Beyond the town was an enormous curving bulwark with an improved dirt road at least four lanes wide running up to the top in a pair of wide switchbacks. The rest of this curved rampart, which had to be at least three hundred 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 running out of each end.
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 tour guide 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 theUnited 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 crossedMain . 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 signaled a left turn—pretty funny, under the circumstances—and swung into a small, recently paved parking lot bordered on three sides by brick walls. Bright white lines were spray-painted on the smooth and crack- less asphalt. On the wall at the rear of the lot was a sign which read: MUNICIPAL
EMPLOYEES AND MUNICIPAL BUSINESS ONLY PLEASE RESPECT THIS PARKING LOT.
Only inNevada would someone ask you to respect a parking lot, Peter thought. InNew 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, fingers tapping restlessly at the steering wheel, humming under his breath. To Peter it sounded like “Last Train toClarksville .”
“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 fingers 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 his 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 theMunicipalBuilding ,” 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 connote the Jewish aspect.”
“Officer—” Mary began.
“No,” he said. “Walk. Make your left. Don’t try my patience.”
They walked. Their footfalls on the fresh black tar seemed very loud. Peter kept thinking of the little plastic bear on the dashboard of the cruiser. Its jiggling head and painted eyes. Who had given it to the cop? A favorite niece? A daughter? Officer Friendly wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Peter had noticed that while watching the man’s fingers tap against the steering wheel, but that didn’t mean he had never been married. And the idea that a woman married to this man might at some point seek a divorce did not strike Peter as in the least bit odd.
From somewhere above him came a monotonous reek- reek-reek sound. He looked down the street and saw a weathervane turning rapidly on the roof of the bar, Bud’s Suds. It was a leprechaun with a pot of gold under one arm and a knowing grin on his spinning face. It was the weathervane making the sound.
“To your left, Dumbo,” the cop said, sounding not impatient but resigned. “Do you know which way is your left? Don’t they teach hayfoot and strawfoot to you New York Homo Presbyterians?”
Peter turned left. He and Mary were still walking hip to hip, still holding hands. They came to a set of three stone steps leading up to modern tinted-glass double doors. The building itself was much less
modern. A white-painted -. sign hung on faded brick proclaimed it to be the DESPERA-
-TIONMUNICIPALBUILDING . Below, on the doors, were listed the offices and services to be found within: Mayor, School Committee, Fire, Police, Sanitation, Welfare Ser-vices, Department of Mines and Assay. At the bottom of the right hand door was printed: MSHA FRIDAYS AT1 PM AND BY
APPOINTMENT.
The cop stopped at the foot of the steps and looked at theJacksons curiously. Although it was brutally hot out here, probably somewhere in the upper nineties, he did not appear to be sweating at all. From behind them, monotonous in the silence, came the reek-reekreek of the weathervane.
“You’re Peter,” he said.
“Yes, Peter Jackson.” He wet his lips.
The cop shifted his eyes. “And you’re Mary.”
“That’s right.”
“So where’s Paul?” the cop asked, looking at them pleasantly while the rusty leprechaun squeaked and spun on the roof of the bar behind them.
“What?” Peter asked. “I don’t understand.”
“How can you sing ‘Five Hundred Miles’ or ‘Leavin on a Jet Plane’ without Paul?” the cop asked, and opened the right hand door. Machine-cooled air puffed out. Peter felt it on his face and had time to register how nice it was nice and cool; then Mary screamed. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom inside the building faster than his own, but he saw it a moment later. There was a girl of about Six sprawled at the foot of the stairs, half-propped against the last four risers. One hand was thrown back over her head It lay palm-up on the stairs. Her straw-colored hair had been tied in a couple of tails. Her eyes were wide open and her head was unnaturally cocked to one side. There was no question in Peter’s mind about whom the dolly lying at the foot of the RV’s steps had belonged to.
FOUR HAPPY WANDERERS, it had said on the front of the RV, but that was clearly out of date in
these modern times. There was no question in his mind about that, either.
“Gosh!” the cop said genially. “Forgot all about her1 But you can never remember everything, can you?
No matter how hard you try!” Mary screamed again, her fingers folded down against her palms and her hands against her mouth, and tried to bolt back down the steps.
“No you don’t, what a bad idea,” the cop said. He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her through the door, which he was holding open. She reeled across the small lobby, revolving her arms in a frantic effort to keep her balance, not wanting to fall on top of the dead child in the jeans and the MotoKops 2200 shirt.