Desperation

Bigtime. He looked around, checking for coy-otes or buzzards or snakes, and saw nothing. Not so much as a bug. “Frankly, David, I trust God about as far as I can sling a piano.” He looked back in at the boy, smiling.

“You trust him all you want. I guess it’s a luxury you can r still afford. Your sister’s dead and your mother’s turned into Christ-knows-what, but there’s still your father to get through before Talc goes to work on you personally.”

David jerked. His mouth trembled. His face crumpled and he began to cry.

“You bitch!” Cynthia shouted at Joh

“Lady, I never pretended to be a saint,” Joh

“Get out!” Cynthia screamed. Behind her, Ralph was down on one knee, clumsily holding his son and staring out at Joh

“Why do it at all.” Joh

“I’m here, ain’t I.” she asked truculently.

“Sorry, that’s not enough for me. I’m not going to be the punchline of a joke in God’s little comedy club. Not if I can help it. I can’t believe any of you are seriously con-templating going up there. The idea is insane.”

“What about Mary.” Steve asked. “Do you want to leave her. Can you leave her.”

“Why not.” Joh

“What happened to you.” Steve asked. “You walked up to that cougar big as life and blew her head off. You were like the fucking Wolverine. So I know you’ve got guts. Had em, anyway. Who stole em.”

“You don’t understand. That was hot blood. You know what my trouble is. If you give me a chance to think, I’ll take it.” He took another step backward. No God stopped him.

“Good luck, you guys. David, for whatever it’s worth, you’re an extraordinary young man.”

“If you go, it’s over,” David said. His face was still against his father’s chest. His words were muftled but audible. “The chain breaks. Tak wins.”

“Yeah, but when playoff-time comes, he’s ours,” Joh

He bad once won the National Book Award, after all.

“I’m going to take a car from the mining-office lot. I’m going to drive like hell until I get to Austin, and then I’m going to make an anonymous call to the State Police, tell them some bad shit’s happened in Desperation. Then I’ll take some rooms in the local Best Western and hope you guys show up to use them. If you do, drinks are on me. One way or another, I’m stepping off the wagon tonight. I think Desperation’s cured me of sobriety for ever.” He smiled at Steve and Cynthia, standing side by side in the back of the truck with their arms around each other. “You two are crazy not to come with me now, you know. Somewhere else you could be good together. I can see that. All you can do here is be can tahs for David s ca

He turned and began to walk away, head down, heart pounding. He expected to be followed by anger, invec tive, maybe pleas. He was ready for any of them, and per baps the only thing that could have stopped him was the thing Steve Ames did say, in the low, almost toneless voice of a man who is only conveying a fact.

“I don’t respect you for this.”

Joh

“I never read any of your books, but I read that story you gave me, and I read the book about you,” Steve said “The one by the professor in Oklahoma. I guess you were a hellraiser, and a shit to your women, but you went to Vietnam without a rifle, for God’s sake… and tonight the cougar… what happened to all that.”

“Ran out like piss down a drunk’s leg,” Joh

David joined Steve and Cynthia at the back of the truck.

He still looked pale and worn, but he was calm. “Its mark is on you,” he said. “It will let you go, but you’ll wish you stayed when you start smelling Tak on your skin.”

Joh

He walked away, and as fast as he could. Any faster and he would have been ru

There was silence in the truck; they watched until Joh

“Poor baby,” Cynthia said.

“Surprised he didn’t lose it sooner,” Steve said. He spoke in the dull, preoccupied tone of a man whose real thoughts are somewhere else entirely. “I kept telling him a guy on a motorcycle trip ought to have a wallet with a chain on it.” A ghost of a grin touched his lips. “Getting those motel rooms in Austin may not be as easy as he thinks.”

“I hope he sleeps in the damn parking lot,” Ralph said. “Or beside the road.”

David barely heard them. He felt the way he had that day in the Bear Street Woods-not when God was speaking to him, but when he had become aware that God was going to.

He bent forward and picked up Joh

“David.” Ralph asked. His voice was distant, his concern echoing over a thousand miles.

Ignoring him, David opened the wallet. There was cur-rency in one compartment and a squash of papers—memoranda, business cards, and such-in another. He ignored both and thumbed a snap on the wallet’s left inte-rior side, releasing an accordion of sleeved photographs. He was faintly aware of the others moving in around him as he looked through the pictures, using one finger to spool back through the years: here was a bearded Joh