Desperation

by Stephen King

“Ten ah?” it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the ini. The woman with Ellen Carver’s fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen’s fingers against Ellen’s collarbones, then waved Ellen’s hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.

There was scuttering from behind it, a sound too low to be heard . . . but it heard it anyway. It pivoted on Ellen’s knees and saw the recluse spiders returning. They came through the Town Office door, turned left, then streamed up the wall, over posters announcing forthcoming town business and soliciting volunteers for this fall’s Pioneer Days extravaganza. Above the one announcing an informational meeting at which Desperation Mining Corporation officials would discuss the resumption of copper mining at the so-called China Pit, the spiders re-formed their circle. The tall woman in the coverall and the Sam Browne belt got up and approached them. The circle on the wall trembled, as if expressing fear or ecstasy or perhaps both. The woman put bloody hands together, then opened them to the wall, palms out. “Ah lah?” The circle dissolved. The spiders scurried into a new shape, moving with the precision of a drill-team putting on a halftime show. T, they made, then broke up, scurried, and made an H. An E followed, an A, another T, another E— It waved them off while they were still scrambling around up there, deciding how to fall in and make an R. “En tow,” it said. “Ras.” The spiders gave up on their R and resumed their faintly trembling circle. “Ten ah?” it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the ini. The woman with Ellen Carver’s fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen’s fingers against Ellen’s collarbones, then waved Ellen’s hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.

Johnny Marinville told his story again—all of it, this time. For the first time in a good many years he tried to keep it short—there were critics all over America who would have applauded, partly in disbelief.

Johnny Marinville told his story again—all of it, this time. For the first time in a good many years he tried to keep it short—there were critics all over America who would have applauded, partly in disbelief. He told them about stopping to take a leak, and how Entragian had planted the pot in his saddlebag while he was doing it. He told them about the coyotes—the one Entragian had seemed to talk to and the others, posted along the road at intervals like a weird honor guard—and about how the big cop had beaten him up. He recounted the murder of Billy Rancourt, and then, with no appreciable change in his voice, about how the buzzard had attacked him, seemingly at Collie Entragian’s command.

“Then I threw one of his own nonsense-words back at him. At least it seemed like nonsense to me, or something in a made-up language. It had a guttural quality . . .” “Was it tak?” Mary asked. Johnny nodded. “And it didn’t seem to be nonsense to the coyotes, or to Entragian, either. When I said it he kind of recoiled . . . and that’s when he called the buzzard bombing-strike down on me.”

Johnny was moved. The kid’s little prayer had touched him in the very place Entragian had tried and failed to reach.

David put the bag and the box of crackers down between his sneakers. Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid’s lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty. “God, please bless this food we are about to eat,” David began. “Yeah, what there is of it,” Cynthia said, and immediately looked sorry that she had spoken. David didn’t seem to mind, though; might not have even heard her. “Bless our fellowship, take care of us, and deliver us from evil. Please take care of my mom, too, if it’s your will.” He paused, then said in a lower voice: “It’s probably not, but please, if it’s your will. Jesus’ sake, amen.” He opened his eyes again. Johnny was moved. The kid’s little prayer had touched him in the very place Entragian had tried and failed to reach. Sure it did. Because he believes it. In his own humble way, this kid makes Pope John Paul in his fancy clothes and Las Vegas hat look like an Easter-and-Christmas Christian.

Their eyes met for a moment, and he heard the old man saying not even Houdini could have done it that way. Because of the head. And of course there was the phone—three transmission-bars showing when it had been in the kid’s hands, none at all when he had held it in his own.

He looked away and saw the box of crackers on the floor. Everyone was busy eating, and no one paid Johnny any particular attention when he picked up the box and looked into it. It had gone all the way around the group, everyone had at least half a dozen crackers (Billingsley might have taken even more; the old goat was really cramming them in), but that cylinder of waxed paper was still in there, and Johnny could have sworn that it was still half-full; that the number of crackers in it had not changed at all.

“Okay, no revolt from the animal kingdom, at least. But I’m very sorry about your wife and your little girl, Mr. Carver. You too, David.”

“Come on, lady, you’re like a kid pretending her mouth is stitched shut so she won’t have to eat the broccoli,”

“Come on, lady, you’re like a kid pretending her mouth is stitched shut so she won’t have to eat the broccoli,” Cynthia said. “Everything we saw dovetails with what Mr. Marinville there saw before us, and Mary saw before him, and the Carvers saw before them. Right down to the knocked-over piece of picket fence where Entragian greased the barber, or whoever he was. So quit the I’m-a-scientist crap for awhile. We’re all on the same page; you’re the one that’s on a different one.” “But I didn’t see any of these things!” Audrey almost wailed. “What did you see?” Ralph asked. “Tell us.”

