Once he saw Henry, dickering with a man who had goats to sell. Mrs. Henry stood near him, but a bit behind, giving the men room to trade. Her back was to Jack, but she had the baby hoisted in her armsJason, one of the little Henrys, Jack thoughtbut Jason saw him. The baby waved one chubby hand at Jack and Jack turned away quickly, putting as much crowd as he could between himself and the Henrys. Everywhere was the smell of roasting meat, it seemed. He saw vendors slowly turning joints of beef over charcoal fires both small and ambitious; he saw prentices laying thick slices of what looked like pork on slabs of homemade bread and taking them to the buyers. They looked like runners at an auction. Most of the buyers were farmers like Henry, and it appeared that they also called for food the way people entered a bid at an auctionthey simply raised one of their hands imperiously, the fingers splayed out. Jack watched several of these transactions closely, and in every case the medium of exchange was the jointed sticks . . . but how many knuckles would be enough? he wondered. Not that it mattered. He had to eat, whether the transaction marked him as a stranger or not. He passed a mimeshow, barely giving it a glance although the large audience that had gatheredwomen and children, most of themroared with appreciative laughter and applauded. He moved toward a stall with canvas sides where a big man with tattoos on his slabbed biceps stood on one side of a trench of smouldering charcoal in the earth. An iron spit about seven feet long ran over the charcoal. A sweating, dirty boy stood at each end. Five large roasts were impaled along the length of the spit, and the boys were turning them in unison. Fine meats! the big man was droning. Fine meats! Fiiine meats! Buy my fine meats! Fine meats here! Fine meats right here! In an aside to the boy closest to him Put your back into it, God pound you. Then back to his droning, huckstering cry. A farmer passing with his adolescent daughter raised his hand, and then pointed at the joint of meat second from the left. The boys stopped turning the spit long enough for their boss to hack a slab from the roast and put in on a chunk of bread. One of them ran with it to the farmer, who produced one of the jointed sticks. Watching closely, Jack saw him break off two knuckles of wood and hand them to the boy. As the boy ran back to the stall the customer pocketed his moneystick with the absent but careful gesture of any man repocketing his change, took a gigantic bite of his openfaced sandwich, and handed the rest to his daughter, whose first chomp was almost as enthusiastic as her fathers. Jacks stomach boinged and goinged. He had seen what he had to see . . . he hoped. Fine meats! Fine meats! Fine The big man broke off and looked down at Jack, his beetling brows drawing together over eyes that were small but not entirely stupid. I hear the song your stomach is singing, friend. If you have money, Ill take your trade and bless you to God in my prayers tonight. If you havent, then get your stupid sheeps face out of here and go to the devil. Both boys laughed, although they were obviously tiredthey laughed as if they had no control over the sounds they were making. But the maddening smell of the slowly cooking meat would not let him leave. He held out the shorter of his jointed sticks and pointed to the roast which was second from the left. He didnt speak. It seemed safer not to. The vendor grunted, produced his crude knife from his wide belt again, and cut a sliceit was a smaller slice than the one he had cut the farmer, Jack observed, but his stomach had no business with such matters; it was rumbling crazily in anticipation. The vendor slapped the meat on bread and brought it over himself instead of handing it to either of the boys. He took Jacks moneystick. Instead of two knuckles, he broke off three. His mothers voice, sourly amused, spoke up in his mind Congratulations, JackO . . . youve just been screwed. The vendor was looking at him, grinning around a mouthful of wretched blackish teeth, daring him to say anything, to protest in any way. You just ought to be grateful I only took three knuckles instead of all fourteen of them. I could have, you know. You might as well have a sign hung around your neck, boy I AM A STRANGER HERE, AND ON MY OWN. So tell me, Sheep sFace do you want to make an issue of it? What he wanted didnt matterhe obviously couldnt make an issue of it. But he felt that thin, impotent anger again. Go on, the vendor said, tiring of him. He flapped a big hand in Jacks face. His fingers were scarred, and there was blood under his nails. You got your food. Now get out of here. Jack thought, I could show you a flashlight and youd run like all the devils of hell were after you. Show you an airplane and youd probably go crazy. Youre maybe not as tough as you think, chum. He smiled, perhaps there was something in his smile that the meatvendor didnt like, because he drew away from Jack, his face momentarily uneasy. Then his brows beetled together again. Get out, I said! he roared. Get out, God pound you! And this time Jack went. 2 The meat was delicious. Jack gobbled it and the bread it sat on, and then unselfconsciously licked the juice from his palms as he strolled along. The meat did taste like pork . . . and yet it didnt. It was somehow richer, tangier than pork. Whatever it was, it filled the hole in the middle of him with authority. Jack thought he could take it to school in bag lunches for a thousand years. Now that he had managed to shut his belly upfor a little while, anywayhe was able to look about himself with more interest . . . and although he didnt know it, he had finally begun to blend into the crowd. Now he was only one more rube from the country come to the markettown, walking slowly between the stalls, trying to gawk in every direction at once. Hucksters recognized him, but only as one more potential mark among many. They yelled and beckoned at him, and as he passed by they yelled and beckoned at whoever happened to be behind himman, woman, or child. Jack gaped frankly at the wares scattered all around him, wares both wonderful and strange, and amidst all the others staring at them he ceased to be a stranger himselfperhaps because he had given up his effort to seem blas in a place where no one acted blas. They laughed, they argued, they haggled . . . but no one seemed bored. The markettown reminded him of the Queens pavillion without the air of strained tension and toohectic gaietythere was the same absurdly rich mingle of smells (dominated by roasting meat and animal ordure), the same brightly dressed crowds (although even the most brightly dressed people Jack saw couldnt hold a candle to some of the dandies he had seen inside the pavillion), the same unsettling but somehow exhilarating juxtaposition of the perfectly normal, cheek by jowl with the extravagantly strange. He stopped at a stall where a man was selling carpets with the Queens portrait woven into them. Jack suddenly thought of Hank Scofflers mom and smiled. Hank was one of the kids Jack and Richard Sloat had hung around with in L.A. Mrs. Scoffler had a thing for the most garish decorations Jack had ever seen. And God, wouldnt she have loved these rugs, with the image of Laura DeLoessian, her hair done up in a high, regal coronet of braids, woven into them! Better than her velvet paintings of Alaskan stags or the ceramic diorama of the Last Supper behind the bar in the Scoffler living room. . . . Then the face woven into the rugs seemed to change even as he looked at it. The face of the Queen was gone and it was his mothers face he saw, repeated over and over and over, her eyes too dark, her skin much too white. Homesickness surprised Jack again. It rushed through his mind in a wave and he called out for her in his heartMom! Hey Mom! Jesus, what am I doing here? Mom!!wondering with a lovers longing intensity what she was doing now, right this minute. Sitting at the window, smoking, looking out at the ocean, a book open beside her? Watching TV? At a movie? Sleeping? Dying? Dead? an evil voice added before he could stop it. Dead, Jack? Already dead? Stop it. He felt the burning sting of tears. Why so sad, my little lad? He looked up, startled, and saw the rug salesman looking at him. He was as big as the meatvendor, and his arms were also tattooed, but his smile was open and sunny. There was no meanness in it. That was a big difference. Its nothing, Jack said. If its nothing makes you look like that, you ought to be thinking of something, my son, my son. I looked that bad, did I? Jack asked, smiling a little. He had also grown unselfconscious about his speechat least for the momentand perhaps that was why the rug salesman heard nothing odd or offrhythm in it. Laddie, you looked as if you only had one friend left on this side o the moon and you just saw the Wild White Wolf come out o the north an gobble him down with a silver spoon. Jack smiled a little. The rug salesman turned away and took something from a smaller display to the right of the largest rugit was oval and had a short handle. As he turned it over the sun flashed across itit was a mirror. To Jack it looked small and cheap, the sort of thing you might get for knocking over all three wooden milkbottles in a carnival game. Here, laddie, the rug salesman said. Take a look and see if Im not right. Jack looked into the mirror and gaped, for a moment so stunned he thought his heart must have forgotten to beat. It was him, but he looked like something from Pleasure Island in the Disney version of Pinocchio, where too much poolshooting and cigarsmoking had turned boys into donkeys. His eyes, normally as blue and round as an AngloSaxon heritage could make them, had gone brown and almondshaped. His hair, coarsely matted and falling across the middle of his forehead, had a definite manelike look. He raised one hand to brush it away, and touched only bare skinin the mirror, his fingers seemed to fade right through the hair. He heard the vendor laugh, pleased. Most amazing of all, long jackassears dangled down to below his jawline. As he stared, one of them twitched. He thought suddenly I HAD one of these! And on the heels of that In the Daydreams I had one of these. Back in the regular world it was . . . was . . . He could have been no more than four. In the regular world (he had stopped thinking of it as the real world without even noticing) it had been a great big glass marble with a rosy center. One day while he was playing with it, it had rolled down the cement path in front of their house and before he could catch it, it had fallen down a sewer grate. It had been goneforever, he had thought then, sitting on the curb with his face propped on his dirty hands and weeping. But it wasnt; here was that old toy rediscovered, just as wonderful now as it had been when he was three or four. He grinned, delighted. The image changed and Jack the Jackass became Jack the Cat, his face wise and secret with amusement. His eyes went from donkeybrown to tomcatgreen. Now pert little grayfurred ears cocked alertly where the droopy donkeyears had dangled. Better, the vendor said. Better, my son. I like to see a happy boy. A happy boy is a healthy boy, and a healthy boy finds his way in the world. Book of Good Farming says that, and if it doesnt, it should. I may just scratch it in my copy, if I ever scratch up enough scratch from my pumpkinpatch to buy a copy someday. Want the glass? Yes! Jack cried. Yeah, great! He groped for his sticks. Frugality was forgotten. How much? The vendor frowned and looked around swiftly to see if they were being watched. Put it away, my son. Tuck it down deep, thats the way. You show your scratch, youre apt to lose the batch. Dips abound on marketground. What? Never mind. No charge. Take it. Half of em get broken in the