The Talisman

28

Jack’s Dream

1

Of course he carried Wolf with him. Wolf had gone home, but a big loyal shadow rode beside Jack in all the trucks and Volkswagen vans and dusty cars pounding along the Illinois highways. This smiling ghost pierced Jack’s heart. Sometimes he could see—could almost see—Wolf’s huge hairy form bounding alongside, romping through the stripped fields. Free, Wolf beamed at him with pumpkin-colored eyes. When he jerked his eyes away, Jack felt the absence of a Wolf-hand folding itself around his. Now that he missed his friend so completely, the memory of his impatience with Wolf shamed him, brought the blood to his face. He had thought about abandoning Wolf more times than he could count. Shameful, shameful. Wolf had been . . . it took Jack a long time to take it in, but the word was noble. And this noble being, so out of place in this world, had died for him.

I kept my herd safe. Jack Sawyer was the herd no longer. I kept my herd safe. There were times when the truckdrivers or insurance salesmen who had picked up this strange, compelling boy on the side of the road—picked him up even though the boy was road-dirty and shaggy, even though they might never have taken on a hitchhiker before in their lives—looked over and saw him blinking back tears.

Jack mourned Wolf as he sped across Illinois. He had somehow known that he would have no trouble getting rides once in that state, and it was true that often all he had to do was stick out his thumb and look an oncoming driver in the eye—instant ride. Most of the drivers did not even demand the Story. All he had to do was give some minimal explanation for travelling alone. “I’m going to see a friend in Springfield.” “I have to pick up a car and drive it back home.” “Great, great,” the drivers said—had they even heard? Jack could not tell. His mind riffled through a mile-high stack of images of Wolf splashing into a stream to rescue his Territories creatures, Wolf nosing into a fragrant box that had held a hamburger, Wolf pushing food into his shed, bursting into the recording studio, taking the bullets, melting away. . . . Jack did not want to see these things again and again, but he had to and they made his eyes burn with tears.

Not far out of Danville, a short, fiftyish man with iron-gray hair and the amused but stern expression of one who has taught fifth grade for two decades kept darting sly looks at him from behind the wheel, then finally said, “Aren’t you cold, buster? You ought to have more than that little jacket.”

“Maybe a little,” Jack said. Sunlight Gardener had thought the denim jackets warm enough for field-work right through the winter, but now the weather licked and stabbed right through its pores.

“I have a coat on the back seat,” the man said. “Take it. No, don’t even try to talk your way out of it. That coat’s yours now. Believe me, I won’t freeze.”

“But—”

“You have no choice at all in the matter. That is now your coat. Try it on.”

Jack reached over the back of the seat and dragged a heavy length of material onto his lap. At first it was shapeless, anonymous. A big patch pocket surfaced, then a toggle button. It was a loden coat, fragrant with pipe tobacco.

“My old one,” the man said. “I just keep it in the car because I don’t know what to do with it—last year, the kids gave me this goosedown thing. So you have it.”

Jack struggled into the big coat, putting it on right over the denim jacket. “Oh boy,” he said. It was like being embraced by a bear with a taste for Borkum Riff.

“Good,” the man said. “Now if you ever find yourself standing out on a cold and windy road again, you can thank Myles P. Kiger of Ogden, Illinois, for saving your skin. Your—” Myles P. Kiger looked as though he were going to say more: the word hung in the air for a second, the man was still smiling; then the smile warped into goofy embarrassment and Kiger snapped his head forward. In the gray morning light, Jack saw a mottled red pattern spread out across the man’s cheeks.

Your (something) skin?

Oh, no.

Your beautiful skin. Your touchable, kissable, adorable . . . Jack pushed his hands deep into the loden coat’s pockets and pulled the coat tightly around him. Myles P. Kiger of Ogden, Illinois, stared straight ahead.

“Ahem,” Kiger said, exactly like a man in a comic book.

“Thanks for the coat,” Jack said. “Really. I’ll be grateful to you whenever I wear it.”

“Sure, okay,” Kiger said, “forget it.” But for a second his face was oddly like poor Donny Keegan’s, back in the Sunlight Home. “There’s a place up ahead,” Kiger said. His voice was choppy, abrupt, full of phony calm. “We can get some lunch, if you like.”

“I don’t have any money left,” Jack said, a statement exactly two dollars and thirty-eight cents shy of the truth.

“Don’t worry about it.” Kiger had already snapped on his turn indicator.

They drove into a windswept, nearly empty parking lot before a low gray structure that looked like a railway car. A neon sign above the central door flashed EMPIRE DINER. Kiger pulled up before one of the diner’s long windows and they left the car. This coat would keep him warm, Jack realized. His chest and arms seemed protected by woolen armor. Jack began to move toward the door under the flashing sign, but turned around when he realized that Kiger was still standing beside the car. The gray-haired man, only an inch or two taller than Jack, was looking at him over the car’s top.

“Say,” Kiger said.

“Look, I’d be happy to give you your coat back,” Jack said.

“No, that’s yours now. I was just thinking I’m not really hungry after all, and if I keep on going I can make pretty good time, get home a little earlier.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

“You’ll get another ride here. Easy. I promise. I wouldn’t drop you here if you were going to be stranded.”

“Fine.”