Desperation, p.4
Desperation, page 4
“Shut your quacking Jew mouth,” the cop replied. He didn’t raise his head, and he went on tapping at the wheel with the tips of his sausage-sized fingers.
“We’re not Jews,” Peter heard himself saying. His voice sounded not afraid but querulous, angry. “We’re, well, Presbyterians, I guess. What’s this Jew thing.”
Mary looked at her husband, horrified, then back through the mesh to see how the cop was taking it. At first he did nothing, only sat with his head down and his fin gem tapping. Then he grabbed his hat and got out of the car. Peter bent down a little so he could watch the cop settle the hat on his head. The cop’s shadow was still squat, but it was no longer puddled around his feet. Peter glanced at his watch and saw it was a few minutes shy of two-thirty. Less than an hour ago, the biggest question he and his wife had had was what their accommodations for the night would be like. His only worry had been hls strong suspicion that he was out of Rolaids.
The cop bent and opened the left rear door. “Please get out of the vehicle, folks,” he said.
They slid out, Peter first. They stood in the hot light looking uncertainly up at the man in the khaki uniform and the Sam Browne belt and the peaked trooper style hat.
“We’re going to walk around to the front of the Munici pal Building,” the cop said.
“That’ll be a left as you reach the sidewalk. And you look like Jews to me. The both of you. You have those big noses which connote the Jewish aspect.”
“Officer—” Mary began.
“No,” he said. “Walk. Make your left. Don’t try my patience.”
They walked. Their footfalls on the fresh black tar seemed very loud. Peter kept thinking of the little plastic bear on the dashboard of the cruiser. Its jiggling head and painted eyes. Who had given it to the cop. A favorite niece. A daughter. Officer Friendly wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Peter had noticed that while watching the man’s fingers tap against the steering wheel, but that didn’t mean he had never been married. And the idea that a woman married to this man might at some point seek a divorce did not strike Peter as in the least bit odd.
From somewhere above him came a monotonous reek—reek-reek sound. He looked down the street and saw a weathervane turning rapidly on the roof of the bar, Bud’s Suds. It was a leprechaun with a pot of gold under one arm and a knowing grin on his spinning face. It was the weathervane making the sound.
“To your left, Dumbo,” the cop said, sounding not impatient but resigned. “Do you know which way is your left. Don’t they teach hayfoot and strawfoot to you New York Homo Presbyterians.”
Peter turned left. He and Mary were still walking hip to hip, still holding hands. They came to a set of three stone steps leading up to modern tinted-glass double doors. The building itself was much less modern. A white-painted sign hung on faded brick proclaimed it to be the DESPERA-TION MUNICIPAL BUILDING. Below, on the doors, were listed the offices and services to be found within: Mayor, School Committee, Fire, Police, Sanitation, Welfare Services, Department of Mines and Assay. At the bottom of the righthand door was printed: MSHA FRIDAYS AT 1 PM AND BY APPOINTMENT.
The cop stopped at the foot of the steps and looked at the Jacksons curiously. Although it was brutally hot out here, probably somewhere in the upper nineties, he did not appear to be sweating at all. From behind them, monotonous in the silence, came the reek-reek—reek of the weathervane.
“You’re Peter,” he said.
“Yes, Peter Jackson.” He wet his lips.
The cop shifted his eyes. “And you’re Mary.”
“That’s right.”
“So where’s Paul.” the cop asked, looking at them pleasantly while the rusty leprechaun squeaked and spun on the roof of the bar behind them.
“What.” Peter asked. “I don’t understand.”
“How can you sing ‘Five Hundred Miles’ or ‘Leavin on a Jet Plane’ without Paul.” the cop asked, and opened the righthand door. Machine-cooled air puffed out. Peter felt it on his face and had time to register how nice it was nice and cool; then Mary screamed. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom inside the building faster than his own, but he saw it a moment later. There was a girl of about SiX sprawled at the foot of the stairs, half—propped against the last four risers. One hand was thrown back over her head It lay palm—up on the stairs. Her straw-colored hair had been tied in a couple of tails. Her eyes were wide open and her head was unnaturally cocked to one side. There was no question in Peter’s mind about whom the dolly lying at the foot of the RV’s steps had belonged to.