back of my wagon when I drag em back to my store come tenmonth. Mothers bring their little uns over and they try it but they dont buy it. Well, at least you dont deny it, Jack said. The vendor looked at him with some surprise and then they both burst out laughing. A happy boy with a snappy mouth, the vendor said. Come see me when youre older and bolder, my son. Well take your mouth and head south and treble what we peddle. Jack giggled. This guy was better than a rap record by the Sugarhill Gang. Thanks, he said (a large, improbable grin had appeared on the chops of the cat in the mirror). Thanks very much! Thank me to God, the vendor said . . . then, as an afterthought And watch your wad! Jack moved on, tucking the mirrortoy carefully into his jerkin, next to Speedys bottle. And every few minutes he checked to make sure his sticks were still there. He guessed he knew what dips were, after all. 3 Two stalls down from the booth of the rhyming rugvendor, a depravedlooking man with a patch askew over one eye and the smell of strong drink about him was trying to sell a farmer a large rooster. He was telling the farmer that if he bought this rooster and put it in with his hens, the farmer would have nothing but doubleyolkers for the next twelvemonth. Jack, however, had neither eyes for the rooster nor ears for the salesmans pitch. He joined a crowd of children who were staring at the oneeyed mans star attraction. This was a parrot in a large wicker cage. It was almost as tall as the youngest children in the group, and it was as smoothly, darkly green as a Heineken beerbottle. Its eyes were a brilliant gold . . . its four eyes. Like the pony he had seen in the pavillion stables, the parrot had two heads. It gripped its perch with its big yellow feet and looked placidly in two directions at once, its two tufted crowns almost touching. The parrot was talking to itself, to the amusement of the childrenbut even in his amazement Jack noted that, while they were paying close attention to the parrot, they seemed neither stunned nor even very wondering. They werent like kids seeing their first movie, sitting stupefied in their seats and all eyes; they were more like kids getting their regular Saturdaymorning cartoonfix. This was a wonder, yes, but not a wholly new one. And to whom do wonders pall more rapidly than the very young? Bawwwrk! How high is up? EastHead enquired. As low as low, WestHead responded, and the children giggled. Graaak! Whats the great truth of noblemen? EastHead now asked. That a king will be a king all his life, but once a knights enough for any man! WestHead replied pertly. Jack smiled and several of the older children laughed, but the younger ones only looked puzzled. And whats in Mrs. Spratts cupboard? EastHead now posed. A sight no man shall see! WestHead rejoined, and although Jack was mystified, the children went into gales of laughter. The parrot solemnly shifted its talons on its perch and made droppings into the straw below it. And what frightened Alan Destry to death in the night? He saw his wifegrowwwwk!getting out of the bath! The farmer was now walking away and the oneeyed salesman still had charge of the rooster. He rounded furiously on the children. Get out of here! Get out of here before I kick your asses square! The children scattered. Jack went with them, sparing a last bemused look over his shoulder at the wonderful parrot. 4 At another stall he gave up two knuckles of wood for an apple and a dipper of milkthe sweetest, richest milk he had ever tasted. Jack thought that if they had milk like that back at home, Nestls and Hersheys would go bankrupt in a week. He was just finishing the milk when he saw the Henry family moving slowly in his direction. He handed the dipper back to the woman in the stall, who poured the lees thriftily back into the large wooden cask beside her. Jack hurried on, wiping a milk moustache from his upper lip and hoping uneasily that no one who had drunk from the dipper before him had had leprosy or herpes or anything like that. But he somehow didnt think such awful things even existed over here. He walked up the markettowns main thoroughfare, past the mimers, past two fat women selling pots and pans (Territories Tupperware, Jack thought, and grinned), past that wonderful twoheaded parrot (its oneeyed owner was now drinking quite openly from a clay bottle, reeling wildly from one end of his booth to the other, holding the dazedlooking rooster by the neck and yelling truculently at passersbyJack saw the mans scrawny right arm was caked with yellowishwhite guano, and grimaced), past an open area where farmers were gathered. He paused there for a moment, curious. Many of the farmers were smoking clay pipes, and Jack saw several clay bottles, much the same as the one the birdsalesman had been brandishing, go from hand to hand. In a long, grassy field, men were hitching stones behind large shaggy horses with lowered heads and mild, stupid eyes. Jack passed the rugstall. The vendor saw him and raised a hand. Jack raised one in turn and thought of calling Use it, my man, but dont abuse it! He decided he better not. He was suddenly aware that he felt blue. That feeling of strangeness, of being an outsider, had fallen over him again. He reached the crossroads. The way going north and south was little more than a country lane. The Western Road was much wider. Old Travelling Jack, he thought, and tried to smile. He straightened his shoulders and heard Speedys bottle clink lightly against the mirror. Here goes old Travelling Jack along the Territories version of Interstate 90. Feets dont fail me now! He set off again, and soon that great dreaming land swallowed him. 5 About four hours later, in the middle of the afternoon, Jack sat down in the tall grass by the side of the road and watched as a number of menfrom this distance they looked little bigger than bugsclimbed a tall, ricketylooking tower. He had chosen this place to rest and eat his apple because it was here that the Western Road seemed to make its closest approach to that tower. It was still at least three miles away (and perhaps much more than thatthe almost supernatural clarity of the air made distances extremely hard to judge), but it had been in Jacks view for an hour or more. Jack ate his apple, rested his tired feet, and wondered what that tower could be, standing out there all by itself in a field of rolling grass. And, of course, he wondered why those men should be climbing it. The wind had blown quite steadily ever since he had left the markettown, and the tower was downwind of Jack, but whenever it died away for a minute, Jack could hear them calling to each other . . . and laughing. There was a lot of laughing going on. Some five miles west of the market, Jack had walked through a villageif your definition of a village stretched to cover five tiny houses and one store that had obviously been closed for a long time. Those had been the last human habitations he had seen between then and now. Just before glimpsing the tower, he had been wondering if he had already come to the Outposts without even knowing it. He remembered well enough what Captain Farren had said Beyond the Outposts the Western Road goes into nowhere . . . or into hell. Ive heard it said that God Himself never ventures beyond the Outposts. . . . Jack shivered a little. But he didnt really believe he had come so far. Certainly there was none of the steadily deepening unease he had been feeling before he floundered into the living trees in his effort to get away from Morgans diligence . . . the living trees which now seemed like a hideous prologue to all the time he had spent in Oatley. Indeed, the good emotions he had felt from the time he woke up warm and rested inside the haystack until the time Henry the farmer had invited him to jump down from his wagon had now resurfaced that feeling that the Territories, in spite of whatever evil they might harbor, were fundamentally good, and that he could be a part of this place anytime he wanted . . . that he was really no Stranger at all. He had come to realize that he was part of the Territories for long periods of time. A strange thought had come to him as he swung easily along the Western Road, a thought which came half in English and half in whatever the Territories language was When Im having a dream, the only time I really KNOW its a dream is when Im starting to wake up. If Im dreaming and just wake up all at onceif the alarm clock goes off, or somethingthen Im the most surprised guy alive. At first its the waking that seems like a dream. And Im no stranger over here when the dream gets deepis that what I mean? No, but its getting close. I bet my dad dreamed deep a lot. And Ill bet Uncle Morgan almost never does. He had decided he would take a swig out of Speedys bottle and flip back the first time he saw anything that might be dangerous . . . even if he saw anything scary. Otherwise he would walk all day over here before returning to New York. In fact, he might have been tempted to spend the night in the Territories, if hed had anything to eat beyond the one apple. But he didnt, and along the wide, deserted dirt track of the Western Road there was not a 7Eleven or a StopnGo in sight. The old trees which had surrounded the crossroads and the markettown had given way to open grassland on either side once Jack got past the final small settlement. He began to feel that he was walking along an endless causeway which crossed the middle of a limitless ocean. He travelled the Western Road alone that day under a sky that was bright and sunny but cool (late September now, of course its cool, he thought, except the word which came to mind was not September but a Territories word which really did translate better as ninemonth). No pedestrians passed him, no wagons either loaded or empty. The wind blew pretty steadily, sighing through the ocean of grasses with a low sound that was both autumnal and lonely. Great ripples ran across the grasses before that wind. If asked How do you feel, Jack?, the boy would have responded Pretty good, thanks. Cheerful. Cheerful is the word which would have come into his mind as he hiked through those empty grasslands; rapture was a word he associated most easily with the pop hit of the same name by the rock group Blondie. And he would have been astounded if told he had wept several times as he stood watching those great ripples chase each other toward the horizon, drinking in a sight that only a very few American children of his time had ever seenhuge empty tracts of land under a blue sky of dizzying width and breadth and, yes, even depth. It was a sky unmarked by either jet contrails across its dome or smutty bands of smog at any of its lower edges. Jack was having an experience of remarkable sensory impact, seeing and hearing and smelling things which were brandnew to him, while other sensory input to which he had grown utterly accustomed was missing for the first time. In many ways he was a remarkably sophisticated childbrought up in a Los Angeles family where his father had been an agent and his mother a movie actress, it would have been odder if he had been naivebut he was still just a child, sophisticated or not, and that was undeniably his gain . . . at least in a situation such as this. That lonely days journey across the grasslands would surely have produced sensory overload, perhaps even a pervasive sense of madness and hallucination, in an adult. An adult would have been scrabbling for Speedys bottleprobably with fingers too shaky to grasp it very successfullyan hour west of the markettown, maybe less. In Jacks case, the wallop passed almost completely through his conscious mind and into his subconscious. So when he blissed out entirely and began to weep, he was really unaware of the tears (except as a momentary doubling of vision which he attributed to sweat) and thought only Jeez, I feel good . . . it should feel spooky out here with no one around, but it doesnt. That was how Jack came to think of his rapture as no more than a good, cheerful feeling as he walked alone up the Western Road with his shadow gradually growing longer behind him. It did not occur to him that part of his emotional radiance might stem from the fact that hardly less than twelve hours before he had been a prisoner of Updikes Oatley Tap (the bloodblisters from the last keg to land on his fingers were still fresh); that hardly less than twelve hours ago he had escapedbarely!some sort of murdering beast that he had begun to think of as a weregoat; that for the first time in his life he was on a wide, open road that was utterly deserted except for him; there was not a CocaCola sign anywhere in view, or a Budweiser billboard showing the WorldFamous Clydesdales; no ubiquitous wires ran beside the road on either side or crisscrossed above it, as had been the case on every road Jack Sawyer had ever travelled in his entire life; there was not so much as even the distant rolling sound of an airplane, let alone the rolling thunder of the 747s on their final approaches to LAX, or the F111s that were always blasting off from the Portsmouth Naval Air Station and then cracking the air over the Alhambra like Osmonds whip as they headed out over the Atlantic; there was only the sound of his feet on the road and the clean ebb and flow of his own respiration. Jeez, I feel good, Jack thought, wiping absently at his eyes, and defined it all as cheerful. 