Stephen King – Desperation

The Jesus Scout slid out of his cell somehow, killed the coyote Entragian set as a guard, and saved your miserable life, Terry spoke up inside his head. Maybe you should listen to him, Johnny.

And that, he thought, was why he had divorced Terry in the first place. In a fucking nutshell. She had been a divine lay, but she had never known when to shut up and listen to her intellectual betters.

But the damage was done; it was now too late to derail this train of thought. He found himself thinking of what Billingsley had said about David’s escape from the jail cell. Not even Houdini, hadn’t that been it?

Because of the head. And then there was the phone. The way he’d sent the coyotes packing. And the matter of the sardines and crackers. The thought which had gone through his own head had been something about unobtrusive miracles, hadn’t it?

He had to quit thinking that way. Because what Jesus Scouts did was get people killed.

Look at John the Baptist, or those nuns inSouth America . or- Not even Houdini.

Because of the head.

Johnny realized there was no point in gilding the lily, or doing little mental tap-dances, or-this was the oldest trick of all-using different voices to argue the question into incoherence. The simple fact was that he was no longer just afraid of the cop, or the other forces which might be loose in this town.

He was also afraid of David Carver.

“It wasn’t really the cop who killed my mother and sister and Mary’s husband,” David said, and gave Johnny a look that reminded him eerily of Terry. That look used to drive him to the edge of insanity. You know what I’m talking about, it said. You know exactly, so don‘t waste my time by being deliberately obtuse. “And whoever I talked to while I was unconscious, it was really God. Only God can’t come to people as himself; he’d scare them to death and never get any business done at all. He comes as other stuff. Birds, pillars of fire, burning bushes, whirlwinds . .

“Or people,” Cynthia said. “Sure, God’s a master of disguise.”

The last of Johnny’s patience broke at the skinny girl’s makes-sense-to-me tone. “This is totally insane!”

he shouted. “We have to get gone, don’t you see that? We’re parked ongoddamn Main Street , shut up in here without a single window to look out of, he could be anywhere-up front behind the fucking wheel, for all we know! Or… I don’t know.., coyotes.. . buzzards. .

“He’s gone,” David said in his quiet voice. He leaned forward and took another Jolt from the case.

“Who?” Johnny asked. “Entragian?”

“The can tak. It doesn’t matter who it’s in-Entragian or my mother or the one it started with-it’s always the same. Always the can tak, the big god, the guardian. Gone. Can’t you feel it?”

1don’t feel anything.”

Don’t be a gonzo, Terry said in his mind.

“Don’t be a gonzo,” David said, looking intently up at him. The bottle of Jolt was clasped loosely in his hands. Johnny bent toward him. “Are you reading my mind?” he asked, almost pleasantly. “If you are, I’ll thank you to get the hell out of my head, sonny.”

“What I’m doing is trying to get you to listen,” David said. “Everyone else will if you will! He doesn’t need to send his can tahs or can tak against us if we’re in disagreement with one another-if there’s a broken window, he’ll get in and tear us apart!”

“Come on,” Johnny said, “don’t go all guilt-trippy. None of this is my fault.”

“I’m not saying it is. Just listen, okay?” David sounded almost pleading. “You can do that, there’s time, because he’s gone. The trailers he put in the road are gone, too. Don’t you get it? He wants us to leave.”

“Great! Let’s give him what he wants!”

“Let’s listen to what David has to say,” Steve said.

Johnny wheeled on him. “I think you must have for-gotten who pays you, Steve.” He loathed the sound of the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but made no effort to take them back. The urge to get out of here, to jump behind the wheel of the Ryder truck and just roll some miles-in any direction but south-was now so strong it was nearly panic.

“You told me to stop calling you boss. I’m holding you to that.”

“Besides, what about Mary?” Cynthia asked. “He says she’s alive!”