“All right,” it told the cougar. “Go on, now. Wait until it’s time. I’ll listen with you.” The cougar made its whining, mewing sound again, licked with its rough tongue at the hand of the thing wearing Ellen Carver’s body, then turned and padded out of the room. It resumed the chair and leaned back in it. It closed Ellen’s eyes and listened to the ceaseless rattle of sand against the windows, and let part of itself go with the animal.

There were cars and trucks sitting dead in the street like toys, all zigzagged here and there, at least a dozen of them. There was an El Camino truck turned on its side up by the hardware store.

“I didn’t run to the car and I didn’t go speeding into town, but I was in shock, just the same. I remember feeling around in the glove compartment for my cigarettes, even though I haven’t smoked in five years. Then I saw two people go running through the intersection. You know, under the blinker-light?” They nodded. “The town’s new police-car came roaring through right after them. Entragian was driving it, but I didn’t know that then. There were three or four gunshots, and the people he was chasing were thrown onto the sidewalk, one right by the grocery store, the other just past it. There was blood. A lot. He never slowed, just went on through the intersection, heading west, and pretty soon I heard more shots. I’m pretty sure I heard him yelling ‘Yee-haw,’ too. “I wanted to help the people he’d shot if I could. I drove up a little way, parked, and got out of my car. That’s probably what saved my life, getting out of my car. Because everything that moved, Entragian killed it. Anyone. Anything. Everything. There were cars and trucks sitting dead in the street like toys, all zigzagged here and there, at least a dozen of them. There was an El Camino truck turned on its side up by the hardware store. 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. He didn’t want anyone wandering into town and wondering what had happened, that’s what I think. He hasn’t done much more than sweep the mess under the rug, but it’ll hold for awhile. Especially with this goddam storm.” “Which wasn’t forecast,” Steve said thoughtfully.

It’s Vietnam, that’s all, coming at you like an acid flashback. All you need now to complete the circle is a transistor radio sticking out of someone’s pocket, playing “People Are Strange” or “Pictures of Matchstick Men.”

“I started wiggling out from under the desk, telling myself not to panic if I got a little stuck, and that was when I heard somebody come into the front of the store, and I yanked myself back under the desk again. It was him. I knew it just by the way he walked. It was the sound of a man in boots.

There are all kinds of stories about it. One is that they dug up a waisin, a kind of ancient earth-spirit, and it tore the mine down. Another is that they made the tommyknockers mad.”

“Anyway, they were a hundred and fifty feet down—almost twice as deep as when the white miners threw down their picks—when the cave-in happened. There are all kinds of stories about it. One is that they dug up a waisin, a kind of ancient earth-spirit, and it tore the mine down. Another is that they made the tommyknockers mad.” “What’re tommyknockers?” David asked. “Troublemakers,” Johnny said. “The underground version of gremlins.” “Three things,” Audrey said from her place at stage-right. She was nibbling a pretzel. “First, you call that sort of mine-work a drift, not a shaft. Second, you drive a driftway, you don’t sink it. Third, it was a cave-in, pure and simple. No tommyknockers, no earth-spirits.” “Rationalism speaks,” Johnny said. “The spirit of the century. Hurrah!” “I wouldn’t go ten feet into that kind of ground,” Audrey said, “no sane person would, and there they were, a hundred and fifty feet deep, forty miners, a couple of bossmen, at least five ponies, all of them chipping and tromping and yelling, doing everything but setting off dynamite. What’s amazing is how long the tommyknockers protected them from their own idiocy!”

“When the cave-in finally did happen, it happened in what should have been a good place,”

“When the cave-in finally did happen, it happened in what should have been a good place,” Billingsley resumed. “The roof fell in about sixty feet from the adit.” He glanced at David. “That’s what you call the entrance to a mine, son. The miners got up that far from below, and there they were stopped by twenty feet of fallen hornfels, skarn, and Devonian shale. The whistle went off, and the folks from town came up the hill to see what had happened. Even the whores and the gamblers came up. They could hear the Chinamen inside screaming, begging to be dug out before the rest of it came down. Some said they sounded like they were fighting with each other. But no one wanted to go in and start digging. That squealing sound hornfels makes when the ground’s uneasy was louder than ever, and the roof was bowed down in a couple of places between the adit and the first rockfall.” “Could those places have been shored up?” Steve asked. “Sure, but nobody wanted to take the responsibility for doing it. Two days later, the president and vice president of Diablo Mines showed up with a couple of mining engineers from Reno. They had a picnic lunch outside the adit while they talked over what to do, my dad told me. Ate it spread out on linen while inside that shaft—pardon me, the drift—not ninety feet from where they were, forty human souls were screaming in the dark.

