Desperation

  "And God told you all this?" Johnny asked.

  The boy nodded, still without looking up.

  "So we're really talking miniseries here," Johnny said. "Night One is the Lushan Brothers, Night Two is Josephson, the Footloose Receptionist. They'll love it at ABC."

  "Why don't you shut up?" Cynthia said softly.

  "Another county heard from!" Johnny exclaimed. "This young woman, this roadbabe with attitude, this flashing female flame of commitment, will now explain, complete with pictures and taped accompaniment by the noted rock ensemble Pearl Jam--"

  "Just shut the fuck up," Steve said.

  Johnny looked at him, shocked to silence.

  Steve shrugged, embarrassed but not backing down. "The time for whistling past the graveyard's over. You need to cut the crap." He looked back at David.

  "I know more about this part," David said. "More than I want to, actually. I got inside this one. I got inside his head." He paused. "Ripton. That was his name. He was the first."

  And still looking down between his cocked knees at his sneakers, David began to talk.

  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, running an open-pit. Stuffing blast-holes full of ANFO and trying not to choke the prancing little faggot from MSHA when he comes out on Tuesday afternoons.

  When Kirk Turner runs into the fiela 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 of volunteers, they're going in. All sorts of possibilities dance in his head. He is too old a hand for childish fantasies about lost goldmines and troves of Indian artifacts, much too old, but as he and Turner rush out, part of him is thinking about those things just the same, oh yes.

  The cluster of men standing at the foot of the newly turned blast-field, eyeing the hole their latest explosions have uncovered, is a small one: seven guys in all, counting Turner, the crew boss. There are right now fewer than ninety men working for the Desperation Mining Corporation. Next year, if they're lucky-if the copper-yield and the prices both stay up--there may be four times that number.

  Ripton and Turner walk up to the edge of the hole. There is a dank, strange smell coming out of it, one Cary Ripton associates with coalgas in the mines of Kentucky and West Virginia. And yes, there are bones. He can see them scattering back into the canted, downsloping darkness of an old-fashioned square-drift mine, and while it's impossible to tell for sure about all of them, he sees a ribcage which is almost certainly human. Farther back, tantalizingly close but still just a little too far for even a powerful flashlight to show clearly, is something that could be a skull.

  "What is this?" Turner asks him. "Any idea?"

  Of course he does; it's Rattlesnake Number One, the old China Shaft. He opens his mouth to say so, then closes it again. This is not a matter for a blast-monkey like Kirk Turner, and is certainly not one for his crew, nitro-boys who spend their weekends in Ely gambling, whoring, drinking... and talking, of course. Talking about anything and everything. Nor can he take them inside. He thinks they would go, that their curiosity would drive them in spite of the obvious risks involved (a drift-mine this old, running through earth this uneasy, shit, a loud yell might be enough to bring the roof down), but the talk would get back to the prancing little MSHA faggot in no time flat, and when it did, losing his job would be the least of Ripton's worries. The MSHA fag (all hat and no cattle is how Frank Geller, the chief mining engineer, sums him up) likes Ripton no more than Ripton likes him, and the foreman who leads an expedition into the long-buried China Shaft today might find himself in federal court, facing a fifty-thousand-dollar fine and a possible five years in jail, the week after next. There are at least nine red-letter regulations expressly forbidding entry into "unsafe and unimproved structures." Which this of course is.

  Yet those bones and old dreams call to him like troubled voices from his childhood, like the ghost of every unfulfilled ambition he has ever held, and he knows even then that he isn't going to turn the China Shaft meekly over to the company and the federal pricks without at least one look inside for himself.

  He instructs Turner, who is bitterly disappointed but not really argumentative (he understands about MSHA as well as Ripton... maybe, as a blast-monkey, even better), to have yellow RESTRICTED AREA tapes placed across the opening. He then turns to the rest of the crew and reminds them that the newly uncovered drift, which might turn out to be a historical and archaeological treasure trove, is on DMC property. "I don't expect you to keep this quiet forever," he tells them, "but as a favor to me I'd like you to keep your mouths shut for the next few days. Even with your wives. Let me notify the brass. That part should be easy, at least--Symes, the comptroller, is coming in from Phoenix next week. Will you do that for me?"