FOUR HAPPY WANDERERS, it had said on the front of the RV, but that was clearly out of date in these modern times. There was no question in his mind about that, either.
“Gosh!” the cop said genially. “Forgot all about her1 But you can never remember everything, can you. No matter how hard you try!”
Mary screamed again, her fingers folded down against her palms and her hands against her mouth, and tried to bolt back down the steps.
“No you don’t, what a bad idea,” the cop said. He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her through the door, which he was holding open. She reeled across the small lobby, revolving her arms in a frantic effort to keep her balance, not wanting to fall on top of the dead child in the jeans and the MotoKops 2200 shirt.
Peter started in toward his wife and the cop caught him with both hands, now using his butt to keep the righthand door open. He slung an arm around Peter’s shoulders. His face looked open and friendly. Most of all, best of all, it looked sane—as if his good angels had won out, at least for now. Peter felt an instant’s hope, and at first did not associate the thing pressing into his stomach with the cop’s monster handgun. He thought of his father, who would sometimes poke him with the tip of his finger while giving him advice—using the finger to sort of tamp his aphorisms home—things like No one ever gets preg-nant if one of you keeps your pants on, Petie.
He didn’t realize it was the gun, not the cop’s oversized sausage of a finger, until Mary shrieked: “No! Oh, no!’ “Don’t—” Peter began.
“I don’t care if you’re a Jew or a Hindu,” the cop said, hugging Peter against him. He squeezed Peter’s shoulder chummily with his left hand as he cocked the.45 with his right. “In Desperation we don’t care about those things much.”
He pulled the trigger at least three times. There might have been more, but three reports were all Peter Jackson heard. They were muffled by his stomach, but still very loud. An incredible heat shot up through his chest and down through his legs at the same time, and he heard something wet drop on his shoes. He heard Mary, still screaming, but the sound seemed to come from far, far away.
Now I’ll wake up in my bed, Peter thought as his knees buckled and the world began to draw away, as bright as afternoon sunlight on the chrome side of a receding rail-road car.
Now I’ll—That was all. His last thought as the darkness swal-lowed him forever really wasn’t a thought at all, but an image: the bear on the dashboard next to the cop’s compass. Head jiggling. Painted eyes staring. The eyes turned into holes, the dark rushed out of them, and then he was gone.
Ralph Carver was somewhere deep in the black and didn’t want to come up. He sensed physical pain waiting—a hangover, perhaps, and a really spectacular one if he could feel his head aching even in his sleep—but not just that. Something else. Something to do with (Kirsten) this morning. Something to do with (Kirsten) their vacation. He had gotten drunk, he supposed pulled a real horror show, Ellie was undoubtedly pissed at him, but even that didn’t seem enough to account for how horrible he felt…
Screaming. Someone was screaming. But distant.
Ralph tried to burrow even deeper into the black, but now hands seized his shoulder and began shaking him Every shake sent a monstrous bolt of pain through his poor hungover head.
“Ralph! Ralph, wake up! You have to wake up!”
Ellie shaking him. Was he late for work. How could he be late for work. They were on vacation.
Then, shockingly loud, penetrating the blackness like the beam of a powerful light, gunshots. Three of them then a pause, then a fourth.
His eyes flew open and he bolted into a sitting position no idea for a moment where he was or what was hap-pening, only knowing that his head hurt horribly and felt the size of a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Something sticky that fell like jam or maple syrup all down the side of his face. Ellen looking at him, one eye wide and frantic, the other nearly lost in a puffy com-plication of blue-black flesh.
Screaming. Somewhere. A woman. From below them. Maybe—He tried to get on his feet but his knees wouldn’t lock.
He fell forward off the bed he was sitting on (except it wasn’t a bed, it was a cot) and landed on his hands and knees. A fresh bolt of pain passed through his head, and for a moment he thought his skull would split open like an eggshell. Then he was looking down at his hands through clotted clumps of hair. Both hands were streaked with blood, the left considerably redder than the right. As he looked at them, sudden memory (Kirsten oh Jesus Ellie catch her)
burst in his head like a poison firework and he screamed himself, screamed down at his bloodstained hands, screamed as what he had been trying to burrow away from dropped into his mind like a stone into a pond. Kirsten had fallen down the stairs—No. Pushed.
