Mary paused in the doorway, bracing for Marinville’s reply. He surprised her. “I’ve been known to draw a few drunkfish myself,” he said. “With words rather than col oring pens, but I imagine the principle is the same. Not bad, Billingsley. But why here. Of all places, why here9 “Because I like this place,” he said with considerable dignity. “Especially since the kids cleared out. Not that they ever bothered us much back here; they liked the bai cony, mostly. I suppose that sounds crazy to you, but I don’t much care. It’s where I come to be with my friends since I retired and quit the Town Committee. I look for-ward to the nights I spend with them. It’s just an old movie theater, there’s rats and the seats are full of mildew, but so what. It’s our business, ain’t it. Our own business. Only now I suppose they’re all dead. Dick Onslo, Tom Kincaid, Cash Lancaster. My old pals.” He uttered a harsh, startling cry, like the caw of a raven. It made her jump.
“Mr. Billingsley.” It was David. The old man looked at him. “Do you think he killed everyone in town.”
“That’s crazy!” Marinville said.
Ralph yanked his arm as if it were the stop-cord on a bus. “Quiet.”
Billingsley was still looking at David and rubbing at the flesh beneath his eyes with his long, crooked fingers. “I think he may have,” he said, and glanced at Marinville again for a moment. “I think he may have at least tried.”
“How many people are we talking about.” Ralph asked. “In Desperation. Hundred and ninety, maybe two hun-dred. With the new mine people starting to trickle in, maybe fifty or sixty more. Although it’s hard to tell how many of em would’ve been here and how many up to the pit.”
“The pit.” Mary asked.
“China Pit. The one they’re reopening. For the copper.”
“Don’t tell me one man, even a moose like that, went around town and killed two hundred people,” Marinville said, “because, excuse me very much, I don’t believe it. I mean, I believe in American enterprise as much as any-one, but that’s just nuts.”
“Well, he might have missed a few on the first pass,” Mary said. “Didn’t you say he ran over a guy when he was bringing you in. Ran him over and killed him.”
Marinville turned and favored her with a weighty frown. “I thought you had to take a leak.”
“I’ve got good kidneys. He did, didn’t he. He ran someone down in the st—’iet. You said so.”
“All right, yeah. t—ancourt, he called him. Billy Rancourt.”
“Oh Jesus.” Billingsley closed his eyes.
“You knew him.” Ralph asked.
“Mister, in a town the size of this one, everybody knows everybody. Billy worked at the feed store, cut some hair in his spare time.”
“All right, yeah, Entragian ran this Rancourt down in the street-ran him down like a dog.”
Marinville sounded upset, querulous. “I’m willing to accept the idea that Entragian may have killed a lot of people. I know what he’s capable of.”
“Do you.” David asked softly, and they all looked at him. David looked away, at the colorful fish floating on the wall.
“For one guy to kill hundreds of people…” Marinville said, and then quit for a moment, as if he’d temporarily lost his train of thought. “Even if he did it at night… I mean, guys…
“Maybe it wasn’t just him,” Mary said. “Maybe the buzzards and the coyotes helped.”
Marinville tried to push this away-even in the gloom she could see him trying-and then gave up. He sighed and rubbed at one temple, as if it hurt. “Okay, maybe they did. The ugliest bird in the universe tried to scalp me when he told it to, that I know happened. But still-”
“It’s like the story of the Angel of Death in Exodus,” David said. “The Israelites were supposed to put blood on their door-tops to show they were the good guys, you know.
Only here, he’s the Angel of Death. So why did he pass over us. He could have killed us all just as easy as he killed Pie, or your husband, Mary.” He turned to the old man. “Why didn’t he kill you, Mr. Billingsley. If he killed everyone else in town, why didn’t he kill you.”
Billingsley shrugged. “Dunno. I was laying home drunk. He came in the new cruiser—same one I helped pick out, by God-and got me. Stuck me in the back and hauled me off to the calabozo. I asked him why, what I’d done, but he wouldn’t tell me. I begged him. I cried. I didn’t know he was crazy, not then, how could I. He was quiet, but he didn’t give any signs that he was crazy. I started to get that idea later, but at first I was just con-vinced I’d done something bad in a blackout. That I’d been out driving, maybe, and hurt someone. I… I did something like that once before.”
“When did he come for you.” Mary asked.