“Are you saying they deliberately buried forty people alive?”

“There had been cave-ins deeper in, folks said they sounded like something was farting or burping deep down in the earth, but the Chinese were still okay—still alive, anyway—behind the first rockfall, begging to be dug out. They were eating the mine-ponies by then, I imagine, and they’d had no water or light for two days. The mining engineers went in—poked their heads in, anyway—and said it was too dangerous for any sort of rescue operation.” “So what did they do?” Mary asked. Billingsley shrugged. “Set dynamite charges at the front of the mine and brought that down, too. Shut her up.” “Are you saying they deliberately buried forty people alive?” Cynthia asked. “Forty-two counting the line-boss and the foreman,” Billingsley said. “The line-boss was white, but a drunk and a man known to speak foul language to decent women. No one spoke up for him. The foreman either, far as that goes.” “How could they do it?” “Most were Chinese, ma’am,” Billingsley said, “so it was easy.”

“But that’s not quite the end of the story,” Billingsley said. “You know how stuff like this grows in folks’ minds over the years.” He put his hands together and wiggled the gnarled fingers. On the movie screen a gigantic bird, a legendary death-kite, seemed to soar. “It grows like shadows.”

“Three days later, two young Chinese fellows showed up at the Lady Day, a saloon which stood about where The Broken Drum is now. Shot seven men before they were subdued. Killed two. One of the ones they killed was the mining engineer from Reno who recommended that the shaft be brought down.”

“All of what he said was in the heathen Chinee, but one idea everyone got was that he and his friend had gotten out of the mine and come to take revenge on those who first put them there and then left them there.”

“The one still alive was shot in five or six places. That didn’t stop em from taking him out and hanging him the next day, though, after a little sawhorse trial in front of a kangaroo court. I bet he was a disappointment to them; according to the story, he was too crazy to have any idea what was happening. They had chains on his legs and cuffs on his wrists and still he fought them like a catamount, raving in his own language all the while.” Billingsley leaned forward a little, seeming to stare at David in particular. The boy looked back at him, eyes wide and fascinated. “All of what he said was in the heathen Chinee, but one idea everyone got was that he and his friend had gotten out of the mine and come to take revenge on those who first put them there and then left them there.” Billingsley shrugged. “Most likely they were just two young men from the so-called Chinese Encampment south of Ely, men not quite so passive or resigned as the others. By then the story of the cave-in had travelled, and folks in the Encampment would have known about it. Some probably had relatives in Desperation. And you have to remember that the one who actually survived the shootout didn’t have any English other than cuss-words. Most of what they got from him must have come from his gestures. And you know how people love that last twist of the knife in a tall tale. Why, it wasn’t a year before folks were saying the Chinese miners were still alive in there, that they could hear em talking and laughing and pleading to be let out, moaning and promising revenge.”

“Anyway, that’s the story,” Billingsley said, “miners buried alive, two get out, both insane by then, and they try to take their revenge. Later on, ghosts in the ground. If that ain’t a tale for a stormy night, I don’t know what is.” He looked across at Audrey, and on his face was a sly drunk’s smile. “You been diggin up there, miss. You new folks. Haven’t come across any short bones, have you?”

The cougar’s eyes opened. She got up. Her tail began switching restlessly from side to side. It was almost time.

Tak! Can ah wan me. Ah lah. The cougar’s eyes opened. She got up. Her tail began switching restlessly from side to side. It was almost time. Her ears cocked forward, twitching, at the sound of someone entering the room behind the white glass. She looked up at it, all rapt attention, a net of measurement and focus. Her leap would have to be perfect to carry her through, and perfection was exactly what the voice in her head demanded. She waited, that small, squalling growl once more rising up from her throat . . . but now it came out of her mouth as well as from her nostrils, because her muzzle was wrinkled back to show her teeth. Little by little, she began to tense down on her haunches. Almost time. Almost time. Tak ah ten.

But how was Entragian different? And why did he, Billingsley, somehow feel that the change in the deputy was important, perhaps vital, to them right now?

He now believed that one of the scariest lessons this nightmare had to offer was how lethally unprepared for survival they all were. Yet they had survived. Most of them, anyway. So far.

“It’s the cop’s language,” he said. He cast his peculiarly efficient recollection back to the moment when the cop had apparently sicced a buzzard on him. “Timoh!” he snapped at Audrey Wyler. “Candy-latch!”

