“Are you going to look at me properly if I do?” the cop asked. “No more insolence? No more disrespect?”
“No! No more!” He would have promised anything. Whatever had leaped out of him and spoken against the cop was gone now; the bird had plucked it out like a worm from an ear of corn.
“You promise?”
The bird, flapping and squalling and pulling. Smelling like green meat and exploded guts.
On him. Eating him. Eating him alive.
“Yes! Yes! I promise!”
“Fuck you,” the cop said calmly. “Fuck you, os pa, and fuck your promise. Take care of it yourself. Or die.”
Eyes squeezed to slits, kneeling, head lowered, Johnny gripped blindly for the bird, caught its wings where they joined its body, and tore it off his head. It spasmed wildly in the air above him, shitting white streams that the wind pulled away in banners, uttering its rough cry (only there was pain in it now), its head whipping from side to side. Sobbing-mostly what he felt was revulsion-Johnny ripped one of its wings off and threw the buzzard against the wall. It stared at him with eyes as black as tar, its bloodstained beak popping open and then snapping closed with liquid little clicks.
That’s my blood, you bastard. Johnny thought. He dropped the wing he’d torn off the bird and got to his feet. The buzzard tried to lurch away from him, flapping its one good wing like an oar, stirring up dust and feathers. It went in the direction of the Desperation police-cruiser, but before it managed more than five feet, Johnny brought one motorcycle boot down on it, snapping its back. The bird’s scaly legs splayed out to either side, as if it were trying to do the split. Johnny put his hands over his eyes, convinced for one moment that his mind was going to snap just as the bird’s back had snapped.
“Not bad,” the cop said. “You got him, pard. Now turn around.”
“No.” He stood, trembling all over, hands to his face.
“Turn around.”
There was no denying the voice. He turned and saw the cop pointing up, once again with all five splayed fingers. Johnny raised his head and saw more buzzards-two dozen at least-sitting in a line along the north side of the parking lot, looking down at them.
“Want me to call them?” the cop asked in a deceptively gentle tone of voice. “I can, you know. Birds are a hobby of mine. They’ll eat you alive, if that’s what I want.”
“N-N-No.” He looked back at the cop and was relieved to see his fly was zipped again.
There was a bloodstain spreading across the front of his pants, though. “No, d-don’t.”
“What’s the magic word, Johnny?”
For a moment-a horrible moment-he had no idea what the cop wanted him to say. Then it came to him.
“Please.”
“Are you ready to be reasonable?”
“Y-Yes.”
“I wonder about that,” the cop said. He seemed to be speaking to himself. “I just wonder.”
Johnny stood looking at him, saying nothing. The anger was gone. Everything felt gone, replaced by a kind of deep numbness.
“That boy,” the cop said, looking up toward the second floor of theMunicipalBuilding , where there were a number of opaque windows with bars outside them. “That boy troubles my mind. I wonder if I shouldn’t talk to you about him. Perhaps you could counsel me.”
The cop folded his arms against his body, raised his hands, and began to tap his fingers lightly against his collarbones, much as he’d tapped them against the steering wheel earlier. He stared at Johnny as he did this.
“Or maybe I should just kill you, Johnny. Maybe it would be the best thing-once you’re dead they might award you that Nobel you’ve always lusted after. What do you think?”
The cop raised his head to the buzzard-lined roofline of theMunicipalBuilding and began to laugh. They cried harsh cawing sounds back down at him, and Johnny was not able to stifle the thought which came to him then. It was horrible because it was so convincing.
They are laughing with him. Because it’s not his joke; it’s their joke.
A gust of air snapped across the parking lot, making Johnny stagger on his feet, blowing the torn-off buzzard wing across the pavement like a featherduster. The light was fading out of the day-fading too fast. He looked to the west and saw that rising dust had blurred the mountains in that direction and might soon erase them completely. The sun was still above the dust, but wouldn’t be for long. It was a windstorm, and headed their way.
The five people in the holding cells-the Carvers, Mary Jackson, and old Mr. White Hair listened to the man screaming and to the sounds that accompanied the screams-harsh bird-cries and flapping wings. At last they stopped. David hoped no one else was dead down there, but when you got right to it, what were the chances?
“What did you say his name was?” Mary asked.
“Collie Entragian,” the old man said. He sounded as if listening to the screams had pretty much tired him out “Collie’s short for Collier. He come here from one of those mining towns inWyoming , oh, fifteen-sixteen years ago. Little more than a teenager then, he was. Wanted police work, couldn’t get it, went to work for the Diablo Company up to the pit instead. That was around the time Diablo was gettin ready to pack up and go home.
Collie was part of the close-down crew, as I remember.”
“He told Peter and me the mine was open,” Mary said.
The old man shook his head in what might have been weariness or exasperation. “There’s some thinks oldChina ain’t played out, but they’re wrong. It’s true they been bustling around up there again, but they won’t take doodley-squat out of it-just lose their investors’ money and then shut her down. Won’t be nobody any happier about it than Jim Reed, either. He’s tired of barroom fights. All of us’ll be glad when they leave oldChina alone again. It’s haunted, that’s what the ignorant folks round these parts think.” He paused. “I’m one of em”
“Who’s Jim Reed?” Ralph asked.
“Town Safety Officer. What you’d call Chief of Police in a bigger burg, but there’s only two hundred or so people in Desperation these days. Jim had two full-time deputies-Dave Pearson and Collie. Nobody expected Collie to stay around after Diablo folded, but he did. He wasn’t married, and he had workman’s comp. He floated along for awhile, odd-jobbin, and eventually Jim started to throw work his way. He was good enough so that the town officers took Jim’s recommendation and hired him on full-time in ‘91.”
“Three guys seems like a lot of law for a town this small,” Ralph said.
“I reckon. But we got some money from Washin’un, Rural Law Enforcement Act, plus we landed a contract with Sedalia County to keep school on the unincorporated lands round here-pop the speeders, jug the drunks, all such as that.”
More coyote wails from outside; they sounded shim-mery in the rising wind.
Mary asked, “What did he get workman’s comp for? Some kind of mental problem?”
“No’m. Pickup he was ridin in turned turtle on its way down into the pit yonder-theChina . Just before the Diablo people gave it up as a bad job, this was. Blew out his knee.
Boy was fit enough after, but he had a limp, no question about that.”
“Then it’s not him,” Mary said flatly.
The old man looked at her, shaggy eyebrows raised.
“The man who killed my husband does not limp.”
“No,” the old man agreed. He spoke with a weird kind of serenity. “No, he don’t. But it’s Collie, all right. I been seem him most every day for fifteen years, have bought him drinks in The Broken Drum and had him buy me a few in return over at Bud’s Suds. He was the one came to the clinic, took pictures, and dusted for prints the time those fellows broke in. Probably looking for drugs, they were, but I don’t know. They never caught em.”
“Are you a doctor, mister?” David asked.
“Vet,” the old man said. “Tom Billingsley is my name.” He held out a big, worn hand that shook a little.
David took it gingerly.
Downstairs, a door smashed open. “Here we are, Big John!” the cop said. His voice rolled jovially up the stairs. “Your room awaits! Room? Hell, a regular efficiency apartment! Up you go! We forgot the word processor, but we left you some great walls and a few little Hallmark sentiments like SUCK MY
COCK and I FUCKED YOUR SISTER to get you started!”
Tom Billingsley glanced toward the door which gave upon the stairs, then looked back at David. He spoke loud enough for the others to hear but it was David he looked at, David he seemed to want to tell. “Tell you something else,” he said. “He’s bigger.”