Characters in Desperation

“Alfie Berk won’t have em around anymore. Kicked em the hell out. They’re a dastardly bunch.” Mary cocked her head at that, and for a moment Peter could see the ghost of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “Are they a gang?” Peter asked.

“No. I had my little radio with me, and all I heard was fair and hot.” “All I heard, too,” Steve said. “This shit’s a total mystery.” “I had a meeting scheduled with Allen Symes, the company comptroller, to summarize the switchover from rainbirds to heads and emitters.

She saw the closet-demon of her childhood, a bogey she had for some reason called Apple Jack, slumped in the corner with his brown fruit-face all pulled in on itself, grinning, waiting for her to wander into his deadly embrace; the last thing she’d smell would be his cidery aroma, …

“And this is—” “Audrey Wyler,” the dark-haired woman said. “I’m a consulting geologist for Diablo Mining. At least, I was.” She scanned the ladies’ room with large dazed eyes, taking in the carton of liquor bottles, the bins of beercans, the fabulous fish swimming on one dirty tiled wall.

Any idea? Barbie. “Look at its tongue,” Cynthia said in a strange, dreaming voice. “What about it?” “It’s a snake.” Yes, he saw, it was. A rattler, maybe.

Steve had seen plenty in Texas, had even been stung by one while rooting in his Aunt Betty’s woodpile as a boy. Over in Arnette, that had been, and it had hurt like a bastard. Like an ant-bite, only hot.

The more Johnny flopped and flailed around, the more gruesomely obsequious Bill Harris became, it seemed. “During the first two years we were married, you must have written at least a dozen essays. Published them, too. For good money. Life, Harper’s, even a couple in The New Yorker.

He hit his nose and bellowed with surprised pain. The cop took no notice of him. “Billy Rancourt!” he cried, delighted. “Damn, that’s Billy Rancourt! I wondered where he got off to! Drunk in the basement of The Broken Drum, I bet you that’s where he was! Dollars to doughnuts!

Sure didn’t look that way, did it?” “No,” Mary agreed. “It didn’t.” “Why do you keep staring at me, Bosco?” Marinville asked the coyote. “You got my fucking jacket, what else do you want? As if I didn’t have a pretty good idea.” He looked up at Mary.

On the desk, flanked by a joke sign (LEAD ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION, FOR I SHALL FIND IT MYSELF) and a name-plaque (BRAD JOSEPHSON), was a stiff studio photo of an overweight but pretty black woman flanked by two cute kids. A male receptionist, then, and not exactly Mr. Neat.

Brian Ross was thrown twenty feet, into the side of a house. On any other morning David would have been with him, but on that particular day he had stayed home sick, nursing a not-too-serious virus.

One of them, Bronwyn, still talked to him. The other two . . . well, if they ever got tired of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, he would be around. He was not by nature a vindictive man. Terry seemed to know that.

Oh shit, my hair!,” and how she had landed on his crotch with a ball-numbing thud when the car went over. He remembered Bruno Gartner bellowing. And the sound of the Partymobile’s collapsing roof driving Rachel Timorov’s head down into her neck, splitting her skull open like a bone flower.

The edges of these rips had then been mended with electrical tape to keep them from widening. Billingsley nodded at the bar. “That come from the old Circle Ranch. Part of the Clayton Loving auction, it was. Buzz Hansen n me teamed together and knocked it down for seventeen bucks.

… 2 The man who hates MSHA is Cary Ripton, pit-foreman of the new Rattlesnake operation. He is forty-eight, balding, sunken-eyed, cynical, in pain more often than not these days, a man who desperately wanted to be a mining engineer but wasn’t up to the math and wound up here instead, …

Two of these were brothers from Tsingtao—Ch’an Lushan and Shih Lushan. Both saw through the break in the face and into the cave, which was really a kind of underground chamber. It was round, like the bottom of a well. The walls were made of faces, these stone animal faces.

The edges of these rips had then been mended with electrical tape to keep them from widening. Billingsley nodded at the bar. “That come from the old Circle Ranch. Part of the Clayton Loving auction, it was. Buzz Hansen n me teamed together and knocked it down for seventeen bucks.

Billingsley took his arm above the elbow, but David shook it off. “Do you hear me? Leave them alone!” “In your dreams, brat,” Collie Entragian said. He poked the key into the cell’s lock and there was a little thump as the tumblers turned. He pulled the door open.

“Work clothes, mostly. Levi’s, khakis, Red Wing boots, stuff like that. They order special for this one guy, Curt Yeoman, who works—worked—for the telephone company. Six-foot-seven, the tallest man in Desperation. That’s why Entragian’s clothes weren’t ripped when he took us, Dad.