Billingsley had to think about it in order to be sure. “Day before yesterday. Just before sundown. I was in bed, my head hurting, thinking about getting something for my hangover. An aspirin, and a little hair of the dog that bit me. He came and got me right out of bed. I didn’t have anything on but my underwear shorts. He let me dress. Helped me. But he wouldn’t let me take a drink even though I was shaking all over, and he wouldn’t tell me why he was taking me in.” He paused, still rubbing the flesh beneath his eyes. Mary wished he would stop doing that, it was making her nervous. “Later on, after he had me in a cell, he brought me a hot dinner. He sat at the desk for a little while and said some stuff. That’s when I started to think he must be crazy, because none of it made sense.”
“‘I see holes like eyes,’ “Mary said.
Billingsley nodded. “Yeah, like that. ‘My head is full of blackbirds,’ that’s another one I remember. And a lot more I don’t. They were like Thoughts for the Day out of a book written by a crazy person.”
“Except for being in town to start with, you’re just like us,” David said. “And you don’t know why he let you live any more than we do.”
“I guess that’s right.”
“What happened to you, Mr. Marinville.”
Marinville told them about how the cop had pulled up behind his bike while he had been whizzing and contem-plating the scenery north of the road, and how he had seemed nice at first. “We talked about my books,” he said. “I thought he was a fan. I was going to give him a fuckin autograph. Pardon my French, David.”
“Sure. Did cars go by while you were talking. I bet they did.”
“A few, I guess, and a couple of semis. I didn’t really notice.”
“But he didn’t bother any of them.”
“Just you. — Marinville looked at the boy thoughtfully.
“He picked you out,” David persisted.
“Well… maybe. I can’t say for sure. Everything seemed jake until he found the dope.”
Mary held her hands up. “Whoa, whoa, time out.”
Marinville looked at her.
“This dope you had-”
“It wasn’t mine, don’t go getting that idea. You think I’d try driving cross-country on a Harley with half a pound of grass in my saddlebag. My brains may be fried, but not that fried.”
Mary began to giggle. It made her need to pee worse, but she couldn’t help it. It was all just too perfect, too I.
wonderfully round. “Did it have a smile-sticker on it.” she asked, giggling harder than ever. She didn’t really need an answer to this question, but she wanted it, just the same.
“Mr. Smiley-Smile.”
“How did you know that.” Marinville looked as-tounded. He also looked remarkably like Arlo Guthrie, at least in the glow of the flashlights, and Mary’s giggles became little screams of laughter. She realized that if she didn’t get to the bathroom soon, she was going to wet her pants.
“B-Because it came from our t-t-trunk,” she said, holding her stomach. “It b-belonged to my sih-sih-sister-in-law. She’s a total ding dong. Entragian may be c-c—crazy, but at least he r-r-recycles… excuse me, I’m about to h-have an accident.”
She hurried across the hail. What she saw when she opened the men’s-room door made her laugh even harder. Set up like some comic-opera throne in the center of the floor was a portable toilet with a canvas bag suspended below the seat in a steel frame. On the wall across from it was another Magic Marker drawing, obviously from the same hand which had created the fish. This one was a horse at full gallop. There was orange smoke jetting from its nostrils and a baleful rose-madder glint in its eyes. It appeared to be headed out into an expanse of prairie somewhere east of the sun and west of the washbasins. None Gf the tiles had fallen out of this wall, but most had buckled, giving the stallion a warped and dreamish look.
Outside, the wind howled. As Mary unsnapped her pants and sat down on the cold toilet seat, she suddenly thought of how Peter sometimes put his hand up to his mouth when he laughed-his thumb touching one corner, his first finger touching the other, as if laughter somehow made him vulnerable-and all at once, with no break at all, at least none she could detect, she was crying. How stupid all this was, to be a widow at thirty-five, to be a fugitive in a town full of dead people, to be sitting in the men’s room of an abandoned movie theater on a canvas Port-A-Potty, peeing and crying at the same time, pissing and moaning, you might say, and looking at a dim beast on a wall so warped that it seemed to be running under-water, how stupid to be so frightened, and to have grief all but stolen away by her mind’s brute determination to sur-vive at any cost… as if Peter had never meant anything anyway, as if he had just been a footnote.
How stupid to still feel so hungry… but she was.
“Why is this happening. Why does it have to be me.” she whispered, and put her face into her hands.