The Talisman

20

Taken by the Law

1

By two o’clock that afternoon they were a hundred miles west, and Jack Sawyer felt as if he too had been running with the moon—it had gone that easily. In spite of his extreme hunger, Jack sipped slowly at the water in the rusty can and waited for Wolf to awaken. Finally Wolf stirred, said, “Ready now, Jack,” hitched the boy up onto his back, and trotted into Daleville.

While Wolf sat outside on the curb and tried to look inconspicuous, Jack entered the Daleville Burger King. He made himself go first to the men’s room and strip to the waist. Even in the bathroom, the maddening smell of grilling meat caused the saliva to spill into his mouth. He washed his hands, arms, chest, face. Then he stuck his head under the tap and washed his hair with liquid soap. Crumpled paper towels fell, one after the other, to the floor.

At last he was ready to go to the counter. The uniformed girl there stared at him while he gave his order—his wet hair, he thought. While she waited for the order to come through, the girl stepped back and leaned against the service hatch, still unabashedly looking at him.

He was biting into the first Whopper as he turned away toward the glass doors. Juice ran down his chin. He was so hungry he could scarcely bother to chew. Three enormous bites took most of the big sandwich. He had just worked his mouth far enough around the remainder to take a fourth when he saw through the doors that Wolf had attracted a crowd of children. The meat congealed in his mouth, and his stomach slammed shut.

Jack hurried outside, still trying to swallow his mouthful of ground chuck, limp bread, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and sauce. The kids stood in the street on three sides of Wolf, staring at him every bit as frankly as the waitress had stared at Jack. Wolf had hunched down on the curb as far as he was able, bowing his back and pulling in his neck like a turtle. His ears seemed flattened against his head. The wad of food stuck in Jack’s throat like a golfball, and when he swallowed convulsively, it dropped down another notch.

Wolf glanced at him out of the side of his eye, and visibly relaxed. A tall blue-jeaned man in his twenties opened the door of a battered red pick-up five or six feet away down the curb, leaned against the cab, and watched, smiling. “Have a burger, Wolf,” Jack said as carelessly as he could. He handed Wolf the box, which Wolf sniffed. Then Wolf lifted his head and took a huge bite out of the box. He began methodically to chew. The children, astounded and fascinated, stepped nearer. A few of them were giggling. “What is he?” asked a little girl with blond pigtails tied with fuzzy pink gift-wrapping yarn. “Is he a monster?” A crewcut boy of seven or eight shoved himself in front of the girl and said, “He’s the Hulk, isn’t he? He’s really the Hulk. Hey? Hey? Huh? Right?”

Wolf had managed to extract what was left of his Whopper from its cardboard container. He pushed the whole thing into his mouth with his palm. Shreds of lettuce fell between his upraised knees, mayonnaise and meat juices smeared over his chin, his cheek. Everything else became a brownish pulp smacked to death between Wolf’s enormous teeth. When he swallowed he started to lick the inside of the box.

Jack gently took the container out of his hands. “No, he’s just my cousin. He’s not a monster, and he’s not the Hulk. Why don’t you kids get away and leave us alone, huh? Go on. Leave us alone.”

They continued to stare. Wolf was now licking his fingers.

“If you keep on gawping at him like that, you might make him mad. I don’t know what he’d do if he got mad.”

The boy with the crewcut had seen David Banner’s transformation often enough to have an idea of what anger might do to this monstrous Burger King carnivore. He stepped back. Most of the others moved back with him.

“Go on, please,” Jack said, but the children had frozen again.

Wolf rose up mountainously, his fists clenched. “GOD POUND YOU, DON’T LOOK AT ME!” he bellowed. “DON’T MAKE ME FEEL FUNNY! EVERYBODY MAKES ME FEEL FUNNY!”

The children scattered. Breathing hard, red-faced, Wolf stood and watched them disappear up Daleville’s Main Street and around the corner. When they were gone, he wrapped his arms around his chest and looked dartingly at Jack. He was miserable with embarrassment. “Wolf shouldn’t have yelled,” he said. “They were just little ones.”

“Big fat scare’ll do them a lot of good,” a voice said, and Jack saw that the young man from the red pick-up was still leaning against his cab, smiling at them. “Never saw anything like that before myself. Cousins, are you?”

