie said, and went on eating her JelI-O.

"Are you all right?" his father had asked.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He went into the house, yanking on one of Pie's braids as he went past her. Pie wrinkled her nose at him, then smiled.

"Supper's almost ready, go wash up," Ellen said.

The telephone started to ring. She went to answer it then called sharply to David as he headed for the down-stairs bathroom to wash his hands, which had been pretty dirty - sticky, sappy, tree-climbing dirty. He turned and saw his mom holding out the telephone in one fist while she twisted the other restlessly in her apron. She tried to talk, but at first no sound came out when her lips moved. She swallowed and tried again. "It's Debbie Ross, for you. She's crying. I think it must be over. For God's sake be kind to her."

David crossed the room and took the phone. That feeling of otherness had swept over him again. He had been sure his mom was at least half-right: something was over.

"Hello?" he said. "Mrs. Ross?"

She was crying so hard that at first she couldn't talk She tried, but what came through her sobs was just wahh-wahh-wahh. From a little distance he heard Mr. Ross say "Let me do it," and Mrs. Ross said, "No, I'm okay There was a mighty honk in David's ear - it sounded like a hungry goose - and then she said: "Brian's awake."

"Is he?" David said. What she had just said made him feel happier than he had ever been in his life. ., and yet it had not surprised him at all.

Is he dead? Ellen was mouthing at him. One hand was still plunged deep in her apron, twisting and turning.

"No," David said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece to talk to his mother and father. It was all right, he could do that; Debbie Ross was sobbing again. He thought she'd do that every time she told anyone, at least for awhile. She wouldn't be able to help it, because her heart had given him up.

Is he dead? Ellen mouthed again.

"No!" he told her, a little irritated - it was like she was deaf. "Not dead, alive. She says he's awake."

His mother and father gaped like fish in an aquarium. Pie went past them, still eating Jell-O, her face turned down to the face of her doll, which was sticking stiffly out from the crook of her arm. "Told you this would happen, she said to Melissa Sweetheart in a forbidding this-closes- the-discussion tone of voice. "Didn't I say so?"

"Awake," David's mother had said in a stunned, musing voice. "Alive."

"David, are you there?" Mrs. Ross asked.

"Yes," he said. "Right here."

"About twenty minutes after you left, the EEC monitor started to show waves. I saw them first - Mark was down in the caff, getting sodas - and I went to the nurses' station. They didn't believe me." She laughed through her tears. "Well, of course, who would? And when I finally got someone to come look, they called maintenance instead of a doctor, that's how sure they were that it couldn't be happening. They actually replaced the mom-tar, isn't that the most amazing thing you ever heard?"

"Yes," David said. "Wild."

Both parents were mouthing at him now, and his dad was also making big hand-gestures. To David he looked like an insane-asylum inmate who thought he was a gameshow host. That made him want to laugh. He didn't want to do that while he was on the phone, Mrs. Ross wouldn't understand, so he turned and faced the wall.

"It wasn't until they saw the same high waves on the new monitor - only even stronger - that one of the nurses called Dr. Waslewski. He's the neurologist. Before he got here, Brian opened his eyes and looked around at us. He asked me if I'd fed the goldfish today. I said yes, the gold-fish were fine. I didn't cry or anything. I was too stunned to cry. Then he said his head ached and closed his eyes again. When Dr. Waslewski came in, Brian looked like he was still in the coma, and I saw him give the nurse a look, like 'Why do you bother me with this?' You know?"

"Sure," David said.

"But when the doctor clapped his hands beside Brian's ear, he opened his eyes again right away. You should have seen that old Polack's face, Davey!" She laughed - the cracked, cackling laugh of a madwoman. "Then. . . then Brian suh-suh-said he was thirsty, and asked if h-he could have a drink of wuh-wuh-water."

She broke down entirely then, her sobs so loud in his ear that they almost hurt. Then they faded and Bri's dad said, "David? You still there?" He sounded none too steady himself, but he wasn't outright bawling, which was a relief.

"Sure."

"Brian doesn't remember the accident, doesn't remember anything after doing his homework in his room the night before it happened, but he remembers his name, and his address, and our names. He knows who the President is, and he can do simple math problems. Dr. Waslewski says he's heard of cases like this, but never actually seen one. He called it 'a clinical miracle.' I don't know if that actually means anything or if it's just something he's always wanted to say, and I don't care. I just want to thank you, David. So does Debbie. From the bottom of our hearts."

"Me?" David asked. A hand was tugging his shoulder, trying to get him to turn around. He resisted it. "What are you thanking me for?"

"For bringing Brian back to us. You were talking to him; the waves started showing up just after you left. He heard you, Davey. He heard you and came back."

"It wasn't me," David said. He turned around. His folks were all but looming over him, their faces frantic with hope, amazement, confusion. His mother was crying. What a day for tears it had been! Only Pie, who usually bawled at least six hours out of every twenty-four, seemed to have her shit together.

"1 know what I know," Mr. Ross said. "I know what I know, David."

He had to talk to his parents before they stared at him so hard they set his shirt on fire . . . but before he did, there was one other thing he had to know. "What time did he wake up and ask about his goldfish? How long after you started seeing his brainwaves?"

"Well, they changed the monitor . . . she told you that and then . .. I don't know He trailed off for a moment, then said: "Yes I do. I remember hearing the Columbus Broad fire-whistle just before everything hap-pened. So it must've been a few minutes past five."

David had nodded, unsurprised. Right around the time the voice in his head had told him You're praying already. "Can I come and see him tomorrow?"

