He almost followed his left-brain"s good advice . . . and then he looked at the Chattery Teeth in the display case again, the Chattery Teeth standing there on those big orange cartoon shoes. And white spats! They were the real killer. Jack would love them, his right brain told him. And tell the truth, Bill, old buddy; if it turns out Jack doesn"t want them, you do. You may see another set of Jumbo Chattery Teeth at some point in your life, any thing"s possible, but ones that also walk on big orange feet? Huh-uh. I really doubt it.
It was the right brain he listened to that time . . . and everything else followed.
The kid with the ponytail was still going through his pockets; the sullen expression on his face deepened each time he came up dry. Hogan was no fan of smoking - his father, a two-pack-a-day man, had died of lung cancer - but he had visions of still waiting to be waited on an hour from now. "Hey! Kid!"
The kid looked around and Hogan flipped him a quarter.
"Hey! Thanks, m"man!"
"Think nothing of it."
The kid concluded his transaction with the beefy Mrs. Scooter, put the cigarettes in one pocket, and dropped the remaining fifteen cents in another. He made no offer of the change to Hogan, who hadn"t really expected it. Boys and girls like this were legion these days - they cluttered the highways from coast to coast, blowing along like tumbleweeds. Perhaps they had always been there, but to Hogan the current breed seemed both unpleasant and a little scary, like the rattlers Scooter was now storing in the back room.
The snakes in p.i.s.s-ant little roadside menageries like this one couldn"t kill you; their venom was milked twice a week and sold to clinics that made drugs with it. You could count on that just as you could count on the winos to show up at the local plasma bank every Tuesday and Thursday. But the snakes could still give you one h.e.l.l of a painful bite if you got too close and then made them mad. That. Hogan thought, was what the current breed of road-kids had in common with them.
Mrs. Scooter came drifting down the counter, the words on her tee-shirt drifting up and down and side to side as she did. "Whatcha need?" she asked.-Her tone was still truculent. The West had a reputation for friendliness, and during the twenty years he had spent selling there Hogan had come to feel the reputation was more often than not deserved, but this woman had all the charm of a Brooklyn shopkeeper who has been stuck up three times in the last two weeks. Hogan supposed that her kind was becoming as much a part of the scene in the New West as the road-kids. Sad but true.
"How much are these?" Hogan asked, pointing through the dirty gla.s.s at what the sign identified as JUMBO CHATTERY TEETH - THEY WALK! The case was filled with novelty items - Chinese finger-pullers, Pepper Gum, Dr. Wacky"s Sneezing Powder, cigarette loads (A Laff Riot! according to the package - Hogan guessed they were more likely a great way to get your teeth knocked out), X-ray gla.s.ses, plastic vomit (So Realistic!), joy-buzzers.
"I dunno," Mrs. Scooter said. "Where"s the box, I wonder?"
The teeth were the only item in the case that wasn"t packaged, but they certainly were jumbo, Hogan thought - super-jumbo, in fact, five times the size of the sets of wind-up teeth which had so amused him as a kid growing up in Maine. Take away the joke feet and they would look like the teeth of some fallen Biblical giant - the cuspids were big white blocks and the canine teeth looked like tentpegs sunk in the improbably red plastic gums. A key jutted from one gum. The teeth were held together in a clench by a thick rubber band.
Mrs. Scooter blew the dust from the Chattery Teeth, then turned them over, looking on the soles of the orange shoes for a price sticker. She didn"t find one. "I don"t know," she said crossly, eyeing Hogan as if he might have taken the sticker off himself. "Only Scooter"d buy a piece of trash like this here. Been around since Noah got off the boat. I"ll have to ask him."
Hogan was suddenly tired of the woman and of Scooter"s Grocery Roadside Zoo. They were great Chattery Teeth, and Jack would undoubtedly love them, but he had promised - eight at the latest.
"Never mind," he said. "It was just an - "
"Them teeth was supposed to go for $15.95, if you c"n believe it," Scooter said from behind them. "They ain"t just plastic - those"re metal teeth painted white. They could give you a h.e.l.luva bite if they worked . . . but she dropped "em on the floor two-three years ago when she was dustm the inside of the case and they"re busted."
