How much would the job pay? Dollar an hour, Updike said. Wish I could pay you more, but He shrugged and tapped the stack of bills. He even smiled a little, as if to say You see how it is, kid, everything in Oatley is running down like a cheap pocketwatch someone forgot to windever since about 1971 its been running down. But his eyes did not smile. His eyes were watching Jacks face with still, catlike concentration. Gee, thats not very much, Jack said. He spoke slowly but he was thinking as fast as he could. The Oatley Tap was a tombthere wasnt even a single bombedout old alky at the bar nursing a beer and watching General Hospital on the tube. In Oatley you apparently drank in your car and called it a club. A dollarfifty an hour was a hard wage when you were busting your buns; in a place like this, a buck an hour might be an easy one. Nope, Updike agreed, going back to his calculator, it aint. His voice said Jack could take it or leave it; there would be no negotiations. Might be all right, Jack said. Well, thats good, Updike said. We ought to get one other thing straight, though. Who you running from and whos looking for you? The brown eyes were on him again, and they drilled hard. If you got someone on your backtrail, I dont want him fucking up my life. This did not shake Jacks confidence much. He wasnt the worlds brightest kid, maybe, but bright enough to know he wouldnt last long on the road without a second cover story for prospective employers. This was a Story 2The Wicked Stepfather. Im from a little town in Vermont, he said. Fenderville. My mom and dad got divorced two years ago. My dad tried to get custody of me, but the judge gave me to my mom. Thats what they do most of the time. FuckingA they do. He had gone back to his bills and was bent so far over the pocket calculator that his nose was almost touching the keys. But Jack thought he was listening all the same. Well, my dad went out to Chicago and he got a job in a plant out there, Jack said. He writes to me just about every week, I guess, but he quit coming back last year, when Aubrey beat him up. Aubreys Your stepfather, Updike said, and for just a moment Jacks eyes narrowed and his original distrust came back. There was no sympathy in Updikes voice. Instead, Updike seemed almost to be laughing at him, as if he knew the whole tale was nothing but a great big swatch of whole cloth. Yeah, he said. My mom married him a year and a half ago. He beats on me a lot. Sad, Jack. Very sad. Now Updike did look up, his eyes sardonic and unbelieving. So now youre off to Shytown, where you and Dads will live happily ever after. Well, I hope so, Jack said, and he had a sudden inspiration. All I know is that my real dad never hung me up by the neck in my closet. He pulled down the neck of his Tshirt, baring the mark there. It was fading now; during his stint at the Golden Spoon it had still been a vivid, ugly redpurplelike a brand. But at the Golden Spoon hed never had occasion to uncover it. It was, of course, the mark left by the root that had nearly choked the life from him in that other world. He was gratified to see Smokey Updikes eyes widen in surprise and what might almost have been shock. He leaned forward, scattering some of his pink and yellow pages. Holy Jesus, kid, he said. Your stepfather did that? Thats when I decided I had to split. Is he going to show up here, looking for his car or his motorcycle or his wallet or his fucking dopestash? Jack shook his head. Smokey looked at Jack for a moment longer, and then pushed the OFF button on the calculator. Come on back to the storeroom with me, kid, he said. Why? I want to see if you can really rock one of those kegs up on its side. If you can run me out a keg when I need one, you can have the job. 4 Jack demonstrated to Smokey Updikes satisfaction that he could get one of the big aluminum kegs up on its rim and walk it forward just enough to get it on the foot of the dolly. He even made it look fairly easydropping a keg and getting punched in the nose was still a day away. Well, that aint too bad, Updike said. You aint big enough for the job and youll probably give yourself a fucking rupture, but thats your nevermind. He told Jack he could start at noon and work through until one in the morning (For as long as you can hack it, anyway). Jack would be paid, Updike said, at closing time each night. Cash on the nail. They went back out front and there was Lori, dressed in dark blue basketball shorts so brief that the edges of her rayon panties showed, and a sleeveless blouse that had almost surely come from Mammoth Mart in Batavia. Her thin blond hair was held back with plastic barrettes and she was smoking a Pall Mall, its end wet and heavily marked with lipstick. A large silver crucifix dangled between her breasts. This is Jack, Smokey said. You can take the Help Wanted sign out of the window. Run, kid, Lori said. Theres still time. Shut the fuck up. Make me. Updike slapped her butt, not in a loving way but hard enough to send her against the padded edge of the bar. Jack blinked and thought of the sound Osmonds whip had made. Big man, Lori said. Her eyes brimmed with tears . . . and yet they also looked contented, as if this was just the way things were supposed to be. Jacks earlier unease was now clearer, sharper . . . now it was almost fright. Dont let us get on your case, kid, Lori said, headed past him to the sign in the window. Youll be okay. Names Jack, not kid, Smokey said. He had gone back to the booth where he had interviewed Jack and began gathering up his bills. A kids a fucking baby goat. Didnt they teach you that in school? Make the kid a couple of burgers. Hes got to go to work at noon. She got the HELP WANTED sign out of the window and put it behind the jukebox with the air of one who has done this a good many times before. Passing Jack, she winked at him. The telephone rang. All three of them looked toward it, startled by its abrupt shrilling. To Jack it looked for a moment like a black slug stuck to the wall. It was an odd moment, almost timeless. He had time to notice how pale Lori wasthe only color in her cheeks came from the reddish pocks of her fading adolescent acne. He had time to study the cruel, rather secretive planes of Smokey Updikes face and to see the way the veins stood out on the mans long hands. Time to see the yellowed sign over the phone reading PLEASE LIMIT YOUR CALLS TO THREE MINUTES. The phone rang and rang in the silence. Jack thought, suddenly terrified Its for me. Long distance . . . long, LONG distance. Answer that, Lori, Updike said, what are you, simple? Lori went to the phone. Oatley Tap, she said in a trembling, faint voice. She listened. Hello? Hello? . . . Oh, fuck off. She hung up with a bang. No one there. Kids. Sometimes they want to know if we got Prince Albert in a can. How do you like your burgers, kid? Jack! Updike roared. Jack, okay, okay, Jack. How do you like your burgers, Jack? Jack told her and they came medium, just right, hot with brown mustard and Bermuda onions. He gobbled them and drank a glass of milk. His unease abated with his hunger. Kids, as she had said. Still, his eyes drifted back to the phone every once in a while, and he wondered. 5 Four oclock came, and as if the Taps total emptiness had been only a clever piece of stage setting to lure him inlike the pitcher plant with its innocent look and its tasty smellthe door opened and nearly a dozen men in workclothes came sauntering in. Lori plugged in the juke, the pinball machine, and Space Invaders game. Several of the men bellowed greetings at Smokey, who grinned his narrow grin, exposing the big set of mailorder dentures. Most ordered beer. Two or three ordered Black Russians. One of thema member of the Fair Weather Club, Jack was almost suredropped quarters into the jukebox, summoning up the voices of Mickey Gilley, Eddie Rabbit, Waylon Jennings, others. Smokey told him to get the mopbucket and squeegee out of the storeroom and swab down the dancefloor in front of the bandstand, which waited, deserted, for Friday night and The Genny Valley Boys. He told Jack when it was dry he wanted him to put the Pledge right to it. Youll know its done when you can see your own face grinnin up at you, Smokey said. 6 So his time of service at Updikes Oatley Tap began. We get pretty busy by four, five oclock. Well, he couldnt very well say that Smokey had lied to him. Up until the very moment Jack pushed away his plate and began making his wage, the Tap had been deserted. But by six oclock there were maybe fifty people in the Tap, and the brawny waitressGloriacame on duty to yells and hooraws from some of the patrons. Gloria joined Lori, serving a few carafes of wine, a lot of Black Russians, and oceans of beer. Besides the kegs of Busch, Jack lugged out case after case of bottled beerBudweiser, of course, but also such local favorites as Genesee, Utica Club, and Rolling Rock. His hands began to blister, his back to ache. Between trips to the storeroom for cases of bottled beer and trips to the storeroom to run me out a keg, Jack (a phrase for which he was already coming to feel an elemental dread), he went back to the dancefloor, the mopbucket, and the big bottle of Pledge. Once an empty beerbottle flew past his head, missing him by inches. He ducked, heart racing, as it shattered against the wall. Smokey ran the drunken perpetrator out, his dentures bared in a great false alligator grin. Looking out the window, Jack saw the drunk hit a parkingmeter hard enough to pop the red VIOLATION flag up. Come on, Jack, Smokey called impatiently from the bar, it missed you, didnt it? Clean that mess up! Smokey sent him into the mens can half an hour later. A middleaged man with a Joe Pyne haircut was standing woozily at one of the two icechoked urinals, one hand braced against the wall, the other brandishing a huge uncircumcised penis. A puddle of puke steamed between his spraddled workboots. Clean her up, kid, the man said, weaving his way back toward the door and clapping Jack on the back almost hard enough to knock him over. Mans gotta make room any way he can, right? Jack was able to wait until the door closed, and then he could control his gorge no longer. He managed to make it into the Taps only stall, where he was faced with the unflushed and sickeningly fragrant spoor of the last customer. Jack vomited up whatever remained of his dinner, took a couple of hitching breaths, and then vomited again. He groped for the flush with a shaking hand and pushed it. Waylon and Willie thudded dully through the walls, singing about Luckenbach, Texas. Suddenly his mothers face was before him, more beautiful than it had ever been on any movie screen, her eyes large and dark and sorrowing. He saw her alone in their rooms at the Alhambra, a cigarette smouldering forgotten in the ashtray beside her. She was crying. Crying for him. His heart seemed to hurt so badly that he thought he would die from love for her and want of herfor a life where there were no things in tunnels, no women who somehow wanted to be slapped and made to cry, no men who vomited between their own feet while taking a piss. He wanted to be with her and hated Speedy Parker with a black completeness for ever having set his feet on this awful road west. In that moment whatever might have remained of his selfconfidence was demolishedit was demolished utterly and forever. Conscious thought was overmastered by a deep, elemental, wailing, childish cry I want my mother please God I want my MOTHER He trembled his way out of the stall on watery legs, thinking Okay thats it everybody out of the pool fuck you Speedy this kids going home. Or whatever you want to call it. In that moment he didnt care if his mother might be dying. In that moment of inarticulate pain he became totally Jacks Jack, as unconsciously selfserving as an animal on which any carnivore may prey deer, rabbit, squirrel, chipmunk. In that moment