Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:
This book is for
RUTH KING
ELVENA STRAUB
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, may be; and stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand.
—MARK TWAIN,
My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.
—MARK TWAIN,
“You get across and you’re gonna find a place—another Alhambra. You got to go in that place. It’s a scary place, a bad place. But you got to go in.”
“Why do I have to go there, if it’s so bad?”
“Because,” Speedy said, “that’s where the Talisman is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You will,” Speedy said. He took Jack’s hand. The two of them stood face-to-face, old black man and young white boy.
“The Talisman be given unto your hand, Travellin Jack. Not too big, not too small, she look just like a crystal ball, Travellin Jack, ole Travelin Jack. Here’s your burden, here’s your cross: Drop her Jack, and all be lost. . . .”
Speedy laughed and keyed the ignition. He backed up, turned around, and then the truck was rattling back toward Arcadia Funworld.
Jack stood by the curb, watching it go.
He had never felt so alone in his life. . . .
ONE
JACK LIGHTS OUT
1
The Alhambra Inn and Gardens
1
On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic. He was twelve years old and tall for his age. The sea- breeze swept back his brown hair, probably too long, from a fine, clear brow. He stood there, filled with the confused and painful emotions he had lived with for the last three months—since the time when his mother had closed their house on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and, in a flurry of furniture, checks, and real-estate agents, rented an apartment on Central Park West. From that apartment they had fled to this quiet resort on New Hampshire’s tiny seacoast. Order and regularity had disappeared from Jack’s world. His life seemed as shifting, as uncontrolled, as the heaving water before him. His mother was moving him through the world, twitching him from place to place; but what moved his mother?
His mother was running, running.
