“You STOP THAT!” his father screamed, startling David out of his thoughts and making him look around. In the growing gloom Ralph Carver’s face was long with terror, his eyes red with grief. In his agitation he sounded like an eleven-year-old himself, one having a hell of a tantrum. “Stop that RIGHT
NOW, do you hear me?”
David turned back to the sink without answering and began to splash water on his face and in his hair.
He remembered King Darius’s parting advice to Daniel before Daniel was led away: “Thy God whom thou ser-vest in your days and nights will deliver thee.” And some-thing else, something Daniel had said the next day about why God had shut the lions’ mouths- “David! DAVID!”
But he wouldn’t look again. Couldn’t. He hated it when his father cried, and he had never seen or heard him cry like this. It was awful, as if someone had cut open a vein in his heart.
“David, you answer me!”
“Put a sock in it, pal,” Marinville said.
“You put a sock in it,” Mary told him.
“But he’s getting the coyote riled!”
She ignored him. “David, what are you doing?”
David didn’t answer. This wasn’t the kind of thing you could discuss rationally, even if there was time, because faith wasn’t rational. This was something Reverend Martin had told him over and over again, drilling him with it like some important spelling rule, I before e except after C: sane men and women don’t believe in God That was all, that was flat. You can’t say it from the pulpit, because the congregation ‘d run you out of town, but it’s the truth. God isn’t about reason; God is about faith and belief God says,
“Sure, take away the safety net. And when that’s gone, take away the tightrope, too.
He filled his hands with water once more and splashed it over his face and into his hair.
His head. That would be where he succeeded or failed, he knew that already. It was the biggest part of him, and he didn’t think there was much give to a person’s skull.
David grabbed the bar of Irish Spring and began to lather himself with it. He didn’t bother with his legs, there would be no problem there, but worked from the groin on up, rubbing harder and generating more suds as he went His father was still yelling at him, but now there was no time to listen. The thing was, he had to be quick … and not just because he was apt to lose his nerve if he stopped too long to think about the coyote sitting out there. If he let the soap dry, it wouldn’t serve to grease him; it would gum him up and hold him back instead.
He gave his neck a fast lube-job, then did his face and hair. Eyes slitted, soap still clutched in one hand, he padded to the cell door. A horizontal bar crossed the vertical ones about three feet off the floor. The gap between the vertical bars was at least four inches and maybe five The cells in the holding area had been built to hold men brawny miners, for the most part-not skinny eleven year-old boys, and he didn’t expect much trouble slipping through.
At least until he got to his head.
Quick, hurry, don’t think, trust God.
He knelt, shivering and covered with green soapslime from the hips on up, and began rubbing the cake of soap up and down, first on the inside of one white-painted vertical bar, then on the other.
Out by the desk, the coyote got to its feet. Its growl rose to a snarl. Its yellow eyes were fixed intently on David Carver. Its muzzle wrinkled back in an unpleasantly toothy grin.
“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, considering 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 surprising, 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 innocency was found in me.” That wasn’t exactly right, but David knew the word “innocency” was. It had fascinated him, chimed some-where deep inside him. Now he spoke it to the being whose voice he
sometimes heard-the one he identified as the voice of the other: Find innocency in me, God. Find innocency in me and shut that fleabag ‘s mouth. Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
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, Johnny thought. Goddamn kid must have checked his brains at the door.
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.
Johnny yanked it away- it was too thin, too apt to give out in the coyote’s jaws before the kid could get out . . . if the kid actually could get out, which Johnny doubted. He let the belt go flying over his shoulder and yanked off the heavy leather jacket itself, trying to hold the coyote’s yellow gaze as he did so willing it not to look away. The animal’s eyes reminded him of the cop’s eyes.
The kid shoved his butt through the bars with a gasp, and Johnny had time to wonder how that felt on the old family jewels. The coyote started to turn toward the sound and Johnny flung the leather jacket out at it, holding on by the collar. If the animal hadn’t taken two steps forward to snatch at the belt, the jacket wouldn’t have reached it . .. – but the coyote had and the jacket did. When it brushed the animal’s shoulder, it whirled and seized the jacket so fiercely that it was almost snapped out of Johnny’s hands.
As it was he was dragged head-first into the bars. It hurt like a mother and a bright red rocket went off
behind his eyes, but he still had time to be grateful that his nose had gone between the bars rather than into one.
“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 inNew York . Johnny had never quite pictured it like this when he had tried it on.
He bunched his arms-not as powerful as they’d been thirty years ago, but not puny, either-and dragged the coyote forward. 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 Johnny’s hands. His collection of Life Savers went flying, his maps, his spare set of keys, his pocket pharmacy (aspirin, codeine caps, Sucrets, a tube of Preparation-H), his sunglasses, and his goddamn cellular phone. He let the coyote take a step or two backward, trying to keep it interested, to play it like a fish, then yanked it forward again.
It bonked its head on the corner of the desk this time, a sound that warmed Johnny’s heart. “A rriba!”