Jim had two full-time deputies—Dave Pearson and Collie. Nobody expected Collie to stay around after Diablo folded, but he did. He wasn’t married, and he had workman’s comp. He floated along for awhile, odd-jobbin, and eventually Jim started to throw work his way.

“Last name? Where he came from?” “David Carver,” he said, the smile widening into a grin. “Dad’s Ralph Carver. They hail from Wentworth, Ohio. Nice town. Next door to Columbus. I was in Columbus with South-side Johnny in ’86.” She came forward, the doll curled against one mosquito-bump breast.

Nobody had told him Brian’s eyes would be open; until just now he hadn’t known your eyes could be open when you were unconscious. Debbie Ross had told him not to be shocked, that Brian didn’t look very nice, but she hadn’t told him about that stuffed-moose stare.

Deirdre Finney, with her pretty pale face and sweet, stoned smile and pre-Raphaelite curls. Deirdre who didn’t eat meat (“It’s like, cruel, you know?”) but smoked the smoke, oh yes, Deirdre had been going steady with that rascal Panama Red for years now.

“Owl’s,” says a woman’s voice in his ear—the sun’s not even up and she sounds tired already. “Howdy, Denise,” he says. “How they hangin?” “Who’s this?” Deeply suspicious. “Cary Ripton, hon. You don’t recognize my voice?” “You must have a bad case of morning mouth, darlin.

I went over to Carson City last November with Collie and Dick and we bought it at a DEA auction. That very car.

… at the good discount meat-cutter’s she’d found in Brooklyn, the venison-steaks Peter’s friend Don had given them, the pints of strawberries they’d picked at the Mohonk Mountain House the previous summer. This smell . . . so similar . . . …

It was something that had a lot to say. “I’ll get Dr. Burgoyne, he’s just up the hall.” She hurried out. Brian’s dad gave David a strained smile. There was sweat trickling down his cheeks and standing out on his forehead in a galaxy of fine dots.

“It wasn’t until they saw the same high waves on the new monitor—only even stronger—that one of the nurses called Dr. Waslewski. He’s the neurologist. Before he got here, Brian opened his eyes and looked around at us. He asked me if I’d fed the goldfish today.

He was still holding out the wallet, the one with the picture of Johnny and David Halberstam and Duffy Pinette standing outside that sleazy little bar, The Viet Cong Lookout. A dive, but it had the best jukebox in the ’Nam. A Wurlitzer.

“I can’t remember which. Madison Square Garden, then in Forest Hills. Dylan played the encore with him at Forest Hills. ‘Blowin in the Wind,’ if you can believe that.”

“Put his arm around him like he did me just now, and shot him four times.” “He killed our little girl,” Ellen Carver told her, and something in her tone struck David with a moment of utter dreamlike unreality.

“What got me past that was the sound of people outside. I got up on my knees and crawled over to the door. I saw four people across the street, by the Owl’s. Two were Mexican—the Escolla boy who works on the crusher up at the mine, and his girlfriend.

“Right, which wasn’t forecast.” “What happened then?” David asked. “I ran up to the people he shot. One of them was Evelyn Shoenstack, the lady who runs the Cut n Curl and works part-time in the library. She was dead with her brains all over the sidewalk.” Mary winced.

Flip somebody.” “Flip Moran? You saw the Flipper?” She nodded. “They were working their way up the other side of the street, trying cars, looking for keys. I thought about mine, and how we could all go together. I started to get up.

That’s what we’d taken to calling the lab and the offices out there on the edge of town. Anyway, that’s why I’m wearing this damned dress, because of the meeting and because Frank Geller told me that Symes doesn’t—didn’t—like women in jeans.

… ; they’d only left Oregon three days before, and that included the day and a half they’d spent with Gary and Marielle Soderson, listening to old records and talking about old times. The cop’s eyes lingered on the pulled-out ashtray. Peter …

… deaf, listening for the voice, the one Reverend Gene Martin called the still, small voice of God. Reverend Martin had listened carefully to David’s story not once but many times over the last seven months, and he seemed especially pleased by David’s recounting of how he had felt during the …

The half on Steve’s side was green; the other half was orange. “My friend Gert says I look like Little Orphan Annie from hell. That’s too cool to change.” “Not gonna give them curls up, huh?”