“Tak ah lah!” The woman spoke in a voice that was both frightening and powerful, nothing like her earlier one, her storytelling voice—that one had been low and often hesitant. To Johnny, this one seemed only a step or two above a dog’s bark. And was she laughing? He thought that at least part of her was. And what of that strange, swimming darkness just below the surface of her skin? Was he really seeing that? “Min! Min! Min en tow!” Cynthia cast a bewildered glance at Steve. “What’s she saying?” Steve shook his head. She looked at Johnny. “It’s the cop’s language,” he said. He cast his peculiarly efficient recollection back to the moment when the cop had apparently sicced a buzzard on him. “Timoh!” he snapped at Audrey Wyler. “Candy-latch!”

“Can tah!” she screamed. “Can tah, can tak, kill the boy, kill him now, kill him!”

Johnny took a step backward, meaning to do just that. Audrey reached into the pocket of her dress as he did and brought it out curled around a fistful of something. She stared at him—only at him, now, John Edward Marinville, Distinguished Novelist and Extraordinary Thinker—with her snarling beast’s eyes. She held her hand out, wrist up. “Can tah!” she cried . . . laughed. “Can tah, can tak! What you take is what you are! Of course! Can tah, can tak, mi tow! Take this! So tah!” When she opened her hand and showed him her offering, the emotional weather inside his head changed at once . . . and yet he still saw everything and sequenced it, just as he had when Sean Hutter’s goddamned Partymobile had rolled over. He had kept on recording everything then, when he had been sure he was going to die, and he went on recording everything now, when he was suddenly consumed with hate for the boy in his arms and overwhelmed by a desire to put something—his motorcycle key would do nicely—into the interfering little prayboy’s throat and open him like a can of beer. He thought at first that there were three odd-looking charms lying on her open palm—the sort of thing girls sometimes wore dangling from their bracelets. But they were too big, too heavy. Not charms but carvings, stone carvings, each about two inches long. One was a snake. The second was a buzzard with one wing chipped off. Mad, bulging eyes stared out at him from beneath its bald dome. The third was a rat on its hind legs. They all looked pitted and ancient. “Can tah!” she screamed. “Can tah, can tak, kill the boy, kill him now, kill him!” Steve stepped forward. With her attention and concentration fully fixed on Johnny, she saw him only at the last instant. He slapped the stones from her hand and they flew into the corner of the room. One—it was the snake—broke in two. Audrey screamed with horror and vexation.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, and in her choked and failing voice Steve heard a real woman, not this decaying monstrosity. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Don’t touch the can tahs. Whatever else you do, don’t touch the can tahs!”

Audrey’s formerly pretty face now drooped from the front of her skull in sweating wrinkles. Her staring eyeballs hung from widening sockets. Her skin was blackening and splitting. Yet none of this was the worst; the worst came as Steve dropped the hideously warm thing he was holding and she lurched to her feet. “I’m very sorry,” she said, and in her choked and failing voice Steve heard a real woman, not this decaying monstrosity. “I never meant to hurt anyone. Don’t touch the can tahs. Whatever else you do, don’t touch the can tahs!” Steve looked at Cynthia. She stared back, and he could read her mind in her wide eyes: I touched one. Twice. How lucky was I? Very, Steve thought. I think you were very lucky. I think we both were.

Now he could hear a plopping, pattering sound as parts of her began to liquefy and fall off in a kind of flesh rain.

Audrey staggered toward them and away from the pitted gray stones. Steve could smell a rich odor of blood and decay. He reached out but couldn’t bring himself to actually put a restraining hand on her shoulder, even though she was headed for the stairs and the hallway . . . headed in the direction Ralph had taken his boy. He couldn’t bring himself to do it because he knew his fingers would sink in. Now he could hear a plopping, pattering sound as parts of her began to liquefy and fall off in a kind of flesh rain. She mounted the steps and lurched out through the door. Cynthia looked up at Steve for a moment, her faced pinched and white. He put his arm around her waist and followed Johnny up the stairs. Audrey made it about halfway down the short but steep flight of stairs leading to the second-floor hall, then fell. The sound of her inside her blood-soaked dress was grisly—a splashing sound, almost. Yet she was still alive. She began to crawl, her hair hanging in strings, mercifully obscuring most of her dangling face. At the far end, by the stairs leading down to the lobby, Ralph stood with David in his arms, staring at the oncoming creature.

“He’s all I got, miss,” Ralph said. “All that’s left of my family.”

Steve suddenly found himself hoping Mary Jackson was dead. That was awful, but in a case like this, dead might be better, mightn’t it? Better than being under the spell of the can tahs. Better than what apparently happened when the can tahs were taken away.