"Oh," Hogan said, disappointed. "That"s too bad. I never saw a pair with, you know, feet."
"There are lots of "em like that now," Scooter said. "They sell "em at the novelty stores in Vegas and Dry Springs. But I never saw a set as big as those. It was funnier"n h.e.l.l to watch "em walk across the floor, snappin like a crocodile. Shame the old lady dropped "em."
Scooter glanced at her, but his wife was looking out at the blowing sand. There was an expression on her face which Hogan couldn"t quite decipher - was it sadness, or disgust, or both?
Scooter looked back at Hogan. "I could let "em go for three-fifty, if you wanted "em. We"re gettin rid of the novelties, anyway. Gonna put rental videotapes in that counter." He closed the storeroom door. The bandanna was now pulled down, lying on the dusty front of his shirt. His face was haggard and too thin. Hogan saw what might have been the shadow of serious illness lurking just beneath his desert tan.
"You could do no such a thing, Scooter!" the big woman snapped, and turned toward him . . . almost turned on him.
"Shutcha head,"" Scooter replied. "You make my fillins ache."
"I told you to get Wolf - "
"Myra, if you want him back there in the storeroom, go get him yourself." He began to advance on her, and Hogan was surprised - almost wonder-struck, in fact - when she gave ground. "Ain"t nothin but a Minnesota coydog anyway. Three dollars even, friend, and those Chattery Teeth are yours. Throw in another buck and you can take Myra"s Woof, too. If you got five, I"ll deed the whole place to you. Ain"t worth a dogfart since the turnpike went through, anyway."
The long-haired kid was standing by the door, tearing the top from the pack of cigarettes Hogan had helped buy and watching this small comic opera with an expression of mean amus.e.m.e.nt. His small gray-green eyes gleamed, flicking back and forth between Scooter and his wife.
"h.e.l.l with you," Myra said gruffly, and Hogan realized shewas close to tears. "If you won"t get my sweet baby, I will." She stalked past him, almost striking him with one boulder-sized breast. Hogan thought it would have knocked the little man flat if it had connected.
"Look," Hogan said, "I think I"ll just shove along."
"Aw, h.e.l.l," Scooter said. "Don"t mind Myra. I got cancer and she"s got the change, and it ain"t my problem she"s havin the most trouble livin with. Take the darn teeth. Bet you got a boy might like "em. Besides, it"s probably just a cog knocked a little off-track. I bet a man who was handy could get "em walkin and chompin again."
He looked around, his expression helpless and musing. Outside, the wind rose to a brief, thin shriek as the kid opened the door and slipped out. He had decided the show was over, apparently. A cloud of fine grit swirled down the middle aisle, between the canned goods and the dog food.
"I was pretty handy myself, at one time," Scooter confided.
Hogan did not reply for a long moment. He could not think of anything - quite literally not one single thing - to say. He looked down at the Jumbo Chattery Teeth standing on the scratched and cloudy display case, nearly desperate to break the silence (now that Scooter was standing right in front of him, he could see that the man"s eyes were huge and dark, glittering with pain and some heavy dope . . . Darvon, or perhaps morphine), and he spoke the first words that popped into his head: "Gee, they don"t look broken."
He picked the teeth up. They were metal, all right - too heavy to be anything else - and when he looked through the slightly parted jaws, he was surprised at the size of the mainspring that ran the thing. He supposed it would take one that size to make the teeth not only chatter but walk, as well. What had Scooter said? They could give you a h.e.l.luva bite if they worked. Hogan gave the thick rubber band an experimental tweak, then stripped it off. He was still looking at the teeth so he wouldn"t have to look into Scooter"s dark, pain-haunted eyes. He grasped the key and at last he risked a look up. He was relieved to see that now the thin man was smiling a little.
"Do you mind?" Hogan asked.
"Not me, pilgrim - let er rip."
Hogan grinned and turned the key. At first it was all right; there was a series of small, ratcheting clicks, and he could see the mainspring winding up. Then, on the third turn, there was a sp.r.o.nk! noise from inside, and the key simply slid bonelessly around in its hole.
"See?"
"Yes," Hogan said. He set the teeth down on the counter. They stood there on their unlikely orange feet and did nothing.
