Desperation

can you tell me… what’s aiim’ me… And he said yeah-yeah-yeah-”

“Stop it!” Joh

“The Rascals,” David said. “Only back then they were still the Young Rascals. Felix Cavaliere on vocals. Very cool. That’s the song that was playing when you died, wasn’t it, Joh

Images begi

“I won’t go back there,” Joh

“At first I didn’t understand how it could have been you,” David said, as if he hadn’t heard. “It was the Land of the Dead-you even said so, Joh

“Joh

“Oh Jesus, don’t tell me that,” he whispered. “I don want to be raised.” But his voice seemed to reach him from far away, and curiously doubled, as if he were coming apart in some strange but fundamental way. Frac turing like hornfels.

“It’s too late,” David said. “It’s already happened.”

“Fuck you, little hero, I’m going to Austin. Do you hear me. Fucking AUSTIN!”

“Tak will be there ahead of you,” David said. He was still holding out the wallet, the one with the picture of Joh

A Wurlitzer In his head Joh

That’s the song that was playing when you died, wasn it, Joh

“Austin,” he whispered in a feeble, failing voice. And still there was that sense of twi

“If you leave now, Tak will be waiting for you in a lot of places,” David said, his implacable would-be jailer, still holding out his wallet, the one in which that hateful picture was entombed. “Not just Austin. Hotel rooms. Speaking halls. Fancy lunches where people talk about books and things. When you’re with a woman, it’ll be you who undresses her and Tak who has sex with her. And the worst thing is that you may live like that for a long time. Can de lach is what you’ll be, heart of the unformed. Mi him can mi. The empty well of the eye.”

Iwon’t! he tried to scream again, but this time no voice came out, and when he struck at the ore-cart again, the hammer dropped free of his fingers. The strength left his hand. His thighs turned watery and his knees began to unhinge. He slipped onto them with a choked and drown-ing cry. That sense of doubling. of twi

Suicide! his heart cried out. Suicide, suicide!

ARVN soldiers, war’s deadeyed optimists, looking for diamonds in assholes. A drunk with a bottle of beer in his hand and his wet hair in his eyes, climbing out of a hotel swimming pool, laughing as the cameras flashed. Terry’s nose bleeding below her hurt, incredulous eyes while a voice from the sky a

It makes me furious, the cop had said. It makes me sick with rage.

Joh

“I’ll take it,” the kneeling man said. He was weeping. “I’ll take my wallet, what the fuck, give it back.”

He saw the boy come to the kneeling man and kneel beside him. He saw the kneeling man take the wallet and then put it in the front pocket of the jeans beneath the chaps so he could press his hands together finger-to—finger, as David had done.

“What do I say.” the kneeling man asked, weeping. “Oh David, how do I start, what do I say.”

“What’s in your heart,” the kneeling boy said, and that was when the ghost gave up and rejoined the man. Clarity streaked into the world, lighting it up-lighting him up—like napalm, and he heard Felix Cavaliere singing I said baby, it’s for sure, I got the fever, you got the cure.

“Help me, God,” Joh

I’m going to catch you, bitch! it thought trium-phantly.

At first, chances of that had seemed slim. It had gotten within twenty yards of the os pa near the top of the pit—sixty short feet-but the bitch had been able to find a little extra and beat it to the top. Once she started down the other side, Mary had been able to extend her lead in a hurry, from twenty yards to sixty to a hundred and fifty. Because she could breathe deeply, she could cope with her body’s oxygen debt. Ellen Carver’s body, on the other hand, was rapidly losing the ability to do either. The vaginal bleeding had become a flood, something that would kill the Ellen-body in the next twenty minutes or so anyway.