“There shall arise among you a prophet, and a dreamer of dreams,”

Desperation! I’m in Desperation, and this is a dream! I fell asleep while I was trying to pray, I’m upstairs in the old movie theater! “There shall arise among you a prophet, and a dreamer of dreams,” someone said. David looked across the street and saw a dead cat—a cougar—hanging from a speed-limit sign. The cougar had a human head. Audrey Wyler’s head. Her eyes rolled at him tiredly and he thought she was trying to smile. “But if he should say to you, Let us seek other gods, you shalt not hearken unto him.” He looked away, grimacing, and here, on his own side of Bear Street, was sweet Pie standing on the porch of his friend Brian’s house (Brian’s house had never been on Bear Street before, but now the rules had apparently changed). She was holding Melissa Sweetheart clasped in her arms. “He was Mr. Big Boogeyman after all,” she said. “You know that now, don’t you?” “Yes. I know, Pie.” “Walk a little faster, David. Mr. Big Boogeyman’s after you.”

“Fear me and turn aside from this path,” the cop in the mouth of the jackal said as David approached. “Mi tow, can de lach: fear the unformed. There are other gods than yours—can tah, can tak. You know I speak the truth.”

“The same God who let Entragian push Kirsten downstairs and then hang her body on a hook for you to find. What God is this? Turn aside from him and embrace mine. Mine is at least honest about his cruelty.”

From the bushes at the side of the path stepped his mother. Her face was black and wrinkled, an ancient bag of dough. Her eyes drooped. The sight of her in this state filled him with sorrow and horror. “Yes, yes, your God is strong,” she said, “no argument there. But look what he’s done to me. Is this strength worth admiring? Is this a God worth having?” She held her hands out to him, displaying her rotting palms. “God didn’t do that,” David said, and began to cry. “The policeman did it!” “But God let it happen,” she countered, and one of her eyeballs dropped out of her head. “The same God who let Entragian push Kirsten downstairs and then hang her body on a hook for you to find. What God is this? Turn aside from him and embrace mine. Mine is at least honest about his cruelty.”

“There’s no heaven, no afterlife at all . . . not for such as us. Only the gods—can taks, can tahs, can—”

But this whole conversation—not just the petitioning but the haughty, threatening tone of it—was so foreign to David’s memory of his mother that he began to walk forward again. Had to walk forward again. The mummy was behind him, and the mummy was slow, yes, but he reckoned that this was one of the ways in which the mummy caught up with his victims: by using his ancient Egyptian magic to put obstacles in their path. “Stay away from me!” the rotting mother-thing screamed. “Stay away or I’ll turn you to stone in the mouth of a god! You’ll be can tah in can tak!” “You can’t do that,” David said patiently, “and you’re not my mother. My mother’s with my sister, in heaven, with God.” “What a joke!” the rotting thing cried indignantly. Its voice was gargly now, like the cop’s voice. It was spitting blood and teeth as it talked. “Heaven’s a joke, the kind of thing your Reverend Martin would spiel happily on about for hours, if you kept buying him shots and beers—it’s no more real than Tom Billingsley’s fishes and horses! You won’t tell me you swallowed it, will you? A smart boy like you? Did you? Oh Davey! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!” What she did was smile furiously. “There’s no heaven, no afterlife at all . . . not for such as us. Only the gods—can taks, can tahs, can—”

“The way Marinville tried to speak to the coyotes is sort of the way we’re speaking now: si em, tow en can de lach. Do you understand?”

“Brian can’t be here,” the dark-haired man said pleasantly. “Brian’s alive, you see.” “I don’t get you.” But he was afraid he did. “What did you tell Marinville when he tried to talk to the coyotes?” It took David a moment to remember, and that wasn’t surprising, because what he’d said hadn’t seemed to come from him but through him. “I said not to speak to them in the language of the dead. Except it wasn’t really me who—” The man in the sunglasses waved this off. “The way Marinville tried to speak to the coyotes is sort of the way we’re speaking now: si em, tow en can de lach. Do you understand?” “Yes. ‘We speak the language of the unformed.’ The language of the dead.” David began to shiver. “I’m dead, too, then . . . aren’t I? I’m dead, too.” “Nope. Wrong. Lose one turn.” The man turned up the volume on his radio—“I said doctor . . . Mr. M.D. . . .”—and smiled. “The Rascals,” he said. “Felix Cavaliere on vocals. Cool?” “Yes,” David said, and meant it. He felt he could listen to the song all day. It made him think of the beach, and cute girls in two-piece bathing suits.

The man in the Yankees cap listened a moment longer, then turned the radio off. When he did, David saw a ragged scar on the underside of his right wrist, as if at some point he had tried to kill himself. Then it occurred to him that the man might have done a lot more than just try; wasn’t this a place of the dead?

