CHAPTER 48 He came staggering and flapping up a long upgrade, the heat of the sun stewing his stomach and

CHAPTER 48

He came staggering and flapping up a long upgrade, the heat of the sun stewing his stomach and baking his brains. The interstate shimmered with reflected radiant heat. He had been Donald Merwin Elbert once, now he was Trashcan Man forever and ever, and he beheld the fabled City, Seven-in- One, Cibola. How long had he been traveling west? How long since The Kid? God might know; Trashcan Man did not. It had been days. Nights. Oh, he remembered the nights! He stood, swaying in his rags, looking down at Cibola, the City that is Promised, the City of Dreams. He was a wreck. The wrist that he had broken when he leaped the railing of the stairway bolted to the Cheery Oil tank had not healed right, and that wrist was a grotesque lump wrapped in a dirty, unraveling Ace bandage. All the bones in the fingers of that hand had pulled up somehow, turning the hand into a Quasimodo claw. His left arm was a slowly healing mass of burn tissue from elbow to shoulder. It no longer smelled bad and suppurated, but the new flesh was hairless and pink, like the skin of a cheap doll. His grinning, mad face was sunburned, peeling, scruffy-bearded, and covered with scabs from the header he had taken when the front wheel of his bike had parted company from the frame. He wore a faded blue J. C. Penney workshirt that was marked with expanding rings of sweatstain and a dirty pair of corduroy trousers. His pack, which had been new not so long ago, had now taken on the style and substance of its owner-one strap had broken, Trash had knotted it as best he could, and the pack now hung askew on his back like a shutter on a haunted house. It was dusty, its creases filled with desert sand. On his feet were Keds now bound together with hanks of twine, and from them his scratched and sandchafed ankles rose innocent of socks. He stared at the city far ahead and below. He turned his face up to the savage gunmetal sky and to the sun that blared down, coating him with furnace heat. He screamed. It was a savage, triumphant scream, very much like the one Susan Stern had uttered when she split Roger Rabbit's skull x With the butt of his own shotgun. He began to do a shuffling, victorious dance on the hot, shimmering surface of Interstate 15 while the desert sirocco blew sand across the highway and the blue peaks of the Pahranagat and Spotted ranges sawed their teeth indifferently at the brilliant sky as they had done for millennia. Off the other side of the highway, a Lincoln Continental and a T-Bird were now almost buried in sand, their occupants mummified behind safety glass. Up ahead on Trashcan's side was an overturned pickup, everything covered but the wheels and the rocker panels. He danced. His feet, clad in the lashed and bulging Keds, bumped up and down on the highway in a drunken sort of hornpipe. The tattered tail of his shirt flapped. His canteen clunked against his pack. The unraveling ends of the Ace bandage fluttered in the hot breath of the wind. Pink, smooth burn tissue gleamed rawly. Clocksprings of veins bulged at his temples. He had been in God's frying pan for a week now, moving southwest across Utah, the tip of Arizona, and then into Nevada, and he was just as mad as a hatter. As he danced, he sang monotonously, the same words over and over, to a tune that had been popular when he was in the Terre Haute institution, a song called "Down to the Nightclub" that had been done by a black group called Tower of Power. But the words were his own. He sang: "Ci-a-bola, Ci-a-bola, bump-ty, bump-ty bump! Ci-a-bola, Ci-a-bola, bump-ty, bump-ty, bump!" Each final "bump!" was followed by a little skipping leap until the heat made everything swim and the harsh bright sky went twilight gray and he collapsed on the road, half fainting, his taxed heart

269 thundering crazily in his arid chest. With the last of his strength, blubbering and grinning, he pulled himself over the overturned pickup truck and lay in its diminishing shade, shivering in the heat and panting. "Cibola!" He croaked. "Bumpty-bumpty-bump!" He fumbled his canteen off his shoulder with his claw hand and shook it. The canteen was nearly empty. Didn't matter. He would drink every single drop and lie up here until the sun went down, and then he would walk down the highway and into Cibola, fabled City. Seven-in-One. Tonight he would drink from everspringing fountains faced in gold. But not until the killer sun went down. God was the greatest firebug of them all. A long time ago a boy named Donald Merwin Elbert had burned up old lady Semple's pension check. That same boy had torched the Methodist Church in Powtanville, and if there had been anything left of Donald Merwin Elbert in this shell, it had surely been cremated with the oiltanks in Gary, Indiana. Over nine dozen of them, and they had gone up like a walloping string of firecrackers. Just in time for the Fourth of July, too. Nice. And in the wake of that conflagration, only the Trashcan Man had been left, his left arm a cracked and boiling stew, a fire inside his body that was never going to go out... at least not until his body was so much blackened charcoal. And tonight he would drink the water of Cibola, yes, and it would taste like wine. He upended the canteen and his throat worked as the last of his water, pisswarm, gurgled down into his belly. When it was gone, he threw the canteen out into the desert. Sweat had broken on his forehead like dew. He lay shivering deliciously with water cramps. "Cibola!" He muttered. "Cibola! I'm coming! I'm coming! I'll do whatever you want! My life for you! Bumptybumpty-bump!" Drowsiness began to steal over him now that his thirst was a little slaked. He was nearly asleep when a polar thought slipped up through the floor of his mind like an icy stiletto blade: What if Cibola had been a mirage? "No," he muttered. "No, uh-uh, no." But simple denial would not drive the thought off. The blade probed and poked, keeping sleep at arm's length. What if he had drunk the last of his water in celebration of a mirage? In his own way he recognized his madness, and that was the sort of thing mad people did, right enough. If it had been a mirage, he would die here in the desert and the buzzards would dine on him. At last, unable to bear the hideous possibility any longer, he staggered to his feet and made his way back to the road, fighting off the waves of faintness and nausea that wanted to take him down. At the breast of the hill he stared out anxiously into the long flat plain below, studded with yucca and tumbleweed and devil's mantilla. His breath caught in his throat and unraveled into a sigh, like a sleeve of fabric on a spike. It was there! Cibola, fabled of old, searched for by many, found by the Trashcan Man! Far down in the desert, surrounded by blue mountains, blue itself in the haze of distance, its towers and avenues gleamed in the desert day. There were palm trees... he could see palm trees... and movement... and water! "Oh, Cibola..." he crooned, and staggered back to the shade of the pickup. It was farther than it looked, he knew that. Tonight, after God's torch had left the sky, he would walk as he never had before. He would reach Cibola and his first act would be to plunge headlong into the first fountain he came to. Then he would find him, the man who had bade him come here. The man who had drawn him across the plains and the mountains and finally into the desert, all in a month's time and despite his horribly burned arm. He who Is—the dark man, the hardcase. He waited for Trashcan Man in Cibola, and his were the armies of the night, his were the white-faced riders of the dead who would sweep out of the west and into the very face of the rising sun. They would come raving and grinning and stinking of sweat and gunpowder. There would be shrieks, and Trashcan cared very little for shrieks, there would be rape and subjugation, things about which he cared even less, there would be murder, which was immaterial— —and there would be a Great Burning. About that he cared very much. In the dreams the dark man came to him and spread out his arms from a high place and showed Trashcan a country in flames. Cities going up like bombs. Cultivated fields drawn in lines of fire. The very rivers of Chicago and Pittsburgh and Detroit and Birmingham ablaze with floating oil. And the dark man had told him a very simple thing in his dreams, a thing which had brought him running: I will set you high in my artillery. You are the man I want. He rolled on his side, his cheeks and eyelids chafed and irritated from the blowing sand. He had been losing hopeyes, ever since the wheel had fallen off his bike he had been losing hope. God,the God of father-killing sheriffs, the God of Carley Yates-, was stronger than the dark man after all, it seemed. Yet he had kept his faith and had kept on. And at last, when it seemed he was going to

270 burn up m this desert before he ever got to Cibola where the dark man waited, he had seen it far below, dreaming in the sun. "Cibola!" he whispered, and slept.

The first dream had come to him in Gary, over a month ago, after he had burned his arm. He had gone to sleep that night sure that he was going to die; no one could be burned as badly as he was and live. A refrain had beaten its way into his head: Live 6y the torch, die by the torch. Live by it, die by it. His legs had given out in a small city park and he had fallen down, his left arm sprawled out and away from him like a dead thing, the shirtsleeve smoked off. The pain was giant, incredible. He had never dreamed there could be such pain in the world. He had been running gleefully from one set of oil tanks to the next, setting up crude timing devices, each constructed of a steel pipe and a flammable paraffin mixture separated from a little pool of acid by a steel tab. He had been pushing these devices into the outflow pipes on top of the tanks. When the acid ate through the steel the paraffin would ignite, and that would cause the tanks to blow. He had planned to get over to the west side of Gary, near the confusion of interchanges leading various roads toward Chicago or Milwaukee, before any of them blew. He wanted to watch the show as the entire dirty city went up in a firestorm. But he had misjudged the last device or constructed it badly. It had gone off while he worked at opening the cap on the outflow with a pipewrench. There had been a blinding white flare as burning paraffin belched out of the tube, coating his left arm with fire. This was no painless flameglove of lighter fluid, to be waved in the air and then shaken out like a big match. This was agony, like having your arm in a volcano. Shrieking, he had run wildly around the top of the oiltank, careering off the waist-high railings like a human pinball. If the railings had not been there, he would have plunged over the side and fallen, turning over and over, like a torch dropped down a well. Only accident saved his life; his feet tangled in each other and he fell with his left arm pinned under him, smothering the flames. He sat up, still half-crazy with the pain. Later he would think that only blind luck-or the dark man's purpose-had saved him from being burned to death. Most of the paraffin jet had missed him. So he was thankful-but his thankfulness only came later. At the time he could only cry out and rock back and forth, holding his crisped arm out from his body as the skin smoked and crackled and contracted. Vaguely, as the light faded from the sky, it occurred to him that he had already set a dozen of the time-devices. They might go anytime. Dying and being out of his exquisite misery would be wonderful; dying in flames would be utter horror. Somehow he had crawled down from the tank and had staggered away, weaving and lunging in and out of the dead traffic, holding his barbecued left arm away from his body. By the time he reached a small park near the center of town, it was sunset. He sat on the grass between two shuffleboard courts, trying to think what you did for burns. Put butter on them, that's what Donald Merwin Elbert's mother would have said. But that was for a scald, or when the bacon fat jumped extra high and spattered you with hot grease. He couldn't imagine putting butter on the cracked and blackened mess between his elbow and shoulder; couldn't even imagine touching it. Kill himself. That was it, that was the ticket. He would put himself out of his misery like an old dog There was a sudden gigantic explosion on the east side of town, as if the fabric of existence had been torn briskly in two. A liquid pillar of fire shot up against dusk's deepening indigo. He had to squeeze his eyes to watering, protesting slits against it. Even in his agony, the fire pleased him... more, it delighted, fulfilled him. The fire was the best medicine, even better than the morphine he found the next day (as a trusty in prison he had worked in the infirmary as well as the library and the motorpool, and he knew about morphine and Elavil and Darvon Complex). He did not connect his present agony to the pillar of fire. He only knew that the fire was good, the fire was beautiful, the fire was something he needed and would always need. Wonderful fire! Moments later a second oiltank exploded and even here, three miles away, he could feel the warm push of expanding air. Another tank went, and another. A slight pause, and then six of them went up in a rattling string and now it was too bright over there to look at but he looked anyway, grinning, his eyes full of yellow flames, his wounded arm forgotten, thoughts of suicide forgotten. It took better than two hours for all of them to go up, and by then dark had fallen but it wasn't dark, the night was yellow and orange and feverish with flames. The entire eastern arc of the horizon danced with fire. It reminded him of a Classic funnybook he had owned as a child, an adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Now, years later, the boy who had owned that funnybook was gone, but the Trashcan Man was here, and Trash owned the wonderful, terrible secret of the Martians' deathray.