Jack nodded suspiciously.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to get personal or anything.” He stepped forward, an easy, dark-haired young man in a sleeveless down vest and a plaid shirt. “I especially don’t want to make anybody feel funny now, ya know.” He paused, lifted his hands, palm-out. “Really. I was just thinking that you guys look like you’ve been on the road awhile.”

Jack glanced at Wolf, who was still hugging himself in embarrassment but also glowering through his round glasses at this figure.

“I’ve been there myself,” the man said. “Hey, dig it—the year I got out of good old DHS—Daleville High, you know—I hitched all the way to northern California and all the way back. Anyhow, if you’re sort of going west, I can give you a lift.”

“Can’t, Jacky.” Wolf spoke in a thunderous stage whisper.

“How far west?” Jack asked. “We’re trying to make it to Springfield. I have a friend in Springfield.”

“Hey, no probleema, seenyor.” He raised his hands again. “I’m going just this side of Cayuga, right next to the Illinois border. You let me scarf a burger, we gone. Straight shot. An hour and a half, maybe less—you’ll be about halfway to Springfield.”

“Can’t,” Wolf rasped again.

“There’s one problem, okay? I got some stuff on the front seat. One of you guys’ll have to ride behind. It’s gonna be windy back there.”

“You don’t know how great that is,” Jack said, speaking nothing more than the truth. “We’ll see you when you come back out.” Wolf began to dance in agitation. “Honest. We’ll be out here, mister. And thanks.”

He turned to whisper to Wolf as soon as the man went through the doors.

And so when the young man—Bill “Buck” Thompson, for that was his name—returned to his pick-up carrying the containers for two more Whoppers, he found a sedate-looking Wolf kneeling in the open back, his arms resting on the side panel, mouth open, nose already lifting. Jack was in the passenger seat, crowded by a stack of bulky plastic bags which had been taped, then stapled shut, and then sprayed extensively with room freshener, to judge by the smell. Through the translucent sides the bags were visible long frondlike cuttings, medium green. Clusters of buds grew on these amputated fronds.

“I reckoned you still looked a little hungry,” he said, and tossed another Whopper to Wolf. Then he let himself in on the driver’s side, across the pile of plastic bags from Jack. “Thought he might catch it in his teeth, no reflection on your cousin. Here, take this one, he already pulverized his.”

And a hundred miles west they went, Wolf delirious with joy to have the wind whipping past his head, half-hypnotized by the speed and variety of the odors which his nose caught in flight. Eyes blazing and glowing, registering every nuance of the wind, Wolf twitched from side to side behind the cab, shoving his nose into the speeding air.

Buck Thompson spoke of himself as a farmer. He talked nonstop during the seventy-five minutes he kept his foot near the floor, and never once asked Jack any questions. And when he swung off onto a narrow dirt road just outside the Cayuga town line and stopped the car beside a cornfield that seemed to run for miles, he dug in his shirt pocket and brought out a faintly irregular cigarette rolled in almost tissuelike white paper. “I’ve heard of red-eye,” he said. “But your cousin’s ridiculous.” He dropped the cigarette into Jack’s hand. “Have him take some of this when he gets excited, willya? Doctor’s orders.”

Jack absently stuffed the joint into his shirt pocket and climbed out of the cab. “Thanks, Buck,” he called up to the driver.

“Man, I thought I’d seen something when I saw him eat,” Buck said. “How do you get him to go places? Yell mush! mush! at him?”

Once Wolf realized that the ride was over, he bounded off the back of the truck.

The red pick-up rolled off, leaving a long plume of dust behind it.

“Let’s do that again!” Wolf sang out. “Jacky! Let’s do that again!”

“Boy, I wish we could,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s walk for a while. Someone will probably come along.”

He was thinking that his luck had turned, that in no time at all he and Wolf would be over the border into Illinois—and he’d always been certain that things would go smoothly once he got to Springfield and Thayer School and Richard. But Jack’s mind was still partially in shed-time, where what is unreal bloats and distorts whatever is real, and when the bad things started to happen again, they happened so quickly that he was unable to control them. It was a long time before Jack saw Illinois, and during that time he found himself back in the shed.