6 Now there was this tower to look at and wonder about. Boy, youd never get me up on that thing, Jack thought. He had gnawed the apple right down to the core, and without thinking about what he was doing or even taking his eyes off the tower, he dug a hole in the tough, springy earth with his fingers and buried the applecore in it. The tower seemed made of barnboards, and Jack guessed it had to be at least five hundred feet high. It appeared to be a big hollow square, the boards rising on all sides in X after X. There was a platform on top, and Jack, squinting, could see a number of men strolling around up there. Wind pushed by him in a gentle gust as he sat at the side of the road, his knees against his chest and his arms wrapped around them. Another of those grassy ripples ran away in the direction of the tower. Jack imagined the way that rickety thing must be swaying and felt his stomach turn over. NEVER get me up there, he thought, not for a million bucks. And then the thing he had been afraid might happen since the moment he had observed that there were men on the tower now did happen one of them fell. Jack came to his feet. His face wore the dismayed, slackjawed expression of anyone who has ever been present at a circus performance where some dangerous trick has gone wrongthe tumbler who falls badly and lies in a huddled heap, the aerialist who misses her grip and bounces off the net with a thud, the human pyramid that unexpectedly collapses, spilling bodies into a heap. Oh shit, oh cripes, oh Jacks eyes suddenly widened. For a moment his jaw sagged even fartheruntil it was almost lying on his breastbone, in factand then it came up and his mouth spread in a dazed, unbelieving grin. The man hadnt fallen from the tower, nor had he been blown off it. There were tonguelike protrusions on two sides of the platformthey looked like diving boardsand the man had simply walked out to the end of one of these and jumped off. Halfway down something began to unfurla parachute, Jack thought, but it would never have time to open. Only it hadnt been a parachute. It was wings. The mans fall slowed and then stopped completely while he was still some fifty feet above the high fieldgrass. Then it reversed itself. The man was now flying upward and outward, the wings going up so high they almost touchedlike the crowns on the heads of that Henny Youngman parrotand then driving downward again with immense power, like the arms of a swimmer in a finishing sprint. Oh wow, Jack thought, driven back to the dumbest clich he knew by his total, utter amazement. This topped everything; this was an utter pisser. Oh wow, look at that, oh wow. Now a second man leaped from the diving board at the top of the tower; now a third; now a fourth. In less than five minutes there must have been fifty men in the air, flying complicated but discernible patterns out from the tower, describe a figureeight, back over the tower and out to the other side, another figureeight, back to the tower, alight on the platform, do it all again. They spun and danced and crisscrossed in the air. Jack began to laugh with delight. It was a little like watching the water ballets in those corny old Esther Williams movies. Those swimmersEsther Williams herself most of all, of coursealways made it look easy, as if you yourself could dip and swirl like that, or as if you and a few of your friends could easily come off the opposite sides of the diving board in timed choreography, making a kind of human fountain. But there was a difference. The men flying out there did not give that sense of effortlessness; they seemed to be expending prodigious amounts of energy to stay in the air, and Jack felt with sudden certainty that it hurt, the way some of the calisthenics in phys edleglifts, or halfway situps, for instancehurt. No pain, no gain! Coach would roar if someone had the nerve to complain. And now something else occurred to himthe time his mother had taken him with her to see her friend Myrna, who was a real ballet dancer, practicing in the loft of a dance studio on lower Wilshire Boulevard. Myrna was part of a ballet troupe and Jack had seen her and the other dancers performhis mother often made him go with her and it was mostly boring stuff, like church or Sunrise Semester on TV. But he had never seen Myrna in practice . . . never that close up. He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stage, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes, and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floortoceiling windows and no musiconly the choreographer rhythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise; only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it was, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks. Except for the choreographers clapping and angry, hectoring shouts, the only sounds were the thrupthud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living; they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressionsall that exhausted concentration, all that pain . . . but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it had scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable. What kind of person could get off by subjecting himself or herself to such steady, throbbing, excruciating pain? And pain that he was seeing here, he thought. Were they actual winged men, like the birdpeople in the old Flash Gordon serials, or were the wings more in the Icarus and Daedalus line, something that you strapped on? Jack found that it didnt really matter . . . at least, not to him. Joy. They live in a mystery, these people live in a mystery. Its joy that holds them up. That was what mattered. It was joy that held them up, no matter if the wings grew out of their backs or were somehow held on with buckles and clamps. Because what he saw, even from this distance, was the same sort of effort he had seen in the loft on lower Wilshire that day. All that profligate investment of energy to effect a splendid, momentary reversal of natural law.


That such a reversal should demand so much and last such a short time was terrible; that people would go for it anyway was both terrible and wonderful. And its all just a game, he thought and suddenly felt sure of it. A game, or maybe not even thatmaybe it was only practice for a game, the way that all the sweat and trembling exhaustion in the Wilshire loft that day had just been practice. Practice for a show that only a few people would probably care to attend and which would probably close quickly. Joy, he thought again, standing now, his face turned up to look at the flying men in the distance, the wind spilling his hair across his forehead. His time of innocence was fast approaching its end (and, if pressed, even Jack would have reluctantly agreed that he felt such an end approachinga boy couldnt go on the road for long, couldnt go through many experiences such as the one he had gone through in Oatley, and expect to remain an innocent), but in those moments as he stood looking into the sky, innocence seemed to surrounded him, like the young fisherman during his brief moment of epiphany in the Elizabeth Bishop poem, everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow. Joydamn, but thats a cheerful little word. Feeling better than he had since all of this beganand only God knew just how long ago that had beenJack set off along the Western Road again, his step light, his face wreathed in that same silly, splendid grin. Every now and then he looked back over his shoulder, and he was able to see the fliers for a very long time. The Territories air was so clear it almost seemed to magnify. And even after he could no longer see them, that feeling of joy remained, like a rainbow inside his head. 7 When the sun began to go down, Jack realized he was putting off his return to the other worldto the American Territoriesand not just because of how terrible the magic juice tasted, either. He was putting it off because he didnt want to leave here. A streamlet had flowed out of the grasslands (where small groves of trees had again begun to appearbillowy trees with oddly flat tops, like eucalyptus trees) and had hooked a right so that it flowed along beside the road. Farther off, to the right and ahead, was a huge body of water. It was so huge, in fact, that until the last hour or so Jack had thought it was a patch of sky that somehow had a slightly bluer color than the rest. But it wasnt sky; it was a lake. A great lake, he thought, smiling at the pun. He guessed that in the other world that would be Lake Ontario. He felt good. He was headed in the right directionmaybe a little too far north, but he had no doubt that the Western Road would bend away from that direction soon enough. That feeling of almost manic joywhat he had defined as cheerfulnesshad mellowed to a lovely sort of calm serenity, a feeling that seemed as clear as the Territories air. Only one thing marred his good feeling, and that was the memory (six, is six, Jack was six) of Jerry Bledsoe. Why had his mind given him such a hard time about coughing that memory up? Nonot the memory . . . the two memories. First me and Richard hearing Mrs. Feeny telling her sister that the electricity came out and cooked him, that it melted his glasses all over his nose, that she heard Mr. Sloat talking on the phone and he said so . . . and then being behind the couch, not really meaning to snoop or eavesdrop, and hearing my dad say Everything has consequences, and some of those consequences might be on the uncomfortable side. And something surely made Jerry Bledsoe uncomfortable, didnt it? When your glasses end up melted all over your nose, Id say youd been through something mildly uncomfortable, yes. . . . Jack stopped. Stopped dead. What are you trying to say? You know what Im trying to say, Jack. Your father was gone that dayhe and Morgan both. They were over here. Where, over here? I think they were at the same spot over here where their building is in California, over in the American Territories. And they did something, or one of them did. Maybe something big, maybe no more than tossing a rock . . . or burying an apple core in the dirt. And it somehow . . . it echoed over there. It echoed over there and it killed Jerry Bledsoe. Jack shivered. Oh