  They say they will. Not all will be able to keep their promise even for twenty-four hours, of course--some men are just no good at keeping secrets--but he thinks he commands enough respect among them to buy twelve hours ... and four would probably be enough. Four hours after quitting time. Four hours in there by himself, with a flashlight, a camera, and an electric follow-me for any souvenirs he may decide to collect. Four hours with all those childhood fantasies he is too old a hand to think about. And if the roof should pick that moment, after almost a hundred and forty years and untold blasts shaking the ground all around it, to let go? Let it. He's a man with no wife, no kids, no parents, and two brothers who have forgotten he's alive. He has a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't be losing that many years, in any case. He's been feeling punk for almost six months now, and just lately he had taken to pissing blood. Not a lot, but even a little seems like a lot when it's yours you see in the toilet bowl.

  If I get out of this, maybe I'll go to the doctor, he thinks. Take it as a sign and go to the damned doctor. How about that?

  Turner wants to take some pictures of the exposed drift after he clocks out. Ripton lets him. It seems the quickest way to get rid of him.

  "How far in do you think we punched it?" Turner asks, standing about two feet beyond the yellow tape and snapping-pictures with his Nikon--pictures that, with no flash, will show nothing but a black hole and a few scattered bones that might belong to a deer.

  "No way to tell, Ripton says. In his mind he's inventorying the equipment he'll take in with him.

  "You ain't gonna do nothin dumb after I'm gone, are you?" Turner asks.

  "Nope, " Ripton says. "I have too much damned respect for Mining Safety to even think of such a thing. "

  "Yeah, right," Turner says, laughing, and early the next morning, around two o'clock, a much larger version of Cary Ripton will enter the bedroom Turner shares with his wife and shoot the man as he sleeps. His wife, too. Tak!

  It's a busy night for Cary Ripton. A night of killing (not one of Turner's blast-crew lives to see the morning sun) and a night of placing can tahs; he has taken a gunnysack filled with them when he leaves the pit, over a hundred in all. Some have broken into pieces, but he knows even the fragments retain some of their queer. unpredictable power. He spends most of the night placing these relics, leaving them in odd corners, mailboxes, glove compartments. Even in pants pockets! Yes! Hardly anyone locks their houses out here, hardly anyone stays up late out here, and the homes belonging to Turner's blast-crew are not the only ones Cary Ripton visits.

  He returns to the pit, feeling as trashed-out as Santa Claus returning to the North Pole after the big night ... only Santa's work ends once the presents have been distributed. Ripton's is only beginning. It's quarter to five; he has over two hours before the first members of Pascal Martinez's small Saturday day-crew show up. It should be enough, but there is certainly no time to waste. Cary
Ripton's body is bleeding so badly he's had to stuff his underwear full of toilet paper to absorb it, and twice on his way out to the mine he has had to stop and yark a gutful of blood out the window of Cary's pickup truck. It's splashed all down the side. In the first tentative and somehow sinister light of the coming day, the drying blood looks like tobacco-juice.

  In spite of his need to hurry, he's stopped dead for a moment by what the headlights show when he arrives at the bottom of the pit. He sits behind the wheel of the old truck with his eyes wide.

  There are enough desert animals on the north slope of the China Pit to fill an ark: wolves, coyotes, hopping baldheaded buzzards, flapping owls with eyes like great gold wedding-rings; cougars and wildcats and even a few scruffy barncats. There are wild dogs with their ribs arcing against their scant hides in cruel detail--many are escapees from the raggedy-ass commune in the hills, he knows--and running around their feet unmolested are hordes of spiders and platoons of rats with black eyes.