he would have been perfectly willing to let her die of the cancer metastasizing wildly outward from her lungs if only she would hold him and then kiss him goodnight and tell him not to play his goddam transistor in bed or read with a flashlight under the covers for half the night. He put his hand against the wall and little by little managed to get hold of himself. This takinghold was no conscious thing but a simple tightening of the mind, something that was very much Phil Sawyer and Lily Cavanaugh. Hed made a mistake, yeah, but he wasnt going back. The Territories were real and so the Talisman might also be real; he was not going to murder his mother with faintheartedness. Jack filled his mopbucket with hot water from the spigot in the storeroom and cleaned up the mess. When he came out again, it was half past ten and the crowd in the Tap began to thin outOatley was a working town, and its working drinkers went home early on weeknights. Lori said, You look as pale as pastry, Jack. You okay? Do you think I could have a gingerale? he asked. She brought him one and Jack drank it while he finished waxing the dancefloor. At quarter to twelve Smokey ordered him back to the storeroom to run out a keg. Jack managed the kegbarely. At quarter to one Smokey started bawling for people to finish up. Lori unplugged the jukeDick Curless died with a long, unwinding groanto a few halfhearted cries of protest. Gloria unplugged the games, donned her sweater (it was as pink as the Canada Mints Smokey ate regularly, as pink as the false gums of his dentures), and left. Smokey began to turn out the lights and to urge the last four or five drinkers out the door. Okay, Jack, he said when they were gone. You did good. Theres room for improvement, but you got a start, anyway. You can doss down in the storeroom. Instead of asking for his pay (which Smokey did not offer anyway), Jack stumbled off toward the storeroom, so tired that he looked like a slightly smaller version of the drunks so lately ushered out. In the storeroom he saw Lori squatting down in one cornerthe squat caused her basketball shorts to ride up to a point that was nearly alarmingand for a moment Jack thought with dull alarm that she was going through his knapsack. Then he saw that she had spread a couple of blankets on a layer of burlap applesacks. Lori had also put down a small satin pillow which said NEW YORK WORLDS FAIR on one side. Thought Id make you a little nest, kid, she said. Thanks, he said. It was a simple, almost offhand act of kindness, but Jack found himself having to struggle from bursting into tears. He managed a smile instead. Thanks a lot, Lori. No problem. Youll be all right here, Jack. Smokey aint so bad. Once you get to know him, he aint half bad. She said this with an unconscious wistfulness, as if wishing it were so. Probably not, Jack said, and then he added impulsively, but Im moving on tomorrow. Oatleys just not for me, I guess. She said Maybe youll go, Jack . . . and maybe youll decide to stay awhile. Why dont you sleep on it? There was something forced and unnatural about this little speechit had none of the genuineness of her grin when shed said Thought Id make you a little nest. Jack noticed it, but was too tired to do more than that. Well, well see, he said. Sure we will, Lori agreed, going to the door. She blew a kiss toward him from the palm of one dirty hand. Good night, Jack. Good night. He started to pull off his shirt . . . and then left it on, deciding he would just take off his sneakers. The storeroom was cold and chilly. He sat down on the applesacks, pulled the knots, pushed off first one and then the other. He was about to lie back on Loris New York Worlds Fair souvenirand he might well have been sound asleep before his head ever touched itwhen the telephone began to ring out in the bar, shrilling into the silence, drilling into it, making him think of wavering, pastygray roots and bullwhips and twoheaded ponies. Ring, ring, ring, into the silence, into the dead silence. Ring, ring, ring, long after the kids who call up to ask about Prince Albert in a can have gone to bed. Ring, ring, ring, Hello, Jacky its Morgan and I felt you in my woods, you smart little shit I SMELLED you in my woods, and how did you ever get the idea that you were safe in your world? My woods are there, too. Last chance, Jacky. Get home or we send out the troops. You wont have a chance. You wont Jack got up and ran across the storeroom floor in his stocking feet. A light sweat that felt freezing cold, seemed to cover his entire body. He opened the door a crack. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Then finally Hello, Oatley Tap. And this better be good. Smokeys voice. A pause. Hello? Another pause. Fuck off! Smokey hung up with a bang, and Jack heard him recross the floor and then start up the stairs to the small overhead apartment he and Lori shared. 7 Jack looked unbelievingly from the green slip of paper in his left hand to the small pile of billsall onesand change by his right. It was eleven oclock the next morning. Thursday morning, and he had asked for his pay. What is this? he asked, still unable to believe it. You can read, Smokey said, and you can count. You dont move as fast as Id like, Jackat least not yetbut youre bright enough. Now he sat with the green slip in one hand and the money by the other. Dull anger began to pulse in the middle of his forehead like a vein. GUEST CHECK, the green slip was headed. It was the exact same form Mrs. Banberry had used in the Golden Spoon. It read 1 hmbrg 1.35 1 hmbrg 1.35 1 lrg mk .55 1 ginale .55 Tx .30 At the bottom the figure 4.10 was written in large numbers and circled. Jack had made nine dollars for his fourtoone stint. Smokey had charged off nearly half of it; what he had left by his right hand was four dollars and ninety cents. He looked up, furiousfirst at Lori, who looked away as if vaguely embarrassed, and then at Smokey, who simply looked back. This is a cheat, he said thinly. Jack, thats not true. Look at the menu prices Thats not what I mean and you know it! Lori flinched a little, as if expecting Smokey to clout him one . . . but Smokey only looked at Jack with a kind of terrible patience. I didnt charge you for your bed, did I? Bed! Jack shouted, feeling the hot blood boil up into his cheeks. Some bed! Cutopen burlap bags on a concrete floor! Some bed! Id like to see you try to charge me for it, you dirty cheat! Lori made a scared sound and shot a look at Smokey . . . but Smokey only sat across from Jack in the booth, the thick blue smoke of a Cheroot curling up between them. A fresh paper frycooks hat was cocked forward on Smokeys narrow head. We talked about you dossing down back there, Smokey said. You asked if it came with the job. I said it did. No mention was made of your meals. If it had been brought up, maybe something could have been done. Maybe not. Point is, you never brought it up, so now you got to deal with that. Jack sat shaking, tears of anger standing in his eyes. He tried to talk and nothing came out but a small strangled groan. He was literally too furious to speak. Of course, if you wanted to discuss an employees discount on your meals now Go to hell! Jack managed finally, snatching up the four singles and the little strew of change. Teach the next kid who comes in here how to look out for number one! Im going! He crossed the floor toward the door, and in spite of his anger he knewdid not just think but flatout knewthat he wasnt going to make the sidewalk. Jack. He touched the doorknob, thought of grasping it and turning itbut that voice was undeniable and full of a certain threat. He dropped his hand and turned around, his anger leaving him. He suddenly felt shrunken and old. Lori had gone behind the bar, where she was sweeping and humming. She had apparently decided that Smokey wasnt going to work Jack over with his fists, and since nothing else really mattered, everything was all right. You dont want to leave me in the lurch with my weekend crowd coming up. I want to get out of here. You cheated me. No sir, Smokey said, I explained that. If anyone blotted your copybook, Jack, it was you. Now we could discuss your mealsfifty percent off the food, maybe, and even free sodas. I never went that far before with the younger help I hire from time to time, but this weekeneds going to be especially hairy, what with all the migrant labor in the county for the applepicking. And I like you, Jack. Thats why I didnt clout you one when you raised your voice to me, although maybe I should have. But I need you over the weekend. Jack felt his rage return briefly, and then die away again. What if I go anyhow? he asked. Im five dollars to the good, anyway, and being out of this shitty little town might be just as good as a bonus. Looking at Jack, still smiling his narrow smile, Smokey said, You remember going into the mens last night to clean after some guy who whoopsed his cookies? Jack nodded. You remember what he looked like? Crewcut. Khakis. So what? Thats Digger Atwell. His real names Carlton, but he spent ten years taking care of the town cemeteries, so everyone got calling him Digger. That wasoh, twenty or thirty years ago. He went on the town cops back around the time Nixon got elected President. Now hes Chief of Police. Smokey picked up his Cheroot, puffed at it, and looked at Jack. Digger and me go back, Smokey said. And if you was to just walk out of here now, Jack, I couldnt guarantee that you wouldnt have some trouble with Digger. Might end up getting sent home. Might end up picking the apples on the towns landOatley Townships got . . . oh, I guess forty acres of good trees. Might end up getting beat up. Or . . . Ive heard that ole Diggers got a taste for kids on the road. Boys, mostly. Jack thought of that clublike penis. He felt both sick and cold. In here, youre under my wing, so to speak, Smokey said. Once you hit the street, who can say? Diggers apt to be cruising anyplace. You might get over the town line with no sweat. On the other hand, you might just see him pulling up beside you in that big Plymouth he drives. Digger aint totally bright, but he does have a nose, sometimes, Or . . . someone might give him a call. Behind the bar, Lori was doing dishes. She dried her hands, turned on the radio, and began to sing along with an old Steppenwolf song. Tell you what, Smokey said. Hang in there, Jack. Work the weekend. Then Ill pack you into my pickup and drive you over the town line myself. How would that be? Youll go out of here Sunday noon with damn near thirty bucks in your poke that you didnt have coming in. Youll go out thinking that Oatleys not such a bad place after all. So what do you say? Jack looked into those brown eyes, noted the yellow scleras and the small flecks of red; he noted Smokeys big, sincere smile lined with false teeth; he even saw with a weird and terrifying sense of dj vu that the fly was back on the paper frycooks hat, preening and washing its hairthin forelegs. He suspected Smokey knew that he knew that everything Updike had said was a lie, and didnt even care. After working into the early hours of Saturday morning and then Sunday morning, Jack would sleep until maybe two Sunday afternoon. Smokey would tell him he couldnt give him that ride because Jack had woken up too late; now he, Smokey, was too busy watching the Colts and the Patriots. And Jack would not only be too tired to walk, he would be too afraid that Smokey might lose interest in the Colts and Patriots just long enough to call his good friend Digger Atwell and say, Hes walking down Mill Road right now, Digger old boy, why dont you pick him up? Then get over here for the second half. Free beer, but dont you go puking in my urinal until I get the kid back here. That was one scenario. There were others that he could think of, each a little different, each really the same at bottom. Smokey Updikes smile widened a little. 