2

The bewilderingly rapid series of events which led to the Sunlight Home began ten minutes after the two boys had walked past the stark little roadsign telling them that they were now in Cayuga, pop. 23,568. Cayuga itself was nowhere visible. To their right the endless cornfield rolled across the land; to their left a bare field allowed them to see how the road bent, then arrowed straight toward the flat horizon. Just after Jack had realized that they would probably have to walk all the way into town to get their next ride, a car appeared on this road, travelling fast toward them.

“Ride in back?” Wolf yelled, joyfully raising his arms up over his head. “Wolf ride in back! Right here and now!”

“It’s going the wrong way,” Jack said. “Just be calm and let it pass us, Wolf. Get your arms down or he’ll think you’re signalling him.”

Reluctantly Wolf lowered his arms. The car had come nearly to the bend in the road which would take it directly past Jack and Wolf. “No ride in the back now?” Wolf asked, pouting almost childishly.

Jack shook his head. He was staring at an oval medallion painted on the car’s dusty white doorpanel. County Parks Commission, this might have said, or State Wildlife Board. It might have been anything from the vehicle of the state agricultural agent to the property of the Cayuga Maintenance Department. But when it turned into the bend, Jack saw it was a police car.

“That’s a cop, Wolf. A policeman. Just keep walking and stay nice and loose. We don’t want him to stop.”

“What’s a coppiceman?” Wolf’s voice had dropped into a dark brown range; he had seen that the speeding car was now coming straight toward him. “Does a coppiceman kill Wolfs?”

“No,” Jack said, “they absolutely never kill Wolfs,” but it did no good. Wolf captured Jack’s hand in his own, which trembled.

“Let go of me, please, Wolf,” Jack pleaded. “He’ll think it’s funny.”

Wolf’s hand dropped away.

As the police car advanced toward them, Jack glanced at the figure behind the wheel, and then turned around and walked back a few paces so that he could watch Wolf. What he had seen was not encouraging. The policeman driving the car had a wide doughy domineering face with livid slabs of fat where he’d once had cheekbones. And Wolf’s terror was plain on his face. Eyes, nostrils flared; he was showing his teeth.

“You really liked riding in the back of that truck, didn’t you?” Jack asked him.

Some of the terror disappeared, and Wolf nearly managed a smile. The police car roared past—Jack was conscious of the driver turning his head to inspect them. “All right,” Jack said. “He’s on his way. We’re okay, Wolf.”

He had turned around again when he heard the sound of the police car suddenly begin to grow louder again.

“Coppiceman’s coming back!”

“Probably just going back to Cayuga,” Jack said. “Turn around and just act like me. Don’t stare at him.”

Wolf and Jack trudged along, pretending to ignore the car, which seemed to hang behind them deliberately. Wolf uttered a sound that was half-moan, half-howl.

The police car swung out into the road, passed them, flashed its brake lights, and then cut in diagonally before them. The officer pushed open his door and got his feet planted on the ground. Then he hoisted himself out of the seat. He was roughly Jack’s height, and all his weight was in his face and his stomach—his legs were twig-skinny, his arms and shoulders those of a normally developed man. His gut, trussed in the brown uniform like a fifteen-pound turkey, bulged out on both sides of the wide brown belt.

“I can’t wait for it,” he said, and cocked an arm and leaned on the open door. “What’s your story, anyhow? Give.”

Wolf padded up behind Jack and hunched his shoulders, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his overalls.

“We’re going to Springfield, officer,” Jack said. “We’ve been hitching—I guess maybe we shouldn’t.”

“You guess maybe you shouldn’t. Hol-eee shit. What’s this guy tryinna disappear behind you, a Wookie?”

“He’s my cousin.” Jack thought frantically for a moment—the Story had to be bent far enough to accommodate Wolf. “I’m supposed to be taking him home. He lives in Springfield with his Aunt Helen, I mean my Aunt Helen, the one who’s a schoolteacher. In Springfield.”

“What’d he do, escape from somewhere?”

“No, no, nothing like that. It was just that—”

The cop looked at him neutrally, his face sizzling. “Names.”

