Thirty minutes later they reached the top of the canyon and were in the desert. The bus began to throw up smoke from the front and make a noise like a dog strangling on a chicken bone. Calhoun pulled over.
“Goddamn bumper got twisted under there and it’s shredded the tire some,” Calhoun said. “I think if we can peel the bumper off, there’s enough of that tire to run on.”
Wayne and Calhoun got hold of the bumper and pulled but it wouldn’t come off. Not completely. Part of it had been creased, and that part finally gave way and broke off from the rest of it.
“That ought to be enough to keep from rubbing the tire,” Calhoun said.
Sister Worth called from inside the bus. Wayne went to check on her. “Take me off the bus,” she said. “…I want to feel free air and sun.”
“There doesn’t feel like there’s any air out there,” Wayne said. “And the sun feels just like it always does. Hot.”
“Please.”
He picked her up and carried her outside and found a ridge of sand and laid her down so her head was propped against it.
“I…I need batteries,” she said.
“Say what?” Wayne said.
She lay looking straight into the sun. “Brother Lazarus’s greatest work…a dead folk that can think…has memory of the past…Was a scientist too…” Her hand came up in stages, finally got hold of her head gear and pushed it off.
Gleaming from the center of her tangled blond hair was a silver knob.
“He…was not a good man… I am a good woman. I want to feel alive…like before…batteries going…brought others.”
Her hand fumbled at a snap pocket on her habit. Wayne opened it for her and got out what was inside. Four batteries.
“Uses two…simple.”
Calhoun was standing over them now. “That explains some things,” he said.
“Don’t look at me like that…” Sister Worth said, and Wayne realized he had never told her his name and she had never asked. “Unscrew…put the batteries in… Without them I’ll be an eater… Can’t wait too long.”
“All right,” Wayne said. He went behind her and propped her up on the sand drift and unscrewed the metal shaft from her skull. He thought about when she had fucked him on the wheel and how desperate she had been to feel something, and how she had been cold as flint and lustless. He remembered how she had looked in the mirror hoping to see something that wasn’t there.
He dropped the batteries in the sand and took out one of the revolvers and put it close to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. Her body jerked slightly and fell over, her face turning toward him.
The bullet had come out where the bird had been on her cheek and had taken it completely away, leaving a bloodless hole.
“Best thing,” Calhoun said. “There’s enough live pussy in the world without you pulling this broken-legged dead thing around after you on a board.”
“Shut up,” Wayne said.
“When a man gets sentimental over women and kids, he can count himself out.”
Wayne stood up.
“Well boy,” Calhoun said. “I reckon it’s time.”
“Reckon so,” Wayne said.
“How about we do this with some class? Give me one of your pistols and we’ll get back-to-back and I’ll count to ten, and when I get there, we’ll turn and shoot.”
Wayne gave Calhoun one of the pistols. Calhoun checked the chambers, said, “I’ve got four loads.”
Wayne took two out of his pistol and tossed them on the ground. “Even Steven,” he said.
They got back-to-back and held the guns by their legs.
“Guess if you kill me you’ll take me in,” Calhoun said. “So that means you’ll put a bullet through my head if I need it. I don’t want to come back as one of the dead folks. Got your word on that?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll do the same for you. Give my word. You know that’s worth something.”
“We gonna shoot or talk?”
“You know, boy, under different circumstances, I could have liked you. We might have been friends.”
“Not likely.”
Calhoun started counting, and they started stepping. When he got to ten, they turned.
Calhoun’s pistol barked first, and Wayne felt the bullet punch him low in the right side of his chest, spinning him slightly. He lifted his revolver and took his time and shot just as Calhoun fired again.
Calhoun’s second bullet whizzed by Wayne’s head. Wayne’s shot hit Calhoun in the stomach.
Calhoun went to his knees and had trouble drawing a breath. He tried to lift his revolver but couldn’t; it was as if it had turned into an anvil.
Wayne shot him again. Hitting him in the middle of the chest this time and knocking him back so that his legs were curled beneath him.
Wayne walked over to Calhoun, dropped to one knee and took the revolver from him.
“Shit,” Calhoun said. “I wouldn’t have thought that for nothing. You hit?” “Scratched.” “Shit.”
Wayne put the revolver to Calhoun’s forehead and Calhoun closed his eyes and Wayne pulled the trigger.
The wound wasn’t a scratch. Wayne knew he should leave Sister Worth where she was and load Calhoun on the bus and haul him in for bounty. But he didn’t care about the bounty anymore.
He used the ragged piece of bumper to dig them a shallow side-by-side grave. When he finished, he stuck the fender fragment up between them and used the sight of one of the revolvers to scratch into it: HERE LIES SISTER WORTH AND CALHOUN WHO KEPT HIS WORD.
You couldn’t really read it good and he knew the first real wind would keel it over, but it made him feel better about something, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it.
His wound had opened up and the sun was very hot now, and since he had lost his hat he could feel his brain cooking in his skull like meat boiling in a pot.
He got on the bus, started it and drove through the day and the night and it was near morning when he came to the Cadillacs and turned down between them and drove until he came to the ‘57.
When he stopped and tried to get off the bus, he found he could hardly move. The revolvers in his belt were stuck to his shirt and stomach because of the blood from his wound.
He pulled himself up with the steering wheel, got one of the shotguns and used it for a crutch. He got the food and water and went out to inspect the ‘57.
It was for shit. It had not only lost its windshield, the front end was mashed way back and one of the big sand tires was twisted at such an angle he knew the axle was shot.
He leaned against the Chevy and tried to think. The bus was okay and there was still some gas in it, and he could get the hose out of the trunk of the ‘57 and siphon gas out of its tanks and put it in the bus. That would give him a few miles.
Miles.
He didn’t feel as if he could walk twenty feet, let alone concentrate on driving.
He let go of the shotgun, the food and water. He scooted onto the hood of the Chevy and managed himself to the roof. He lay there on his back and looked at the sky.
It was a clear night and the stars were sharp with no fuzz around them. He felt cold. In a couple of hours the stars would fade and the sun would come up and the cool would give way to heat.
He turned his head and looked at one of the Cadillacs and a skeleton face pressed to its windshield, forever looking down at the sand.
That was no way to end, looking down.
He crossed his legs and stretched out his arms and studied the sky. It didn’t feel so cold now, and the pain had almost stopped. He was more numb than anything else.
He pulled one of the revolvers and cocked it and put it to his temple and continued to look at the stars. Then he closed his eyes and found that he could still see them. He was once again hanging in the void between the stars wearing only his hat and cowboy boots, and floating about him were the junk cars and the ‘57, undamaged.