Mr. Ross had laughed then. "David, you can come see him at midnight, if that's what you want. Why not? Dr. Waslewski says we have to keep waking him up, anyway, and asking him stupid questions. I know what he's afraid of - that Brian will slip back into the coma - but I don't think that's going to happen, do you?"

"Nope," David said. "Bye, Mr. Ross."

He'd hung up the telephone then, and his parents all but pounced on him. How did it happen? they wanted to know. How did it happen, and what do they think you had to do with it?

David felt an urge then - an amazingly strong one - to cast his eyes down modestly and say, Well, he woke up, that's really all I know. Except . . . well . . . He would pause with seeming reluctance, then add: Mr. and Mrs. Ross think he might have heard my voice and responded to it, but you know how upset they've been. That's all it would take to start a legend; part of him knew it. And he wanted to do it.

Part of him really, really wanted to do it.

It wasn't the strange inside-out voice that stopped him but a thought of his own, one that was more intuited than articulated: If you take the credit, it stops here.

What stops?

Everything that matters, the voice of intuition responded. Everything that matters.

"David, come on," his father said, giving his shoulders a little shake. "We're dying here."

"Brian's awake," he said, choosing his words carefully. "He can talk, he can remember. The brain-guy says it's a miracle. Mr. and Mrs. Ross think I had something to do with it, that he heard me talking to him and came back, but nothing like that happened. I was holding his hand, and he wasn't there. He was the most gone person I ever saw in my life. That's why I cried - not because his folks were having a fit but because he was gone. I don't know what happened, and I don't care. He's awake, that's all I care about."

"That's all you need to care about, darling," his mother said, and gave him a brief, hard hug.

"I'm hungry," he said. "What's for supper?"

3

Now he hung in the black, blind but not deaf, listening for the voice, the one Reverend Gene Martin called the still, small voice of God. Reverend Martin had listened carefully to David's story not once but many times over the last seven months, and he seemed especially pleased by David's recounting of how he had felt during the conversation with his parents after he had finished talking with Mr. Ross.

"You were completely correct," Reverend Martin had said. "It wasn't another voice you heard at the end, especially not the voice of God . . . except in the sense that God always speaks to us through our consciences. Secular people, David, believe that the conscience is only a kind of censor, a place where social sanctions are stored, but in fact it is itself a kind of outsider, often guiding us to good solutions even in situations far beyond our understanding. Do you follow me?"

"I think so."

"You didn't know why it was wrong to take the credit for your friend's recovery, but you didn't need to. Satan tempted you as he tempted Moses, but in this case you did what Moses didn't, or couldn't: first understood, then withstood."

"What about Moses? What did he do?"

Reverend Martin told him the story of how, when the Israelites he'd led out of Egypt were thirsty, Moses had struck a stone with Aaron's staff and brought water gushing out of it. And when the Israelites asked to whom their thanks should be directed. Moses said they could thank him. Reverend Martin sipped from a teacup with HAPPY, JOYOUS, AND FREE printed on the side as he told this story, but what was in the cup didn't exactly smell like tea to David. It smelled more like the whiskey his dad sometimes drank while watching the late news.

"Just one little misstep in a long, hardworking life in the service of the Lord," Reverend Martin said cheerfully, "but God kept him out of the Promised Land for it. Joshua led em across the river-nasty, ungrateful bunch that they were.

This conversation had taken place on a Sunday afternoon in June. By then the two of them had known each other for quite awhile, and grown comfortable with each other. David had fallen into the habit of going to church in the morning, then walking over to the Methodist parsonage on Sunday afternoon and talking with Reverend Martin for an hour or so in his study. David looked forward to these meetings, and Gene Martin did, too. He was immensely taken with the child, who seemed at one moment an ordinary boy and at the next someone much older than his years. And there was something else: he believed that David Carver had been touched by God, and that God's touch might not yet have departed.

He was fascinated with the story of Brian Ross, and by how what had happened to Brian had caused David, a perfect late-twentieth-century religious illiterate, to seek answers . . . to seek God. He told his wife that David was the only honest convert he had ever seen, and that what had happened to David's friend was the only modem miracle he'd ever heard of that he could actually believe in. Brian had turned out fine and dandy except for a slight limp, and the doctors said even that might be gone in a year or so.

"Marvellous," StelIa Martin replied. "That will be a comfort to me and the baby if your young friend says the wrong thing about his religious instruction and you wind up in court, facing child-abuse charges. You have to be careful, Gene-and you're crazy to be drinking around him."

"I'm not drinking around him," Reverend Martin had replied, suddenly finding something interesting to look at out the window. At last he had returned his eyes to his wife. "As to the other, the Lord is my shepherd."

He went on seeing David on Sunday afternoons He was not quite thirty himself, and discovering for the first time the pleasures of writing on a perfectly blank slate. He didn't quit mixing Seagram's with his tea a Sunday-afternoon tradition of long standing, but he left the study door open whenever he and David were together. The TV was always on during their conversations, always punched to Mute and tuned to the various Sunday-afternoon athletic contests-soundless football when David first came to Reverend Martin, then sound-less basketball, then soundless baseball.

It was during a soundless baseball game between the Indians and the A's that David sat mulling over the story of Moses and the water from the rock. After awhile he looked up from the TV screen and said: "God isn't very forgiving, is he?"

"Yes, indeed he is," Reverend Martin said, sounding a little surprised. "He has to be, because he is so demanding."

"But he's cruel, too-isn't he?"

Gene Martin hadn't hesitated. "Yes," he said. "God is cruel. I have popcorn, David-would you like me to make some?"

