The Regulators - Stephen King [31]
One thing keeps nagging me, and that's why I've enclosed a Xerox of the postcard my brother sent me from Carson City shortly before he died. He says on it that they've had a breakthrough — an amazing breakthrough is what he says, actually — with Seth. Capital letters, lots of exclamation points. See for yourself. I was curious, natch, so I asked him about it the next time we talked on the phone. That must have been on July 27th or 28th, and it was the last time I spoke to him. His reaction was very peculiar, very unlike Bill. A long silence, then this weird artificial laugh: 'Ha-ha-ha!' the way it gets written out but the way real laughter hardly ever sounds, except at boring cocktail parties. I never heard my brother laugh like that in his life. 'Well, Aud,' he sez, 'I might have overreacted a little on that one.'
He didn't want to say any more on the subject, but when I pressed him he said that Seth seemed brighter, more with them, once they got far enough into Colorado to see the Rockies. 'You know how he's always loved Western movies and TV shows,' he said, and although I didn't then, I sure do now. Nuts for cowboys and posses and cuttin' 'em off at the pass is young Seth Garin. Bill said Seth probably knew he wasn't in the real Old West because of all the cars and campers, but 'the scenery still turned him on'. That's how Bill put it.
I might have let it go at that if he hadn't sounded so funny and vague, so really unlike himself. You know your own kin, don't you? Or you think you do. And Bill was always outgoing and bubbly or indrawn and pouty. There wasn't much middle ground. Except during that phone call, it seemed to be all middle ground. So I kept after him about it, which I wouldn't have done ordinarily. I said that AN AMAZING BREAKTHROUGH sounded like one specific event. So he said that well, yes, something had happened not too far from Ely, which is one of the few good-sized towns north of Las Vegas. Just after they went by a road sign pointing the way to a burg called Desperation (charming names they have out there, I must say, makes you just wild to visit), Seth 'kinda freaked out'. That's how Bill put it. They were on Route 50, the non-turnpike route, and there was this huge ridge of earth on their left, south of the highway.
Bill thought it was sort of interesting, but no more. Seth, though — when he turned in that direction and saw it, he went nuts. Started waving his arms and gabbling in that private language of his. To me it always sounds like talk on a tape that someone is playing backward.
Bill and June and the two older kids went along with him the way they do — did — when he gets excited and starts verbalizing, which is rare but far from unheard-of. You know, kind of like Yeah, Seth, you bet, Seth, it sure is wild, Seth — and all the time they're doing it, that embankment is slipping farther and farther behind them. Until finally Seth — get this — speaks up, not in gibberish but in English. He really talks, says: 'Stop, Daddy, go back, Seth want to see mountain, Seth want to see Hoss and Little Joe.' Hoss and Little Joe, in case you don't remember, are two of the main characters on Bonanza.
Bill said it was more real words than Seth had put together in his whole life, and some time spent around Seth has convinced me of how unusual it would be for him to say so much in clear language at one time. But. . . AMAZING BREAKTHROUGH? I don't want to be mean or anything, but it was hardly the Gettysburg Address, was it? I couldn't make it jibe