The Talisman

even smiled a little, as if to say You see how it is, kid, everything in Oatley is running down like a cheap pocket-watch someone forgot to wind—ever since about 1971 it’s been running down. But his eyes did not smile. His eyes were watching Jack’s face with still, catlike concentration.

“Gee, that’s not very much,” Jack said. He spoke slowly but he was thinking as fast as he could.

The Oatley Tap was a tomb—there wasn’t even a single bombed-out old alky at the bar nursing a beer and watching General Hospital on the tube. In Oatley you apparently drank in your car and called it a club. A dollar-fifty an hour was a hard wage when you were busting your buns; in a place like this, a buck an hour might be an easy one.

“Nope,” Updike agreed, going back to his calculator, “it ain’t.” His voice said Jack could take it or leave it; there would be no negotiations.

“Might be all right,” Jack said.

“Well, that’s good,” Updike said. “We ought to get one other thing straight, though. Who you running from and who’s looking for you?” The brown eyes were on him again, and they drilled hard. “If you got someone on your backtrail, I don’t want him fucking up my life.”

This did not shake Jack’s confidence much. He wasn’t the world’s brightest kid, maybe, but bright enough to know he wouldn’t last long on the road without a second cover story for prospective employers. This was a Story #2—The Wicked Stepfather.

“I’m from a little town in Vermont,” he said. “Fenderville. My mom and dad got divorced two years ago. My dad tried to get custody of me, but the judge gave me to my mom. That’s what they do most of the time.”

“Fucking-A they do.” He had gone back to his bills and was bent so far over the pocket calculator that his nose was almost touching the keys. But Jack thought he was listening all the same.

“Well, my dad went out to Chicago and he got a job in a plant out there,” Jack said. “He writes to me just about every week, I guess, but he quit coming back last year, when Aubrey beat him up. Aubrey’s—”

“Your stepfather,” Updike said, and for just a moment Jack’s eyes narrowed and his original distrust came back. There was no sympathy in Updike’s voice. Instead, Updike seemed almost to be laughing at him, as if he knew the whole tale was nothing but a great big swatch of whole cloth.

“Yeah,” he said. “My mom married him a year and a half ago. He beats on me a lot.”

“Sad, Jack. Very sad.” Now Updike did look up, his eyes sardonic and unbelieving. “So now you’re off to Shytown, where you and Dads will live happily ever after.”

“Well, I hope so,” Jack said, and he had a sudden inspiration. “All I know is that my real dad never hung me up by the neck in my closet.” He pulled down the neck of his T- shirt, baring the mark there. It was fading now; during his stint at the Golden Spoon it had still been a vivid, ugly red-purple—like a brand. But at the Golden Spoon he’d never had occasion to uncover it. It was, of course, the mark left by the root that had nearly choked the life from him in that other world.

He was gratified to see Smokey Updike’s eyes widen in surprise and what might almost have been shock. He leaned forward, scattering some of his pink and yellow pages. “Holy Jesus, kid,” he said. “Your stepfather did that?”

“That’s when I decided I had to split.”

“Is he going to show up here, looking for his car or his motorcycle or his wallet or his fucking dope-stash?”

Jack shook his head.

Smokey looked at Jack for a moment longer, and then pushed the OFF button on the calculator. “Come on back to the storeroom with me, kid,” he said.

“Why?”

“I want to see if you can really rock one of those kegs up on its side. If you can run me out a keg when I need one, you can have the job.”

4

Jack demonstrated to Smokey Updike’s satisfaction that he could get one of the big aluminum kegs up on its rim and walk it forward just enough to get it on the foot of the dolly. He even made it look fairly easy—dropping a keg and getting punched in the nose was still a day away.

“Well, that ain’t too bad,” Updike said. “You ain’t big enough for the job and you’ll probably give yourself a fucking rupture, but that’s your nevermind.”

He told Jack he could start at noon and work through until one in the morning (“For as long as you can hack it, anyway”). Jack would be paid, Updike said, at closing time each night. Cash on the nail.

They went back out front and there was Lori, dressed in dark blue basketball shorts so brief that the edges of her rayon panties showed, and a sleeveless blouse that had almost surely come from Mammoth Mart in Batavia. Her thin blond hair was held back with plastic barrettes and she was smoking a Pall Mall, its end wet and heavily marked with lipstick. A large silver crucifix dangled between her breasts.

“This is Jack,” Smokey said. “You can take the Help Wanted sign out of the window.”

“Run, kid,” Lori said. “There’s still time.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Make me.”

Updike slapped her butt, not in a loving way but hard enough to send her against the padded edge of the bar. Jack blinked and thought of the sound Osmond’s whip had made.

“Big man,” Lori said. Her eyes brimmed with tears . . . and yet they also looked contented, as if this was just the way things were supposed to be.

Jack’s earlier unease was now clearer, sharper . . . now it was almost fright.

“Don’t let us get on your case, kid,” Lori said, headed past him to the sign in the window. “You’ll be okay.”