“You think you do, don’t you. What’s going to happen. Is God going to send down a lightning-bolt.”—“That’s what David thinks,” Johnny said, “and after the sardines and crackers, I’m not surprised. I don’t think it’ll come to anything that extreme, though. Come on. The hour groweth late.”
They walked out into what was left of the night and joined the others.
At the bottom of the slope, twenty yards below the ragged yawn that was China Shaft, Johnny stopped them and told them to tie the drawstrings of the bags together in pairs.
He slipped one of these pairs around his own neck, the sacks hanging down on either side of his chest like the counterweights of a cuckoo clock. Steve took another pair, and Johnny made no objection when David took the last set from his father and slipped the joined drawstrings around his own neck. Ralph, troubled, looked at Johnny. Johnny glanced at David, saw David was staring up at the drift opening, then looked back at the boy’s father, shook his head, and tapped a finger against his lips. Quiet, Dad.
Ralph looked doubtful but said nothing.
“Everybody all right.” Johnny asked.
“What’s going to happen.” Mary asked. “I mean, what’s the plan.”
“We do what God tells us,” David said. “That’s the plan. Come on.
It was David who led, going up the slope sidesaddle to keep from falling. There was no wide gravel road here, not even a path, and the ground was evil. Johnny could feel it trying to crumble out from under his boots at every upward lurch. Soon his heart was pounding and his bat-tered nose was throbbing in sync. He had been a good boy over the last few months, but a lot of chickens (not to mention some roast ducks and a few caviar—stuffed quail) were now coming home to roost nevertheless.
Yet he felt good. Everything was simple now. That was sort of wonderful.
David was in the lead, his father behind him. Steve and Cynthia next. Johnny and Mary Jackson brought up the rear.
“Why have you still got that motorcycle helmet.” she asked.
Johnny grinned. She reminded him of Terry, in an odd way. Terry as she had been back in the old days. He held the helmet up, stuck on his hand like a puppet. “Ask not for whom the Bell tolls,” he said. “It tolls for thee, thou storied honeydew.”
She gave a small, breathless laugh. “You’re nuts.”
If it had been forty yards uphill instead of twenty, Johnny wasn’t sure he could have made it. As it was, the pounding of his heart had become so rapid it seemed like one steady thrum in his chest by the time David reached the ragged tunnel opening. And his thighs felt like spaghetti.
Don’t weaken now, he told himself. You’re into the final straightaway.
He made himself move a little faster, suddenly afraid that David might simply turn and go into the shaft before he could get there, It was possible, too. Steve thought the boss knew what was going on, but in fact the boss knew precious little. He was being handed the script a page ahead of the rest of them, that was all.
But David waited, and soon they were all clustered on the slope in front of the opening.
A dank smell issued from it, chilly and charred at the same time. And there was a sound Johnny associated with elevator shafts: a faint, windy whisper.
“We ought to pray,” David said, sounding timid. He held his hands out to either side of him.
His father took one of his hands. Steve put down the.30-.06 and took the other. Mary took Ralph’s, Cynthia took Steve’s. Johnny stepped between the two women, dropped the helmet between his boots, and the circle was complete.
They stood in the darkness of China Pit, smelling the dank exhaled breath of the earth, listening to that faint roar, looking at David Carver, who had brought them here.
“Whose father.” David asked them.
“Our father,” Johnny said, stepping easily onto the road of the old prayer. as if he had never been away. “Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come-”
The others joined in, Cynthia, the minister’s daughter, first, Mary last.
“-thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”
Through the amen, Cynthia continued on: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen.” She looked up with the little twinkle Johnny had come to like quite a lot. “That’s the way I learned it—kind of a Protestant dance-mix, y’know.”
David was looking at Johnny now.
“Help me do my best,” Johnny said. “If you’re there, God-and I now have reason to believe you are-help me to do my best and not weaken again. I want you to take that request very seriously, because I have a long history of weakening. David, what about you. Anything to say.”
David shrugged and shook his head. “Said it already.” He let go of the hands holding his, and the circle broke.
Johnny nodded. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“Do what.” Mary asked. “Do what. Will you please tell me.”
“I’m supposed to go in,” David said. “Alone.”
Johnny shook his head. “Nope. And don’t start in with your God-told-me-to stuff, because right now he’s not telling you anything. Your TV screen has got a PLEASE STAND BY sign on it, am I right.”
David looked at him uncertainly and wet his lips.
Johnny lifted a hand toward the waiting darkness of the drift and spoke in the tone of a man conveying a large favor. “You can go first, though. How’s that.”
“My dad-”
“Right behind you. He’ll catch you if you fall.”
“No,” David said. He suddenly looked scared—terrified. “I don’t want that. I don’t want him in there at all. The roof might cave in, or-”
“David! What you want doesn’t matter.”
Cynthia grabbed Johnny’s arm. She would have been digging into him if she hadn’t nibbled her nails to the quick. “Leave him alone! Christ, he saved your fucking 4fe!
Can’t you quit badgering him.”
“I’m not,” Johnny said. “At this point he’s badger—ing himself. If he’ll just let go, remember who’s in charge…”
He looked at David. The boy muttered something under his breath, far too low to hear, but Johnny didn’t have to hear it to know what he had said.
“That’s right, he’s cruel. But you knew that. And you have no control over the nature of God anyway. None of us do. So why won’t you relax.”
David made no reply. His head was bowed, but not in prayer this time. Johnny thought it was resignation. In some way, the boy knew what was coming, and that was the worst part. The cruelest part, if you liked. It’s not going to be that easy for him, he had told Steve in the powder magazine, but back there he hadn’t really under-stood how hard hard could be. First his sis, then his mother; now—“Right,” he said in a voice that st5unded as dry as the ground they were standing on. “First David, then Ralph, then you, Steve. I’ll be behind you. Tonight-sorry, this morning-it’s a case of ladies last.”
“If we have to go in, I want to go in with Steve,” Cyn-thia said.
“Okay, fine,” Johnny said at once-it was as if he had been expecting this. “You and I can switch places.”
“Who put you in charge, anyway.” Mary asked.
Johnny turned on her like a snake, startling her into a precarious step backward. “Do you want to have a go.” he asked with a kind of dangerous good cheer. “Because if you do, lass, I’d be happy to turn it over to you. I asked for this no more than David did. So what do you think. Want to put-urn on Big Chiefs headdress.”
She shook her head, confused.
“Easy, boss,” Steve murmured.
“I’m easy,” Johnny said, but he wasn’t. He looked at David and his father, standing side by side, heads down, hands entwined, and wasn’t easy. He could barely believe the enormity of what he was allowing. Could barely believe. Couldn’t believe at all, was more like it. How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehen-sion held before him like a shield. How could anyone.