Scooter poked the clenched molars on the lefthand side with the tip of one h.o.r.n.y finger. The jaws of the teeth opened. One orange foot rose and took a dreamy half-step forward. Then the teeth stopped moving and the whole rig fell sideways. The Chattery Teeth came to rest on the wind-up key, a slanted, disembodied grin out here in the middle of no-man"s-land. After a moment or two, the big teeth came together again with a slow click. That was all.
Hogan, who had never had a premonition in his life, was suddenly filled with a clear certainty that was both eerie and sickening. A year from now, this man will have been eight months in his grave, and if someone exhumed his coffin and pried off the lid, they"d see teeth just like these poking out of his dried-out dead face like an enamel trap.
He glanced up into Scooter"s eyes, glittering like dark gems in tarnished settings, and suddenly it was no longer a question of wanting to get out of here; he had to get out of here.
"Well," he said (hoping frantically that Scooter would not stick out his hand to be shaken), "gotta go. Best of luck to you, sir."
Scooter did put his hand out, but not to be shaken. Instead, he snapped the rubber band back around the Chattery Teeth (Hogan had no idea why, since they didn"t work), set them on their funny cartoon feet, and pushed them across the scratched surface of the counter. "Thank you kindly," he said. "And take these teeth. No charge."
"Oh . . . well, thanks, but I couldn"t . . . "
"Sure you can," Scooter said. "Take "em and give "em to your boy. He"ll get a kick out of "em standin on the shelf in his room even if they don"t work. I know a little about boys. Raised up three of "em."
"How did you know I had a son?" Hogan asked.
Scooter winked. The gesture was terrifying and pathetic at the same time. "Seen it in your face," he said. "Go on, take "em."
The wind gusted again, this time hard enough to make the boards of the building moan. The sand hitting the windows sounded like fine snow. Hogan picked the teeth up by the plastic feet, surprised all over again by how heavy they were.
"Here." Scooter produced a paper bag, almost as wrinkled and crumpled about the edges as his own face, from beneath the counter. "Stick "em in here. That"s a real nice sportcoat you got there. If you carry them choppers in the pocket, it"ll get pulled out of shape."
He put the bag on the counter as if he understood how little Hogan wanted to touch him.
"Thanks," Hogan said. He put the Chattery Teeth in the bag and rolled down the top. "Jack thanks you, too - he"s my son."
Scooter smiled, revealing a set of teeth just as false (but nowhere near as large) as the ones in the paper bag. "My pleasure, mister. You drive careful until you get out of the blow. You"ll be fine once you get in the foothills."
"I know." Hogan cleared his throat. "Thanks again. I hope you . . . uh . . . recover soon."
"That"d be nice," Scooter said evenly, "but I don"t think it"s in the cards, do you?"
"Uh. Well." Hogan realized with dismay that he didn"t have the slightest idea how to conclude this encounter. "Take care of yourself."
Scooter nodded. "You too."
Hogan retreated toward the door, opened it, and had to hold on tight as the wind tried to rip it out of his hand and bang the wall. Fine sand scoured his face and he slitted his eyes against it.
He stepped out, closed the door behind him, and pulled the lapel of his real nice sportcoat over his mouth and nose as he crossed the porch, descended the steps, and headed toward the customized Dodge camper-van parked just beyond the gas-pumps. The wind pulled his hair and the sand stung his cheeks. He was going around to the driver"s-side door when someone tugged his arm.
"Mister! Hey, mister!"
He turned. It was the blonde-haired boy with the pale, ratty face. He hunched against the wind and blowing sand, wearing nothing but a tee-shirt and a pair of faded 501 jeans. Behind him, Mrs. Scooter was dragging a mangy beast on a choke-chain toward the back door of the store. Wolf the Minnesota coydog looked like a half-starved German shepherd pup - and the runt of the litter, at that "What?" Hogan shouted, knowing very well what.
"Can I have a ride?" the kid shouted back over the wind.
