Jack pulled from his pockets the random detritus of his time on the road. A red handkerchief Elbert Palamountain’s wife had given him when she’d seen him wipe his nose on his sleeve, two matchbooks, the few dollars and scattered change that was all of his money—a total of six dollars and forty-two cents—the key to room 407 of the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. He closed his fingers over the three objects he intended to keep. “I guess you want my pack, too,” he said.
“Sure, you sorry little fart,” Singer ranted, “of course we want your foul backpack, but first we want whatever you’re trying to hide. Get it out—right now.”
Reluctantly Jack took Speedy’s guitar-pick, the croaker marble, and the big wheel of the silver dollar from his pocket and put them in the nest of the handkerchief. “They’re just good-luck stuff.”
Singer snatched up the pick. “Hey, what’s this? I mean, what is it?”
“Fingerpick.”
“Yeah, sure.” Singer turned it over in his fingers, sniffed it. If he had bitten it, Jack would have slugged him in the face. “Fingerpick. You tellin me the truth?”
“A friend of mine gave it to me,” Jack said, and suddenly felt as lonely and adrift as he ever had during these weeks of travelling. He thought of Snowball outside the shopping mall, who had looked at him with Speedy’s eyes, who in some fashion Jack did not understand had actually been Speedy Parker. Whose name he had just adopted for his own.
“Bet he stole it,” Singer said to no one in particular, and dropped the pick back into the handkerchief beside the coin and the marble. “Now the knapsack.” When Jack had unshouldered the backpack, handed it over, Singer pawed through it for some minutes in growing distaste and frustration. The distaste was caused by the condition of the few clothes Jack had left, the frustration by the reluctance of the pack to yield up any drugs.
“He’s not holding,” Singer complained. “You think we should do a skin search?”
Gardener shook his head. “Let us see what we can learn from Mr. Wolf.”
Bast shouldered up even closer. Singer said, “Well?”
“He doesn’t have anything in his pockets,” Jack said.
“I want those pockets EMPTY! EMPTY!” Singer yelled. “ON THE TABLE!”
Wolf tucked his chin into his chest and clamped his eyes shut.
“You don’t have anything in your pockets, do you?” Jack asked.
Wolf nodded once, very slowly.
“He’s holding! The dummy’s holding!” Singer crowed. “Come on, you big dumb idiot, get the stuff out on the table.” He clapped his hands sharply together twice. “Oh wow, Williams never searched him! Fairchild never did! This is incredible—they’re going to look like such morons.”
Bast shoved his face up to Wolf’s and snarled, “If you don’t empty your pockets onto that table in a hurry, I’m going to tear your face off.”
Jack softly said, “Do it, Wolf.”
Wolf groaned. Then he removed his balled right hand from its overall pocket. He leaned over the desk, brought his hand forward, and opened his fingers. Three wooden matches and two small water-polished stones, grained and straited and colorful, fell out onto the leather. When his left hand opened, two more pretty little stones rolled alongside the others.
“Pills!” Singer snatched at them.
“Don’t be an idiot, Sonny,” Gardener said.
“You made me look like a jerk,” Singer said in low but vehement tones to Jack as soon as they were on the staircase to the upper floors. These stairs were covered with a shabby rose-patterned carpet. Only the principal downstairs rooms of the Sunlight Scripture Home had been decorated, dressed up—the rest of it looked rundown and ill cared for. “You’re gonna be sorry, I promise you that—in this place,
“I didn’t know he had anything in his pockets,” Jack said.
A step ahead of Jack and Wolf, Singer abruptly stopped moving. His eyes narrowed; his entire face seemed to contract. Jack understood what was going to happen a second before Singer’s hand slapped stingingly over the side of his face.
“Jack?” Wolf whispered.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“When you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back twice as bad,” Singer said to Jack. “When you hurt me in front of Reverend Gardener, I’ll hurt you four times as bad, you got that?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I think I got it. Aren’t we supposed to get some clothes?”
Singer whirled around and marched upward, and for a second Jack stood still and watched the other boy’s thin intense back go up the stairs.
In a long room stacked with boxes Singer fidgeted at the door while a tall boy with a passionless bland face and the demeanor of a sleepwalker researched the shelves for their clothes.
“Shoes, too. You get him into regulation shoes or you’re gonna be holding a shovel all day,” Singer said from the doorway, conspicuously not looking at the clerk. Weary disgust—it would have been another of Sunlight Gardener’s lessons.
