The Talisman

He had been shocked at the idea of strait-jackets, and although he had seen the Box—a big ugly iron thing which sat in the Home’s back yard like a weird abandoned refrigerator—he couldn’t believe that Gardener actually put boys in it. Ferd had slowly convinced him, talking in a low voice as they harvested rocks in Far Field.

“He’s got a great setup here,” Ferd had said. “It’s a license to coin money. His religious shows play all over the midwest on the radio and over most of the country on cable TV and the indy stations. We’re his captive audience. We sound great on the radio and we look great on the tube—when Roy Owdersfelt isn’t milking that fucking pimple on the end of his nose, that is. He’s got Casey, his pet radio and TV producer—Casey videotapes every morning- chapel and audiotapes every night-chapel. He cuts all the sound and picture together and hypes everything until Gardener looks like Billy Graham and us guys sound like the crowd in Yankee Stadium during the seventh game of the World Series. That isn’t all Casey does, either. He’s the house genius. You see the bug in your room? Casey set up the bugs. Everything feeds into his control room, and the only way into that control room is through Gardener’s private office. The bugs are voice-actuated, so he doesn’t waste any tape. Anything juicy he saves for Sunlight Gardener. I’ve heard Casey put a blue box on Gardener’s phone so he can make long-distance phone calls free, and I know damned well he’s spliced a line into the pay-TV cable that goes by out front. You like the idea of Mr. Ice Cream settling back and watching a big double feature on Cinemax after a hard day of selling Jesus to the masses? I like it. This guy is as American as spinner hubcaps, Jack, and here in Indiana they love him almost as much as they love high-school basketball.”

Ferd hawked back snot, grimaced, twisted his head, and spat into the dirt.

“You’re kidding,” Jack said.

“Ferd Janklow never kids about the Marching Morons of the Sunlight Home,” Ferd said solemnly. “He’s rich, he doesn’t have to declare any of it to the Internal Revenue, he’s got the local school board buffaloed—I mean, they’re scared to death of him; there’s this one woman who practically skitters every time she’s out here, looks like she’d like to give him the sign against the evil eye, or something—and like I said, he always seems to know when someone from the State Education Board is going to pay us a surprise visit. We clean this place from top to bottom, Bast the Bastard takes the canvas overcoats up to the attic, and the Box gets filled with hay from the barn. And when they come, we’re always in class. How many classes you been in since you landed here in Indiana’s version of the Love Boat, Jack?”

“None,” Jack said.

“None!” Ferd agreed, delighted. He laughed his cynical, hurt laugh again—that laugh said, Guess what I found out when I turned eight or so? I found out that I was getting a royal fucking from life, and that things weren’t going to change in a hurry. Or maybe they were never going to change. And although it bums me out, it also has its funny side. You know what I mean, jellybean?

4

Such was the run of Jack’s thoughts when hard fingers suddenly grasped the back of his neck at the pressure- points below the ears and lifted him out of his chair. He was turned around into a cloud of foul breath and treated— if that was the word—to the sterile moonscape of Heck Bast’s face.

“Me and the Reverend was still in Muncie when they brought your queer troublemaker friend into the hospital,” he said. His fingers pulsed and squeezed, pulsed and squeezed. The pain was excruciating. Jack moaned and Heck grinned. The grin allowed bad breath to escape his mouth in even greater quantities. “Reverend got the news on his beeper. Janklow looked like a taco that spent about forty-five minutes in a microwave oven. It’s gonna be a while before they put that boy back together again.”

He’s not talking to me, Jack thought. He’s talking to the whole room. We’re supposed to get the message that Ferd’s still alive.

“You’re a stinking liar,” he said. “Ferd’s—”

Heck Bast hit him. Jack went sprawling on the floor. Boys scattered away from him. From somewhere, Donny Keegan hee-hawed.

There was a roar of rage. Jack looked up, dazed, and shook his head in an effort to clear it. Heck turned and saw Wolf standing protectively over Jack, his upper lip pulled back, the overhead lights sending weird orange glints off his round glasses.

“So the dumbhead finally wants to dance,” Heck said, beginning to grin. “Hey, all right! I love to dance. Come on, snotface. Come on over here and let’s dance.”

Still growling, saliva now coating his lower lip, Wolf began to move forward. Heck moved to meet him. Chairs scraped across linoleum as people moved back hurriedly to give them room.

“What’s going on h—”

From the door. Sonny Singer. No need to finish his question; he saw what was going on here. Smiling, he pulled the door shut and leaned against it, watching, arms crossed over his narrow chest, his dark narrow face now alight.

Jack switched his gaze back to Wolf and Heck.

“Wolf, be careful!” he shouted.

“I’ll be careful, Jack,” Wolf said, his voice little more than a growl. “I’ll—”

“Let’s dance, asshole,” Heck Bast grunted, and threw a whistling, country-boy roundhouse. It hit Wolf high on the right cheekbone, driving him backward three or four steps. Donny Keegan laughed his high, whinnying laugh, which Jack now knew was as often a signal of dismay as of glee.

The roundhouse was a good, heavy blow. Under other circumstances, the fight would probably have ended right there. Unfortunately for Hector Bast, it was also the only blow he landed.

He advanced confidently, big fists up at chest height, and drove the roundhouse again. This time Wolf’s arm moved upward and outward to meet it. Wolf caught Heck’s fist.

Heck’s hand was big. Wolf’s hand was bigger.

Wolf’s fist swallowed Heck’s.

Wolf’s fist clenched.

From within it came a sound like small dry sticks first cracking, then breaking.

Heck’s confident smile first curdled, then froze solid. A moment later he began to shriek.