Now he floated in the black, listening for Reverend Martin's cruel God, the one who had refused Moses entry into Canaan because Moses had one single time claimed God's work as his own, the one who had used him in some fashion to save Brian Ross, the one who had then killed his sweet little sister and put the rest of them in the hands of a giant lunatic who had the empty eyes of a coma patient.

There were other voices in the dark place where he went when he prayed; he heard them frequently while he was there-usually distant, like the dim voices you some times heard in the background when you made a Ion distance call, sometimes more clearly. Today one of then was very clear, indeed.

If you want to pray, pray to me, it said. Why would you pray to a God who kills baby sisters? You'll never laugh at how funny she is again, or tickle her until she squeals, or pull her braids. She's dead and you and your folks are in jail. When he comes back, the crazy cop, he'll probably kill all three of you. The others as well. This is what your God did, and really, what else would you expect from a God who kills baby sisters? He's as crazy as the cop, when you get right down to cases. Yet you kneel before him. Come on, Davey, get a life. Get a grip. Pray to me. At least I'm not crazy.

He wasn't rocked by this voice - not very, anyway. He'd heard it before, perhaps first wrapped inside that strong impulse to give his folks the impression that he had called Brian back from the deep reaches of his coma. He heard it more clearly, more personally, during his daily prayers, and this had troubled him, but when he told Reverend Martin about how that voice would sometimes cut in as if it were on a telephone extension, Reverend Martin had only laughed. "Like God, Satan tends to speak to us most clearly in our prayers and meditations," he said. "It's when we're most open, most in touch with our pneuma.

"Pneuma? What's that?"

"Spirit. The part of you that yearns to fulfill its God-made potential and be eternal. The part that God and Satan are squabbling over even now.

He had taught David a little mantra to use at such times, and he used it now. See in me, be in me, he thought, over and over again. He was waiting for the voice of the other to fade, but he also needed to get above the pain again. It kept coming back like cramps. Thinking about what had happened to Pie hurt so deep. And yes, he did resent God for letting the insane cop push her down those stairs. Resented, hell, hated.

See in me, God. Be in me, God. See in me, be in me.

The voice of Satan (if it was indeed him; David didn't know for sure) faded away, and for awhile there was only the dark.

Tell me what to do, God. Tell me what you want. And if it's your will that we should die here, help me not to waste time being mad or being scared or yelling for an explanation.

Distant, the howl of a coyote. Then, nothing.

He waited, trying to stay open, and still there was noth-ing. At last he gave up and spoke the prayer - ending words that Reverend Martin had taught him, muttering them into his clasped hands: "Lord, make me be useful to myself and help me to remember that until I am, I can't be useful to others. Help me to remember that you are my creator. I am what you made - sometimes the thumb on your hand, sometimes the tongue in your mouth. Make me a vessel which is whole to your service. Thanks. Amen."

He opened his eyes. As always, he first stared into the darkness in the center of his clasped hands, and as always, the first thing it reminded him of was an eye-a hole like an eye. Whose, though? God's? The devil's? Perhaps just his own?

He stood up, turned slowly around, looked at his parents. They were looking back at him, Ellie amazed, Ralph grave.

"Well thank heaven," his mother said. She gave him a chance to reply, and when he didn't she asked: "Were you praying? You were down on your knees almost half an hour, I thought you must have gone to sleep, were you praying?"

"Yes."

"Do you do it all the time, or is this a special case?"

"I do it three times a day. In the morning, at night, and once somewhere in the middle. The middle one I use to say thanks for the good things in my life and ask for help with the stuff I don't understand." He laughed - a small, nervous sound. "There's always plenty of that."

"Is this a recent development, or have you been doing it since you started going to that church?" She was still looking at him with a perplexity that made David feel self-conscious. Part of it was the black eye - she was developing a hell of shiner from where the cop had hit her - but that wasn't all of it, or even most of it. She was looking at him as if she had never seen him before.

"He's been doing it since Brian's accident," Ralph said. He touched the swollen place over his left eye, winced, and dropped his hand again. He stared at David through two sets of bars, looking as self-conscious as David felt. "I came upstairs to kiss you goodnight this one time - it was a few days after they let Brian go home - and I saw you down on your knees at the foot of your bed. At first I thought you might be. . . well, I don't know, doing something else . . . then I heard some of what you were saying, and understood."

David smiled, feeling a blush heat his cheeks. That was pretty absurd, under the circumstances, but there it was. "I do it in my head now. I don't even move my lips. A couple of kids heard me mumbling to myself one day in study-hall and thought I was going feeble."

"Maybe your father understands, but I don't," Ellen said.

"I talk to God," he said. This was embarrassing, but maybe if it was said once, and right out straight, it wouldn't have to be said again. "That's what praying is, talking to God. At first it feels like talking to yourself, but then it changes."

"Is that something you know for yourself, David, or is it something your new Sunday pal told you?"

"Something I know for myself."

"And does God answer?"

"Sometimes I think I hear him," David said. He reached into his pocket and touched the shotgun shell with the tips of his fingers. "And once I know I did. I asked him to let Brian be all right. After Dad took me to the hospital, I went to the Bear Street Woods and climbed to the platform me and Bri made in a tree there and asked God to let him be all right. I said that if he did that, I'd kind of give him an IOU. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes, David, I know what an IOU is. And has he collected on it? This God of yours?"