271 It was time to leave the park. Already the temperature had risen ten degrees. He ought to go west, stay ahead of the fire the way he had in Powtanville, racing the expanding arc of destruction. But he was in no condition to race. And. so he fell asleep on the grass, and the firelight played over the face of a tired, ill-used child. In his dream, the dark man came in his hooded robe, his face invisible... yet the Trashcan Man thought he had seen this man before. When the loungers in the candy store and the beer parlor back in Powtanville catcalled at him, it seemed that this man had been among them, silent and thoughtful. When he had worked at the Scrubba-Dubba (soap the headlights, knock the wipers, soap the rocker panels, hey mister you want hotwax on that?), wearing the sponge glove on his right hand until the hand beneath looked like a pale dead fish, the nails as white as fresh ivory, it seemed he had seen this man's face, fiery and grinning with lunatic joy from beneath the rippling film of water rolling down the windshield. When the sheriff had sent him away to the nuthatch in Terre Haute, he had been the grinning psych aide standing above his head in the room where they gave you the shocks, his hands on the controls (I'm gonna fry your brains out, boy, help you on your way as you change from Donald Merwin Elbert into the Trashcan Man, would you like hotwax on that?), ready to send about a thousand volts zizzing into his brain. He knew this dark man all right, his was the face you could never quite see, his the hands which dealt all spades from a dead deck, his the eyes beyond the flames, his the grin from beyond the grave of the world. "I'll do whatever you want," he said gratefully in the dream. "My life for you!" The dark man had lifted his arms inside his robe, turning the robe into the shape of a black kite. They stood on a high place, and below them, America lay in flames. I will set you high in my artillery. You are the man I want. Then he saw an army of ten thousand raggle-taggle castoff men and women driving east, driving across the desert and into the mountains, a rough beast of an army whose time had come round at last; they loaded down trucks and jeeps and Wagoneers and campers and tanks; each man and woman wore a dark stone about his or her neck, and deep in some of those stones was a red shape that might have been an Eye or might have been a Key. And riding in their van, atop a giant tanker with pillow tires, he saw himself, and knew that the truck was filled with jellied napalm... and behind him, in column, were trucks loaded with pressure bombs and Teller mines and plastic explosive; flame throwers and flares and heat-seeking missiles; grenades and machine guns and rocket launchers. The dance of death was about to begin, and already the strings of the fiddles and guitars were smoking and the stench of brimstone and cordite filled the air. The dark man lifted his arms again and when he dropped them everything was cold and silent, the fires gone, even the ashes cold, and for just a moment he was only Donald Merwin Elbert again, small and afraid and confused. For just that moment he suspected he was just another pawn in the dark man's huge chess game, that he had been deceived. Then he saw the dark man's face was no longer entirely hidden; two dark red coals burned in the sunken pits where his eyes should have been, and illuminated a nose as narrow as a blade. "I'll do whatever you want," Trash said gratefully in the dream. "My life for you! My soul for you!" "I will set you to burn," the dark man said gravely. "You must come to my city and there all will be made clear." "Where? Where?" He was in an agony of hope and expectation. "West," the dark man said, fading. "West. Beyond the mountains." He woke up then, and it was still night and still bright. The flames were closer. The heat was stifling. Houses were exploding. The stars were gone, shrouded in a thick pall of oilsmoke. A fine rain of soot had begun. The shuffleboard courts were dusted with black snow. Now that he had a purpose, he found he could walk. He limped west, and from time to time he saw a few others leaving Gary, looking back over their shoulders at the conflagration. Fools, Trash thought, almost affectionately. You'll burn. In good time, you'll burn. They took no notice of him; to them, the Trashcan Man was only another survivor. They disappeared into the smoke and sometime after dawn Trashcan Man limped across the Illinois state line. Chicago was north of him, Joliet to the southwest,. the fire lost in its own horizon-blotting smoke behind. That had been the dawn of July 2. He had forgotten his dreams of burning Chicago to the ground-his dreams of more oiltanks and freightcars full of LP gas tucked away on railroad sidings and the tinder-dry tenements. He didn't care a fig for the Windy City. That afternoon he broke into a Chicago Heights doctor's office and stole a case of morphine syrettes. The morphine drove back the pain a little, but it had a more important sideeffect: it made him care less about the pain he did feel. He took a huge jar of Vaseline from a drugstore that night and packed the burned part of his arm in an inch of the jelly. He was very thirsty; it seemed he wanted to drink all of the time. Fantasies of the dark man buzzed in and out of his mind like blowflies. When he collapsed at dusk, he had already begun to think that the city the dark man was directing him to must be Cibola, Seven- inOne, the City that is Promised.

272 That night the dark man came to him again in his dreams, and with a sardonic giggle confirmed that this was so.

Trashcan Man awoke from these confused dream-memories of what had been to shivering desert cold. In the desert it was always ice or fire; there was no inbetween. Moaning a little, he stood up, holding himself as close to himself as he could. Overhead a trillion stars gleamed, seeming almost close enough to touch, bathing the desert in their cold witchlight. He walked back to the road, wincing at his chafed and tender skin, and his many aches and pains. They were little to him now. He paused for a moment looking down at the city, dreaming in the night (there were little sparks of light here and there, like electric campfires). Then he began to walk.

When dawn began to color the sky hours later, Cibola seemed almost as distant as it had when he first came over the rise and saw it. And he had foolishly drunk all of his water, forgetting how magnified things looked out here. He didn't dare walk for long after sunrise because of the dehydration. He would have to lie up again before the sun rose in all its power. An hour past dawn he came to a Mercedes-Benz off the road, its right side drifted in sand up to the door panels. He opened one of the left side doors and pulled the two wrinkled, monkeylike occupants out-an old woman wearing a lot of bangled jewelry, an old man with theatrical-looking white hair. Muttering, Trash took the keys from the ignition, went around, and opened the trunk. Their suitcases were not locked. He hung a variety of clothes over the windows of the Mercedes, weighting them down with rocks. Now he had a cool, dim cave. He crawled in and went to sleep. Miles to the west, the city of Las Vegas gleamed in the light of the summer sun.

He couldn't drive a car, they had never taught him that in prison, but he could ride a bike. On July 4, the day that Larry Underwood discovered Rita Blakemoor had overdosed and died in her sleep, Trashcan Man took a ten-speed and began to ride. At first his progress was slow, because his left arm wasn't much good to him. He fell off twice that first day, once squarely on his burn, causing terrible agony. By then the burn was suppurating freely through the Vaseline and the smell was terrific. He wondered from time to time about gangrene but would not allow himself to wonder for long. He began to mix the Vaseline with an antiseptic ointment, not knowing if it would help, but feeling it certainly couldn't hurt any. It made a milky, viscous gloop that looked like semen. Little by little he adjusted to riding the bike mostly onehanded and found that he could make good speed. The land had flattened out and most of the time he could keep the bike speeding giddily along. He drove himself steadily in spite of the bum and the light-headedness that came from being constantly stoned on morphine. He drank gallons of water and ate prodigiously. He pondered the dark man's words: I will set you high in my artillery. You are the man I want. How lovely those words were-had anyone really wanted him before? The words played over and over in his mind as he pedaled under the hot Midwestern sun. And he began to hum the melody of a little tune called "Down to the Nightclub" under his breath. The words ("Ci-a-bola! Bumpty-bumpty-bump!") came in their own good time. He was not then as insane as he was to become, but he was advancing. On July 8, the day Nick Andros and Tom Cullen saw buffalo grazing in Comanche County, Kansas, Trashcan Man crossed the Mississippi at the Quad Cities of Davenport, Rock Island, Bettendorf, and Moline. He was in Iowa. On the fourteenth, the day Larry Underwood woke up near the big white house in eastern New Hampshire, Trashy crossed the Missouri north of Council Bluffs and entered Nebraska. He had regained some use of his left hand, his leg muscles had toned up, and he pressed on, feeling a huge need to hurry, hurry. It was on the west side of the Missouri that Trash first suspected that God Himself might intervene between Trashcan Man and his destiny. There was something wrong about Nebraska, something dreadfully wrong. Something that made him afraid. It looked about the same as Iowa... but it wasn't. The dark man had come to him every previous night in dreams, but when Trashy crossed into Nebraska, the dark man came no more. Instead, he began to dream about an old woman. In these dreams he would find himself belly- down in a cornfield, almost paralyzed with hate and fear. It was bright morning. He could hear flocks of crows cawing. In front of him was a screen of broad, sword-like corn-leaves. Not wanting to, but powerless to stop himself, he would spread the leaves with a shaking hand and peer between them. He saw an old house in the middle of a clearing. The house was up on blocks or jacks or something. There was an apple tree with a tire swing hanging from one of the branches. And sitting on the porch was an old black woman playing a guitar and singing some old-time spiritual song. The song varied from dream to dream and Trashcan knew most of them because he had once known a

273 woman, the mother of a boy named Donald Merwin Elbert, who had sung many of the same songs as she did her housework. This dream was a nightmare, but not just because something exceedingly horrible happened at the end of it. At first you would have said there wasn't a frightening element in the whole dream. Corn? Blue sky? Old woman? Tire swing? What could be frightening about those things? Old women didn't throw rocks and jeer, especially not old women that sang old-home Jesus-jumping songs like "In That Great Getting-Up Morning" and "Bye-and-Bye, Sweet Lord, Byeand-Bye." It was the Carley Yateses of the world who threw rocks. But long before the dream ended he was paralyzed with fear, as if it wasn't an old woman at all he was peeking at but at some secret, some barely concealed light that seemed ready to break out all around her, to play over her with a fiery brilliance that would make the flaming oiltanks of Gary seem like so many candles in the wind-a light so bright it would chalk his eyes to cinders. And during this part of the dream all he thought was: Oh please get me away from her, I don't want no part of that old biddy, please oh please get me out of Nebraska! Then whatever song she had been playing would come to a discordant, jangling stop. She would look right at the place where he was peeping through a tiny loophole in the broad lattice of leaves. Her face was old and seamed with wrinkles, her hair was thin enough to show her brown skull, but her eyes were bright as diamonds, full of the light he feared. In an old, cracked, but strong voice she would cry out: Weasels in the corn! and he would feel the change in himself and would look down to see he had become a weasel, a terry, brownish-black slinking thing, his nose grown long and sharp, his eyes melted down to beady black points, his fingers turned into claws. He was a weasel, a cowardly nocturnal thing preying on the weak and the small. He would begin to scream then, and eventually he would scream himself awake, streaming with sweat and buggyeyed. His hands would fly over his body, reassuring himself that all his human parts were still there. At the end of this panicky check he would grip his head, making sure it was still a human head and not something long and sleek and streamlined, furry and bullet-shaped. He crossed four hundred miles of Nebraska in three days, running mostly on high octane terror. He crossed into Colorado near Julesburg, and the dream began to fade and grow sepia-toned. (For Mother Abagail's part, she woke on the night of July 15-shortly after Trashcan Man had passed north of Hemingford Home-with a terrible chill and a feeling that was both fear and pity; pity for whom or for what she did not know. She thought she might have been dreaming of her grandson Anders, who had been killed senselessly in a hunting accident when he was but six.) On July 18, then southwest of Sterling, Colorado, and still some miles from Brush, he had met The Kid.

Trash woke up just as twilight was falling. In spite of the clothes he had hung over the windows, the Mercedes had gotten hot. His throat was a dry well which had been faced with sandpaper. His temples thumped and jumped. He ran his tongue out, and when he stroked it with his finger, it felt like a dead treebranch. Sitting up, he put his hand on the Mercedes' steering wheel and then drew it back with a scalded hiss of pain. He had to wrap his shirttail around the doorhandle to let himself out. He thought he would just step out, but he had overestimated his strength and underestimated how far the dehydration had advanced on this August evening: his legs collapsed and he fell onto the road, which was also hot. Moaning, he scrabbled his way into the shadow of the Mercedes like a crippled crawdad. He sat there, arms and head dangling between his cocked knees, panting. He stared morbidly at the two bodies he had pulled out of the car, she with her bangles on her shriveled arms and he with his shock of theatrical white hair above his mummified monkey-face. He must get to Cibola before the sun came up tomorrow morning. If he didn't, he would die... and in sight of his goal! Surely the dark man could not be as cruel as thatsurely not! "My life for you;" Trashcan Man whispered, and when the sun had dropped below the line of the mountains, he gained his feet and began to walk toward the towers, minarets, and avenues of Cibola, where the sparks of the lights were coming on again. As the heat of the day segued into the cool of the desert night, he found himself more able to walk. His sprung and rope-tied sneakers flapped and thudded against the surface of I-15. He was plodding along, his head hanging like the bloom of a dying sunflower, and did not see the green, reflectorized sign which read LAS VEGAS 30 when he passed it. He was thinking about The Kid. By rights The Kid should have been with him now. They should be driving into Cibola together, with the straightpipes of The Kid's deuce coupe blatting back echoes from the desert. But The Kid had proved unworthy, and Trash had been sent on alone into the wilderness. His feet rose and fell on the pavement. "Ci-a-bola!" he croaked. "Bumptybumpty-bump!" Around midnight he collapsed by the side of the road and fell into an uneasy doze. The city was closer now.