… And there was something else: he believed that David Carver had been touched by God, and that God’s touch might not yet have departed. He was fascinated with the story of Brian Ross, and by how what had happened to Brian had caused David …

A knife in the back, most likely, although the story most people like is that a professional gambler named Harold Brophy flicked a playing-card from where he was sitting and cut the man’s throat with it. “The one still alive was shot in five or six places.

… his place of honor in her heart to the MotoKops (especially Cassie Styles and the handsome Colonel Henry) over the last year or so, but the old Prof still seemed like the right answer to David. He only remembered one of Prof. KrayZee’s little …

Pushed it again and TERRY appeared. Pushed it again and JACK appeared—Jack Appleton, his editor at FS&G. Dear God, why had he put all these people ahead of Steve Ames? Steve was his lifeline.

Won’t be nobody any happier about it than Jim Reed, either. He’s tired of barroom fights. All of us’ll be glad when they leave old China alone again. It’s haunted, that’s what the ignorant folks round these parts think.” He paused. “I’m one of em.” “Who’s Jim Reed?” Ralph asked.

What they’re waiting for is their turn to go into the dark. Tak begins to laugh with Cary Ripton’s vocal cords. “What a hoot!” he exclaims. Then he drives on to the field office, unlocks the door with Ripton’s key, and kills Joe Prudum, the night watchman.

And what no doctor in the world seemed to know was that, for men like Johnny Marinville, fearing was sometimes better than finding. Especially when you’d put out the welcome mat for every disease going. Including AIDS, he thought, continuing to stare out at the desert.

At a party in East Hampton, that had been. Spielberg had been there. Joyce Carol Oates, too. He stepped back, put one foot on the corpse’s shoulder, and pushed. The woman’s body slid slowly and stiffly to the right.

When Kirk Turner runs into the field office this afternoon, face blazing with excitement, to tell him that the last blast-pattern has uncovered an old drift-mine and that there are bones inside, they can see them, Ripton’s first impulse is to tell him to organize a party …

… He glanced up into the rearview at Kirsten, who had stopped playing with Melissa Sweetheart and was now holding the doll against her chest. Kirstie knew something was going on, just not what. “Kirsten, sit down!” he called. “Belt in!” Except by then it was over. He wrestled the Wayfarer …

Not much road-litter yet; they’d only left Oregon three days before, and that included the day and a half they’d spent with Gary and Marielle Soderson, listening to old records and talking about old times. The cop’s eyes lingered on the pulled-out ashtray.

In August of this year they had made, with Mark Ross’s help, a bottlecap Parthenon from a picture in a book. It turned out so well that Mark kept it in the downstairs hall and showed it to company.

Marsha had told him that; he’d been over near Washoe, looking after some sick sheep. He’d seen her around town plenty since, though.

She sighed. “That’s what I thought.” He pointed vaguely across toward the stage-right entrance. “Marty Ives brought in a little bag of somethin a couple of nights ago. Probably sardines. Marty loves sardines and crackers.” “Yuck,” Mary said, but she looked interested almost in spite of herself.

… 3 What Mary Jackson recalled, what caused her to reach for the shotgun even though she had never actually held a gun—rifle or pistol—in her entire life, was the memory of the big cop mixing the words I’m going to kill you into the Miranda warning. And he meant it.

It wasn’t. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut. He was still in bed. The blood was everywhere.

He’s got Miguel Rivera, his amigo, with him. Ripton waves. Pascal waves back. He parks on the other side of the field office, and then he and Mig walk around to see what Ripton’s doing here on Saturday morning, and at this ungodly hour.

“I tried to use the phone in Mr. Worrell’s office. It was dead. I stayed in the back of the store for about a half an hour. The cruiser went by twice during that time, once on Main Street, then around the back, probably on Mesquite, or Cotton again.

It was like he wanted me to turn it in, only to him instead of Mrs. Hardy in the office. And something else. He wanted me to find out as much as I could about him—what he is, what he wants, what he does, and what he won’t do.

I went upstairs to where the Worrells live, thinking maybe the phone up there would still be live. It wasn’t. Neither was Mrs. Worrell or the boy. Mert, I think his name was. She was in the kitchen with her head in the sink and her throat cut.

Ripton’s is only beginning. It’s quarter to five; he has over two hours before the first members of Pascal Martínez’s small Saturday day-crew show up. It should be enough, but there is certainly no time to waste.

Under the heading St. Louis, Marinville had scribbled, Patricia Franklin. Redhead, big boobs. DON’T CALL HER PAT OR PATTY! Name of org. is FRIENDS OF OPEN LIBES. Bill sez P.F. also active in animal-rights stuff. Veggie.”