"Not yet. But when I got up to climb back down the tree, God told me to put my EXCUSED EARLY pass on a nail that was sticking out of the bark up there. It was like he wanted me to turn it in, only to him instead of Mrs. Hardy in the office. And something else. He wanted me to find out as much as I could about him - what he is, what he wants, what he does, and what he won't do. I didn't exactly hear that in words, but I heard the name of the man he wanted me to go to - Reverend Martin. That's why I go to the Methodist church. I don't think the brand name matters much to God, though. He just said to do church for my heart and spirit, and Reverend Martin for my mind. I didn't even know who Reverend Martin was at first."

"But you did," Ellie Carver said. She spoke in the soft, soothing voice of a person who suddenly understands that the person she's talking with is having mental problems. "Gene Martin has come to the house two or three years in a row to collect for African Relief."

"Really? I didn't see him. I guess I must have been in school when he came."

"Nonsense," his mother said, now in tones of absolute finality. "He would have come around near Christmas, so you wouldn't have been in school. Now listen to me David. Very carefully. When the stuff with Brian hap pened, you must have. ., well, I don't know . . . thought you needed outside help. And your subconscious dredged up the only name it knew. The God you heard in your moment of bereavement was your subconscious mind looking for answers." She turned to Ralph and spread her hands. "The obsessive Bible-reading was bad enough, but this. ., why didn't you tell me about this praying

"Because it looked private." He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. "And it wasn't hurting anybody."

"Oh no, praying is great, without it the thumbscrews and the Iron Maiden probably never would have been invented." This was a voice David had heard before, a nervous, hectoring voice that his mother adopted when she was trying to keep from breaking down completely. It was the way she'd spoken to him and his dad when Brian had been in the hospital; she had gone on in that vein for a week or so even after Brian came around.

David's father turned away from her, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking nervously down at the floor That seemed to make her more furious than ever. She swung back to David, mouth working, eyes shiny with new tears.

"What kind of deal did he make with you, this wonderful God? Was it like one of the baseball-card trades you do with your buds? Did he say 'Hey, I'll trade you this neat Brian Ross '84 for this Kirstie Carver '88?' Was it like that? Or more like - "

"Lady, he's your boy and I don't mean to interfere, but why don't you give it a rest? I guess you lost your little girl; I lost my husband. We've all had a tough day."

It was the woman who had shot at the cop. She was sitting on the end of the bunk. Her black hair hung against her cheeks like limp wings but did not obscure her face; she looked shocked and stricken and tired. Most of all tired. David couldn't remember ever having seen such a weary pair of eyes.

He thought for a moment that his mother would turn her rage on the dark-haired woman. It wouldn't have sur-prised him; she sometimes went nuclear with total strangers. He remembered once, when he'd been about six, she'd flamed a political candidate trolling for votes outside their neighborhood supermarket. The guy had made the tactical mistake of trying to hand her a leaflet when she had an armload of groceries and was late for an appointment. She had turned on him like some small, biting animal, asking him who he thought he was, what he thought he stood for, what his position was on the trade deficit, had he ever smoked pot, had he ever in his life converted the six-ten split, did he support a woman's right to choose. On that last one the guy had been emphatic - he did support a woman's right to choose, he told Ellen Carver proudly. "Good, great, because I choose right now to tell you to GET THE HOLY HELL OUT OF MY FACE!" she had screamed, and that was when the guy had simply turned tail and fled. David hadn't blamed him, either. But some-thing in the dark-haired woman's face (Mary, he thought, her name is Mary) changed his mother's mind, if blowing up had indeed been on it.

She focused on David again instead.

"So - any word from the big G on how we're supposed to get out of this? You were on your knees long enough, there must have been some sort of message.

Ralph turned back to her. "Quit riding him!" he growled. "Just quit it! Do you think you're the only one who's hurting?"

She gave him a look which was perilously close to contempt, then looked back at David again. "Well?"

"No," he said. "No message."

"Someone's coming," Mary said sharply. There was a window behind her bunk. She stood on the bunk and tried to look out. "Shit! Bars and frosted glass with goddam chicken - wire in it! But I hear it, I do!"

David heard it, too - an approaching motor. Suddenly it revved up, blatting at full power. The sound was accompanied by a scream of tires. He looked around at the old man. The old man shrugged and raised his hands, palms up.

David heard what might have been a yell of pain, and then another scream. Human, this time. It would be better to think it had been a scream of wind caught in a gutter or a downspout, but he thought it had almost certainly been human.

"What the hell?" Ralph said. "Jesus! Someone's screaming his head off! Is it the cop, do you think?"

"God I hope so!" Mary cried fiercely, still standing on the bunk and peering at the useless window. "I hope someone's pulling the son of a bitch's lungs right out of his chest!" She looked around at them. Her eyes were still tired, but now they looked wild, as well. "It could be help Have you thought of that? It could be help!"

The engine-not too close but by no means distant revved. The tires screamed again, screamed the way they did in the movies and on TV but hardly ever in real life Then there was a crunching sound. Wood, metal, maybe both. A brief honk, as if someone had inadvertently struck the car's horn. A coyote howl rose, wavering and glassy It was joined by another and another and another. They seemed to be mocking the dark-haired woman's idea of help. Now the motor was approaching, rumbling at a sedate level just above an idle.

The man with the white hair was sitting at the foot of the cell's bunk, his hands pressed together finger-to-finger between his thighs. He talked without raising his eyes from his hands. "Don't get your hopes up." His voice sounded as cracked and dusty as the salt flats west and north of here. "Ain't nobody but him. I recognize the sound of the motor."

"I refuse to believe that," Ellie Carver said flatly.

