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 shit-factory 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 se**n 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 An instant later, the pistol was withdrawn.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 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 I'll 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?"