Hogan did not ordinarily pick up hitchhikers - not since one afternoon five years ago. He had stopped for a young girl on the outskirts of Tonopah. Standing by the side of the road, the girl had resembled one of those sad-eyed waifs in the UNICEF posters, a kid who looked like her mother and her last friend had both died in the same housefire about a week ago. Once she was in the car, however, Hogan had seen the bad skin and mad eyes of the long-time junkie. By then it was too late. She"d stuck a pistol in his face and demanded his wallet. The pistol was old and rusty. Its grip was wrapped in tattered electrician"s tape. Hogan had doubted that it was loaded, or that it would fire if it was . . . but he had a wife and a kid back in LA, and even if he had been single, was a hundred and forty bucks worth risking your life over? He hadn"t thought so even then, when he had just been getting his feet under him in his new line of work and a hundred and forty bucks had seemed a lot more important than it did these days. He gave the girl his wallet. By then her boyfriend had been parked beside the van (in those days it had been a Ford Econoline, nowhere near as nice as the custom Dodge XRT) in a dirty blue Chevy Nova. Hogan asked the girl if she would leave him his driver"s license, and the pictures of Lita and Jack. "f.u.c.k you, sugar," she said, and slapped him across the face, hard, with his own wallet before getting out and running to the blue car.
Hitchhikers were trouble.
But the storm was getting worse, and the kid didn"t even have a jacket. What was he supposed to tell him? f.u.c.k you, sugar, crawl under a rock with the rest of the lizards until the wind drops?
"Okay," Hogan said.
"Thanks, man! Thanks a lot!"
The kid ran toward the pa.s.senger door, tried it, found it locked, and just stood there, waiting to be let in, hunching his shoulders up around his ears. The wind billowed out the back of his shirt like a sail, revealing glimpses of his thin, pimple-studded back.
Hogan glanced back at Scooter"s Grocery Roadside Zoo as he went around to the driver"s door. Scooter was standing at the window, looking out at him. He raised his hand, solemnly, palm out. Hogan raised his own in return, then slipped his key into the lock and turned it. He opened the door, pushed the unlock b.u.t.ton next to the power window switch, and motioned for the kid to get in.
He did, then had to use both hands to pull the door shut again. The wind howled around the van, actually making it rock a little from side to side.
"Wow!" the kid gasped, and rubbed his fingers briskly through his hair (he"d lost the sneaker lace and the hair now lay on his shoulders in lank clots). "Some storm, huh? Big-time!"
"Yeah," Hogan said. There was a console between the two front seats - the kind of seats the brochures liked to call "captain"s chairs" - and Hogan placed the paper bag in one of the cup-holders. Then he turned the ignition key. The engine started at once with a good-tempered rumble.
The kid twisted around in his seat and looked appreciatively into the back of the van. There was a bed (now folded back into a couch), a small LP gas stove, and several storage compartments where Hogan kept his various sample cases, and a toilet cubicle at the rear.
"Not too tacky, m"man!" the kid said. "All the comforts." He glanced back at Hogan. "Where you headed?"
"Los Angeles."
The kid grinned. "Hey, great! So"m I!" He took out his just-purchased pack of Merits and tapped one loose.
Hogan had put on his headlights and dropped the transmission into drive. Now he shoved the gearshift back into park and turned to the kid. "Let"s get a couple of things straight," he said.
The kid gave Hogan his wide-eyed innocent look. "Sure, dude - no prob."
"First, I don"t pick up hitchhikers as a rule. I had a bad experience with one a few years back. It vaccinated me, you might say. I"ll take you through the Santa Clara foothills, but that"s all. There"s a truckstop on the other side - Sammy"s. It"s close to the turnpike. That"s where we part company. Okay?"
"Okay. Sure. You bet." Still with the wide-eyed look.
"Second, if you really have to smoke, we part company right now. That okay?"
For just a moment Hogan saw the kid"s other look (and even on short acquaintance, Hogan was almost willing to bet he only had two): the mean, watchful look. Then he was all wide-eyed innocence again, just a harmless refugee from Wayne"s World. He tucked the cigarette behind his ear and showed Hogan his empty hands. As he raised them, Hogan noticed the hand-lettered tattoo on the kid"s left bicep: DEF LEPPARD 4-EVER.
"No cigs," the kid said. "I got it."
"Fine. Bill Hogan." He held out his hand.
"Bryan Adams," the kid said, and shook Hogan"s hand briefly.
Hogan dropped the transmission into drive again and began to roll slowly toward Route 46. As he did, his eyes dropped briefly to a ca.s.sette box lying on the dashboard. It was Reckless, by Bryan Adams.
