on the driver’s side, across the pile of plastic bags from Jack. “Thought he might catch it in his teeth, no reflection on your cousin. Here, take this one, he already pulverized his.”
And a hundred miles west they went, Wolf delirious with joy to have the wind whipping past his head, half- hypnotized by the speed and variety of the odors which his nose caught in flight. Eyes blazing and glowing, registering every nuance of the wind, Wolf twitched from side to side behind the cab, shoving his nose into the speeding air.
Buck Thompson spoke of himself as a farmer. He talked nonstop during the seventy-five minutes he kept his foot near the floor, and never once asked Jack any questions. And when he swung off onto a narrow dirt road just outside the Cayuga town line and stopped the car beside a cornfield that seemed to run for miles, he dug in his shirt pocket and brought out a faintly irregular cigarette rolled in almost tissuelike white paper. “I’ve heard of red-eye,” he said. “But your cousin’s ridiculous.” He dropped the cigarette into Jack’s hand. “Have him take some of this when he gets excited, willya? Doctor’s orders.”
Jack absently stuffed the joint into his shirt pocket and climbed out of the cab. “Thanks, Buck,” he called up to the driver.
“Man, I thought I’d seen something when I saw him eat,” Buck said. “How do you get him to go places? Yell
Once Wolf realized that the ride was over, he bounded off the back of the truck.
The red pick-up rolled off, leaving a long plume of dust behind it.
“Let’s do that again!” Wolf sang out. “Jacky! Let’s do that again!”
“Boy, I wish we could,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s walk for a while. Someone will probably come along.”
He was thinking that his luck had turned, that in no time at all he and Wolf would be over the border into Illinois—and he’d always been certain that things would go smoothly once he got to Springfield and Thayer School and Richard. But Jack’s mind was still partially in shed-time, where what is unreal bloats and distorts whatever is real, and when the bad things started to happen again, they happened so quickly that he was unable to control them. It was a long time before Jack saw Illinois, and during that time he found himself back in the shed.
2
The bewilderingly rapid series of events which led to the Sunlight Home began ten minutes after the two boys had walked past the stark little roadsign telling them that they were now in Cayuga, pop. 23,568. Cayuga itself was nowhere visible. To their right the endless cornfield rolled across the land; to their left a bare field allowed them to see how the road bent, then arrowed straight toward the flat horizon. Just after Jack had realized that they would probably have to walk all the way into town to get their next ride, a car appeared on this road, travelling fast toward them.
“Ride in back?” Wolf yelled, joyfully raising his arms up over his head. “Wolf ride in back! Right here and now!”
“It’s going the wrong way,” Jack said. “Just be calm and let it pass us, Wolf. Get your arms down or he’ll think you’re signalling him.”
Reluctantly Wolf lowered his arms. The car had come nearly to the bend in the road which would take it directly past Jack and Wolf. “No ride in the back now?” Wolf asked, pouting almost childishly.
Jack shook his head. He was staring at an oval medallion painted on the car’s dusty white doorpanel. County Parks Commission, this might have said, or State Wildlife Board. It might have been anything from the vehicle of the state agricultural agent to the property of the Cayuga Maintenance Department. But when it turned into the bend, Jack saw it was a police car.
“That’s a cop, Wolf. A policeman. Just keep walking and stay nice and loose. We don’t want him to stop.”
“What’s a coppiceman?” Wolf’s voice had dropped into a dark brown range; he had seen that the speeding car was now coming straight toward him. “Does a coppiceman kill Wolfs?”
“No,” Jack said, “they absolutely never kill Wolfs,” but it did no good. Wolf captured Jack’s hand in his own, which trembled.
“Let go of me, please, Wolf,” Jack pleaded. “He’ll think it’s funny.”
Wolf’s hand dropped away.
As the police car advanced toward them, Jack glanced at the figure behind the wheel, and then turned around and walked back a few paces so that he could watch Wolf. What he had seen was not encouraging. The policeman driving the car had a wide doughy domineering face with livid slabs of fat where he’d once had cheekbones. And Wolf’s terror was plain on his face. Eyes, nostrils flared; he was showing his teeth.
“You really liked riding in the back of that truck, didn’t you?” Jack asked him.
Some of the terror disappeared, and Wolf nearly managed a smile. The police car roared past—Jack was conscious of the driver turning his head to inspect them. “All right,” Jack said. “He’s on his way. We’re okay, Wolf.”
He had turned around again when he heard the sound of the police car suddenly begin to grow louder again.
“Coppiceman’s coming back!”
“Probably just going back to Cayuga,” Jack said. “Turn around and just act like me. Don’t stare at him.”
Wolf and Jack trudged along, pretending to ignore the car, which seemed to hang behind them deliberately. Wolf uttered a sound that was half-moan, half-howl.
The police car swung out into the road, passed them, flashed its brake lights, and then cut in diagonally before them. The officer pushed open his door and got his feet planted on the ground. Then he hoisted himself out of the seat. He was roughly Jack’s height, and all his weight was in his face and his stomach—his legs were twig-skinny, his arms and shoulders those of a normally developed man. His gut, trussed in the brown uniform like a fifteen- pound turkey, bulged out on both sides of the wide brown belt.
“I can’t wait for it,” he said, and cocked an arm and leaned on the open door. “What’s your story, anyhow? Give.”