yes, he supposed he knew why it had taken his mind so long to cough up the memorythe toy taxi, the murmur of the mens voices, Dexter Gordon blowing his horn. It hadnt wanted to cough it up. Because (who plays those changes daddy) it suggested that just by being over here he could be doing something terrible in the other world. Starting World War III? No, probably not. He hadnt assassinated any kings lately, young or old. But how much had it taken to set up the echo which had fried Jerry Bledsoe? Had Uncle Morgan shot Jerrys Twinner (if Jerry had had one)? Tried to sell some Territories bigwig on the concept of electricity? Or had it been just some little thing . . . something no more earthshattering than buying a chunk of meat in a rural markettown? Who played those changes? What played those changes? A nice flood, a sweet fire. Suddenly Jacks mouth was as dry as salt. He crossed to the little stream by the side of the road, dropped to his knees, and put a hand down to scoop up water. His hand froze suddenly. The smoothrunning stream had taken on the colors of the coming sunset . . . but these colors suddenly suffused with red, so that it seemed to be a stream of blood rather than water running beside the road. Then it went black. A moment later it had become transparent and Jack saw A little mewling sound escaped him as he saw Morgans diligence roaring along the Western Road, pulled by its foaming bakers dozen of blackplumed horses. Jack saw with almost swooning terror that the driver sitting up high in the peakseat, his booted feet on the splashboard and a ceaselessly cracking whip in one hand, was Elroy. But it was not a hand at all that held that whip. It was some sort of hoof. Elroy was driving that nightmare coach, Elroy grinning with a mouth that was filled with dead fangs, Elroy who just couldnt wait to find Jack Sawyer again and split open Jack Sawyers belly and pull out Jack Sawyers intestines. Jack knelt before the stream, eyes bulging, mouth quivering with dismay and horror. He had seen one final thing in this vision, not a large thing, no, but by implication it was the most frightful thing of all the eyes of the horses seemed to glow. They seemed to glow because they were full of lightfull of the sunset. The diligence was travelling west along this same road . . . and it was after him. Crawling, not sure he could stand even if he had to, Jack retreated from the stream and lurched clumsily out into the road. He fell flat in the dust, Speedys bottle and the mirror the rug salesman had given him digging into his guts. He turned his head sideways so that his right cheek and ear were pressed tightly against the surface of the Western Road. He could feel the steady rumble in the hard, dry earth. It was distant . . . but coming closer. Elroy up on top . . . Morgan inside. Morgan Sloat? Morgan of Orris? Didnt matter. Both were one. He broke the hypnotic effect of that rumbling in the earth with an effort and got up again. He took Speedys bottlethe same over here in the Territories as in the U.S.A.out of his jerkin and pulled as much of the mossplug out of the neck as he could, never minding the shower of particles into the little bit of liquid remainingno more than a couple of inches now. He looked nervously to his left, as if expecting to see the black diligence appear at the horizon, the sunsetfilled eyes of the horses glowing like weird lanterns. Of course he saw nothing. Horizons were closer over here in the Territories, as he had already noticed, and sounds travelled farther. Morgans diligence had to be ten miles to the east, maybe as much as twenty. Still right on top of me, Jack thought, and raised the bottle to his lips. A bare second before he drank from it, his mind shouted, Hey, wait a minute! Wait a minute, dummy, you want to get killed? He would look cute, wouldnt he, standing in the middle of the Western Road and then flipping back into the other world in the middle of some road over there, maybe getting run down by a highballing semi or a UPS truck. Jack shambled over to the side of the road . . . and then walked ten or twenty paces into the thighhigh grass for good measure. He took one final deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of this place, groping for that feeling of serenity . . . that feeling of rainbow. Got to try and remember how that felt, he thought. I may need it . . . and I may not get back here for a long time. He looked out at the grasslands, darkening now as night stole over them from the east. The wind gusted, chilly now but still fragrant, tossing his hairit was getting shaggy nowas it tossed the grass. You ready, JackO? Jack closed his eyes and steeled himself against the awful taste and the vomiting that was apt to follow. Banzai, he whispered, and drank. 14 Buddy Parkins 1 He vomited up a thin purple drool, his face only inches from the grass covering the long slope down to a fourlane highway; shook his head and rocked backward onto his knees, so that only his back was exposed to the heavy gray sky. The world, this world, stank. Jack pushed himself backward, away from the threads of puke settling over the blades of grass, and the stench altered but did not diminish. Gasoline, other nameless poisons floated in the air; and the air itself stank of exhaustion, fatigueeven the noises roaring up from the highway punished this dying air. The back end of a roadsign reared like a gigantic television screen over his head. Jack wobbled to his feet. Far down the other side of the highway glinted an endless body of water only slightly less gray than the sky. A sort of malignant luminescence darted across the surface. From here, too, rose an odor of metal filings and tired breath. Lake Ontario and the snug little city down there might be Olcott or Kendall. Hed gone miles out of his waylost a hundred miles or more and just about four and a half days. Jack stepped under the sign, hoping it was no worse than that. He looked up at the black letters. Wiped his mouth. ANGOLA. Angola? Where was that? He peered down at the smoky little city through the already nearly tolerable air. And Rand McNally, that invaluable companion, told him that the acres of water way down there were Lake Erieinstead of losing days of travel time, he had gained them. But before the boy could decide that hed be smarter after all if he jumped back into the Territories as soon as he thought it might be safewhich is to say, as soon as Morgans diligence had roared long past the place he had beenbefore he could do that, before he could even begin to think about doing that, he had to go down into the smokey little city of Angola and see if this time Jack Sawyer, JackO, had played any of those changes, Daddy. He began to make his way down the slope, a twelveyearold boy in jeans and a plaid shirt, tall for his age, already beginning to look uncaredfor, with suddenly too much worry in his face. Halfway down the long slope, he realized that he was thinking in English again. 2 Many days later, and a long way west the man, Buddy Parkins by name, who, just out of Cambridge, Ohio, on U.S. 40, had picked up a tall boy calling himself Lewis Farren, would have recognized that look of worrythis kid Lewis looked like worry was about to sink into his face for good. Lighten up, son, for your own sake if no one elses; Buddy wanted to tell the boy. But the boy had troubles enough for ten, according to his story. Mother sick, father dead, sent off to some schoolteacher aunt in Buckeye Lake . . . Lewis Farren had plenty to trouble him. He looked as though he had not seen as much as five dollars all together since the previous Christmas. Still . . . Buddy thought that somewhere along the line this Farren kid was jiving him. For one thing, he smelled like farm, not town. Buddy Parkins and his brothers ran three hundred acres not far from Amanda, about thirty miles southeast of Columbus, and Buddy knew that he could not be wrong about this. This boy smelled like Cambridge, and Cambridge was country. Buddy had grown up with the smell of farmland and barnyard, of manure and growing corn and pea vineries, and the unwashed clothes of this boy beside him had absorbed all these familiar odors. And there were the clothes themselves. Mrs. Farren must have been awful sick, Buddy thought, if she sent her boy off down the road in ripped jeans so stiff with dirt the wrinkles seemed bronzed. And the shoes! Lewis Farrens sneakers were about to fall off his feet, the laces all spliced together and the fabric split or worn through in a couple of places on each shoe. So they got yore daddys car, did they, Lewis? Buddy asked. Just like I said, thats rightthe lousy cowards came out after midnight and just stole it right out of the garage. I dont think they should be allowed to do that. Not from people who work hard and really are going to start making their payments as soon as they can. I mean, do you? You dont, do you? The boys honest, sunburned face was turned toward him as if this were the most serious question since the Nixon Pardon or maybe the Bay of Pigs, and all Buddys instincts were to agreehe would be inclined to agree with any generally goodhearted opinion uttered by a boy so redolent of farm work. I guess theres two sides to everything when you come down to it, Buddy Parkins said, not very happily. The boy blinked, and then turned away to face forward again. Again Buddy felt his anxiety, the cloud of worry that seemed to hang over the boy, and was almost sorry he had not given Lewis Farren the agreement he seemed to need. I suppose yore aunts in the grade school there in Buckeye Lake, Buddy said, at least in part hoping to lighten the boys misery. Point to the future, not the past. Yes, sir, thats right. She teaches in the grade school. Helen Vaughan. His expression did not change. But Buddy had heard it againhe didnt consider himself any Henry Higgins, the professor guy in that musical, but he knew for certain sure that young Lewis Farren didnt talk like anyone who had been raised in Ohio. The kids voice was all wrong, too pushedtogether and full of the wrong ups and downs. It wasnt an Ohio voice at all. It especially was not a rural Ohioans voice. It was an accent. Or was it possible that some boy from Cambridge, Ohio, could learn to talk like that? Whatever his crazy reason might be? Buddy supposed it was. On the other hand, the newspaper this Lewis Farren had never once unclamped from beneath his left elbow seemed to validate Buddy Parkinss deepest and worst suspicion, that his fragrant young companion was a runaway and his every word a lie. The name of the paper, visible to Buddy with only the slightest tilt of his head, was The Angola Herald. There was that Angola in Africa that a lot of Englishmen had rushed off to as mercenaries, and there was Angola, New Yorkright up there on Lake Erie. Hed seen pictures of it on the news not long ago, but could not quite remember why. Id like to ask you a question, Lewis, he said, and cleared his throat. Yes? the boy said. How come a boy from a nice little burg on U.S. Forty is carrying around a paper from Angola, New York? Which is one hell of a long way away. Im just curious, son. The boy looked down at the paper flattened under his arm and hugged it even closer to him, as if he were afraid it might squirm away. Oh, he said. I found it. Oh, hell, Buddy said. Yes, sir. It was on a bench at the bus station back home. You went to the bus station this morning? Right before I decided to save the money and hitch. Mr. Parkins, if you can get me to the turnoff at Zanesville, Ill only have a short ride left. Could probably get to my aunts house before dinner. Could be, Buddy said, and drove in an uncomfortable silence for several miles. Finally he could bear it no longer, and he said, very quietly and while looking straight ahead, Son, are you running away from home? Lewis Farren