“Hold on. I said I’d get you lunch, and I will.” He put his hand in his trouser pocket, then held a bill out across the top of the car to Jack. The chill wind ruffled his hair and flattened it against his forehead. “Take it.”
“No, honest,” Jack said. “It’s okay. I have a couple dollars.”
“Get yourself a good steak,” Kiger said, and was leaning across the top of the car holding out the bill as if offering a life preserver, or reaching for one.
Jack reluctantly came forward and took the bill from Kiger’s extended fingers. It was a ten. “Thanks a lot. I mean it.”
“Here, why don’t you take the paper, too, have something to read? You know, if you have to wait a little or something.” Kiger had already opened his door, and leaned inside to pluck a folded tabloid newspaper off the back seat. “I’ve already read it.” He tossed it over to Jack.
The pockets of the loden coat were so roomy that Jack could slip the folded paper into one of them.
Myles P. Kiger stood for a moment beside his open car door, squinting at Jack. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re going to have an interesting life,” he said.
“It’s pretty interesting already,” Jack said truthfully.
Salisbury steak was five dollars and forty cents, and it came with french fries. Jack sat at the end of the counter and opened the newspaper. The story was on the second page—the day before, he had seen it on the first page of an Indiana newspaper. ARRESTS MADE, RELATED TO SHOCK HORROR DEATHS. Local Magistrate Ernest Fairchild and Police Officer Frank B. Williams of Cayuga, Indiana, had been charged with misuse of public monies and acceptance of bribes in the course of the investigation of the deaths of six boys at the Sunlight Gardener Scripture Home for Wayward Boys. The popular evangelist Robert “Sunlight” Gardener had apparently escaped from the grounds of the Home shortly before the arrival of the police, and while no warrants had as yet been issued for his arrest he was urgently being sought for questioning. WAS HE ANOTHER JIM JONES? asked a caption beneath a picture of Gardener at his most gorgeous, arms outspread, hair falling in perfect waves. Dogs had led the State Police to an area near the electrified fences where boy’s bodies had been buried without ceremony—five bodies, it appeared, most of them so decomposed that identification was not possible. They would probably be able to identify Ferd Janklow. His parents would be able to give him a real burial, all the while wondering what they had done wrong, exactly; all the while wondering just
When the Salisbury steak came, it tasted both salty and woolly, but Jack ate every scrap. And soaked up all the thick gravy with the Empire Diner’s underdone fries. He had just about finished his meal when a bearded trucker with a Detroit Tigers cap shoved down over long black hair, a parka that seemed to be made from wolfskins, and a thick cigar in his mouth paused beside him and asked, “You need a ride west, kid? I’m going to Decatur.” Halfway to Springfield, just like that.
2
That night, in a three-dollar-a-night hotel the trucker had told him about, Jack had two distinct dreams: or he later remembered these two out of many that deluged his bed, or the two were actually one long joined dream. He had locked his door, peed into the stained and cracked sink in the corner, put his knapsack under his pillow, and fallen asleep holding the big marble that in the other world was a Territories mirror. There had been a suggestion of music, an almost cinematic touch—fiery alert bebop, at a volume so low Jack could just pick out that the lead instruments were a trumpet and an alto saxophone.
Wolf was trotting toward him across a blasted, smoking landscape. Strings of barbed wire, now and then coiling up into fantastic and careless barbed-wire intricacies, separated them. Deep trenches, too, divided the spoiled land, one of which Wolf vaulted easily before nearly tumbling into one of the ranks of wire.
—Watch out, Jack called.
Wolf caught himself before falling into the triple strands of wire. He waved one big paw to show Jack that he was unhurt, and then cautiously stepped over the wires.
Jack felt an amazing surge of happiness and relief pass through him. Wolf had not died; Wolf would join him again.
Wolf made it over the barbed wire and began trotting forward again. The land between Jack and Wolf seemed mysteriously to double in length—gray smoke hanging over the many trenches almost obscured the big shaggy figure coming forward.
—Jason! Wolf shouted. Jason! Jason!
—I’m still here, Jack shouted back.
—Can’t make it, Jason! Wolf can’t make it!
—Keep trying, Jack bawled. Damn it, don’t give up!
Wolf paused before an impenetrable tangle of wire, and through the smoke Jack saw him slip down to all fours and trot back and forth, nosing for an open place. From side to side Wolf trotted, each time going out a greater distance, with every second becoming more evidently disturbed. Finally Wolf stood up again and placed his hands on the thick tangle of wire and forced a space he could shout through. —Wolf can’t! Jason, Wolf can’t!
—I love you, Wolf, Jack shouted across the smouldering plain.
—JASON! Wolf bawled back. BE CAREFUL! They are COMING for you! There are MORE of them!
—More what, Jack wanted to shout, but could not. He knew.
Then either the whole character of the dream changed or another dream began. He was back in the ruined recording studio and office at the Sunlight Home, and the smells of gunpowder and burned flesh crowded the air. Singer’s mutilated body lay slumped on the floor, and Casey’s dead form drooped through the shattered glass panel. Jack sat on the floor cradling Wolf in his arms, and knew again that Wolf was dying. Only Wolf was not Wolf.
Jack was holding Richard Sloat’s trembling body, and it was Richard who was dying. Behind the lenses of his sensible black plastic eyeglasses, Richard’s eyes skittered aimlessly, painfully. —Oh no, oh no, Jack breathed out in horror. Richard’s arm had been shattered, and his chest was a pulp of ruined flesh and bloodstained white shirt. Fractured bones glinted whitely here and there like teeth.
—I don’t want to die, Richard said, every word a super-human effort. Jason, you should not . . . you should not have . . .
