Desperation

The cop took no notice of him. “Billy Rancourt!” he cried, delighted. “Damn, that’s Billy Rancourt! I won-dered where he got off to! Drunk in the basement of The Broken Drum, I bet you that’s where he was! Dollars to doughnuts! Big-Balls Billy, damn if it’s not!”

“My dose!” Joh

“Shut up, you baby,” the cop said. “Gosh, aren’t you spleeny.”

He backed up a little, then turned the cruiser so it was facing west on the cross-street. He cranked his window down and poked his head out. The nape of his neck was now the color of age-darkened bricks, badly blistered, crisscrossed with cracks. Bright lines of blood filled some of these. “Billy!” the cop yelled. “Yo, you Billy Ran—court! Hey, you old cuss!”

The western end of Desperation appeared to be a resi-dential section-dusty and dispirited, but maybe a cut or two above the trailer park. Through his watering eyes, Joh

The cop pulled his large square head back in. He turned to look at Joh

“That’s Billy Rancourt,” he confided happily. “He cuts my hair. I been looking for him.”

He lowered his voice to that register at which confidences are imparted and added, “He drinks a bit.” Then he faced front, dropped the transmission into Drive, and floored the accelerator. The rumbling engine howled; the tires squalled; Joh

Joh

“No!” Joh

At the last minute, Billy Rancourt understood and tried to run. He broke to his right, toward a ramshackle house squatting tiredly behind a picket fence, but it was too little and too late. He yelled, then there was a crump as thc cruiser struck him hard enough to make the frame shudder. Blood spattered the picket fence, there was a double thud from beneath the car as the wheels ran over the fallen man, and then the cruiser hit the fence and knocked it down. The big cop jammed on the brakes, bringing the cruiser to a stop in the bald dirt dooryard of the ramshackle house. Joh

“Billy, you bugger!” the cop cried happily. “Tak an lah!”

Billy Rancourt screamed. Joh

That was the horror of it.

“YeeHAw!” the cop yelled, and dropped the cruiser s transmission into Reverse. The tires screamed and smoked across the sidewalk, bounced back into the street and ran over Billy Rancourt’s cowboy hat. The cruiser s back deck hit one of the bikes (it made a hell of a bang cracked the rear window, then flew out of sight for a moment before coming down in front). Joh

“Whoa,” the cop said. “What a damn mess, huh.”

“Yeah, you killed him,” Joh

The cop turned, gave him a considering look with his one good eye, then turned back to face the windshield again. “‘I have taught thee in the way of wisdom,’” he said, “‘I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou run—nest, thou shalt not stumble.’ That’s from the Book of Adverbs, John.

But I think old Billy stumbled. Yes, I do. He was always a gluefoot. I think that was his basic problem.”

Joh

Maybe that was just as well.

“‘Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life.’ That’s a little advice you could afford to take, Mr. Marinville, sir. Excuse me a minute.”

He got out and walked to the dead man in the street, his boots seeming to shimmer as the strengthening wind blew sand across them. There was a large bloody patch on the seat of his uniform pants now, and when he bent to pick up the late Billy Rancourt, Joh

Maybe so. Probably so. I think he’s on the verge of crashing and bleeding out, the way heinophiliacs some-times do. if he wasn’t so Christing big, he’d probably be dead already. You know what you have to do. don ‘t you.

Yes, of course he did. He had a bad temper, a horrible temper, and it seemed that not even getting the shit kicked out of him by a homicidal maniac had changed that. What he had to do now was keep that temper of his under con-trol. No more cracks, like calling the cop a brave boy just now. That had earned him a look Joh