274 He would make it. He was quite sure he would make it.

He heard The Kid a long time before he saw him. It was the heavy, crackling roar of unmuffled straightpipes thundering toward him from the east, branding the day: The sound was coming up Highway 34 from the direction of Yuma, Colorado. His first impulse was to hide, the way he'd hidden from the few other survivors he'd seen since Gary. But this time something made him stay where he was, astride his bike on the shoulder of the road, looking back apprehensively over his shoulder. The thunder grew louder and louder, and then the sun was reflecting off chrome and (??FIRE??) something bright and orange. The driver saw him. Downshifted in a machine-gun burst of backfires. Goodyear rubber peeled off on the highway in hot swatches. And then the car was beside him, not idling but panting like a deadly animal which may or may not be tamed, and the driver was getting out. But at first Trashcan only had eyes for the car. He knew about cars, he liked cars, even though he had never gotten so much as a learner's permit. This one was a beauty, a car someone had worked on for years, put thousands of dollars into, the kind of thing you usually only saw at funnycar shows, a labor of love. It was a 1932 Ford deuce coupe, but the owner had not stinted nor stopped with the usual deuce coupe customizing innovations. He had gone on and on, turning it into a parody of all American cars, a glittering science fiction vehicle with hand-painted flames billowing out of the manifold pipes. The paint job was flake gold. The chrome headpipes, which stretched almost the whole length of the car, reflected the sun fiercely. The windshield was a convex bubble. The back tires were gigantic Goodyear Wide Ovals, the wheelwells cut to an exaggerated height and depth to accommodate them. Growing out of the hood like a weird heating duct was a supercharger. Growing out of the roof, solid black but shot with red flecks like embers, was a steel sharkfin. Written on both sides were two words, raked backward to indicate speed. THE KID, they said. "Hey, youall long tall an ogly," the driver drawled, and Trash shifted his attention from the painted flames to the driver of this rolling bomb. He stood about five feet three inches. His hair was piled and swirled and pomaded and brilliantined. The hair alone gave him another three inches of height. The swirls all met above his collar in what was not just a duck's ass but the avatar of all the duck's ass hairdos ever affected by the punks and hoods of the world. He was wearing-black boots with pointed toes. The sides were elasticized. The heels, which gave The Kid another three inches, bringing him up to a respectable five-nine total, were stacked Cubans. His pegged and faded jeans were tight enough to read the dates of the coins in his pockets. They limned each nifty little buttock into a kind of blue sculpture and made his crotch look like he'd maybe stuffed a chamois bag full of Spalding golf-balls in there. He wore a Western-style silk shirt of an off-burgundy color. It was decorated with yellow trim and imitation sapphire buttons. The cufflinks looked like polished bone, and Trash later found out that was just what they were. The Kid had two sets, one made from a pair of human molars, the other from the incisors of a Doberman pinscher. Over this wonder of a shirt, in spite of the heat of the day, he wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with an eagle on the back. It was crisscrossed with zippers, the teeth glimmering like diamonds. From the shoulder-flaps and waistbelt three rabbits' feet dangled. One was white, one brown, one bright St. Paddy's Day green. This jacket, even more wonderful than the shirt, creaked smugly with rich oil. Above the eagle, this time written in white silk thread, were the words THE KID. The face now looking up at the Trashcan Man from between the high pile of gleaming hair and the upturned collar of the gleaming motorcycle jacket was tiny and pallid, a doll's face, with heavy but flawlessly sculpted pouting lips, dead gray eyes, a wide forehead without a mark or a seam, and strange full cheeks. He looked like Baby Elvis. Two gunbelts were crisscrossed on his flat belly, and a giant . 45 leaned out of each of the sagging holsters on his hips. "Hey, boy, whatchall say?" The Kid drawled. And the only thing Trashcan could think of to say was, "I like your car." It was the right thing. Maybe the only thing. Five minutes later Trash was in the passenger seat and the deuce coupe was accelerating up to The Kid's cruising speed, which was about ninety-five. The bike Trash had ridden all the way from eastern Illinois was fading to a speck on the horizon. Timidly, Trashcan Man suggested that at such a speed The Kid would not be able to see a wreck or a stall in the road if they came to one (they had already come to several, as a matter of fact; The Kid simply slalomed around them, the Wide Ovals shrieking unheeded protest). "Hey, boy," The Kid said. "I got the reflexes. I got the timin. I got threefiffs of a second. You believe that?" "Yes, sir," Trash said faintly. He felt like a man who has just used a stick to stir up a nest of snakes. '

275 "I like you, boy," The Kid said in his odd, droning voice. His doll's eyes stared out over the fluorescent orange steering wheel at the shimmering road. Large Styrofoam dice with death's heads for pips dangled and bounced from the rearview mirror. "Getchall a beer out'n the back seat." They were Coors and they were warm and Trashcan Man hated beer and he drank one fast and said how good it was. "Hey, boy," The Kid said. "Coors beer's the only beer. I'd piss Coors if I could. You believe that happy crappy?" Trashcan said he did indeed believe that happy crappy. "They call me The Kid. Outta Shreveport, Looseyanna. You know that? This here beast won every major carshow award in the South. You believe that happy crappy?" Trashcan Man said he did and got another warm beer. It seemed like the best move under the circumstances. "What they call you, boy?" "The Trashcan Man." "The whut?" For one horrible moment the dead doll's eyes rested on Trashcan's face. "You jokin me, boy? Ain't nobody jokes The Kid. An you better believe that happy crappy." "I do believe it," Trashcan said earnestly, "but that's what they call me. Because I used to light fires in people's trashcans and mailboxes and stuff. I set old lady Semple's pension check on fire. I got sent to the reformatory for it. I also burned down the Methodist Church in Powtanville, Indiana." "Didja?" The Kid asked, delighted. "Boy, you sound as crazy as a rat in a shithouse. That's okay. I like crazy people. I'm crazy myself. Tripped right outta my fuckin gourd. Trashcan Man, huh? I like that. We make a pair. The fucking Kid and the fucking Trashcan Man. Shake, Trash." The Kid offered his hand and Trash shook it as quick as he could so that The Kid could put both hands back on the wheel. They whizzed around a bend and there was a Bekins semi nearly blocking the whole highway and Trashcan put his hands over his face, prepared to make an immediate transition to the astral plane. The Kid never turned a hair. The deuce coupe skittered along the left side of the highway like a waterbug and they skinned by the cab of the truck with a coat of paint to spare. "Close," Trashcan said when he felt he could speak without a quaver in his voice. "Hey, boy," The Kid said flatly. Then one of his doll's eyes closed in a solemn wink. "Don't tell me- I'll tell you. How's that beer? Pretty fuckin gnarly, ain't it? Hits the spot after ridin that kiddy-bike, don't it?" "It sure does," Trashcan Man said, and took another big swallow of warm Coors. He was insane, but not yet insane enough to disagree with The Kid while he was driving. Nowhere near. "Well, no sense beatin around the motherfuckin bush," The Kid said, reaching back over the seat to get his own can of suds. "I guess we're goin to the same place." "I guess so," Trash said cautiously. "Gonna jine up," The Kid said. "Goin west. Gonna get in on the motherfuckin ground floor. You believe that happy crappy?" "I guess so." "You been gettin dreams about that boogeyman in the black flight-suit, ain'tcha?" "You mean the priest." "I always mean what I say an say what I mean," The Kid said flatly. "Don't tell me, ya fuckin bug, I'll tell you. It's a black flight-suit, and the guy's got goggles. Like in a John Wayne movie about Big Two. Goggles so big you can't see his motherfuckin face. Spooky old cock-knocker, ain't he?" "Yeah," Trashcan said, and sipped his warm beer. His head was beginning to buzz. The Kid hunched over the orange steering wheel and began to imitate a fighter pilot-one who had done his stuff in Big Two, presumably-in a dogfight. The deuce coupe rollercoastered alarmingly from one side of the road to the other as he imitated loops and dives and barrel rolls. "Neeeeyaaaahhhh ...eheheheheheh .. budda-budda-budda... take that, ya fuckin kraut... Cap'n! Bandits at twelve o'clock!... Turn the air-cooled cannon on em, ya fuckin dipstick... takka... takka... takka-takkatakka! We got em, sir! All clear... HowOOOGAH! Stand down, fellers! HowOOOOOOOGAH!" His face gained no expression as he went through this fantasy; not a single well-oiled hair fell from grace as he jerked the car back into its lane and pounded on up the road. Trashcan Man's heart thudded heavily in his chest. A light sheen of sweat had oiled his body. He drank his beer. He had to make weewee. "But he don't scare me," The Kid said, as if the former topic of conversation had never lapsed. "Fuck no. He's a hard baby, but The Kid has handled hard babies before. I shut em up and then I shut em down, just like The Boss says. You believe that happy crappy?" "Sure," Trash said. "You dig The Boss?"

276 "Sure," Trash said. He hadn't the slightest idea who The Boss was or had been. "Fuckin better dig The Boss. Listen, you know what I'm gonna do?" "Go west?" Trashcan Man hazarded. It seemed safe. The Kid looked impatient. "After I get there, I mean. After. You know what I'm gonna do after?" "No. What?" "I'm gonna lay low for a while. Check out the situation. Can you dig that happy crappy?" "Sure," Trash said. "Fuckin A. Don't tell me, I'll fuckin tell you. Just check it out. Check out the big man. Then..." The Kid fell silent, brooding over the top of his orange steering wheel. "Then what?" Trashcan asked hesitantly. "Gonna shut him down. Send him around dead man's curve. Put him out to pasture on the motherfuckin Cadillac Ranch. You believe it?" . "Yeah, sure." "I'm gonna take over," The Kid said confidently. "Gonna strip his gears and leave him at the Cadillac Ranch. You stick with me, Trashman or whatever the fuck ya call yaself. We ain't gonna eat no pork and beans. We're gonna eat more chicken than any man ever seen." The deuce coupe roared down the highway with painted flames shooting up from the manifold. Trashcan Man sat in the passenger seat, a warm beer in his lap and troubled in his mind.

It was almost dawn on the morning of August S when Trashcan Man entered Cibola, otherwise known as Vegas. Somewhere in the last five miles he had lost his left sneaker and now, as he walked down the curving exit ramp, his footfalls sounded like this: slap-THUMP, slap-THUMP, slapTHUMP. They sounded like the flap of a flat tire. He saw a hundred honky-tonk nightclubs. There were signs that read LIBERAL SLOTS, sips that said BLUEBELL WEDDING CHAPEL and 60-SECOND WEDDING BUT IT'LL LAST A LIFETIME! He saw a Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce halfway through a plate glass window of an adult bookstore. He saw a naked woman hanging upside down from a lamppost. He saw two pages of the Las Vegas Sun go riffling by. The headline that revealed itself over and over again as the paper flapped and turned was PLAGUE GROWS WORSE WASHINGTON MUTE. He saw a gigantic billboard which said NEIL DIAMOND! THE AMERICANA HOTEL JUNE 15-AUGUST 30! Someone had scrawled the words DIE LAS VEGAS FOR YOUR SINS! across the show window of a jewelry store seeming to specialize in nothing but wedding and engagement rings. He saw an overturned grand piano lying in the street like a large dead wooden horse. His eyes were full of these wonders. As he walked on he began to see other signs, their neon dead this midsummer for the first time in years. Flamingo. The Mint. Dunes. Sahara. Glass Slipper. Imperial. But where were the people? Where was the water? Hardly knowing what he was doing, letting his feet pick their own path, Trashcan turned off the Strip. His head dropped forward, his chin resting on his chest. He dozed as he walked. And when his feet tripped over the curbing, when he fell forward and gave himself a bloody nose on the pavement, when he looked up and beheld what was there, he could hardly believe it. Blood ran unnoticed from his nose to his tattered blue shirt. It was as if he was still dozing and this was his dream. A tall white building stretched up to the desert sky, a monolith in the desert, a needle, a monument, every bit as magnificent as the Sphinx or the Great Pyramid. The windows of its eastern face gave off the fire of the rising sun like an omen. In front of this bonewhite desert edifice, flanking its entranceway, were two huge gold pyramids. Over the canopy was a great bronze medallion, and carved on it in bas-relief was the snarling head of a lion. Above this, also in bronze, the simple but mighty legend: MGM GRAND HOTEL. But what captured his eyes was what stood on the grassy quadrangle between the parking lot and the entranceway. Trashcan stared, an orgasmic shivering consuming him so fiercely that for a moment he could only prop himself on his bloody hands, the unraveling end of the Ace bandage trailing between them, and stare at the fountain with his faded blue eyes, eyes that were halfway to being glareblind by now. A little groaning noise began to escape him. The fountain was working. It was a gorgeous construction of stone and ivory, chased and inlaid with gold. Colored lights played over the spray, making the water purple, then yellow-orange, then red, then green. The constant ticking patter as the spray fell back into the pool was very loud. "Cibola," he muttered, and struggled to his feet. His nose was still dripping blood. He began, to stagger toward the fountain. His stagger became a trot. The trot became a run, the run a sprint, the sprint a mad dash. His scabbed knees rose, pistonlike, almost to his neck. A word began to fly out of his mouth, a long word like a paper streamer that rose to the sky, bringing people to the windows high above (and who saw them? God, perhaps, or the devil, but certainly not the Trashcan Man). The word grew higher and shriller, longer and longer as he approached the fountain and that word was:

