Стивен Кинг - Desperation

Anything to get that room-for-rent look out of her eyes long enough for Mary to scream “you GOT YouR BROTHER KILLED, you STUPID TWAT, ARE YOU READING ME.” into Deirdre’s face and to see the understanding there.

“Violence breeds violence,” she told her hands in a calm, teacherly tone. Talking to herself under these cir-cumstances seemed perfectly normal. “I know it, every-body knows it, but thinking about it is so pleasant, sometimes.”

“What.” Ralph Carver asked. He sounded dazed. In fact-gruesome idea-he sounded quite a bit like the walking short-circuit that was her sister-in-law.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

She got up. Two steps took her to the front of the cell. She wrapped her hands around the bars and looked out. The coyote was sitting on the floor with the remains of Johnny Marinville’s leather jacket in front of its fore-paws, looking up at the writer as if mesmerized.

“Do you think he got away.” Ralph asked her. “Do you think my boy got away, ma’am.”

“It’s not ma’am, it’s Mary, and I don’t know. I want to believe it, I can tell you that. I think there’s a pretty good chance that he did, actually.” As long as he didn’t run into the cop, she added to herself.

“Yeah, I guess so. I had no idea he was so serious about the praying stuff,” Ralph said.

He sounded almost apolo-getic, which Mary found weird, under the circumstances. “I thought it was probably… I don’t know… a passing fad. 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. “You know, if one of us could get out of here, I think that mangebasket might actually turn tail and-”

“Hush!” Billingsley said. “Someone coming up the stairs!”

The coyote heard it, too. It broke eye-contact with Mar-inville and turned around, growling. The footfalls neared, reached the landing, stopped. Mary snatched a glance at Ralph Carver, but couldn’t look for long; the combina-tion of hope and terror on his face was too awful. She had lost her husband, and that hurt worse than she had ever imagined anything could. What would it be like to see your whole family snatched away in the course of an afternoon.

The wind rose, howling along the eaves. The coyote looked nervously over its shoulder at the sound, then took three slow steps toward the door, ragged ears twitching.

“Son!” Ralph called desperately. “Son, if that’s you, don’t come in! That thing’s standing right in front of the door!”

“How close.” It was him, the boy. It really was. Amazing. And the self-possession in his voice was even more amazing. Mary thought that perhaps she should re-evaluate the power of prayer.

Ralph looked bewildered, as if he didn’t understand the—r. question. The writer did, though. “Probably five feet, and looking right at it. Be careful.”—“I’ve got a gun,” the boy said. “I think you better all get under your bunks. Mary, get as far over to my dad’s side as you can. Are you sure he’s right in front of the door, Mr.

Marinville.”

“Yes. Big as life and twice as ugly is my friend Bosco. Have you ever fired a gun before, David.”

“‘No.” “Oh, Moses.” Marinville rolled his eyes.

“David, no!” Ralph called. Belated alarm was filling his face; he seemed to be just realizing what was hap-pening here. “Run and get help! Open the door and that r bastard’ll be on you in two jumps!”

“No,” the kid said. “I thought about it, Dad, and I’d rather chance the coyote than the cop. Plus I have a key. 1 21 think it’ll work. It looks just the same as the one the cop used.”

“I’m convinced,” Marinville said, as if that settled it. “Everybody get down. Count to five, David, then do it.”

“You’ll get him killed!” Ralph yelled furiously at Mar-inville. “You’ll get my boy killed just to save your own ass!”

Mary said, “I understand your concern, Mr. Carver, but I think if we don’t get out of here, we’re all dead.”

“Count to five, David!” Marinville repeated. He got down on his knees, then slid under his bunk.

Mary looked across at the door, realized that her cell would be directly in the kid’s line of fire, and understood why David had told her to get way over to his father’s side. He might only be eleven, but he was thinking better than she was.

“One,” the boy on the other side of the door said. She could hear how scared he was, and she didn’t blame him. Not a bit. “Two.”

“Son!” Billingsley called. “Listen to me, son! Get on your knees! Hold the gun in both hands and be ready to shoot up-up, son! It won’t come on the floor, it’ll jump for you! Do you understand.”

“Yeah,” the kid said. “Yeah, okay. You under your bunk, Dad.”

Ralph wasn’t. He was still standing at the bars of his cell. There was a scared, set look on the—wollen face hovering between the white-painted bars. “Don’t do it, David! I forbid you to do it!”

“Get down, you asshole,” Marinville said. He was staring out from under his bunk at David’s father with furious eyes.

Mary approved of the sentiment but thought that Mar-inville’s technique sucked-she would have expected better from a writer. Some other writer, anyway; she had this one placed. The guy who’d written Delight, perhaps the century’s dirtiest book, was cooling his heels in the cell next to hers, surreal but true, and although his nose looked as if it might never recover from what the cop had done to it, Marinville still had the attitude of a guy who expects to get whatever he wants. Probably on a silver tray.

“Is my dad out of the way.” The kid sounded unsure as well as scared now, and Mary hated his father for what he was doing-plucking the boy’s already overstrained nerves as if they were guitar strings.

“No!” Ralph bawled. “And I’m not going to get out of the way! Get out of here! Find a phone! Call the State Cops!”

“1 tried the one on Mr. Reed’s desk,” David called back. “It’s dead.”

“Then try another one! Goddammit, keep trying until you find one that-”

“Quit being dumb and get under your bunk,” Mary said to him in a low voice. “What do you want him to remember about today. That he saw his sister killed and shot his father by mistake, all before suppertime. Help! Your son’s trying; you try, too.”

He looked at her, his cheeks shiny-pale, a vivid contrast to the blood clotted on the left side of his face. “He’s all I got left,” he said in a low voice. “Do you understand that.”

“Of course I do. Now get under your bunk, Mr. Carver.”

Ralph stepped back from the bars of his cell, hesitated, then dropped to his knees and slid under his bunk.

Mary glanced over at the cell David had wriggled out of-God, that had taken guts-and saw that the old vet-erinarian was under his bunk. His eyes, the only young part of him, gleamed out of the shadows like luminous blue gems.

“David!” Marinville called. “We’re clear!”

The voice that returned was tinged with doubt: “My dad, too.”

“I’m under the bunk,” Ralph called. “Son, you be careful. If-” His voice trembled, then firmed. “If it gets on you, hold onto the gun and try to shoot up into its belly.” He poked his head out from under the bunk, sud-denly alarmed. “Is the gun even loaded. Are you sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” He paused. “Is it still in front of the door.”

“Yes!” Mary called.

The coyote had taken a step closer, in fact. Its head was down, its growl as steady as the idle of an outboard motor. Every time the boy spoke from his side of the door, its ears twitched attentively.