through him. Wolf moved easily to his left, his stride so long that he was keeping up with Jack easily by doing no more than a moderately fast walk. Jack knew that he had maybe gotten paranoid about the cops, but the man in the CASE FARM EQUIPMENT hat had looked really scared. And pissed.
They hadn’t gone even a quarter of a mile when a deep, burning stitch settled into his side and he asked Wolf if he could give him a piggyback for a while.
“Huh?” Wolf asked.
“You know,” Jack said, and pantomimed.
A big grin had overspread Wolf’s face. Here at last was something he understood; here was something he could
“You want a
“Yeah, I guess . . .”
“Oh, yeah! Wolf! Here and now! Used to give em to my litter-brothers! Jump up, Jack!” Wolf bent down, holding his curved hands ready, stirrups for Jack’s thighs.
“Now when I get too heavy, just put me d—”
Before he could finish, Wolf had swept him up and was running lightly down the road with him into the dark— really running. The cold, rainy air flipped Jack’s hair back from his hot brow.
“Wolf, you’ll wear yourself out!” Jack shouted.
“Not me! Wolf! Wolf! Runnin here and now!” For the first time since they had come over, Wolf sounded actually happy. He ran for the next two hours, until they were west of Arcanum and travelling along a dark, unmarked stretch of two-lane black-top. Jack saw a deserted barn standing slumped in a shaggy, untended field, and they slept there that night.
Wolf wanted nothing to do with downtown areas where the traffic was a roaring flood and the stinks rose up to heaven in a noxious cloud, and Jack didn’t want anything to do with them, either. Wolf stuck out too much. But he had forced one stop, at a roadside store just across the Indiana line, near Harrisville. While Wolf waited nervously out by the road, hunkering down, digging at the dirt, getting up, walking around in a stiff little circle, then hunkering again, Jack bought a newspaper and checked the weather page carefully. The next full moon was on October 31st —Halloween, that was fitting enough. Jack turned back to the front page so he could see what day it was today . . . yesterday, that had been now. It had been October 26th.
7
Jack pulled open one of the glass doors and stepped inside the lobby of the Town Line Sixplex. He looked around sharply at Wolf, but Wolf looked—for the moment, at least—pretty much okay. Wolf was, in fact, cautiously optimistic . . . at least for the moment. He didn’t like being inside a building, but at least it wasn’t a car. There was a good smell in here—light and sort of tasty. Or would have been, except for a bitter, almost rancid undersmell. Wolf looked left and saw a glass box full of white stuff. That was the source of the good light smell.
“Jack,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“I want some of that white stuff, please. But none of the pee.”
“Pee? What are you talking about?”
Wolf searched for a more formal word and found it. “Urine.” He pointed at a thing with a light going off and on inside it. BUTTERY FLAVORING, it read. “That’s some kind of urine, isn’t it? It’s got to be, the way it smells.”
Jack smiled tiredly. “A popcorn without the fake butter, right,” he said. “Now pipe down, okay?”
“Sure, Jack,” Wolf said humbly. “Right here and now.”
The ticket-girl had been chewing a big wad of grape-flavored bubble gum. Now she stopped. She looked at Jack, then at Jack’s big, hulking companion. The gum sat on her tongue inside her half-open mouth like a large purple tumor. She rolled her eyes at the guy behind the counter.
“Two, please,” Jack said. He took out his roll of bills, dirty, tag-eared ones with an orphan five hiding in the middle.
“Which show?” Her eyes moved back and forth, back and forth, Jack to Wolf and Wolf to Jack. She looked like a woman watching a hot table-tennis match.
“What’s just starting?” Jack asked her.
“Well . . .” She glanced down at the paper Scotch-taped beside her. “There’s
Jack felt relieved. Wolf was nothing but a big, overgrown kid, and kids loved cartoons. This could work out after all. Wolf would maybe find at least one thing in the Country of Bad Smells that would amuse him, and Jack could sleep for three hours.
“That one,” he said. “The cartoons.”
“That’ll be four dollars,” she said. “Bargain Matinee prices end at two.” She pushed a button and two tickets poked out of a slot with a mechanical ratcheting noise. Wolf flinched backward with a small cry.
The girl looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“You jumpy, mister?”
“No, I’m Wolf,” Wolf said. He smiled, showing a great many teeth. Jack would have sworn that Wolf showed more teeth now when he smiled than he had a day or two ago. The girl looked at all those teeth. She wet her lips.
“He’s okay. He just—” Jack shrugged. “He doesn’t get off the farm much. You know.” He gave her the orphan five. She handled it as if she wished she had a pair of tongs to do it with.