Now the boy met a dilemma: Wolf was certain to call him Jack, no matter what name he gave the cop. “I’m Jack Parker,” he said. “And he’s—”

“Hold it. I want the feeb to tell me himself. Come on, you. You remember your name, basket case?”

Wolf squirmed behind Jack, digging his chin into the top of his overalls. He muttered something.

“I couldn’t hear you, sonny.”

“Wolf,” he whispered.

“Wolf. Prob’ly I should have guessed. What’s your first name, or did they just give you a number?”

Wolf had squeezed his eyes shut, and was twisting his legs together.

“Come on, Phil,” Jack said, thinking that it was one of the few names Wolf might remember.

But he had just finished it when Wolf pulled up his head and straightened his back and yelled, “JACK! JACK! JACK WOLF!”

“We call him Jack sometimes,” the boy put in, knowing it was already too late. “It’s because he likes me so much, sometimes I’m the only one who can do anything with him. I might even stay there in Springfield a few days after I get him home, just to make sure he settles down okay.”

“I sure am sick of the sound of your voice, Jack boy. Why don’t you and good old Phil-Jack get in the back seat here and we’ll go into town and straighten everything out?” When Jack did not move, the policeman put a hand on the butt of the enormous pistol which hung from his straining belt. “Get in the car. Him first. I want to find out why you’re a hundred miles from home on a school day. In the car. Right now.”

“Ah, officer,” Jack began, and behind him Wolf rasped, “No. Can’t.”

“My cousin has this problem,” Jack said. “He’s claustrophobic. Small spaces, especially the insides of cars, drive him crazy. We can only get rides in pick-ups, so he can be in the back.”

“Get in the car,” the policeman said. He stepped forward and opened the back door.

“CAN’T!” Wolf wailed. “Wolf CAN’T! Stinks, Jacky, it stinks in there.” His nose and lip had wrinkled into corrugations.

“You get him in the car or I will,” the cop said to Jack.

“Wolf, it won’t be for long,” Jack said, reaching for Wolf’s hand. Reluctantly, Wolf allowed him to take it. Jack pulled him toward the back seat of the police car, Wolf literally dragging his feet across the surface of the road.

For a couple of seconds it looked as though it would work. Wolf got close enough to the police car to touch the doorframe. Then his entire body shook. He clamped both hands onto the top of the doorframe. It looked as though he were going to try to rip the top of the car in half, as a circus strongman tears a telephone book in two.

“Please,” Jack said quietly. “We have to.”

But Wolf was terrified, and too disgusted by whatever he had smelled. He shook his head violently. Slobber ran from his mouth and dripped onto the top of the car.

The policeman stepped around Jack and released something from a catch on his belt. Jack had time only to see that it was not his pistol before the cop expertly whapped his blackjack into the base of Wolf’s skull. Wolf’s upper body dropped onto the top of the car, and then all of Wolf slid gracefully down onto the dusty road.

“You get on his other side,” the cop said, fastening the sap to his belt. “We’re gonna finally get this big bag of shit into the vehicle.”

Two or three minutes later, after they had twice dropped Wolf’s heavy unconscious body back onto the road, they were speeding toward Cayuga. “I already know what’s gonna happen to you and your feeb cousin, if he is your cousin, which I doubt.” The cop looked up at Jack in his rear-view mirror, and his eyes were raisins dipped in fresh tar.

All the blood in Jack’s body seemed to swing down, down in his veins, and his heart jumped in his chest. He had remembered the cigarette in his shirt pocket. He clapped his hand over it, then jerked his hand away before the cop could say anything.

“I gotta put his shoes back on,” Jack said. “They sort of fell off.”

“Forget it,” the cop said, but did not object further when Jack bent over. Out of sight of the mirror, he first shoved one of the split-seamed loafers back up on Wolf’s bare heel, then quickly snatched the joint out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth. He bit into it, and dry crumbly particles with a oddly herbal taste spilled over his tongue. Jack began to grind them between his teeth. Something scratched down into his throat, and he convulsively jerked upright, put his hand in front of his mouth, and tried to cough with his lips together. When his throat was clear, he hurriedly swallowed all of the dampened, now rather sludgy marijuana. Jack ran his tongue over his teeth, collecting all the flecks and traces.