10 Elroy 1 When I was six . . . The Tap, which had begun to wind down by this time on his previous two nights, was roaring along as if the patrons expected to greet the dawn. He saw two tables had vanishedvictims of the fistfight that had broken out just before his last expedition into the john. Now people were dancing where the tables had been. About time, Smokey said as Jack staggered the length of the bar on the inside and put the case down by the refrigerator compartments. You get those in there and go back for the fucking Bud. You should have brought that first, anyway. Lori didnt say Hot, incredible pain exploded in his foot as Smokey drove one heavy shoe down on Jacks sneaker. Jack uttered a muffled scream and felt tears sting his eyes. Shut up, Smokey said. Lori dont know shit from Shinola, and you are smart enough to know it. Get back in there and run me out a case of Bud. He went back to the storeroom, limping on the foot Smokey had stomped, wondering if the bones in some of his toes might be broken. It seemed all too possible. His head roared with smoke and noise and the jagged ripsaw rhythm of The Genny Valley Boys, two of them now noticeably weaving on the bandstand. One thought stood out clearly it might not be possible to wait until closing. He really might not be able to last that long. If Oatley was a prison and the Oatley Tap was his cell, then surely exhaustion was as much his warder as Smokey Updikemaybe even more so. In spite of his worries about what the Territories might be like at this place, the magic juice seemed more and more to promise him his only sure way out. He could drink some and flip over . . . and if he could manage to walk a mile west over there, two at the most, he could drink a bit more and flip back into the U.S.A. well over the town line of this horrible little place, perhaps as far west as Bushville or even Pembroke. When I was six, when JackO was six, when He got the Bud and stumblestaggered out through the door again . . . and the tall, rangy cowboy with the big hands, the one who looked like Randolph Scott, was standing there, looking at him. Hello, Jack, he said, and Jack saw with rising terror that the irises of the mans eyes were as yellow as chickenclaws. Didnt somebody tell you to get gone? You dont listen very good, do you? Jack stood with the case of Bud dragging at the ends of his arms, staring into those yellow eyes, and suddenly a horrid idea hammered into his mind that this had been the lurker in the tunnelthis manthing with its dead yellow eyes. Leave me alone, he saidthe words came out in a wintery little whisper. He crowded closer. You were supposed to get gone. Jack tried to back up . . . but now he was against the wall, and as the cowboy who looked like Randolph Scott leaned toward him, Jack could smell dead meat on its breath. 2 Between the time Jack started work on Thursday at noon and four oclock, when the Taps usual afterwork crowd started to come in, the pay phone with the PLEASE LIMIT YOUR CALLS TO THREE MINUTES sign over it rang twice. The first time it rang, Jack felt no fear at alland it turned out to be only a solicitor for the United Fund. Two hours later, as Jack was bagging up the last of the previous nights bottles, the telephone began to shrill again. This time his head snapped up like an animal which scents fire in a dry forest . . . except it wasnt fire he sensed, but ice. He turned toward the telephone, which was only four feet from where he was working, hearing the tendons in his neck creak. He thought he must see the pay phone caked with ice, ice that was sweating through the phones black plastic case, extruding from the holes in the earpiece and the mouthpiece in lines of blue ice as thin as pencilleads, hanging from the rotary dial and the coin return in icicle beards. But it was just the phone, and all the coldness and death was on the inside. He stared at it, hypnotized. Jack! Smokey yelled. Answer the goddam phone! What the fuck am I paying you for? Jack looked toward Smokey, as desperate as a cornered animal . . . but Smokey was staring back with the thinlipped, outofpatience expression that he got on his face just before he popped Lori one. He started toward the phone, barely aware that his feet were moving; he stepped deeper and deeper into that capsule of coldness, feeling the gooseflesh run up his arms, feeling the moisture crackle in his nose. He reached out and grasped the phone. His hand went numb. He put it to his ear. His ear went numb. Oatley Tap, he said into that deadly blackness, and his mouth went numb. The voice that came out of the phone was the cracked, rasping croak of something long dead, some creature which could never be seen by the living the sight of it would drive a living person insane, or strike him dead with frostetchings on his lips and staring eyes blinded by cataracts of ice. Jack, this scabrous, rattling voice whispered up out of the earpiece, and his face went numb, the way it did when you needed to spend a heavy day in the dentists chair and the guy needled you up with a little too much Novocain. You get your ass back home, Jack. From far away, a distance of lightyears, it seemed, he could hear his voice repeating Oatley Tap, is anyone there? Hello? . . . Hello? . . . Cold, so cold. His throat was numb. He drew breath and his lungs seemed to freeze. Soon the chambers of his heart would ice up and he would simply drop dead. That chilly voice whispered, Bad things can happen to a boy alone on the road, Jack. Ask anybody. He hung the phone up with a quick, clumsy reaching gesture. He pulled his hand back and then stood looking at the phone. Was it the asshole, Jack? Lori asked, and her voice was distant . . . but a little closer than his own voice had seemed a few moments ago. The world was coming back. On the handset of the pay phone he could see the shape of his hand, outlined in a glittering rime of frost. As he looked, the frost began to melt and run down the black plastic. 3 That was the nightThursday nightthat Jack first saw Genny Countys answer to Randolph Scott. The crowd was a little smaller than it had been Wednesday nightvery much a daybeforepayday crowdbut there were still enough men present to fill the bar and spill over into the tables and booths. They were town men from a rural area where the plows were now probably rusting forgotten in back sheds, men who perhaps wanted to be farmers but had forgotten how. There were a lot of John Deere caps in evidence, but to Jack, very few of these men looked as if they would be at home riding a tractor. These were men in gray chinos and brown chinos and green chinos; men with their names stitched on blue shirts in gold thread; men in squaretoed Dingo Boots and men in great big clumping Survivors. These men carried their keys on their belts. These men had wrinkles but no laughlines; their mouths were dour. These men wore cowboy hats and when Jack looked at the bar from in back of the stools, there were as many as eight who looked like Charlie Daniels in the chewingtobacco ads. But these men didnt chew; these men smoked cigarettes, and a lot of them. Jack was cleaning the bubble front of the jukebox when Digger Atwell came in. The juke was turned off; the Yankees were on the cable, and the men at the bar were watching intently. The night before, Atwell had been in the Oatley males version of sports clothes (chinos, khaki shirt with a lot of pens in one of the two big pockets, steeltoed workboots). Tonight he was wearing a blue cops uniform. A large gun with wood grips hung in a holster on his creaking leather belt. He glanced at Jack, who thought of Smokey saying Ive heard that ole Diggers got a taste for kids on the road. Boys, mostly, and flinched back as if guilty of something. Digger Atwell grinned a wide, slow grin. Decided to stick around for a while, boy? Yes, sir, Jack muttered, and squirted more Windex onto the jukes bubble front, although it was already as clean as it was going to get.


He was only waiting for Atwell to go away. After a while, Atwell did. Jack turned to watch the beefy cop cross to the bar . . . and that was when the man at the far left end of the bar turned around and looked at him. Randolph Scott, Jack thought at once, thats just who he looks like. But in spite of the rangy and uncompromising lines of his face, the real Randolph Scott had had an undeniable look of heroism; if his good looks had been harsh, they had also been part of a face that could smile. This man looked both bored and somehow crazy. And with real fright, Jack realized the man was looking at him, at Jack. Nor had he simply turned around during the commercial to see who might be in the bar; he had turned around to look at Jack. Jack knew this was so. The phone. The ringing phone. With a tremendous effort, Jack pulled his gaze away. He looked back into the bubble front of the juke and saw his own frightened face hovering, ghostlike, over the records inside. The telephone began to shriek on the wall. The man at the left end of the bar looked at it . . . and then looked back at Jack, who stood frozen by the jukebox with his bottle of Windex in one hand and a rag in the other, his hair stiffening, his skin freezing. If its that asshole again, Im gonna get me a whistle to start blowing down the phone when he calls, Smokey, Lori was saying as she walked toward it. I swear to God I am. She might have been an actress in a play, and all the customers extras paid the standard SAG rate of thirtyfive dollars a day. The only two real people in the world were him and this dreadful cowboy with the big hands and the eyes Jack could not . . . quite . . . see. Suddenly, shockingly, the cowboy mouthed these words Get your ass home. And winked. The phone stopped ringing even as Lori stretched out her hand to it. Randolph Scott turned around, drained his glass, and yelled, Bring me another tapper, okay? Ill be damned, Lori said. That phones got the ghosts. 4 Later on, in the storeroom, Jack asked Lori who the guy was who looked like Randolph Scott. Who looks like who? she asked. An old cowboy actor. He was sitting down at the end of the bar. She shrugged. They all look the same to me, Jack. Just a bunch of swinging dicks out for a good time. On Thursday nights they usually pay for it with the little womans Beano money. He calls beers tappers.  