The Talisman

24

Jack Names the Planets

1

Another week in the Sunlight Home, praise God. The moon put on weight.

On Monday, a smiling Sunlight Gardener asked the boys to bow their heads and give thanks to God for the conversion of their brother Ferdinand Janklow. Ferd had made a soul-decision for Christ while recuperating in Parkland Hospital, Sunlight said, his smile radiant. Ferd had made a collect call to his parents and told them he wanted to be a soul-winner for the Lord, and they prayed for guidance right there over the long-distance line, and his parents had come to pick him up that very day. Dead and buried under some frosty Indiana field . . . or over in the Territories, perhaps, where the Indiana State Patrol could never go.

Tuesday was too coldly rainy for field-work. Most of the boys had been allowed to stay in their rooms and sleep or read, but for Jack and Wolf, the period of harassment had begun. Wolf was lugging load after load of garbage from the barn and the sheds out to the side of the road in the driving rain. Jack had been set to work cleaning toilets. He supposed that Warwick and Casey, who had assigned him this duty, thought they were giving him a really nasty job to do. It was obvious that they’d never seen the men’s room of the world-famous Oatley Tap.

Just another week at the Sunlight Home, can you say oh-yeah.

Hector Bast returned on Wednesday, his right arm in a cast up to the elbow, his big, doughy face so pallid that the pimples on it stood out like garish dots of rouge.

“Doctor says I may never get the use of it back,” Heck Bast said. “You and your numbnuts buddy have got a lot to answer for, Parker.”

“You aiming to have the same thing happen to your other hand?” Jack asked him . . . but he was afraid. It was not just a desire for revenge he saw in Heck’s eyes; it was a desire to commit murder.

“I’m not afraid of him,” Heck said. “Sonny says they took most of the mean out of him in the Box. Sonny says he’ll do anything to keep from going back in. As for you—”

Heck’s left fist flashed out. He was even clumsier with his left hand than with his right, but Jack, stunned by the big boy’s pallid rage, never saw it coming. His lips spread into a weird smile under Heck’s fist and broke open. He reeled back against the wall.

A door opened and Billy Adams looked out.

“Shut that door or I’ll see you get a helping!” Heck screamed, and Adams, not anxious for a dose of assault and battery, complied in a hurry.

Heck started toward Jack. Jack pushed groggily away from the wall and raised his fists. Heck stopped.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Heck said. “Fighting with a guy that’s only got one good hand.” Color rushed up into his face.

Footsteps rattled on the third floor, heading toward the stairs. Heck looked at Jack. “That’s Sonny. Go on. Get out of here. We’re gonna get you, my friend. You and the dummy both. Reverend Gardener says we can, unless you tell him whatever it is he wants to know.”

Heck grinned.

“Do me a favor, snotface. Don’t tell him.”

2

They had taken something out of Wolf in the Box, all right, Jack thought. Six hours had passed since his hallway confrontation with Heck Bast. The bell for confession would ring soon, but for now Wolf was sleeping heavily in the bunk below him. Outside, rain continued to rattle off the sides of the Sunlight Home.

It wasn’t meanness, and Jack knew it wasn’t just the Box that had taken it. Not even just the Sunlight Home. It was this whole world. Wolf was, simply, pining for home. He had lost most of his vitality. He smiled rarely and laughed not at all. When Warwick yelled at him at lunch for eating with his fingers, Wolf cringed.

It has to be soon, Jacky. Because I’m dying. Wolf’s dying.

Heck Bast said he wasn’t afraid of Wolf, and indeed there seemed nothing left to be afraid of; it seemed that crushing Heck’s hand had been the last strong act of which Wolf was capable.

The confession bell rang.

That night, after confession and dinner and chapel, Jack and Wolf came back to their room to find both of their beds dripping wet and reeking of urine. Jack went to the door, yanked it open, and saw Sonny, Warwick, and a big lunk named Van Zandt standing in the hall, grinning.

“Guess we got the wrong room, snotface,” Sonny said. “Thought it had to be the toilet, on account of the turds we always see floating around in there.”

Van Zandt almost ruptured himself laughing at this sally.

Jack stared at them for a long moment, and Van Zandt stopped laughing.

“Who you looking at, turd? You want your fucking nose broke off?”

Jack closed the door, looked around, and saw Wolf asleep in his wet bunk with all his clothes on. Wolf’s beard was coming back, but still his face looked pale, the skin stretched and shiny. It was an invalid’s face.

Leave him alone, then, Jack thought wearily. If he’s that tired, let him sleep in it.

No. You will not leave him alone to sleep in that fouled bed. You will not!

Tiredly, Jack went to Wolf, shook him half-awake, got him off the wet, stinking mattress, and out of his biballs. They slept curled up together on the floor.

At four in the morning, the door opened and Sonny and Heck marched in. They yanked Jack up and half-carried him down to Sunlight Gardener’s basement office.

Gardener was sitting with his feet up on the corner of his desk. He was fully dressed in spite of the hour. Behind him was a picture of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee while his disciples gawped in wonder. To his right was a glass window looking into the darkened studio where Casey worked his idiot-savant wonders. There was a heavy keychain attached to one of Gardener’s belt-loops. The keys, a heavy bunch of them, lay in the palm of his hand. He played with them while he spoke.

