We “bid a fond adieu” to the China Pit and I drove them back to the office trailer where their car was. So far as I could see, no one took much notice of us, even though I drove right down Main Street. Desperation on a Sunday afternoon in the hot weather is like a ghost-town.
I remember standing there at the bottom of the trailer steps, waving as they drove off toward the awful thing Garin’s sister said was waiting for them at the end of their trip-a senseless driveby shooting. All of them waved back… except for Seth, that is. Whatever was in that mine, I think we were fortunate to get out… and for him to then be the only survivor of that shooting in San Jose! It’s almost as if he’s got what they call “a charmed life”, isn’t it?
As I said, I dreamed about it in Peru-mostly the skull-dream, and of shining my light into that crack-but I didn’t think of it much until I read Audrey Wyler’s letter, the one that was tacked on the bulletin board when I came back from Peru. Sally lost the envelope, but said it just came addressed to “The Mining Company of Desperation”. Reading it reinforced my belief that something happened out there when Seth was underbill (as we say in the business), something it might be wrong to lie about, but I did lie. How could I not, when I didn’t even know what that something was?
Still, that grin.
That grin.
He was a nice little boy, and I am so glad he wasn’t killed in the Rattlesnake (and he could have been; we all could have been) or with the rest of them in San Jose, but…
The grin didn’t seem to belong to the boy at all. I wish I could say better, but that’s as close as I can come.
I want to set down one more thing. You may remember me saying that Seth talked about “the old mine”, but that I didn’t connect that with the Rattlesnake shaft because hardly anyone in town knew about it, let alone through-travelers from Ohio. Well, I started thinking about what he’d said again while I was standing there, watching the dust from their car settle. That, and how he ran across the office trailer, right to the pictures of the China Pit on the bulletin board, like he’d been there a thousand times before. Like he knew. I had an idea then, and that cold feeling came with it. I went back inside to look at the pictures, knowing it was the only way I could lay that feeling to rest.
There were six in all, aerial photos the company had commissioned in the spring. I got the little magnifier off my key-chain and ran it over them, one after another. My gut was rolling, telling me what I was going to see even before I saw it. The aerials were taken long before the blast-pattern that uncovered the Rattlesnake shaft, so there was no sign of it in them. Except there was. Remember me writing that he tapped his way around the pictures, saying: “Here it is, here’s what I want to see, here’s the mine’? We thought he was talking about the pit-mine, because that’s what the pictures were of. But with my magnifying loupe I could see the prints his fingers had left on the shiny surface of the photos. Every one was on the south face, where we uncovered the shaft. That was what he was telling us he wanted to see, not the pit-mine but the shaft-mine the pictures didn’t even show. I know how crazy that must sound, but I have never doubted it. He knew it was there. To me, the marks of his finger on the photographs-not just one photo but all six-prove it. I know it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, but that doesn’t change what I know. It’s like something in that mine sensed him going past on the highway and called out to him. And of all my questions, there’s maybe only one that really matters: Is Seth Garin all right? I would write Garin’s sister and ask, have once or twice actually picked up a pen to do that, and then I remember that I lied, and a lie is hard for me to admit. Also, do I really want to prod a sleeping dog that might turn out to have big teeth? I don’t think so, but…
There should be more to say, maybe, but there isn’t. It all comes back to the grin.
I don’t like the way he grinned.
This is my true statement of what happened; God, if only I knew what it was I saw!
Chapter Eleven
1
Old Doc was the first one over the Carvers” back fence. He surprised them all (including himself) by going up easily, needing only a single boost in the butt from Johnny to get him started. He paused at the top for a second or two, setting his hands to his liking. To Brad Josephson he looked like a skinny monkey in the moonlight. He dropped. There was a soft grunt from the other side of the stakes.
“You all right, Doc?” Audrey asked.
“Yeah,” Billingsley said. “Right as rain. Aren’t I, Susi?”
“Sure,” Susi Geller agreed nervously. Then, through the fence: “Mrs Wyler, is that you? Where did you come from?”
“That doesn’t matter right now. We need to-”
“What happened out there? Is everyone all right? My mom is having a cow. A large one.”
Is everyone all right? That was a question Brad didn’t want to answer. No one else did either, from the look.
“Mrs Reed?” Johnny asked. “Dave next, then you?”
Cammie gave him her dry stare, then turned back to Dave. She murmured in his ear once more, stroking his hair as she did so. Dave listened with a troubled expression, then murmured back, just loud enough for Brad to hear, “I don’t want to.” She murmured again, more vehemently this time. Brad caught the words your brother near the end. This time Dave reached up, grabbed the top of the fence, and swung himself smoothly over to the other side. He did it, so far as Brad could see, with no expression save that look of faint unease on his face. Cammie went next, Audrey and Cynthia boosting. As she gained the top, Dave’s hands rose to meet her. Cammie slipped into them, making no effort to keep hold of the fence for safety’s sake. Brad had an idea that at this point she might have actually welcomed a fall. Maybe even a broken neck. Why did you send us out here, Ma? the kid had shouted, perhaps intuiting that his own eagerness to go-and Jim’s-would never serve as a mitigating circumstance in her mind. Cammie would always blame herself, and he would probably always be willing to let her.
“Brad?” That was a voice he was glad to hear, although he rarely heard it sound so soft and worried. “You there, hon?”
“I’m here, Bee.”
“You okay?”
“Fine. Listen, Bee, and don’t lose your cool. Jim Reed is dead. So’s Entragian from down the street.”
There was a gasp, and then Susi Geller was screaming Jim’s name over and over again. To Brad, who was emotionally as well as physically exhausted, those screams roused annoyance rather than pity… and the fear that they might draw something even less pleasant than the big cat or the coyote with the human fingers.
“Susi?” The alarmed voice of Kim Geller from the house. Then she was screaming, too, the sound seeming to cut the moonlit air like a sharp whirling blade: “Soooooo-zeeeeee! Sooooozeeeeee!”
“Shut up!” Johnny yelled. “Jesus, Kim, SHUT UP!”
For a wonder she did, but the girl went on and on, shrieking like a misbegotten fifth-act Juliet.
“Dear God,” Audrey muttered. She put her palms over her ears and ran her fingers into her hair.
“Bee,” Brad said through the fence, “shut that Chicken Little up. I don’t care how.”
“JIM!” Susi screamed. “OHHHH GAWWWD, JIM! OH GAWWWD NO! OH-”
There was a slap. The screams were cut off almost at once. Then:
“You can’t hit my daughter! You can’t hit my daughter, you bitch, I don’t care what ideas you’ve gotten from… from affirmative action! You fat black bitch!”
“Oh, fuck me til I cry,” Cynthia said. She clutched her own double-dyed hair and squeezed her eyes shut like a kid who doesn’t want to watch the final few minutes of a scary movie.
Brad kept his open and held his breath, waiting for Bee to go nuclear. Instead, Bee ignored the woman, calling softly through the fence: “Are you sending his body over, Bradley?” She sounded completely composed, for which Brad was completely thankful.
“Yeah. You and his mother and his brother catch hold of him when we do.”