The Talisman

“You bet, Wolf.” He rolled his eyes at Richard. Richard rolled his back, and grinned.

The next day they rolled across Nebraska and Iowa; a day later they tooled past the gutted ruin of the Sunlight Home. Jack thought Wolf had taken them past it on purpose, that he perhaps wanted to see the place where his brother had died. He turned up the Creedence tape in the cassette player as loud as it would go, but Jack still thought he heard the sound of Wolf sobbing.

Time—suspended swatches of time. Jack seemed almost to be floating, and there was a feeling of suspension, triumph, valediction. Work honorably discharged.

Around sunset of the fifth day, they crossed into New England.

47

Journey’s End

1

The whole long drive from California to New England seemed, once they had got so far, to have taken place in a single long afternoon and evening. An afternoon that lasted days, an evening perhaps life-long, bulging with sunsets and music and emotions. Great humping balls of fire, Jack thought, I’m really out of it, when he happened for the second time in what he assumed to be about an hour to look at the discreet little clock set in the dashboard—and discovered that three hours had winked past him. Was it even the same day? “Run Through the Jungle” pumped through the air; Wolf bobbed his head in time, grinning unstoppably, infallibly finding the best roads; the rear window showing the whole sky opening in great bands of twilight color, purple and blue and that particular deep plangent red of the down-going sun. Jack could remember every detail of this long long journey, every word, every meal, every nuance of the music, Zoot Sims or John Fogerty or simply Wolf delighting himself with the noises of the air, but the true span of time had warped itself in his mind to a concentration like a diamond’s. He slept in the cushiony backseat and opened his eyes on light or darkness, on sunlight or stars. Among the things he remembered with particular sharpness, once they had crossed into New England and the Talisman began to glow again, signalling the return of normal time—or perhaps the return of time itself to Jack Sawyer—were the faces of people peering into the back seat of the El Dorado (people in parking lots, a sailor and an ox-faced girl in a convertible at a stoplight in a sunny little town in Iowa, a skinny Ohio kid wearing Breaking Away–style bicycle gear) in order to see if maybe Mick Jagger or Frank Sinatra had decided to pay them a call. Nope, just us, folks. Sleep kept stealing him away. Once he awoke (Colorado? Illinois?) to the thumping of rock music, Wolf snapping his fingers while keeping the big car rolling smoothly, a bursting sky of orange and purple and blue, and saw that Richard had somewhere acquired a book and was reading it with the aid of the El Dorado’s recessed passenger light. The book was Broca’s Brain. Richard always knew what time it was. Jack rolled his eyes upward and let the music, the evening colors, take him. They had done it, they had done everything . . . everything except what they would have to do in an empty little resort town in New Hampshire.

Five days, or one long, dreaming twilight? “Run Through the Jungle.” Zoot Sims’s tenor saxophone saying Here’s a story for you, do you like this story? Richard was his brother, his brother.

Time returned to him about when the Talisman came back to life, during the magical sunset of the fifth day. Oatley, Jack thought on the sixth day. I could have shown Richard the Oatley tunnel, and whatever’s left of the Tap, I could have shown Wolf which way to go . . . but he did not want to see Oatley again, there was no satisfaction or pleasure in that. And he was conscious now of how close they had come, of how far they had travelled while he drifted through time like a whistle. Wolf had brought them to the great broad artery of I-95, now that they were in Connecticut, and Arcadia Beach lay only a few states away, up the indented New England coast. From now on Jack counted the miles, and the minutes, too.

2

At quarter past five on the evening of December 21st, some three months after Jack Sawyer had set his face —and his hopes—on the west, a black El Dorado Cadillac swung into the crushed-gravel driveway of the Alhambra Inn and Gardens in the town of Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire. In the west, the sunset was a mellow valediction of reds and oranges fading to yellow . . . and blue . . . and royal purple. In the gardens themselves, naked branches clattered together in a bitter winter wind. Amid them, until a day not quite a week ago, had been a tree which caught and ate small animals—chipmunks, birds, the desk clerk’s starveling, slat-sided cat. This small tree had died very suddenly. The other growing things in the garden, though skeletal now, still bided with dormant life.

The El Dorado’s steel-belted radials popped and cracked over the gravel. From inside, muffled behind the polarized glass, came the sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival. “The people who know my magic,” John Fogerty sang, “have filled the land with smoke.”

The Cadillac stopped in front of the wide double doors. There was only darkness beyond them. The double headlights went out and the long car stood in shadow, tailpipe idling white exhaust, orange parking lights gleaming.

Here at the end of day; here at sunset with color fanning up from the western sky in glory.

Here:

Right here and now.

3

The back of the Caddy was lit with faint, uncertain light. The Talisman flickered . . . but its glow was weak, little more than the glow of a dying firefly.

Richard turned slowly toward Jack. His face was wan and frightened. He was clutching Carl Sagan with both hands, wringing the paperback the way a washerwoman might wring a sheet.

Richard’s Talisman, Jack thought, and smiled.

“Jack, do you want—”

“No,” Jack said. “Wait until I call.”

He opened the rear right door, started to get out of the car, then looked back at Richard. Richard sat small and shrunken in his seat, wringing his paperback in his hand. He looked miserable.

Not thinking, Jack came back in for a moment and kissed Richard’s cheek. Richard put his arms around Jack’s neck for a moment, and hugged fiercely. Then he let Jack go. Neither of them said anything.

4

Jack started for the stairs leading up to the lobby-level . . . and then turned right and walked for a moment to the edge of the driveway instead. There was an iron railing here. Below it, cracked and tiered rock fell to the beach. Farther to his right, standing against the darkling sky, was the Arcadia Funworld roller coaster.