Her eyes lit. Oh yeah! Him. He looks mean. She said this last with actual appreciation . . . as if admiring the straightness of his nose or the whiteness of his smile. Who is he? I dont know his name, Lori said. Hes only been around the last week or two. I guess the mill must be hiring again. It For Christs sake, Jack, did I tell you to run me out a keg or not? Jack had been in the process of walking one of the big kegs of Busch onto the foot of the handdolly. Because his weight and the kegs weight were so close, it was an act requiring a good deal of careful balancing. When Smokey shouted from the doorway, Lori screamed and Jack jumped. He lost control of the keg and it went over on its side, the cap shooting out like a champagne cork, beer following in a whitegold jet. Smokey was still shouting at him but Jack could only stare at the beer, frozen . . . until Smokey popped him one. When he got back out to the taproom perhaps twenty minutes later, holding a Kleenex against his swelling nose, Randolph Scott had been gone. 5 Im six. John Benjamin Sawyer is six. Six Jack shook his head, trying to clear this steady, repeating thought out as the rangy millhand who was not a millhand leaned closer and closer. His eyes . . . yellow and somehow scaly. Heitblinked, a rapid, milky, swimming blink, and Jack realized it had nictitating membranes over its eyeballs. You were supposed to get gone, it whispered again, and reached toward Jack with hands that were beginning to twist and plate and harden. The door banged open, letting in a raucous flood of the Oak Ridge Boys. Jack, if you dont quit lollygagging, Im going to have to make you sorry, Smokey said from behind Randolph Scott. Scott stepped backward. No melting, hardening hooves here; his hands were just hands againbig and powerful, their backs crisscrossed with prominent ridged veins. There was another milky, swirling sort of blink that didnt involve the eyelids at all . . . and then the mans eyes were not yellow but a simple faded blue. He gave Jack a final glance and then headed toward the mens room. Smokey came toward Jack now, his paper cap tipped forward, his narrow weasels head slightly inclined, his lips parted to show his alligator teeth. Dont make me speak to you again, Smokey said. This is your last warning, and dont you think I dont mean it. As it had against Osmond, Jacks fury suddenly rose upthat sort of fury, closely linked as it is to a sense of hopeless injustice, is perhaps never as strong as it is at twelvecollege students sometimes think they feel it, but it is usually little more than an intellectual echo. This time it boiled over. Im not your dog, so dont you treat me like I am, Jack said, and took a step toward Smokey Updike on legs that were still rubbery with fear. Surprisedpossibly even flabbergastedby Jacks totally unexpected anger, Smokey backed up a step. Jack, Im warning you No, man, Im warning you, Jack heard himself say. Im not Lori. I dont want to be hit. And if you hit me, Im going to hit you back, or something. Smokey Updikes discomposure was only momentary. He had most assuredly not seen everythingnot living in Oatley, he hadntbut he thought he had, and even for a minor leaguer, sometimes assurance can be enough. He reached out to grab Jacks collar. Dont you smart off to me, Jack, he said, drawing Jack close. As long as youre in Oatley, my dog is just what you are. As long as youre in Oatley Ill pet you when I want and Ill beat you when I want. He adminstered a single necksnapping shake. Jack bit his tongue and cried out. Hectic spots of anger now glowed in Smokeys pale cheeks like cheap rouge. You may not think that is so right now, but Jack, it is. As long as youre in Oatley youre my dog, and youll be in Oatley until I decide to let you go. And we might as well start getting that learned right now. He pulled his fist back. For a moment the three naked sixtywatt bulbs which hung in this narrow hallway sparkled crazily on the diamond chips of the horseshoeshaped pinky ring he wore. Then the fist pistoned forward and slammed into the side of Jacks face. He was driven backward into the graffiticovered wall, the side of his face first flaring and then going numb. The taste of his own blood washed into his mouth. Smokey looked at himthe close, judgmental stare of a man who might be thinking about buying a heifer or a lottery number. He must not have seen the expression he wanted to see in Jacks eye, because he grabbed the dazed boy again, presumably the better to center him for a second shot. At that moment a woman shrieked, from the Tap, No, Glen! No! There was a tangle of bellowing male voices, most of them alarmed. Another woman screameda high, drilling sound. Then a gunshot. Shit on toast! Smokey cried, enunciating each word as carefully as an actor on a Broadway stage. He threw Jack back against the wall, whirled, and slammed out through the swinging door. The gun went off again and there was a scream of pain. Jack was sure of only one thingthe time had come to get out. Not at the end of tonights shift, or tomorrows, or on Sunday morning. Right now. The uproar seemed to be quieting down. There were no sirens, so maybe nobody had gotten shot . . . but, Jack remembered, cold, the millhand who looked like Randolph Scott was still down in the mens can. Jack went into the chilly, beersmelling storeroom, knelt by the kegs, and felt around for his pack. Again there was that suffocating certainty, as his fingers encountered nothing but thin air and the dirty concrete floor, that one of themSmokey or Lorihad seen him hide the pack and had taken it. All the better to keep you in Oatley, my dear. Then relief, almost as suffocating as the fear, when his fingers touched the nylon. Jack donned the pack and looked longingly toward the loading door at the back of the storeroom. He would much rather use that doorhe didnt want to go down to the firedoor at the end of the hall. That was too close to the mens bathroom. But if he opened the loading door, a red light would go on at the bar. Even if Smokey was still sorting out the ruckus on the floor, Lori would see that light and tell him. So . . . He went to the door which gave on the back corridor. He eased it open a crack and applied one eye. The corridor was empty. All right, that was cool. Randolph Scott had tapped a kidney and gone back to where the action was while Jack was getting his backpack. Great. Yeah, except maybe hes still in there. You want to meet him in the hall, Jacky? Want to watch his eyes turn yellow again? Wait until youre sure. But he couldnt do that. Because Smokey would see he wasnt out in the Tap, helping Lori and Gloria swab tables, or behind the bar, unloading the dishwasher. He would come back here to finish teaching Jack what his place was in the great scheme of things. So So what? Get going! Maybe hes in there waiting for you, Jacky . . . maybe hes going to jump out just like a big bad JackintheBox . . . The lady or the tiger? Smokey or the millhand? Jack hesitated a moment longer in an agony of indecision. That the man with the yellow eyes was still in the bathroom was a possibility; that Smokey would be back was a certainty. Jack opened the door and stepped out into the narrow hallway. The pack on his back seemed to gain weightan eloquent accusation of his planned escape to anyone who might see it. He started down the hallway, moving grotesquely on tiptoe in spite of the thundering music and the roar of the crowd, his heart hammering in his chest. I was six, Jacky was six. So what? Why did that keep coming back? Six. The corridor seemed longer. It was like walking on a treadmill. The firedoor at the far end seemed to draw closer only by agonizing degrees. Sweat now coated his brow and his upper lip. His gaze flicked steadily toward the door to the right, with the black outline of a dog on it. Beneath this outline was the word POINTERS. And at the end of the corridor, a door of fading, peeling red. The sign on the door said EMERGENCY USE ONLY! ALARM WILL SOUND! In fact, the alarm bell had been broken for two years. Lori had told him so when Jack had hesitated about using the door to take out the trash. Finally almost there. Directly opposite POINTERS. Hes in there, I know he is . . . and if he jumps out Ill scream . . . I . . . Ill . . . Jack put out a trembling right hand and touched the crashbar of the emergency door. It felt blessedly cool to his touch. For one moment he really believed he would simply fly out of the pitcher plant and into the night . . . free. Then the door behind him suddenly banged open, the door to SETTERS, and a hand grabbed his backpack. Jack uttered a highpitched, despairing shriek of a trapped animal and lunged at the emergency door, heedless of the pack and the magic juice inside it. If the straps had broken he would have simply gone fleeing through the trashy, weedy vacant lot behind the Tap, and never mind anything else. But the straps were tough nylon and didnt break. The door opened a little way, revealing a brief dark wedge of the night, and then thumped shut again. Jack was pulled into the womens room. He was whirled around and then thrown backward. If he had hit the wall dead on, the bottle of magic juice would undoubtedly have shattered in the pack, drenching his few clothes and good old Rand McNally with the odor of rotting grapes. Instead, he hit the rooms one washbasin with the small of his back. The pain was giant, excruciating. The millhand was walking toward him slowly, hitching up his jeans with hands that had begun to twist and thicken. You were supposed to be gone, kid, he said, his voice roughening, becoming at every moment more like the snarl of an animal. Jack began to edge to his left, his eyes never leaving the mans face. His eyes now seemed almost transparent, not just yellow but lighted from within . . . the eyes of a hideous Halloween jackolantern. But you can trust old Elroy, the cowboything said, and now it grinned to reveal a mouthful of curving teeth, some of them jaggedly broken off, some black with rot. Jack screamed. Oh, you can trust Elroy, it said, its words now hardly discernible from a doglike growl. He aint gonna hurt you too bad. Youll be all right, it growled, moving toward Jack, youll be all right, oh yeah, youll . . . It continued to talk, but Jack could no longer tell what it was saying. Now it was only snarling. Jacks foot hit the tall wastecan by the door. As the cowboy thing reached for him with its hooflike hands, Jack grabbed the can and threw it. The can bounced off the Elroythings chest. Jack tore open the bathroom door and lunged to the left, toward the emergency door. He slammed into the crashbar, aware that Elroy was right behind him. He lurched into the dark behind the Oatley Tap. There was a colony of overloaded garbage cans to the right of the door. Jack blindly swept three of them behind him, heard them clash and rattleand then a howl of fury as Elroy stumbled into them. He whirled in time to see the thing go down. There was even a moment to realizeOh dear Jesus a tail its got something like a tailthat the thing was now almost entirely an animal. Golden light fell from its eyes in weird rays, like bright light falling through twin keyholes. Jack backed away from it, pulling the pack from his back, trying to undo the catches with fingers which felt like blocks of wood, his mind a roaring confusion Jacky was six God help me Speedy Jacky was SIX God please of thoughts and incoherent pleas. The thing snarled and flailed at the garbage cans. Jack saw one hoofhand go up and then come whistling down, splitting the side of one corrugated metal can in a jagged slash a yard long. It got up again, stumbled, almost fell, and then began to lurch toward Jack, its snarling, rippling face now almost at chest level. And somehow, through its barking growls, he was able to make out what it was saying. Now Im not just gonna ream you, little chicken. Now Im gonna kill you . . . after. Hearing it with his ears? Or in his head? It didnt matter. The space between this world and that had shrunk from a universe to a mere membrane. The Elroything snarled and came toward him, now unsteady and awkward on its rear feet, its clothes bulging in all the wrong places, its tongue swinging from its fanged mouth. Here was the vacant lot behind Smokey Updikes Oatley Tap, yes, here it was at last, choked with weeds and blown trasha rusty bedspring here, the grille of a 1957 Ford over there, and a ghastly sickle moon like a bent bone in the sky overhead, turning every shard of broken glass into a dead and staring eye, and this hadnt begun in New Hampshire, had it? No. It hadnt begun when his mother got sick, or with the appearance of Lester Parker. It had begun when Jacky was six. When we all lived in California and no one lived anywhere else and Jacky was He fumbled at the straps of his pack. It came again, seeming almost to dance, for a moment reminding him of some animated Disney cartoonfigure in the chancy moonlight. Crazily, Jack began to laugh. The thing snarled and leaped at him. The swipe of those heavy hoofclaws again missed him by barest inches as he danced back through the weeds and litter. The Elroything came down on the bedspring and somehow became entangled in it. Howling, snapping white gobbets of foam into the air, it pulled and twisted and lunged, one foot buried deep in the rusty coils. Jack groped inside his pack for the bottle. He dug past socks and dirty undershorts and a wadded, fragrant pair of jeans. He seized the neck of the bottle