It drops Ripton ’s body-the body feels as light as a burst seedpod-and strides toward the door, listening to the seams of Josephson ’s khaki shirt tear open as his shoulders widen and his arms lengthen. His feet don’t grow as much, but enough to burst the laces of his tennis shoes.
Tak stands outside, grinning hugely. It has never felt better. Everything is in its eye. The world roars like a waterfall. A recordsetting erection, a pantsbuster if ever there was one, has turned the front of his jeans into a tent.
Tak is here, liberated from the well of the worlds. Tak is great, Tak will feed, and Tak will rule as it has always ruled, in the desert of wastes, where the plants are migrants and the ground is magnetic.
It gets into the Buick, splitting the seam running up the back of Brad Josephson ’s pants all the way to the belt-loops. Then, grinning at the thought of the bumper-sticker on the front of the car-MINERS GO DEEPER AND STAY LONGER-it swings around the field office and heads back toward Desperation, stretching out a rooster-tail of dust behind the fastmoving car.
David stopped. He still sat with his back against the wall of the Ryder truck, looking down at his sneakers. His voice had grown husky with talking. The others stood around him in a semicircle, pretty much as Johnny sup-posed the wise old wallahs had once stood around the boy Jesus while he gave them the scoop, the lowdown, the latest buzz, the true gen. Johnny’s clearest view was of the little punk-chick, Steve Ames’s catch of the day, and she looked pretty much the way he himself felt: mesmer-ized, amazed, but not disbelieving. And that, of course, was the root of his disquiet. He was going to get out of this town, nothing was going to stop him from doing that, but it would be a lot easier on the old ego if he could simply believe the boy was deluded, rapping tall tales straight out of his own imagination. But he didn’t think that was the case.
You know it’s not, Terry said from her cozy little place in Der Bitchen Bunker.
Johnny squatted to get a fresh bottle of Jolt, not feeling his wallet (genuine crocodile, Barneys, three hundred and ninety-five dollars), which had worked most of the way out of his back pocket, slip all the way out and drop to the floor. He tapped David’s hand with the neck of the bottle. The boy looked up, smiling, and Johnny was shocked at how tired he looked. He thought about David’s explana-tion of Talc-trapped in the earth like an ogre in a fairy—tale, using human beings like paper cups because it wore their bodies out so rapidly-and wondered if David’s God was much different.
“Anyway, that’s how he does it,” David said in his husky voice. “He goes across on their breath, like a seed on a gust of wind.”
“The kiss of death instead of the kiss of life,” Ralph said.
David nodded.
“But what kissed Ripton.” Cynthia asked. “When he went into the mine the night before, what kissed him.”
“I don’t know,” David said. “Either I wasn’t shown or I don’t understand. All I know is that it happened at the well I told you about. He went into the room… the chamber… the can tahs drew him, but he wasn’t allowed to actually touch any of them.”
“Because the can tahs spoil people as a vessel for Tak,” Steve half-said, half-asked.
“Yes.”
“But Talc has a physical body. I mean, he-it-we’re not just talking about an idea, are we.
Or a spirit.”
David was shaking his head. “No, Tak’s real, it has a being. It had to get Ripton into the mine because it can’t get through the mi-the well. It has a physical body, and the well is too small for it. All it can do is catch people, inhabit them, make them into can tak. And trade them in when they wear out.”
“What happened to Josephson, David.” Ralph asked. He sounded quiet, almost drained.
Johnny found it increasingly difficult to look at Carver looking at his son.
“He had a leaky heart valve,” David said. “It wasn’t a big deal. He could have gone on without any problem for years, maybe, but Talc got hold of him, and just…
David shrugged. “Just wore him out. It took two and a half days. Then he switched to Entragian. Entragian was strong, he lasted most of a whole week… but he had very fair skin. People used to kid him about all the sun—bum creams he had.”
“Your guide told you all this,” Johnny said.
“Yes. I guess that’s what he was.”
“But you don’t know who he was.”
“I almost know. I feel like I should know.”
“Are you sure he didn’t come from this Talc. Because there’s an old saying: ‘The devil can wear a pleasing aspect.’ “He wasn’t from Talc, Johnny.”
“Let him talk,” Steve said. “All right.”
Johnny shrugged and sat down. One of his hands almost touched his fallen wallet as he did so. Almost, but not quite.
“The back part of the hardware store here in town is a clothes store,” David resumed.
“Work clothes, mostly. Levi’s, khakis, Red Wing boots, stuff like that. They order special for this one guy, Curt Yeoman, who works—worked-for the telephone company. Six-foot—seven, the tallest man in Desperation. That’s why Entragian’s clothes weren’t ripped when he took us, Dad. Saturday night, Josephson broke into the True Value and grabbed a set of khakis in Curt Yeoman’s size. Shoes, too. He took them to the Municipal Building and actually put them in Collie Entragian’s locker. Even then he knew who he was going to use next, you see.”
“Was that when he killed the Police Chief.” Ralph asked.
“Mr. Reed. No. Not then. He did that Sunday night. By then Mr. Reed didn’t matter much, anyway. Ripton left him one of the can tahs, you see, and it messed Mr. Reed up.
Bad. The can tahs do different things to different people. When Mr. Josephson killed him, Mr. Reed was sitting at his desk and-”
Looking away, clearly embarrassed, David made his right hand into a tube and moved it rapidly up and down in the air.
“Okay,” Steve said. “We get the picture. What about Entragian. Where was he all weekend.”
“Out of town, like Audrey. The Desperation cops have-had-a law-enforcement contract with the county. It means a lot of travelling. Friday night, the night Ripton killed the blast-crew, Entragian was in Austin. Saturday night he slept at the Davis Ranch. Sunday night-the last night he was really Collie Entragian-he spent on Shoshone tribal land. He had a friend up there. A woman, I think.”
Johnny walked toward the back of the Ryder truck, then wheeled around. “What did he do, David. What did it do. How did we get to where we are now. How did it happen without anyone finding out. How could it happen.” He paused. “And another question.
What does Tak want. To get out of its hole in the ground and stretch its legs. Eat pork rinds. Snort cocaine and drink Tequila Sunrises. Sorew some NFL cheerleaders. Ask Bob Dylan what the lyrics to ‘Gates of Eden’ really mean. Rule the earth. What.”
“It doesn’t matter,” David said quietly.
“Huh.”
“All that matters is what God wants. And what he wants is for us to go up to the China Pit. All the rest is just… story-hour.”
Johnny smiled. It felt tight and a little painful, too small for his mouth. “Tell you what, sport: what your God wants doesn’t matter in the least to me.” He turned back to the Ryder truck’s rear door and ran it up. Outside, the air seemed almost breathlessly still and strangely warm in the wake of the storm. The blinker pulsed rhythmically at the intersection. Crossing the street at regular intervals were rippled sand dunes. Seen in the nebulous light of the westering moon and the yellow pulse of the blinker-light, Desperation looked like an outpost in a science fiction movie.
“I can’t stop you if you mean to go,” David said.
“Maybe Steve and my dad could, but it wouldn’t do any r good. Because of the free-will covenant.”