"I want to know what's going on here," Cynthia said. She sounded worried.
"Nothing," Johnny told her, his voice soothing. "Really."
"The fuck there ain't," Cynthia said morosely, but she went with the others, each of them carrying a bag of ANFO.
Before Johnny could say anything, David slipped back inside. There were still traces of dried soap on his cheeks, and his lids were tinged purple. Steve had once dated a girl who'd worn eyeshadow that exact same color. On David it looked like shock instead of glamour.
"Is everything okay?" David asked. He glanced briefly at Steve, but it was Johnny he was talking to.
"Yes. Steve, give David a bag of ANFO."
David stood a moment longer, holding the bag Steve handed him, looking down at it, lost in thought. Abruptly he looked up at Johnny and said, "Turn out your pockets. All of them."
"What--" Steve began.
Johnny shushed him, smiling oddly. It was the smile of someone who has bitten into something which tastes both bitter and compelling. "David knows what he's doing."
He unbuckled the chaps, turned out the pockets of his jeans underneath, handing Steve his goods--the famous wallet, his keys, the hammer which had been stuck in his belt--to hold as he did. He bowed forward so David could look into his shirt pocket. Then he unbuckled his pants and pushed them down. Underneath he was wearing blue bikini briefs. His not inconsiderable gut hung over them. He looked to Steve like one of those rich older guys you saw strolling along the beach sometimes. You knew they were rich not just because they always wore Rolexes and Oakley sunglasses, but because they dared walk along in those tiny spandex ballhuggers in the first place. As if, once your income passed a certain figure, your gut became another asset.
The boss wasn't wearing spandex, at least. Plain old cotton.
He did a three-sixty, arms slightly raised, giving David all the angles and bruises, then pulled up his jeans again. The chaps followed. "Satisfied? I'll take off my boots, if you're not."
"No," David said, but he poked a hand into the pockets of the chaps before stepping back. His face was troubled, but not exactly worried. "Go on and have your talk. But hurry it up."
And he was gone, leaving Steve and Johnny alone.
The boss moved to the rear of the powder magazine, as far from the door as possible. Steve followed. Now he could smell the corpse in the dynamite chest under the stronger fuel-oil aroma of the place, and he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
"He wanted to make sure you didn't have a few of those can tahs on you, didn't he? Like Audrey."
Johnny nodded. "He's a wise child."
"I guess he is." Steve shuffled his feet, looked at them, then back up at the boss. "Look, you don't need to apologize for buzzing off. The important thing is that you came back. Why don't we just--"
"I owe a lot of apologies," Johnny said. He began taking his stuff back, rapidly returning the items to the pockets from which they had come. He took the hammer last, once more tucking it into the belt of his chaps. "It's really amazing how much fuckery a person can get up to in the course of one lifetime. But you're really the least of my worries in that respect, Steve, especially now. Just shut up and listen, all right?"
"All right."
"And this really does have to be speedy. David already suspects I'm up to something; that's another reason why he wanted me to turn out my pockets. There'll come a moment--very soon now--when you're going to have to grab David. When you do, make sure you get a good grip, because he's going to fight like hell. And make sure you don't let go."
"Why?"
"Will your pal with the creative hairdo help if you ask her to?"
"Probably, but--"
"Steve, you have to trust me."
"Why should I?"
"Because I had a moment of revelation on the way up here. Except that's way too stiff; I like David's phrase better. He asked me if I got hit by a God-bomb. I told him no, but that was another lie. Do you suppose that's why God picked me in the end? Because I'm an accomplished liar? That's sort of funny, but also sort of awful, you know it?"
"What's going to happen? Do you even know?"
"No, not completely." Johnny picked up the .30-.06 in one hand and the black-visored helmet in the other. He looked back and forth between them, as if comparing their relative worth.
"I can't do what you want," Steve said flatly. "I don't trust you enough to do what you want."
"You have to," Johnny said, and handed him the rifle. "I'm all you have now."