“You got a few surprises ahead of you,” the policeman said. “You’re gonna get a little sunlight in your soul.”

“Sunlight in my soul?” Jack asked, thinking that the cop had seen him stuff the joint into his mouth.

“A few blisters on your hands, too,” the cop said, and glared happily at Jack’s guilty image in the rear-view mirror.

The Cayuga Municipal Building was a shadowy maze of unlighted hallways and narrow staircases that seemed to wind unexpectedly upward alongside equally narrow rooms. Water sang and rumbled in the pipes. “Let me explain something to you kids,” the policeman said, ushering them toward the last staircase to their right. “You’re not under arrest. Got that? You are being detained for questioning. I don’t want to hear any bullshit about one phone call. You’re in limbo until you tell us who you are and what you’re up to,” the cop went on. “You hear me? Limbo. Nowhere. We’re gonna see Judge Fairchild, he’s the magistrate, and if you don’t tell us the truth, you’re gonna pay some big fuckin consequences. Upstairs. Move it!”

At the top of the stairs the policeman pushed a door open. A middle-aged woman in wire glasses and a black dress looked up from a typewriter placed sideways against the far wall. “Two more runaways,” the policeman said. “Tell him we’re here.”

She nodded, picked up her telephone, and spoke a few words. “You may go in,” the secretary said to them, her eyes wandering from Wolf to Jack and back again.

The cop pushed them across the anteroom and opened the door to a room twice as large, lined with books on one long wall, framed photographs and diplomas and certificates on another. Blinds had been lowered across the long windows opposite. A tall skinny man in a dark suit, a wrinkled white shirt, and a narrow tie of no discernible pattern stood up behind a chipped wooden desk that must have been six feet long. The man’s face was a relief map of wrinkles, and his hair was so black it must have been dyed. Stale cigarette smoke hung visibly in the air. “Well, what have we got here, Franky?” His voice was startlingly deep, almost theatrical.

“Kids I picked up on French Lick Road, over by Thompson’s place.”

Judge Fairchild’s wrinkles contorted into a smile as he looked at Jack. “You have any identification papers on you, son?”

“No sir,” Jack said.

“Have you told Officer Williams here the truth about everything? He doesn’t think you have, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes sir,” Jack said.

“Then tell me your story.” He walked around his desk, disturbing the flat layers of smoke just over his head, and half-sat, half-leaned on the front corner nearest Jack. Squinting, he lit a cigarette—Jack saw the Judge’s recessed pale eyes peering at him through the smoke and knew there was no charity in them.

It was the pitcher plant again.

Jack drew in a large breath. “My name is Jack Parker. He’s my cousin, and he’s called Jack, too. Jack Wolf. But his real name is Philip. He was staying with us in Daleville because his dad’s dead and his mother got sick. I was just taking him back to Springfield.”

“Simple-minded, is he?”

“A little slow,” Jack said, and glanced up at Wolf. His friend seemed barely conscious.

“What’s your mother’s name?” the Judge asked Wolf. Wolf did not respond in any way. His eyes were clamped shut and his hands stuffed into his pockets.

“She’s named Helen,” Jack said. “Helen Vaughan.”

The Judge eased himself off the desk and walked slowly over to Jack. “Have you been drinking, son? You’re a little unsteady.”

“No.”

Judge Fairchild came to within a foot of Jack and bent down. “Let me smell your breath.”

Jack opened his mouth and exhaled.

“Nope. No booze.” The Judge straightened up again. “But that’s the only thing you were telling the truth about, isn’t it? You’re trying to string me along, boy.”

“I’m sorry we were hitching,” Jack said, aware that he had to speak with great caution now. Not only might what he said determine whether he and Wolf were to be let free, but he was having a little trouble forming the words themselves—everything seemed to be happening with great slowness. As in the shed, the seconds had wandered off the metronome. “In fact, we hardly ever hitch because Wolf—Jack, that is—hates being in cars. We’ll never do it again. We haven’t done anything wrong, sir, and that really is the truth.”