Sure, he thought. You"re Bryan Adams and I"m really Don Henley. We just stopped by Scooter"s Grocery Roadside Zoo to get a little material for our next alb.u.ms, right, dude?
As he pulled out onto the highway, already straining to see through the blowing dust, he found himself thinking of the girl again, the one outside of Tonopah who had slapped him across the face with his own wallet before fleeing. He was starting to get a very bad feeling about this.
Then a hard gust of wind tried to push him into the eastbound lane, and he concentrated on his driving.
They rode in silence for a while. When Hogan glanced once to his right he saw the kid was lying back with his eyes closed - maybe asleep, maybe dozing, maybe just pretending because he didn"t want to talk. That was okay; Hogan didn"t want to talk, either. For one thing, he didn"t know what he might have to say to Mr. Bryan Adams from Nowhere, USA. It was a cinch young Mr. Adams wasn"t in the market for labels or Universal Product Code readers, which was what Hogan sold. For another, just keeping the van on the road had become something of a challenge.
As Mrs. Scooter had warned, the storm was intensifying. The road was a dim phantom crossed at irregular intervals by tan ribs of sand. These drifts were like speed-b.u.mps, and they forced Hogan to creep along at no" more than twenty-five. He could live with that. At some points, however, the sand had spread more evenly across the road"s surface, camouflaging it, and then Hogan had to drop down to fifteen miles an hour, navigating by the dim bounceback of his headlights from the reflector-posts which marched along the side of the road.
Every now and then an approaching car or truck would loom out of the blowing sand like a prehistoric phantom with round blazing eyes. One of these, an old Lincoln Mark IV as big as a cabin cruiser, was driving straight down the center of 46. Hogan hit the horn and squeezed right, feeling the suck of the sand against his tires, feeling his lips peel away from his teeth in a helpless snarl. Just as he became sure the oncomer was going to force him into the ditch, the Lincoln swerved back onto its own side just enough for Hogan to make it by. He thought he heard the metallic click of his b.u.mper kissing off the Mark TV"s rear b.u.mper, but given the steady shriek of the wind, that was almost certainly his own imagination. He did catch just a glimpse of the driver - an old bald-headed man sitting bolt-upright behind the wheel, peering into the blowing sand with a concentrated glare that was almost maniacal. Hogan shook his fist at him, but the old codger did not so much as glance at him. Probably didn"t even realize I was there, Hogan thought, let alone how close he came to hitting me.
For a few seconds he was very close to going off the road anyway. He could feel the sand sucking harder at the rightside wheels, felt the van trying to tip. His instinct was to twist the wheel hard to the left. Instead, he fed the van gas and only urged it in that direction, feeling sweat dampen his last good shirt at the armpits. At last the suck on the tires diminished and he began to feel in control of the van again. Hogan blew his breath out in a long sigh.
"Good piece of driving, man."
His attention had been so focused he had forgotten his pa.s.senger, and in his surprise he almost twisted the wheel all the way to theIleft, which would have put them in trouble again. He looked around and saw the blonde kid watching him. His gray-green eyes were unsettlingly bright; there was no sign of sleepiness in them.
"It was really just luck," Hogan said. "If there was a place to pull over, I would . . . but I know this piece of road. It"s Sammy"s or bust. Once we"re in the foothills, it"ll get better."
He did not add that it might take them three hours to cover the seventy miles between here and there.
"You"re a salesman, right?"
"As rain."
He wished the kid wouldn"t talk. He wanted to concentrate on his driving. Up ahead, fog-lights loomed out of the murk like yellow ghosts. An Iroc Z with California plates followed them. The van and the Z crept past each other like old ladies in a nursing-home corridor. In the corner of his eye, Hogan saw the kid take the cigarette from behind his ear and begin to play with it. Bryan Adams indeed. Why had the kid given him a false name? It was like something out of an old Republic movie, the kind of thing you could still see on the late-late show, a black-and-white crime movie where the traveling salesman (probably played by Ray Milland) picks up the tough young con (played by Nick Adams, say) who has just broken out of jail in Gabbs or Deeth or some place like that - "What do you sell, dude?""
"Labels."
"Labels?"