"But--"
Johnny came a step closer. To Steve he no longer looked like the same man who had gotten on the Harley-Davidson back in Connecticut, his absurd new leathers creaking, showing every tooth in his head as the photographers from Life and People and the Daily News circled him and clicked away. The change was a lot more than a few bruises and a broken nose. He looked younger, stronger. The pomposity had gone out of his face, and the somehow frantic vagueness as well. It was only now, observing its absence, that Steve realized how much of the time that look had been there--as if, no matter what he was saying or doing, most of Marinville's attention was taken up by something that wasn't. Something like a misplaced item or a forgotten chore.
"David thinks God means him to die in order to close Tak up in his bolthole again. The final sacrifice, so to speak. But David's wrong." Johnny's voice cracked on the last word, and Steve was astonished to see that the boss was almost crying. "It's not going to be that easy for him."
"What--"
Johnny grabbed his arm. His grip so tight it was painful. "Shut up, Steve. Just grab him when the time comes. It's up to you. Come on now." He bent into the chest, grabbed a bag of ANFO by its drawstring, and tossed it to Steve. He got another for himself.
"Do you know how to set this shit off without any dyno or blasting caps?" Steve asked. "You think you do, don't you? What's going to happen? Is God going to send down a lightning-bolt?"
"That's what David thinks," Johnny said, "and after the sardines and crackers, I'm not surprised. I don't think it'll come to anything that extreme, though. Come on. The hour groweth late."
They walked out into what was left of the night and joined the others.
4
At the bottom of the slope, twenty yards below the ragged yawn that was China Shaft, Johnny stopped them and told them to tie the drawstrings of the bags together in pairs. He slipped one of these pairs around his own neck, the sacks hanging down on either side of his chest like the counterweights of a cuckoo clock. Steve took another pair, and Johnny made no objection when David took the last set from his father and slipped the joined drawstrings around his own neck. Ralph, troubled, looked at Johnny. Johnny glanced at David, saw David was staring up at the drift opening, then looked back at the boy's father, shook his head, and tapped a finger against his lips. Quiet, Dad.
Ralph looked doubtful but said nothing.
"Everybody all right?" Johnny asked.
"What's going to happen?" Mary asked. "I mean, what's the plan?"
"We do what God tells us," David said. "That's the plan. Come on."
It was David who led, going up the slope sidesaddle to keep from falling. There was no wide gravel road here, not even a path, and the ground was evil. Johnny could feel it trying to crumble out from under his boots at every upward lurch. Soon his heart was pounding and his battered nose was throbbing in sync. He had been a good boy over the last few months, but a lot of chickens (not to mention some roast ducks and a few caviar-stuffed quail) were now coming home to roost nevertheless.
Yet he felt good. Everything was simple now. That was sort of wonderful.
David was in the lead, his father behind him. Steve and Cynthia next. Johnny and Mary Jackson brought up the rear.
"Why have you still got that motorcycle helmet?" she asked.
Johnny grinned. She reminded him of Terry, in an odd way. Terry as she had been back in the old days. He held the helmet up, stuck on his hand like a puppet. "Ask
not for whom the Bell tolls," he said. "It tolls for thee, thou storied honeydew."
She gave a small, breathless laugh. "You're nuts."
If it had been forty yards uphill instead of twenty, Johnny wasn't sure he could have made it. As it was, the pounding of his heart had become so rapid it seemed like one steady thrum in his chest by the time David reached the ragged tunnel opening. And his thighs felt like spaghetti.
Don't weaken now, he told himself. You're into the final straightaway.
He made himself move a little faster, suddenly afraid that David might simply turn and go into the shaft before he could get there. It was possible, too. Steve thought the boss knew. what was going on; but in fact the boss knew precious little. He was being handed the script a page ahead of the rest of them, that was all.
But David waited, and soon they were all clustered on the slope in front of the opening. A dank smell issued from it, chilly and charred at the same time. And there was a sound Johnny associated with elevator shafts: a faint, windy whisper.
"We ought to pray," David said, sounding timid. He held his hands out to either side of him.
