They say they will. Not all will be able to keep their promise even for twenty-four hours, of course-some men are just no good at keeping secrets-but he thinks he com-mands enough respect among them to buy twelve hours and four would probably be enough. Four hours after quitting time. Four hours in there by himself with a flash-light, a camera, and an electric follow-me for any sou-venirs he may decide to collect. Four hours with all those childhood fantasies he is too old a hand to think about. And if the roof should pick that moment, after almost a hundred and forty years and untold blasts shaking the ground all around it, to let go. Let it. He’s a man with no wife, no kids, no parents, and two brothers who have forgotten he’s alive. He has a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn ‘t be losing that many years, in any case. He’s been feeling punk for almost six months now, and just lately he had taken to pissing blood.
Not a lot, but even a little seems like a lot when it’s yours you see in the toilet bowl.
If I get out of this, maybe I’ll go to the doctor, he thinks. Take it as a sign and go to the damned doctor. How about that.
Turner wants to take some pictures of the exposed drift after he clocks out. Ripton lets him. It seems the quickest way to get rid of him.
“How far in do you think we punched it.” Turner asks, standing about two feet beyond the yellow tape and snap-ping pictures with his Nikon-pictures that, with no flash, will show nothing but a black hole and a few scattered bones that might belong to a deer.
“No way to tell,” Ripton says. In his mind he’s invento-rying the equipment he’ll take in with him.
“You ain’t gonna do nothin dumb after I’m gone, are you.” Turner asks.
“Nope,” Ripton says. “I have too much damned respect for Mining Safety to even think of such a thing.”
“Yeah, right,” Turner says, laughing, and early the next morning, around two o’clock, a much larger version of Gary Ripton will enter the bedroom Turner shares with his wife and shoot the man as he sleeps. His wife, too. Tak!
It’s a busy night for Gary Ripton. A night of killing (not one of Turner’s blast-crew lives to see the morning sun) and a night of placing can tahs; he has taken a gunnysack filled with them when he leaves the pit, over a hundred in all. Some have broken into pieces, but he knows even the fragments retain some of their queer, unpredictable power. He spends most of the night placing these relics, leaving them in odd corners, mailboxes, glove compart-ments. Even in pants pockets! Yes! Hardly anyone locks their houses out here, hardly anyone stays up late out here, and the homes belonging to Turner’s blast—crew are not the only ones Gary Ripton visits.
He returns to the pit, feeling as trashed-out as Santa Claus returning to the North Pole after the big night… only Santa ’s work ends once the presents have been dis-tributed.
Ripton ’s is only beginning. it’s quarter to five; he has over two hours before the first members of Pascal Martinez ’s small Saturday day-crew show up. It should be enough, but there is certainly no time to waste. Gary Ripton ’s body is bleeding so badly he’s had to stuff his underwear full of toilet paper to absorb it, and twice on his way out to the mine he has had to stop and yark a gutful of blood out the window of Gary’s pickup truck, it’s splashed all down the side. in the first tentative and somehow sinister light of the coming day, the drying blood looks like tobacco-juice.
In spite of his need to hurry, he’s stopped dead for a moment by what the headlights show when he arrives at the bottom of the pit. He sits behind the wheel of the old truck with his eyes wide.
There are enough desert animals on the north slope of the China Pit to fill an ark: wolves, coyotes, hopping baldheaded buzzards, flapping owls with eyes like great gold wedding—rings; cougars and wildcats and even afew scruffy barncats. There are wild dogs with their ribs arcing against their scant hides in cruel detail-many are escapees from the raggedy-ass commune in the hills, he knows-and running around their feet unmolested are hordes of spiders and platoons of rats with black eyes.
Each of the animals coming out of the China Shaft car-ries a can tah in its mouth. They lope, flap, and scurry iq the pit-road like a flood of weird refugees escaping some underground world. Below them, sitting patiently like customers in a Green Stamp redemption center two days before Christmas-take a number and wait-are more animals. What they’re waiting for is their turn to go into the dark.
Tak begins to laugh with Gary Ripton ’s vocal cords. “What a hoot!” he exclaims.
Then he drives on to the field office, unlocks the door with Ripton ’s key, and kills Joe Prudum, the night watchman. Old Joe isn’t much of a night watchman; comes on at dark, doesn ‘t have the slightest idea any-thing’s going on in the pit, and doesn’t think there’s any-thing strange about Gary Ripton showing up first thing in the morning. He ’s using the washer in the corner to do some laundry, he’s sitting down to have his topsy-turvy version of dinner, and everything ’s cozy right up to the moment when Ripton puts a bullet in his throat.
That done, Ripton calls the Owl’s Club in town. The Owl’s is open twenty-four hours a day (although, like a vampire, it’s never really alive), it’s where Brad Josephson, he of the gorgeous chocolate skin and long, sloping gut, eats breakfast six days a week… and always at this brutally early hour. That will come in handy now. Ripton wants Brad on hand, and quickly, before the black man can be polluted by the can tahs. The can tahs are useful in many ways, but they spoil a man or woman for Tak ’s greater work. Ripton knows he can take someone from Martinez’s crew if he needs to, perhaps even Pascal himself, but he wants (well, Tak wants, actually) Brad. Brad will be useful in other ways.
How long do the bodies last if they’re healthy. he asks himself as he approaches the phone. How long if the one you push into overdrive hasn’t been incubating a juicy case of cancer to start with.
He doesn’t know, but thinks he will probably soon have a chance to find out.
“Owl’s,” says a woman ’s voice in his ear-the sun’s not even up and she sounds tired already.
“Howdy, Denise,” he says. “How they hangin.”
“Who ’s this.” Deeply suspicious.
“Cary Ripton, hon. You don’t recognize my voice.”
“You must have a bad case of morning mouth, darlin. Or are you coming down with a cold.”
“Gold, I guess,” he says, grinning and wiping blood off his lower lip. It is oozing out from between his teeth. Down below it feels like all of his innards have come loose and are floating in a sea of blood. “Listen, hon. is Brad in.”
“Right over in the corner where he always is, livin large and eatin nasty-four eggs, home fries, ‘bout half a pound of limpfried bacon. I hope when he finally vapor—locks, he — does it somewheres else. What you want Brad for at this hour of a Sat’d’y mornin.”
“Company business.”
“Well shut my mouth n go to heaven,” she says. “You want to take care of that cold, Rip—you sound really congested.”
“Just with love for you,” he tells her.
“Huh,” she says, and the phone goes down with a clunk. “Brad!” he hears her yell.
“Phone! For you! Mr. Wonderful!” A pause while Brad is probably asking her what she’s talking about. “Find out for yourself” she says, and a moment later Brad Josephson is on the line. He says hello like a man who knows perfectly well that Publishers Clearinghouse doesn’t call at five in the morning to tell you you won the big one.
“Brad, it’s Gary Ripton,” he says. He knows just how to get Brad out here; he got the idea from the late great Kirk Turner. “Have you got your camera gear in your car.” Of course he does. Brad is, among other things, an ardent birdwatcher. Fancies himself an amateur orni-thologist, in fact. But Gary Ripton can do better than birds this morning. A lot better.