277 "CIIIIIIIIBOLAAAAAAAA!" The final "aahh" sound drew out and out, a sound of all the pleasures that all the people who have ever lived on the earth have ever known, and it ended only when he struck the lip of the fountain chest-high and yanked himself up and over and into a bath of incredible coolness and mercy. He could feel the pores of his body open like a million mouths and slurp the water in like a sponge. He screamed. He lowered his head, snorted in water, and blew it back out in a combined sneeze and cough that sent blood and water and snot against the side of the fountain in a splat. He lowered his head and drank like a cow. "Cibola! Cibola!" Trash cried rapturously. "My life for you!" He dogpaddled his way around the fountain, drank again, then climbed over the edge and fell onto the grass with an awkward thump. It had all been worth it, everything had been worth it. Water cramps struck him and he suddenly threw up with a loud grunt. Even throwing up felt grand. He got to his feet, and holding on to the lip of the fountain with his claw hand, he drank again. This time his belly accepted the gift gratefully. Sloshing like a filled goatskin, he staggered toward the alabaster steps which led to the doors of this fabulous place, steps that led between the golden pyramids. Halfway up the steps, a water cramp struck him and doubled him over. When it passed he lurched gamely onward. The doors were of the revolving type, and it took all his feeble strength to get one of them in motion. He pushed through into a plushy carpeted lobby that seemed miles long. The rug underfoot was thick and lush and cranberry-colored. There was a registration desk, a mail desk, a key desk, the cashiers' windows. All empty. To his right, beyond an ornamental grilled railing, was the casino. Trashcan Man stared at it in awe-the serried ranks of slot machines like soldiers standing at parade rest, beyond them the roulette and crap tables,, the marble railings enclosing the baccarat tables. "Who's here?" Trash croaked, but no answer came back. He was afraid then, because this was a place of ghosts, a place where monsters might lurk, but the fear was weakened by his weariness. He stumbled down the steps and into the casino, passing the Cub Bar, where Lloyd Henreid sat silently in the deep shadows, watching him and holding a glass of Poland water. He came to a table upholstered in green baize, the mystic legend DEALER MUST HIT 16 AND STAND ON 17 inscribed thereon. Trash climbed up on it and fell instantly asleep. Soon nearly half a dozen men stood around the sleeping ragamuffin that was the Trashcan Man. "What do we do with him?" Ken DeMott asked. "Let him sleep," Lloyd answered. "Flagg wants him." "Yeah? Where the Christ is Flagg, anyway?" another asked. Lloyd turned to look at the man, who was balding and stood a full foot taller than Lloyd. Nonetheless, he drew back a step at Lloyd's gaze. The stone around Lloyd's neck was the only one that was not solid jet; in the center gleamed a small and disquieting red flaw. "Are you that anxious to see him, Hec?" Lloyd asked. "No," the balding man said. "Hey, Lloyd, you know I didn't—2' "Sure." Lloyd looked down at the man sleeping on the blackjack table. "Flagg will be around," he said. "He's been waiting for this guy. This guy is something special." On the table, oblivious of all this, Trashcan Man slept on.

Trash and The Kid spent the night of July 18 in a motel in Golden, Colorado. The Kid picked two rooms with a connecting door. The connecting door was locked. The Kid, now well in the bag, solved this minor problem by blowing the lock off with three bullets from one of his . 45s. The Kid raised one tiny boot and kicked the door. It shuddered open in a fine blue haze of gunsmoke. "Betcha fuckin A," he said. "Which room? Take your pick, Trashy." Trashcan Man opted for the room on the right, and for a while was left alone. The Kid had gone out someplace. Trashcan Man was slowly considering the idea of simply fading away into the gloom before something really bad could happentrying to balance that possibility against his lack of transportation-when The Kid returned. Trashcan Man was alarmed to see that he was pushing a shopping cart which was full of six-packs of Coors beer. The doll's eyes were now bloodshot and rimmed with red. The pompadour hairdo was coming unraveled like a broken and expanding clockspring, and greasy bunches of hair now hung down over The Kid's ears and cheeks, making him look like some dangerous (albeit absurd) caveman who had found a leather jacket left by a time- traveler and put it on. The rabbits' feet bobbed back and forth on the belt of the jacket. "It's warm," The Kid said, "but who gives a rip, am I right? "Right, absolutely," Trashcan Man said. "Have a beer, asshole," The Kid said, and tossed him a can. When Trashcan pulled the ringtab, he got a fateful of foam and The Kid roared with oddly diminutive laughter, holding his flat belly with both hands. Trash smiled weakly. He decided that later tonight, after this small monster had

278 succumbed to sleep, he would slip away. He had had enough. And what The Kid had said about the dark priest... Trashcan Man's fears about that were so big he could not even get them to coalesce. Saying things like that, even if you were joking, was like shitting on the altar of a church or holding your face up to the sky in a thunderstorm and begging the lightning to come hit you. The worst thing was that he didn't think The Kid had been joking. Trashcan Man had no intention of going up into the mountains and around all those hairpin turns with this crazy dwarf who drank all day (and apparently all night) and who talked about overthrowing the dark man and putting himself in his place. Meanwhile, The Kid had put away two beers in two minutes, crushed the cans, and tossed them indifferently on one of the room's twin beds. He was looking morosely at the RCA Chromacolor, a fresh Coors in his left hand and the . 45 he had used to blow open the connecting door in his right. "No fuckin lectricity, so there ain't no fuckin TV," he said. As he grew more drunk, his Southern accent grew more pronounced, putting fur on his words. "Don't I hate that. I love it that all the assholes got wasted, but Jesusjumped-up-baldheaded-ole-Christ, where's HBO? Where's the goddam rasslin matches? Where's the Playboy Channel? That was a good one, Trashy. I mean, they never showed guys gettin right down and eating hair pie, munchin the ole bearded clam, you know what I mean, but some of those ladies had laigs went right up to their chins, you know what the motherfuck I'm talkin about?" "Sure," Trashcan said. "You're fuckin A. Don't tell me, I'll tell you." The Kid stared at the dead TV. "You numb cant," he said, and shot the TV. The picture tube imploded with a great hollow bang. Glass belched out onto the carpet. Trashcan Man raised his arm to shield his eyes, and his beer gurgled out onto the green nylon shag when he did. "Oh looka that, you dumb dork!" The Kid exclaimed. His tone was one of great outrage. Suddenly the . 45 was pointed at Trash, its bore as big and dark as an ocean liner's smoke stack. Trashcan felt his groin go numb. He thought he might be pissing himself, but had no way of telling for sure. "I'm gonna venilate your thinkin-machine for that," The Kid said. "You done spilt the beer. If it was any other kind I won't do it, but that was Coors you spilled. I'd piss Coors if I could, you believe that happy crappy?" "Sure," Trashcan whispered. "And do you think they're makin any more Coors these days, Trash? That seem very fuckin likely to you?" "No," Trashcan whispered. "Guess not." "You're fuckin right. It's a dangered spee-shees." He raised the gun slightly. Trashcan Man thought it was the end of his life, the end of his life for sure. Then The Kid lowered the gun again... slightly. He had an absolutely vacant look on his face. Trashcan guessed this expression indicated deep thought. "I'll tell you what, Trash.. You get you another can, and you chug it. If you can chug the whole thing, I won't send you to the Cadillac Ranch. You believe that happy crappy?" "What's... what's chugging?" "Jesus Christ, boy, you as dumb as a stone boat! Drink the whole can without stoppin, that's what chuggin is! Where you been spendin your time, motherfuckin Africa? You want to get on the stick, Trashy. If I have to put one inya, it goes right in your eye. I got this sucker loaded up with dumdums. Open you right the fuck up, turn you into a fuckin buffet dinner for the cockroaches in this dump." He gestured with the pistol, his red eyes fixed on Trash. There was a speckle of beer- foam on his upper lip. Trashcan went to the cardboard carton, selected a beer, and-popped the top. "Go on. Ever drop. And if you puke it back up, you're a gone fuckin goose." Trashcan Man upended the can. Beer gurgled out. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam's apple going up and down like a monkey on a stick. When the can was empty he dropped it between his feet, fought a seemingly endless battle with his gorge, and won his life back in one long, echoing belch. The Kid threw his small head back and laughed with tinkling delight. Trash swayed on his feet, grinning sickly. All at once he was a lot drunk instead of a little. The Kid holstered his piece. "Okay. Not bad, Trashcan Man. Not too motherfuckin shabby." The Kid continued to drink. Squashed cans piled up on the motel bed. Trash held a can of Coors between his knees and sipped on it whenever The Kid seemed to be looking at him with disapproval. The Kid muttered on and on, his voice growing ever lower and more Southern as the empties piled up. He talked of places he had been. Races he had won. A load of dope he had run across the border from Mexico in a laundry truck with a 442 hemi engine under the hood. Nasty stuff, he said. All dope was nasty motherfuckin stuff. He never touched it himself, but boy-howdy, after you muled a few loads of that shit, you could wipe your ass with gold toilet-paper. At last he began to nod off, the little red eyes closing for longer and longer periods, then coming reluctantly back to half-mast.

279 "Gonna get him, Trashy," The Kid muttered. "I'll go out there, check it out, keep kissin his motherfuckin ass until I see how the land lays. But nobody orders this Kid around. No-fuckin-body. Not for long. I don't do piecework. If I'm on a job, I run it. That's just my style. I dunno who he is or where he comes from or how he can broadcast into our motherfuckin thinkin-machines, but I'm gonna run him right the fuck"-huge yawn-"outta town. Gonna shut him down. Gonna send him to the Cadillac Ranch. Stick with me, Crash, or whoever the fuck y'are." He collapsed slowly backward onto the bed. His can of beer, freshly opened, fell from his relaxing hand. More Coors puddled on the rug. The case was gone, and by Trashcan's reckoning, The Kid had gotten through twentyone cans of it himself. Trashcan Man couldn't understand how such a little man could drink so much beer, but he did understand what time it was: time for him to go. He knew that, but he felt drunk and weak and ill. What he wanted more than anything was to sleep for a little while. That would be all right, wouldn't it? The Kid was apt to sleep like a log all night, maybe half of tomorrow morning, too. Plenty of time for him to take a little nap. So he went into the other room (tiptoeing in spite of The Kid's comatose state) and closed the connecting door as well as he could-which wasn't very well. The force of the bullets had warped it somehow. There was a wind-up alarmclock on the dresser. Trash wound it, set it for midnight since he didn't know (and didn't care) what time it really was, and then set the alarm for five o'clock. He lay down on one of the twin beds without even stopping to take off his sneakers. He was asleep in five minutes. He woke up sometime later, in the dark grave of the morning, with the smell of beer and puke blowing across his face in a dry little gale. Something was in bed with him, something hot and smooth and squirmy. His first panicky thought was that a weasel had somehow gotten right out of his Nebraska dream and into reality. A whimpery little moan came out of him as he realized that the animal in bed with him, while not big, was too big to be a weasel. He had a headache from the beer; it drilled mercilessly at his temples. "Grab on me," The Kid whispered in the dark. Trashcan's hand was seized and led to something hard and cylindrical and throbbing like a piston. "Jerk me off. Go on, jerk me off, you know what to do, I saw that the first time I looked atcha. Come on, ya motherfuckin jerkoff, jerk me off." Trashcan Man knew how to do it. In many ways it was a relief. He knew about it from the long nights in stir. They said it was bad, that it was queer, but what the queers did was better than what some of the others did, the ones who spent their nights sharpening spoon-handles into shanks, and the ones who just lay there on their bunks, cracking their knuckles and looking at you and grinning. The Kid had put Trashcan's hand on the kind of gun he understood. He closed his hand around it and began. After it was over The Kid would fall asleep again. Then he would creep out. The Kid's breath was becoming ragged. He began to bump his hips in time with Trashcan's strokes. Trash did not at first realize The Kid was also unbuckling his belt, then slipping his jeans and underpants down to his knees. Trash let him. It didn't matter if The Kid wanted to slip it to him. Trash had had it slipped to him before. You didn't die. It wasn't poison. Then his hand froze. Whatever it was suddenly pressing against his anus, it wasn't flesh. It was cold steel. And suddenly he knew what it was. "No," he whispered. His eyes were wide and terrified in the dark. Now he could dimly see that homicidal doll's face in the mirror, hanging over his shoulder with its hair in its red eyes. "Yes," The Kid whispered back. "And you don't want to lose a stroke, Trashy. Not one motherfuckin stroke. Or I might just pull the trigger on this thang. Blow your shitfactory all to hell and gone. Dumdums, Trashy. You believe that happy crappy?" Whining, Trashcan began to stroke him again. His whines became little gasps of pain as the barrel of the . 45 worked its way into him, rotating, gouging, tearing. And could it be that this was exciting him? It was. Eventually his excitement became apparent to The Kid. "Like it, dontcha?" The Kid panted. "I knew you would, you bag of pus. You like having it up your ass, dontcha? Say yes, pusbag. Say yes or right to hell you go." "Yes," Trashcan Man whimpered. "Want me to do it to you?" He didn't. Excited or not, he didn't. But he knew better than to say so. "Yes." "I wouldn't touch your dick if it was diamonds. Do it yaself. Why you think God gave you two hands?" How long did it go on? God might know; the Trashcan Man did not. A minute, an hour, an age- what was the difference? He became sure that at the instant of The Kid's orgasm he would feel two things simultaneously: the hot jet of the small monster's semen on his belly and the mushrooming agony of a dumdum bullet roaring up through his vitals. The ultimate enema. Then The Kid's hips froze and his penis went through its convulsions in Trashcan Man's hand. His fist became slick, like a rubber glove. An instant later, the pistol was withdrawn. Silent tears of relief