"Refuse all you want," the old man said. "It don't matter. I was on the committee that approved the money for a new town cruiser. Just before I finished my term and retired from politics, that was. I went over to Carson City last November with Collie and Dick and we bought it at a DEA auction. That very car. I had my head under the hood before we bid on her and drove her halfway home at speeds varying from sixty-five to a hunnert n ten. I recognize her, all right. It's our'n."

And, as David turned to look at the old man, the still, small voice - the one he had first heard in Brian's hospital room-spoke to him. As usual, its arrival came pretty much as a surprise, and the two words it spoke made no immediate sense.

The soap.

He heard the words as clearly as he had heard You re praying already while he'd been sitting in the Viet Cong Lookout with his eyes closed.

The soap.

He looked into the left rear corner of the cell he was sharing with old Mr. White Hair. There was a toilet with no seat. Beside it was an ancient rust-stained porcelain sink. Sitting beside the righthand spigot was a green bar of what could only be Irish Spring soap.

Outside, the engine-sound of the Desperation police-cruiser grew fatter and closer. A little farther off, the coy-otes howled. To David that howling had begun to sound like the laughter of lunatics after the keepers have decamped the asylum.

4

The Carver family had been too distraught and too focused on their captor to notice the dead dog hung from the welcome-to-town sign, but John Marinville was a trained noticer. And in truth, the dog was now hard to miss. Since the Carvers had passed this way, the buzzards had found it. They sat on the ground below the carcass, the ugliest birds Johnny had ever seen, one pulling on Old Shep's tail, the other gnawing at one of his dangling feet. The body swung hack and forth on the rope twisted around its neck. Johnny made a sound of disgust.

"Buzzards!" the cop said. "Gosh, aren't they some-thing?" His voice had thickened a great deal. He had sneezed twice more on the ride in from town, and the second time there had been teeth in the blood he sprayed out of his mouth. Johnny didn't know what was happening to him and didn't care; he only wished it would hurry up. "I'll tell you something about buzzards," the CO continued. "They wake to sleep and take their waking slow. They learn by going where they have to go. Wouldn't you agree, mon capitaine?"

A lunatic cop who quoted poetry. How Sartre.

"Whatever you say, Officer." He had no intention of antagonizing the cop again, if he could help it; the guy seemed to be self-destructing, and Johnny wanted to be around when the process was over.

They rolled past the dead dog and the grisly skinned-looking things dining on it.

What about the coyotes, Johnny? What was up with them?

But he wouldn't let himself think about the coyotes, lined up along both sides of the road at neat intervals like an honor guard, or of how they had peeled off like the Blue Angels as soon as the cruiser passed, running back into the desert as if their heads were on fire and their asses were catching -

"They fart, you know," the cop said in his bloodsoaked voice: "Buzzards fart."

"No, I didn't know that."

"Yes sir, only birds that do. I tell you so you can put it in your book. Chapter 16 of Travels with Harley."

Johnny thought the putative title of his book had never sounded so quintessentially stupid.

They were now passing a trailer park. Johnny saw a sign in front of one rusty, roof-sagging doublewide which read:

I'M A GUN-TOTIN' SNAPPLE-DRINKIN'

BIBLE-READIN' CLINTON-BASHIN' SON OF A BITCH!

NEVER MIND THE DOG, BEWARE OF THE OWNER!

Welcome to country music hell, Johnny thought.

The cruiser rolled past a mining-company building. There were quite a few cars and pickups in the parking lot, which struck Johnny as peculiar. It was past quitting time now, and not by a little. Why weren't these cars in their own driveways, or down in front of the local watering hole?

"Yep, yep," the cop said. He lifted one hand, as if to frame a picture. "I can see it now. Chapter 16: The Farting Buzzards of Desperation. Sounds like a goddam Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, doesn't it? Burroughs was a better writer than you, though, and do you know why? Because he was a hack without pretensions. One with priorities. Tell the story, do the work, give people something they can enjoy without feeling too stupid, and stay out of the gossip columns."

"Where are you taking me?" Johnny asked, striving for a neutral tone.

"Jail," the big cop said in his stuffy, liquid voice. "Where anything you bray will be abused against you in a sort of caw."

He leaned forward, wincing at the pain in his back where the cop had kicked him. "You need help," he said. He tried to keep his voice non-accusatory, even gentle. "Do you know that, Officer?"

"You're the one who needs help," the cop replied. "Spiritual, physical, and editorial. Tak! But no help is going to come, Big John. You've eaten your last literary lunch and fucked your last culture cunt. You're on your own in the wilderness, and this is going to be the longest forty days and forty nights of your entire useless life."

The words rang in his head like the peal of some sickly bell. Johnny closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. They were in the town proper now, passing Gail's Beauty Bar on one side and True Value Hardware on the other. There was nobody on the sidewalks - absolutely nobody. He'd never seen a small Western town that was actually hustling, but this was ridiculous. No one at all? As they passed the Conoco station he saw a guy in the office, rocked back in his chair with his feet up on the desk, but that was it. Except. . . up ahead. . .

A pair of animals went trotting lazily across what appeared to be the town's only intersection, moving on a diagonal beneath the blinker-light. Johnny tried to tell himself they were dogs, but they weren't dogs. They were coyotes.

It's not all the cop, Johnny. don't you think it is. Something not normal is going on here. Something very much not normal.

As they reached the intersection, the cop slammed on the brakes. Johnny, not expecting it, was thrown forward into the mesh between the front and back seats. He hit his nose and bellowed with surprised pain.

The cop took no notice of him. "Billy Rancourt!" he cried, delighted. "Damn, that's Billy Rancourt! I wondered where he got off to! Drunk in the basement of The Broken Drum, I bet you that's where he was! Dollars to doughnuts! Big-Balls Billy, damn if it's not!"

