The Talisman

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 distances – or when he had to work standing up all day – his feet stung as if they’d 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 he’d heard his mother’s voice. What if she sounded weak – what 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 it – as if Elroy or some other Territories creature could reach 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 mall’s 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 sleepwalker’s stroll. One of the princesses glanced at him and muttered something to the brownhaired girl beside her.
    I’m different now , Jack thought: I’m not like them anymore . The recognition pierced him with loneliness.
    A thickset blond boy in a blue sleeveless down vest climbed out of the driver’s 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 Timmy’s 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 pre-digested air embraced him.
    Water trickled down over a fountain two stories high set in a wide pool surrounded by benches. Open-fronted 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 fire-engine 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 mall’s other end, making, Jack thought, for a fast-food restaurant called The Captain’s Table right at the top of the escalator. Jack put his hand in his pants pocket again and touched his roll of bills. Speedy’s guitar-pick and Captain Farren’s coin nested at the bottom of the pocket, along with a handful of dimes and quarters.
    On Jack’s 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 here – they were called Speedster or Bullseye or Zooms, and the laces of