280 gushed down Trashcan's cheeks. He was not afraid to die, at least not in the service of the dark man, but he did not want to die in this dark motel room at the hands of a psychopath. Not before he had seen Cibola. He would have prayed to God, but he knew instinctively that God would not lend a sympathetic ear to those who had thrown their allegiance to the dark man. And what had God ever done for the Trashcan Man, anyway? Or for Donald Merwin Elbert either, for that matter? In the breathing silence The Kid's voice rose in song, offkey, cracking, trailing down toward sleep: "My buddies an me are gettin real well known... yeah, the bad guys know us an they leave us alone..." He began to snore. Now Ill leave, Trashcan Man thought, but he was afraid that if he moved, he would wake The Kid up. I'll leave just as soon as I'm sure he's really asleep. Five minutes. Shouldn't take any longer than that. But no one knows how long five minutes is in the dark; it might be fair to say that, in the dark, five minutes does not exist. He waited. He rolled in and out of a doze without knowing he had dozed. Before long he had slipped down the slide of sleep. He was on a dark road that was very high. The stars seemed close enough to reach up and touch; it seemed you could just pick them off the sky and pop them into a jar, like fireflies. It was bitterly cold. It was dark. Dimly, frosted with starshine, he could see the living rockfaces through which this highway had been cut. And in the darkness, something was walking toward him. And then his voice, coming from nowhere, coming from everywhere: In the mountains I'll give you a sign. I'll show you my power. I'll show you what happens to those who would set themselves against me. Wait. Watch. Red eyes began to open in the dark, as if someone had set out three dozen danger lamps with hoods on them and now that someone was pulling the hoods off in pairs. They were eyes, and they surrounded the Trashcan Man in a fey ring. At first he thought they were the eyes of weasels, but as the ring tightened around him he saw they were great gray mountain wolves, their ears cocked forward, foam dripping from their dark muzzles. He was afraid. They are not for you, my good and faithful servant. See? And they were gone. Just tike that, the panting gray timberwolves were gone. Watch, the voice said. Wait, the voice said. The dream ended. He woke to discover bright sunshine falling in through the motel room window. The Kid was standing in front of it, seeming none the worse for wear from his bout with the now- defunct Adolph Coors Company the night before. His hair was combed into its former shining swirls and eddies, and he was admiring his reflection in the glass. He had slipped his leather jacket over the back of a chair. The rabbits' feet dangled from the belt like tiny corpses from a gibbet. "Hey, pusbag! I thought I was gonna hafta grease your hand again to wake you up. Come on, we got us a big day ahead. Lotta stuff gonna happen today, am I right?" "You sure are," the Trashcan Man replied with a queer smile.

When the Trashcan Man swam out of sleep on the evening of August 5, he was still lying on the blackjack table in the casino of the MGM Grand Hotel. Sitting backward on a chair in front of him was a young man with lank straw-blond hair and mirror sunglasses. The first thing Trash noticed was the stone which hung about his neck in the v of his open sport-shirt. Black, with a red flaw in the center. Like the eye of a wolf in the night. He tried to say he was thirsty and managed only a weak "Gaw!" sound. "You sure did spend some time in the hot sun, I guess," Lloyd Henreid said. "Are you him?" Trash. whispered. "Are you—" "The big guy? No, I'm not him. Flagg's in L. A. He knows you're here, though. I talked to him on the radio this afternoon." "Is he coming?" "What, just to see you? Hell, no! He'll be here in his own good time. You and me, guy, we're just little people. He'll be here in his own good time." And he reiterated the question he had asked the tall man that morning, not long after Trashcan Man had stumbled in. "Are you that anxious to see him?" "Yes... no... I don't know." "Well, whichever way it turns out to be, you'll get your chance." "Thirsty..." "Sure. Here." He handed over a large thermos filled with cherry Kool-Aid. Trashcan drained it at a draught, then leaned over, holding his belly and groaning. When the cramp had passed, he looked at Lloyd with dumb gratitude.

281 "Think you could eat something?" Lloyd asked. "Yes, I think so." Lloyd turned to a man standing behind them. The man was idly whirling a roulette wheel, then letting the little white ball bounce and rattle. "Roger, go tell Whitney or Stephanie-Ann to rustle this man up some fries and a couple of hamburgers. Naw, shit, what am I thinking about? He'll ralph all over the place. Soup. Get him some soup. That okay, man?" "Anything," Trash said gratefully. "We got a guy here," Lloyd said, "name of Whitney Horgan, used to be a butcher. He's a fat, loud sack of shit, but don't that man know how to cook! Jesus! And they got everything here. The gennies were still running when we moved in, and the freezers're full. Fucking Vegas! Ain't it the goddamndest place you ever saw?" "Yeah," Trash said. He liked Lloyd already, and he didn't even know his name. "It's Cibola." "Say what?" "Cibola. Searched for by many." "Yeah, been plenty people searchin for it over the years, but most of em go away sort of sorry they found it. Well, you call it whatever you want, buddy— looks like you almost cooked yourself gettin here. What's your name?" "Trashcan Man." Lloyd didn't seem to think this a strange name at all. "Name like that, I bet you used to be a biker." He stuck out a hand. The tips of his fingers still bore the fading marks of his stay in the Phoenix jail where he had almost died of starvation. "I'm Lloyd Henreid. Pleased to meet you, Trash. Welcome aboard the good ship Lollypop. Trashcan Man shook the offered hand and had to struggle to keep from weeping with gratitude. So far as he could remember, this was the first time in his life someone had offered to shake his hand. He was here. He had been accepted. At long last he was on the inside of something. He would have walked through twice as much desert as he had for this moment, would have burned the other arm and both legs as well. "Thanks," he muttered. "Thanks, Mr. Henreid." "Shit, brother-if you don't call me Lloyd, we'll have to throw that soup out." "Lloyd, then. Thanks, Lloyd." "That's better. After you eat, I'll take you upstairs and put you in a room of your own. We'll get you doing something tomorrow. The big guy's got something of his own for you, I think, but until then there's plenty for you to do. We've got some of the place running again, but nowhere near all of it. There's a crew up at Boulder Dam, trying to get all the power back on. There's another one working on water supplies. We've got scout parties out, we've been pulling in six or eight people a day, but we'll keep you off that detail for a while. Looks like you've had enough sun to last you a month." "I guess I have," Trashcan Man said with a weak smile. He was already willing to lay down his life for Lloyd Henreid. Gathering up all of his courage, he pointed at the stone which lay in the hollow of Lloyd's throat. "That—" "Yeah, us guys who are sort of in charge all wear em. His idea. It's jet. Not really a rock at all, you know. It's like an oil bubble. ' "I mean... the red light. The eye." "Looks like that to you too, huh? It's a flaw. Special from him. I'm not the smartest guy he's got, not even the smartest guy in good ole Lost Wages, not by a long shot. But I'm .. shit, I guess you'd say I'm his mascot." He looked closely at Trash. "Maybe you too, who knows? Not me, that's for sure. He's a close one, Flagg is. Anyway, we heard about you special. Me and Whitney. That's not the regular drill at all. Too many comin in to take special notice of many." He paused. "Although I guess he could, if he wanted to. I guess he could take notice of just about anybody." Trashcan Man nodded. "He can do magic," Lloyd said, his voice becoming slightly hoarse. "I seen it. I'd hate to be the people against him, you know?" "Yes," Trashcan said. "I saw what happened to The Kid." "What kid?" "The guy I was with until we got into the mountains." He shuddered. "I don't want to talk about it." "Okay, man. Here comes your soup. And Whitney put a burger on the side after all. You'll love it. The guy makes great burgers, but try not to puke, okay?" "Okay." "Me, I got places to go and people to see. If my old buddy Poke could see me now, he'd never believe it. I'm busier'n a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest. Catch you later." "Sure," Trashcan said, and then added, almost timidly: "Thanks. Thanks for everything."

282 "Don't thank me," Lloyd said amiably. "Thank him." "I do," Trashcan Man said. "Every night." But he was talking to himself. Lloyd was already halfway down the lobby, talking with the man who had brought the soup and the hamburger. Trashcan Man watched them fondly until they were out of sight, and then he began to chow down, eating ravenously until almost everything was gone. He would have been fine if he hadn't looked down into the soup bowl. It was tomato soup, and it was the color of blood. He pushed the bowl aside, his appetite suddenly gone. It was all very well for him to tell Lloyd Henreid he didn't want to talk about The Kid; it was quite another thing to stop thinking about what had happened to him. He walked over to the roulette wheel, sipping at the glass of milk that had come with his food. He gave the wheel an idle twist and dropped the little white marble into the dish. It rolled around the rim, then hit the slots below and began to racket back and forth. He thought about The Kid. He wondered if someone would come and show him which room was his. He thought about The Kid. He wondered if the ball would fetch up on a red number or a black one .. but mostly he thought about The Kid. The bouncing, jittering ball caught in one of the slots, this time for good. The wheel came to a stop. The ball was sitting under the green double zero. House spin.

On the cloudless, eighty-degree day when they headed west from Golden directly into the Rockies along Interstate 70, The Kid had given up Coors in favor of a bottle of Rebel Yell whiskey. Two more bottles sat between the two of them on the driveshaft hump, each neatly packed into an empty cardboard milk carton so the bottles wouldn't roll around and break. The Kid would nip at the bottle, chase the nip with a swallow of Pepsi-Cola, and then holler hot-damn! or yahoo! or sex-machine! at the top of his lungs. He remarked several times that he would piss Rebel Yell if he could. He asked Trashcan Man if he believed that happy crappy. Trashcan Man, pale with fright and still hung over from his three beers of the night before, said he did. Even The Kid couldn't stampede along at ninety on these roads. He lowered his speed to sixty and muttered about the goddam fucking mountains under his breath. Then he brightened. "When we get over in Utah n Nevada, we'll make up plenty of lost time, Trashy. This little darlin'll do a hunnert n sixty on the flat. You believe that happy crappy?" "Sure is a nice car," Trashcan said with a sick-doggy smile. "Bet your ass." He nipped Rebel Yell. Chased it with Pepsi. Yelled yahoo! at the top of his lungs. Trash stared morbidly out at the passing scenery, which was now washed with midmorning sunshine. The Interstate had been blasted right into the shoulder of the mountain, and at times they were traveling between huge cliffs of rock. The cliffs he had seen in his dream of the night before. After dark, would those red eyes open again? He shuddered. A short while later he became aware that their speed had dropped from sixty to forty. Then to thirty. The Kid was swearing monotonously and horribly under his breath. The deuce coupe wove in and out of steadily thickening traffic, all of it stalled and deadly silent. "What the fuck is this?" The Kid raged. "What did they? All decide to die at ten thousand motherfuckin feet? Hey, you stupid fucks, out my way! You hear me? Get the fuck out my way!" Trashcan Man cringed. They rounded a curve and faced a horrendous four-car pileup which blocked the westbound lanes of I-70 completely. A dead man covered with blood which had dried to an uneven crack-glaze long since lay spreadeagled facedown in the road. Near him was a broken Chatty Cathy doll. Any way around the jam on the left was blocked by steel guardrail posts six feet high. On the right, the land fell away into cloudy distance. The Kid gulped Rebel Yell and swung the deuce coupe toward the dropoff. "Hang on, Trashy," he whispered, "we're goin around." "There's no room," Trashcan Man rasped. His throat felt like the side of a steel file. "Yeah, just enough," The Kid whispered. His eyes were glittering. He began to edge the car off the road. The righthand wheels were now hissing in the dirt of the shoulder. "Count me out," Trashcan said hurriedly, and grabbed for the doorhandle. "You sit," said The Kid, "or you're gonna be one dead pusbag." Trash turned his head and looked into the bore of a . 45. The Kid giggled tensely. Trashcan Man sat back. He wanted to close his eyes but could not. On his side of the car, the last six inches of shoulder dropped from view. Now he was looking straight down at a long vista of blue- gay pines and huge tumbled boulders. He could imagine the deuce coupe's Wide Oval tires now four inches from the edge... now two... "Another inch," The Kid crooned, his eyes huge, his grin enormous. Sweat stood out on that pale doll's forehead in perfect clear drops. "Just... one... more."