astonished him by smilingnot grinning and not faking it, but actually smiling. He thought the whole notion of running away from home was funny. It tickled him. The boy glanced at him a fraction of a second after Buddy had looked sideways, and their eyes met. For a second, for two seconds, three . . . for however long that moment lasted, Buddy Parkins saw that this unwashed boy sitting beside him was beautiful. He would have thought himself incapable of using that word to describe any male human being above the age of nine months, but underneath the roadgrime this Lewis Farren was beautiful. His sense of humor had momentarily murdered his worries, and what shone out of him at Buddywho was fiftytwo years old and had three teenage sonswas a kind of straightforward goodness that had only been dented by a host of unusual experiences. This Lewis Farren, twelve years old by his own account, had somehow gone farther and seen more than Buddy Parkins, and what he had seen and done had made him beautiful. No, Im not a runaway, Mr. Parkins, the boy said. Then he blinked, and his eyes went inward again and lost their brightness, their light, and the boy slumped back again against his seat. He pulled up a knee, rested it on the dashboard, and snugged the newspaper up under his bicep. No, I guess not, Buddy Parkins said, snapping his eyes back to the highway. He felt relieved, though he was not quite sure why. I guess yore not a runaway, Lewis. Yore something, though. The boy did not respond. Been workin on a farm, havent you? Lewis looked up at him, surprised. I did, yeah. The past three days. Two dollars an hour. And yore mommy didnt even take the time out from bein sick to wash yore clothes before she sent you to her sister, is that right? Buddy thought. But what he said was Lewis, Id like you to think about coming home with me. Im not saying yore on the run or anything, but if yore from anywhere around Cambridge Ill eat this beatup old car, tires and all, and I got three boys myself and the youngest one, Billy, hes only about three years oldern you, and we know how to feed boys around my house. You can stay about as long as you like, depending on how many questions you want to answer. Cuz Ill be asking em, at least after the first time we break bread together. He rubbed one palm over his gray crewcut and glanced across the seat. Lewis Farren was looking more like a boy and less like a revelation. Youll be welcome, son. Smiling, the boy said, Thats really nice of you, Mr. Parkins, but I cant. I have to go see my, ah, aunt in . . . Buckeye Lake, Buddy supplied. The boy swallowed and looked forward again. Ill give you help, if you want help, Buddy repeated. Lewis patted his forearm, sunburned and thick. This ride is a big help, honest. Ten nearly silent minutes later he was watching the boys forlorn figure trudge down the exit ramp outside Zanesville. Emmie would probably have brained him if hed come home with a strange dirty boy to feed, but once shed seen him and talked to him, Emmie would have brought out the good glasses and the plates her mother had given her. Buddy Parkins didnt believe that there was any woman named Helen Vaughan in Buckeye Lake, and he wasnt so sure this mysterious Lewis Farren even had a motherthe boy seemed such an orphan, off on a vast errand. Buddy watched until the boy was taken by the curve of the offramp, and he was staring out at space and the enormous yellowandpurple sign of a shopping mall. For a second he thought of jumping out of the car and running after the kid, trying to get him back . . . and then he had a moment of recall of a crowded, smokey scene on the sixoclock news. Angola, New York. Some disaster too small to be reported more than once, that was what had happened in Angola; one of those little tragedies the world shovels under a mountain of newsprint. All Buddy could catch, in this short, probably flawed moment of memory, was a picture of girders strewn like giant straws over battered cars, jutting up out of a fuming hole in the grounda hole that might lead down into hell. Buddy Parkins looked once more at the empty place on the road where the boy had been, and then stamped on his clutch and dropped the old car into low. 3 Buddy Parkinss memory was more accurate than he imagined. If he could have seen the first page of the monthold Angola Herald Lewis Farren, that enigmatic boy, had been holding so protectively yet fearfully beneath his arm, these are the words he would have read FREAK EARTHQUAKE KILLS 5 by Herald staff reporter Joseph Gargan Work on the Rainbird Towers, intended to be Angolas tallest and most luxurious condominium development and still six months from completion, was tragically halted yesterday as an unprecedented earth tremor collapsed the structure of the building, burying many construction workers beneath the rubble. Five bodies have been retrieved from the ruins of the proposed condominium, and two other workers have not yet been found but are presumed dead. All seven workers were welders and fitters in the employ of Speiser Construction, and all were on the girders of the buildings top two floors at the time of the incident. Yesterdays tremor was the first earthquake in Angolas recorded history. Armin Van Pelt of New York Universitys Geology Department, contacted today by telephone, described the fatal quake as a seismic bubble. Representatives of the State Safety Commission are continuing their examinations of the site, as is a team of . . . The dead men were Robert Heidel, twentythree; Thomas Thielke, thirtyfour; Jerome Wild, fortyeight; Michael Hagen, twentynine; and Bruce Davey, thirtynine. The two men still missing were Arnold Schulkamp, fiftyfour, and Theodore Rasmussen, fortythree. Jack no longer had to look at the newspapers front page to remember their names. The first earthquake in the history of Angola, New York, had occurred on the day he had flipped away from the Western Road and landed on the towns border. Part of Jack Sawyer wished that he could have gone home with big kindly Buddy Parkins, eaten dinner around the table in the kitchen with the Parkins familyboiled beef and deepdish apple pieand then snuggled into the Parkinses guest bed and pulled the homemade quilt up over his head. And not moved, except toward the table, for four or five days. But part of the trouble was that he saw that knottypine kitchen table heaped with crumbly cheese, and on the other side of the table a mousehole was cut into a giant baseboard; and from holes in the jeans of the three Parkins boys protruded thin long tails. Who plays these Jerry Bledsoe changes, Daddy? Heidel, Thielke, Wild, Hagen, Davey; Schulkamp and Rasmussen. Those Jerry changes? He knew who played them. 4 The huge yellowandpurple sign reading BUCKEYE MALL floated ahead of Jack as he came around the final curve of the offramp, drifted past his shoulder and reappeared on his other side, at which point he could finally see that it was erected on a tripod of tall yellow poles in the shoppingcenter parking lot. The mall itself was a futuristic assemblage of ochrecolored buildings that seemed to be windowlessa second later, Jack realized that the mall was covered, and what he was seeing was only the illusion of separate buildings. He put his hand in his pocket and fingered the tight roll of twentythree single dollar bills which was his earthly fortune. In the cool sunlight of an early autumn afternoon, Jack sprinted across the street toward the malls parking lot. If it had not been for his conversation with Buddy Parkins, Jack would very likely have stayed on U.S. 40 and tried to cover another fifty mileshe wanted to get to Illinois, where Richard Sloat was, in the next two or three days. The thought of seeing his friend Richard again had kept him going during the weary days of nonstop work on Elbert Palamountains farm the image of spectacled, seriousfaced Richard Sloat in his room at Thayer School, in Springfield, Illinois, had fueled him as much as Mrs. Palamountains generous meals. Jack still wanted to see Richard, and as soon as he could but Buddy Parkinss inviting him home had somehow unstrung him. He could not just climb into another car and begin all over again on the Story. (In any case, Jack reminded himself, the Story seemed to be losing its potency.) The shopping mall gave him a perfect chance to drop out for an hour or two, especially if there was a movie theater somewhere in thereright now, Jack could have watched the dullest, soppiest Love Story of a movie. And before the movie, were he lucky enough to find a theater, he would be able to take care of two things he had been putting off for at least a week. Jack had seen Buddy Parkins looking at his disintegrating Nikes. Not only were the running shoes falling apart, the soles, once spongy and elastic, had mysteriously become hard as asphalt. On days when he had to walk great distancesor when he had to work standing up all dayhis feet stung as if theyd been burned. The second task, calling his mother, was so loaded with guilt and other fearful emotions that Jack could not quite allow it to become conscious. He did not know if he could keep from weeping, once hed heard his mothers voice. What if she sounded weakwhat if she sounded really sick? Could he really keep going west if Lily hoarsely begged him to come back to New Hampshire? So he could not admit to himself that he was probably going to call his mother. His mind gave him the suddenly very clear image of a bank of pay telephones beneath their hairdryer plastic bubbles, and almost immediately bucked away from itas if Elroy or some other Territories creature could reach right out of the receiver and clamp a hand around his throat. Just then three girls a year or two older than Jack bounced out of the back of a Subaru Brat which had swung recklessly into a parking spot near the malls main entrance. For a second they had the look of models contorted into awkwardly elegant poses of delight and astonishment. When they had adjusted into more conventional postures the girls glanced incuriously at Jack and began to flip their hair expertly back into place. They were leggy in their tight jeans, these confident little princesses of the tenth grade, and when they laughed they put their hands over their mouths in a fashion which suggested that laughter itself was laughable. Jack slowed his walk into a kind of sleepwalkers stroll. One of the princesses glanced at him and muttered something to the brownhaired girl beside her. Im different now, Jack thought Im not like them anymore. The recognition pierced him with loneliness. A thickset blond boy in a blue sleeveless down vest climbed out of the drivers seat and gathered the girls around him by the simple expedient of pretending to ignore them. The boy, who must have been a senior and at the very least in the varsity backfield, glanced once at Jack and then looked appraisingly at the facade of the mall. Timmy? said the tall brownhaired girl. Yeah, yeah, the boy said. I was just wondering what smells like shit out here. He rewarded the girls with a superior little smile. The brownhaired girl looked smirkingly toward Jack, then swung herself across the asphalt with her friends. The three girls followed Timmys arrogant body through the glass doors into the mall. Jack waited until the figures of Timmy and his court, visible through the glass, had shrunk to the size of puppies far down the long mall before he stepped on the plate which opened the doors. Cold predigested air embraced him. Water trickled down over a fountain two stories high set in a wide pool surrounded by benches. Openfronted shops on both levels faced the fountain. Bland Muzak drifted down from the ochre ceiling, as did the peculiar bronzy light; the smell of popcorn, which had struck Jack the moment the glass doors had whooshed shut behind him, emanated from an antique