“No, that’s not why… Dad.” The boy reached out and took his father’s hand. It was an oddly adult gesture of comfort. “Morn’s dead.”
Ralph bowed his head. “Well, we don’t know that for sure, David, and we mustn’t give up hope, but I guess it’s likely.”
“I do know for sure. I’m not just guessing.” David’s face was haggard in the light of the crisscrossing flash-light beams. His eyes settled on Johnny last. “There’s stuff we have to do. You know it, don’t you. That’s why you waited for me to wake up.”
“No, David. Not at all. We just didn’t want to risk moving you until we were sure you were okay.” Yet this felt like a lie to his heart. He found himself filling up with a vague, fluttery nervousness. It was the way he felt in the last few days before beginning a new book, when he understood that the inevitable could not be put off much longer, that he would soon be out on the wire again, clutching his balance-pole and riding his stupid little unicycle.
But this was worse. By far. He felt an urge to hop the kid over the head with the butt of the Rossi shotgun knock him out and shut him up before he could say any thing else.
Don’t you fuek us up, kid, he thought. Not when we’re starting to see a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
David looked back at his father. He was still holding Ralph’s hand. “She’s dead but not at rest. She can’t be as long as Tak inhabits her body.”
“Who’s Tak, David.” Cynthia asked.
“One of the Wintergreen Twins,” Johnny said cheer—fully. “The other one is Tik.”
David gave him a long, level look, and Johnny dropped his eyes. He hated himself for doing it but couldn’t 7 help it.
“Tak is a god,” David said. “Or a demon. Or maybe nothing at all, just a name, a nonsense syllable-but a dangerous nothing, like a voice in the wind. It doesn matter.
What does is that my mom should be put to rest Then she can be with my sister in…
well, in wherever there is for us after we die.”
“Son, what matters is that we have to get out of here,” Johnny said. He was still managing to keep his voice gentle, but now he could hear an undercurrent of impa tience and fear in it. “Once we get to Ely, we’ll contact 7 the State Police-hell, the FBI. There’ll be a hundred cops on the ground and a dozen helicopters in the air by noon tomorrow, that I promise you. But for now-”
“My mom’s dead, but Mary’s not,” David said. “She s still alive. She’s in the pit.”
Cynthia gasped. “How did you know she was even gone.”
David smiled wanly. “Well, I don’t see her, for one thing. The rest 1 know the same way I know it was Audrey who choked me. I was told.”
“By who, David.” Ralph asked.
“I don’t know,” David said. ‘—1 don’t even know if it matters. What matters is that he told me stuff. True stuff. I know it was.”
“Story-hour’s over, pal,” Johnny said. There was a raggedness in his voice. He heard it, but he couldn’t help it. And was it surprising. This wasn’t a panel-discussion on magical realism or concrete prose, after all. Story-hour was finished; bug-out time had arrived. He had absolutely no desire to listen to a bunch of shit from this spooky little Jesus Scout.
The Jesus Scout slid out of his cell somehow, killed the coyote Entragian set as a guard, and saved your mis-erable life, Terry spoke up inside his head. Maybe you should listen to him, Johnny.
And that, he thought, was why he had divorced Terry in the first place. In a fucking nutshell. She had been a divine lay, but she had never known when to shut up and listen to her intellectual betters.
But the damage was done; it was now too late to derail this train of thought. He found himself thinking of what Billingsley had said about David’s escape from the jail cell. Not even Houdini, hadn’t that been it. Because of the head. And then there was the phone.
The way he’d sent the coyotes packing. And the matter of the sardines and crackers. The thought which had gone through his own head had been something about unobtrusive miracles, hadn’t it.
He had to quit thinking that way. Because what Jesus Scouts did was get people killed.
Look at John the Bap-tist, or those nuns in South America. or—Not even Houdini.
Because of the head.
Johnny realized there was no point in gilding the lily, or doing little mental tap-dances, or-this was the oldest trick of all-using different voices to argue the question into incoherence. The simple fact was that he was no longer just afraid of the cop, or the other forces which might be loose in this town.
He was also afraid of David Carver.
“It wasn’t really the cop who killed my mother and sister and Mary’s husband,” David said, and gave Johnny a look that reminded him eerily of Terry. That look used to drive him to the edge of insanity. You know what I’m talking about, it said. You know exactly, so don ‘t waste my time by being deliberately obtuse. “And whoever I talked to while I was unconscious, it was really God. Only God can’t come to people as himself; he’d scare them to death and never get any business done at all. He comes as other stuff. Birds, pillars of fire, burning bushes, whirlwinds…
“Or people,” Cynthia said. “Sure, God’s a master of disguise.”
The last of Johnny’s patience broke at the skinny girl’s makes-sense-to-me tone. “This is totally insane!” he shouted. “We have to get gone, don’t you see that. We’re parked on goddam Main Street, shut up in here without a single window to look out of, he could be anywhere-up front behind the fucking wheel, for all we know! Or… I don’t know… coyotes… buzzards…
“He’s gone,” David said in his quiet voice. He leaned forward and took another Jolt from the case.
“Who.” Johnny asked. “Entragian.”
“The can tak. It doesn’t matter who it’s in-Entragian or my mother or the one it started with-it’s always the same. Always the can tak, the big god, the guardian. Gone. Can’t you feel it.”
1don’t feel anything.”
Don’t be a gonzo, Terry said in his mind.
“Don’t be a gonzo,” David said, looking intently up at him. The bottle of Jolt was clasped loosely in his hands. Johnny bent toward him. “Are you reading my mind.” he asked, almost pleasantly. “If you are, I’ll thank you to get the hell out of my head, sonny.”
“What I’m doing is trying to get you to listen,” David said. “Everyone else will if you will! He doesn’t need to send his can tahs or can tak against us if we’re in dis-agreement with one another-if there’s a broken window, he’ll get in and tear us apart!”
“Come on,” Johnny said, “don’t go all guilt-trippy. None of this is my fault.”
“I’m not saying it is. Just listen, okay.” David sounded almost pleading. “You can do that, there’s time, because he’s gone. The trailers he put in the road are gone, too. Don’t you get it. He wants us to leave.”
“Great! Let’s give him what he wants!”
“Let’s listen to what David has to say,” Steve said.
Johnny wheeled on him. “I think you must have for-gotten who pays you, Steve.” He loathed the sound of the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but made no effort to take them back. The urge to get out of here, to jump behind the wheel of the Ryder truck and just roll some miles-in any direction but south-was now so strong it was nearly panic.
“You told me to stop calling you boss. I’m holding you to that.”
“Besides, what about Mary.” Cynthia asked. “He says she’s alive!”
Johnny turned toward her-turned on her. “You may want to pack your suitcases and travel Trans-God Air-ways with David, but I think I’ll pass.”
“We’ll listen to him,” Ralph said in a low voice.
Johnny stared at him, amazed. If he had expected help from anyone, it had been from the boy’s father. He’s all I got, Ralph had said in the lobby of The American West. All that’s left of my family.