283 It ended in a hurry. Trashcan Man felt the right rear of the car slip suddenly outward and sharply downward. He heard a falling millrace, first of pebbles, then of larger stones. He screamed. The Kid cursed horribly, changed down to first gear, and floored the accelerator. From the left, where they had been inching by the overturned corpse of a VW Microbus, came a squall of grinding metal. "Fly!" The Kid screamed. ` Just like a bigass bird! Fly! Goddammit, FLY!" The deuce coupe's rear wheels spun. For a moment their shift toward the drop seemed to be increasing. Then the car jerked forward, lurched up, and they were back on the road on the far side of the pileup, laying rubber. "I told you she'd do it!" The Kid screamed triumphantly. "Goddam! Did we do it? Did we do it, Trashy, ya fuckin chickenshit suckhole?" "We did it," Trashcan Man said quietly. He was twitching all over. He couldn't seem to control it. And then, for the second time since meeting The Kid, he unwittingly said the one thing that could have saved his life-had he not said it, The Kid surely would have killed him; it would have been his queer way of celebrating. "Good driving, champ," he said. He had never called anyone "champ" in his whole life before now. "Ahhh... not that great," The Kid said patronizingly. "There's at least two other guys in the country coulda done it. You believe that happy crappy?" "If you say so, Kid." "Don't tell me, sweetheart, I'll fuckin tell you. Well, on we go. All in a day's work." But they did not go on for long. The Kid's deuce coupe was stopped for good fifteen minutes later, eighteen hundred miles or more from its point of origin in Shreveport, Louisiana. "I don't believe it," The Kid said. "I don't... motherfuckin... B'LEEVE it!" He threw open the driver's side door and jumped out, the quarter-full bottle of Rebel Yell still clutched in his left hand. "GET OUTTA MY ROAD!" The Kid roared, dancing about in his grotesquely highheeled boots, a tiny natural force of destruction, like an earthquake in a bottle. "GET OUTTA MY ROAD, MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU'RE DEAD, Y'ALL B'LONG IN THE MOTHERFUCKIN BONEYARD, YOU GOT NO BUSINESS IN MY FUCKIN ROAD!" He threw the Rebel Yell bottle and it flew end over end, spraying amber droplets. It crashed into a hundred pieces against the side of an old Porsche. The Kid stood silent, panting and reeling a little on his feet. The problem was nothing so simple as a four-car pileup this time. This time the problem was nothing but traffic. The eastbound lanes were here divided from those westbound by a grassy median strip about ten yards across, and the deuce coupe probably could have made it from one side of the highway to the other, but the condition of both arteries was the same: the four lanes were crowded with six lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper and side to side. The breakdown lanes were as full as the travel lanes. Some drivers had even attempted to use the median itself, although it was rough and upgraded and full of rocks which punched out of the thin gray soil like dragon's teeth. Perhaps there had been high-hung four-wheel-drive vehicles which had had some success there, but what Trashcan saw on the median strip was an automobile graveyard of crashed, bashed, and mashed Detroit rolling iron. It was as if a mass madness had infected all the drivers and they had decided to hold an apocalyptic demolition derby or lunatic gymkhana here high up on I-70. Colorado Rocky Mountain high, Trashcan Man thought, I've seen it raining Chevies in the sky. He almost giggled and hurriedly covered his mouth. If The Kid heard him giggling now, he would most likely never giggle again. The Kid came striding back in his high-heeled boots, his carefully coiffed hair gleaming. His face was that of a dwarf basilisk. His eyes were bulging with fury. "I'm not leavin my fuckin car," he said. "You hear me? No way. I'm not leavin it. You get walkin, Trashy. You walk up there and see how far this motherfuckin traffic jam goes. Maybe it's a truck in the road, I don't know. I know we can't fuckin backtrack. We lost the shoulder. We'd go all the way down. But if it's just a stalled truck or somethin, I don't give a rat's ass. I'll jump these sonsofwhores one at a time and run em right the fuck over the edge. I can do it, and you better believe that happy crappy. Get movie, son." Trash didn't argue. He began to walk carefully up the road, weaving in and out between the packed cars. He was ready to duck and run if The Kid started shooting. But The Kid didn't. When Trashcan had walked what he judged to be a safe distance (i. e., out of pistol range), he climbed atop a tanker truck and looked back. The Kid, miniature streetpunk from hell, truly doll-sized at this half-a-mile distance, was leaning against the side of his deucey, having a drink. Trashcan Man thought of waving and then decided it might be a bad idea.

The Trashcan Man started his walk that day at about ten-thirty in the morning, MDT. Walking was slow-he often had to scramble over the hoods and roofs of cars and trucks, they were so tightly packed together-and by the time he got to the first TUNNEL CLOSED sign, it was already quarter past three in the afternoon. He had made about twelve miles. Twelve miles wasn't so much-not to

284 someone who'd crossed twenty percent of the country on a bicycie—but considering the obstacles, he thought twelve miles was pretty awesome. He could have gone back long-ago to tell The Kid it was impossible ..: if, that was, he'd ever had any intentions of going back. He didn't, of course. Trashcan Man had never read much history (after the electroshock therapy, reading had gotten sort of tough for him), but he didn't need to know that, in times of old, kings and emperors had often killed the bearers of bad news out of simple pique. What he did know was enough: he had seen enough of The Kid to know he didn't ever want to see any more. He stood pondering the sign, black letters on an orange diamond-shaped field. It had been knocked over and was lying beneath one wheel of what looked like the world's oldest Yugo. TUNNEL CLOSED. What tunnel? He peered ahead, shading his eyes, and thought he could see something. He walked on another three hundred yards, scrambling over cars when he had to, and came to an alarming confusion of crashed vehicles and dead bodies. Some of the cars and trucks had been burned to the axles. Many were army vehicles. Many of the bodies were dressed in khaki. Beyond the scene of this battle-Trash was pretty sure that's what it had beenthe traffic jam began again. And beyond it, east and west, the traffic disappeared into the twin bores of what a huge sign bolted to the living rock proclaimed to be THE EISENHOWER TUNNEL. He walked closer, heart bumping, not knowing just what he intended. Those twin bores punching their way into the rock intimidated him, and as he drew closer, intimidation became outright terror. He would have understood Larry Underwood's feelings about the Lincoln Tunnel perfectly; in that instant they were unknowing soul brothers, the shared soul emotion one of stark fear. The main difference was that, while the Lincoln Tunnel's pedestrian catwalk was set high off the roadbed, here it was low enough so that some cars had actually attempted to run along the side, with one pair of wheels up on the catwalk and the other on the road. The tunnel was two miles long. The only way to negotiate it would be to crawl along from car to car in the pitch dark. It would take hours. Trashcan Man felt his bowels turn to water. He stood looking at the tunnel for a long time. Larry Underwood, over a month before, had gone into his tunnel in spite of his fear. After a long contemplation, Trashcan Man turned away and began to walk back toward The Kid, his shoulders slumped, the corners of his mouth trembling. It was not just the absence of any easy place to walk which made him turn back, or the length of the tunnel (Trash, who had lived his whole life in Indiana, had no idea how long the Eisenhower Tunnel was). Larry Underwood had been moved (and perhaps controlled) by an underlying streak of self-interest by the simple logic of survival: New York was an island, and he had to get off. The tunnel was the quickest way. So he would walk through as quick as he could; he would do it the way you held your nose and swallowed fast when you knew the medicine was going to taste bad. Trashcan Man was a beaten thing, used to accepting the punchings and pummelings of both fate and his own inexplicable nature... and doing so with a bowed head. He had been further unmanned, brainwashed almost, by his cataclysmic encounter with The Kid. He had been whooshed along at speeds high enough to induce brain-damage. He had been threatened with extinction if he could not drink a whole can of beer without stopping and without throwing up afterward. He had been sodomized with a pistol barrel. He had been nearly dumped a thousand feet straight down from the edge of the turnpike. On top of this, could he summon enough courage to crawl through a hole bored straight through the base of a mountain, a hole where he might encounter who knew what horrors in the dark? He could not. Others, maybe, but not the Trashcan Man. And there was also a certain logic in the idea of turning back. It was the logic of the beaten and the half-mad, true, but it still had its own perverse charm. He was not on an island. If he had to backtrack the rest of today and all day tomorrow in order to find a road that went over the mountains instead of through them, he would do it. He'd have to get by The Kid, it was true, but he thought The Kid might have changed his mind and left already, in spite of his declarations to the contrary. He might be dead drunk. He might even (although Trash really doubted that such extraordinarily good luck would ever come his way) be simply dead. At the worst, if The Kid was still there, watching and waiting, Trashcan could wait until dark and then creep past him like (a weasel) some small animal in the underbrush. Then he would just continue on to the east until he found the road he was looking for. He arrived back at the tanker truck from whose top he had last seen The Kid and The Kid's mythic deuce coupe, making better time on the return trip. This time he did not climb up to where he would be clearly silhouetted against the evening sky but began to crawl from car to car on his hands and knees, trying to be very quiet. The Kid might be alert and on watch. With a guy like The Kid, you just couldn't tell... and it didn't pay to take chances. He found himself wishing he had taken one of the soldiers' guns, even though he had never used a gun in his life. He kept crawling, the road-pebbles biting painfully into his claw hand. It was eight o'clock, and the sun had gone behind the mountains.

285 Trashcan stopped behind the hood of the Porsche The Kid had thrown his liquor bottle at and carefully raised his eyes over it. Yes, there was The Kid's deuce coupe, with its flamboyant flake- gold paint, its convex windshield and sharkfin cutting at the bruise-colored evening sky. The Kid was slumped behind the DayGlo steering wheel, his eyes closed, his mouth open. Trashcan Man's heart thundered a percussive victory song in his chest. Dead drunk! his heartbeat proclaimed in syllables of two. Dead drunk! By God! Dead drunk! Trash thought he could be twenty miles east of here before The Kid even woke up to his hangover. Still, he was careful. He skittered from car to car like a waterbug crossing the still surface of a pond, skirting the deuce coupe on his left, hurrying across the increasing gaps. Now the deucey was at nine o'clock on his left, now seven, now six and directly behind him. Now to put distance between him and that crazy "You prick-stupid cocksucker, you hold still." Trash froze on his hands and knees. He made wee-wee in his pants, and his mind dissolved into a madly fluttering black bird of panic. He turned around little by little, the tendons in his neck creaking like the hinges of a door in a haunted house. And there stood The Kid, resplendent in an iridescent shirt of green and gold and a pair of sunfaded cords. There was a . 45 in each hand and a horrible grimace of hate and rage on his face. "I was just chuh-checkin down this way," Trashcan Man heard himself saying. "To make sure the cuh-cuh-coast was clear." "Sure—on your hands and knees you was checkin, dinkweed. I'll clear your motherfuckin coast. Stand up here." Trashcan somehow gained his feet and kept them by holding on to the doorhandle of a car on his right. The twin bores of The Kid's matched set of . 45s looked every bit as big as the twin bores of the Eisenhower Tunnel. He was looking at death now. He knew that. There were no right words to avert it this time. He offered up a silent prayer to the dark man: Please... if it be your will... my life for you! "What's up there?" The Kid asked. "A wreck?" "A tunnel. It's jammed solid. That's why I came back, to tell you. Please—" "A tunnel," The Kid groaned. "Jesus-hairy-ole-baldheaded-Christ!" The scowl returned. "Are you lyin to me, you fuckin fairy?" "No! I swear I'm not! The sign said Eeesenhoover Tunnel. I think that's what it said, but I have trouble with long words. I—" "Shut your dough-hole. How far?" "Eight miles. Maybe even more." The Kid was silent for a moment, looking west along the turnpike. Then he fixed Trashcan Man with a glittery gaze. "You trine to tell me this traffic jam's eight miles long? You lyin sack of shit!" The Kid thumbed the triggers on both guns up to half-cock. Trashcan, who wouldn't have known half-cock from full cock and full cock from a bag of frogs, screeched like a woman and put his hands over his eyes. "No kidding!" he screamed. "No kidding! I swear! I swear!" The Kid looked at him for a long time. At last he lowered the hammers on his guns. "I'm gonna kill you, Trashy," he said, smiling. "I'm gonna take your motherfuckin life. But first we're gonna walk back to that pileup we squeaked by this morning. You're gonna push the van over the edge. Then I'm gonna go back and find another way around. Not gonna leave my fuckin car," he added petulantly. "Nohow no way." "Please don't kill me," Trashcan whispered. "Please don't." "If you can get that VW van over the side in less'n fifteen minutes, maybe I won't," The Kid said. "You believe that happy crappy?" "Yes," Trash said. But he had gotten a good look into those preternaturally glittering eyes, and he did not believe it at all. They walked back to the pileup, Trashcan Man walking in front of The Kid on wobbling rubber legs. The Kid walked mincingly, his leather jacket creaking softly in its secret folds. There was a vague, almost sweet smile on his dolllike lips.

