The Talisman Read online

  "Now you're wards of the State of Indiana, and that's what you'll be for the next thirty days, unless you decide to stay longer." Singer twitched the papers back toward himself. "You'll be--"

  "Decide?" Jack asked. "What do you mean, decide?"

  A trifle of red grew smooth beneath Singer's cheeks. He jerked his head to one side and seemed to smile. "I guess you don't know that over sixty percent of our kids are here voluntarily. It's possible, yeah. You could decide to stay here."

  Jack tried to keep his face expressionless.

  Singer's mouth twitched violently, as if a fishhook had snagged it. "This is a pretty good place, and if I ever hear you ranking it I'll pound the shit out of you--it's the best place you've ever been in, I'm sure. I'll tell you another thing: you got no choice. You have to respect the Sunlight Home. You understand?"

  Jack nodded his head.

  "How about him? Does he?"

  Jack looked up at Wolf, who was blinking slowly and breathing through his mouth.

  "I think so."

  "All right. The two of you will be bunkmates. The day starts at five in the morning, when we have chapel. Fieldwork until seven, then breakfast in the dining hall. Back to the field until noon, when we get lunch plus Bible readings--everybody gets a crack at this, so you better start thinking about what you'll read. None of that sexy stuff from the Song of Songs, either, unless you want to find out what discipline means. More work after lunch."

  He looked sharply up at Jack. "Hey, don't think that you work for nothing at the Sunlight Home. Part of our arrangement with the state is that everybody gets a fair hourly wage, which is set against the cost of keeping you here--clothes and food, electricity, heating, stuff like that. You are credited fifty cents an hour. That means that you earn five dollars a day for the hours you put in--thirty dollars a week. Sundays are spent in the Sunlight Chapel, except for the hour when we actually put on the Sunlight Gardener Gospel Hour."

  The red smoothed itself out under the surface of his skin again, and Jack nodded in recognition, being more or less obliged to.

  "If you turn out right and if you can talk like a human being, which most people can't, then you might get a shot at OS--Outside Staff. We've got two squads of OS, one that works the streets, selling hymn sheets and flowers and Reverend Gardener's pamphlets, and the other one on duty at the airport. Anyhow, we got thirty days to turn you two scumbags around and make you see how dirty and filthy and diseased your crummy lives were before you came here, and this is where we start, right now exactly."

  Singer stood up, his face the color of a blazing autumn leaf, and delicately set the tips of his fingers atop his desk. "Empty your pockets. Right now."

  "Right here and now," Wolf mumbled, as if by rote.

  "TURN EM OUT!" Singer shouted. "I WANT TO SEE IT ALL!"

  Bast stepped up beside Wolf. Reverend Gardener, having seen Franky Williams to his car, drifted expressively into Jack's vicinity.

  "Personal possessions tend to tie our boys too much to the past, we've found," Gardener purred to Jack. "Destructive. We find this a very helpful tool."

  "EMPTY YOUR POCKETS!" Singer bawled, now nearly in a straightforward rage.

  Jack pulled from his pockets the random detritus of his time on the road. A red handkerchief Elbert Palamountain's wife had given him when she'd seen him wipe his nose on his sleeve, two matchbooks, the few dollars and scattered change that was all of his money--a total of six dollars and forty-two cents--the key to room 407 of the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. He closed his fingers over the three objects he intended to keep. "I guess you want my pack, too," he said.

  "Sure, you sorry little fart," Singer ranted, "of course we want your foul backpack, but first we want whatever you're trying to hide. Get it out--right now."

  Reluctantly Jack took Speedy's guitar-pick, the croaker marble, and the big wheel of the silver dollar from his pocket and put them in the nest of the handkerchief. "They're just good-luck stuff."

  Singer snatched up the pick. "Hey, what's this? I mean, what is it?"

  "Fingerpick."

  "Yeah, sure." Singer turned it over in his fingers, sniffed it. If he had bitten it, Jack would have slugged him in the face. "Fingerpick. You tellin me the truth?"

  "A friend of mine gave it to me," Jack said, and suddenly felt as lonely and adrift as he ever had during these weeks of travelling. He thought of Snowball outside the shopping mall, who had looked at him with Speedy's eyes, who in some fashion Jack did not understand had actually been Speedy Parker. Whose name he had just adopted for his own.

