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:
“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
“Are you that anxious to see him, Hec?” Lloyd asked.
“No,” the balding man said. “Hey, Lloyd, you know I didn’t—”
“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 happen—trying 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 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 Jesus- jumped-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
“Sure,” Trashcan said.
“You’re fuckin A. Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you.”
The Kid stared at the dead TV. “You numb cunt,” 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
“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.”
