he grunted. “How’d that feel, honey?”
“Hurry up!” Mary screamed. “Hurry up, David!”
Johnny glanced over at the kid’s cell. What he saw made his muscles relax with fear when the coyote yanked on the jacket this time, the animal came very close to pulling it free.
“Hurry up!” the woman screamed again, but Johnny saw that the kid couldn’t hurry up.
Soaped up, naked as a peeled shrimp, he had gotten as far as his chin, and there he was stuck, with the whole length of his body out in the holding area and his head back inside the cell. Johnny had one overwhelming impression, mostly called to mind by the twist of the neck and the stressed line of the jaw.
The kid was hung.
He did okay until he got to his head, and there he stuck fast with his cheek on the boards and the shelf of his jaw pressed against one soapy bar and the back of his head against the other. A panic driven by claustrophobia- the smell of the wood floor, the iron touch of the bars, a nightmare memory of a picture he’d once seen of a Puritan in stocks-dimmed his vision like a dark curtain. He could hear his dad shouting, the woman screaming, and the coyote snarling, but those sounds were all far away. His head was stuck, he’d have to go back, only he wasn’t sure he could go back because now his arms were out and one was pinned under him and- God help me, he thought. It didn’t seem like a prayer; it was maybe too scared and up against it to be a prayer. Please help me, don’t let me be stuck, please help me.
Turn your head, the voice he sometimes heard now told him. As always, it spoke in an almost disinterested way, as if the things it was saying should have been self- evident, and as always David recognized it by the way it seemed to pass through him rather than to come from him.
An image came to him then: hands pressing the front and back of a book, squeezing the pages together a little in spite of the boards and the binding. Could his head do that?
David thought-or perhaps only hoped-that it could. But he would have to be in the right position.
Turn your head, the voice had said.
From somewhere behind him came a thick ripping sound, then Marinville’s voice, somehow amused, scared, and outraged all at the same time: “Do you know how much that thing cost?”
David twisted around so he lay on his back instead of his side. Just having the pressure of the bar off his jaw was an incredible relief. Then he reached up and placed his palms against the bars.
Is this right?
No answer. So often there was no answer. Why was that?
Because God is cruel, the Reverend Martin who kept school inside his head replied. God is cruel. I have pop-corn, David, why don ‘t I make some? Maybe we can find one of those old horror movies on TV,
something Universal, maybe even The Mummy.
He pushed with his hands. At first nothing happened, but then, slowly, slowly, his soapy head began sliding between the bars. There was one terrible moment when he stopped with his ears crushed against the sides of his head and the pressure beating on his temples, a sick throb that was maybe the worst physical hurt he had ever known. In that moment he was sure he was going to stick right where he was and die in agony, like a heretic caught in some Inquisitorial torture device.
He shoved harder with his palms, eyes looking up at the dusty ceiling with agonized concentration, and gave a small, relieved moan as he began to move again almost at once.
With the narrowest aspect of his skull presented to the bars, he was able to deliver himself into the holding area without too much more trouble. One of his ears was trickling blood, but he was out. He had made it. Naked, covered with foamy greenish curds of Irish Spring soap, David sat up. A monstrous bolt of pain shot through his head from back to. front, and for a moment he felt his eyes were literally bugging out, like those of a cartoon Romeo who has just spotted a dishy blonde.
The coyote was the least of his problems, at least for the time being. God had shut its mouth with a motorcycle jacket. Stuff from the pockets was scattered everywhere, and the jacket itself was torn straight down the middle. A limp rag of saliva-coated black leather hung from the side of the coyote’s muzzle like a well-chewed cheroot.
“Get out, David!” his father cried. His voice was hoarse with tears and anxiety. “Get out while you still can!”
The gray-haired man, Marinville, flicked his eyes up to David momentarily. “He’s right, kid. Get lost.”
He looked back down at the snarling coyote. “Come on, Rover, you can do better than that! By Jesus, I’d like to be around when you start shitting zippers by the light of the moon!” He yanked the jacket hard. The coyote came skidding along the floor, head down, neck stretched, forelegs stiff, shaking its narrow head from side to side as it tried to pull the jacket away from Marinville.
David turned on his knees and pulled his clothes out through the bars. He squeezed his pants, feeling for the tube of the shotgun shell in the pocket. The shotgun shell was there. He got to his feet, and for a few seconds the world turned into a merry-go-round. He had to reach out for the bars of his erstwhile cell to keep from falling over. Billingsley put a hand over his. It was surprisingly warm. “Go, son,” he said.
“Time’s almost up.”
David turned and tottered toward the door. His head was still throbbing, and his balance was badly off; the door seemed to be on a rocker or a spindle or something.
He staggered, regained his footing, and opened the door. He turned to look at his father.
“I’ll be back.”
“Don’t you dare,” his father said at once. “Find a phone and call the cops, David. The State cops. And be careful. Don’t let-”
There was a harsh ripping sound as Johnny’s expensive leather jacket finally tore in two.
The coyote, not expecting such a sudden victory, went flying backward, rolled over on its side, and saw the naked boy in the doorway. It scrambled to its feet and flew at him with a snarl. Mary screamed.
“Go, kid, GET OUT!” Johnny yelled.
David ducked out and yanked the door shut behind him. A split second later, the coyote hit it with a thud. A howl-terrible because it was so close-rose from the holding area. It was as if it knew it had been fooled, David thought; as if it also knew that, when the man who had summoned it here returned, he would not be pleased.
There was another thud as the coyote threw itself at the door again, a pause, then a third.
The animal howled again. Gooseflesh rose on David’s soapy arms and chest. Just ahead of him were the stairs down which his kid sister had tumbled to her death; if the crazy cop hadn’t moved her, she would still be at the bottom, waiting for him in the gloom, eyes open and accusing, asking him why he hadn’t stopped Mr. Big Boogeyman, what good was a big brother if he couldn’t stop the boogeyman?
I can‘t go down there, he thought. I can’t, I absolutely can’t.
No., . but all the same, he had to.
Outside, the wind gusted hard enough to make the brick building creak like a ship in a working sea.
David could hear dust, too, hitting the side of the building and the street doors down there like fine snow.
The coyote howled again, separated from him only by an inch or so of wood.., and knowing it.
David closed his eyes and pressed his fingers together in front of his mouth and chin.
“God, this is David Carver again. I’m in such a mess, God, such a mess. Please protect me and help me do what I have to do. Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”
He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and groped for the stair railing. Then, naked, holding his clothes against his chest with his free hand, David Carver started down into the shadows.
Steve tried to speak and couldn’t. Tried again and still couldn’t, although this time he did manage a single dry squeak. You sound like a mouse farting behind a baseboard, he thought.
He was aware that Cynthia was squeezing his hand in a grip powerful enough to be painful, but the pain didn’t seem to matter. He didn’t know how long they would have stood there in the doorway of the big room at the end of the Quonset hut if the wind hadn’t blown something over outside and sent it clattering down the Street. Cynthia gasped like someone who has been punched and put the hand not holding Steve’s up to one side of her face. She turned to look at him that way, so he could see only one wide, horrified eye. Tears were trickling down from it.