"My dose!" Johnny cried. It had started bleeding again, and he once more sounded like a human foghorn. "Oh Christ, it hurts!"

"Shut up, you baby," the cop said. "Gosh, aren't you spleeny?"

He backed up a little, then turned the cruiser so it was facing west on the cross-street. He cranked his window down and poked his head out. The nape of his neck was now the color of age-darkened bricks, badly blistered, crisscrossed with cracks. Bright lines of blood filled some of these. "Billy!" the cop yelled. "Yo, you Billy Rancourt! Hey, you old cuss!"

The western end of Desperation appeared to be a residential section-dusty and dispirited, but maybe a cut or two above the trailer park. Through his watering eyes, Johnny saw a man in blue jeans and a cowboy hat standing in the center of the street. He had been looking at two bicycles which sat there upside down, with their wheels sticking up. There had been three, but the smallest - a candy-pink little girl's bike - had fallen over in the strengthening wind. The wheels of the other two spun madly. Now this fellow looked up, saw the cruiser, waved hesitantly, then started toward them.

The cop pulled his large square head back in. He turned to look at Johnny, who understood at once that the guy out there couldn't have gotten a good look at this particular officer of the law; if he had, he would be running in the other direction right now. The cop's mouth had the sunken, infirm, look of lips with no teeth to back them up, and blood ran from the corners in little streams. One of his eyes was a cauldron of gore - except for an occasional gray flash from its swimming depths, it could have been a plucked socket. A shiny mat of blood covered the top half of his khaki shirt.

"That's Billy Rancourt," he confided happily. "He cuts my hair. I been looking for him." He lowered his voice to that register at which confidences are imparted and added, "He drinks a bit." Then he faced front, dropped the transmission into Drive, and floored the accelerator. The rumbling engine howled; the tires squalled; Johnny was thrown backward, yelling with surprise. The cruiser shot forward.

Johnny reached out, hooked his fingers through the mesh, and hauled himself back to a sitting position. He saw the man in the jeans and cowboy hat - Big-Balls Billy Rancourt - just standing there in the street ten feet or so in front of the bikes, frozen, watching them come. He seemed to swell in the windshield as the cruiser ran at him; it was like watching some crazy camera trick.

"No!" Johnny shrieked, beating his left hand at the mesh behind the cop's head. "No, don 't! Don't! MISTER, LOOK OUT!"

At the last minute, Billy Rancourt understood and tried to run. He broke to his right, toward a ramshackle house squatting tiredly behind a picket fence, but it was too little and too late. He yelled, then there was a crump as the cruiser struck him hard enough to make the frame shudder. Blood spattered the picket fence, there was a double thud from beneath the car as the wheels ran over the fallen man, and then the cruiser hit the fence and knocked it down. The big cop jammed on the brakes, bringing the cruiser to a stop in the bald dirt dooryard of the ramshackle house. Johnny was thrown forward into the mesh again, but this time he managed to get his arm up and his head down, protecting his nose.

"Billy, you bugger!" the cop cried happily. "Tak an lah!"

Billy Rancourt screamed. Johnny turned in the back seat of the cruiser and saw him crawling as fast as he could toward the north side of the Street. That wasn't very fast; he was trailing a broken leg. There were tread-marks running across the back of his shirt and the set of his jeans. His cowboy hat was sitting on the pavement, now turned upside down like the bicycles. Billy Rancourt bumped it with one knee, knocking it aslant, and blood poured out over the brim like water. More blood was gushing from his split skull and broken face. He was badly hurt, but although he had been struck amidships and then run over, he didn't appear even close to dead. That didn't surprise Johnny much. Most times it took a lot to kill a man - he had seen it again and again in Vietnam Guys alive with half their heads blown off, guys alive with their guts piled in their laps and drawing flies, guys alive with their jugulars spouting through their dirty fin-gers. People usually died hard. That was the horror of it.

"Yeehaw!" the cop yelled, and dropped the cruiser s transmission into Reverse. The tires screamed and smoked across the sidewalk, bounced back into the street and ran over Billy Rancourt's cowboy hat. The cruiser s back deck hit one of the bikes (it made a hell of a bang cracked the rear window, then flew out of sight for a moment before coming down in front). Johnny had time to see that Billy Rancourt had stopped crawling, that he was looking back over his shoulder at them, that his blood-streaked broken-nosed face wore an expression of unspeakable resignation. He can't even be thirty, Johnny thought, and then the man was borne under the reversing car. It lurched over the body and came to a stop, idling against the far curb. The cop hit the horn with the point of his elbow, making it blip briefly, as he turned to face for ward again. Ahead of the cruiser's nose, Billy Rancourt lay face-down in a huge splat of blood. One of his feet twitched, then stopped.

"Whoa," the cop said. "What a damn mess, huh?"

"Yeah, you killed him," Johnny said. Suddenly he didn't care anymore about playing this guy up, outlasting him. He didn't care about the book, or his Harley, or where Steve Ames might be. Maybe later - if there was a later-he would care about some of those things, but not now. Now, in his shock and dismay, an earlier draft of himself had come out from someplace inside; a pre-edited version of Johnny Marinville who didn't give a shit about the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award or fucking actresses, with or without emeralds. "Ran him over in the street like a damn rabbit. Brave boy!"

The cop turned, gave him a considering look with his one good eye, then turned back to face the windshield again. "I have taught thee in the way of wisdom," he said, "I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.' That's from the Book of Adverbs, John. But I think old Billy stumbled. Yes, I do. He was always a gluefoot. I think that was his basic problem."

