“Tak,” it whispered, and grinned. Ellen Carver’s lower lip split open when it did. Blood ran down her chin in an unnoticed rill. The rotten, presumptuous little boy would probably never view this revision of his revision, but how nice it was to imagine his reaction to it if he did! If he saw how little his efforts had come to, how easily respect could be snatched back, how naturally zero reasserted itself in the artificially concocted integers of men.
It pulled the drape up to the coyote’s neck. Now the child and the beast almost seemed to be lovers. How it wished the boy were here! The father, too, but especially the boy.
Because it was the boy who so badly needed instruction.
It was the boy who was the dangerous one.
There was scuttering from behind it, a sound too low to be heard… but it heard it anyway. It pivoted on Ellen’s knees and saw the recluse spiders returning. They came through the Town Office door, turned left, then streamed up the wall, over posters announcing forthcoming town business and soliciting volunteers for this fall’s Pioneer Days extravaganza. Above the one announcing an infor-mational meeting at which Desperation Mining Corpora-tion officials would discuss the resumption of copper mining at the so-called China Pit, the spiders re-formed their circle.
The tall woman in the coverall and the Sam Browne belt got up and approached them.
The circle on the wall trembled, as if expressing fear or ecstasy or perhaps both. The woman put bloody hands together, then opened them to the wall, palms out. “Ah lah.”
The circle dissolved. The spiders scurried into a new shape, moving with the precision of a drill-team put-ting on a halftime show. I, they made, then broke up, scurried, and made an H. An E followed, an A, another T, another E—It waved them off while they were still scrambling around up there, deciding how to fall in and make an R.
“En tow,” it said. “Ras.”
The spiders gave up on their R and resumed their faintly trembling circle.
“Ten ah.” it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the mi. The woman with Ellen Carver’s fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen’s fingers against Ellen’s collarbones, then waved Ellen’s hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.
It walked back out into the hall, not looking at the spi-ders streaming about its feet. The spiders would be avail-able if it needed them, and that was all that mattered.
It stood at the double doors, once more looking out into the night. It couldn’t see the old movie house, but that was all right; it knew where The American West was, about an eighth of a mile north of here, just past the town’s only intersection. And, thanks to the fiddlebacks, she now knew where they were, as well.
Where he was. The shitting little prayboy.
Johnny Marinville told his story again-all of it, this time. For the first time in a good many years he tried to keep it short-there were critics all over America who would have applauded, partly in disbelief. He told them about stopping to take a leak, and how Entragian had planted the pot in his saddlebag while he was doing it. He told them about the coyotes-the one Entragian had seemed to talk to and the others, posted along the road at intervals like a weird honor guard-and about how the big cop had beaten him up. He recounted the murder of Billy Rancourt, and then, with no appreciable change in his voice, about how the buzzard had attacked him, seem-ingly at Collie Entragian’s command.
There was an expression of frank disbelief on Audrey Wyler’s face at this, but Johnny saw Steve and the skinny little girl he’d picked up somewhere along the way ex-change a look of sick understanding. Johnny didn’t glance around to see how the others were taking it, but instead looked down at his hands on his knees, concentrating as he did when he was trying to work through a tough patch of composition.
“He wanted me to suck his cock. I think that was sup-posed to start me gibbering and begging for mercy, but I didn’t find the idea as shocking as Entragian maybe expected.
Cocksucking’s a pretty standard sexual demand in situations where authority’s exceeded its normal bounds and restrictions, but it’s not what it looks like. On the surface, rape is about dominance and aggression. Underneath, though, it’s about fear-driven anger.”
“Thank you, Dr. Ruth,” Audrey said. “Next ye vill be discussink ze imberdence.”
Johnny looked at her without rancor. “I did a novel on the subject of homosexual rape.
Tiburon. Not a big critical success, but I talked to a lot of people and got the basics down pretty well, I think. The point is, he made me mad instead of scaring me. By then I’d decided I didn’t have a lot to lose, anyway. I told him that.I’d take his cock, all right, but once it was in my mouth I’d bite it off. Then… then…
He thought harder than he had in at least ten years, nod-ding to himself as he did.
“Then I threw one of his own nonsense-words back at him. At least it seemed like nonsense to me, or something in a made-up language. It had a guttural quality…
“Was it tak.” Mary asked.
Johnny nodded. “And it didn’t seem to be nonsense to the coyotes, or to Entragian, either. When I said it he kind of recoiled… and that’s when he called the buzzard bombing-strike down on me.”
“I don’t believe that happened,” Audrey said. “I guess you’re a famous writer or something, and you’ve got the look of a guy who isn’t used to having doubt cast, so to speak, but I just don’t believe it.”
“It’s what happened, though,” he said. “You didn’t see anything like that. Strange, aggressive animal behavior.”
“I was hiding in the town laundrymat,” she said. “I mean, hello. Are we talking the same language here.”
“But-”
“Listen, you want to talk about strange and aggressive animal behavior.” Audrey asked.
She leaned forward, eyes bright and fixed on Marinville’s. “That’s Collie you’re talking about. Collie as he is now. He killed everyone he saw, everyone who crossed his path.
Isn’t that enough for you. Do we have to have trained buz-zards, as well.”
“What about spiders.” Steve asked. He and the skinny girl were in the chair instead of sitting on the arms now, and Steve had his arm around her shoulders.
“What about them.”
“Did you see any spiders kind of… well… flocking together.”
“Like birds of a feather.” She was favoring him with a gaze that said CAUTION, LUNATIC AT WORK.
“Well, no. Wrong word. Travelling together. In packs. Like wolves. Or coyotes.”
She shook her head.
“What about snakes.”
“Haven’t’seen any of them, either. Or coyotes in town. Not even a dog riding a bike and wearing a party hat. This is all news to me.”
David came back onto the stage with a brown bag in his hands, the kind that convenience-store clerks put small purchases in-Twinkies and Slim Jims, cartons of milk, single cans of beer. He also had a box of Ritz crackers under his arm. “Found some stuff,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Steve said, eyeing the box and the little bag. “That should certainly take care of hunger in America. What does it come to, Davey. One sardine and two crackers apiece, do you think.”
“Actually, there’s quite a lot,” David said. “More than you’d think. Um He paused, looking at them thought-fully, and a little anxiously. “Would anybody mind if I said a prayer before I hand this stuff around.”
“Like grace.” Cynthia asked.
“Grace, yeah.”
“It works for me,” Johnny said. “I think we can use all the grace we can lay our hands on.”
“Amen,” Steve said.
David put the bag and the box of crackers down between his sneakers. Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid’s lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty.