Desperation Read online

  "Yes, yes, your God is strong," she said, "no argument there. But look what he's done to me. Is this strength worth admiring? Is this a God worth having?" She held her hands out to him, displaying her rotting palms.

  "God didn't do that," David said, and began to cry. "The policeman did it!"

  "But God let it happen," she countered, and one of her eyeballs dropped out of her head. "The same God who let Entragian push Kirsten downstairs and then hang her body on a hook for you to find. What God is this? Turn aside from him and embrace mine. Mine is at least honest about his cruelty."

  But this whole conversation--not just the petitioning but the haughty, threatening tone of it--was so foreign to David's memory of his mother that he began to walk forward again. Had to walk forward again. The mummy was behind him, and the mummy was slow, yes, but he reckoned that this was one of the ways in which the mummy caught up with his victims: by using his ancient Egyptian magic to put obstacles in their path.

  "Stay away from me!" the rotting mother-thing screamed. "Stay away or I'll turn you to stone in the mouth of a god! You'll be can tah in can tak!"

  "You can't do that," David said patiently, "and you're not my mother. My mother's with my sister, in heaven, with God."

  "What a joke!" the rotting thing cried indignantly. Its voice was gargly now, like the cop's voice. It was spitting blood and teeth as it talked. "Heaven's a joke, the kind of thing your Reverend Martin would spiel happily on about for hours, if you kept buying him shots and beers--it's no more real than Tom Billingsley's fishes and horses! You won't tell me you swallowed it, will you? A smart boy like you? Did you? Oh Davey! I don't know whether to laugh or cry!" What she did was smile furiously. "There's no heaven, no afterlife at all ... not for such as us. Only the gods--can taks, can tahs, can--"

  He suddenly realized what this confused sermon was about: holding him here. Holding him so the mummy could catch up and choke him to death. He stepped forward, seized the raving head, and squeezed it between his hands. He surprised himself by laughing as he did it, because it was so much like the stuff the crazy cable-TV preachers did; they grabbed their victims upside the head and bellowed stuff like "Sickness come OWHT! Tumors come OWWT! Rheumatiz come OWWWT! In the name of Jeeeesus!" There was another of those soundless flashes, and this time not even the body was left; he was alone on the path again.

  He walked on, sorrow working at his heart and mind, thinking of what the mother-thing had said. No heaven, no afterlife at all, not for such as us. That might be true or it might not be; he had no way of knowing. But the thing had also said that God had allowed his mother and sister to be killed, and that was true ... wasn't it?

  Well, maybe. How's a kid supposed to know about stuff like that?

  Ahead was the oak tree with the Viet Cong Lookout in it. At the base of the tree was a piece of red-and-silver paper--a 3 Muskies wrapper. David bent over, picked it up, and stuck it in his mouth, sucking the smears of sweet chocolate off the inside with his eyes closed. Take, eat, he heard Reverend Martin say--this was a memory and not a voice, which was something of a relief. This is my body, broken for you and for many. He opened his eyes, fearing he might nevertheless see Reverend Martin's drunken face and dead eyes, but Reverend Martin wasn't there.

  David spat the wrapper out and climbed to the Viet Cong Lookout with the sweet taste of chocolate in his mouth. He climbed into the sound of rock-and-roll music.

  Someone was sitting cross-legged on the platform and looking out at the Bear Street Woods. His posture was so similar to Brian's--legs crossed, chin propped on the palms of his hands--that for a moment David was sure it was his old friend, only grown to young adulthood. David thought he could handle that. It wouldn't be any stranger than the rotting effigy of his mother or the cougar with Audrey Wyler's head, and a hell of a lot less distressing.

  Slung over the young man's shoulder was a radio on a strap. Not a Walkman or a boombox; it looked older than either. There were two circular decals pasted to its leather case, one a yellow smile-guy, the other the peace sign. The music was coming from a small exterior speaker. The sound was tinny but still way cool, hot drums, killer rhythm guitar, and a somehow perfect rock-and-roll vocal: "I was feelin' . . . so bad . . . asked my family doctor just what I had . . ."

  "Bri?" he asked, grabbing the bottom of the platform and pulling himself up. "That you?"

  The man turned. He was slim, dark-haired under a Yankees baseball cap, wearing jeans, a plain gray tee-shirt, and big reflector shades--David could see his own face in them. He was the first person David had seen in this ... whatever-it-was ... that he didn't know. "Brian's not here, David," he said.

  "Who are you, then?" If the guy in the reflector sunglasses started to rot or to bleed out like Entragian, David was vacating this tree in a hurry, and never mind the mummy that might be lurking somewhere in the woods below. "This is our place. Mine and Bri's."

  "Brian can't be here," the dark-haired man said pleasantly. "Brian's alive, you see."

  "I don't get you." But he was afraid he did.

  "What did you tell Marinville when he tried to talk to the coyotes?"

  It took David a moment to remember, and that wasn't surprising, because what he'd said hadn't seemed to come from him but through him. "I said not to speak to them in the language of the dead. Except it wasn't really me who--"

  The man in the sunglasses waved this off. "The way Marinville tried to speak to the coyotes is sort of the way we're speaking now: si em, tow en can de lach. Do you understand?"

  "Yes. 'We speak the language of the unformed.' The language of the dead." David began to shiver. "I'm dead, too, then ... aren't I? I'm dead, too."

  "Nope. Wrong. Lose one turn." The man turned up the volume on his radio--"I said doctor... Mr. M.D.... "--and smiled. "The Rascals," he said. "Felix Cavaliere on vocals. Cool?"

  "Yes," David said, and meant it. He felt he could listen to the song all day. It made him think of the beach, and cute girls in two-piece bathing suits.

  The man in the Yankees cap listened a moment longer, then turned the radio off. When he did, David saw a ragged scar on the underside of his right wrist, as if at some point he had tried to kill himself. Then it occurred to him that the man might have done a lot more than just try; wasn't this a place of the dead?

  He suppressed a shiver.

  The man took off his Yankees cap, wiped the back of his neck with it, put it back on, and looked at David seriously. "This is the Land of the Dead, but you're an exception. You're special. Very."

  "Who are you?"

  "It doesn't matter. Just another member of the Young Rascals-Felix Cavaliere Fan Club, if it comes to that," the man said. He looked around, sighed, grimaced a little. "But I'll tell you one thing, young man: it doesn't surprise me at all that the Land of the Dead should turn out to be located in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio." He looked back at David, his faint smile fading. "I guess it's time we got down to business. Time is short. You're going to have a bit of a sore throat when you wake up, by the way, and you may feel disoriented at first; they're moving you to the back of the truck Steve Ames drove into town. They feel a strong urge to vacate The American West--take it any way you want--and I can't say I blame them."

  "Why are you here?"

  "To make sure you know why you're here, David... to begin with, at least. So tell me: why are you here?"

  "I don't know what you're--"

  "Oh please," the man with the radio said. His mirror shades flashed in the sun. "If you don't, you're in deep shit. Why are you on earth? Why did God make you?"

  David looked at him in consternation.

  "Come on, come on!" the man said impatiently. "These are easy questions. Why did God make you? Why did God make me? Why did God make anyone?"

  "To love and serve him," David said slowly.

  "Okay, good. It's a start, anyway. And what is God? What's your experience of the nature of God?"

  "I don't want to say." David looked down at his hands, then
up at the grave, intent man--the strangely familiar man--in the sunglasses. "I'm scared I'll get in dutch." He hesitated, then dragged out what he was really afraid of: "I'm scared you're God."

  The man uttered a short, rueful laugh. "In a way; that's pretty funny, but never mind. Let's stay focused here. What do you know of the nature of God, David? What is your experience?"

  With the greatest reluctance, David said: "God is cruel."

  He looked down at his hands again and counted slowly to five. When he had reached it and still hadn't been fried by a lightning-bolt, he looked up again. The man in the jeans and tee-shirt was still grave and intent, but David saw no anger in him.

  "That's right, God is cruel. We slow down, the mummy always catches us in the end, and God is cruel. Why is God cruel, David?"

  For a moment he didn't answer, and then something Reverend Martin had said came to him--the TV in the comer had been broadcasting a soundless spring-training baseball game that day.

  "God's cruelty is refining," he said.

  "We're the mine and God is the miner?"

  "Well--"

  "And all cruelty is good? God is good and cruelty is good?"

  "No, hardly any of it's good!" David said. For a single horrified second he saw Pie, dangling from the hook on the wall, Pie who walked around ants on the sidewalk because she didn't want to hurt them.

  "What is cruelty done for evil?"

  "Malice. Who are you, sir?"

  "Never mind. Who is the father of malice?"

  "The devil ... or maybe those other gods my mother talked about."

  "Never mind can tah and can tak, at least for now. We have bigger fish to fry, so pay attention. What is faith?"

  That one was easy. "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

  "Yeah. And what is the spiritual state of the faithful?"

  "Um ... love and acceptance. I think."

  "And what is the opposite of faith?"

  That was tougher--a real hairball, in fact. Like one of those damned reading-achievement tests. Pick a, b, c, or d. Except here you didn't even get the choices. "Disbelief?" he ventured.

  "No. Not disbelief but unbelief. The first is natural, the second willful. And when one is in unbelief, David, what is that one's spiritual state?"

  He thought about it, then shook his head. "I don't know."

  "Yes you do."

  He thought about it and realized he did. "The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation."

  "Yes. Look down, David!"

  He did, and was shocked to see that the Viet Cong Lookout was no longer in the tree. It now floated, like a magic carpet made out of boards, above a vast, blighted countryside. He could see buildings here and there amid rows of gray and listless plants. One was a trailer with a bumper-sticker proclaiming the owner a Snapple-drinkin', Clinton-bashin' son of a bitch; another was the mining Quonset they'd seen on the way into town; another was the Municipal Building; another was Bud's Suds. The grinning leprechaun with the pot of gold under his arm peered out of a dead and strangulated jungle.

  "This is the poisoned field," the man in the reflector sunglasses said. "What's gone on here makes Agent Orange look like sugar candy. There will be no sweetening this earth. It must be eradicated--sown with salt and plowed under. Do you know why?"

  "Because it will spread?"

  "No. It can't. Evil is both fragile and stupid, dying soon after the ecosystem it's poisoned."

  "Then why--"

  "Because it's an affront to God. There is no other reason. Nothing hidden or held back, no fine print. The poisoned field is a perversity and an affront to God. Now look down again."

  He did. The buildings had slipped behind them. Now the Viet Cong Lookout floated above a vast pit. From this perspective, it looked like a sore which has rotted through the skin of the earth and into its underlying flesh. The sides sloped inward and downward in neat zigzags like stairs; in a way, looking into this place was like looking into (walk a little faster)

  a pyramid turned inside out. There were pines in the hills south of the pit, and some growth high up around the edges, but the pit itself was sterile--not even juniper grew here. On the near side--it would be the north face, David supposed, if the poisoned field was the town of Desperation--these neat setbacks had broken through near the bottom. Where they had been there was now a long slope of stony rubble. At the site of the landslide, and not too far from the broad gravel road leading down from the rim of the pit, there was a black and gaping hole. The sight of it made David profoundly uneasy. It was as if a monster buried in the desert ground had opened one eye. The landslide surrounding it made him uneasy, too. Because it looked somehow ... well... planned.

  At the bottom of the pit, just below the ragged hole, was a parking area filled with ore-freighters, diggers, pickup trucks, and tread-equipped vehicles that looked sort of like World War II tanks. Nearby stood a rusty Quonset hut with a stove-stack sticking crooked out of the roof. WELCOME TO RATTLESNAKE #2, read the sign on the door. PROVIDING JOBS AND TAX-DOLLARS TO CENTRAL NEVADA SINCE 1951. Off to the left of the metal building was a squat concrete cube. The sign on this one was briefer: POWDER MAGAZINE

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  Parked between the two buildings was Collie Entragian's road-dusty Caprice. The driver's door stood open and the domelight was on, illuminating an interior that looked like an abattoir. On the dash, a plastic bear with a noddy head had been stuck beside the compass.

