Desperation

A moment later they were racing south along narrow patched blacktop with no centerline.

Amile or so farther on, they passed a sign which read DESPERATION’s CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME YOU! The words CHURCH & CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS were readable, although they had been coated with yellow spray-paint. Above them, in the same paint, the words DEAD DOGS had been added in ragged caps. The churches and civic organizations were listed beneath, but Peter didn’t bother to read them. A German Shepherd had been hanged from the sign.

Its rear paws tick-tocked back and forth an inch or two above a patch of ground that was dark and muddy with its blood.’ Mary’s hands were clamped on his like a vise. He wel-comed their pressure. He leaned toward her again, into the sweet smell of her perfume and the sour smell of her tern—fled sweat, leaned toward her until his lips were pressed against the cup of her ear. “Don’t say a word, don’t make a sound,” he murmured. “Nod your head if you under-stand me.”

She nodded against his lips, and Peter straightened up again.

They passed a trailer park behind a stake fence. Most of the trailers were small and looked as if they had seen better days—around the time Cheers first went on the air, perhaps. Dispirited-looking laundry flapped between a few of them in the hot desert wind. In front of one was a sign which read: I’M A GUN-TOTIN’ SNAPPLE-DRINKIN”

BIBLE-READIN’ CLINTON-BASHIN’ SON OF A BITCH!

NEVER MIND THE DOG, BEWARE OF THE OWNER!

Mounted on an old Airstream which stood near the road was a large black satellite dish.

On the side of it was another sign, white-painted metal down which streaks of rust had run like ancient bloody tears:

THIS TELACOMMUNICATIONS

PROPERTY RATTLESNAKE TRAILER PARK

NO TREESPASSING! POLICE PATROLED!

Beyond the Rattlesnake Trailer Park was a long Quonset hut with rusty, corrugated sides and roof. The sign out front read DESPERATION MINING CORP. To one side was a cracked asphalt parking lot with a dozen cars and pickups in it. A moment later they passed the Desert Rose Cafe.

Then they were in the town proper. Desperation, Nevada, consisted of two streets that crossed at right angles (a blinker-light, currently flashing yellow on all four sides, hung over the intersection) and two blocks of business buildings. Most seemed to have false fronts. There was an Owl’s Club casino and cafe, a grocery, a laundrymat, a bar with a sign in the window reading ENJOY OUR SLOTSPITALITY, hardware and feed stores, a movie theater called The American West, a few others. None of the businesses looked as if they were booming, and the theater had the air of a place that has been closed a long time. A single crooked R hung from its dirty, bashed-in marquee.

Going the other way, east and west, were some frame houses and more trailers. Nothing seemed to be in motion except for the cruiser and one tumbleweed, which moved down Main in large, lazy lopes.

I’d get off the streets, too, if I saw this guy coming, Peter thought. You’re goddamned tooting I would.

Beyond the town was an enormous curving bulwark with an improved dirt road at least four lanes wide run-ning up to the top in a pair of wide switchbacks. The rest of this curved rampart, which had to be at least three hun-dred feet high, was crisscrossed by deep runoff trenches.

To Peter they looked like wrinkles in old skin. At the foot of the crater (he assumed it was a crater, the result of some sort of mining operation), trucks that looked like toys compared to the soaring, wrinkled wall behind them were clustered together by a long, corrugated building with a conveyor belt ru

Their host spoke up for the first time since telling them his mind was full of holes, or whatever it was he’d said.

“Rattlesnake Number Two. Sometimes known as the China Pit.” He sounded like a tourguide who still enjoys his job. “Old Number Two was opened in 1951, and from ’62 or so right through the seventies, it was the biggest open-pit copper mine in the United States, maybe in the world. Then it played out. They opened it up again year before last.

They got some new technology that makes even the tailings valuable. Science, huh.

“Gosh!”

But there was nothing moving up there now, not that Peter could see, although it was a weekday. Just the huddle of trucks by what was probably some kind of sorting-mill, and another truck—this one a pickup—parked off to the side of the gravel highway leading to the summit. The conveyors at the ends of the long metal building were stopped.

The cop drove through the center of town, and as they passed beneath the blinker, Mary squeezed Peter’s hands twice in rapid succession. He followed her gaze and saw three bikes in the middle of the street which crossed Main. They were about a block and a half down and had been set on their seats in a row, with their wheels sticking up. The wheels were turning like windmill blades in the gusty alr.

She turned to look at him, her wet eyes wider than ever.

Peter squeezed her hands again and made a “Shhh” sound.

The cop signalled a left turn—pretty fu

Only in Nevada would someone ask you to respect a parking lot, Peter thought. In New York the sign would probably read UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE STOLEN AND THEIR OWNERS EATEN.

There were four or five cars in the lot. One, a rusty old Ford Estate Wagon, was marked FIRE CHIEF. There was another police-car, in better shape than the Fire Chiefs car but not as new as the one their captor was driving. There was a single handicapped space in the lot Officer Friendly parked in it. He turned off the engine and then just sat there for a moment or two, head lowered, fin gers tapping restlessly at the steering wheel, humming under his breath. To Peter it sounded like “Last Train to Clarksville.”

“Don’t kill us,” Mary said suddenly in a trembling, teary voice. “We’ll do whatever you want, just please don’t kill us.”

“Shut your quacking Jew mouth,” the cop replied. He didn’t raise his head, and he went on tapping at the wheel with the tips of his sausage-sized fingers.

“We’re not Jews,” Peter heard himself saying. His voice sounded not afraid but querulous, angry. “We’re, well, Presbyterians, I guess. What’s this Jew thing.”

Mary looked at her husband, horrified, then back through the mesh to see how the cop was taking it. At first he did nothing, only sat with his head down and his fin gem tapping. Then he grabbed his hat and got out of the car. Peter bent down a little so he could watch the cop settle the hat on his head. The cop’s shadow was still squat, but it was no longer puddled around his feet. Peter glanced at his watch and saw it was a few minutes shy of two-thirty. Less than an hour ago, the biggest question he and his wife had had was what their accommodations for the night would be like. His only worry had been hls strong suspicion that he was out of Rolaids.

The cop bent and opened the left rear door. “Please get out of the vehicle, folks,” he said.

They slid out, Peter first. They stood in the hot light looking uncertainly up at the man in the khaki uniform and the Sam Browne belt and the peaked trooper style hat.

“We’re going to walk around to the front of the Munici pal Building,” the cop said.

“That’ll be a left as you reach the sidewalk. And you look like Jews to me. The both of you. You have those big noses which co