The Talisman

“It’s the worst smell,” Wolf said. “It’s when people forget how to be healthy. We call it—Wolf! —the Black Disease. I don’t even think he knew he had it. And . . . these Strangers can’t smell it, can they, Jack?”

“No,” he whispered. If he were to be suddenly teleported back to New Hampshire, to his mother’s room in the Alhambra, would he smell that stink on her?

Yes. He would smell it on his mother, drifting out of her pores, the smell of shit and rotting grapes, the Black Disease.

“We call it cancer,” Jack whispered. We call it cancer and my mother has it.

“I just don’t know if I can hitch,” Wolf said. “I’ll try again if you want, Jack, but the smells . . . inside . . . they’re bad enough in the outside air, Wolf! but inside . . .”

That was when Jack put his face in his hands and wept, partly out of desperation, mostly out of simple exhaustion. And, yes, the expression Wolf believed he had seen on Jack’s face really had been there; for an instant the temptation to leave Wolf was more than a temptation, it was a maddening imperative. The odds against his ever making it to California and finding the Talisman—whatever it might be—had been long before; now they were so long they dwindled to a point on the horizon. Wolf would do more than slow him down; Wolf would sooner or later get both of them thrown in jail. Probably sooner. And how could he ever explain Wolf to Rational Richard Sloat?

What Wolf saw on Jack’s face in that moment was a look of cold speculation that unhinged his knees. He fell on them and held his clasped hands up to Jack like a suitor in a bad Victorian melodrama.

“Don’t go away an’ leave me, Jack,” he wept. “Don’t leave old Wolf, don’t leave me here, you brought me here, please, please don’t leave me alone. . . .”

Beyond this, conscious words were lost; Wolf was perhaps trying to talk but all he really seemed able to do was sob. Jack felt a great weariness fall over him. It fit well, like a jacket that one has worn often. Don’t leave me here, you brought me here . . .

There it was. Wolf was his responsibility, wasn’t he? Yes. Oh yes indeed. He had taken Wolf by the hand and dragged him out of the Territories and into Ohio and he had the throbbing shoulder to prove it. He had had no choice, of course; Wolf had been drowning, and even if he hadn’t drowned, Morgan would have crisped him with whatever that lightning-rod thing had been. So he could have turned on Wolf again, could have said: Which would you prefer, Wolf old buddy? To be here and scared, or there and dead?

He could, yes, and Wolf would have no answer because Wolf wasn’t too swift in the brains department. But Uncle Tommy had been fond of quoting a Chinese proverb that went: The man whose life you save is your responsibility for the rest of your life.

Never mind the ducking, never mind the fancy footwork; Wolf was his responsibility.

“Don’t leave me, Jack,” Wolf wept. “Wolf-Wolf! Please don’t leave good old Wolf, I’ll help you, I’ll stand guard at night, I can do lots, only don’t don’t—”

“Quit bawling and get up,” Jack said quietly. “I won’t leave you. But we’ve got to get out of here in case that guy does send a cop back to check on us. Let’s move it.”

5

“Did you figure out what to do next, Jack?” Wolf asked timidly. They had been sitting in the brushy ditch just over the Muncie town line for more than half an hour, and when Jack turned toward Wolf, Wolf was relieved to see he was smiling. It was a weary smile, and Wolf didn’t like the dark, tired circles under Jack’s eyes (he liked Jack’s smell even less—it was a sick smell), but it was a smile.

“I think I see what we should do next right over there,” Jack said. “I was thinking about it just a few days ago, when I got my new sneakers.”

He bowed his feet. He and Wolf regarded the sneakers in depressed silence. They were scuffed, battered, and dirty. The left sole was bidding a fond adieu to the left upper. Jack had owned them for . . . he wrinkled his forehead and thought. The fever made it hard to think. Three days. Only three days since he had picked them out of the bargain bin of the Fayva store. Now they looked old. Old.

“Anyway . . .” Jack sighed. Then he brightened. “See that building over there, Wolf?”

The building, an explosion of uninteresting angles in gray brick, stood like an island in the middle of a giant parking lot. Wolf knew what the asphalt in that parking lot would smell like: dead, decomposing animals. That smell would almost suffocate him, and Jack would barely notice it.

“For your information, the sign there said Town Line Sixplex,” Jack said. “It sounds like a coffee pot, but actually it’s a movie with six shows. There ought to be one we like.” And in the afternoon, there won’t be many people there and that’s good because you have this distressing habit of going Section Eight, Wolf. “Come on.” He got unsteadily to his feet.

“What’s a movie, Jack?” Wolf asked. He had been a dreadful problem to Jack, he knew—such a dreadful problem that he now hesitated to protest about anything, or even express unease. But a frightening intuition had come to him: that going to a movie and hitching a ride might be the same thing. Jack called the roaring carts and carriages “cars,” and “Chevys,” and “Jartrans,” and “station- wagons” (these latter, Wolf thought, must be like the coaches in the Territories which carried passengers from one coach-station to the next). Might the bellowing, stinking carriages also be called “movies”? It sounded very possible.

“Well,” Jack said, “it’s easier to show you than to tell you. I think you’ll like it. Come on.”

Jack stumbled coming out of the ditch and went briefly to his knees. “Jack, are you okay?” Wolf asked anxiously.

Jack nodded. They started across the parking lot, which smelled just as bad as Wolf had known it would.

6

Jack had come a good part of the thirty-five miles between Arcanum, Ohio, and Muncie, Indiana, on Wolf’s broad back. Wolf was frightened of cars, terrified of trucks, nauseated by the smells of almost everything, apt to howl and run at sudden loud noises. But he was also almost tireless. As far as that goes, you can strike the “almost,” Jack thought now. So far as I know, he is tireless.

Jack had moved them away from the Arcanum ramp as fast as he could, forcing his wet, aching legs into a rusty trot. His head had been throbbing like a slick, flexing fist inside his skull, waves of heat and cold rushing