By the time they got to the pileup, dusk was almost gone. The VW Microbus was on its side, the corpses of the three or four occupants a tangle of arms and legs that was mercifully hard to see in the fast-failing light. The Kid walked past the van and stood on the shoulder, looking at the place they had edged by some ten hours before. One of the deucey's tire tracks was still there, but the other had crumbled away with the embankment. "Nope," The Kid said with finality. "Never make it by here again unless we do some movin and groovin first. Don't tell me, I'll tell you."

286 For one brief moment, Trashcan Man entertained the notion of rushing at The Kid and trying to push him over the edge. Then The Kid turned around. His guns were drawn and pointing casually at Trashcan's midriff. "Say, Trashy. You was thinkin evil thoughts. Don't try to tell me no different. I can read you like a motherfuckin book." Trashcan shook his head violently back and forth in protest. "Don't you make a mistake with me, Trashy. That's the one thing in this wide world you don't want to do. Now get pushing on that van. You got fifteen minutes." There was an Austin parked nearby on the broken centerline. The Kid pulled open the passenger door, casually ripped out the bloated corpse of a teenage girl (her arm came off in his hand and he tossed it aside with the absent air of a man who has finished with the turkey drumstick he has been nibbling on), and sat down on the bucket seat with his feet out on the pavement. He gestured goodhumoredly with his guns at the slumped, shuddering form of the Trashcan Man. "Time's a-wastin, good buddy." He threw back his head and sang: "Oh... here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he's a one-ball man and he's OFF to the ro-dee-OH... that's right, Trashy, ya fuckin wet end, getcha back into it, only twelve minutes left... alamand left an alamand right, come on, ya fuckin dummy, getcha right foot right Trash leaned against the Microbus. Bunched his legs and pushed. The Microbus moved perhaps two inches toward the drop. In his heart, hope-that indestructible weed of the human heart-had begun to bloom again. The Kid was irrational, impulsive, what Carley Yates and his poolhall buddies would have called crazier than a shithouse rat. Maybe if he actually got the van over the side and cleared the way for The Kid's precious deuce coupe, the lunatic would let him live. Maybe. He lowered his head, gripped the edge of the VW's frame, and shoved with all his might. Pain flared in his recently burned arm, and he knew that the fragile new tissue would soon rip open. Then the pain would become agony. The bus moved three inches. Sweat dripped from Trashcan's brow and ran into his eyes, stinging like warm engine oil. "Oh, here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he's a one-ball man and he's OFF to the ro- dee-OH!" The Kid sang. "Well, alamand left an alamand r—" The song broke off like a brittle twig. Trashcan Man looked up apprehensively. The Kid had come out of the Austin's passenger seat. He was standing in profile to Trash, staring across their half of the turnpike toward the eastbound lanes. A rocky, brushy slope rose beyond them, blotting out half the sky. "What the fuck was that?" The Kid whispered. "I didn't hear anyth—" Then he did hear something. He heard a small rattle of pebbles and stones on the other side of the highway. His dream recurred to him in sudden, total recall that froze his blood and evaporated all the spit in his mouth. "Who's there?" The Kid shouted. "You better answer me! Answer, goddammit, or I start shooting!" And he was answered, but not by any human voice. A howl rose up in the night like a hoarse siren, first climbing and then dropping rapidly down to a guttural growl. "Holy Jesus!" The Kid said, and his voice was suddenly thin. Coming down the slope on the far side of the turnpike and crossing the median strip were wolves, gaunt gray timberwolves, their eyes red, their jaws gaping and adrip. There were more than two dozen of them. Trashcan, in an ecstasy of terror, made wee-wee in his pants again. The Kid stepped around the trunk of the Austin, leveled his . 45s, and began firing. Flame licked from the barrels; the sound of the shots echoed and reechoed from the mountain faces, making it sound as if artillery were at work. Trashcan Man cried out and poked his index fingers in his ears. The night breeze tattered the gun-smoke, fresh and ripe and hot. Its cordite aroma stung his nose. The wolves came on, no faster and no slower, at a fast walk. Their eyes... Trashcan Man found himself unable to look away from their eyes. They were not the eyes of—ordinary wolves; of that he was quite convinced. They were the eyes of their Master, he thought. Their Master and his Master. Suddenly he remembered his prayer and he was afraid no longer. He took his fingers out of his ears. He ignored the wetness spreading at his crotch. He began to smile. The Kid had emptied both of his guns, dropping three of the wolves in so doing. He holstered the . 45s without making an attempt to reload and turned west. He went about ten paces and then stopped. More wolves were padding down the westbound lanes, weaving in and out of the dark hulks of the stalled cars like tattered streamers of mist. One of them raised its snout to the sky and howled. Its cry was joined by a second, the second by a third, the third by a whole chorus. Then they came on again.

287 The Kid began to back up. He was trying to load one of his guns now, but the shells were spilling out between his nerveless fingers. Suddenly he gave up. The gun fell out of his hand and clanked on the road. As if it had been a signal, the wolves rushed him. With a high, reedy scream of fear, The Kid turned and ran for the Austin. As he ran, his second pistol tumbled from its low holster and bounced off the road. With a low, ripping growl, the wolf closest to him sprang just as The Kid dove into the Austin and slammed the door. He just made it. The wolf bounced off the door, growling, its red eyes rolling horribly. It was joined by the others, and in moments the Austin was ringed with wolves. From inside, The Kid's face was a small white moon looking out. Then one of the wolves was coming toward the Trashcan Man, its triangular head held low, its eyes glowing like stormlamps. My life for you... Steadily, now not in the least afraid, Trash went to meet it. He held out his burned hand and the wolf licked it. After a moment it sat at his feet, curling its ragged, brushy tail about its withers. The Kid was staring at him, his mouth hanging open. Smiling into his eyes, Trashcan Man gave him the finger. Both fingers. And he screamed: "Fuck you! You're shut down! Do you hear me? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT HAPPY CRAPPY? SHUT DOWN! DON'T TELL ME, I'LL TELL YOU!" The wolfs mouth closed gently on Trashcan's good hand. He looked down. It was standing again, tugging him lightly. Tugging him west. "All right," Trashcan said serenely. "Okay, boy." He began to walk and the wolf fell in right behind him, walking like a welltrained dog at heel. As they walked away, five others joined them from amid the stalled cars. Now he walked with one wolf ahead of him, one behind him, and two on each side, like an escorted dignitary. He paused once and looked back over his shoulder. He never forgot what he saw: a ring of wolves sitting patiently in a. gray circle around the little Austin, and the pale circle of The Kid's face staring out, his mouth working behind the windowglass. The wolves seemed to grin up at The Kid, their tongues lolling out of their mouths. They seemed to be asking him just how long it would be before he kicked the dark man out of ole Lost Wages on his ass. Just how long? Trashcan Man wondered how long those wolves would sit around the little Austin, ringing it in a circle of teeth. The answer, of course, was as long as it took. Two days, three, maybe even four. The Kid would sit there, looking out. Nothing to eat (unless the teenage girl had had a passenger, that was), nothing to drink, the afternoon temperature in the car's small interior maybe as high as a hundred and thirty degrees, what with the greenhouse effect. The dark man's lapdogs would wait until The Kid starved to death, or until he got crazy enough to open the door and try to make a run for it. Trashcan Man giggled in the darkness. The Kid wasn't very big. He wouldn't make much more than a mouthful for each of them. And what they did get might well poison them. "Am I right?" he cried, and cackled up at the bright stars. "Don't tell me if you believe that happy crappy! I'll motherfuckin tell YOU!" His gray-ghostly companions padded gravely along all about him, taking no notice of Trashcan Man's shouts. When they reached The Kid's deuce coupe, the wolf at his heel padded over to it, sniffed at one of the Wide Ovals, and then, grinning sardonically, lifted his leg and made wee-wee on it. Trashcan Man had to laugh. He laughed until tears squirted from his eyes and ran down his cracked, stubbled cheeks. His madness, like a fine skillet dish, now wanted only for the desert sun to simmer it and complete it, to give it that final subtle touch of flavor. They walked, the Trashcan Man and his escorts. As the traffic grew thicker, the wolves either squirmed under cars with their bellies dragging on the road or padded over hoods and roofs near him-sanguine, silent companions with red eyes and bright teeth. When, sometime after midnight, they reached the Eisenhower Tunnel, Trashcan did not hesitate but worked his way steadily into the maw of the westbound side. How could he be afraid now? How could he be afraid with guardians like these? It was a long trip, and he had lost all track of time before it had little more than begun. He groped blindly forward from one car to the next. Once his hand plunged into something wet and sickeningly soft, and there was a horrible whoosh of stinking gas. Even then he did not falter. From time to time he saw red eyes in the dark, always up ahead, always leading him forward.

A time later he sensed a new freshness in the air and began to hurry, once losing his balance and plunging from the hood of one car to crack his skull painfully on the bumper of the next. A short time after that, he looked up and saw the stars again; now paling before the onset of dawn. He was out.

288 His guardians had faded away. But Trashcan fell to his knees and gave thanks in a long, rambling, disjointed prayer. He had seen the hand of the dark man at work, and he had seen it plain. In spite of all he had been through since he had awakened the previous morning to see The Kid admiring his hairdo in the mirror of the Golden Motel room, Trash was too exalted to sleep. He walked instead, putting the tunnel behind him. The traffic was choked on the westbound side of the tunnel too, but it had cleared out enough to walk comfortably before he had gone two miles. Across the median, in the eastbound lanes, the stream of cars that had been waiting to use the tunnel stretched on and on. At noon he began to come down from Vail Pass into Vail itself, passing the condominiums and the singles apartment complexes. Now weariness had almost overcome him. He broke a window, unlocked a door, found a bed. And that was all he remembered until early the next morning.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window. Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on Purpose. It was quite likely for this reason that the Trashcan Man talked to a crow for nearly twenty minutes on the road west of Vail, convinced it was either an emissary of the dark man... or the dark man himself. The crow regarded him silently from its perch on a high telephone wire for a long time, not flying away until it was bored or hungry... or until Trashcan's outpouring of praise and promises of loyalty were complete. He got another bike near Grand Junction, and by July 25 he had been speeding across western Utah on Route 4, which connects I-89 on the east to the great southwestern-tending I-15, which goes from north of Salt Lake City all the way to San Bernadino, California. And when the front wheel of his new bike suddenly decided to part company from the rest of the machine and go speeding off into the desert on its own, Trashcan Man was pitched over the handlebars to land on his head, a crash that should have fractured his skull (he was doing forty when it happened, and wearing no helmet). Yet he was able to stand up less than five minutes later, with blood streaming over his face from half a dozen cuts and lacerations, able to do his shuffling, grimacing little dance, able to chant: "Cii-a-bo-la, my life for you, Ci-a-bola, bumpty, bumpty, bump!" There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit or the broken of skull than a good strong dose of "Thy will be done."

On August 7, Lloyd Henreid came to the room in which the dehydrated and semidelirious Trashcan Man had been installed the day before. It was a fine room, on the thirtieth floor of the MGM Grand. There was a round bed with silk sheets, and a round mirror which looked to be the exact same size as the bed, mounted on the ceiling. Trashcan Man looked at Lloyd. "How you feeling, Trash?" Lloyd asked, looking back. "Good," Trashcan Man said. "Better." "Some food and water and rest, that's all you needed," Lloyd said. "I brought you some clean clothes. Had to guess at the sizes." "They look fine." Trash had never really been able to remember his sizes. He took the jeans and the workshirt Lloyd offered. "Come on down to breakfast when you're dressed," Lloyd said. He spoke almost deferentially. "Most of us eat in the deli." "Okay. Sure." The deli hummed with conversation, and he paused outside and around the corner, suddenly overcome with fright. They would look up at him when he came in. They would look up and laugh. Someone would start giggling in the back of the room, someone else would join in, and then the whole place would be an uproar of laughter and pointing fingers. Hey, put away ya matches, here comes the Trashcan Man! Hey, Trash! What did ole lady Semple say when you torched her pension check? Wet the bed much, Trashy? Sweat popped out on his skin, making him feel slimy in spite of the shower he'd taken after Lloyd left. He remembered his face in the bathroom mirror, covered with slowly healing scabs, his body, too gaunt, his eyes, too small for their yawning sockets. Yes, they would laugh. He listened to the hum of conversation, the clink of silverware, and thought he should just slink away. Then he thought of the way the wolf had taken his hand, so gently, and had led him away from The Kid's metal tomb, and Trash squared his shoulders and walked inside.