  "Bet he stole it," Singer said to no one in particular, and dropped the pick back into the handkerchief beside the coin and the marble. "Now the knapsack." When Jack had unshouldered the backpack, handed it over, Singer pawed through it for some minutes in growing distaste and frustration. The distaste was caused by the condition of the few clothes Jack had left, the frustration by the reluctance of the pack to yield up any drugs.

  Speedy, where are you now?

  "He's not holding," Singer complained. "You think we should do a skin search?"

  Gardener shook his head. "Let us see what we can learn from Mr. Wolf."

  Bast shouldered up even closer. Singer said, "Well?"

  "He doesn't have anything in his pockets," Jack said.

  "I want those pockets EMPTY! EMPTY!" Singer yelled. "ON THE TABLE!"

  Wolf tucked his chin into his chest and clamped his eyes shut.

  "You don't have anything in your pockets, do you?" Jack asked.

  Wolf nodded once, very slowly.

  "He's holding! The dummy's holding!" Singer crowed. "Come on, you big dumb idiot, get the stuff out on the table." He clapped his hands sharply together twice. "Oh wow, Williams never searched him! Fairchild never did! This is incredible--they're going to look like such morons."

  Bast shoved his face up to Wolf's and snarled, "If you don't empty your pockets onto that table in a hurry, I'm going to tear your face off."

  Jack softly said, "Do it, Wolf."

  Wolf groaned. Then he removed his balled right hand from its overall pocket. He leaned over the desk, brought his hand forward, and opened his fingers. Three wooden matches and two small water-polished stones, grained and straited and colorful, fell out onto the leather. When his left hand opened, two more pretty little stones rolled alongside the others.

  "Pills!" Singer snatched at them.

  "Don't be an idiot, Sonny," Gardener said.

  "You made me look like a jerk," Singer said in low but vehement tones to Jack as soon as they were on the staircase to the upper floors. These stairs were covered with a shabby rose-patterned carpet. Only the principal downstairs rooms of the Sunlight Scripture Home had been decorated, dressed up--the rest of it looked rundown and ill cared for. "You're gonna be sorry, I promise you that--in this place, nobody makes Sonny Singer into a jackass. I practically run this place, you two idiots. Christ!" He pushed his burning narrow face into Jack's. "That was a great stunt back there, the dummy and his fuckin stones. It'll be a long time before you get over that one."

  "I didn't know he had anything in his pockets," Jack said.

  A step ahead of Jack and Wolf, Singer abruptly stopped moving. His eyes narrowed; his entire face seemed to contract. Jack understood what was going to happen a second before Singer's hand slapped stingingly over the side of his face.

  "Jack?" Wolf whispered.

  "I'm okay," he said.

  "When you hurt me, I'll hurt you back twice as bad," Singer said to Jack. "When you hurt me in front of Reverend Gardener, I'll hurt you four times as bad, you got that?"

  "Yeah," Jack said. "I think I got it. Aren't we supposed to get some clothes?"

  Singer whirled around and marched upward, and for a second Jack stood still and watched the other boy's thin intense back go up the stairs. You, too, he said to himself. You and Osmond. Someday. Then he followed, and Wolf trudged after.

  In a long room stacked with boxes Singer fidgeted at t
he door while a tall boy with a passionless bland face and the demeanor of a sleepwalker researched the shelves for their clothes.

  "Shoes, too. You get him into regulation shoes or you're gonna be holding a shovel all day," Singer said from the doorway, conspicuously not looking at the clerk. Weary disgust--it would have been another of Sunlight Gardener's lessons.

  The boy finally located a size thirteen pair of the heavy square black lace-ups in a corner of the storeroom, and Jack got them on Wolf's feet. Then Singer took them up another flight to the dormitory floor. Here there was no attempt to disguise the real nature of the Sunlight Home. A narrow corridor ran the entire length of the top of the house--it might have been fifty feet long. Rows of narrow doors with inset eye-level windows marched down either side of the long corridor. To Jack, the so-called dormitory looked like a prison.

  Singer took them a short way up the narrow hall and paused before one of the doors. "On their first day, nobody works. You start the full schedule tomorrow. So get in here for now and look at your Bibles or something until five. I'll come back and let you out in time for the confession period. And change into the Sunlight clothes, hey?"