  Each of the animals coming out of the China Shaft carries a can tah in its mouth. They lope, flap, and scurry up the pit-road like a flood of weird refugees escaping some underground world. Below them, sitting patiently like customers in a Green Stamp redemption center two days before Christmas--take a number and wait--are more animals. 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' key, and kills Joe Prudum, the night watchman. Old Joe isn't much of a night watchman; comes on at dark, doesn't have the slightest idea anything's going on in the pit, and doesn't think there's anything strange about Cary Ripton showing up first thing in the morning. He's using the washer in the corner to do some laundry, he's sitting down to have his topsy-turvy version of dinner, and everything's cozy right up to the moment when Ripton puts a bullet in his throat.

  That done, Ripton calls the Owl's Club in town. The Owl's is open twenty-four hours a day (although, like a vampire, it's never really alive). It's where Brad Josephson, he of the gorgeous chocolate skin and long, sloping gut, eats breakfast six days a week... and always at this brutally early hour. That will come in handy now. Ripton wants Brad on hand, and quickly, before the black man can be polluted by the can tahs. The can tahs are useful in many ways, but they spoil a man or woman for Tak's greater work. Ripton knows he can take someone from Martinez's crew if he needs to, perhaps even Pascal himself, but he wants (well, Tak wants, actually) Brad. Brad will be useful in other ways.

  How long do the bodies last if they're healthy? he asks himself as he approaches the phone. How long if the one you push into overdrive hasn't been incubating a juicy case of cancer to start with?

  He doesn't know, but thinks he will probably soon have a chance to find out.

  "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. Or are you coming down with a cold?"

  "Cold, I guess, " he says, grinning and wiping blood off his lower lip. It is oozing out from between his teeth. Down below it feels like all of his innards have come loose and are floating in a sea of blood. "Listen, hon, is Brad in?"

  "Right over in the corner where he always is, livin large and eatin nasty--four eggs, home fries, 'bout half a pound of limpfried bacon. I hope when he finally vapor-locks, he does it somewheres else. What you want Brad for at this hour of a Sat'd'y mornin?"

  "Company business. "

  "Well shut my mouth n go to heaven, " she says. "You want to take care of that cold, Rip--you sound really congested. "

  "Just with love for you, " he tells her.

  "Huh," she says, and the phone goes down with a clunk. "Brad!" he hears her yell. "Phone! For you! Mr. Wonderful!" A pause while Brad is probably asking her what she's talking about. "Find out for yourself, " she says, and a moment later Brad Josephson is on the line. He says hello like a man who knows perfectly well that Publishers Clearinghouse doesn't call at five in the morning to tell you you won the big one.

  "Brad, it's Cary Ripton, " he says. He knows just how to get Brad out here; he got the idea from the late great Kirk Turner. "Have you got your camera gear in your car?" Of course he does. Brad is, among other things, an ardent birdwatcher. Fancies himself an amateur ornithologist, in fact. But Cary Ripton can do better than birds this morning. A lot better.

  "Yes, sure, what's the deal?"

  Ripton leans back against the poster taped up in the corner, the one showing a dirty miner pointing like Uncle Sam and saying GO AHEAD, BAN MINING, LET THE BASTARDS FREEZE IN THE DARK! "If you hop in your car and drive out here right now, I'll show you, Ripton says. "And if you get here before Pascal Martinez and his boys, I'll give you a chance at the most amazing pictures you'll ever take in your life. "

  "What are you talking about?" Josephson sounds excited now.

  "The bones of forty or fifty dead Chinese, to start with, how's that sound?"

  "What--"

  "We punched into the old China Shaft yesterday afternoon. Less than twenty feet in you'll get the most

  amazing--"

  "I'm on my way. Don't you move. Don't you goddam move. "

  The phone clicks in his ear and Ripton grins with red lips. "I won't, " he says. "Don't worry about that. Can de lach! Ah ten! Tak! "

  Ten minutes later, Ripton--now bleeding from the navel as well as the rectum and penis--walks across the crumbled bottom of the pit to the China Slope. Here he spreads his arms like an evangelist and speaks to the animals in the language of the unformed. All of them either fly away or withdraw into the mine. It will not do for Brad Josephson to see them. No, that would not do at all.