Patti Nickerson said she had a vague memory of Sean saying Hold on, we’re going for a ride just before it happened, but that was it.

50 “The Loneliest Highway in America,” and in Peter Jackson’s opinion, it lived up to its billing. Of course he was a New York boy, and he supposed he might be suffering a cumulative case of the creeps. Desert agoraphobia, Ballroom Syndrome, something like that.

“You must like Peter Tosh,” she said. “It can’t be my tits.” “I worked with Peter Tosh once,” he replied. “No way!” “Way,” he said. He glanced in the rearview and saw that Ely was already gone. It was spooky, how fast that happened out here.

Professor KrayZee had yielded his place of honor in her heart to the MotoKops (especially Cassie Styles and the handsome Colonel Henry) over the last year or …

And the sound of the Partymobile’s collapsing roof driving Rachel Timorov’s head down into her neck, splitting her skull open like a bone flower. A tight crunching sound it had been, the sound you hear in your head when you smash an icecube between your teeth. He remembered shit.

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.

True enough, she supposed . . . except wasn’t that what people did? Wasn’t that why, when Richie Judkins had come home in a really badass ear-ripping mood, Little Miss Cynthia had still been there?

She had gotten pregnant while stoned, had undoubtedly decided to marry Roger Finney while stoned, and Peter knew for a fact that she had left Reed (carrying a one-point-forget-it grade average) because there was too much dope floating around and she just couldn’t say no to it.

“Woman called me on the phone. Said her horse was a three-year-old mare named Sally. Yessir.” He put the rag back over the bottle, not thinking about it, hiding by habit, his mind on that day last summer.

In 1986, while riding in the back seat of Sean Hutter’s so-called Party-mobile (Sean had been doing the Friday-night East Hampton rounds with Johnny and three others in the big old ’65 Caddy), he had been involved in a fatal accident.

Two of these were brothers from Tsingtao—Ch’an Lushan and Shih Lushan. Both saw through the break in the face and into the cave, which was really a kind of underground chamber. It was round, like the bottom of a well. The walls were made of faces, these stone animal faces.

At a party in East Hampton, that had been. Spielberg had been there. Joyce Carol Oates, too. He stepped back, put one foot on the corpse’s shoulder, and pushed.

“Marvellous,” Stella Martin replied. “That will be a comfort to me and the baby if your young friend says the wrong thing about his religious instruction and you wind up in court, facing child-abuse charges. You have to be careful, Gene—and you’re crazy to be drinking around him.”

He couldn’t wait to tell Steve Ames about this when they met up in Austin tonight. Hell, he might call him on the cellular later on this afternoon . . . if the cellulars worked out here, that was. Now that he thought about it, he supposed they didn’t.

“It seemed like I remembered every rotten thing that ever happened to me in my life,” she said. “Sylvia Marcucci spitting on me in the eighth grade, out in the playground—she said I stole her boyfriend, and I didn’t even know who the hell she was talking about.

Instead he grabs Josephson’s arms, calling on the last of this body’s strength to do it, and shoves the black man against the wall so hard that the entire prefab building shakes. And it’s not just Ripton now, of course; it’s Tak’s strength.

… saved your miserable life, Terry spoke up inside his head. Maybe you should listen to him, Johnny. And that, he thought, was why he had divorced Terry in the first place. In a fucking nutshell. She had been a divine lay, but she had never known when to shut up …

David asked. “Vet,” the old man said. “Tom Billingsley is my name.” He held out a big, worn hand that shook a little. David took it gingerly. Downstairs, a door smashed open. “Here we are, Big John!” the cop said. His voice rolled jovially up the stairs. “Your room awaits!

he bellowed in his rolling, trembling Jimmy Swaggart voice. It was a great success at cocktail parties; Tom Wolfe had once laughed so hard when he was doing the evangelist voice that Johnny thought the man was going to have a stroke. “Water in the desert, that’s a big ten-four!

Tommy Ortega’s, I think. That truck was almost his girlfriend.” “I didn’t see anything like that,” Johnny said. “The street was clear when he brought me in.” “Yeah—the son of a bitch keeps his room picked up, you have to give him that.

The time my dad got drunk at my Aunt Wanda’s second wedding and felt my ass while we were dancing and pretended it was a mistake. Like his hardon was a mistake, too.” Her hand crept to the side of her head. “Gettin yelled at. Gettin dumped on.

Worrell’s. Wendy Worrell was lying dead by the cash register. Her dad—he’s the butcher as well as the owner—was sitting in the little office area, shot in the head. His shirt was off. He must have been just changing into his whites when it happened.”