Стивен Кинг - Desperation

David thought, These are the machines that are keeping him alive. And when they turn them off when they pull out the needles—Disbelief filled him at the idea, buds of wonder which were only grief rolled tight. He and Brian squirted each other at the waterfountain outside their home room at school whenever they thought they could get away with it They rode their bikes in the fabled Bear Street Woods pretending they were commandos. They swapped books and comics and baseball cards and sometimes just sat on David’s back porch, playing with Brian’s Gameboy or reading and drinking David’s mom’s lemonade. They slapped each other high fives and called each other “bad boy.”

(Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, they called each other “fuckhead” or “dickweed.”) In the second grade they’d pricked their fingers with pins and smooshed them together and sworn themselves blood brothers. 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 down stairs hail and showed it to company. At the first of the year the bottlecap Parthenon was slated to travel the block and a half to the Carver house.

It was the Parthenon that David’s mind had fixed upon most firmly as he stood by his comatose friend’s bed They had built it—him, Brian, Brian’s dad—out in the Ross garage while the tape player endlessly recycled Rattle and Hum on the shelf behind them.

A silly thing because it was just bottlecaps, a cool thing because it looked like what it was supposed to look like, you could tell what it was. Also a cool thing because they had made it with their own hands. And soon Brian’s hands would be picked up and scrubbed by an undertaker who would use a special brush and pay particular attention to the finger nails. No one would want to look at a corpse with dirty nails, David supposed. And after Bri’s hands were clean and he was in the coffin his folks would pick out for him the undertaker would lace his fingers together like they were a pair of sneakers. And that was how they’d stay head somberly, as if the rest was too awful to be spoken aloud.

You lie, you liar, David thought… but then another howl drifted through the open window in the stairwell, and he wondered.

“In any case,” the cop said, “these are good locks and good cells. They were built by hardasses for roughneck miners, and escape’s not an option. If that’s been in your mind, send it home to its momma. You mind me, now. That’s the best thing to do. Believe me, it is.” Then he was gone, this time for real—David could hear his booted feet thudding down the stairs, shaking the whole building.

The boy stood where he was for a moment, knowing what he had to do now—absolutely had to do-but reluc-tant to do it in front of his parents. Still, there was no choice, was there. And he had been right about the cop. The big man hadn’t exactly been reading his mind like it was a newspaper, but he’d been getting some of it—he’d been getting the God stuff. But maybe that was good. Better the cop should see God than the shotgun shell, maybe.

He turned and took two slow steps to the foot of the bunk. He could feel the weight of the shell in his pocket as he went. That weight was very clear, very distinct. It was as if he had a lump of gold hidden in there.

No, more dangerous than gold. A chunk of something radioactive, maybe.

He stood where he was for a moment, back to the room, and then, very slowly, sank down on his knees. He took a deep breath, pulling in air until his lungs would absolutely hold no more, then let it out again in a long silent whoosh. He folded his hands on the rough woolen blanket, dropped his forehead softly onto them.

“David, what’s wrong with you.” his mother called.

“David!”

“There isn’t anything wrong with him,” his father said, and David smiled a little as he closed his eyes.

“What do you mean, nothing wrong.” Eilie screamed. “Look at him, he fell down, he’s fainting! David!”

Their voices were distant now, fading, but before they went out entirely, he heard his dad say, “Not fainting. Praying.”

No God in Desperation. Well, let’s just see about that.

Then he was gone, no longer concerned about what his parents might be thinking, no longer worried that old Mr. White Hair might have seen him filch the shotgun shell and might tell the monster cop what he had seen, no longer grieving for sweet little Pie, who had never hurt anyone in her life and hadn’t deserved to die as she had He was not, in fact, precisely even inside his own head anymore. He was in the black now, blind but not deaf in the black and listening for his God.

Like most spirituaL conversions, David Carver s was dramatic only on the outside; on the inside it was quiet, almost mundane. Not rational, perhaps—matters of the spirit may never be strictly rational—but possessed of its own clarity and logic. And to David, at least, its genu ineness was beyond question. He had found God, that was all. And (this he considered probably more important) God had found him.

In November of the previous year, David’s best friend had been struck by a car while riding his bike to school 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. The phone had rung at eight-thirty and his mother had come into the living room ten minutes later, pale and trembling. “David, some thing’s happened to Brian. Please try not to be too upset” After that he didn’t remember much of the conversation only the words not expected to live.

It had been his idea to go and see Brian in the hospital the next day, after calling the hospital all on his own that evening and ascertaining that his friend was still alive.

“Honey, I understand how you feel, but that’s a really bad idea,” his father had said. His use of “honey,” a term of endearment long since retired along with David s stuffed toys, indicated how upset Ralph Carver was. He had looked at Ellen, but she only stood by the sink wringing a dishcloth nervously back and forth in her hands. Obviously no help there. Not that Ralph had felt very helpful himself, God knew, but who had ever ex-pected such a conversation. My God, the boy was only eleven, Ralph hadn’t even gotten around to telling him the facts of life, let alone those of death. Thank God Kirstie was in the other room, watching cartoons on TV.

“No,” David had said. “It’s a good idea. In fact, it’s the only idea.” He thought of adding something heroically modest like Besides, Brian ’d do it for me, and decided not to. He didn’t think Brian would do it for him, actually. That didn’t change anything, though.

Because he had vaguely understood, even then, before what had happened in Bear Street Woods, that he’d be going not for Brian but for himself.

His mother had advanced a few hesitant steps from her bastion by the sink. “David, you’ve got the dearest heart in the world… the kindest heart in the world… but Brian…

he was… well… thrown…

“What she’s trying to say is that he hit a brick wall head-first,” his father said. He had reached across the table and taken one of his son’s hands. “There was exten-sive brain—damage. He’s in a coma, and there are no good vital signals. Do you know what that means.”

“That they think his brain turned into a cabbage.”

Ralph had winced, then nodded. “He’s in a situation where the best thing that could happen would be for it to end fast. If you went to see him, you wouldn’t be seeing the friend you know, the one you used to have sleepovers with…

His mother had gone into the living room at that point, had swept the bewildered Pie into her lap and begun to cry again.