of the Civic Center ended at the base of a drunkenly leaning dead oak tree two hundred feet away. The cause of both the tree's death and its final leaning position was clear: one side of the venerable relic had been peeled like a banana by a glancing stroke of lightning. The cracks and crenellations and bulges of its gray bark seemed to make the shapes of halfburied, silently screaming faces, and the tree spread its nude branches against the sky like grim ideograms... ones which boreat least in Ralph's imagination-an uncomfortable resemblance to the Japanese ideograms which meant kamikaze. The bolt which had killed the tree hadn't succeeded in knocking it over, but it had certainly done its best. The part of its extensive root-system which faced the airport had been yanked right out of the ground. These roots had extended beneath the chainlink fence and pulled a section of it upward and outward in a bell shape that made Ralph think, for the first time in years, of a childhood acquaintance named Charles Engstrom"Don't you play with Chuckle," Ralph's mother used to tell him.
"He's a dirty boy." Ralph didn't know if Chuckle was a dirty boy or not, but he was fruitcrackers, no question about that. Chuckle Engstrom liked to hide behind the tree in his front yard with a long tree-branch which he called his Peekle Wand. When a woman in a full skirt passed, Chuckle would tiptoe after her, extending the Peekie Wand under the hem and then lifting. Quite often he got to check out the color of the woman's underwear (the color of ladies' underwear held great fascination for Chuckle) before she realized is what was going on and chased the wildly cackling lad back to his house, threatening to tell his mother. The airport fence, pulled out and up by the old oak's roots, reminded Ralph of the way the skirts of Chuckle's victims had looked when he started to raise them with the Peekie Wand.
["Ralph?"] He looked at her.
["who is Piggyjuan? And why are you thinking about him now?"
Ralph burst out laughing.
["Did -you see that in my aura?"] ["I guess so-I don't really know anymore. Who is he?"] ["Tell you another time. Come on." He took her hand and they walked slowly toward the oak tree where Atropos's trail ended, into the thickening odor of wild decay that was his scent.
Part III THE CRIMSON KING CHAPTER 25
They stood at the base of the oak, looking down. Lois was gnawing obsessively on her lower lip.
["Do we have to go down there, Ralph? Do we really?"] E "Yes. "I ["But why? What are we supposed to do? Take something he stole?
Kill him? What?"] Other than retrieve Joe's comb and Lois's earrings, he didn't know... but he felt certain he would know, that they both would, when the time came.
"I think for now we better just keep moving, Lois."
The lightning had acted like a strong hand, shoving the tree violently toward the east and opening a large hole at the bottom on its western side. To a man or woman with Short-Time vision, that hole would undoubtedly look dark-and maybe a little scary, with its crumbly sides and barely glimpsed roots squirming in the deep shadows like snakes-but otherwise not very unusual.
A kid with a good imagination might see more, Ralph thought.
That dark space at the bottom of the tree might make him think of pirate treasure... outlaw hideouts... troll-holes...
But Ralph didn't think even an imaginative Short-Time kid would have been able to see the dim red glow filtering up from beneath the tree, or realize that those squirming roots were actually rough rungs leading down to some unknown (and undoubtedly unpleasant) place.
No-even an imaginative kid wouldn't see those things... but he or she might sense them.
Right. And after doing so, one with any brains would turn and run as if all the demons of hell were in hot pursuit. As would he and Lois, if they had any sense at all. Except for Lois's earrings Except for Joe Wyzer's comb. Except for his own lost place in the Purpose.
And, of course, except for Helen (and possibly Nat) and the two thousand other people who were going to be at the Civic Center tonight.
Lois was right. They were supposed to do something, and if they backed out now, it was a something that would remain forever done-bun-undone.
And those are the ropes, he thought. The ropes the powers-that-be use to the'e us poor, muddled Short-Time creatures