popcorn wagon, painted fireengine red and stationed outside a Waldenbooks to the left of the fountain on the ground level. Jack had seen immediately that there was no movie theater in the Buckeye Mall. Timmy and his leggy princesses were floating up the escalator at the malls other end, making, Jack thought, for a fastfood restaurant called The Captains Table right at the top of the escalator. Jack put his hand in his pants pocket again and touched his roll of bills. Speedys guitarpick and Captain Farrens coin nested at the bottom of the pocket, along with a handful of dimes and quarters. On Jacks level, sandwiched between a Mr. Chips cookie shop and a liquor store advertising NEW LOW PRICES for Hiram Walker bourbon and Inglenook Chablis, a Fayva shoe store drew him toward its long table of running shoes. The clerk at the cash register leaned forward and watched Jack pick over the shoes, clearly suspicious that he might try to steal something. Jack recognized none of the brands on the table. There were no Nikes or Pumas herethey were called Speedster or Bullseye or Zooms, and the laces of each pair were tied together. These were sneakers, not true running shoes. They were good enough, Jack supposed. He bought the cheapest pair the store had in his size, blue canvas with red zigzag stripes down the sides. No brand name was visible anywhere on the shoes. They seemed indistinguishable from most of the other shoes on the table. At the register he counted out six limp onedollar bills and told the clerk that he did not need a bag. Jack sat on one of the benches before the tall fountain and toed off the battered Nikes without bothering to unlace them. When he slipped on the new sneakers, his feet fairly sighed with gratitude. Jack left the bench and dropped his old shoes in a tall black wastebasket with DONT BE A LITTERBUG stencilled on it in white. Beneath that, in smaller letters, the wastebasket read The earth is our only home. Jack began to move aimlessly through the long lower arcade of the mall, searching for the telephones. At the popcorn wagon he parted with fifty cents and was handed a quartsize tub of fresh popcorn glistening with grease. The middleaged man in a bowler hat, a walrus moustache, and sleeve garters who sold him the popcorn told him that the pay phones were around a corner next to 31 Flavors, upstairs. The man gestured vaguely toward the nearest escalator. Scooping the popcorn into his mouth, Jack rode up behind a woman in her twenties and an older woman with hips so wide they nearly covered the entire width of the escalator, both of them in pants suits. If Jack were to flip inside the Buckeye Mallor even a mile or two from itwould the walls shake and the ceiling crumble down, dropping bricks and beams and Muzak speakers and light fixtures down on everybody unlucky enough to be inside? And would the tenthgrade princesses, and even arrogant Timmy, and most of the others, too, wind up with skull fractures and severed limbs and mangled chests and . . . for a second just before he reached the top of the escalator Jack saw giant chunks of plaster and metal girders showering down, heard the terrible cracking of the mezzanine floor, the screams, tooinaudible, they were still printed in the air. Angola. The Rainbird Towers. Jack felt his palms begin to itch and sweat, and he wiped them on his jeans. THIRTYONE FLAVORS, gleamed out a chilly incandescent white light to his left, and when he turned that way he saw a curving hallway on its other side. Shiny brown tiles on the walls and floor; as soon as the curve of the hallway took him out of sight of anyone on the mezzanine level, Jack saw three telephones, which were indeed under transparent plastic bubbles. Across the hall from the telephones were doors to MEN and LADIES.


Beneath the middle bubble, Jack dialed 0, followed by the area code and the number for the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. Billing? asked the operator, and Jack said, This is a collect call for Mrs. Sawyer in fourohseven and fouroheight. From Jack. The hotel operator answered, and Jacks chest tightened. She transferred the call to the suite. The telephone rang once, twice, three times. Then his mother said Jesus, kid, Im glad to hear from you! This absenteemother business is hard on an old girl like me. I kind of miss you when youre not moping around and telling me how to act with waiters. Youre just too classy for most waiters, thats all, Jack said, and thought that he might begin to cry with relief. Are you all right, Jack? Tell me the truth. Im fine, sure, he said. Yeah, Im fine. I just had to make sure that you . . . you know. The phone whispered electronically, a skirl of static that sounded like sand blowing across a beach. Im okay, Lily said. Im great. Im not any worse, anyhow, if thats what youre worried about. I suppose Id like to know where you are. Jack paused, and the static whispered and hissed for a moment. Im in Ohio now. Pretty soon Im going to be able to see Richard. When are you coming home, JackO? I cant say. I wish I could. You cant say. I swear, kid, if your father hadnt called you that silly nameand if youd asked me about this ten minutes earlier or ten minutes later . . . A rising tide of static took her voice, and Jack remembered how shed looked in the tea shop, haggard and feeble, an old woman. When the static receded he asked, Are you having any trouble with Uncle Morgan? Is he bothering you? I sent your Uncle Morgan away from here with a flea in his ear, she said. He was there? He did come? Is he still bothering you? I got rid of the Stoat about two days after you left, baby. Dont waste time worrying about him. Did he say where he was going? Jack asked her, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth the telephone uttered a tortured electronic squeal that seemed to bore right into his head. Jack grimaced and jerked the receiver away from his ear. The awful whining noise of static was so loud that anyone stepping into the corridor would have heard it. MOM! Jack shouted, putting the phone as close to his head as he dared. The squeal of static increased, as if a radio between stations had been turned up to full volume. The line abruptly fell silent. Jack clamped the receiver to his ear and heard only the flat black silence of dead air. Hey, he said, and jiggled the hook. The flat silence in the phone seemed to press up against his ear. Just as abruptly, and as if his jiggling the hook had caused it, the dial tonean oasis of sanity, of regularity, nowresumed. Jack jammed his right hand in his pocket, looking for another coin. He was holding the receiver, awkwardly, in his left hand as he dug in his pocket; he froze when he heard the dial tone suddenly slot off into outer space. Morgan Sloats voice spoke to him as clearly as if good old Uncle Morgan were standing at the next telephone. Get your ass back home, Jack. Sloats voice carved the air like a scalpel. You just get your ass back home before we have to take you back ourselves. Wait, Jack said, as if he were begging for time in fact, he was too terrified to know quite what he was saying. Cant wait any longer, little pal. Youre a murderer now. Thats right, isnt it? Youre a murderer. So were not able to give you any more chances. You just get your can back to that resort in New Hampshire. Now. Or maybe youll go home in a bag. Jack heard the click of the receiver. He dropped it. The telephone Jack had used shuddered forward, then sagged off the wall. For a second it drooped on a network of wires; then crashed heavily to the floor. The door to the mens room banged open behind Jack, and a voice yelled, Holy SHIT! Jack turned to see a thin crewcut boy of about twenty staring at the telephones. He was wearing a white apron and a bow tie a clerk at one of the shops. I didnt do it, Jack said. It just happened. Holy shit. The crewcut clerk goggled at Jack for a splitsecond, jerked as if to run, and then ran his hands over the crown of his head. Jack backed away down the hall. When he was halfway down the escalator he finally heard the clerk yelling, Mr. Olafson! The phone, Mr. Olafson! Jack fled. Outside, the air was bright, surprisingly humid. Dazed, Jack wandered across the sidewalk. A halfmile away across the parking lot, a blackandwhite police car swung in toward the mall. Jack turned sideways and began to walk down the pavement. Some way ahead, a family of six struggled to get a lawn chair in through the next entrance to the mall. Jack slowed down and watched the husband and wife tilt the long chair diagonally, hindered by the attempts of the smaller children to either sit on the chair or to assist them. At last, nearly in the posture of the flagraisers in the famous photograph of Iwo Jima, the family staggered through the door. The police car lazily circled through the big parking lot. Just past the door where the disorderly family had succeeded in planting their chair, an old black man sat on a wooden crate, cradling a guitar in his lap. As Jack slowly drew nearer, he saw the metal cup beside the mans feet. The mans face was hidden behind big dirty sunglasses and beneath the brim of a stained felt hat. The sleeves of his denim jacket were as wrinkled as an elephants hide. Jack swerved out to the edge of the pavement to give the man all the room he seemed to warrant, and noticed that around the mans neck hung a sign handwritten in big shaky capital letters on discolored white cardboard. A few steps later he could read the letters. BLIND SINCE BIRTH WILL PLAY ANY SONG GOD BLESS YOU He had nearly walked past the man holding the beatup old guitar when he heard him utter, his voice a cracked and juicy whisper, Yeahbob. 15 Snowball Sings 1 Jack swung back toward the black man, his heart hammering in his chest. Speedy? The black man groped for his cup, held it up, shook it. A few coins rattled in the bottom. It is Speedy. Behind those dark glasses, it is Speedy. Jack was sure of it. But a moment later he was just as sure that it wasnt Speedy. Speedy wasnt built square in the shoulders and broad across the chest; Speedys shoulders were rounded, a little slumped over, and his chest consequently had a slightly cavedin look. Mississippi John Hurt, not Ray Charles. But I could tell one way or the other for sure if hed take off those shades. He opened his mouth to speak Speedys name aloud, and suddenly the old man began to play, his wrinkled fingers, as dully dark as old walnut that has been faithfully oiled but never polished, moving with limber speed and grace on both strings and frets. He played well, fingerpicking the melody. And after a moment, Jack recognized the tune. It had been on one of his fathers older records. A Vanguard album called Mississippi John Hurt Today. And although the blind man didnt sing, Jack knew the words O kindly friends, tell me, aint it hard? To see ole Lewis in a new graveyard, The angels laid him away. . . . The blond football player and his three princesses came out of the malls main doors. Each of the princesses had an ice cream cone. Mr. AllAmerica had a chilidog in each hand. They sauntered toward where Jack stood. Jack, whose whole attention was taken up by the old black man, had not even noticed them. He had been transfixed by the idea that it was Speedy, and Speedy had somehow read his mind. How else could it be that this man had begun to play a Mississippi John Hurt composition just as Jack happened to think Speedy looked like that very man? And a song containing his own roadname, as well? The blond football player transferred both chilidogs to his left hand and slapped Jack on the back with his right as hard as he could. Jacks teeth snapped on his own tongue like a beartrap. The pain was sudden and excruciating. You just shake her easy, urinebreath, he said. The princesses giggled and shrieked. Jack stumbled forward and kicked over