and yanked it out. The Elroything split the air with a howl of rage, finally pulling free of the bedspring. Jack hit the cindery, weedy, scruffy ground and rolled over, the last two fingers of his left hand hooked around one packstrap, his right hand holding the bottle. He worked at the cap with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, the pack dangling and swinging. The cap spun off. Can it follow me? he wondered incoherently, tipping the bottle to his lips. When I go, do I punch some kind of hole through the middle of things? Can it follow me through and finish me on the other side? Jacks mouth filled with that rotten deadgrape taste. He gagged, his throat closing, seeming to actually reverse direction. Now that awful taste filled his sinuses and nasal passages as well and he uttered a deep, shaking groan. He could hear the Elroything screaming now, but the scream seemed far away, as if it were on one end of the Oatley tunnel and he, Jack, were falling rapidly toward the other end. And this time there was a sense of falling and he thought Oh my God what if I just flipped my stupid self over a cliff or off a mountain over there? He held on to the pack and the bottle, his eyes screwed desperately shut, waiting for whatever might happen nextElroything or no Elroything. Territories or oblivionand the thought which had haunted him all night came swinging back like a dancing carousel horseSilver Lady, maybe Ella Speed. He caught it and rode it down in a cloud of the magic juices awful smell, holding it, waiting for whatever would happen next; feeling his clothes change on his body. Six oh yes when we were all six and nobody was anything else and it was California who blows that sax daddy is it Dexter Gordon or is it is it what does Mom mean when she says were living on a faultline and where where oh where do you go Daddy you and Uncle Morgan oh Daddy sometimes he looks at you like like oh like there is a faultline in his head and an earthquake going on behind his eyes and youre dying in it oh Daddy! Falling, twisting, turning in the middle of limbo, in the middle of a smell like a purple cloud, Jack Sawyer, John Benjamin Sawyer, Jacky, Jacky was six when it started to happen, and who blew that sax Daddy? Who blew it when I was six, when Jacky was six, when Jacky 11 The Death of Jerry Bledsoe 1 was six . . . when it really started, Daddy, when the engines that eventually pulled him to Oatley and beyond began to chug away. There had been loud saxophone music. Six. Jacky was six. At first his attention had been entirely on the toy his father had given him, a scale model of a London taxithe toy car was heavy as a brick, and on the smooth wooden floors of the new office a good push sent it rumbling straight across the room. Late afternoon, first grade all the way on the other side of August, a neat new car that rolled like a tank on the strip of bare wood behind the couch, a contented, relaxed feeling in the airconditioned office . . . no more work to do, no more phone calls that couldnt wait until the next day. Jack pushed the heavy toy taxi down the strip of bare wood, barely able to hear the rumbling of the solid rubber tires under the soloing of a saxophone. The black car struck one of the legs of the couch, spun sideways, and stopped. Jack crawled down and Uncle Morgan had parked himself in one of the chairs on the other side of the couch. Each man nursed a drink; soon they would put down their glasses, switch off the turntable and the amplifier, and go downstairs to their cars. when we were all six and nobody was anything else and it was California Whos playing that sax? he heard Uncle Morgan ask, and, half in a reverie, heard that familiar voice in a new way something whispery and hidden in Morgan Sloats voice coiled into Jackys ear. He touched the top of the toy taxi and his fingers were as cold as if it were of ice, not English steel. Thats Dexter Gordon, is who that is, his father answered. His voice was as lazy and friendly as it always was, and Jack slipped his hand around the heavy taxi. Good record. Daddy Plays the Horn. It is a nice old record, isnt it? Ill have to look for it. And then Jack thought he knew what that strangeness in Uncle Morgans voice was all aboutUncle Morgan didnt really like jazz at all, he just pretended to in front of Jacks father. Jack had known this fact about Morgan Sloat for most of his childhood, and he thought it was silly that his father couldnt see it too. Uncle Morgan was never going to look for a record called Daddy Plays the Horn, he was just flattering Phil Sawyerand maybe the reason Phil Sawyer didnt see it was that like everyone else he never paid quite enough attention to Morgan Sloat. Uncle Morgan, smart and ambitious (smart as a wolverine, sneaky as a courthouse lawyer, Lily said), good old Uncle Morgan deflected observationyour eye just sort of naturally slid off him. When he was a kid, Jacky would have bet, his teachers would have had trouble even remembering his name. Imagine what this guy would be like over there, Uncle Morgan said, for once fully claiming Jacks attention. That falsity still played through his voice, but it was not Sloats hypocrisy that jerked up Jackys head and tightened his fingers on his heavy toythe words over there had sailed straight into his brain and now were gonging like chimes. Because over there was the country of Jacks Daydreams. He had known that immediately. His father and Uncle Morgan had forgotten that he was behind the couch, and they were going to talk about the Daydreams. His father knew about the Daydreamcountry. Jack could never have mentioned the Daydreams to either his father or his mother, but his father knew about the Daydreams because he had tosimple as that. And the next step, felt along Jacks emotions more than consciously expressed, was that his dad helped keep the Daydreams safe. But for some reason, equally difficult to translate from emotion into language, the conjunction of Morgan Sloat and the Daydreams made the boy uneasy. Hey? Uncle Morgan said. This guy would really turn em around, wouldnt he? Theyd probably make him Duke of the Blasted Lands, or something. Well, probably not that, Phil Sawyer said. Not if they liked him as much as we do. But Uncle Morgan doesnt like him, Dad, Jacky thought, suddenly clear that this was important. He doesnt like him at all, not really, he thinks that music is too loud, he thinks it takes something from him. . . . Oh, you know a lot more about it than I do, Uncle Morgan said in a voice that sounded easy and relaxed. Well, Ive been there more often. But youre doing a good job of catching up. Jacky heard that his father was smiling. Oh, Ive learned a few things, Phil. But really, you knowIll never get over being grateful to you for showing all that to me. The two syllables of grateful filled with smoke and the sound of breaking glass. But all of these little warnings could not do more than dent Jacks intense, almost blissful satisfaction. They were talking about the Daydreams. It was magical, that such a thing was possible. What they said was beyond him, their terms and vocabulary were too adult, but sixyearold Jack experienced again the wonder and joy of the Daydreams, and was at least old enough to understand the direction of their conversation. The Daydreams were real, and Jacky somehow shared them with his father. That was half his joy. 2 Let me just get some things straight, Uncle Morgan said, and Jacky saw the word straight as a pair of lines knotting around each other like snakes. They have magic like we have physics, right? Were talking about an agrarian monarchy, using magic instead of science. Sure, Phil Sawyer said. And presumably theyve gone on like that for centuries. Their lives have never changed very much. Except for political upheavals, thats right. Then Uncle Morgans voice tightened, and the excitement he tried to conceal cracked little whips within his consonants. Well, forget about the political stuff. Suppose we think about us for a change. Youll sayand Id agree with you, Philthat weve done pretty well out of the Territories already, and that wed have to be careful about how we introduce changes there. I have no problems at all with that position. I feel the same way myself. Jacky could feel his fathers silence. Okay, Sloat continued. Lets go with the concept that, within a situation basically advantageous to ourselves, we can spread the benefits around to anybody on our side. We dont sacrifice the advantage, but were not greedy about the bounty it brings. We owe these people, Phil. Look what theyve done for us. I think we could put ourselves into a really synergistic situation over there. Our energy can feed their energy and come up with stuff weve never even thought of, Phil. And we end up looking generous, which we arebut which also doesnt hurt us. He would be frowning forward, the palms of his hands pressed together. Of course I dont have a total window on this situation, you know that, but I think the synergy alone is worth the price of admission, to tell you the truth. But Philcan you imagine how much fucking clout wed swing if we gave them electricity? If we got modern weapons to the right guys over there? Do you have any idea? I think itd be awesome. Awesome. The damp, squashy sound of his clapping hands. I dont want to catch you unprepared or anything, but I thought it might be time for us to think along those linesto think, Territorieswise, about increasing our involvement. Phil Sawyer still said nothing. Uncle Morgan slapped his hands together again. Finally Phil Sawyer said, in a noncommittal voice, You want to think about increasing our involvement. I think its the way to go. And I can give you chapter and verse, Phil, but I shouldnt have to. You can probably remember as well I can what it was like before we started going there together. Hey, maybe we could have made it all on our own, and maybe we would have, but as for me, Im grateful not to be representing a couple of brokendown strippers and Little Timmy Tiptoe anymore. Hold on, Jacks father said. Airplanes, Uncle Morgan said. Think airplanes. Hold on, hold on there, Morgan, I have a lot of ideas that apparently have yet to occur to you. Im always ready for new ideas, Morgan said, and his voice was smoky again. Okay. I think we have to be careful about what we do over there, partner. I think anything majorany real changes we bring aboutjust might turn around and bite our asses back here. Everything has consequences, and some of those consequences might be on the uncomfortable side. Like what? Uncle Morgan asked. Like war. Thats nuts, Phil. Weve never seen anything . . . unless you mean Bledsoe. . . . I do mean Bledsoe. Was that a coincidence? Bledsoe? Jack wondered. He had heard the name before; but it was vague. Well, thats a long way from war, to put it mildly, and I dont concede the connection anyhow. All right. Do you remember hearing about how a Stranger assassinated the old King over therea long time ago? You ever hear about that? Yeah, I suppose, Uncle Morgan said, and Jack heard again the falseness in his voice. His fathers chair squeakedhe was taking his feet off his desk, leaning forward. The assassination touched off a minor war over there. The followers of the old King had to put down a rebellion led by a couple of disgruntled nobles. These guys saw their chance to take over and run thingsseize lands, impound property, throw their enemies in jail, make themselves rich. Hey, be fair, Morgan broke in. I heard about this stuff, too. They also wanted to bring some kind of political order to a crazy inefficient systemsometimes you have to be tough, starting out. I can see that. And its not for us to make judgments about their politics, I agree. But heres my point. That little war over there lasted about three weeks. When it was over, maybe a hundred people had been killed. Fewer, probably. Did anyone ever tell you when that war began? What year it was? What day? No, Uncle Morgan muttered in a sulky voice. It was the first of September, 1939. Over here, it was the day Germany invaded Poland. His father stopped talking, and Jacky, clutching his black toy taxi behind the couch, yawned silently but hugely. Thats screwball, Uncle Morgan finally said. Their war started ours? Do you really believe that? I do believe that, Jacks father said. I believe a threeweek squabble over there in some way sparked off a war here that lasted six years and killed millions of people. Yes. Well . . . Uncle Morgan said, and Jack could see him beginning to huff and blow. Theres more. Ive talked to lots of people over there about this, and the feeling I get is that the stranger who assassinated the King was a real Stranger, if you see what I mean. Those who saw him got the feeling that he was uncomfortable with Territories clothes. He acted like he was unsure of local customshe didnt understand the money right away. Ah. Yes. If they hadnt torn him to pieces right after he stuck a knife into the King, we could be sure about this, but Im sure anyhow that he was Like us. Like us. Thats right. A visitor. Morgan, I dont think we can mess around too much over there. Because we simply dont know what the effects will be. To tell you the truth, I think were affected all the time by things that go on in the Territories. And should I tell you another crazy thing? Why not? Sloat answered. Thats not the only other world out there. 