The Talisman

the shower of particles into the little bit of liquid remaining – no 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 sunset-filled 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. Morgan’s 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, wouldn’t 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 thigh-high 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 hair – it was getting shaggy now – as it tossed the grass.
    You ready, Jack-O?
    Jack closed his eyes and steeled himself against the awful taste and the vomiting that was apt to follow.
    ‘Banzai,’ he whispered, and drank.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BUDDY PARKINS
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    1
    He vomited up a thin purple drool, his face only inches from the grass covering the long slope down to a four-lane 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, fatigue – even 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. He’d gone miles out of his way – lost 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 smokey 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 Erie – instead of losing days of travel time, he had gained them.
    But before the boy could decide that he’d be smarter after all if he jumped back into the Territories as soon as he thought it might be safe – which is to say, as soon as Morgan’s diligence had roared long past the place he had been – before 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, Jack-O, had played any of those changes, Daddy. He began to make his way down the slope, a twelve-year-old boy in jeans and a plaid shirt, tall for his age, already beginning to look uncared-for, 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 worry – this kid Lewis looked like worry was about to sink into his face for good. Lighten up, son, for your own sake if no one else’s , 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