the blind mans cup. Coins spilled and rolled. The gentle lilt of the blues tune came to a jangling halt. Mr. AllAmerica and the Three Little Princesses were already moving on. Jack stared after them and felt the nowfamiliar impotent hate. This was how it felt to be on your own, just young enough to be at everyones mercy and to be anyones meatanyone from a psychotic like Osmond to a humorless old Lutheran like Elbert Palamountain, whose idea of a pretty fair workday was to slog and squelch through gluey fields for twelve hours during a steady cold downpour of October rain, and to sit boltupright in the cab of his International Harvester truck during lunch hour, eating onion sandwiches and reading from the Book of Job. Jack had no urge to get them, although he had a strange idea that if he wanted to, he couldthat he was gaining some sort of power, almost like an electrical charge. It sometimes seemed to him that other people knew that, toothat it was in their faces when they looked at him. But he didnt want to get them; he only wanted to be left alone. He The blind man was feeling around himself for the spilled money, his pudgy hands moving gently over the pavement, almost seeming to read it. He happened on a dime, set his cup back up again, and dropped the dime in. Plink! Faintly, Jack heard one of the princesses Why do they let him stay there, hes so gross, you know? Even more faintly still Yeah, rilly! Jack got down on his knees and began to help, picking up coins and putting them into the blind mans cup. Down here, close to the old man, he could smell sour sweat, mildew, and some sweet bland smell like corn. Smartly dressed mall shoppers gave them a wide berth. Thankya, thankya, the blind man croaked monotonously. Jack could smell dead chili on his breath. Thankya, blessya, God blessya, thankya. He is Speedy. Hes not Speedy. What finally forced him to speakand this was not really so oddwas remembering just how little of the magic juice he had left. Barely two swallows now. He did not know if, after what had happened in Angola, he could ever bring himself to travel in the Territories again, but he was still determined to save his mothers life, and that meant he might have to. And, whatever the Talisman was, he might have to flip into the other world to get it. Speedy? Blessya, thankya, God blessya, didnt I hear one go over there? He pointed. Speedy! Its Jack! Aint nothin speedy round here, boy, No sir. His hands began to whisperwalk along the concrete in the direction he had just pointed. One of them found a nickel and he dropped it into the cup. His other happened to touch the shoe of a smartly dressed young woman who was passing by. Her pretty, empty face wrinkled in almost painful disgust as she drew away from him. Jack picked the last coin out of the gutter. It was a silver dollara big old cartwheel with Lady Liberty on one side. Tears began to spill out of his eyes. They ran down his dirty face and he wiped them away with an arm that shook. He was crying for Thielke, Wild, Hagen, Davey, and Heidel. For his mother. For Laura DeLoessian. For the carters son lying dead in the road with his pockets turned out. But most of all for himself. He was tired of being on the road. Maybe when you rode it in a Cadillac it was a road of dreams, but when you had to hitch it, riding on your thumb and a story that was just about worn out, when you were at everybodys mercy and anyones meat, it was nothing but a road of trials. Jack felt that he had been tried enough . . . but there was no way to cry it off. If he cried it off, the cancer would take his mother, and Uncle Morgan might well take him. I dont think I can do it, Speedy, he wept. I dont think so, man. Now the blind man groped for Jack instead of the spilled coins. Those gentle, reading fingers found his arm and closed around it. Jack could feel the hard pad of callus in the tip of each finger. He drew Jack to him, into those odors of sweat and heat and old chili. Jack pressed his face against Speedys chest. Hoo, boy. I dont know no Speedy, but it sounds like you puttin an awful lot on him. You I miss my mom, Speedy, Jack wept, and Sloats after me. It was him on the phone inside the mall, him. And thats not the worst thing. The worst thing was in Angola . . . the Rainbird Towers . . . earthquake . . . five men . . . me, I did it, Speedy, I killed those men when I flipped into this world, I killed them just like my dad and Morgan Sloat killed Jerry Bledsoe that time! Now it was out, the worst of it. He had sicked up the stone of guilt that had been in his throat, threatening to choke him, and a storm of weeping seized himbut this time it was relief rather than fear. It was said. It had been confessed. He was a murderer. Hoooeeee! the black man cried. He sounded perversely delighted. He held Jack with one thin, strong arm, rocked him. You tryin to carry you one heavy load, boy. You sure am. Maybe you ought to put some of it down. I killed em, Jack whispered. Thielke, Wild, Hagen, Davey . . . Well, if yo friend Speedy was here, the black man said, whoever he might be, or wherever he might be in this wide old world, he might tell you that you caint carry the world on yo shoulders, son. You caint do that. No one can. Try to carry the world on yo shoulders, why, first its gonna break yo back, and then its gonna break you sperrit. I killed Put a gun to their heads and shot somebodies, didya? No . . . the earthquake . . . I flipped. . . . Dont know nothin bout dat, the black man said. Jack had pulled away from him a bit and was staring up into the black mans seamed face with wondering curiosity, but the black man had turned his head toward the parking lot. If he was blind, then he had picked out the smoother, slightly more powerful beat of the police cars engine from the others as it approached, because he was looking right at it. All I know is you seem to have this idear of moider a little broad. Prolly if some fella dropped dead of a heartattack goin around us as we sit here, youd think you killed him. Oh look, I done moidered that fella on account of where I was sittin, oh woe, oh dooom, oh gloooooom, oh this . . . oh that!  As he spoke this and that, the blind man punctuated it with a quick change from G to C and back to G again. He laughed, pleased with himself. Speedy Nothin speedy round here, the black man reiterated, and then showed yellow teeth in a crooked grin.  Cept maybe how speedy some folks are to put the blame on themselves for things others might have got started. Maybe you runnin, boy, and maybe you bein chased. Gchord. Maybe you be just a little offbase. Cchord, with a nifty little run in the middle that made Jack grin in spite of himself. Might be somebody else gettin on yo case. Back down to G again, and the blind man laid his guitar aside (while, in the police car, the two cops were flipping to see which of them would actually have to touch Old Snowball if he wouldnt get into the back of the cruiser peaceably). Maybe dooom and maybe gloooooom and maybe this and maybe that . . . He laughed again, as if Jacks fears were the funniest thing hed ever heard. But I dont know what could happen if I No one ever knows what could happen if they do anything, do dey? the black man who might or might not be Speedy Parker broke in. No. Dey do not. If you thought about it, youd stay in yo house all day, ascairt to come out! I dont know yo problems, boy. Dont want to know em. Could be crazy, talkin bout earthquakes and all. But bein as how you helped me pick up my money and didnt steal noneI counted every plinketyplink, so I knowIll give you some advice. Some things you caint help. Sometimes people get killed because somebody does somethin . . . but if somebody didnt do that somethin, a whole lot of more people would have got killed. Do you see where Im pushin, son? The dirty sunglasses inclined down toward him. Jack felt a deep, shuddery relief. He saw, all right. The blind man was talking about hard choices. He was suggesting that maybe there was a difference between hard choices and criminal behavior. And that maybe the criminal wasnt here. The criminal might have been the guy who had told him five minutes ago to get his ass home. Could even be, the blind man remarked, hitting a dark Dminor chord on his box, that all things soive the Lord, just like my momma tole me and your momma might have tole you, if she was a Christian lady. Could be we think we doin one thing but are really doin another. Good Book says all things, even those that seem evil, soive the Lord. What you think, boy? I dont know, Jack said honestly. He was all mixed up. He only had to close his eyes and he could see the telephone tearing off the wall, hanging from its wires like a weird puppet. Well, it smells like you lettin it drive you to drink. What? Jack asked, astonished. Then he thought, I thought that Speedy looked like Mississippi John Hurt, and this guy started playing a John Hurt blues . . . and now hes talking about the magic juice. Hes being careful, but I swear thats what hes talking aboutits got to be! Youre a mindreader, Jack said in a low voice. Arent you? Did you learn it in the Territories, Speedy? Dont know nothin bout readin minds, the blind man said, but my lamps have been out fortytwo year come November, and in fortytwo year your nose and ears take up some of the slack. I can smell cheap wine on you, son. Smell it all over you. Its almost like you washed yo hair widdit! Jack felt an odd, dreamy guiltit was the way he always felt when accused of doing something wrong when he was in fact innocentmostly innocent, anyway. He had done no more than touch the almostempty bottle since flipping back into this world. Just touching it filled him with dreadhe had come to feel about it the way a fourteenthcentury European peasant might have felt about a splinter of the One True Cross or the fingerbone of a saint. It was magic, all right. Powerful magic. And sometimes it got people killed. I havent been drinking it, honest, he finally managed. What I started with is almost gone. It . . . I . . . man, I dont even like it! His stomach had begun to clench nervously; just thinking about the magic juice was making him feel nauseated. But I need to get some more. Just in case. More Poiple Jesus? Boy your age? The blind man laughed and made a shooing gesture with one hand. Hell, you dont need dat. No boy needs dat poison to travel with. But Here. Ill sing you a song to cheer you up. Sounds like you could use it. He began to sing, and his singing voice was nothing at all like his speaking voice. It was deep and powerful and thrilling, without the Nigger Jim MyHuckdatsureisgay! cadences of his talk. It was, Jack thought, awed, almost the trained, cultured voice of an opera singer, now amusing itself with a little piece of popular fluff. Jack felt goosebumps rise on his arms and back at that rich, full voice. Along the sidewalk which ran along the dull, ochre flank of the mall, heads turned. When the red, red robin goes bobbobbobbin along, ALONG, therell be no more sobbin when he starts throbbin his old . . . sweet SONG Jack was struck by a sweet and terrible familiarity, a sense that he had heard this before, or something very like it, and as the blind man bridged, grinning his crooked, yellowing smile, Jack realized where the feeling was coming from. He knew what had made all those heads turn, as they would have turned if a unicorn had gone galloping across the malls parking lot. There was a beautiful, alien clarity in the mans voice. It was the clarity of, say, air so pure that you could smell a radish when a man pulled one out of the ground half a mile away. It was a good old Tin Pan Alley song . . . but the voice was pure Territories. Get up . . . get up, you sleepyhead . . . get out . . . get out, get outta bed . . . live, love, laugh and be ha Both guitar and voice came to a