The man in the Yankees cap listened a moment longer, then turned the radio off. When he did, David saw a ragged scar on the underside of his right wrist, as if at some point he had tried to kill himself. Then it occurred to him that the man might have done a lot more than just try; wasn’t this a place of the dead? He suppressed a shiver. The man took off his Yankees cap, wiped the back of his neck with it, put it back on, and looked at David seriously. “This is the Land of the Dead, but you’re an exception. You’re special. Very.” “Who are you?” “It doesn’t matter. Just another member of the Young Rascals-Felix Cavaliere Fan Club, if it comes to that,” the man said. He looked around, sighed, grimaced a little. “But I’ll tell you one thing, young man: it doesn’t surprise me at all that the Land of the Dead should turn out to be located in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio.” He looked back at David, his faint smile fading. “I guess it’s time we got down to business. Time is short. You’re going to have a bit of a sore throat when you wake up, by the way, and you may feel disoriented at first; they’re moving you to the back of the truck Steve Ames drove into town. They feel a strong urge to vacate The American West—take it any way you want—and I can’t say I blame them.”

Why are you on earth? Why did God make you?”

“Why are you here?” “To make sure you know why you’re here, David . . . to begin with, at least. So tell me: why are you here?” “I don’t know what you’re—” “Oh please,” the man with the radio said. His mirror shades flashed in the sun. “If you don’t, you’re in deep shit. Why are you on earth? Why did God make you?” David looked at him in consternation. “Come on, come on!” the man said impatiently. “These are easy questions. Why did God make you? Why did God make me? Why did God make anyone?” “To love and serve him,” David said slowly. “Okay, good. It’s a start, anyway.

With the greatest reluctance, David said: “God is cruel.”

And what is God? What’s your experience of the nature of God?” “I don’t want to say.” David looked down at his hands, then up at the grave, intent man—the strangely familiar man—in the sunglasses. “I’m scared I’ll get in dutch.” He hesitated, then dragged out what he was really afraid of: “I’m scared you’re God.” The man uttered a short, rueful laugh. “In a way, that’s pretty funny, but never mind. Let’s stay focused here. What do you know of the nature of God, David? What is your experience?” With the greatest reluctance, David said: “God is cruel.” He looked down at his hands again and counted slowly to five. When he had reached it and still hadn’t been fried by a lightning-bolt, he looked up again. The man in the jeans and tee-shirt was still grave and intent, but David saw no anger in him. “That’s right, God is cruel. We slow down, the mummy always catches us in the end, and God is cruel.

Why is God cruel, David?”

Why is God cruel, David?” For a moment he didn’t answer, and then something Reverend Martin had said came to him—the TV in the corner had been broadcasting a soundless spring-training baseball game that day. “God’s cruelty is refining,” he said. “We’re the mine and God is the miner?” “Well—” “And all cruelty is good? God is good and cruelty is good?” “No, hardly any of it’s good!” David said. For a single horrified second he saw Pie, dangling from the hook on the wall, Pie who walked around ants on the sidewalk because she didn’t want to hurt them. “What is cruelty done for evil?” “Malice. Who are you, sir?” “Never mind. Who is the father of malice?” “The devil . . . or maybe those other gods my mother talked about.” “Never mind can tah and can tak, at least for now. We have bigger fish to fry, so pay attention.

What is faith?”

What is faith?” That one was easy. “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” “Yeah. And what is the spiritual state of the faithful?” “Um . . . love and acceptance. I think.” “And what is the opposite of faith?” That was tougher—a real hairball, in fact. Like one of those damned reading-achievement tests. Pick a, b, c, or d. Except here you didn’t even get the choices. “Disbelief?” he ventured. “No. Not disbelief but unbelief. The first is natural, the second willful. And when one is in unbelief, David, what is that one’s spiritual state?” He thought about it, then shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Yes you do.” He thought about it and realized he did. “The spiritual state of unbelief is desperation.”

“Because it’s an affront to God. There is no other reason. Nothing hidden or held back, no fine print. The poisoned field is a perversity and an affront to God.

Look down, David!” He did, and was shocked to see that the Viet Cong Lookout was no longer in the tree. It now floated, like a magic carpet made out of boards, above a vast, blighted countryside. He could see buildings here and there amid rows of gray and listless plants. One was a trailer with a bumper-sticker proclaiming the owner a Snapple-drinkin’, Clinton-bashin’ son of a bitch; another was the mining Quonset they’d seen on the way into town; another was the Municipal Building; another was Bud’s Suds. The grinning leprechaun with the pot of gold under his arm peered out of a dead and strangulated jungle. “This is the poisoned field,” the man in the reflector sunglasses said. “What’s gone on here makes Agent Orange look like sugar candy. There will be no sweetening this earth. It must be eradicated—sown with salt and plowed under. Do you know why?” “Because it will spread?” “No. It can’t. Evil is both fragile and stupid, dying soon after the ecosystem it’s poisoned.” “Then why—” “Because it’s an affront to God. There is no other reason. Nothing hidden or held back, no fine print. The poisoned field is a perversity and an affront to God.

