David looked at Johnny.
“Two questions,” Johnny said. “First, what happens when this is over? What happens here? If the Desperation Mining Corporation comes back in and starts working the China Pit again, they’ll most likely reopen the China Shaft. Won’t they? So what good is it?”
David actually grinned. To Mary he looked relieved, as if he had expected a much tougher question.
“That’s not our problem-that’s God’s problem. Ours is to close the an tak and the tunnel from there to the outside. Then we ride away and never look back.
What’s your other question?”
“Could I take you out for an ice cream when this is over? Tell you some high school war stories?”
“Sure. As long as I can tell you to stop when they get, you know, boring.”
“Boring stories are not in my repertoire,” Johnny said loftily.
The boy walked back to the truck with Mary, slipping his arm around her waist and leaning his head against her arm as if she were his mother. Mary guessed she could be that for awhile, if he needed her to be. Steve and Cynthia took the cab; Ralph and Johnny Marinville sat on the floor of the box a across from Mary and David.
When the truck stopped halfway up the grade, Mary felt David’s grip on her waist tighten and put an arm around his shoulders. They had come to the place where his mother-her shell, anyway-had finished up. He knew it as well as she did. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly through his mouth. Mary put a hand on the side of his head and urged him wordlessly with it. He came willingly enough, putting his face against her breast. The light, rapid mouth-breathing went on, and then she felt the first of his tears wetting her shirt. Across from her, David’s father was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands over his face.
“That’s all right, David,” she murmured, and began stroking his hair. “That’s all right.”
Doors slammed. Feet crunched on the gravel. Then, faintly, Cynthia Smith’s voice, full of horror: “Oh jeez, look at her!”
Steve: “Be quiet, stupid, they’ll hear you.”
Cynthia: “Oh sugar. Sorry.”
Steve: “Come on. Help me.”
Ralph took his hands away from his face, wiped a sleeve across his eyes, then came across to Mary’s side of the truck and put his arm around David. David groped for his father’s hand and took it. Ralph’s stricken, streaming eyes met Mary’s, and she began to cry herself.
She could now hear shuffling steps from outside as Steve and Cynthia carried Ellen out of the road.
There was a pause, a little grunt of effort from the girl, and then the footsteps came back to the truck.
Mary was suddenly sure that Steve would walk around to the back and tell the boy and his father some outrageous lie-foolishness about how Ellen looked peaceful, like she was maybe just taking a nap out here in the middle of nowhere.
She tried to send him a message: Don’t do it, don’t come back here and tell well-meaning lies, you can only make things worse. They ‘ye been in Desperation, they’ve seen what’s there, don’t try to kid them about what’s out here.
The steps paused. Cynthia murmured. Steve said some-thing in return. Then they got back into the truck, the doors slammed, the engine revved, and they started off again.
David kept his face pressed against her a moment or two longer, then raised his head.
“Thanks.”
She smiled, but the truck’s rear door was still up and she supposed enough light was getting in for David to see that she had also wept. “Any time,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “Really.”
She clasped her arms around her knees and looked out the back of the truck, watching the dust spume up. She could still see the blinker-light, a yellow spark in the wide sweep of the dark, but now it was going in the wrong direction, drawing away from them.
The world-the one she had always thought to be the only world-also seemed to be drawing away from
her now. Malls, restaurants, MTV, Gold’s Gym workouts, and occasional hot sex in the afternoon, all drawing away.
And it’s all so easy, she thought. As easy as a penny slipping through a hole in your pocket.
“David?” Johnny asked. “Do you know how Tak got into Ripton in the first place?”
David shook his head.
Johnny nodded as if that was what he had expected and sat back, resting his head against the side of the truck. Mary realized that, as exasperating as Marinville could be, she sort of liked him. And not just because he had come back with David; she had sort of liked him ever since. . . well, since they were looking for guns, she guessed. She’d scared him, but he had bounced back. She guessed he was the kind of guy who had made a second career out of bouncing back from stuff. And when he wasn’t concentrating on being an asshole, he could be amusing.
The .30-.06 was lying beside him. Johnny felt around for it without raising his head, picked it up, and laid it across his knees. “I suspect I may miss a lecture tomorrow evening,” he said to the ceiling. “It was to be on the subject ‘Punks and Post-literates: American Writing in the Twenty-first Century.’ I shall have to return the advance. ‘Sad, sad, sad, George and Martha.’ That’s from-”
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Mary said. “Ed-ward Albee. We’re not all bozos on this bus.”
“Sorry,” Johnny said, sounding startled.
“Just be sure to put the apology in your journal,” she said, without the slightest idea of what she was talking about. He lowered his head to look at her, frowned for a moment, then started laughing. After a moment, Mary joined him. Then David was also laughing, and Ralph joined in. His was surprisingly high-pitched for a big man, a kind of cartoon tee-bee, and thinking that made Mary laugh even harder. It hurt her scraped stomach, but the hurt didn’t stop her.
Steve pounded on the back of the cab. It was impossible to tell if his muffled voice was amused or alarmed “What’s going on?”
In his best lion’s voice, Johnny Marinville roared back “Be quiet, you Texas longhorn! We’re discussing literature back here!”
Mary screamed with laughter, one hand pressed to the base of her throat, the other curled against her throbbing belly. She wasn’t able to stop until the truck reached the crest of the embankment, crossed the rim, and started down the far side. Then all the humor went out of her at once. The others stopped at about the same time.
“Do you feel it?” David asked his father.
“I feel something.”
Mary started shivering. She tried to remember if she had been shivering before, while she was laughing, and couldn’t. They felt something, yes, she had no doubt that they did.
They might have felt even more if they had been out here earlier, if they’d had to get up this same road before the bleeding thing just behind could- Push it out of your head, Mare. Push it out and lock the door.
“Mary?” David asked.
She looked at him.
“It won’t be much longer.”
“Good.”
Five minutes later-very long minutes-the truck stopped and the cab doors opened. Steve and Cynthia
came around to the back. “Hop out, you guys,” Steve said “Last stop.”
Mary worked herself out of the truck, wincing at every move. She hurt all over, but her legs were the worst. If she had sat in the back of the truck much longer, she reckoned she probably wouldn’t have been able to walk at all.
“Johnny, do you still have those aspirin?”
He handed them over. She took three, washing them down with the last of her Jolt. Then she walked around to the front of the truck.
They were at the bottom of the China Pit, first time for the others, second for her. The field office was near; looking at it, thinking of what was inside and of how close she had probably come to ending her existence in there, made her feel like screaming. Then her eyes fixed on the cruiser, the driver’s door still open, the hood still raised, the air-cleaner still lying by the left front tire.
“Put your arm around me,” she told Johnny.
He did, looking down at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Now walk me over to that car.”
“Why?”
“There’s something I have to do.”
“Mary, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish,” David said.
“This’ll only take a second. Come on, Shakespeare. Let’s go.”
He walked her over to the car, his arm around her waist, the .30-.06 in his free hand. She supposed he could feel her trembling, but that was all right. She nerved herself, gnawing at her lower lip, remembering the ride into town in the back of this car. Sitting with Peter behind the mesh. Smelling Old Spice and the metallic scent of her own fear. No doorhandles. No window-cranks. And nothing to look at but the back of Entragian’s sunburned neck and that stupid blank-eyed bear stuck to the dashboard.