Desperation

“David, no! Don ‘t do it, son! Don ‘t be crazy!”

“He’s right, kid.” Marinville was standing at the bars of his cell now, hands wrapped around them. So was Mary. That was embarrassing but probably natural enough, con-sidering the way his father was carrying on. And it couldn’t be helped. He had to go, and go now. He hadn’t been able to draw any hot water from the tap, and he thought the cold would dry the soap on his skin even quicker.

He recalled the story of Daniel and the lions again as he dropped to one knee, gathering himself. Not very sur-prising, given the circumstances. When King Darius arrived the next day, Daniel had been fine. “My God hath sent his anger, and hath shut the lions’ mouths,” Daniel told him, “forasmuch as i

He turned sideways, then propped his whole weight on one arm, like Jack Palance doing pushups at the Academy Awards. In this fashion he was able to stick both feet out through the bars at the same time. He wriggled backward, now out to his ankles, now his knees, now his thighs… which was where he first felt the painted bars press their soapslick coolness against him.

“No!” Mary screamed. “No, get away from him, you ugly fuck! GETAWAY FROM HIM!”

There was a clink. It was followed by a thin rolling—marble sound. David turned his head long enough to see Mary with her hands now outside the bars of her cell. The left was cupped. He saw her pick another coin out of it with her right hand and throw it at the coyote. This time it barely paid attention, although the quarter struck it on the flank. The animal started toward David’s bare feet and legs instead, head lowered, snarling.

Oh Christ almighty, Joh

Then he yanked the belt out of the bottom of his motor-cycle jacket, stuck his arm as far out through the bars as he could, and brought the buckle end down on the 7 coyote’s scant flank just as it was about to help itself to the kid’s right foot.

The coyote yelped in pain as well as surprise this time. It whirled, snatching at the belt.

Joh

The kid shoved his butt through the bars with a gasp, and Joh

“No, you don’t,” he grunted, winding his hands into the leather collar and pulling. “Come on, hon… come on. you nasty gopher-eating bugger… come on over… and any howdy.”

The coyote snarled bitterly at him, the sound muffled through its mouthful of jacket-twelve hundred bucks at Barneys in New York. Joh

He bunched his arms-not as powerful as they’d been thirty years ago, but not puny, either-and dragged the coyote foward. Its claws slid on the hardwood floor. It got one front leg braced against the desk and shook the jacket from side to side, trying to yank it out of Joh

It bonked its head on the corner of the desk this time, a sound that warmed Joh

“Hurry up!” Mary screamed. “Hurry up, David!”

Joh

“Hurry up!” the woman screamed again, but Joh

Soaped up, naked as a peeled shrimp, he had gotten as far as his chin, and there he was stuck, with the whole length of his body out in the holding area and his head back inside the cell. Joh

The kid was hung.

He did okay until he got to his head, and there he stuck fast with his cheek on the boards and the shelf of his jaw pressed against one soapy bar and the back of his head against the other. A panic driven by claustrophobia—the smell of the wood floor, the iron touch of the bars, a nightmare memory of a picture he’d once seen of a Puritan in stocks-dimmed his vision like a dark curtain. He could hear his dad shouting, the woman screaming, and the coyote snarling, but those sounds were all far away. His head was stuck, he’d have to go back, only he wasn’t sure he could go back because now his arms were out and one was pi

Turn your head, the voice he sometimes heard now told him. As always, it spoke in an almost disinterested way, as if the things it was saying should have been self—evident, and as always David recognized it by the way it seemed to pass through him rather than to comefrom him.

An image came to him then: hands pressing the front and back of a book, squeezing the pages together a little in spite of the boards and the binding. Could his head do that.

David thought-or perhaps only hoped-that it could. But he would have to be in the right position.

Turn your head, the voice had said.

From somewhere behind him came a thick ripping sound, then Marinville’s voice, somehow amused, scared, and outraged all at the same time: “Do you know how much that thing cost.”

David twisted around so he lay on his back instead of his side. Just having the pressure of the bar off his jaw was an incredible relief. Then he reached up and placed his palms against the bars.

Is this right.

No answer. So often there was no answer. Why was that.

Because God is cruel, the Reverend Martin who kept school inside his head replied. God is cruel. I have pop-corn, David, why don ‘t I make some. Maybe we can find one of those old horror movies on TV, something Uni-versal, maybe even The Mummy.

He pushed with his hands. At first nothing happened, but then, slowly, slowly, his soapy head began sliding between the bars. There was one terrible moment when he stopped with his ears crushed against the sides of his head and the pressure beating on his temples, a sick throb that was maybe the worst physical hurt he had ever known. In that moment he was sure he was going to stick right where he was and die in agony, like a heretic caught in some Inquisitorial torture device.