nothing. He holds his silence until he turns back onto 93, when he says, “I’m glad you came with me.”
“Thank you,” Jack says. “I am, too.”
“I feel sort of out of my depth here, you know, but I’d like to get your impressions of what went on in there. Do you think it went pretty well?”
“I think it went better than that. Your wife is . . . I hardly know how to describe her. I don’t have the vocabulary to tell you how great I think she is.”
Fred nods and sneaks a glance at Jack. “So you don’t think she’s out of her head, I guess.”
“If that’s crazy, I’d like to be crazy right along with her.”
The two-lane blacktop highway that stretches before them lifts up along the steep angle of the hillside and, at its top, seems to extend into the dimensionless blue of the enormous sky.
Another wary glance from Fred. “And you say you’ve seen this, this
“I have, yes. As hard as that is to believe.”
“No crap. No b.s. On your mother’s grave.”
“On my mother’s grave.”
“You’ve been there. And not just in a dream, really
“The summer I was twelve.”
“Could I go there, too?”
“Probably not,” Jack says. This is not the truth, since Fred could go to the Territories if Jack took him there, but Jack wants to shut this door as firmly as possible. He can imagine bringing Judy Marshall into that other world; Fred is another matter. Judy has more than earned a journey into the Territories, while Fred is still incapable of believing in its existence. Judy would feel at home over there, but her husband would be like an anchor Jack had to drag along with him, like Richard Sloat.
“I didn’t think so,” says Fred. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to pull over again when we get to the top.”
“I’d like that,” Jack says.
Fred drives to the crest of the hill and crosses the narrow highway to park in the gravel turnout. Instead of getting out of the car, he points at the briefcase lying flat on Jack’s knees. “Is what you’re going to show me in there?”
“Yes,” Jack says. “I was going to show it to you earlier, but after we stopped here the first time, I wanted to wait until I heard what Judy had to say. And I’m glad I did. It might make more sense to you, now that you’ve heard at least part of the explanation of how I found it.”
Jack snaps open the briefcase, raises the top, and from its pale, leather-lined interior removes the Brewers cap he had found that morning. “Take a look,” he says, and hands over the cap.
“Ohmygod,” Fred Marshall says in a startled rush of words. “Is this . . . is it . . . ?” He looks inside the cap and exhales hugely at the sight of his son’s name. His eyes leap to Jack’s. “It’s Tyler’s. Good Lord, it’s Tyler’s. Oh, Lordy.” He crushes the cap to his chest and takes two deep breaths, still holding Jack’s gaze. “Where did you find this? How long ago was it?”
“I found it on the road this morning,” Jack says. “In the place your wife calls Faraway.”
With a long moan, Fred Marshall opens his door and jumps out of the car. By the time Jack catches up with him, he is at the far edge of the lookout, holding the cap to his chest and staring at the blue-green hills beyond the long quilt of farmland. He whirls to stare at Jack. “Do you think he’s still alive?”
“I think he’s alive,” Jack says.
“In that world.” Fred points to the hills. Tears leap from his eyes, and his mouth softens. “The world that’s over there somewhere, Judy says.”
“In that world.”
“Then you go there and find him!” Fred shouts. His face shining with tears, he gestures wildly toward the horizon with the baseball cap. “Go there and bring him back, damn you!
When Fred’s shoulders stop trembling and his breath comes in gasps, Jack says, “I’ll do everything I can.”
“I know you will.” He steps away and wipes his face. “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. I know you’re going to help us.”
The two men turn around to walk back to the car. Far off to the west, a loose, woolly smudge of pale gray blankets the land beside the river.
“What’s that?” Jack asks. “Rain?”
“No, fog,” Fred says. “Coming in off the Mississippi.”
PART THREE
Night’s
Plutonian Shore
15
BY EVENING, the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees as a minor cold front pushes through our little patch
