Stephen King – Desperation

Mary said. “Maybe the buzzards and the coyotes helped.”

Marinville tried to push this away-even in the gloom she could see him trying-and then gave up. He sighed and rubbed at one temple, as if it hurt. “Okay, maybe they did. The ugliest bird in the universe tried to scalp me when he told it to, that I know happened. But still-”

“It’s like the story of the Angel of Death in Exodus,” David said. “The Israelites were supposed to put blood on their door-tops to show they were the good guys, you know?

Only here, he’s the Angel of Death. So why did he pass over us? He could have killed us all just as easy as he killed Pie, or your husband, Mary.” He turned to the old man. “Why didn’t he kill you, Mr.

Billingsley? If he killed everyone else in town, why didn’t he kill you?”

Billingsley shrugged. “Dunno. I was laying home drunk. He came in the new cruiser, same one I helped pick out, by God-and got me. Stuck me in the back and hauled me off to the calabozo. I asked him why, what I’d done, but he wouldn’t tell me. I begged him. I cried. I didn’t know he was crazy, not then, how could I? He was quiet, but he didn’t give any signs that he was crazy. I started to get that idea later, but at first I was just convinced I’d done something bad in a blackout. That I’d been out driving, maybe, and hurt someone. I … I did something like that once before.”

“When did he come for you?” Mary asked.

Billingsley had to think about it in order to be sure. “Day before yesterday. Just before sundown. I was in bed, my head hurting, thinking about getting something for my hangover. An aspirin, and a little hair of the dog that bit me. He came and got me right out of bed. I didn’t have anything on but my underwear shorts. He let me dress. Helped me. But he wouldn’t let me take a drink even though I was shaking all over, and he wouldn’t tell me why he was taking me in.” He paused, still rubbing the flesh beneath his eyes. Mary wished he would stop doing that, it was making her nervous. “Later on, after he had me in a cell, he brought me a hot dinner. He sat at the desk for a little while and said some stuff. That’s when I started to think he must be crazy, because none of it made sense.”

“‘I see holes like eyes,’ “Mary said.

Billingsley nodded. “Yeah, like that. ‘My head is full of blackbirds,’ that’s another one I remember. And a lot more I don’t. They were like Thoughts for the Day out of a book written by a crazy person.”

“Except for being in town to start with, you’re just like us,” David said. “And you don’t know why he let you live any more than we do.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“What happened to you, Mr. Marinville?”

Marinville told them about how the cop had pulled up behind his bike while he had been whizzing and contemplating the scenery north of the road, and how he had seemed nice at first. “We talked about my books,” he said. “I thought he was a fan. I was going to give him a fuckin autograph. Pardon my French, David.”

“Sure. Did cars go by while you were talking? I bet they did.”

“A few, I guess, and a couple of semis. I didn’t really notice.”

“But he didn’t bother any of them.”

“Just you.~~

Marinville looked at the boy thoughtfully.

“He picked you out,” David persisted.

“Well . . . maybe. I can’t say for sure. Everything seemed jake until he found the dope.”

Mary held her hands up. “Whoa, whoa, time out.”

Marinville looked at her.

“This dope you had-”

“It wasn’t mine, don’t go getting that idea. You think I’d try driving cross-country on a Harley with half a pound of grass in my saddlebag? My brains may be fried, but not that fried.”

Mary began to giggle. It made her need to pee worse, but she couldn’t help it. It was all just too perfect, too wonderfully round. “Did it have a smile-sticker on it?” she asked, giggling harder than ever. She didn’t really need an answer to this question, but she wanted it, just the same.

“Mr. Smiley-Smile?”

“How did you know that?” Marinville looked astounded. He also looked remarkably like Arlo Guthrie, at least in the glow of the flashlights, and Mary’s giggles became little screams of laughter. She realized that if she didn’t get to the bathroom soon, she was going to wet her pants.

“B-Because it came from our t-t-trunk,” she said, holding her stomach. “It b-belonged to my sih-sih-sister-in-law. She’s a total ding dong. Entragian may be c-c- crazy, but at least he r-r-recycles. . .

excuse me, I’m about to h-have an accident.”

She hurried across the hail. What she saw when she opened the men’s-room door made her laugh even harder. Set up like some comic-opera throne in the center of the floor was a portable toilet with a canvas bag suspended below the seat in a steel frame. On the wall across from it was another Magic Marker drawing, obviously from the same hand which had created the fish. This one was a horse at full gallop.

There was orange smoke jetting from its nostrils and a baleful rose-madder glint in its eyes. It appeared to be headed out into an expanse of prairie somewhere east of the sun and west of the washbasins. None of the tiles had fallen out of this wall, but most had buckled, giving the stallion a warped and dreamish look.

Outside, the wind howled. As Mary unsnapped her pants and sat down on the cold toilet seat, she suddenly thought of how Peter sometimes put his hand up to his mouth when he laughed-his thumb touching one corner, his first finger touching the other, as if laughter somehow made him vulnerable-and all at once, with no break at all, at least none she could detect, she was crying. How stupid all this was, to be a widow at thirty-five, to be a fugitive in a town full of dead people, to be sitting in the men’s room of an abandoned movie theater on a canvas Port-A-Potty, peeing and crying at the same time, pissing and moaning, you might say, and looking at a dim beast on a wall so warped that it seemed to be running under-water, how stupid to be so frightened, and to have grief all but stolen away by her mind’s brute determination to sur-vive at any cost.. . as if Peter had never meant anything anyway, as if he had just been a footnote.

How stupid to still feel so hungry. . . but she was.

“Why is this happening? Why does it have to be me?” she whispered, and put her face into her hands.

If either Steve or Cynthia had had a gun, they probably would have shot her.

They were passing Bud’s Suds (the neon sign in the window read ENJOY OUR

(SLOTSPITALITY) when the door of the next business up-the laundrymat-opened and a woman sprang out. Steve, seeing only a dark shape, drew back the tire iron to hit her.

“No!” Cynthia said, grabbing at his wrist and holding it. “Don’t do that!”

The woman-she had a lot of dark hair and very white skin, but that was all Cynthia could tell at first-grabbed Steve by the shoulders and shoved her face up into his. Cynthia didn’t think the laundrymat woman ever saw the upraised tire iron at all. She’s gonna ask him if he’s found Jeeeesus, Cynthia thought. It’s never Jesus when they grab you like that, it’s always Jeeeesus.

But of course that was not what she said.

“We have to get out.” Her voice was low, hoarse. “Right now.” She snatched a glance over her shoulder, flicked a look at Cynthia, then seemed to dismiss her entirely as she focussed on Steve again.

Cynthia had seen this before and wasn’t offended by it. When it got to be crunch-time, a certain kind of woman could only see the guy. Sometimes it was the way they had been raised; more often it seemed actually hard-wired into their cunning little Barbie Doll circuits.

Cynthia was getting a better look at her now, in spite of the dark and the blowing dust.

An older woman (thirty, at least), intelligent-looking, not unsexy. Long legs poking out of a short dress that looked somehow gawky, as if the chick inside it wasn’t accustomed to wearing dresses Yet she was far from clumsy, judging from the way she moved with Steve when he moved, as if they were dancing.

“Do you have a car?” she rapped.

“That’s no good,” Steve said. “The road out of town is blocked.”