His father took one of his hands. Steve put down the .30-.06 and took the other. Mary took Ralph's, Cynthia took Steve's. Johnny stepped between the two women, dropped the helmet between his boots, and the circle was complete.
They stood in the darkness of China Pit, smelling the dank exhaled breath of the earth, listening to that faint roar, looking at David Carver, who had brought them here.
"Whose father?" David asked them.
"Our father," Johnny said, stepping easily onto the road of the old prayer, as if he had never been away. "Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come--"
The others joined in, Cynthia, the minister's daughter, first, Mary last.
"--thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen."
Through the amen, Cynthia continued on: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." She looked up with the little twinkle Johnny had come to like quite a lot. "That's the way I learned it--kind of a Protestant dance-mix, y'know?"
David was looking at Johnny now.
"Help me do my best," Johnny said. "If you're there, God--and I now have reason to believe you are--help me to do my best and not weaken again. I want you to take that request very seriously, because I have a long history of weakening. David, what about you? Anything to say?"
David shrugged and shook his head. "Said it already." He let go of the hands holding his, and the circle broke.
Johnny nodded. "Okay, let's do it."
"Do what?" Mary asked. "Do what? Will you please tell me?"
"I'm supposed to go in," David said. "Alone."
Johnny shook his head. "Nope. And don't start in with your God-told-me-to stuff, because right now he's not telling you anything. Your TV screen has got a PLEASE STAND BY sign on it, am I right?"
David looked at him uncertainly and wet his lips.
Johnny lifted a hand toward the waiting darkness of the drift and spoke in the tone of a man conveying a large favor. "You can go first, though. How's that?"
"My dad--"
"Right behind you. He'll catch you if you fall."
"No," David said. He suddenly looked scared--terrified. "I don't want that. I don't want him in there at all. The roof might cave in, or--"
"David! What you want doesn't matter."
Cynthia grabbed Johnny's arm. She would have been digging into him if she hadn't nibbled her nails to the quick. "Leave him alone! Christ, he saved your fucking life! Can't you quit badgering him?"
"I'm not," Johnny said. "At this point he's badgering himself. If he'll just let go, remember who's in charge..."
He looked at David. The boy muttered something under his breath, far too low to hear, but Johnny didn't have to hear it to know what he had said.
"That's right, he's cruel. But you knew that. And you have no control over the nature of God anyway. None of us do. So why won't you relax?"
David made no reply. His head was bowed, but not in prayer this time. Johnny thought it was resignation. In some way, the boy knew what was coming, and that was the worst part. The cruelest part, if you liked. It's not going to be that easy for him, he had told Steve in the powder magazine, but back there he hadn't really understood how hard hard could be. First his sis, then his mother; now--
"Right," he said in a voice that sounded as dry as the ground they were standing on. "First David, then Ralph, then you, Steve. I'll be behind you. Tonight--sorry, this morning--it's a case of ladies last."
"If we have to go in, I want to go in with Steve," Cynthia said.
"Okay, fine," Johnny said at once--it was as if he had been expecting this. "You and I can switch places."
"Who put you in charge, anyway?" Mary asked.
Johnny turned on her like a snake, startling her into a precarious step backward. "Do you want to have a go?" he asked with a kind of dangerous good cheer. "Because if you do, lass, I'd be happy to turn it over to you. I asked for this no more than David did. So what do you think? Want to put-um on Big Chiefs headdress?"
She shook her head, confused.
"Easy, boss," Steve murmured.
"I'm easy," Johnny said, but he wasn't. He looked at David and his father, standing side by side, heads down, hands entwined, and wasn't easy. He could barely believe the enormity of what he was allowing. Could barely believe? Couldn't believe at all, was more like it. How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?
"Want me to take those bags, Johnny?" Cynthia asked timidly. "You still sound pretty out of breath, and you look all in, if you don't mind me saying."
"I'll be fine. It's not far now. Is it, David?"