The crazy bastard who had brought them here had pushed his seven-year-old daughter down the stairs. Ellie had reached for her and the crazy bastard had punched his wife in the eye and knocked her down. But Ellie had fallen on the stairs and Kirsten had plunged down them, her eyes wide open, full of shocked surprise, Ralph didn’t think she’d known what was happening, and if he could hold onto anything he would hold onto that, that it had all happened too fast for her to have any real idea, and then she had hit, she had cartwheeled, feet flying first upward and then backward, and there had been this sound, this awful sound like a branch breaking under a weight of ice, and suddenly everything about her had changed, he had seen the change even before she came to a stop at the foot of the stairs, as if that were no little girl down there but a stuffed dummy, headpiece full of straw.
Don’t think it, don ‘t think it, don’t you dare think it. Except he had to. The way she had landed… the way she had lain at the foot of the stairs with her head on one side…
Fresh blood was pattering down on his left hand, he saw. Apparently something was wrong with that side of his head. What had happened. Had the cop hit him, too, maybe with the butt of the monster sidearm he had been wearing. Maybe, but that part was mostly gone. He could remember the gruesome somersault she had done, and the way she had slid down the rest of the stairs, and how she had come to rest with her head cocked that way, and that was all. Christ, wasn’t it enough.
“Ralph.” Ellie was tugging at him and panting harshly “Ralph, get up! Please get up!”
“Dad! Daddy, come on!” That was David, from farther away. “He okay, Mom. He’s bleeding again, isn’t he.’ “No… no, he—”
“Yes he is, I can see it from here. Daddy, are you okay.”
“Yes,” he said. He got one foot planted beneath him groped for the bunk, and tottered upright. His left eye was bleary with blood. The lid felt as if it had been dipped in plaster of Paris. He wiped it with the heel of his hand wincing as fresh pain stung him—the area above his left eye felt like freshly tenderized meat. He tried to turn around, toward the sound of his son’s voice, and stag gered. It was like being on a boat. His balance was shot, and even when he stopped turning it felt to something in his head like he was still doing it, reeling and rocking going round and round. Ellie grabbed him, supported him, helped him forward.
“She’s dead, isn’t she.” Ralph asked. His choked voice came out of a throat plated with dead blood. He couldn believe what he heard that voice saying, but he supposed that in time he would. That was the worst of it. In time he would. “Kirsten’s dead.”
“I think so, yes.” Ellie staggered this time. “Grab the bars, Ralph, can you. You’re going to knock me over.”
They were in a jail cell. In front of him, just out of reach, was the barred door. The bars were painted white and in some places the paint had dried and hardened in thick runnels.
Ralph lunged forward a step and grabbed them. He was looking out at a desk, sitting in the middle of a square of floor like the single bit of stage dressing in a minimalist play.
There were papers on it, and a double barrelled shotgun, and a strew of fat green shotgun shells The old-fashioned wooden desk chair in the kneehole was on casters, and there was a faded blue pillow on the seat. Overhead was a light fixture encased in a mesh bowl. The dead flies inside the fixture made huge, gro-tesque shadows.
There were jail cells on three sides of this room. The one in the middle, probably the drunk-tank, was large and empty. Ralph and Ellie Carver were in a smaller one. A second small cell to their right was empty. Across from them were two other closet-sized cells.
In one of them was their eleven-year-old son, David, and a man with white hair. Ralph could see nothing else of this man, because he was sitting on the bunk with his head lowered onto his hands. When the woman screamed from below them again, David turned in that direction, where an open door gave on a flight of stairs (Kirsten, Kirsten falling, the snapping sound of her neck breaking) going down to street level, but the white-haired man did not shift his position in the slightest.
Ellie came to stand beside him and slipped an arm around his waist. Ralph risked letting go of the bars with one of his hands so he could take one of hers.
Now there were thuds on the stairs, coming closer, and scuffling sounds. Someone was being brought up to join them, but she wasn’t coming easily.