Johnny opened his mouth. For one of the few times in his entire life, nothing came out. Maybe that was just as well.

"Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life. That's a little advice you could afford to take, Mr. Marinville, sir. Excuse me a minute."

He got out and walked to the dead man in the street, his boots seeming to shimmer as the strengthening wind blew sand across them. There was a large bloody patch on the seat of his uniform pants now, and when he bent to pick up the late Billy Rancourt, Johnny saw more blood oozing out through the ripped seams under the cop's arms. It was as if he were literally sweating blood.

Maybe so. Probably so. I think he's on the verge of crashing and bleeding out, the way heinophiliacs sometimes do. If he wasn't so Christing big, he'd probably be dead already. You know what you have to do. Don 't you?

Yes, of course he did. He had a bad temper, a horrible temper, and it seemed that not even getting the shit kicked out of him by a homicidal maniac had changed that. What he had to do now was keep that temper of his under control. No more cracks, like calling the cop a brave boy just now. That had earned him a look Johnny hadn't liked at all. A dangerous look.

The cop carried Billy Rancourt's body across the street, stepping between the two fallen bikes and past the one with its wheels still whirring and its spokes shining in the evening light. He tromped over the knocked-down piece of picket fence, climbed the steps of the house behind it, and shifted his burden so he could try the door. It opened with no trouble. Johnny wasn't surprised. He supposed that people out here did not, as a rule, bother locking their doors.

He'll have to kill the people inside, he thought. That's pretty much automatic.

But the cop only bent, offloaded his burden, then backed out onto the porch's little stoop again. He closed the door and then wiped his hands above it, leaving smears of blood on the lintel. He was so tall he didn't even have to reach to do this. The gesture gave Johnny a deep chill - it was like something out of the Book of Exodus, instructions for the Angel of Death to pass on by . . . except this man was the Angel of Death. The destroyer.

The cop walked back to the cruiser, got in, and drove sedately back toward the intersection.

"Why'd you take him into there?" Johnny asked.

"What did you want me to do?" the cop asked. His voice was thicker than ever; now he seemed almost to be gargling his words. "Leave him for the buzzards? I m ashamed of you, mon capitaine. You've been living so long with so-called civilized folk that you're starting to think like them."

"The dog - "

"A man is not a dog," the cop said in a prim, lecturely voice. He turned right at the intersection, then almost immediately hung a left, turning into a parking lot next to the town's Municipal Building. He killed the engine, got out, and opened the right-hand rear door. That at least spared Johnny the pain and effort of sliding his banged-up body out past the sagging driver's seat. "A chicken is not a chicken dinner and a man is not a dog, Johnny. Not even a man like you. Come on. Get out. Alley-zoop."

Johnny got out. He was very aware of the silence; the sounds he could hear - wind, the spick-spack of alkali hit ting the brick side of the Municipal Building, a monotonous squeaking sound from somewhere nearby - only emphasized that silence, turned it into something like a dome. He stretched, wincing at the pain in his back and leg but needing to do something for the rest of his muscles, which were badly cramped. Then he forced him self to look up into the ruin of the cop's face. The man's height was intimidating, somehow disorienting. It wasn't just that at six-three Johnny was used to looking down into people's faces instead of up; it was the amount of the height differential, not an inch or two but at least four Then there was the breadth of the man. The sheer breadth He didn't just stand; he loomed.

"Why didn't you kill me like you did that guy back there? Billy? Or does it even make any sense to ask? Are you beyond why?"

"Oh shit, we're all beyond why, you know that," the cop said, exposing bloody teeth in a smile Johnny could have done without. "The important thing is . . . listen closely . . . I could let you go. Would you like that? You must have at least two more stupid, pointless books left in your head, maybe as many as half a dozen. You could write a few before that thunderclap coronary that's waiting for you up the road finally takes you off. And I'm sure that, given time, you could put this interlude behind you and once more convince yourself that what you are doing somehow justifies your existence. Would you like that, Johnny? Would you Like me to let you go free?"

Erin go bragh, Johnny thought for no reason at all, and for one nightmarish moment felt he would laugh. Then the urge was gone and he nodded. "Yes, I'd like that very much."

"Free! Like a bird out of a cage." The cop flapped his arms to demonstrate, and Johnny saw that the bloody patches under his arms had spread. His uniform shirt was now stained crimson along the torn side-seams almost all the way down to his beltline.

"Yes." Not that he believed his new playmate had the slightest intention in the world of letting him free; oh no. But said playmate was shortly going to be nothing but blood-sausage held together by the casing of his uniform, and if he could just remain whole and functional himself until that happened. . .

"All right. Here's the deal, bigshot: suck my cock. Do that and I'll let you go. Straight trade."

He unzipped his fly and pulled down the elastic front of his shorts. Something that looked like a dead whitesnake fell out. Johnny observed the thin stream of blood driz-zling from it without surprise. The cop was bleeding from every other orifice, wasn't he?

"Speaking in the literature sense," the cop said, grinning, "this particular blowjob is going to be a little more Anne Rice than Armistead Maupin. I suggest you follow Queen Victoria's advice - close your eyes and think of strawberry shortcake."

Johnny Marinville looked at the maniac's prick, then up at the maniac's grinning face, then back at his prick again.

He didn't know what the cop expected - screams, revulsion, tears, melodramatic pleading - but he had a clear sense that he wasn't feeling what the cop wanted him to feel, what the cop probably thought he was feeling.

You don't seem to understand, that I've seen a far worse things in my tune than a cock dripping blood. Not just in Vietnam, either.