  "You mean you're going to lock us in there for the next three hours?" Jack asked.

  "You want me to hold your hand?" Singer exploded, his face reddening again. "Look. If you were a voluntary, I could let you walk around, get a look at the place. But since you're a ward of the state on a referral from a local police department, you're one step up from being a convicted criminal. Maybe in thirty days you'll be voluntaries, if you're lucky. In the meantime, get in your room and start acting like a human being made in God's image instead of like an animal." He impatiently fitted a key into the lock, swung the door open, and stood beside it. "Get in there. I got work to do."

  "What happens to all our stuff?"

  Singer theatrically sighed. "You little creep, do you think we'd be interested in stealing anything you could have?"

  Jack kept himself from responding.

  Singer sighed again. "Okay. We keep it all for you, in a folder with your name on it. In Reverend Gardener's office downstairs--that's where we keep your money, too, right up until the time you get released. Okay? Get in there now before I report you for disobedience. I mean it."

  Wolf and Jack went into the little room. When Singer slammed the door, the overhead light automatically went on, revealing a windowless cubicle with a metal bunkbed, a small corner sink, and a metal chair. Nothing more. On the white Sheetrock walls yellowing tape marks showed where pictures had been put up by the room's previous inhabitants. The lock clicked shut. Jack and Wolf turned to see Singer's driven face in the small rectangular window. "Be good, now," he said, grinning, and disappeared.

  "No, Jacky," Wolf said. The ceiling was no more than an inch from the top of his head. "Wolf can't stay here."

  "You'd better sit down," Jack said. "You want the top or the bottom bunk?"

  "Huh?"

  "Take the bottom one and sit down. We're in trouble here."

  "Wolf knows, Jacky. Wolf knows. This is a bad bad place. Can't stay."

  "Why is it a bad place? How do you know it, I mean?"

  Wolf sat heavily on the lower bunk, dropped his new clothes on the floor, and idly picked up the book and two pamphlets set out there. The book was a Bible bound in some artificial fabric that looked like blue skin; the pamphlets, Jack saw by looking at those on his own bunk, were entitled The High Road to Everlasting Grace and God Loves You! "Wolf knows. You know, too, Jacky." Wolf looked up at him, almost scowling. Then he glanced back down at the books in his hands, began turning them over, almost shuffling them. They were, Jack supposed, the first books Wolf had ever seen.

  "The white man," Wolf said, almost too softly for Jack to hear.

  "White man?"

  Wolf held up one of the pamphlets, its back cover showing. The whole rear cover was a black-and-white photograph of Sunlight Gardener, his beautiful hair lifting in a breeze, his arms outstretched--a man of everlasting grace, beloved of God.

  "Him," Wolf said. "He kills, Jacky. With whips. This is one of his places. No Wolf should ever be in one of his places. No Jack Sawyer, either. Never. We have to get away from here, Jacky."

  "We'll get out," Jack said. "I promise you. Not today, not tomorrow--we have to work it out. But soon."

  Wolf's feet protruded far past the edge of his bunk. "Soon."

  3

  Soon, he had promised, and Wolf had required the promise. Wolf was terrified. Jack could not tell if Wolf had ever seen Osmond in the Territories, but he had certainly heard of him. Osmond's reputation in the Territories, at least among members of the Wolf family, appeared to be even worse than Morgan's. But though both Wolf and Jack had recognized Osmond in Sunlight Gardener, Gardener had not recognized them--which brought up two possibilities. Either Gardener was just having fun with them, pretending ignorance; or he was a Twinner like Jack's mother, profoundly connected to a Territories figure but unaware of the connection at any but the deepest level.

  And if that was true, as Jack thought it was, then he and Wolf could wait for the really right moment to escape. They had time to watch, time to learn.

  Jack put on the scratchy new clothes. The square black shoes seemed to weigh several pounds apiece, and to be suited to either foot. With difficulty, he persuaded Wolf to put on the Sunlight Home uniform. Then the two of them lay down. Jack heard Wolf begin to snore, and after a while, he drifted off himself. In his dreams his mother was somewhere in the dark, calling for him to help her, help her.

