The Talisman

It was deep and powerful and thrilling, without the Nigger Jim ‘My-Huck-dat-sure-is- gay !’ 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 bob-bob-bobbin along, ALONG, there’ll 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 mall’s parking lot. There was a beautiful, alien clarity in the man’s 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 man’s face (trying subconsciously to peer right through those dark glasses, perhaps, and see if Speedy Parker’s eyes were behind them), now widened his focus and saw two cops standing beside the blind man.
    ‘You know, I don’t hear nothin,’ the blind guitarist said, almost coyly, ‘but I b’lieve I smell somethin blue.’
    ‘Goddammit, Snowball, you know you’re 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. Noplace 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 don’t—’
    His partner put a hand on his arm and nodded toward Jack in a little-pitchers-have-big-ears gesture.
    ‘Go tell your mother she wants you, kid,’ the first cop said curtly.
    Jack started walking down the sidewalk. He couldn’t stay. Even if there was something he could do, he couldn’t 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 doesn’t take cops long to get good at spotting road-kids, 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 didn’t 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 clear-cut 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