Wolf!—and couldn’t even keep up with the herd anymore.”
Jack pointed at the guitar case.
“Where did that come from?”
Wolf grinned, showing many big teeth. “Parkus,” he said. “Left this for you, too. Almost forgot.”
From his back pocket he took a very old postcard. On the front was a carousel filled with a great many familiar horses—Ella Speed and Silver Lady among them—but the ladies in the foreground were wearing bustles, the boys knickers, many of the men derby hats and Rollie Fingers moustaches. The card felt silky with age.
He turned it over, first reading the print up the middle: ARCADIA BEACH CAROUSEL, JULY 4TH, 1894.
It was Speedy—not Parkus—who had scratched two sentences in the message space. His hand was sprawling, not very literate; he had written with a soft, blunt pencil.
Jack put the postcard in his hip pocket and got into the back of the Cadillac, sliding across the plush seat. One of the catches on the old guitar case was broken. He unsnapped the other three.
Richard had gotten in after Jack. “Holy crow!” he whispered.
The guitar case was stuffed with twenty-dollar bills.
8
Wolf took them home, and although Jack grew hazy about many of that autumn’s events in a very short time, each moment of that trip was emblazoned on his mind for the rest of his life. He and Richard sat in the back of the El Dorado and Wolf drove them east and east and east. Wolf knew the roads and Wolf drove them. He sometimes played Creedence Clearwater Revival tapes—“Run Through the Jungle” seemed to be his favorite—at a volume just short of ear-shattering. Then he would spend long periods of time listening to the tonal variations in the wind as he worked the button that controlled his wing window. This seemed to fascinate him completely.
East, east, east—into the sunrise each morning, into the mysterious deepening blue dusk of each coming night, listening first to John Fogerty and then to the wind, John Fogerty again and then the wind again.
They ate at Stuckeys’. They ate at Burger Kings. They stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken. At the latter, Jack and Richard got dinners; Wolf got a Family-Style Bucket and ate all twenty-one pieces. From the sounds, he ate most of the bones as well. This made Jack think of Wolf and the popcorn. Where had that been? Muncie. The outskirts of Muncie—the Town Line Sixplex. Just before they had gotten their asses slammed into the Sunlight Home. He grinned . . . and then felt something like an arrow slip into his heart. He looked out the window so Richard wouldn’t see the gleam of his tears.
They stopped on the second night in Julesburg, Colorado, and Wolf cooked them a huge picnic supper on a portable barbecue he produced from the trunk. They ate in a snowy field by starlight, bundled up in heavy parkas bought out of the guitar-case stash. A meteor-shower flashed overhead, and Wolf danced in the snow like a child.
“I love that guy,” Richard said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, me too. You should have met his brother.”
“I wish I had.” Richard began to gather up the trash. What he said next flummoxed Jack almost completely. “I’m forgetting a lot of stuff, Jack.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. Every mile I remember a little less about what happened. It’s all getting misty. And I think . . . I think that’s the way I want it. Look, are you really sure your mother’s okay?”
Three times Jack had tried to call his mother. There was no answer. He was not too worried about this. Things were okay. He hoped. When he got there, she would be there. Sick . . . but still alive. He hoped.
“Yes.”
“Then how come she doesn’t answer the phone?”
“Sloat played some tricks with the phones,” Jack said. “He played some tricks with the help at the Alhambra, too, I bet. She’s still okay. Sick . . . but okay. Still there. I can feel her.”
“And if this healing thing works—” Richard grimaced a little, then plunged. “You still . . . I mean, you still think she’d let me . . . you know, stay with you guys?”
“No,” Jack said, helping Richard pick up the remains of supper. “She’ll want to see you in an orphanage, probably. Or maybe in jail. Don’t be a dork, Richard, of course you can stay with us.”
“Well . . . after all my father did . . .”
“That was your dad, Richie,” Jack said simply. “Not you.”
“And you won’t always be reminding me? You know . . . jogging my memory?”
“Not if you want to forget.”
“I do, Jack. I really do.”
Wolf was coming back.
“You guys ready? Wolf!”
“All ready,” Jack said. “Listen, Wolf, how about that Scott Hamilton tape I got in Cheyenne?”
“Sure, Jack. Then how about some Creedence?”
“ ’Run Through the Jungle,’ right?”
“Good tune, Jack! Heavy!