  22

  The Sermon

  1

  At five that afternoon, an electric bell went off in the hallway, a long, toneless blare of sound. Wolf leaped from his bunk, thudding the metal frame of the upper with the side of his head hard enough to wake up Jack, who had been dozing, with a jolt.

  The bell stopped shrieking after fifteen seconds or so; Wolf went right on.

  He staggered over into the corner of the room, his hands wrapped around his head.

  "Bad place, Jack!" he screamed. "Bad place right here and now! Gotta get outta here! Gotta get outta here RIGHT HERE AND NOW!"

  Pounding on the wall.

  "Shut the dummy up!"

  From the other side, a shrieking, whinnying, horsey laugh. "You gittin some sunlight in you souls now, boys! And from de way dat big fella soun, it sho feel fine!" The giggling, whinnying laugh, too much like a horrified scream, came again.

  "Bad, Jack! Wolf! Jason! Bad! Bad, bad--"

  Doors were opening all up and down the hall. Jack could hear the rumble of many feet dressed in blocky Sunlight Home shoes.

  He got down from the top bunk, forcing himself to move. He felt cross-grained to reality--not awake, not really asleep, either. Moving across the mean little room to Wolf was like moving through Karo syrup instead of air.

  He felt so tired now . . . so very tired.

  "Wolf," he said. "Wolf, stop it."

  "Can't, Jacky!" Wolf sobbed. His arms were still wrapped around his head, as if to keep it from exploding.

  "You got to, Wolf. We have to go out in the hall now."

  "Can't, Jacky," Wolf sobbed, "it's a bad place, bad smells. . . ."

  From the hallway, someone--Jack thought it was Heck Bast--yelled, "Out for confession!"

  "Out for confession!" someone else yelled, and they all took up the chant: Out for confession! Out for confession! It was like some weird football cheer.

  "If we're going to get out of here with our skins on, we've got to stay cool."

  "Can't, Jacky, can't stay cool, bad. . . ."

  Their door was going to open in a minute and Bast or Sonny Singer would be there . . . maybe both. They were not "out for confession," whatever that was, and while newcomers to the Sunlight Home might be allowed a few screw-ups during their orientation period, Jack thought their chances for escape would be better if they blended in as completely as they could as soon as they could. With Wolf, that wasn't going
to be easy. Christ, I'm sorry I got you into this, big guy, Jack thought. But the situation is what the situation is. And if we can't ride it, it's gonna ride us down. So if I'm hard with you, it's for your own good. He added miserably to himself, I hope.

  "Wolf," he whispered, "do you want Singer to start beating on me again?"

  "No, Jack, no. . . ."

  "Then you better come out in the hall with me," Jack said. "You have to remember that what you do is going to have a lot to do with how Singer and that guy Bast treat me. Singer slapped me around because of your stones--"

  "Someone might slap him around," Wolf said. His voice was low and mild, but his eyes suddenly narrowed, flared orange. For a moment Jack saw the gleam of white teeth between Wolf's lips--not as if Wolf had grinned, but as if his teeth had grown.

  "Don't even think of that," Jack said grimly. "It'll only makes things worse."

  Wolf's arms fell away from his head. "Jack, I don't know. . . ."

  "Will you try?" Jack asked. He threw another urgent glance at the door.

  "I'll try," Wolf whispered shakily. Tears shone in his eyes.

  2

  The upstairs corridor should have been bright with late-afternoon light, but it wasn't. It was as if some sort of filtering device had been fitted over the windows at the end of the corridor so that the boys could see out--out to where the real sunlight was--but that the light itself wasn't allowed to enter. It seemed to drop dead on the narrow inner sills of those high Victorian windows.

  There were forty boys standing in front of twenty doors, ten on each side. Jack and Wolf were by far the last to appear, but their lateness was not noticed. Singer, Bast, and two other boys had found someone to rag and could not be bothered with taking attendance.

  Their victim was a narrow-chested, bespectacled kid of maybe fifteen. He was standing at a sorry approximation of attention with his chinos puddled around his black shoes. He wore no underpants.

  "Have you stopped it yet?" Singer asked.

  "I--"

  "Shut up!" One of the other boys with Singer and Bast yelled this last. The four of them wore blue jeans instead of chinos, and clean white turtleneck sweaters. Jack learned soon enough that the fellow who had just shouted was Warwick. The fat fourth was Casey.