"What?" he said. "I don't -- Oh, God, oh, God!" He wrenched his hand away, grabbed the steering wheel and tried to shake it, then thought of the door handle and reached for it, but it would not move. The giant's arm came around him, pinning him to the seat. "Easy," said the voice. "Easy. Take it easy."
The roar went on echoing unbearably in the cab, like an avalanche, a river of stone; darkness hurried past the windshield, the side windows."Easy!" Larry said. "Oh, God!" His mouth wouldn't work right, and when he wiped it with his sleeve, he found that his face was wet with tears.
Bits of the solid darkness were bounding upward from the hood. Larry stared uncomprehendingly; then he saw the edge of the black mass creeping up from the bottom of the windshield. It was rising all around them. Coal! They were being buried in coal! He screamed and fought, but the giant would not let him go.
Remorseless as sand in an hourglass, the darkness rose over the windshield. Now there was only a narrow stripe at the top where the black torrent was still falling. Now even that was gone. In the yellow dome light, the windshield and side windows were masked by a solid layer of tiny gray-glistening bits of coal. The sound had changed; it was more furious than ever on the roof, but muffled all around.
Then there was another change: the roar of the falling coal was receding above their heads, dwindling, distant. At last it stopped. Larry could hear nothing but the painful ringing in his ears. The giant held him firmly. "Listen," he said. "Listen. We're going to get out. You understand me?"
"Get out," said Larry. He heard how weak his voice was, but he couldn't help it. "How we going to get out?"
"I'll show you after a while. Right now we have to wait."
"Wait, why?"
"Because the man who did this is still out there." He let go of Larry. "Okay now?"
Larry wiped his face with his sleeve. "You know who did it?"
"I think so. It's a man who wants to kill me."
Larry looked at him in wonder. The giant's mouth was set in an expression he could not read: it was not anger or sadness, but something else.
He could feel his body still trembling; he was cold all the way through, as cold as if he were already dead. Through the ringing in his ears he could feel the silence. There was nothing out there, nothing but stillness; it was like being entombed in the heart of a mountain. After a moment he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
"Better not," said the giant. "The air."
"Oh. How long can we -- ?"
"I don't know. Long enough, but it won't help if we fill the cab with smoke."
They listened to the silence. The giant said, "You remember that thing that jumped at us? What did it look like?"
"I dunno. It happened so quick. A dummy, I guess, like a scarecrow."
"The face? Did you see the face?"
"Yeah."
"Was it a kid's face?"
"Maybe. Yeah, I guess so. Listen, couldn't we break a window -- "
"The coal would come in."
"Yeah, but we could pull the coal in and then get out the window.'"
"Unless there's too much coal. Even if there isn't, I told you, the man who did this is still out there. We've got to wait."
"How long?"
"Till he goes away."
"Okay, if you say so." Larry fidgeted. "I gotta piss," he said, and clamped his knees together. "Oh, Jesus."
"Is there a bottle or something?"
He remembered the Coke bottle, reached for it, and unzipped his pants. It was hard to direct the stream through the narrow neck of the bottle; some of it ran down outside and some sprayed. He offered the half-full bottle to the giant. "Do you want -- ?"
"No, I'll wait." Suddenly the giant raised his head. "He's gone."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"What do we do now?"
"Wait awhile, just to make sure he doesn't come back."
After a moment Larry heard himself saying, "There was a story we read in school, the cask of something -- "
"'The Cask of Amontillado'?"
"Yeah, that was it. Where they wall up this guy in the cellar?"
"'For the love of God, Montresor.' I remember."
"Yeah, when he put in the last brick. That scared the hell out of me."
"Try not to think about it."
"Some kids locked me in a closet once, when I was little."
"Where was that, in Cleveland?"
"Yeah. I can remember how it smelled in there. Kind of dead air. Ever since then -- "
"What did your folks do?"
"My old man's an engineer with the power company. He was sore when I dropped out of school Then he wanted me to volunteer for the army. Listen, it's getting real hard to breathe in here. Can you really do it, because if you can for God's sake will you do it?"
"All right." The giant turned away and put his hands on the window.
"That's jammed," Larry said.
"I know it. Shut up a minute."
Larry waited. After a few moments he heard a curious rustling sound. He leaned to look past the giant's body, and saw with disbelief that the particles of coal were sliding down past the window.
The giant let his head hang for a moment, took a deep breath, and straightened again. The rustling sound resumed. Suddenly a shaft of pale light came in at the top of the window. It was the most beautiful and unexpected thing Larry had ever seen. It widened into a wedge-shape, expanding slowly and steadily. "What are you doing?" he whispered.
"Getting rid of the coal," said the giant. He lowered his. head for a moment, raised it again. The wedge of daylight steadily widened; Larry could see now that a funnel was forming in the coal beyond the door, particles pouring down the sides as if they were falling into a hole somewhere.
The giant opened the door and stepped out. Larry followed him. They were in a semicircular hollow space; beyond it the coal was still heaped chest-high. The buildings around them were silent and almost shadowless in the morning light; the sky was a pale greenish blue, and the air was scented with moisture. Larry filled his lungs again and again, experiencing the incredible fact that he was alive.
The giant was climbing the slope. Larry scrambled up after him on hands and knees, got over the top and down the other side.
The giant was a few yards away, staring at the front of the mound. After a moment Larry saw what he was looking at: a thin copper wire hung from a stairway on the hopper almost to the mound of coal. Another piece, not attached to anything, lay in loops on the road. "That's where he hung the dummy," the giant said. "He must have taken it away again. I was hoping it was still here."
He turned, and they walked around to the back. The mound of coal covered all but the last five feet of the trailer. The giant turned long enough to say, "See if you can find a shovel. They must have some around for cleanup."
When he came back with the shovel, the giant was standing at the side of the mound. Directly in front of him, Larry could see that a little funnel-shaped space had formed high on the slope, exposing the top of the door. As he watched, the funnel deepened abruptly. There was a pause, and it deepened again.
The giant looked around and saw him. "Dig," he said.
"It'll take me all day to shovel this. Why can't you -- "
"I can't do much at a time. Shut up and dig."
By the time they had cleared the door, it was full daylight. Sweat was dripping from Larry's chin; the giant looked haggard and ill. Inside, the lighted interior of the trailer was like a room in a cave. The giant climbed in slowly, took off his robe and began to dress. When he was finished, he wandered around the trailer and put a few things in his pockets, then took a suitcase out of the storage space under the bed. "Let's go."
"Aren't you going to put anything in that?"
"No, it doesn't matter."
Out in the road, the giant put the suitcase down. "This had better be good-bye. I can't go back to the carnival, and I wish you wouldn't either, because that's the first place he'll look. It would be easy enough for him to find out you were my driver. You understand?" He took some bills out of his pocket and handed them to Larry. "Take this and buy yourself a car, or get on the train and go wherever you want. And by the way, if there's anything in the trailer you want, help yourself."