At the site of the landslide, and not too far from the broad gravel road leading down from the rim of the pit, there was a black and gaping hole.

Now look down again.” He did. The buildings had slipped behind them. Now the Viet Cong Lookout floated above a vast pit. From this perspective, it looked like a sore which has rotted through the skin of the earth and into its underlying flesh. The sides sloped inward and downward in neat zigzags like stairs; in a way, looking into this place was like looking into (walk a little faster) a pyramid turned inside out. There were pines in the hills south of the pit, and some growth high up around the edges, but the pit itself was sterile—not even juniper grew here. On the near side—it would be the north face, David supposed, if the poisoned field was the town of Desperation—these neat setbacks had broken through near the bottom. Where they had been there was now a long slope of stony rubble. At the site of the landslide, and not too far from the broad gravel road leading down from the rim of the pit, there was a black and gaping hole. The sight of it made David profoundly uneasy. It was as if a monster buried in the desert ground had opened one eye. The landslide surrounding it made him uneasy, too. Because it looked somehow . . . well . . . planned.

Parked between the two buildings was Collie Entragian’s road-dusty Caprice. The driver’s door stood open and the domelight was on, illuminating an interior that looked like an abattoir.

At the bottom of the pit, just below the ragged hole, was a parking area filled with ore-freighters, diggers, pickup trucks, and tread-equipped vehicles that looked sort of like World War II tanks. Nearby stood a rusty Quonset hut with a stove-stack sticking crooked out of the roof, WELCOME TO RATTLESNAKE #2, read the sign on the door. PROVIDING JOBS AND TAX-DOLLARS TO CENTRAL NEVADA SINCE 1951. Off to the left of the metal building was a squat concrete cube. The sign on this one was briefer: POWDER MAGAZINE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY Parked between the two buildings was Collie Entragian’s road-dusty Caprice. The driver’s door stood open and the domelight was on, illuminating an interior that looked like an abattoir. On the dash, a plastic bear with a noddy head had been stuck beside the compass. Then all that was sliding behind them. “You know this place, don’t you, David?” “Is it the China Pit? It is, isn’t it?” “Yes.”

Beyond the parking area and the buildings were vast heaps of even more radically crumbled rock, piled on black plastic.

They swooped closer to the side, and David saw that the pit was, in its way, even more desolate than the poisoned field. There were no whole stones or outcrops in the earth, at least not that he could see; everything had been reduced to an awful yellow rubble. Beyond the parking area and the buildings were vast heaps of even more radically crumbled rock, piled on black plastic. “Those are waste dumps,” his guide remarked. “The stuff piled on the plastic is gangue—spoil. But the company’s not ready to let it rest, even now. There’s more in it, you see . . . gold, silver, molybdenum, platinum. And copper, of course. Mostly it’s copper. Deposits so diffuse it’s as if they were blown in there like smoke. Mining it used to be uneconomic, but as the world’s major deposits of ore and metal are depleted, what used to be uneconomic becomes profitable. The oversized Hefty bags are collection pads—the stuff they want precipitates out onto them, and they just scrape it off. It’s a leaching process—spell it either way and it comes to the same. They’ll go on working the ground until all of this, which used to be a mountain almost eight thousand feet high, is just dust in the wind.”

“What are those big steps coming down the side of the pit?”

“What are those big steps coming down the side of the pit?” “Benches. They serve as ringroads for heavy equipment around the pit, but their major purpose is to minimize earthslides.” “It doesn’t look like it worked very well back there.” David hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Up here, either.” They were nearing another area where the look of vast stairs descending into the earth was obliterated by a tilted range of crumbled rock. “That’s a slope failure.” The Viet Cong Lookout swooped above the slide area. Beyond it, David saw networks of black stuff that at first looked like cobwebs. As they drew nearer, he saw that the strands of what looked like cobwebbing were actually PVC pipe.

Do you see what they replaced the rainbirds with, David? The big pipes are distribution heads—can taks, let’s say.”

“Just lately it’s been a switchover from rainbirds to emitters.” His guide spoke in the tone of one who recites rather than speaks. David had a moment of déjà vu, then realized why: the man was repeating what Audrey Wyler had already said. “A few eagles died.” “A few?” David asked, giving Mr. Billingsley’s line. “All right, about forty, in all. No big deal in terms of the species; there’s no shortage of eagles in Nevada. Do you see what they replaced the rainbirds with, David? The big pipes are distribution heads—can taks, let’s say.” “Big gods.” “Yes! And those little hollow cords that stretch between them like mesh, those are emitters. Can tahs. They drip weak sulfuric acid. It frees the ore . . . and rots the ground. Hang on, David.”