"No," David said in a small, trembling voice. He appeared not to be just holding his father's hand now but caressing it as a lover might do. He looked at Johnny with hopeless, pleading eyes. The eyes of someone who almost knows.
Johnny looked away, sick in his stomach, feeling simultaneously hot and cold. He met Steve's bewildered, concerned eyes and tried to send him another message: Just hold him. When the time comes. Out loud he said: "Give David the flashlight, Steve."
For a moment he didn't think Steve would do it. Then he pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket and handed it over.
Johnny lifted his hand to the blackness of the shaft again. Toward the dead cold smell of old fire and the faint roaring sound from deep in the middle of the murdered mountain. He listened for some comforting word from Terry, but Terry had split the scene. Maybe just as well.
"David?" His voice, trembling. "Will you light us on our way?"
"I don't want to," David whispered. Then, pulling in a deep breath, he looked up at a sky in which the stars were just beginning to pale and screamed: "I don't want to! Haven't I done enough? Everything you asked? This isn't fair! THIS ISN'T FAIR AND I DON'T WANT TO! "
The last four words came out in a desperate, throat-tearing shriek. Mary started forward. Johnny grabbed her arm.
"Take your hand off me," she said, and started forward again.
Johnny yanked her back again. "Be still."
She subsided.
Johnny looked at David and silently raised his hand to the drift again.
David looked up at his father with tears running down his cheeks. "Go away, Dad. Go back to the truck."
Ralph shook his head. "If you go in, I go in."
"Don't. I'm telling you. It won't be good for you."
Ralph simply stood his ground and looked patiently at his son.
David looked back up at. him, then at Johnny's outstretched hand (a hand which now did not simply invite but demanded), and then turned and walked into the drift. He clicked on the light as he went, and Johnny saw motes dancing in its
bright beam ... motes and something else. Something that might have caused the heart of an old prospector to beat faster. A glint of gold, there and then gone.
Ralph followed David. Steve came next. The light moved in the boy's hand, tracing first along a rock wall, then an ancient support with a trio of symbols carved into it--some long-dead Chinese miner's name, perhaps, or the name of his sweetheart, left far behind in the marsh-side huts of Po Yang--and then to the floor, where it picked out a litter of bones: cracked skulls and ribcages that curved like ghastly Cheshire cat grins. It shifted upward again and to the left. The gold-gleam came again, this time brighter and more defined.
"Hey, look out!" Cynthia cried. "Something's in here with us!"
There was a fluttering explosion in the dark. It was a sound Johnny associated with his Connecticut childhood, pheasant exploding out of the underbrush and into the air as twilight drew down toward dark. For a moment the smell of the mine was stronger, as unseen wings drove the ancient air against his face in pulses.
Mary screamed. The flashlight beam jagged upward at an angle, and for just one moment it pinpointed a nightmarish midair apparition, something with wings and glaring golden eyes and outstretched talons. It was David the eyes were glaring at, David it wanted.
"Look out!" Ralph yelled, and threw himself over David's back, driving him down to the bone-littered floor of the shaft.
The flashlight fell from the boy's hand as he went down, kicking up just enough light to be confusing. Unclear shapes strove together in its reflected glow: David under his father, and the shadow of the eagle flexing and swelling above them both.
"Shoot it!" Cynthia screamed. "Steve, shoot it. it's gonna tear his head off!"
Johnny grabbed the barrel of the .30-.06 as Steve brought it up. "No. A gunshot'll bring the whole works down on top of us."
The eagle screeched, wings battering Carver's head.
Ralph tried to fend the bird off with his left hand. It seized one of his fingers in the hook of its beak and tore it off. And then its talons plunged into Ralph Carver's face like strong fingers into dough.
"DADDY, NO!" David shrieked.
Steve shoved into the tangle of shadows, and when the side of his foot kicked the downed flashlight, Johnny was treated to a better view than he wanted of the bird with Ralph's head in its grip. Its wings sent furious skirls of dust in motion from the floor and the old shaft walls. Ralph's head wagged wildly from side to side, but his body covered David almost completely.