3 Bullshit, Sloat said. I mean it. Ive had the feeling, once or twice when I was there, that I was near to somewhere elsethe Territories Territories. Yes, Jack thought, thats right, it has to be, the Daydreams Daydreams, someplace even more beautiful, and on the other side of that is the Daydreams Daydreams Daydreams, and on the other side of that is another place, another world nicer still. . . . He realized for the first time that he had become very sleepy. The Daydreams Daydreams And then he was almost immediately asleep, the heavy little taxi in his lap, his whole body simultaneously weighty with sleep, anchored to the strip of wooden floor, and so blissfully light. The conversation must have continuedthere must have been much that Jacky missed. He rose and fell, heavy and light, through the second whole side of Daddy Plays the Horn, and during that time Morgan Sloat must at first have arguedgently, but with what squeezings of his fists, what contortions of his forehead!for his plan; then he must have allowed himself to seem persuadable, then finally persuaded by his partners doubts. At the end of this conversation, which returned to the twelveyearold Jacky Sawyer in the dangerous borderland between Oatley, New York, and a nameless Territories village, Morgan Sloat had allowed himself to seem not only persuaded but positively grateful for the lessons. When Jack woke up, the first thing he heard was his father asking, Hey, did Jack disappear or something? and the second thing was Uncle Morgan saying, Hell, I guess youre right, Phil. You have a way of seeing right to the heart of things, youre great the way you do that. Where the hell is Jack? his father said, and Jack stirred behind the couch, really waking up now. The black taxi thudded to the floor. Aha, Uncle Morgan said. Little pitchers and big ears, peuttre? You behind there, kiddo? his father said. Noises of chairs pushing back across the wooden floor, of men standing up. He said, Oooh, and slowly lifted the taxi back into his lap. His legs felt stiff and uncomfortablewhen he stood, they would tingle. His father laughed. Footsteps came toward him. Morgan Sloats red, puffy face appeared over the top of the couch. Jack yawned and pushed his knees into the back of the couch. His fathers face appeared beside Sloats. His father was smiling. For a moment, both of those grownup adult male heads seemed to be floating over the top of the couch. Lets move on home, sleepyhead, his father said.


When the boy looked into Uncle Morgans face, he saw calculation sink into his skin, slide underneath his jollyfatmans cheeks like a snake beneath a rock. He looked like Richard Sloats daddy again, like good old Uncle Morgan who always gave spectacular Christmas and birthday presents, like good old sweaty Uncle Morgan, so easy not to notice. But what had he looked like before? Like a human earthquake, like a man crumbling apart over the faultline behind his eyes, like something all wound up and waiting to explode. . . . How about a little ice cream on the way home, Jack? Uncle Morgan said to him. That sound good to you? Uh, Jack said. Yeah, we can stop off at that place in the lobby, his father said. Yummyyummyyum, Uncle Morgan said. Now were really talking about synergy, and smiled at Jack once more. This happened when he was six, and in the midst of his weightless tumble through limbo, it happened againthe horrible purple taste of Speedys juice backed up into his mouth, into the passages behind his nose, and all of that languid afternoon of six years before replayed itself out in his mind. He saw it just as if the magic juice brought total recall, and so speedily that he lived through that afternoon in the same few seconds which told him that this time the magic juice really was going to make him vomit. Uncle Morgans eyes smoking, and inside Jack, a question smoking too, demanding to finally come out . . . Who played What changes what changes Who plays those changes, daddy? Who killed Jerry Bledsoe? The magic juice forced itself into the boys mouth, stinging threads of it nauseatingly trickled into his nose, and just as Jack felt loose earth beneath his hands he gave up and vomited rather than drown. What killed Jerry Bledsoe? Foul purple stuff shot from Jacks mouth, choking him, and he blindly pushed himself backwardhis feet and legs snagged in tall stiff weeds. Jack pushed himself up on his hands and knees and waited, patient as a mule, his mouth drooping open, for the second attack. His stomach clenched, and he did not have time to groan before more of the stinking juice burned up through his chest and throat and spattered out of his mouth. Ropey pink strings of saliva hung from his lips, and Jack feebly brushed them away. He wiped his hand on his pants. Jerry Bledsoe, yes. Jerrywhod always had his name spelled out on his shirt, like a gasstation attendant. Jerry, who had died when The boy shook his head and wiped his hands across his mouth again. He spat into a nest of sawtoothed wild grass sprouting like a giants corsage out of the graybrown earth. Some dim animal instinct he did not understand made him push loose earth over the pinkish pool of vomit. Another reflex made him brush the palms of his hands against his trousers. Finally he looked up. He was kneeling, in the last of the evening light, on the edge of a dirt lane. No horrible Elroything pursued himhe had known that immediately. Dogs penned in a wooden, cagelike enclosure barked and snarled at him, thrusting their snouts through the cracks of their jail. On the other side of the fencedin dogs was a rambling wooden structure and from here too doggy noises rose up into the immense sky. These were unmistakably similar to the noises Jack had just been hearing from the other side of a wall in the Oatley Tap the sounds of drunken men bellowing at each other. A barhere it would be an inn or a public house, Jack imagined. Now that he was no longer sickened by Speedys juice, he could smell the pervasive, yeasty odors of malt and hops. He could not let the men from the inn discover him. For a moment he imagined himself running from all those dogs yipping and growling through the cracks in their enclosure, and then he stood up. The sky seemed to tilt over his head, to darken. And back home, in his world, what was happening? A nice little disaster in the middle of Oatley? Maybe a nice little flood, a sweet little fire? Jack slipped quietly backward away from the inn, then began to move sideways through the tall grass. Perhaps sixty yards away, thick candles burned in the windows of the only other building he could see. From somewhere not far off to his right drifted the odor of pigs. When Jack had gone half the distance between the inn and the house, the dogs ceased growling and snapping, and he slowly began walking forward toward the Western Road. The night was dark and moonless. Jerry Bledsoe. 4 There were other houses, though Jack did not see them until he was nearly before them. Except for the noisy drinkers behind him at the inn, here in the country Territories people went to bed when the sun did. No candles burned in these small square windows. Themselves squarish and dark, the houses on either side of the Western Road sat in a puzzling isolationsomething was wrong, as in a visual game from a childs magazine, but Jack could not identify it. Nothing hung upsidedown, nothing burned, nothing seemed extravagantly out of place. Most of the houses had thick fuzzy roofs which resembled haystacks with crewcuts, but Jack assumed that these were thatchhe had heard of it, but never seen it before. Morgan, he thought with a sudden thrill of panic, Morgan of Orris, and saw the two of them, the man with long hair and a builtup boot and his fathers sweaty workaholic partner, for a moment jumbled up togetherMorgan Sloat with pirates hair and a hitch in his walk. But Morganthis worlds Morganwas not what was Wrong with This Picture. Jack was just now passing a short squat onestory building like an inflated rabbit hutch, crazily halftimbered with wide black wooden Xs. A fuzzy crewcut thatch capped this building too. If he were walking out of Oatleyor even running out of Oatley, to be closer to the truthwhat would he expect to see in the single dark window of this hutch for giant rabbits? He knew the dancing glimmer of a television screen. But of course Territories houses did not have television sets inside them, and the absence of that colorful glimmer was not what had puzzled him. It was something else, something so much an aspect of any grouping of houses along a road that its absence left a hole in the landscape. You noticed the hole even if you could not quite identify what was absent. Television, television sets . . . Jack continued past the halftimbered little building and saw ahead of him, its front door set only inches back from the verge of the road, another gnomishly small dwelling. This one seemed to have a sod, not a thatched, roof, and Jack smiled to himselfthis tiny village had reminded him of Hobbiton. Would a Hobbit cablestringer pull up here and say to the lady of the . . . shack? doghouse? . . . anyhow, would he say, Maam, were installing cable in your area, and for a small monthly feehitch you up right nowyou get fifteen new channels, you get Midnight Blue, you get the allsports and allweather channels, you get . . .? And that, he suddenly realized, was it. In front of these houses were no poles. No wiring! No TV antennas complicated the sky, no tall wooden poles marched the length of the Western Road, because in the Territories there was no electricity. Which was why he had not permitted himself to identify the absent element. Jerry Bledsoe had been, at least part of the time, Sawyer  Sloats electrician and handyman. 