He looked at it-a green bar of Irish Spring sitting beside the spigot-and thought of Entragian saying I’ll be back for you.
The soap.
Suddenly he understood… or thought he did. Hoped he did.
I better be right. I better be right, or—He was wearing a Cleveland Indians tee-shirt. He pulled it off, dropped it by the cell door. He looked up and saw the coyote staring at him.
Its ragged ears were all the way up again, and David thought he could hear it growl-ing, low and far back in its throat.
“Son.” his father asked. “What do you think you’re doing.”
Without answering, he sat down on the end of the bunk, took off his sneakers, and tossed them over to where his shirt lay. Now there was no question that the coyote was growling. As if it knew what he was planning to do. As if it meant to stop him if he actually tried it.
Don’t be a dope, of course it means to stop you if you try it, why else did the cop leave it there. You just have to trust. Trust and have faith.
“Have faith that God will protect me,” he murmured. He stood up, unbuckled his belt, then paused with his fingers on the snap of his jeans. “Ma’am.” he said.
“Ma’am.” She looked at him, and David felt himself blush. “I wonder if you’d mind turning around,” he said, “I have to take off my pants, and I guess I better take off my underwear, too… ’ “What in God’s name are you thinking about.” his father asked. There was panic in his voice now. “What-ever it is, I forbid it! Absolutely!”
David didn’t reply, only looked at Mary. Looked at her as steadily as the coyote was looking at him. She returned his look for a moment, then, without saying a word, turned her back. The man in the motorcycle jacket sat on his bunk, crunching his Life Saver and watching him. David was as body-shy as most eleven-year-olds, and that steady gaze made him uncomfortable… but as he had already pointed out to himself, this was no time to be a dope. He took another glance at the bar of Irish Spring, then thumbed down his pants and undershorts.
“Nice,” Cynthia said. “I mean, that’s class.”
“What.” Steve asked. He was sitting forward, watching the road carefully. More sand and tumbleweeds were blowing across it now, and the driving had gotten tricky.
“The sign. See it.”
He looked. The sign, which had originally read DES-PERATION ’s CHURCH & civic ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME You! had been changed by some wit with a spraycan; it now read DESPERATION’s DEAD DOGS WELCOME you! A rope, frayed at one end, flapped back and forth in the wind. Old Shep himself was gone, however. The buzzards had gotten their licks in first; then the coyotes had come Hungry and not a bit shy about eating a first cousin, they had snapped the rope and dragged the Shepherd’s carcass away, pausing only to squabble and fight with one another. What remained (mostly bones and toenails) lay over the next rise. The blowing sand would cover it soon enough.
“Boy, folks around here must love a good laugh,” Steve said.
“They must.” She pointed. “Stop there.”
It was a rusty Quonset hut. The sign in front read DES-PERATION MINING CORP.
There was a parking lot beside it with ten or twelve cars and trucks in it.
He pulled over but didn’t turn in to the lot, at least not yet. The wind was blowing more steadily now, the gusts gradually merging into one steady blast. To the west, the sun was a surreal red-orange disc hanging over the Desa-toya Mountains, as flat and bloated as a photo of the planet Jupiter. Steve could hear a fast and steady tink-tink-tink-tink coming from somewhere nearby, possibly the sOund of a steel lanyard-clip banging against a flagpole.
“What’s on your mind.” he asked her.
“Let’s call the cops from here. There’s people; see the lights.”
He glanced toward the Quonset and saw five or six golden squares of brightness toward the rear of the building. In the dusty gloom they looked like lighted win-dows in a train—car. He looked back at Cynthia and shrugged. “Why from here, when we could just drive to the local cop-shop. The middle of town-such as it is—can’t be far.”
She rubbed one hand across her forehead as if she were tired, or getting a headache. “You said you’d be careful. I said I’d help you be careful. That’s what I’m trying to do now. I sort of want to see how things are hanging before someone in a uniform sits me down in a chair and starts shooting questions. And don’t ask me why, because I don’t really know.
If we call the cops and they sound cool, that’s fine. They’re cool, we’re cool. But… where the fuck were they. Never mind your boss, he disap-peared almost clean, but an RV parked beside the road, the tires flat, door unlocked, valuables inside. I mean, gimme a break. Where were the cops.”
“It goes back to that, doesn’t it.”
“Yeah, back to that.” The cops could have been at the scene of a road-accident or a ranch-fire or a convenience—store stickup, even a murder, and she knew it-all of them, because there just weren’t that many cops out in this part of the world. But still, yeah, it came back to that. Because it felt more than funny. It felt wrong.
“Okay,” Steve said mildly, and turned in to the parking lot. “Might not be anybody at what passes for the Des-peration P.D… anyhow. It’s getting late. I’m surprised there’s anyone still here, tell you the truth. Must be money in minerals, huh.”
He parked next to a pickup, opened the door, and the wind snatched it out of his hand. It banged the side of the truck. Steve winced, half-expecting a Slim Pickens type to come running toward him, holding his hat on with one hand and yelling Hey thar, boy! No owner did. A tumble-weed zoomed by, apparently headed for Salt Lake City, but that was all. And the alkali dust was flying-plenty of it. He had a red bandanna in his back pocket.
He took it out, knotted it around his neck, and pulled it up over his mouth.
“Hold it, hold it,” he said, tugging her arm to keep her from opening her door just yet. He leaned over so he could open the glove compartment. He rummaged and found another bandanna, this one blue, and handed it to her. “Put that on first.”
She held it up, examined it gravely, then turned her wide little-girl eyes on him again.
“No cootiebugs.”
He snorted and grinned behind the red bandanna. “Airy a one, ma am, as we say back in Lubbock. Put it on.”
She knotted it, then pulled it up. “Butch and Sundance,” she said, her voice a little muffled.
“Yeah, Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Omar and Sharif,” she said, and giggled.
“Be careful getting out. The wind’s really getting cranked up.”
He stepped out and the wind slapped him in the face, making him stagger as he reached the front of the van. Flying grit stung his forehead. Cynthia was holding onto her doorhandle, head down, the Peter Tosh shirt flapping out behind her skinny midriff like a sail. There was still some daylight left, and the sky overhead was still blue, but the landscape had taken on a strange shadowless quality. It was stormlight if Steve had ever seen it.
“Come on!” he yelled, and put an arm around Cynthia’s waist. “Let’s get out of this!”
They hurried across the cracked asphalt to the long building. There was a door at one end of it. The sign bolted to the corrugated metal beside it read DESPERATION MINING CORP… like the one out front, but Steve saw that this one had been painted over something else, some other name that was starting to show through the white paint like a red ghost. He was pretty sure that one of the painted—over words was DIABLO, with the I modified into a devil’s pitchfork.
Cynthia was tapping the door with one bitten fingernail. A sign had been hung on the inside from one of those little transparent suction cups. Steve thought there was something perfectly, irritatingly, showily Western about the message on the sign.
IF WE’re OPEN, WE’re OPEN IF WE’re CLOSED, Y’ALL COME BACK
“They forgot son,” he said.
“Huh.”