“You haven’t given us a single confession since you got here, Jack,” Sunlight Gardener said, his tone one of mild reproof. “Confession is good for the soul. Without confession we cannot be saved. Oh, I don’t mean the idolatrous, heathenish confession of the Catholics. I mean confession before your brothers and your Saviour.”

“I’ll keep it between me and my Saviour, if it’s all the same to you,” Jack said evenly, and in spite of his fear and disorientation, he could not help relishing the expression of fury which overspread Gardener’s face.

“It’s not all the same to me!” Gardener screamed. Pain exploded in Jack’s kidneys. He fell to his knees.

“Watch what you say to Reverend Gardener, snotface,” Sonny said. “Some of us around here stand up for him.”

“God bless you for your trust and your love, Sonny,” Gardener said gravely, and turned his attention to Jack again.

“Get up, son.”

Jack managed to get up, holding on to the edge of Sunlight Gardener’s expensive blondewood desk.

“What’s your real name?”

“Jack Parker.”

He saw Gardener nod imperceptibly, and tried to turn, but it was a moment too late. Fresh pain exploded in his kidneys. He screamed and went down again, knocking the fading bruise on his forehead against the edge of Gardener’s desk.

“Where are you from, you lying, impudent, devil’s spawn of a boy?”

“Pennsylvania.”

Pain exploded in the meaty upper part of his left thigh. He rolled into a fetal position on the white Karastan carpet, huddled with his knees against his chest.

“Get him up.”

Sonny and Heck got him up.

Gardener reached into the pocket of his white jacket and took out a Zippo lighter. He flicked the wheel, produced a big yellow flame, and brought the flame slowly toward Jack’s face. Nine inches. He could smell the sweet, pungent reek of lighter fluid. Six inches. Now he could feel heat. Three inches. Another inch—maybe just half that—and discomfort would turn to pain. Sunlight Gardener’s eyes were hazy-happy. His lips trembled on the edge of a smile.

“Yeah!” Heck’s breath was hot, and it smelled like mouldy pepperoni. “Yeah, do it!”

“Where do I know you from?”

“I never met you before!” Jack gasped.

The flame moved closer. Jack’s eyes began to water, and he could feel his skin beginning to sear. He tried to pull his head back. Sonny Singer pushed it forward.

“Where have I met you?” Gardener rasped. The lighter’s flame danced deep in his black pupils, each deep spark a twinner of the other. “Last chance!”

Tell him, for God’s sake tell him!

“If we ever met I don’t remember it,” Jack gasped. “Maybe California—”

The Zippo clicked closed. Jack sobbed with relief.

“Take him back,” Gardener said.

They yanked Jack toward the door.

“It won’t do you any good, you know,” Sunlight Gardener said. He had turned around and appeared to be meditating on the picture of Christ walking on water. “I’ll get it out of you. If not tonight, then tomorrow night. If not tomorrow night, then the night after. Why not make it easy on yourself, Jack?”

Jack said nothing. A moment later he felt his arm twisted up to his shoulder blades. He moaned.

“Tell him!” Sonny whispered.

And part of Jack wanted to, not because he was hurt but because—because confession was good for the soul.

He remembered the muddy courtyard, he remembered this same man in a different envelope of skin asking who he was, he remembered thinking: I’ll tell you anything you want to know if only you’ll stop looking at me with those freaked-out eyes of yours, sure, because I’m only a kid, and that’s what kids do, they tell, they tell everything—

Then he remembered his mother’s voice, that tough voice, asking him if he was going to spill his guts to this guy.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he said.

Gardener’s lips parted in a small, dry smile. “Take him back to his room,” he said.

3

Just another week in the Sunlight Home, can you say amen, brothers and sisters. Just another long, long week.

Jack lingered in the kitchen after the others had taken in their breakfast dishes and left. He knew perfectly well that he was risking another beating, more harassment . . . but by this time, that seemed a minor consideration. Only three hours before, Sunlight Gardener had come within an ace of burning his lips off. He had seen it in the man’s crazy eyes, and felt it in the man’s crazy heart. After something like that, the risk of a beating seemed a very minor consideration indeed.

Rudolph’s cook’s whites were as gray as the lowering November sky outside. When Jack spoke his name in a near-whisper, Rudolph turned a bloodshot, cynical gaze on him. Cheap whiskey was strong on his breath.

“You better get outta here, new fish. They’re keepin an eye on you pretty good.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Jack glanced nervously toward the antique dishwasher, which thumped and hissed and gasped its steamy dragon’s breath at the boys loading it. They seemed not to be looking at Jack and Rudolph, but Jack knew that seemed was really the operant word. Tales would be carried. Oh yes. At the Sunlight Home they took away your dough, and carried tales became a kind of replacement currency.

“I need to get out of here,” Jack said. “Me and my big friend. How much would you take to look the other way while we went out that back door?”

