“That’s right,” Johnny said. “Good old free will.” He jumped down from the back of the truck, wincing at another twinge of pain in his back. His nose was hurting again, too.
Bigtime. He looked around, checking for coy-otes or buzzards or snakes, and saw nothing. Not so much as a bug. “Frankly, David, I trust God about as far as I can sling a piano.” He looked back in at the boy, smiling.
“You trust him all you want. I guess it’s a luxury you can r still afford. Your sister’s dead and your mother’s turned into Christ-knows-what, but there’s still your father to get through before Talc goes to work on you personally.”
David jerked. His mouth trembled. His face crumpled and he began to cry.
“You bitch!” Cynthia shouted at Johnny. “You cunt—She rushed to the back of the truck and kicked at him Johnny dodged back, the toe of her small foot missing his chin by only an inch or two. He felt the wind of it. Cyn thia stood on the edge of the truck, waving her arms for balance. She probably would have fallen into the street if Steve hadn’t caught her by the shoulders and steadied her.
“Lady, I never pretended to be a saint,” Johnny said, — and it came out the way he wanted-easy and ironic and amused-but inside he was horrified. The wince on the kid’s face… as if he’d been slugged by someone he’d counted on as a friend. And he’d never been called a bitch in his life. A cunt, either, for that matter.
“Get out!” Cynthia screamed. Behind her, Ralph was down on one knee, clumsily holding his son and staring out at Johnny in a kind of stunned disbelief. “We don’t need you, we’ll do it without you!”
“Why do it at all.” Johnny asked, taking care to stay out of range of her foot. “That’s my point. For God. What did he ever do for you, Cynthia. that you should spend your life waiting for him to buzz you on the old intercom or send you a fax. Did God protect you from the guy who jobbed your ear and broke your nose.”
“I’m here, ain’t I.” she asked truculently.
“Sorry, that’s not enough for me. I’m not going to be the punchline of a joke in God’s little comedy club. Not if I can help it. I can’t believe any of you are seriously con-templating going up there. The idea is insane.”
“What about Mary.” Steve asked. “Do you want to leave her. Can you leave her.”
“Why not.” Johnny asked, and actually laughed. It was just a short bark of sound… but it was not without amusement, and he saw Steve shy away from it, dis-gusted. Johnny glanced around for animals, but the coast was still clear. So maybe the kid was right-Tak wanted them to go, had opened the door for them. “I don’t know her any more than I know the sandhogs he-it, if you like that better-killed in this town. Most of whom were probably so brain-dead they didn’t even know they were gone. I mean, don’t you see how pointless all this is. If you should succeed, Steve, what’s your reward going to be. A lifetime membership at the Owl’s Club.”
“What happened to you.” Steve asked. “You walked up to that cougar big as life and blew her head off. You were like the fucking Wolverine. So I know you’ve got guts. Had em, anyway. Who stole em.”
“You don’t understand. That was hot blood. You know what my trouble is. If you give me a chance to think, I’ll take it.” He took another step backward. No God stopped him.
“Good luck, you guys. David, for whatever it’s worth, you’re an extraordinary young man.”
“If you go, it’s over,” David said. His face was still against his father’s chest. His words were muftled but audible. “The chain breaks. Tak wins.”
“Yeah, but when playoff-time comes, he’s ours,” Johnny said, and laughed again. The sound reminded him of cocktail parties where you laughed that same meaning-less laugh at meaningless witticisms while, in the back—ground, a meaningless little jazz combo played meaning—less renditions of meaningless old standards like “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “Papa Loves Mambo.” It was the way he had been laughing when he climbed out of the pool at the Bel-Air, still holding his beer in one hand. But so what. He could laugh any fucking way he wanted to.
He bad once won the National Book Award, after all.
“I’m going to take a car from the mining-office lot. I’m going to drive like hell until I get to Austin, and then I’m going to make an anonymous call to the State Police, tell them some bad shit’s happened in Desperation. Then I’ll take some rooms in the local Best Western and hope you guys show up to use them. If you do, drinks are on me. One way or another, I’m stepping off the wagon tonight. I think Desperation’s cured me of sobriety for ever.” He smiled at Steve and Cynthia, standing side by side in the back of the truck with their arms around each other. “You two are crazy not to come with me now, you know. Somewhere else you could be good together. I can see that. All you can do here is be can tahs for David s cannibal God.”
He turned and began to walk away, head down, heart pounding. He expected to be followed by anger, invec tive, maybe pleas. He was ready for any of them, and per baps the only thing that could have stopped him was the thing Steve Ames did say, in the low, almost toneless voice of a man who is only conveying a fact.
“I don’t respect you for this.”
Johnny turned around, more hurt by this simple decla ration than he would have believed possible. “Dear me, be said. “I’ve lost the respect of a man once in charge of throwing out Steven Tyler’s barf-bags. Ratfuck.”
“I never read any of your books, but I read that story you gave me, and I read the book about you,” Steve said “The one by the professor in Oklahoma. I guess you were a hellraiser, and a shit to your women, but you went to Vietnam without a rifle, for God’s sake… and tonight the cougar… what happened to all that.”
“Ran out like piss down a drunk’s leg,” Johnny said. “I suppose you don’t think that happens, but it does. The last of mine ran out in a swimming pool. How’s that for absurd.”
David joined Steve and Cynthia at the back of the truck.
He still looked pale and worn, but he was calm. “Its mark is on you,” he said. “It will let you go, but you’ll wish you stayed when you start smelling Tak on your skin.”
Johnny looked at the boy for a long time, fighting an urge to walk back to the truck—fighting it with all the considerable force of will at his disposal. “So I’ll wear lots of aftershave,” he said. “Bye, boys and girls. Live right.”
He walked away, and as fast as he could. Any faster and he would have been running.
There was silence in the truck; they watched until Johnny was out of sight, and still no one said anything. David stood with his father’s arm around him, thinking he had never felt so hollow, so empty, so utterly done in. It was over. They had lost. He kicked one of the empty Jolt bottles, his eye following its skitter to the wall of the truck, where it bounced and came to rest next to—David stepped forward. “Look, Johnny’s wallet. It must have fallen out of his pocket.”
“Poor baby,” Cynthia said.
“Surprised he didn’t lose it sooner,” Steve said. He spoke in the dull, preoccupied tone of a man whose real thoughts are somewhere else entirely. “I kept telling him a guy on a motorcycle trip ought to have a wallet with a chain on it.” A ghost of a grin touched his lips. “Getting those motel rooms in Austin may not be as easy as he thinks.”
“I hope he sleeps in the damn parking lot,” Ralph said. “Or beside the road.”
David barely heard them. He felt the way he had that day in the Bear Street Woods-not when God was speaking to him, but when he had become aware that God was going to.
He bent forward and picked up Johnny’s wallet. When he touched it, something that felt like a wallop of electricity exploded in his head. A small, plo—sive grunt escaped him. He fell against the wall of the truck, clutching the wallet.