5 When his father and Morgan Sloat used that name, Bledsoe, he thought he had never heard it beforethough, having remembered it, he must have heard the handymans last name once or twice. But Jerry Bledsoe was almost always just Jerry, as it said above the pocket on his workshirt. Cant Jerry do something about the airconditioning? Get Jerry to oil the hinges on that door, will you? The squeaks are driving me batshit. And Jerry would appear, his workclothes clean and pressed, his thinning rustred hair combed flat, his glasses round and earnest, and quietly fix whatever was wrong. There was a Mrs. Jerry, who kept the creases sharp and clean in the tan workpants, and several small Jerrys, whom Sawyer  Sloat invariably remembered at Christmas. Jack had been small enough to associate the name Jerry with Tom Cats eternal adversary, and so imagined that the handyman and Mrs. Jerry and the little Jerrys lived in a giant mousehole, accessible by a curved arch cut into a baseboard. But who had killed Jerry Bledsoe? His father and Morgan Sloat, always so sweet to the Bledsoe children at Christmastime? Jack stepped forward into the darkness of the Western Road, wishing that he had forgotten completely about Sawyer  Sloats handyman, that he had fallen asleep as soon as he had crawled behind the couch. Sleep was what he wanted nowwanted it far more than the uncomfortable thoughts which that sixyearsdead conversation had aroused in him. Jack promised himself that as soon as he was sure he was at least a couple of miles past the last house, he would find someplace to sleep. A field would do, even a ditch. His legs did not want to move anymore; all his muscles, even his bones, seemed twice their weight. It had been just after one of those times when Jack had wandered into some enclosed place after his father and found that Phil Sawyer had somehow contrived a disappearance. Later, his father would manage to vanish from his bedroom, from the dining room, from the conference room at Sawyer  Sloat. On this occasion he executed his mystifying trick in the garage beside the house on Rodeo Drive. Jack, sitting unobserved on the little knob of raised land which was the closest thing to a hill offered by this section of Beverly Hills, saw his father leave their house by the front door, cross the lawn while digging in his pockets for money or keys, and let himself into the garage by the side door. The white door on the right side should have swung up seconds later; but it remained stubbornly closed. Then Jack realized that his fathers car was where it had been all this Saturday morning, parked at the curb directly in front of the house. Lilys car was goneshed plugged a cigarette into her mouth and announced that she was taking herself off to a screening of Dirt Track, the latest film by the director of Deaths Darling, and nobody by God had better try to stop herand so the garage was empty. For minutes, Jack waited for something to happen. Neither the side door nor the big front doors opened. Eventually Jack slid down off the grassy elevation, went to the garage, and let himself in. The wide familiar space was entirely empty. Dark oil stains patterned the gray cement floor. Tools hung from silver hooks set into the walls. Jack grunted in astonishment, called out, Dad? and looked at everything again, just to make sure. This time he saw a cricket hop toward the shadowy protection of a wall, and for a second almost could have believed that magic was real and some malign wizard had happened along and . . . the cricket reached the wall and slipped into an invisible crack. No, his father had not been turned into a cricket. Of course he had not. Hey, the boy saidto himself it seemed. He walked backward to the side door and left the garage. Sunlight fell on the lush, springy lawns of Rodeo Drive. He would have called someone, but whom? The police? My daddy walked into the garage and I couldnt find him in there and now Im scared. . . . Two hours later Phil Sawyer came walking up from the Beverly Wilshire end of the street. He carried his jacket over his shoulder, had pulled down the knot of his tieto Jack, he looked like a man returning from a journey around the world. Jack jumped down from his anxious elevation and tore toward his father. You sure cover the ground, his father said, smiling, and Jack flattened himself against his legs. I thought you were taking a nap, Travelling Jack. They heard the telephone ringing as they came up the walk, and some instinctperhaps the instinct to keep his father closemade Jacky pray that it had already rung a dozen times, that whoever was calling would hang up before they reached the front door. His father ruffled the hair on his crown, put his big warm hand on the back of his neck, then pulled open the door and made it to the phone in five long strides. Yes, Morgan, Jacky heard his father say. Oh? Bad news? Youd better tell me, yes. After a long moment of silence in which the boy could hear the tinny, rasping sound of Morgan Sloats voice stealing through the telephone wires Oh, Jerry. My God. Poor Jerry. Ill be right over. Then his father looked straight at him, not smiling, not winking, not doing anything but taking him in. Ill come over, Morgan. Ill have to bring Jack, but he can wait in the car. Jack felt his muscles relax, and was so relieved that he did not ask why he had to wait in the car, as he would have at any other time. Phil drove up Rodeo Drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel, turned left onto Sunset, and pointed the car toward the office building. He said nothing. His father zipped through the oncoming traffic and swung the car into the parking lot beside the office building. Already in the lot were two police cars, a fire truck, Uncle Morgans pocketsize white Mercedes convertible, the rusted old Plymouth twodoor that had been the handymans car. Just inside the entrance Uncle Morgan was talking to a policeman, who shook his head slowly, slowly, in evident sympathy. Morgan Sloats right arm squeezed the shoulders of a slim young woman in a dress too large for her who had twisted her face into his chest. Mrs. Jerry, Jack knew, seeing that most of her face was obscured by a white handkerchief she had pressed to her eyes. A behatted, raincoated fireman pushed a mess of twisted metal and plastic, ashes and broken glass into a disorderly heap far past them down the hall. Phil said, Just sit here for a minute or two, okay, Jacky? and sprinted toward the entrance. A young Chinese woman sat talking to a policeman on a concrete abutment at the end of the parking lot. Before her lay a crumpled object it took Jack a moment to recognize as a bike. When Jack inhaled, he smelled bitter smoke. Twenty minutes later, both his father and Uncle Morgan left the building. Still gripping Mrs. Jerry, Uncle Morgan waved goodbye to the Sawyers. He led the woman around to the passenger door of his tiny car. Jacks father twirled his own car out of the lot and back into the traffic on Sunset. Is Jerry hurt? Jack asked. Some kind of freak accident, his father said. Electricitythe whole building couldve gone up in smoke. Is Jerry hurt? Jack repeated. Poor son of a bitch got hurt so bad hes dead, said his father. Jack and Richard Sloat needed two months to really put the story together out of the conversations they overheard. Jacks mother and Richards housekeeper supplied other detailsthe housekeeper, the goriest. Jerry Bledsoe had come in on a Saturday to try to iron out some of the kinks in the buildings security system. If he tampered with the delicate system on a weekday, he was sure to confuse or irritate the tenants with the Klaxon alarm whenever he accidentally set it off. The security system was wired into the buildings main electrical board, set behind two large removable walnut panels on the ground floor. Jerry had set down his tools and lifted off the panels, having already seen that the lot was empty and nobody would jump out of his skin when the alarm went off. Then he went downstairs to the telephone in his basement cubicle and told the local precinct house to ignore any signals from the Sawyer  Sloat address until his next telephone call. When he went back upstairs to tackle the mares nest of wires coming into the board from all the contact points, a twentythreeyearold woman named Lorette Chang was just riding her bicycle into the buildings lotshe was distributing a leaflet advertising a restaurant which was due to open down the street in fifteen days. Miss Chang later told the police that she looked through the glass front door and saw a workman enter the hall from the basement. Just before the workman picked up his screwdriver and touched the wiring panel, she felt the parking lot wobble beneath her feet. It was, she assumed, a miniearthquake a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, Lorette Chang was untroubled by any seismic event that did not actually knock anything down. She saw Jerry Bledsoe set his feet (so he felt it, too, though no one else did), shake his head, then gently insert the tip of the screwdriver into a hive of wires. And then the entry and downstairs corridor of the Sawyer  Sloat building turned into a holocaust. The entire wiring panel turned instantly to a solid rectangular body of flame; bluishyellow arcs of what looked like lightning shot out and encased the workman. Electronic horns bawled and bawled KAWHAAAAM! KAWHAAAM! A ball of fire six feet high fell right out of the wall, slammed the already dead Jerry Bledsoe aside, and rolled down the corridor toward the lobby. The transparent front door blew into flying glass and smoking, twisted pieces of frame. Lorette Chang dropped her bike and sprinted toward the pay telephone across the street. As she told the fire department the buildings address and noticed that her bicycle had been twisted neatly in half by whatever force had burst through the door, Jerry Bledsoes roasted corpse still swayed upright back and forth before the devastated panel. Thousands of volts poured through his body, twitching it with regular surges, snapping it back and forth in a steady pulse. All the handymans body hair and most of his clothes had fried off, and his skin had become a cooked blotchy gray. His eyeglasses, a solidifying lump of brown plastic, covered his nose like a poultice. Jerry Bledsoe. Who plays those changes, daddy? Jack made his feet move until he had gone half an hour without seeing another of the little thatched cottages. Unfamiliar stars in unfamiliar patterns lay all over the sky above himmessages in a language he could not read. 12 Jack Goes to the Market 1 He slept that night in a sweetly fragrant Territories haystack, first burrowing his way in and then turning around so the fresh air could reach him along the tunnel he had made. He listened apprehensively for small scuttering soundshe had heard or read somewhere that fieldmice were great haystack fans. If they were in this one, then a great big mouse named Jack Sawyer had scared them into silence. He relaxed little by little, his left hand tracing the shape of Speedys bottlehe had plugged the top with a piece of springy moss from a small stream where he had stopped to drink. He supposed it was entirely possible that some of the moss would fall into the bottle, or already had. What a pity, it would spoil the piquant flavor and the delicate bouquet. As he lay in here, warm at last, heavily sleepy, the feeling he was most aware of was relief . . . as if there had been a dozen tenpound weights strapped to his back and some kind soul had undone the buckles and allowed them to fall to the ground. He was in the Territories again, the place which such charming folks as Morgan of Orris, Osmond the Bullwhipper, and Elroy the Amazing GoatMan all called home, the Territories, where anything could happen. But the Territories could be good, too. He remembered that from his earliest childhood, when everyone had lived in California and no one had lived anyplace else. The Territories could be good, and it seemed he felt that goodness around him now, as calmly, inarguably sweet as the smell of the haystack, as clear as the smell of the Territories air. Does a fly or a ladybug feel relief if an unexpected gust of wind comes along and tilts the pitcher plant just enough to allow the drowning insect to fly out? Jack didnt know . . . but he knew that he was out of Oatley, away from Fair Weather Clubs and old men who wept over their stolen shopping carts, away from the smell of beer and the smell of puke . . . most important of all, he was away from Smokey Updike and the Oatley Tap. He thought he might travel in the Territories for a while, after all. And so thinking, fell asleep. 