Desperation   ::   Кинг Стивен

“No!” David whipped his head from side to side in a frenzy. “No, it’s my job! It’s mine!

He can’t take them all and leave me! Do you hear. HE CAN’T TAKE THEM ALL AND-”

“David! Quit it!”

David stopped struggling and merely hung in Steve’s arms like a puppet with its strings cut. His eyes were red and raw. Johnny thought he had never seen such desola-tion and loss in a human face.

The motorcycle helmet was lying where Johnny had dropped it when the eagle attacked.

He bent, picked it up, and looked at the boy in Steve’s arms. Steve looked the way Johnny felt-sick, lost, bewildered.

“David-” he began, “is God in you.” David asked. “Can you feel him in there, Johnny. Like a hand. Or a fire.”

“Yes,” Johnny said.

“Then you won’t take this wrong.” David spit into his face. It was warm on the skin below Johnny’s eyes, like tears.

Johnny made no effort to wipe away the boy’s spittle. “Listen to me, David. I’m going to tell you something you didn’t learn from your minister or your Bible. For all I know it’s a message from God himself. Are you listening.”

David only looked at him, saying nothing.

“You said ‘God is cruel’ the way a person who’s lived his whole life on Tahiti might say ’snow is cold.’ You knew, but you didn’t understand.” He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy’s cold cheeks. “Do you know how cruel your God can be, David.

How fantas-tically cruel.”

David waited, saying nothing. Maybe listening, maybe not. Johnny couldn’t tell.

“Sometimes he makes us live.”

Johnny turned, scooped up the flashlight, started down the drift, then turned back once again. “Go to your friend Brian, David. Go to your friend and make him your brother.

Then start telling yourself there was an accident out on the highway, a bad one, a no—brain drunk crossed the centerline, the RV you were in rolled over and only you survived.

It happens all the time. Just read the paper.”

“But that’s not the truth!”

“It might as well be. And when you get back to Ohio or Indiana or wherever it is you hang your hat, pray for God to get you over this. To make you well again. As for now, you’re excused.”

“I’ll never say another… what. What did you say.”

“I said you’re excused.” Johnny was looking at him fixedly. “Excused early.” He turned his head. “Get him out of here, Steven. Get them all out of here.