  Then all that was sliding behind them.

  "You know this place, don't you, David?"

  "Is it the China Pit? It is, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  They swooped closer to the side, and David saw that the pit was, in its way, even more desolate than the poisoned field. There were no whole stones or outcrops in the earth, at least not that he could see; everything had been reduced to an awful yellow rubble. Beyond the parking area and the buildings were vast heaps of even more radically crumbled rock, piled on black plastic.

  "Those are waste dumps," his guide remarked. "The stuff piled on the plastic is gangue--spoil. But the company's not ready to let it rest, even now. There's more in it, you see ... gold, silver, molybdenum, platinum. And copper, of course. Mostly it's copper. Deposits so diffuse it's as if they were blown in there like smoke. Mining it used to be uneconomic, but as the world's major deposits of ore and metal are depleted, what used to be uneconomic becomes profitable. The oversized Hefty bags are collection pads--the stuff they want precipitates out onto them, and they just scrape it off. It's a leaching process--spell it either way and it comes to the same. They'll go on working the ground until all of this, which used to be a mountain almost eight thousand feet high, is just dust in the wind."

  "What are those big steps coming down the side of the pit?"

  "Benches. They serve as ringroads for heavy equipment around the pit, but their major purpose is to minimize earthslides."

  "It doesn't look like it worked very well back there." David hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Up here, either." They were nearing another area where the look of vast stairs descending into the earth was obliterated by a tilted range of crumbled rock.

  "That's a slope failure." The Viet Cong Lookout swooped above the slide area. Beyond it, David saw networks of black stuff that at first looked like cobwebs. As they drew nearer, he saw that the strands of what looked like cobwebbing were actually PVC pipe.

  "Just lately it's been a switchover from rainbirds to emitters." His guide spoke in the tone of one who recites rather than speaks. David had a moment of deja vu, then realized why: the man was repeating what Audrey Wyler had already said. "A few eagles died."

  "A few?" David asked, giving Mr. Billingsley's line.

  "All right, about forty, in all. No big deal in terms of the species; there's no shortage of eagles in Nevada. Do you see what they replaced the rainbirds with, David? The big pipes are distribution heads--can taks, let's say."

  "Big gods."
r />   "Yes! And those little hollow cords that stretch between them like mesh, those are emitters. Can tahs. They drip weak sulfuric acid. It frees the ore ... and rots the ground. Hang on, David."

  The Viet Cong Lookout banked--also like a flying carpet--with David holding onto the edge of the boards to keep from tumbling off. He didn't want to fall onto that terrible gouged ground where nothing grew and streams of brackish fluid flowed down to the plastic collection pads.

  They sank into the pit again and passed above the rusty Quonset with the stove-stack, the powder magazine, and the cluster of machinery where the road ended. Up the slope, above the gaping hole, was a wide area pocked with other, much smaller holes. David thought there had to be fifty of them at least, probably more. From each poked a yellow-tipped stick.

  "Looks like the world's biggest gopher colony."

  "This is a blast-face, and those are blast-holes," his new acquaintance lectured. "The active mining is going on right here. Each of those holes is three feet in diameter and about thirty feet deep. When you're getting ready to shoot, you lower a stick of dynamite with a blasting cap on it to the bottom of each hole. That's the igniter. Then you pour in a couple of wheelbarrows' worth of ANFO--stands for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. Those assholes who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City used ANFO. It usually comes in pellets that look like white BBs."

  The man in the Yankees cap pointed to the powder magazine.

  "Lots of ANFO in there. No dynamite--they used up the last on the day all this started to happen--but plenty of ANFO."

  "I don't understand why you're telling me this."

  "Never mind, just listen. Do you see the blast-holes?"

  "Yes. They look like eyes."

  "That's right, holes like eyes. They're sunk into the porphyry, which is crystalline. When the ANFO is detonated, it shatters the rock. The shattered stuff contains the ore. Get it?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "That material is trucked away to the leach pads, the distribution heads and emitters--can tah, can tak--are laid over it, and the rotting process begins. Voila, there you have it, leach-ore mining at its very finest. But see what the last blast-pattern uncovered, David!"