The Talisman

A moment later Smokey’s thin, powerful fingers bit into Jack’s shoulder—hunting for the most painful place and, as always, finding it. They were educated, nerve-seeking fingers.

“Jack, you just got to move faster,” Smokey said. His voice sounded almost sympathetic, but his fingers dug and moved and probed. His breath smelled of the pink Canada Mints he sucked almost constantly. His mail-order false teeth clicked and clacked. Sometimes there was an obscene slurping as they slipped a little and he sucked them back into place. “You got to move faster or I’m going to have to light a fire under your ass. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Y-yeah,” Jack said. Trying not to moan.

“All right. That’s good then.” For an excruciating second Smokey’s fingers dug even deeper, grinding with a bitter enthusiasm at the neat little nest of nerves there. Jack did moan. That was good enough for Smokey. He let up.

“Help me hook this keg up, Jack. And let’s make it fast. Friday night, people got to drink.”

“Saturday morning,” Jack said stupidly.

“Then, too. Come on.”

Jack somehow managed to help Smokey lift the keg into the square compartment under the bar. Smokey’s thin, ropey muscles bulged and writhed under his Oatley Tap T-shirt. The paper fry-cook’s hat on his narrow weasel’s head stayed in place, its leading edge almost touching his left eyebrow, in apparent defiance of gravity. Jack watched, holding his breath, as Smokey flicked off the red plastic breather-cap on the keg. The keg breathed more gustily than it should have done . . . but it didn’t foam. Jack let his breath out in a silent gust.

Smokey spun the empty toward him. “Get that back in the storeroom. And then swamp out the bathroom. Remember what I told you this afternoon.”

Jack remembered. At three o’clock a whistle like an air-raid siren had gone off, almost making him jump out of his skin. Lori had laughed, had said: Check out Jack, Smokey—I think he just went wee-wee in his Tuffskins. Smokey had given her a narrow, unsmiling look and motioned Jack over. Told Jack that was the payday whistle at the Oatley T & W. Told Jack that a whistle very much like it was going off at Dogtown Rubber, a company that made beach-toys, inflatable rubber dolls, and condoms with names like Ribs of Delight. Soon, he said, the Oatley Tap would begin filling up.

“And you and me and Lori and Gloria are going to move just as fast as lightning,” Smokey said, “because when the eagle screams on Friday, we got to make up for what this place don’t make every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. When I tell you to run me out a keg, you want to have it out to me before I finish yelling. And you’re in the men’s room every half an hour with your mop. On Friday nights, a guy blows his groceries every fifteen minutes or so.”

“I got the women’s,” Lori said, coming over. Her hair was thin, wavy gold, her complexion as white as a comic-book vampire’s. She either had a cold or a bad coke habit; she kept sniffing. Jack guessed it was a cold. He doubted if anyone in Oatley could afford a bad coke habit. “Women ain’t as bad as men, though. Almost, but not quite.”

“Shut up, Lori.”

“Up yours,” she said, and Smokey’s hand flickered out like lightning. There was a crack and suddenly the imprint of Smokey’s palm was printed red on one of Lori’s pallid cheeks like a child’s Tattoodle. She began to snivel . . . but Jack was sickened and bewildered to see an expression in her eyes that was almost happy. It was the look of a woman who believed such treatment was a sign of caring.

“You just keep hustling and we’ll have no problem,” Smokey said. “Remember to move fast when I yell for you to run me out a keg. And remember to get in the men’s can with your mop every half an hour and clean up the puke.”

And then he had told Smokey again that he wanted to leave and Smokey had reiterated his false promise about Sunday afternoon . . . but what good did it do to think of that?

There were louder screams now, and harsh caws of laughter. The crunch of a breaking chair and a wavering yell of pain. A fistfight—the third of the night—had broken out on the dance floor. Smokey uttered a curse and shoved past Jack. “Get rid of that keg,” he said.

Jack got the empty onto the dolly and trundled it back toward the swinging door, looking around uneasily for Randolph Scott as he went. He saw the man standing in the crowd that was watching the fight, and relaxed a little.

In the storeroom he put the empty keg with the others by the loading-bay—Updike’s Oatley Tap had already gone through six kegs tonight. That done, he checked his pack again. For one panicky moment he thought it was gone, and his heart began to hammer in his chest—the magic juice was in there, and so was the Territories coin that had become a silver dollar in this world. He moved to the right, sweat now standing out on his forehead, and felt between two more kegs. There it was—he could trace the curve of Speedy’s bottle through the green nylon of the pack. His heartbeat began to slow down, but he felt shaky and rubber-legged—the way you feel after a narrow escape.

The men’s toilet was a horror. Earlier in the evening Jack might have vomited in sympathy, but now he actually seemed to be getting used to the stench . . . and that was somehow the worst thing of all. He drew hot water, dumped in Comet, and began to run his soapy mop back and forth through the unspeakable mess on the floor. His mind began to go back over the last couple of days, worrying at them the way an animal in a trap will worry at a limb that has been caught.

3

The Oatley Tap had been dark, and dingy, and apparently dead empty when Jack first walked into it. The plugs on the juke, the pinball machine, and the Space Invaders game were all pulled. The only light in the place came from the Busch display over the bar—a digital clock caught between the peaks of two mountains, looking like the weirdest UFO ever imagined.

Smiling a little, Jack walked toward the bar. He was almost there when a flat voice said from behind him, “This is a bar. No minors. What are you, stupid? Get out.”

Jack almost jumped out of his skin. He had been touching the money in his pocket, thinking it would go just as it had at the Golden Spoon: he would sit on a stool, order something, and then ask for the job. It was of course illegal to hire a kid like him—at least without a work permit signed by his parents or a guardian—and that meant they could get him for under the minimum wage. Way under. So the negotiations would start, usually beginning with Story #2—Jack and the Evil Stepfather.

He whirled around and saw a man sitting alone in one of the booths, looking at him with chilly, contemptuous