“We have to help him!” she was screaming. “We have to help Peter! We—”
Her words broke off as she was thrown into the room. She crossed it with weird, balletic grace, stuttering on her toes, white sneakers like ballet slippers, hands held out, hair streaming behind her, jeans, a faded blue shirt. She collided with the desk, upper thighs smacking the edge hard enough to move it backward toward the chair, and then, from the other side of the room, David was shriek-ing at her like a bird, standing at the bars, jumping up and down on the balls of his feet, shrieking in a savage, panicky voice Ralph had never heard before, never even suspected.
“The shotgun, lady!” David screamed. “Get the shot-gun, shoot him, shoot him, lady, shoot him!”
The white-haired man finally looked up. His face was old and dark with desert tan; the deep bags beneath his watery ginhead eyes gave him a bloodhound look.
“Get it!” the old man rasped. “For Christ’s sake, woman!”
The woman in the jeans and the workshirt looked toward the sound of the boy’s voice, then back over her shoulder toward the stairs and the clump of heavy approaching footfalls.
“Do it!” Ellie chimed in from beside Ralph. “He killed our daughter, he’ll kill all of us, do it!”
The woman in the jeans and workshirt grabbed for the gun.
UntiL Nevada, things had been fine.
They had started out as four happy wanderers from Ohio, destination Lake Tahoe. There Ellie Carver and the kids would swim and hike and sightsee for ten days and Ralph Carver would gamble—slowly, pleasurably, and with tremendous concentration. This would be their fourth visit to Nevada, their second to Tahoe, and Ralph would continue to follow his ironclad gambling rule: he would quit when he had either (a) lost a thousand dollars, or (b) won ten thousand. In their three previous trips, he had reached neither of these markers. Once he had gone back to Columbus with five hundred dollars of his stake intact, once with two hundred, and last year he had driven them back with over three thousand dollars in the inner lefthand pocket of his lucky safari jacket. On that trip they had stayed at Hiltons and Sheratons instead of in the RV at camping areas, and the elder Carvers had gotten themselves laid every damned night. Ralph considered that pretty phenomenal for people pushing forty.
“You’re probably tired of casinos,” he’d said in February, when they started talking about this vacation. “Maybe California this time. Mexico.”
“Sure, we can all get dysentery,” Ellie had replied. “Look at the Pacific between sprints to the casa de poo-p00, or whatever they call it down there.”
“What about Texas. We could take the kids to see the Alamo.”
“Too hot, too historic. Tahoe will be cool, even in July.
The kids love it. I do, too. And as long as you don’t come asking for any of my money when yours is gone—”
“You know I’d never do that,” he had said, sounding shocked. Feeling a little shocked, actually. The two of them sitting in the kitchen of their suburban home in Wentworth, not far from Columbus, sitting next to the bronze Frigidaire with the magnetic stick-on daisies scat-tered across it, travel-folders on the counter in front of them, neither aware that the gambling had already started and the first loss would be their daughter. “You know what I told you—”
“‘Once the addict-behavior starts, the gambling stops,’” she had repeated. “I know, I remember, I believe. You like Tahoe, I like Tahoe, the kids like Tahoe, Tahoe is fine.”
So he had made the reservations, and today—if it still was today—they had been on U.s.
50, the so-called loneliest highway in America, headed west across Nevada toward the High Sierra. Kirsten had been playing with Melissa Sweetheart, her favorite doll, Ellie had been nap-ping, and David had been sitting beside Ralph, looking out the window with his chin propped on his hand. Earlier he had been reading the Bible his new pal the Rev had given him (Ralph hoped to God that Martin wasn’t queer—the man was married, which was good, but still, you could never damn tell), but now he’d marked his place and tucked the Bible away in the console storage bin. Ralph thought again of asking the kid what he was thinking about, what all the Bible stuff was about, but you might as well ask a post what it was thinking. David (he could abide Davey but hated to be called Dave) was a strange kid that way, not like either parent. Not much like his sister, either, for that matter. This sudden interest in religion—what Ellen called “David’s God-trip”—was only one of his oddities. It would probably pass, and in the meantime, David did not quote verses at him on the subject of gambling, cursing, or avoiding the razor on weekends, and that was good enough for Ralph. He loved the kid, after all, and love stretched to cover a multitude of oddities. He had an idea that was one of the things love was for.