He realized that the anger was creeping up on hut again, threatening to take him over. Oh shit, of course it was. Anger had always been his primary addiction, not whiskey or coke or 'hides. Plain old rage. It didn't have anything to do with what the cop had taken out of his pants, and that might be what the guy didn't understand It wasn't a sex issue. The thing was, Johnny Marinville had never liked anything stuck in his face.

"I'll get down on my knees in front of you if you want he said, and although his voice was mild, something in the cop's face changed - really changed for the first time. It blanked out somehow, except for the good eye, which narrowed suspiciously.

"Why are you looking at me that way? What in the hell gives you the right to look at me that way? Tak!"

"Never mind how I'm looking at you. Just hear me out, motherfucker: three seconds after I put that trouser-rat of yours into my mouth, it's going to be lying on the pavement. You got that? Tuk!'

He spat this last word up into the cop's face, standing on tiptoe to do it. and for a moment the big man looked more than surprised - he looked shocked. Then the expression tightened into a cramp of rage, and he shoved Johnny away from him so hard that for a moment he f It as if he were flying. He hit the side of the building, saw stars as the back of his head connected with rough brick bounced back, then went sprawling when his feet tangled together. New places hurt and old places howled, but the expression he had seen on. the cop's face made it all worthwhile. He looked up to see if it was still there wanting to sample it again like a bee sampling the sweet heart of a flower, and his heart staggered in his chest.

The cop's face had tautened. The skin on it now looked like makeup, or a thin coat of paint - unreal. Even the blood-filled eye looked unreal. It was as if there was another face beneath the one Johnny could see, pushing at the overlying flesh, trying to get out.

The cop's good eye fixed on him for a moment, and then his head lifted. He pointed at the sky with all five fingers of his left hand. "Tak ah lah," he said in his guttural, gargling voice. "Timoh. Can de lach! On! On!"

There was a flapping sound like clothes on a line, and a shadow fell over Johnny's face. There was a harsh cry, not quite a caw, and then something with scabrous, flapping wings dropped on him, its crooked claws gripping his shoulders and folding themselves into the fabric of his shirt, its beak digging into his scalp as it uttered its inhuman cry again.

It was the smell that told Johnny what it was - a smell like meat gone feverish with rot. Its huge, unkempt wings flapped against the sides of his face as it solidified its position, driving that stench into his mouth and nose, jamming it in, making him gag. He saw the Shepherd on its rope, swinging as the peeled-looking bald things pulled at its tail and feet with their beaks. Now one of them was roosting on him - one which had apparently never heard that buzzards were fundamental cowards that only attacked dead things-and its beak was plowing his scalp in furrows, bringing blood.

"Get it off"' he screamed, completely unnerved. He tried to grab the wide, beating wings, but got only two fistfuls of feathers. Nor could he see; he was afraid that if he opened his eyes, the buzzard would shift its position and peck them out. 'Jesus. Please, please get it off me!"

"Are you going to look at me properly if I do?" the cop asked. "No more insolence? No more disrespect?"

"No! No more!" He would have promised anything. Whatever had leaped out of him and spoken against the cop was gone now; the bird had plucked it out like a worm from an ear of corn.

"You promise?"

The bird, flapping and squalling and pulling. Smelling like green meat and exploded guts. On him. Eating him. Eating him alive.

"Yes! Yes! I promise!"

"Fuck you," the cop said calmly. "Fuck you, os pa, and fuck your promise. Take care of it yourself. Or die."

Eyes squeezed to slits, kneeling, head lowered, Johnny gripped blindly for the bird, caught its wings where they joined its body, and tore it off his head. It spasmed wildly in the air above him, shitting white streams that the wind pulled away in banners, uttering its rough cry (only there was pain in it now), its head whipping from side to side. Sobbing - mostly what he felt was revulsion - Johnny ripped one of its wings off and threw the buzzard against the wall. It stared at him with eyes as black as tar, its bloodstained beak popping open and then snapping closed with liquid little clicks.

That's my blood, you bastard. Johnny thought. He dropped the wing he'd torn off the bird and got to his feet. The buzzard tried to lurch away from him, flapping its one good wing like an oar, stirring up dust and feathers. It went in the direction of the Desperation police-cruiser, but before it managed more than five feet, Johnny brought one motorcycle boot down on it, snapping its back. The bird's scaly legs splayed out to either side, as if it were trying to do the split. Johnny put his hands over his eyes, convinced for one moment that his mind was going to snap just as the bird's back had snapped.

"Not bad," the cop said. "You got him, pard. Now turn around."

"No." He stood, trembling all over, hands to his face.

"Turn around."

There was no denying the voice. He turned and saw the cop pointing up, once again with all five splayed fingers. Johnny raised his head and saw more buzzards - two dozen at least - sitting in a line along the north side of the parking lot, looking down at them.

"Want me to call them?" the cop asked in a deceptively gentle tone of voice. "I can, you know. Birds are a hobby of mine. They'll eat you alive, if that's what I want."

"N-N-No." He looked back at the cop and was relieved to see his fly was zipped again. There was a bloodstain spreading across the front of his pants, though. "No, d-don' t."

"What's the magic word, Johnny?"

For a moment - a horrible moment - he had no idea what the cop wanted him to say. Then it came to him. "Please."

"Are you ready to be reasonable?"

"Y-Yes."

"I wonder about that," the cop said. He seemed to be speaking to himself. "I just wonder."

Johnny stood looking at him, saying nothing. The anger was gone. Everything felt gone, replaced by a kind of deep numbness.

"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 seem 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!"