2 He had walked two, perhaps three miles along the Western Road the following morning, enjoying the sunshine and the good, earthy smell of fields almost ready for the harvests of summers end, when a cart pulled over and a whiskery farmer in what looked like a toga with rough breeches under it pulled up and shouted Are you for markettown, boy? Jack gaped at him, half in a panic, realizing that the man was not speaking Englishnever mind prithee or Dost thou go crossgartered, varlet, it wasnt English at all. There was a woman in a voluminous dress sitting beside the whiskery farmer; she held a boy of perhaps three on her lap. She smiled pleasantly enough at Jack and rolled her eyes at her husband. Hes a simpleton, Henry. Theyre not speaking English . . . but whatever it is theyre speaking, I understand it. Im actually thinking in that language . . . and thats not allIm seeing in it, or with it, or whatever it is I mean. Jack realized he had been doing it the last time he had been in the Territories, tooonly then he had been too confused to realize it; things had moved too fast, and everything had seemed strange. The farmer leaned forward. He smiled, showing teeth which were absolutely horrid. Are you a simpleton, laddie? he asked, not unkindly. No, he said, smiling back as best he could, aware that he had not said no but some Territories word which meant nowhen he had flipped, he had changed his speech and his way of thinking (his way of imaging, anywayhe did not have that word in his vocabulary, but understood what he meant just the same), just as he had changed his clothes. Im not simple. Its just that my mother told me to be careful of people I might meet along the road. Now the farmers wife smiled. Your mother was right, she said. Are you for the market? Yes, Jack said. That is, Im headed up the roadwest. Climb up in the back, then, Henry the farmer said. Daylights wasting. I want to sell what I have if I can and be home again before sunset. Corns poor but its the last of the season. Lucky to have corn in ninemonth at all. Someone may buy it. Thank you, Jack said, climbing into the back of the low wagon. Here, dozens of corn ears were bound with rough hanks of rope and stacked like cordwood. If the corn was poor, then Jack could not imagine what would constitute good corn over herethey were the biggest ears he had ever seen in his life. There were also small stacks of squashes and gourds and things that looked like pumpkinsbut they were reddish instead of orange. Jack didnt know what they were, but he suspected they would taste wonderful. His stomach rumbled busily. Since going on the road, he had discovered what hunger wasnot as a passing acquaintance, something you felt dimly after school and which could be assuaged with a few cookies and a glass of milk souped up with Nestls Quik, but as an intimate friend, one that sometimes moved away to a distance but who rarely left entirely. He was sitting with his back to the front of the wagon, his sandalclad feet dangling down, almost touching the hardpacked dirt of the Western Road. There was a lot of traffic this morning, most of it bound for the market, Jack assumed. Every now and then Henry bawled a greeting to someone he knew. Jack was still wondering how those applecolored pumpkins might tasteand just where his next meal was going to come from, anywaywhen small hands twined in his hair and gave a brisk tugbrisk enough to make his eyes water. He turned and saw the threeyearold standing there in his bare feet, a big grin on his face and a few strands of Jacks hair in each of his hands. Jason! his mother criedbut it was, in its way, an indulgent cry (Did you see the way he pulled that hair? My, isnt he strong!)Jason, thats not nice! Jason grinned, unabashed. It was a big, dopey, sunshiney grin, as sweet in its way as the smell of the haystack in which Jack had spent the night. He couldnt help returning it . . . and while there had been no politics of calculation in his returning grin, he saw he had made a friend of Henrys wife. Sit, Jason said, swaying back and forth with the unconscious movement of a veteran sailor. He was still grinning at Jack. Huh? Yap. Im not getting you, Jason. Sityap. Im not And then Jason, who was husky for a threeyearold, plopped into Jacks lap, still grinning. Sityap, oh yeah, I get it, Jack thought, feeling the dull ache from his testicles spreading up into the pit of his stomach. Jason bad! his mother called back in that same indulgent, butisnthecute voice . . . and Jason, who knew who ruled the roost, grinned his dopey, sweetly charming grin. Jack realized that Jason was wet. Very, extremely, indubitably wet. Welcome back to the Territories, JackO. And sitting there with the child in his arms and warm wetness slowly soaking through his clothes, Jack began to laugh, his face turned up to the blue, blue sky. 3 A few minutes later Henrys wife worked her way to where Jack was sitting with the child on his lap and took Jason back. Oooh, wet, bad baby, she said in her indulgent voice. Doesnt my Jason wet big! Jack thought, and laughed again. That made Jason laugh, and Mrs. Henry laughed with them. As she changed Jason, she asked Jack a number of questionsones he had heard often enough in his own world. But here he would have to be careful. He was a stranger, and there might be hidden trapdoors. He heard his father telling Morgan, . . . a real Stranger, if you see what I mean. Jack sensed that the womans husband was listening closely. He answered her questions with a careful variation of the Storynot the one he told when he was applying for a job but the one he told when someone who had picked him up thumbing got curious. He said he had come from the village of AllHandsJasons mother had a vague recollection of hearing of the place, but that was all. Had he really come so far? she wanted to know. Jack told her that he had. And where was he going? He told her (and the silently listening Henry) that he was bound for the village of California. That one she had not heard of, even vaguely, in such stories as the occasional peddler told. Jack was not exactly very surprised . . . but he was grateful that neither of them exclaimed California? Whoever heard of a village named California? Who are you trying to shuck and jive, boy? In the Territories there had to be lots of placeswhole areas as well as villagesof which people who lived in their own little areas had never heard. No power poles. No electricity. No movies. No cable TV to tell them how wonderful things were in Malibu or Sarasota. No Territories version of Ma Bell, advertising that a threeminute call to the Outposts after five p.m. cost only 5.83, plus tax, rates may be higher on GodPounders Eve and some other holidays. They live in a mystery, he thought. When you live in a mystery, you dont question a village simply because you never heard of it. California doesnt sound any wilder than a place named AllHands. Nor did they question. He told them that his father had died the year before, and that his mother was quite ill (he thought of adding that the Queens repossession men had come in the middle of the night and taken away their donkey, grinned, and decided that maybe he ought to leave that part out). His mother had given him what money she could (except the word that came out in the strange language wasnt really moneyit was something like sticks) and had sent him off to the village of California, to stay with his Aunt Helen. These are hard times, Mrs. Henry said, holding Jason, now changed, more closely to her. AllHands is near the summer palace, isnt it, boy? It was the first time Henry had spoken since inviting Jack aboard. Yes, Jack said. That is, fairly near. I mean You never said what your father died of. Now he had turned his head. His gaze was narrow and assessing, the former kindness gone; it had been blown out of his eyes like candleflames in a wind. Yes, there were trapdoors here. Was he ill? Mrs. Henry asked. So much illness these dayspox, plaguehard times . . . For a wild moment Jack thought of saying, No, he wasnt ill, Mrs. Henry. He took a lot of volts, my dad. You see he went off one Saturday to do some work, and he left Mrs. Jerry and all the little Jerrysincluding meback at home. This was when we all lived in a hole in the baseboard and nobody lived anywhere else, you see. And do you know what? He stuck his screwdriver into a bunch of wires and Mrs. Feeny, she works over at Richard Sloats house, she heard Uncle Morgan talking on the phone and he said the electricity came out, all of the electricity, and it cooked him, it cooked him so bad that his glasses melted all over his nose, only you dont know about glasses because you dont have them here. No glasses . . . no electricity . . . no Midnight Blue . . . no airplanes. Dont end up like Mrs. Jerry, Mrs. Henry. Dont Never mind was he ill, the whiskered farmer said. Was he political? Jack looked at him. His mouth was working but no sounds came out. He didnt know what to say. There were too many trapdoors. Henry nodded, as if he had answered. Jump down, laddie. Markets just over the next rise. I reckon you can ankle it from here, cant you? Yes, Jack said. I reckon I can. Mrs. Henry looked confused . . . but she was now holding Jason away from Jack, as if he might have some contagious disease. The farmer, still looking back over his shoulder, smiled a bit ruefully. Im sorry. You seem a nice enough lad, but were simple people herewhatevers going on back yonder by the sea is something for great lords to settle. Either the Queen will die or she wont . . . and of course, someday she must. God pounds all His nails sooner or later. And what happens to little people when they meddle into the affairs of the great is that they get hurt. My father I dont want to know about your father! Henry said sharply. His wife scrambled away from Jack, still holding Jason to her bosom. Good man or bad, I dont know and I dont want to knowall I know is that hes a dead man, I dont think you lied about that, and that his son has been sleeping rough and has all the smell of being on the dodge. The son doesnt talk as if he comes from any of these parts. So climb down. Ive a son of my own, as you see. Jack got down, sorry for the fear in the young womans facefear he had put there. The farmer was rightlittle people had no business meddling in the affairs of the great. Not if they were smart. 13 The Men in the Sky 1 It was a shock to discover that the money he had worked so hard to get literally had turned into sticksthey looked like toy snakes made by an inept craftsman. The shock lasted only for a moment, however, and he laughed ruefully at himself. The sticks were money, of course. When he came over here, everything changed. Silver dollar to gryphoncoin, shirt to jerkin, English to Territories speech, and good old American money towell, to jointed sticks. He had flipped over with about twentytwo dollars in all, and he guessed that he had exactly the same amount in Territories money, although he had counted fourteen joints on one of the moneysticks and better than twenty on the other. The problem wasnt so much money as costhe had very little idea of what was cheap and what was dear, and as he walked through the market, Jack felt like a contestant on The New Price Is Rightonly, if he flubbed it here, there wouldnt be any consolation prize and a clap on the back from Bob Barker; if he flubbed it here, they might . . . well, he didnt know for sure what they might do. Run him out for sure. Hurt him, rough him up? Maybe. Kill him? Probably not, but it was impossible to be absolutely certain. They were little people. They were not political. And he was a stranger. Jack walked slowly from one end of the loud and busy marketday throng to the other, wrestling with the problem. It now centered mostly in his stomachhe was dreadfully hungry.