Waiting for all of them, but mostly for Prayboy. It would rip Prayboy’s throat out with one of the golden eagle’s powerful talons, his eyes with the other; Prayboy would be dead before any of them knew what had happened. Before the os dam himself knew what had hap-pened, or even realized he was dying blind.
Steve had brought a blanket-an old faded plaid thing-along to cover the boss’s scoot with in the event that he did end up having to transport the Harley to the West Coast in the back of the truck. When Johnny and David pulled up in the ATV, Mary Jackson had this blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a tartan shawl. The truck’s rear door had been run up and she was sitting there with her feet on the bumper, holding the blanket together in front of her. In her other hand was one of the few remaining bottles of Jolt. She thought she had never tasted anything sweeter in her whole life. Her hair was plastered flat against her head in a sweaty helmet. Her eyes were huge. She was shivering in spite of the blanket, and felt like a refugee in a TV newsclip. Something about a fire or an earthquake. She watched Ralph give his son a fierce one-armed hug, the Ruger.44 in his other hand, actually lifting David up off his feet and then setting him down again.
Mary slid to the ground, and staggered a little. The muscles of her legs were still trembling from her run. I ran for my life, she thought, and that’s something I’ll never be able to explain, not by talking, probably not even in a poem-how it is to run not for a meal or a medal or a prize or to catch a train but for your very fucking life.
Cynthia put a hand on her arm. “You okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Give me five years and I’ll be in the goddam pink.”
Steve joined them. “No sign of her,” he said-meaning Ellen, Mary supposed. Then he went over to David and Marinville. “David. All right.”
“Yes,’—David said. “So’s Johnny.”
Steve looked at the man he had been hired to shepherd, his face noncommittal. “That so.”
“I think so,” Marinville said. “I had…” He glanced at David. “You tell him, cabbage.
You got the head on you.”
David smiled wanly at that. “He had a change of heart. And if it was my mother you were looking for… the thing that was inside my mother… you can stop. She’s dead.”
“You’re sure.”
David pointed. “We’ll find her body about halfway up the embankment.” Then, in a voice which struggled to be matter-of-fact and failed, he added: “I don’t want to look at her. When you move her out of the way, I mean. Dad, I don’t think you should, either.”
Mary walked over to them, rubbing the backs of her thighs, where the ache was the worst. “The Ellen-body is finished, and it couldn’t quite catch me, So it’s stuck in its hole again, isn’t it.”
“Ye-es…
Mary didn’t like the doubtful sound of David’s voice. There was more guessing than knowing in it.
“Did it have anyone else it could get into.” Steve asked. “Is there anyone else up here. A hermit. An old prospector.”
“No,” David said. More certain now.
“It’s fallen and it can’t get up,” Cynthia said, and pumped her fist at the star-littered sky.
“Yesss!”
“David.” Mary asked.
He turned to her.
“We’re not done, even if it is stuck in there. Are we. We’re supposed to close the drift.”
“First the an tak,” David said, nodding, “then the drift, yeah. Seal it in, like it was before.” He glanced at his father.
Ralph put an arm around him. “If you say so, David.”
“I’m up for it,” Steve said. “I can’t wait to see where this guy takes his shoes off and puts his feet up on the hassock.”
“I was in no particular hurry to get to Bakersfield, anyway,” Cynthia said.
David looked at Mary.
“Of course. It was God that showed me how to get out, you know. And there’s Peter to think about. It killed my husband. I think I owe it a little something for Peter.”
David looked at Johnny.
“Two questions,” Johnny said. “First, what happens when this is over. What happens here. If the Desperation Mining Corporation comes back in and starts working the China Pit again, they’ll most likely reopen the China Shaft. Won’t they. So what good is it.”
David actually grinned. To Mary he looked relieved, as if he had expected a much tougher question. “That’s not our problem-that’s God’s problem. Ours is to close the an tak and the tunnel from there to the outside. Then we ride away and never look back.
What’s your other question.”
“Could I take you out for an ice cream when this is over. Tell you some high school war stories.”
“Sure. As long as I can tell you to stop when they get, you know, boring.”
“Boring stories are not in my repertoire,” Johnny said loftily.
The boy walked back to the truck with Mary, slipping his arm around her waist and leaning his head against her arm as if she were his mother. Mary guessed she could be that for awhile, if he needed her to be. Steve and Cynthia took the cab; Ralph and Johnny Marinville sat on the floor of the box a across from Mary and David.
When the truck stopped halfway up the grade, Mary felt David’s grip on her waist tighten and put an arm around his shoulders. They had come to the place where his mother-her shell, anyway-had finished up. He knew it as well as she did. He was breathing rapidly and shal-lowly through his mouth. Mary put a hand on the side of his head and urged him wordlessly with it. He came will-ingly enough, putting his face against her breast. The light, rapid mouth-breathing went on, and then she felt the first of his tears wetting her shirt. Across from her, David’s father was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands over his face.
“That’s all right, David,” she murmured, and began stroking his hair. “That’s all right.”
Doors slammed. Feet crunched on the gravel. Then, faintly, Cynthia Smith’s voice, full of horror: “Oh jeez, look at her!”
Steve: “Be quiet, stupid, they’ll hear you.”
Cynthia: “Oh sugar. Sorry.”
Steve: “Come on. Help me.”
Ralph took his hands away from his face, wiped a sleeve across his eyes, then came across to Mary’s side of the truck and put his arm around David. David groped for his father’s hand and took it. Ralph’s stricken, streaming eyes met Mary’s, and she began to cry herself.
She could now hear shuffling steps from outside as Steve and Cynthia carried Ellen out of the road. There was a pause, a little grunt of effort from the girl, and then the footsteps came back to the truck. Mary was suddenly sure that Steve would walk around to the back and tell the boy and his father some outrageous lie-foolishness about how Ellen looked peaceful, like she was maybe just taking a nap out here in the middle of nowhere.
She tried to send him a message: Don’t do it, don’t come back here and tell well-meaning lies, you can only make things worse. They ‘ye been in Desperation, they’ve seen what’s there, don’t try to kid them about what’s out here.
The steps paused. Cynthia murmured. Steve said some-thing in return. Then they got back into the truck, the doors slammed, the engine revved, and they started off again.
David kept his face pressed against her a moment or two longer, then raised his head.
“Thanks.”
She smiled, but the truck’s rear door was still up and she supposed enough light was getting in for David to see that she had also wept. “Any time,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “Really.”
She clasped her arms around her knees and looked out the back of the truck, watching the dust spume up. She could still see the blinker-light, a yellow spark in the wide sweep of the dark, but now it was going in the wrong direction, drawing away from them.
The world-the one she had always thought to be the only world-also seemed to be drawing away from her now. Malls, restau-rants, MTV, Gold’s Gym workouts, and occasional hot sex in the afternoon, all drawing away.