sudden halt. Jack, who had been concentrating fiercely on the blind mans face (trying subconsciously to peer right through those dark glasses, perhaps, and see if Speedy Parkers eyes were behind them), now widened his focus and saw two cops standing beside the blind man. You know, I dont hear nothin, the blind guitarist said, almost coyly, but I blieve I smell somethin blue. Goddammit, Snowball, you know youre not supposed to work the mall! one of the cops cried. What did Judge Hallas tell you the last time he had you in chambers? Downtown between Center Street and Mural Street. No place else. Damn, boy, how senile have you got? Your pecker rotted off yet from that whatall your woman gave you before she took off? Christ, I just dont His partner put a hand on his arm and nodded toward Jack in a littlepitchershavebigears gesture. Go tell your mother she wants you, kid, the first cop said curtly. Jack started walking down the sidewalk. He couldnt stay. Even if there was something he could do, he couldnt stay. He was lucky the cops attention had been taken up by the man they called Snowball. If they had given him a second glance, Jack had no doubt he would have been asked to produce his bona fides. New sneakers or not, the rest of him looked used and battered. It doesnt take cops long to get good at spotting roadkids, and Jack was a boy on the road if there ever had been one. He imagined being tossed into the Zanesville pokey while the Zanesville cops, fine upstanding boys in blue who listened to Paul Harvey every day and supported President Reagan, tried to find out whose little boy he was. No, he didnt want the Zanesville cops giving him more than the one passing glance. A motor, throbbing smoothly, coming up behind him. Jack hunched his pack a little higher on his back and looked down at his new sneakers as if they interested him tremendously. From the corners of his eyes he saw the police cruiser slide slowly by. The blind man was in the back seat, the neck of his guitar poking up beside him. As the cruiser swung into one of the outbound lanes, the blind man abruptly turned his head and looked out the back window, looked directly at Jack . . . . . . and although Jack could not see through the dirty dark glasses, he knew perfectly well that Lester Speedy Parker had winked at him. 2 Jack managed to keep further thought at bay until he reached the turnpike ramps again. He stood looking at the signs, which seemed the only clearcut things left in a world (worlds?) where all else was a maddening gray swirl. He felt a dark depression swirling all around him, sinking into him, trying to destroy his resolve. He recognized that homesickness played a part in this depression, but this feeling made his former homesickness seem boyish and callow indeed. He felt utterly adrift, without a single firm thing to hold on to. Standing by the signs, watching the traffic on the turnpike, Jack realized he felt damn near suicidal. For quite a while he had been able to keep himself going with the thought that he would see Richard Sloat soon (and, although he had hardly admitted the thought to himself, the idea that Richard might head west with him had done more than cross Jacks mindafter all, it would not be the first time that a Sawyer and a Sloat had made strange journeys together, would it?), but the hard work at the Palamountain farm and the peculiar happenings at the Buckeye Mall had given even that the false glitter of fools gold. Go home, Jacky, youre beaten, a voice whispered. If you keep on, youre going to end up getting the living shit kicked out of you . . . and next time it may be fifty people that die. Or five hundred. I70 East. I70 West. Abruptly he fished in his pocket for the cointhe coin that was a silver dollar in this world. Let whatever gods there were decide this, once and for all. He was too beaten to do it for himself. His back still smarted where Mr. AllAmerica had whacked him. Come up tails, and he would go down the eastbound ramp and head home. Come up heads, he would go on . . . and there would be no more looking back. He stood in the dust of the soft shoulder and flicked the coin into the chilly October air. It rose, turning over and over, kicking up glints of sun. Jack craned his head to follow its course. A family passing in an old stationwagon stopped squabbling long enough to look at him curiously. The man driving the wagon, a balding C.P.A. who sometimes awoke in the middle of the night fancying that he could feel shooting pains in his chest and down his left arm, had a sudden and absurd series of thoughts Adventure. Danger. A quest of some noble purpose. Dreams of fear and glory. He shook his head, as if to clear it, and glanced at the boy in the wagons rearview mirror just as the kid leaned over to look at something. Christ, the balding C.P.A. thought. Get it out of your head, Larry, you sound like a fucking boys adventure book. Larry shot into traffic, quickly getting the wagon up to seventy, forgetting about the kid in the dirty jeans by the side of the road. If he could get home by three, hed be in good time to watch the middleweight title fight on ESPN. The coin came down. Jack bent over it. It was heads . . . but that was not all. The lady on the coin wasnt Lady Liberty. It was Laura DeLoessian, Queen of the Territories. But God, what a difference here from the pale, still, sleeping face he had glimpsed for a moment in the pavillion, surrounded by anxious nurses in their billowing white wimples! This face was alert and aware, eager and beautiful. It was not a classic beauty; the line of the jaw was not clear enough for that, and the cheekbone which showed in profile was a little soft. Her beauty was in the regal set of her head combined with the clear sense that she was kind as well as capable. And oh it was so like the face of his mother. Jacks eyes blurred with tears and he blinked them hard, not wanting the tears to fall. He had cried enough for one day. He had his answer, and it was not for crying over. When he opened his eyes again, Laura DeLoessian was gone; the woman on the coin was Lady Liberty again. He had his answer all the same. Jack bent over, picked up the coin out of the dust, put it in his pocket, and headed down the westbound ramp of Interstate 70. 3 A day later; white overcast in the air that tasted of chilly rain on its way; the OhioIndiana border not much more than a lick and a promise from here. Here was in a scrub of woods beyond the Lewisburg rest area on I70. Jack was standing concealedhe hopedamong the trees, patiently waiting for the large bald man with the large bald voice to get back into his Chevy Nova and drive away. Jack hoped he would go soon, before it started to rain. He was cold enough without getting wet, and all morning his sinuses had been plugged, his voice foggy. He thought he must finally be getting a cold. The large bald man with the large bald voice had given his name as Emory W. Light. He had picked Jack up around eleven oclock, north of Dayton, and Jack had felt a tired sinking sensation in the pit of his belly almost at once. He had gotten rides with Emory W. Light before. In Vermont Light had called himself Tom Ferguson, and said he was a shoeshop foreman; in Pennsylvania the alias had been Bob Darrent (Almost like that fellow who sang SplishSplash, ahhahahhah), and the job had changed to District High School Superintendent; this time Light said he was President of the First Mercantile Bank of Paradise Falls, in the town of Paradise Falls, Ohio. Ferguson had been lean and dark, Darrent as portly and pink as a freshly tubbed baby, and this Emory W. Light was large and owlish, with eyes like boiled eggs behind his rimless glasses. Yet all of these differences were only superficial, Jack had found. They all listened to the Story with the same breathless interest. They all asked him if he had had any girlfriends back home. Sooner or later he would find a hand (a large bald hand) lying on his thigh, and when he looked at FergusonDarrentLight, he would see an expression of halfmad hope in the eyes (mixed with halfmad guilt) and a stipple of sweat on the upper lip (in the case of Darrent, the sweat had gleamed through a dark moustache like tiny white eyes peering through scant underbrush). Ferguson had asked him if he would like to make ten dollars. Darrent had upped that to twenty. Light, in a large bald voice that nonetheless cracked and quivered through several registers, asked him if he couldnt use fifty dollarshe always kept a fifty in the heel of his left shoe, he said, and hed just love to give it to Master Lewis Farren. There was a place they could go near Randolph. An empty barn. Jack did not make any correlation between the steadily increasing monetary offers from Light in his various incarnations and any changes his adventures might be working on himhe was not introspective by nature and had little interest in selfanalysis. He had learned quickly enough how to deal with fellows like Emory W. Light. His first experience with Light, when Light had been calling himself Tom Ferguson, had taught him that discretion was by far the better part of valor. When Ferguson put his hand on Jacks thigh, Jack had responded automatically out of a California sensibility in which gays had been merely part of the scenery No thanks, mister. Im strictly A.C. He had been groped before, certainlyin movie theaters, mostly, but there had been the mensshop clerk in North Hollywood who had cheerfully offered to blow him in a changing booth (and when Jack told him no thanks, the clerk said, Fine, now try on the blue blazer, okay?). These were annoyances a goodlooking twelveyearold boy in Los Angeles simply learned to put up with, the way a pretty woman learns to put up with being groped occasionally on the subway. You eventually find a way to cope without letting it spoil your whole day. The deliberate passes, such as the one this Ferguson was making, were less of a problem than the sudden gropes from ambush. They could simply be shunted aside. At least in California they could. Eastern gaysespecially out here in the sticksapparently had a different way of dealing with rejection. Ferguson had come to a screeching, sliding halt, leaving forty yards of rubber behind his Pontiac and throwing a cloud of shoulderdust into the air. Who you calling D.C.? he screamed. Who you calling queer? Im not queer! Jesus! Give a kid a fucking ride and he calls you a fucking queer! Jack was looking at him, dazed. Unprepared for the sudden stop, he had thumped his head a damned good one on the padded dash. Ferguson, who had only a moment before been looking at him with melting brown eyes, now looked ready to kill him. Get out! Ferguson yelled. Youre the queer, not me! Youre the queer! Get out, you little queerboy! Get out! Ive got a wife! Ive got kids! Ive probably got bastards scattered all over New England! Im not queer! Youre the queer, not me, SO GET OUT OF MY CAR! More terrified than he had been since his encounter with Osmond, Jack had done just that. Ferguson tore out, spraying him with gravel, still raving. Jack staggered over to a rock wall, sat down, and began to giggle. The giggles became shrieks of laughter, and he decided right then and there that he would have to develop A POLICY, at least until he got out of the boondocks. Any serious problem demands A POLICY, his father had said once. Morgan had agreed vigorously, but Jack decided he shouldnt let that hold him back. His POLICY had worked well enough with Bob Darrent, and he had no reason to believe it wouldnt also work with Emory Light . . . but in the meantime he was cold and his nose was running. He wished Light would head em up and move em out. Standing in the trees, Jack could see him down there, walking back and forth with his hands in his pockets, his large bald head gleaming mellowly under the whiteout sky.