Johnny turned toward her-turned on her. “You may want to pack your suitcases and travel Trans-God Air-ways with David, but I think I’ll pass.”

“We’ll listen to him,” Ralph said in a low voice.

Johnny stared at him, amazed. If he had expected help from anyone, it had been from the boy’s father.

He’s all I got, Ralph had said in the lobby of The American West. All that’s left of my family.

Johnny looked around at the others, and was dismally astounded to see they were in agreement; only he stood apart. And Steve had the keys to the truck in his pocket. Yet it was him the boy was mostly looking at. Him. As it was him, John Edward Marinville, that people had been mostly looking at ever since he had published his first novel at the impossibly precocious age of twenty-two. He thought he had gotten used to it, and maybe he had, but this time it was different. He had an idea that none of the others-the teachers, the readers, the critics, the editors, the drinking buddies, the women-had ever wanted what this boy seemed to want, which was not just for him to listen; listening, Johnny was afraid, was only where it would start.

The eyes were not just looking, though. The eyes were pleading.

Forget it, kid, he thought. When people like you drive, the bus always seems to crash.

If it wasn’t for David, 1 think your personal bus would have crashed already, Terry said from Der Bitchen Bunker inside his head. 1 think you’d be dead and hung up on a hook somewhere. Listen to him, Johnny. For Christ’s sake, listen!

In a much lower voice, Johnny said: “Entragian’s gone. You’re sure of that.”

“Yes,” David said. “The animals, too. The coyotes and wolves-hundreds of them, it must have taken, maybe thousands-moved the trailers off the road. Dumped them over the side and onto the hardpan.

Now most of them have drawn away, into ml him, the watchman’s circle.” He drank from the bottle of Jolt. The hand holding it shook slightly. He looked at each of them in turn, but it was Johnny his eyes

came back to. Always Johnny. “He wants what you want. For us to leave.”

“Then why did he bring us here in the first place?” “He didn’t.”

“What?”

“He thinks he did, but he didn’t.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re-”

“God brought us,” David said. “To stop him.”

In the silence which followed this, Steve discovered he was listening for the wind outside. There was none. He thought he could hear a plane far away-sane people on their way to some sane destination, sleeping or eating or reading U.S. News & World Report but that was all.

It was Johnny who broke the silence, of course, and although he sounded as confident as ever, there was a look in his eyes (a slidey look) that Steve didn’t like much. He thought he liked Johnny’s crazed look better the wide eyes and terrified Clyde Barrow grin he’d had on when he put the shotgun up to the cougar’s ear and blew its head of f. That there was a half-bright outlaw in Johnny was something Steve knew very well-he’d seen flickers of that guy from the start of the tour, and knew it was the outlaw Bill Harris had feared when he laid down the Five Commandments that day in Jack Appleton’s office but Clyde Barrow seemed to have stepped out and left the other Marinville, the one with the satiric eyebrow and the windbag William F. Buckley rhetoric, in his place.

“You speak as if we all had the same God, David,” he said. “I don’t mean to patronize you, but I hardly think that’s the case.”

“But it is the case,” David replied calmly. “Compared to Tak, you and a cannibal king would have the same God. You’ve seen the can tahs, I know you have. And you’ve felt what they can do.”

Johnny’s mouth twitched-indicating, Steve thought, that he had taken a hit but didn’t want to admit it.

“Per-haps that’s so,” he said, “but the person who brought me here was a long way from God. He was a big blond policeman with skin problems. He planted a bag of dope in my saddlebag and then beat the shit out of me.”

“Yes. I know. The dope came from Mary’s car. He put something like nails in the road to get us. It’s funny, when you think about it-funny-weird, not ha-ha. He went through Desperation like a whirlwind-shot people, stabbed them, beat them, pushed them out windows, ran them down with his car-but he still couldn’t just come up to us, any of us, and take out his gun and say ‘You’re coming with me.’ He had to have a … I don’t know the word.” He looked at Johnny.