“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—”

“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 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 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 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 halfmast.

“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.”