“What in God’s name are you thinking about?” his father asked. There was panic in his voice now.
“What-ever it is, I forbid it! Absolutely!”
David didn’t reply, only looked at Mary. Looked at her as steadily as the coyote was looking at him.
She returned his look for a moment, then, without saying a word, turned her back. The man in the motorcycle jacket sat on his bunk, crunching his Life Saver and watching him. David was as body-shy as most eleven-year-olds, and that steady gaze made him uncomfortable … but as he had already pointed out to himself, this was no time to be a dope. He took another glance at the bar of Irish Spring, then thumbed down his pants and undershorts.
“Nice,” Cynthia said. “I mean, that’s class.”
“What?” Steve asked. He was sitting forward, watching the road carefully. More sand and tumbleweeds were blowing across it now, and the driving had gotten tricky.
“The sign. See it?”
He looked. The sign, which had originally read DES-PERATION ‘S CHURCH & civic ORGANIZATIONS WELCOME You! had been changed by some wit with a spray can; it now read DESPERATION’S DEAD DOGS WELCOME you! A rope, frayed at one end, flapped back and forth in the wind. Old Shep himself was gone, however. The buzzards had gotten their licks in first; then the coyotes had come Hungry and not a bit shy about eating a first cousin, they had snapped the rope and dragged the Shepherd’s carcass away, pausing only to squabble and fight with one another. What remained (mostly bones and toenails) lay over the next rise. The blowing sand would cover it soon enough.
“Boy, folks around here must love a good laugh,” Steve said.
“They must.” She pointed. “Stop there.”
It was a rusty Quonset hut. The sign in front read DES-PERATION MINING CORP.
There was a parking lot beside it with ten or twelve cars and trucks in it.
He pulled over but didn’t turn in to the lot, at least not yet. The wind was blowing more steadily now, the gusts gradually merging into one steady blast. To the west, the sun was a surreal red-orange disc hanging over theDesatoyaMountains , as flat and bloated as a photo of the planet Jupiter. Steve could hear a fast and steady tink-tink-tink-tink coming from somewhere nearby, possibly the sOund of a steel lanyard-clip banging against a flagpole.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked her.
“Let’s call the cops from here. There’s people; see the lights?”
He glanced toward the Quonset and saw five or six golden squares of brightness toward the rear of the building. In the dusty gloom they looked like lighted windows in a traincar.
He looked back at Cynthia and shrugged. “Why from here, when we could just drive to the local cop-shop? The middle of town-such as it is- can’t be far.”
She rubbed one hand across her forehead as if she were tired, or getting a headache. “You said you’d be careful. I said I’d help you be careful. That’s what I’m trying to do now. I sort of want to see how things are hanging before someone in a uniform sits me down in a chair and starts shooting questions.
And don’t ask me why, because I don’t really know.
If we call the cops and they sound cool, that’s fine. They’re cool, we’re cool. But… where the fuck were they? Never mind your boss, he disappeared almost clean, but an RV parked beside the road, the tires flat, door unlocked, valuables inside? I mean, gimme a break. Where were the cops?”
“It goes back to that, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, back to that.” The cops could have been at the scene of a road-accident or a ranch-fire or a convenience- store stickup, even a murder, and she knew it-all of them, because there just weren’t that many cops out in this part of the world. But still, yeah, it came back to that. Because it felt more than funny. It felt wrong.
“Okay,” Steve said mildly, and turned in to the parking lot. “Might not be anybody at what passes for the Desperation P.D., anyhow. It’s getting late. I’m surprised there’s anyone still here, tell you the truth.
Must be money in minerals, huh?”
He parked next to a pickup, opened the door, and the wind snatched it out of his hand. It banged the side of the truck. Steve winced, half-expecting a Slim Pickens type to come running toward him, holding his hat on with one hand and yelling Hey thar, boy! No owner did. A tumble-weed zoomed by, apparently headed forSalt Lake City , but that was all. And the alkali dust was flying-plenty of it. He had a red bandanna in his back pocket.
He took it out, knotted it around his neck, and pulled it up over his mouth.
“Hold it, hold it,” he said, tugging her arm to keep her from opening her door just yet. He leaned over so he could open the glove compartment. He rummaged and found another bandanna, this one blue, and handed it to her. “Put that on first.”
She held it up, examined it gravely, then turned her wide little-girl eyes on him again.
“No cootiebugs?”
He snorted and grinned behind the red bandanna. “Airy a one, ma am, as we say back inLubbock . Put it on.”
She knotted it, then pulled it up. “Butch and Sundance,” she said, her voice a little muffled.
“Yeah, Bonnie andClyde .”
“Omar and Sharif,” she said, and giggled.
“Be careful getting out. The wind’s really getting cranked up.”
He stepped out and the wind slapped him in the face, making him stagger as he reached the front of the van. Flying grit stung his forehead. Cynthia was holding onto her doorhandle, head down, the Peter Tosh shirt flapping out behind her skinny midriff like a sail. There was still some daylight left, and the sky overhead was still blue, but the landscape had taken on a strange shadowless quality. It was stormlight if Steve had ever seen it.
“Come on!” he yelled, and put an arm around Cynthia’s waist. “Let’s get out of this!”
They hurried across the cracked asphalt to the long building. There was a door at one end of it. The sign bolted to the corrugated metal beside it read DESPERATION MINING CORP., like the one out front, but Steve saw that this one had been painted over something else, some other name that was starting to show through the white paint like a red ghost. He was pretty sure that one of the painted over words was DIABLO, with the I modified into a devil’s pitchfork.
Cynthia was tapping the door with one bitten fingernail. A sign had been hung on the inside from one of those little transparent suction cups. Steve thought there was something perfectly, irritatingly, showily Western about the message on the sign.
IF WE’RE OPEN, WE’RE OPEN
IF WE’RE CLOSED, Y’ALL COME BACK
“They forgot son,” he said.
“Huh?”
“It should say ‘Y’all come back, son.’ Then it would be perfect.” He glanced at his watch and saw that it wastwenty past seven . Which meant they were closed, of course. Except if they were closed, what were those cars and trucks doing in the parking lot?
He tried the door. It pushed open. From inside came the sound of country music, broken by heavy static. “I built it one piece at a time,” Johnny Cash sang, “And it didn’t cost me a dime.”
They stepped in. The door closed on a pneumatic arm. Outside, the wind played rattle and hum along the ridged metal sides of the building. They were in a reception area. To the right were four chairs with patched vinyl seats. They looked like they were mostly used by beefy men wearing dirty jeans and workboots. There was a long coffee-table in front of the chairs, piled with magazines you didn’t find in the doctor’s office: Guns and Ammo, Road and Track, MacLean ‘s Mining Report, Metallurgy Newsletter, Arizona Highways. There was also a very old Penthouse with Tonya Harding on the cover.
Straight ahead of them was a field-gray receptionist’s desk, so dented that it might have been kicked here all the way from Highway 50. It was loaded down with papers, a crazily stacked set of volumes marked MSHA Guidelines (an overloaded ashtray sat on top of these), and three wire baskets full of rocks. A manual typewriter perched on one end of the desk; no computer that Steve could see, and a chair in the kneehole, the kind that runs on casters, but nobody sitting in it. The air conditioner was running, and the room was uncomfortably cool.
Steve walked around the desk, saw a cushion sitting on the chair, and picked it up so Cynthia could see it. PARK YER ASS had been crocheted across the front in old-fashioned Western-style lettering.
“Oh, tasteful,” she said. “Operators are standing by, use Tootie.”