“Yep.” The British department head was gone; Tak returned to John Payne doing his Gary Cooper thing. “Best be crawling, pard.”
“Down the path to the fork.”
“Reckon so.”
Peter rose to his feet like an old clockwork toy with rust in its gears. His eyeballs jiggled in the silver dreamlight from the TV.
“Best be crawling. And when I get to the fork, I can sit down with my friend.”
“Yessir, that’s the deal.” Now it was the half-leering, half-laughing voice of Rory Calhoun. “He’s quite the boy, your friend. You could say he got this whole thing started. Lit the fuse, anyway. You git on, now, pard. Happy trails to you, until we meet again.”
Peter walked through the arch, not glancing with his one dying eye at Audrey, who was slumped over sideways in one of the living-room chairs with her eyes half-open. She appeared to be in a daze or perhaps even a state of coma. She was breathing slowly and regularly. Her legs, long and pretty (the first things about her to attract Herb back in the days when she had still been Audrey Garin), were stretched out before her, and Peter almost stumbled over them in his sleepwalk to the front door. When he opened the door and the red light of the declining day fell on his grin, it looked more like a scream than ever.
Halfway down the walk with that red light falling like strained blood through the rising pillar of smoke from the Hobart place, the Rory Calhoun voice filled his head, ripping at it like a razor blade: Close the door behind you, partner, was you born in a barn?
Peter made a drunken about-face, came back and did as he was told. The door was smooth and intact, the only one on the block not riddled with bullet-holes. He did another about-face (almost falling off the stoop in the process) and then set sail through the red light toward his own house, where he would walk up the driveway, past the breezeway, and into the backyard. From there he would climb over the low wire fence and enter the greenbelt. Find the path. Find the fork. Find his friend. Sit down with his friend.
He stepped over the sprawled body of his wife, then paused as a wild cry rose in the hot, smoky air: Wh-Wh-Whooo… As far gone as he was, that cry brought a scatter of gooseflesh to his arms. What was a coyote doing in Ohio? In a suburb of Colum-
Best be crawling, pard. Git along, little dogie.
Pain, even more excruciating than before. He moaned through the frozen curve of his grin. Fresh blood oozed from his ruptured eye and trickled down his cheek.
He started forward again, and when the cry returned-this time joined by a second, a third, and finally a fourth-he didn’t react. He thought only of the path, the fork, the friend. Tak made one final check of the man’s mind (it did not take long, as there was not much mind left in Peter to check) and then withdrew.
Now there was only it and the woman. It supposed it knew why it had let her live, like the bird that is reputed to live in the very jaws of the crocodile, the bird safe from the croc’s teeth because it cleans among them, but Tak would not save her much longer. In many ways the boy had been an inspired host-perhaps the only host in which it could have lived and grown so much-but there was this one ironic drawback: what Tak could conceive and desire, the boy’s body could not carry out. It could dress the woman and dye her hair, it could strip her naked, it could make her pinch her own nipples and do all sorts of other puerile things if it desired. It did not desire. What it desired was to couple with her, and that it could not do. Under certain circumstances it felt that it might have been able to manage some sort of joining in spite of its host’s immaturity… but Seth himself was still inside, and on the occasions it had really tried, Seth had prevented it. Tak could have challenged the boy and almost certainly prevailed, but it was perhaps wiser not to do so. It had not emerged from its black place under the Nevada dust, after all the millennia of imprisonment, to have sex with a woman who was much younger than Tak itself and much older than its host body.
And what had it come for?
Well… to have fun. And…
To watch television, a voice far back in its mind whispered. To watch television, to eat SpaghettiOs, and to make. To build.
“You want to try me, Sheriff?” Rory Calhoun asked, and Tak’s eyes drifted back to the TV.
Some of the others might be moving into the woods. It could have made sure of this one way or another if it had really desired, but it did not. Let them go into the woods if they wanted. They would not like what they found. And where could they go? Back, that was all. Back to the houses. In a very real sense, there was nowhere else. Meantime, it would save its energy.
Just relax and watch the movie. Soon enough it would be time to bring on the night.
Why don’t we just stand down, think things over?” John Payne asked, and Seth and Tak came together again, as the Westerns-this one in particular-had always brought them together. Tak bent forward, eyes never leaving the screen, and picked up a bowl filled with a congealed mixture of Franco-American spaghetti and hamburger. It began to eat, eyes glued to the TV screen, oblivious of the chunks of meat that tumbled down its naked chest from time to time, coming to rest in its lap. Soon the final shootout would begin yet again-KAPOW and KA-BAM all the way home-and Tak let itself float into the story and the silvery black-and-white images, drinking in the atmosphere of violence, as ripe and electric as an impending thunderstorm. As it watched, entranced, Seth Garin separated himself from Tak and moved away from it with the stealth of Jack creeping past the sleeping giant. He glanced at the TV and wasn’t surprised to find that, whatever Tak might believe, he no longer liked The Regulators very much. Then he turned away, found one of the secret passages he had made for himself during Tak’s reign, and disappeared quietly into it. Deeper into his own mind he went, the passage taking him ever downward. He walked at first, then began to jog. He didn’t understand much more of this world than he did the one outside, but now it was the only world he had.
From The Regulators, screenplay by Craig Goodis and Quentin Woolrich
EXT. MAIN STREET DAY
SHERIFF STREETER watches DEPUTY LAINE yank CANDY to his feet. Behind them, in the adobe which houses Lushan’s Chinese Laundry, a number of Chinese workers watch from the doorway, where they are huddled.
CANDY
What’re you chinkies lookin” at?!
They don’t recoil this time.
CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN You! Clothes needee washee now, sure, sure!
The other CHINESE laugh. Even STREETER smiles a little. CANDY looks dazed. Can’t believe STREETER has beaten him in a fair fight, can’t believe these “Chink-Chink-China Boys” are laughing at him, can’t believe any of this is happening.
STREETER
Best get on inside, boys.
The LAUNDRYMEN go back inside, but look out the windows.
STREETER (to LAINE) Make sure he gets his hat, Josh. Wouldn’t want him to have to go to jail without his hat.
Grinning, LAINE picks up CANDY’s pinned-back Johnny Reb cavalry hat, which fell off CANDY’s head when STREETER knocked him over the hitching rail. Now, grinning more broadly than ever, DEPUTY LAINE slams it down on the defeated thug’s head. There is a puff of dust.
LAINE Come on, Cap’n. I done saved you the nicest tent in the bivouac. Wait’11 you see it.
SCENE CONTINUES
He shoves the dazed and defeated CANDY toward the jail. SHERIFF STREETER is watching them go with a grin, and does not at first see the batwing doors of The Lady Day Saloon open as MAJOR MURDOCK pushes out on to the sidewalk. For once, MURDOCK’s trademark grin is gone.
MURDOCK You think puttin” Candy in jail’s gonna solve your problems, Sheriff?
STREETER turns toward him. MURDOCK pulls his mud-splattered cavalry duster back, freeing the butt of his army-issue Colt.
STREETER (smiles) Could be I just arrested my first ghost. Where are the rest of your regulators hold up? Desatoya Canyon? Skate Rock? You ready to tell me yet?
MURDOCK
You’re crazy as a snakebit varmit!
STREETER That so? Well, we’ll see. I’m guessing there won’t be any ghosts riding tonight without Captain Candell to hand out the sheets.
Still smiling, STREETER turns toward the jail again.
MURDOCK Suppose I told you the regulators were a lot closer than Desatoya Mountain or Skate Rock? Suppose I told you they were right outside of town, just waitin” for the first gunshot? How would you like that, you damn Yankee?