“More than you could pay me even if you could get your hands on what they took from you when they ho’d you in here, buddy-roo,” Rudolph said. His words were hard but he looked at Jack with a bleary sort of kindness.

Yes, of course—it was all gone, everything. The guitar-pick, the silver dollar, the big croaker marble, his six dollars . . . all gone. Sealed in an envelope and held somewhere, probably in Gardener’s office downstairs. But—

“Look, I’d give you an IOU.”

Rudolph grinned. “Comin from someone in this den of thieves and dope-addicts, that’s almost funny,” he said. “Piss on your fuckin IOU, old hoss.”

Jack turned all the new force that was in him upon Rudolph. There was a way to hide that force, that new beauty—to a degree, at least—but now he let it all come out, and saw Rudolph step back from it, his face momentarily confused and amazed.

“My IOU would be good and I think you know it,” Jack said quietly. “Give me an address and I’ll mail you the cash. How much? Ferd Janklow said that for two bucks you’d mail a letter for someone. Would ten be enough to look the other way just long enough for us to take a walk?”

“Not ten, not twenty, not a hundred,” Rudolph said quietly. He now looked at the boy with a sadness that scared Jack badly. It was that look as much as anything else—maybe more—that told him just how badly he and Wolf were caught. “Yeah, I’ve done it before. Sometimes for five bucks. Sometimes, believe it or not, for free. I would have done it free for Ferdie Janklow. He was a good kid. These fuckers—”

Rudolph raised one water- and detergent-reddened fist and shook it toward the green-tiled wall. He saw Morton, the accused pud-puller, looking at him, and Rudolph glared horribly at him. Morton looked away in a hurry.

“Then why not?” Jack asked desperately.

“Because I’m scared, hoss,” Rudolph said.

“What do you mean? The night I came here, when Sonny started to give you some trouble—”

“Singer!” Rudolph flapped one hand contemptuously. “I ain’t scared of Singer, and I ain’t scared of Bast, no matter how big he is. It’s him I’m afraid of.”

“Gardener?”

“He’s a devil from hell,” Rudolph said. He hesitated and then added, “I’ll tell you something I never told nobody else. One week he was late givin me my pay envelope and I went downstairs to his office. Most times I don’t, I don’t like to go down there, but this time I had to . . . well, I had to see a man. I needed my money in a hurry, you know what I mean? And I seen him go down the hall and into his office, so I knew he was there. I went down and knocked on the door, and it swung open when I did, because it hadn’t completely latched. And you know what, kid? He wasn’t there.”

Rudolph’s voice had lowered steadily as he told this story, until Jack could barely hear the cook over the thump and wheeze of the dishwasher. At the same time, his eyes had widened like the eyes of a child reliving a scary dream.

“I thought maybe he was in that recordin-studio thing they got, but he wasn’t. And he hadn’t gone into the chapel because there’s no direct connectin door. There’s a door to the outside from his office, but it was locked and bolted on the inside. So where did he go, buddy-roo? Where did he go?”

Jack, who knew, could only look at Rudolph numbly.

“I think he’s a devil from hell and he took some weird elevator down to report to fuckin HQ,” Rudolph said. “I’d like to help you but I can’t. There ain’t enough money in Fort Knox for me to cross the Sunlight Man. Now you get out of here. Maybe they ain’t noticed you’re missin.”

But they had, of course. As he came out through the swinging doors, Warwick stepped up behind him and clubbed Jack in the middle of the back with hands interlaced to form one gigantic fist. As he went stumbling forward through the deserted cafeteria, Casey appeared from nowhere like an evil jack-in-the-box and stuck out a foot. Jack couldn’t stop. He tripped over Casey’s foot, his own feet went out from under him, and he sprawled in a tangle of chairs. He got up, fighting back tears of rage and shame.

“You don’t want to be so slow taking in your dishes, snot-face,” Casey said. “You could get hurt.”

Warwick grinned. “Yeah. Now get on upstairs. The trucks are waiting to leave.”

4

At four the next morning he was awakened and taken down to Sunlight Gardener’s office again.

Gardener looked up from his Bible as if surprised to see him.

“Ready to confess, Jack Parker?”

“I have nothing—”

The lighter again. The flame, dancing a bare inch from the tip of his nose.

“Confess. Where have we met?” The flame danced a little closer yet. “I mean to have it out of you, Jack. Where? Where?”

“Saturn!” Jack screamed. It was all he could think of. “Uranus! Mercury! Somewhere in the asteroid belt! Io! Ganymede! Dei—”

Pain, thick and leaden and excruciating, exploded in his lower belly as Hector Bast reached between his legs with his good hand and squeezed Jack’s testes.

“There,” Heck Bast said, smiling cheerfully. “Didn’t you just have that coming, you hellbound mocker.”

Jack collapsed slowly to the floor, sobbing.

Sunlight Gardener leaned slowly down, his face patient—almost beatific. “Next time, it will be your friend down here,” Sunlight Gardener said gently. “And with him I will not hesitate. Think about it, Jack. Until tomorrow night.”

But tomorrow night, Jack decided, he and Wolf would not be here. If only the Territories were left, then the Territories it would be . . .

. . . if he could get them back there.