289 A few people looked up briefly, then went back to their meals and their conversations. Lloyd, at a big table in the middle of the room, raised an arm and waved him over. Trash threaded his way among the tables and under a darkened electronic Keno toteboard. There were three other people at the table. They were all eating ham and scrambled eggs. "Serve yourself," Lloyd said. "It's a steam-table kinda thing—" Trashcan Man got a tray and served himself. The man behind the counter, large and dressed in dirty cook's whites, watched him. "Are you Mr. Horgan?" Trashcan Man asked timidly. Horgan grinned, exposing gapped teeth. "Yeah, but we won't get nowhere with you callin me that, boy. You call me Whitey. You feelin a little better? When you came in, you looked like the wratha God." "Much better, sure." "Dig in those aigs. All you want. Go light on the home fries, though. I would, at least. Them taters is old and tough. Good to have you here, boy." "Thanks," Trash said. He went back to Lloyd's table. "Trash, this here is Ken DeMott. The fella with the bald spot is Hector Drogan. And this kid tryin to grow on his face what springs up wild in his asshole calls himself Ace High." They all nodded at him. "This is our new boy," Lloyd said. "Name's Trashcan Man." Hands were shaken all around. Trash started to dig into his eggs. He looked up at the young man with the scraggly beard and said in a low, polite voice: "Would you pass the salt, please, Mr. High?" There was a moment of surprise as they looked at each other, and then they all burst into laughter. Trash stared at them, feeling the panic rise in his chest, and then he heard the laughter, really heard it, with his mind as well as his ears, and understood that there was no meanness in it. No one here was going to ask him why he hadn't burned down the school instead of the church. No one here was going to dun him about old lady Semple's pension check. He could smile too, if he wanted. And he did. "Mr. High," Hector Drogan was giggling. "Oh, Ace, you just been had. Mr. High, I love it. Meeestair Haaaaah. Man, that is so fuckin rich." Ace High handed Trashcan the salt. "Just Ace, my man. That'll get me every time. You don't call me Mr. High and I won't call you Mr. Man, that a deal?" "Okay," Trashcan Man said, still smiling. "That's fine." "Oh, Mr. Hiiiigh?" Heck Drogan said in a coy falsetto. Then he burst into laughter again. "Ace, you never gonna live that down. I swear you won't." "Maybe not, but I'm sure-God gonna live it up," Ace High said, and got up with his plate for more eggs. His hand closed for a moment on Trashcan Man's shoulder as he went. The hand was warm and solid. It was a friendly hand that did not squeeze or pinch. Trashcan Man dug into his eggs, feeling warm,,And good inside. This warmth and goodness was so foreign to his nature that it almost felt like a disease. As he ate he tried to isolate it, understand it. He looked up, looked at the faces around him, and thought he might understand what it was. Happiness. What a good bunch of people, he thought. And on the heels of that: I'm home.

That day he was left on his own to sleep, but the next day he was bussed up to Boulder Dam with a lot of other people. There they spent the day wrapping copper core wire around the spindles of burned-out motors. He worked at a bench with a view of the water-Lake Mead-and no one supervised him. Trashcan Man assumed that there was no foreman or anyone like that around because everyone was as in love with what they were doing as he was himself. He learned differently the next day. It was quarter past ten in the morning. Trashcan Man was sitting on his bench, wrapping copper wire, his mind a million miles away as his fingers did their work. He was composing a psalm of praise to the dark man in his mind. It had occurred to him that he should get a large book (a Book, ctually) and begin to write some of his thoughts about him down. It would be the sort of Book people might want to read someday. People who felt about him as Trash did. Ken DeMott came to his bench, and Ken looked pale and frightened under his desert tan. "Come on," he said. "Work's over. We're going back to Vegas. Everyone. The buses are outside." "Huh? Why?" Trashcan blinked up at him. "I don't know. It's his order. Lloyd passed it along. Get your ass in gear, Trashy. It's best not to ask questions when the hardcase is involved." So he didn't. Outside, on Hoover Drive, three Las Vegas Public School buses were parked with their engines idling. Men and women were climbing aboard. There was little talk; the midmorning

290 ride back to Vegas was the antithesis of the usual commutes to and from work. There was no horseplay, little conversation, and none of the usual light banter that passed between the twenty or so women and the thirty or so men. Everyone had drawn into himself or herself. As they neared the city, Trashcan Man heard one of the men sitting across the aisle from him say quietly to his seatmate: "It's Heck. Heck Drogan. Goddammit, how does that spook find things out?" "Shut up," the other said, and gave Trashcan Man a mistrustful glance. Trash averted his gaze and looked out the window at the passing desert. He was once again troubled in his mind.

291 had saved him from dying at the hands of The Kid (that the dark man might have sent The Kid for just that purpose never crossed Trashcan Man's mind), and surely that meant his life was now a debt he owed to that same dark man... the man some of them here called the Walkin Dude. His life! Had he not himself offered it again and again? But your soul... did you offer your soul as well? In for a penny, in for a pound, the Trashcan Man thought, and gently put one hand around the gold chain and the other around the dark Stone. The stone was cold and smooth. He held it in his fist for a moment just to see if he could warm it up. He didn't think he would be able to, and he was right. So he put it around his neck, where it lay against his skin like a tiny ball of ice. But he didn't mind that icy feeling. That icy feeling counterbalanced the fire which was always in his mind. "Just tell yourself you don't know him," Lloyd said. "Heck, I mean. That's what I always do. It makes it easier. It—" Two of the wide hotel doors banged open. Frantic, terrified screams floated across to them. The crowd sighed. A party of nine came down the steps. Hector Drogan was in the center. He was fighting like a tiger caught in a net. His face was dead pale except for two hectic blots of color riding high up on his cheekbones. Sweat was pouring off every inch of skin in rivers. He was mother-naked. Five men were holding on to him. One of them was Ace High, the kid Heck had been ribbing about his name. "Ace!" Hector was babbling. "Hey, Ace, what do you say? Little help for the kid, okay? Tell them to quit this, man-I can get clean, I swear to God I can clean up my act. What do you say? Little help here! Please, Ace!" Ace High said nothing; simply tightened his grip on Heck's thrashing arm. It was answer enough. Hector Drogan began to scream again. He was dragged relentlessly across the pavilion and toward the fountain. Behind him, walking in line like a solemn undertaker's party, were three men: Whitney Horgan, carrying a large carpetbag; a man named Roy Hoopes, with a stepladder; and Winky Winks, a bald man whose eyes twitched constantly. Winky was carrying a clipboard with a typed sheet of paper on it. Heck was dragged to the foot of the cross. A horrible yellow smell of fear was radiating out from him; his eyes rolled, showing the muddy whites, like the eyes of a horse left out in a thunderstorm. "Hey, Trashy," he said hoarsely as Roy Hoopes set up the stepladder behind him. "Trashcan Man. Tell em to cut it out, buddy. Tell them I can get clean. Tell them a scare like this is better'n all the fuckin rehabs in the world. Tell em, man." Trashcan stared down at his feet. As he bent his neck, the black stone swung out from his chest and into his field of vision. The red flaw, the eye, seemed to be staring up at him fixedly. "I don't know you," he mumbled. From the tail of his eye he saw Whitey down on one knee, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his left eye squinted against the smoke. He opened the carpetbag. He was taking out sharp wooden nails. To Trashcan Man's horrified gaze, they looked almost as big as tentpegs. He laid the nails on the grass and then removed a large wooden mallet from the carpetbag. In spite of the murmuring voices all around them, Trashcan Man's words seemed to have penetrated the panicky haze in Hector brogan's mind. "What do you mean, you don't know me?" he cried wildly. "We had breakfast together just two days ago! You called the kid there Mr. High. What do you mean you don't know me, you chickenshit little liar?" "I don't know you at all," Trash repeated, a little more clearly this time. And what he felt was almost a sense of relief. All he saw here in front of him was a stranger, a stranger who looked a bit like Carley Yates. His hand went to the stone and curled around it. Its coolness reassured him further. "You liar!" Heck screamed. He began to struggle again, his muscles flexing and pumping, the sweat trickling down his bare chest and arms. You liar! You do so know me! You do so, you liar!" "No I don't. I don't know you and I don't want to know YOU." Heck began to scream again. The four men holding him bore down, panting and out of breath. "Go ahead," Lloyd said. Heck was dragged backward. One of the men holding him stuck out a leg and tripped him. He landed half on the cross and half off it. Meanwhile, Winky had begun to read the typed sheet on his clipboard in a high voice that sliced through Heck's screams like the howl of a buzzsaw. "Attention attention attention! By the order of Randall Flagg, Leader of the People and First Citizen, this man, Hector Alonzo Drogan by name, is ordered executed by an act of crucifixion, this penalty so ordered for the crime of drug use." "No! No! No!" Heck screamed in frenzied counterpoint. His left arm, greasy with sweat, escaped Ace High's hold, and instinctively Trash knelt and pinned the arm back down, forcing the wrist against an arm of the cross. A second later, Whitey was kneeling beside Trashcan with the wooden

292 mallet and two of the crude nails. The cigarette still hung from the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man about to do a little job of carpentering in his back yard. "Yeah, good, hold him just like that, Trash. I'll staple him. Won't take a minute." "Drug use is not allowed in this Society of the People because it impairs the user's ability to contribute fully to the Society of the People," Winky was proclaiming. He spoke fast, like an auctioneer, and his eyes bunched and scrunched and wiggled. "Specifically in this case, the accused Hector brogan was found with freebasing paraphernalia and a large supply of cocaine." Now Heck's screams had reached a pitch that might well have shattered crystal, if there had been any crystal around to. shatter. His head lashed from side to side. ''here was foam on his lips. Ribbons of blood coursed down his arms as six of them, Trashcan Man included, lifted the cross into the cement pit. Now Hector Drogan was silhouetted against the sky with his head thrown back in a rictus of pain. "—is done for the good of this Society of the People," Winky screamed relentlessly. "This communication ends with a solemn warning and greetings to the People of Las Vegas. Let this bill of true facts be nailed above the miscreant's head, and let it be marked with the seal of the First Citizen, RANDALL FLAGG by name." "Oh my God it HURTS!" Hector Drogan screamed from above them. "Oh my God my God oh God God God!" The crowd remained for almost an hour, each person afraid to be remarked upon as having been the first to leave. There was disgust on many faces, a drowsy kind of excitement on many others... but if there was a common denominator, it was fear. Trashcan Man wasn't frightened, though. Why should he have been frightened? He hadn't known the man. He hadn't known him at all.

It was quarter past ten that night when Lloyd came back to Trashcan Man's room. He glanced at Trash and said, "You're dressed. Good. I thought you might have gone to bed already." "No," Trashcan Man said, "I'm up. Why?" Lloyd's voice dropped. "It's now, Trashy. He wants to see you. Flagg." "He-?" "Yeah." Trashcan Man was transported. "Where is he? My life for him, oh yes—" "Top floor," Lloyd said. "He got in just after we finished burning brogan's body. From the Coast. He was just here when Whitey and I got back from the landfill. No one ever sees him come or go, Trash, but they always know when he's taken off again. Or when he comes back. Come on, let's go.

Four minutes later the elevator arrived at the top floor and Trashcan Man, his face alight and his eyes goggling, stepped out. Lloyd did not. Trash turned toward him. "Aren't you-?" Lloyd managed a smile, but it was a sorry affair. "No, he wants to see you alone. Good luck, Trash." And before he could say anything else, the elevator door had slid shut and Lloyd was gone. Trashcan Man turned around. He was in a wide, sumptuous hallway. There were two doors... and the one at the end was slowly opening. It was dark in there. But Trash could see a form standing in the doorway. And eyes. Red eyes. Heart thudding slowly in his chest, mouth dry, Trashcan Man started to walk toward that form. As he did, the air seemed to grow steadily cooler and cooler. Goosebumps rushed out on his sunbaked arms. Somewhere deep inside him, the corpse of Donald Merwin Elbert rolled over in its grave and seemed to cry out. Then it was still again. "The Trashcan Man," a low and charming voice said. "How good it is to have you here. How very good." The words fell like dust from his mouth: "My... my life for you." "Yes," the shape in the doorway said soothingly. Lips parted and white teeth showed in a grin. "But I don't think R will come to that. Come in. Let me look at you." His eyes overbright, his face as slack as the face of a sleepwalker, Trashcan Man stepped inside. The door closed, std they were in dimness. A terribly hot hand closed over Trashcan Man's icy one... and suddenly he felt at peace. Flagg said: "There's work for you in the desert, Trash. Great work. If you want it." "Anything," Trashcan Man whispered. "Anything." Randall Flagg slipped an arm around his wasted shoulders "I'm going to set you to burn," he said. "Come, let's r.—. have something to drink and talk about it."

293

And in the end, that burning was very great.