The Talisman

Jack perhaps would not have lingered to see that, and everything that happened thereafter—the movie theater, the shed, and the hell of the Sunlight Home—would not have happened (or would, at the very least, have happened in some completely different way), but in the extremity of his terror he froze completely after getting up. He was no more able to run than a deer is when it is frozen in a hunter’s jacklight.

As the figure in the bib overalls approached, he thought: Elroy wasn’t that tall or that broad. And his eyes were yellow—The eyes of this creature were a bright, impossible shade of orange. Looking into them was like looking into the eyes of a Halloween pumpkin. And while Elroy’s grin had promised madness and murder, the smile on this fellow’s face was large and cheerful and harmless.

His feet were bare, huge, and spatulate, the toes clumped into groups of three and two, barely visible through curls of wiry hair. Not hooflike, as Elroy’s had been, Jack realized, half-crazed with surprise, fear, a dawning amusement, but padlike-pawlike.

As he closed the distance between himself and Jack,

(his? its?)

eyes flared an even brighter orange, going for a moment to the Day-Glo shade favored by hunters and flagmen on road-repair jobs. The color faded to a muddy hazel. As it did, Jack saw that his smile was puzzled as well as friendly, and understood two things at once: first, that there was no harm in this fellow, not an ounce of it, and second, that he was slow. Not feeble, perhaps, but slow.

“Wolf!” the big, hairy boy-beast cried, grinning. His tongue was long and pointed, and Jack thought with a shudder that a wolf was exactly what he looked like. Not a goat but a wolf. He hoped he was right about there not being any harm in him. But if I made a mistake about that, at least I won’t have to worry about making any more mistakes . . . ever again. “Wolf! Wolf!” He stuck out one hand, and Jack saw that, like his feet, his hands were covered with hair, although this hair was finer and more luxuriant—actually quite handsome. It grew especially thick in the palms, where it was the soft white of a blaze on a horse’s forehead.

My God I think he wants to shake hands with me!

Gingerly, thinking of Uncle Tommy, who had told him he must never refuse a handshake, not even with his worst enemy (“Fight him to the death afterward if you must, but shake his hand first,” Uncle Tommy had said), Jack put his own hand out, wondering if it was about to be crushed . . . or perhaps eaten.

“Wolf! Wolf! Shakin hands right here and now!” the boything in the Oshkosh biballs cried, delighted. “Right here and now! Good old Wolf! God-pound it! Right here and now! Wolf!”

In spite of this enthusiasm, Wolf’s grip was gentle enough, cushioned by the crisp, furry growth of hair on his hand. Bib overalls and a big handshake from a guy who looks like an overgrown Siberian husky and smells a little bit like a hayloft after a heavy rain, Jack thought. What next? An offer to come to his church this Sunday?

“Good old Wolf, you bet! Good old Wolf right here and now!” Wolf wrapped his arms around his huge chest and laughed, delighted with himself. Then he grabbed Jack’s hand again.

This time his hand was pumped vigorously up and down. Something seemed required of him at his point, Jack reflected. Otherwise, this pleasant if rather simple young man might go on shaking his hand until sundown.

“Good old Wolf,” he said. It seemed to be a phrase of which his new acquaintance was particularly fond.

Wolf laughed like a child and dropped Jack’s hand. This was something of a relief. The hand had been neither crushed nor eaten, but it did feel a bit seasick. Wolf had a faster pump than a slot-machine player on a hot streak.

“Stranger, ain’tcha?” Wolf asked. He stuffed his hairy hands into the slit sides of his biballs and began playing pocket-pool with a complete lack of self-consciousness.

“Yes,” Jack said, thinking of what that word meant over here. It had a very specific meaning over here. “Yes, I guess that’s just what I am. A stranger.”

“God-pounding right! I can smell it on you! Right here and now, oh yeah, oh boy! Got it! Doesn’t smell bad, you know, but it sure is funny. Wolf! That’s me. Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” He threw back his head and laughed. The sound ended being something that was disconcertingly like a howl.

“Jack,” Jack said. “Jack Saw—”

His hand was seized again and pumped with abandon.

“Sawyer,” he finished, when he was released again. He smiled, feeling very much as though someone had hit him with a great big goofystick. Five minutes ago he had been standing scrunched against the cold brick side of a shithouse on I-70. Now he was standing here talking to a young fellow who seemed to be more animal than man.

And damned if his cold wasn’t completely gone.

3

“Wolf meet Jack! Jack meet Wolf! Here and now! Okay! Good! Oh, Jason! Cows in the road! Ain’t they stupid! Wolf! Wolf!”

Yelling, Wolf loped down the hill to the road, where about half of his herd was standing, looking around with expressions of bland surprise, as if to ask where the grass had gone. They really did look like some strange cross between cows and sheep, Jack saw, and wondered what you would call such a crossbreed. The only word to come immediately to mind was creeps—or perhaps, he thought, the singular would be more proper in this case, as in Here’s Wolf taking care of his flock of creep. Oh yeah. Right here and now.

The goofystick came down on Jack’s head again. He sat down and began to giggle, his hands crisscrossed over his mouth to stifle the sounds.

Even the biggest creep stood no more than four feet high. Their fur was woolly, but of a muddy shade that was similar to Wolf’s eyes—at least, when Wolf’s eyes weren’t blazing like Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. Their heads were topped with short, squiggly horns that looked good for absolutely nothing. Wolf herded them back out of the road. They went obediently, with no sign of fear. If a cow or a sheep on my side of the jump got a whiff of that guy, Jack thought, it’d kill itself trying to get out of his way.

But Jack liked Wolf—liked him on sight, just as he had feared and disliked Elroy on sight. And that contrast was particularly apt, because the comparison between the two was undeniable. Except that Elroy had been goatish