The Talisman

his head, leaned over and opened the door.

“Hop in, boys! Dirty night, ain’t it?”

“Thanks, mister, it sure is,” Jack said cheerfully. His mind was in overdrive, trying to figure out how he could work Wolf into the Story, and he barely noticed Wolf’s expression.

The man noticed it, however.

His face hardened.

“You smell anything bad, son?”

Jack was snapped back to reality by the man’s tone, which was as hard as his face. All cordiality had departed it, and he looked as if he might have just wandered into the Oatley Tap to eat a few beers and drink a few glasses.

Jack whipped around and looked at Wolf.

Wolf’s nostrils were flaring like the nostrils of a bear which smells a blown skunk. His lips were not just pulled back from his teeth; they were wrinkled back from them, the flesh below his nose stacked in little ridges.

“What is he, retarded?” the man in the CASE FARM EQUIPMENT hat asked Jack in a low voice.

“No, ah, he just—”

Wolf began to growl.

That was it.

“Oh, Christ,” the man said in the tones of one who simply cannot believe this is happening. He stepped on the gas and roared down the exit ramp, the passenger door flopping shut. His taillights dot-dashed briefly in the rainy dark at the foot of the ramp, sending reflections in smeary red arrows up the pavement toward where they stood.

“Boy, that’s great,” Jack said, and turned to Wolf, who shrank back from his anger. “That’s just great! If he’d had a CB radio, he’d be on Channel Nineteen right now, yelling for a cop, telling anyone and everyone that there are a couple of loonies trying to hitch a ride out of Arcanum! Jason! Or Jesus! Or Whoever, I don’t care! You want to see some fucking nails get pounded, Wolf? You do that a few more times and you’ll feel them get pounded! Us! We’ll get pounded!”

Exhausted, bewildered, frustrated, almost used up, Jack advanced on the cringing Wolf, who could have torn his head from his shoulders with one hard, swinging blow if he had wanted to, and Wolf backed up before him.

“Don’t shout, Jack,” he moaned. “The smells . . . to be in there . . . shut up in there with those smells . . .”

“I didn’t smell anything!” Jack shouted. His voice broke, his sore throat hurt more than ever, but he couldn’t seem to stop; it was shout or go mad. His wet hair had fallen in his eyes. He shook it away and then slapped Wolf on the shoulder. There was a smart crack and his hand began to hurt at once. It was as if he had slapped a stone. Wolf howled abjectly, and this made Jack angrier. The fact that he was lying made him angrier still. He had been in the Territories less than six hours this time, but that man’s car had smelled like a wild animal’s den. Harsh aromas of old coffee and fresh beer (there had been an open can of Stroh’s between his legs), an air-freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror that smelled like dry sweet powder on the cheek of a corpse. And there had been something else, something darker, something wetter . . .

“Not anything!” he shouted, his voice breaking hoarsely. He slapped Wolf’s other shoulder. Wolf howled again and turned around, hunching like a child who is being beaten by an angry father. Jack began to slap at his back, his smarting hands spatting up little sprays of water from Wolf’s overalls. Each time Jack’s hand descended, Wolf howled. “So you better get used to it (Slap!) because the next car to come along might be a cop (Slap!) or it might be Mr. Morgan Bloat in his puke-green BMW (Slap!) and if all you can be is a big baby, we’re going to be in one big fucking world of hurt! (Slap!) Do you understand that?”

Wolf said nothing. He stood hunched in the rain, his back to Jack, quivering. Crying. Jack felt a lump rise in his own throat, felt his eyes grow hot and stinging. All of this only increased his fury. Some terrible part of him wanted most of all to hurt himself, and knew that hurting Wolf was a wonderful way to do it.

“Turn around!”

Wolf did. Tears ran from his muddy brown eyes behind the round spectacles. Snot ran from his nose.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Wolf moaned. “Yes, I understand, but I couldn’t ride with him, Jack.”

“Why not?” Jack looked at him angrily, fisted hands on his hips. Oh, his head was aching.

“Because he was dying,” Wolf said in a low voice.

Jack stared at him, all his anger draining away.

“Jack, didn’t you know?” Wolf asked softly. “Wolf! You couldn’t smell it?”

“No,” Jack said in a small, whistling, out-of-breath voice. Because he had smelled something, hadn’t he? Something he had never smelled before. Something like a mixture of . . .

It came to him, and suddenly his strength was gone. He sat down heavily on the guardrail cable and looked at Wolf.

Shit and rotting grapes. That was what that smell had been like. That wasn’t it a hundred percent, but it was too hideously close.

Shit and rotting grapes.