“You don’t understand, sonny,” the Judge said, and his far-off eyes gleamed again. He’s enjoying this, Jack understood. Judge Fairchild moved slowly back behind his desk. “Hitching rides isn’t the issue. You two boys are out on the road by yourself, coming from nowhere, going nowhere—real targets for trouble.” His voice was like dark honey. “Now we have here in this country what we think is a most unusual facility—state-approved and state-funded, by the way—which might have been set up expressly for the benefit of boys like yourselves. It’s called the Sunlight Gardener Scripture Home for Wayward Boys. Mr. Gardener’s work with young fellows in trouble has been nothing short of miraculous. We’ve sent him some tough cases, and in no time at all he has those boys on their knees begging Jesus for forgiveness. Now I’d say that was pretty special, wouldn’t you?”

Jack swallowed. His mouth felt drier than it had been in the shed. “Ah, sir, it’s really urgent that we get to Springfield. Everybody’s going to wonder—”

“I very much doubt that,” said the Judge, smiling with all his wrinkles. “But I’ll tell you what. As soon as you two wags are on your way to the Sunlight Home, I’ll telephone Springfield and try to get the number of this Helen . . . Wolf, is it? Or is it Helen Vaughan?”

“Vaughan,” Jack said, and a red-hot blush covered his face like a fever.

“Yes,” the Judge said.

Wolf shook his head, blinking, and then put a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“Coming around are you, son?” the Judge asked. “Could you tell me your age?”

Wolf blinked again, and looked at Jack.

“Sixteen,” Jack said.

“And you?”

“Twelve.”

“Oh. I would have taken you for several years older. All the more reason for seeing you get help now before you get in real deep trouble, wouldn’t you say, Franky?”

“Amen,” the policeman said.

“You boys come back here in a month,” said the Judge. “Then we’ll see if your memory is any better. Why are your eyes so bloodshot?”

“They feel kind of funny,” Jack said, and the policeman barked. He had laughed, Jack realized a second later.

“Take them away, Franky,” the Judge said. He was already picking up the telephone. “You’re going to be different boys thirty days from now. Depend on it.”

While they walked down the steps of the redbrick Municipal Building, Jack asked Franky Williams why the Judge had asked for their ages. The cop paused on the bottom step and half-turned to glare up at Jack out of his blazing face. “Old Sunlight generally takes em in at twelve and turns em loose at nineteen.” He grinned. “You tellin me you never heard him on the radio? He’s about the most famous thing we got around here. I’m pretty sure they heard of old Sunlight Gardener even way over in Daleville.” His teeth were small discolored pegs, irregularly spaced.

3

Twenty minutes later they were in farmland again.

Wolf had climbed into the back seat of the police car with surprisingly little fuss. Franky Williams had pulled his sap from his belt and said, “You want this again, you fuckin freak? Who knows, it might make you smart.” Wolf had trembled, Wolf’s nose had wrinkled up, but he had followed Jack into the car. He had immediately clapped his hand over his nose and begun breathing through his mouth. “We’ll get away from this place, Wolf,” Jack had whispered into his ear. “A couple of days, that’s all, and we’ll see how to do it.” “No chatter” came from the front seat.

Jack was strangely relaxed. He was certain that they would find a way to escape. He leaned back against the plastic seat, Wolf’s hand wrapped around his, and watched the fields go by.

“There she is,” Franky Williams called from the front seat. “Your future home.”

Jack saw a meeting of tall brick walls planted surrealistically amidst the fields. Too tall to see over, the walls around the Sunlight Home were topped with three strands of barbed wire and shards of broken glass set in cement. The car was now driving past exhausted fields bordered with fences in which strands of barbed and smooth wire alternated.

“Got sixty acres out here,” Williams said. “And all of it is either walled or fenced—you better believe it. Boys did it themselves.”

A wide iron gate interrupted the expanse of wall where the drive turned into the Home’s property. As soon as the police car turned into the drive the gates swung open, triggered by some electronic signal. “TV camera,” the policeman explained. “They’re a-waitin for you two fresh fish.”

Jack leaned forward and put his face to the window. Boys in denim jackets worked in the long fields to either side, hoeing and raking, pushing wheelbarrows.

“You two shitheads just earned me twenty bucks,” Williams said. “Plus another twenty for Judge Fairchild. Ain’t that great?”