“This is a blast-face, and those are blast-holes,” his new acquaintance lectured. “The active mining is going on

They sank into the pit again and passed above the rusty Quonset with the stove-stack, the powder magazine, and the cluster of machinery where the road ended. Up the slope, above the gaping hole, was a wide area pocked with other, much smaller holes. David thought there had to be fifty of them at least, probably more. From each poked a yellow-tipped stick. “Looks like the world’s biggest gopher colony.” “This is a blast-face, and those are blast-holes,” his new acquaintance lectured. “The active mining is going on right here. Each of those holes is three feet in diameter and about thirty feet deep. When you’re getting ready to shoot, you lower a stick of dynamite with a blasting cap on it to the bottom of each hole. That’s the igniter. Then you pour in a couple of wheelbarrows’ worth of ANFO—stands for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

“That material is trucked away to the leach pads, the distribution heads and emitters—can tah, can tak—are laid over it, and the rotting process begins. Voilà, there you have it, leach-ore mining at its very finest. But see what the last blast-pattern uncovered, David!”

The man in the Yankees cap pointed to the powder magazine. “Lots of ANFO in there. No dynamite—they used up the last on the day all this started to happen—but plenty of ANFO.” “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.” “Never mind, just listen. Do you see the blast-holes?” “Yes. They look like eyes.” “That’s right, holes like eyes. They’re sunk into the porphyry, which is crystalline. When the ANFO is detonated, it shatters the rock. The shattered stuff contains the ore. Get it?” “Yes, I think so.” “That material is trucked away to the leach pads, the distribution heads and emitters—can tah, can tak—are laid over it, and the rotting process begins. Voilà, there you have it, leach-ore mining at its very finest. But see what the last blast-pattern uncovered, David!” He pointed at the big hole, and David felt an unpleasant, debilitating coldness begin to creep through him. The hole seemed to stare up at him with a kind of idiot invitation. “What is it?” he whispered, but he supposed he knew. “Rattlesnake Number One. Also known as the China Mine or the China Shaft or the China Drift. The last series of shots uncovered it. To say the crew was surprised would be an understatement, because nobody in the Nevada mining business really believes that old story. By the turn of the century, the Diablo Company was claiming that Number One was simply shut down when the vein played out. But it’s been here, David. All along. And now—” “Is it haunted?” David asked, shivering. “It is, isn’t it?” “Oh yes,” the man in the Yankees cap said, turning his silvery no-eyes on David. “Yes indeed.”

“Is it haunted?”

“Take me back,” David whispered. “I’m tired of all this death.”

“Whatever you brought me up here for, I don’t want to hear it!” David cried. “I want you to take me back! Back to my dad! I hate this! I hate being in the Land of the—” He broke off as a horrible thought struck him. The Land of the Dead, that was what the man had said. He’d called David an exception. But that meant— “Reverend Martin . . . I saw him on my way to the Woods. Is he . . .” The man looked briefly down at his old-fashioned radio, then looked back up again and nodded. “Two days after you left, David.” “Was he drunk?” “Toward the end he was always drunk. Like Billingsley.” “Was it suicide?” “No,” the man in the Yankees cap said, and put a kindly hand on the back of David’s neck. It was warm, not the hand of a dead person. “At least, not conscious suicide. He and his wife went to the beach. They took a picnic. He went in the water too soon after lunch, and swam out too far.” “Take me back,” David whispered. “I’m tired of all this death.”

“You were put on earth to love God—”

“The poisoned field is an affront to God,” the man said. “I know it’s a bummer, David, but—” “Then let God clean it up!” David cried. “It’s not fair for him to come to me after he killed my mother and my sister—” “He didn’t—” “I don’t care! I don’t care! Even if he didn’t, he stood aside and let it happen!” “That’s not true, either.” David shut his eyes and clapped his hands to his ears. He didn’t want to hear any more. He refused to hear any more. Yet the man’s voice came through anyway. It was relentless. He would be able to escape it no more than Jonah had been able to escape God. God was as relentless as a bloodhound on a fresh scent. And God was cruel. “Why are you on earth?” The voice seemed to come from inside his head now. “I don’t hear you! I don’t hear you!” “You were put on earth to love God—” “No!” “—and serve him.” “No! Fuck God! Fuck his love! Fuck his service!” “God can’t make you do anything you don’t want to—” “Stop it! I won’t listen, I won’t decide! Do you hear? Do you—” “Shh—listen!” Not quite against his will, David listened.

“My mom’s dead, but Mary’s not,” David said. “She’s still alive. She’s in the pit.”