  Five minutes after that Josephson comes down the steep grade of the pit-road, sitting bolt-upright behind the wheel of an old Buick. The sticker on the front reads MINERS GO DEEPER AND STAY LONGER. Ripton watches him from the door of the field office. It wouldn't do for Brad to get a good look at him, either, not until he gets a little closer.

  No problem there. Brad parks with a scrunch of tires, gets out, grabs three different cameras, and trots toward the field office, pausing only to gape at the open hole twenty feet or so up the slope.

  "Holy shit, it's the China, all right, " he says. "Got to be. Come on, Cary ! For Christ's sake, Martinez'll be here any time! "

  "Nah, they start a little later on Saturday, " he says, grinning. "Cool your jets. "

  "Yeah, but what about old Joe? He could be a prob--"

  "Cool your jets, I said! Joe's in Reno. Granddaughter popped a kid. "

  "Good! Great! Have a cigar, huh?" Brad laughs a little wildly.

  "Come in here, " Ripton says. "Got something to show you. "

  "Something you brought out?"

  "That's right, " Ripton says, and in a way it's true, in a way he does want to show Brad something he brought out. Josephson is still frowning down at his swinging cameras, trying to sort out the straps, when Ripton grabs him and throws him to the back of the room. Josephson squawks indignantly. Later he will be scared, and still later he'll be terrified, but right now he hasn't noticed Joe Prudum 's body and is only indignant.

  "For the last time, cool your jets!" Ripton says as he steps outside and locks the door. "Gosh! Relax!"

  Laughing, he goes to the truck and gets in. Like many Westerners, Cary Ripton believes passionately in the right of Americans to bear arms; there's a shotgun in the rack behind the seat and a nasty little hideout gun--a Ruger Speed-Six-in the glovebox. He loads the shotgun and lays it across his lap. The Ruger, which is already loaded, he simply puts on the seat beside him. His first impulse is to tuck it into his belt, but now he's all but swimming in blood down there (Ripton, you idiot, he thinks, don't you know men your age a
re supposed to get the old prostate tickled every year or so), and soaking Ripton's pistol in it might not be a good idea.

  When Josephson's ceaseless hammering at the field-office door begins to annoy him, he turns on the radio, juices the volume, and sings along with Johnny Paycheck, who is telling whoever wants to listen that he was the only hell his mama ever raised.

  Pretty soon Pascal Martinez shows up for some of that good old Saturday-morning time and a half. 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. Ripton sticks the shotgun out the window, still smiling, and shoots both of them. It's easy. Neither tries to run. They die with puzzled looks on their faces. Ripton looks at them, thinking of his granddaddy telling about the passenger pigeons, birds so dumb you could club them on the ground The men out here all have guns but few of them think, way down deep, that they will ever have to use one. They are all show and no go. Or all hat and no cattle, if you like that better.

  The rest of the crew arrives by ones and twos--no one worries much about the timeclock on Saturdays. Ripton shoots them as they come and drags their bodies around to the back of the field office, where they soon begin to stack up beneath the clothes dryer's exhaust-pipe like cordwood. When he runs out of shotgun shells (there's plenty of ammo for the Ruger, but the pistol is useless as a primary weapon, not accurate at a distance greater than a dozen feet), he finds Martinez's keys, opens the back of his Cherokee, and discovers a beautiful (and completely illegal) Iver Johnson auto under a blanket. Next to it are two dozen thirty-round clips in a Nike shoebox. The arriving miners hear the shots as they ascend the north side of the pit, but they think it's target-shooting, which is how a good many Saturdays start in the China Pit. It's a beautiful thing.