The Talisman

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 Jack’s mind – after 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 fool’s gold.
    Go home, Jacky, you’re beaten , a voice whispered. If you keep on, you’re 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.
    I-70 East.
    I-70 West.
    Abruptly he fished in his pocket for the coin – the 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 All-America 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 station-wagon 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 wagon’s rear-view 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, he’d 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 wasn’t 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.
    Jack’s 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 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 Ohio-Indiana 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 I-70. Jack was standing concealed – he hoped – among 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 o’clock, 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 shoe-shop foreman; in Pennsylvania the alias had been Bob Darrent (‘Almost like that fellow who sang “Splish-Splash”, ah-ha-hah-hah’), and the job had changed to District High School Superintendent; this time Light said he