The Talisman

idea of what he had been planning to say to the custodian, or even if he intended to say anything at all. Speedy gave the roll of black tape another twist around the cord, nodded, took a battered Palmer knife from the flat pocket of his workshirt and sliced the tape off the roll with a flat surgical neatness. Jack would have escaped from here too, if he could – he was intruding on the man’s work, and anyhow, it was crazy to think that Speedy could really help him in any way. What kind of help could he give, an old janitor in an empty amusement park?
    Then Speedy turned his head and registered the boy’s presence with an expression of total and warming welcome – not so much a smile as a deepening of all those heavy lines in his face – and Jack knew that he was at least no intrusion.
    ‘Travellin Jack,’ Speedy said. ‘I was beginnin to get afraid you decided to stay away from me. Just when we got to be friends, too. Good to see you again, son.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘Good to see you, too.’
    Speedy popped the metal knife back into his shirt pocket and lifted his long bony body upright so easily, so athletically, that he seemed weightless. ‘This whole place comin down around my ears,’ he said. ‘I just fix it a little bit at a time, enough so everything works more or less the way it should.’ He stopped in mid-sentence, having had a good look at Jack’s face. ‘Old world’s not so fine right now, seems like. Travellin Jack got bucked up to a load of worries. That the way it is?’
    ‘Yeah, sort of,’ Jack began – he still had no idea of how to begin expressing the things that troubled him. They could not be put into ordinary sentences, for ordinary sentences made everything seem rational. One . . . two . . . three: Jack’s world no longer marched in those straight lines. All he could not say weighed in his chest.
    He looked miserably at the tall thin man before him. Speedy’s hands were thrust deep into his pockets; his thick gray eyebrows pushed toward the deep vertical furrow between them. Speedy’s eyes, so light they were almost no color at all, swung up from the blistered paint of the pier and met Jack’s own – and suddenly Jack felt better again. He did not understand why, but Speedy seemed to be able to communicate emotion directly to him: as if they had not met just a week before, but years ago, and had shared far more than a few words in a deserted arcade.
    ‘Well, that’s enough work for now,’ Speedy said, glancing up in the direction of the Alhambra. ‘Do any more and I just spoil em. Don’t suppose you ever saw my office, did you?’
    Jack shook his head.
    ‘Time for a little refreshment, boy. The time is right .’
    He set off down the pier in his long-legged gait, and Jack trotted after him. As they jumped down the steps of the pier and began going across the scrubby grass and packed brown earth toward the buildings on the far side of the park, Speedy astonished Jack by starting to sing.
    Travellin Jack, ole Travellin Jack,
    Got a far long way to go,
    Longer way to come back.
    It was not exactly singing, Jack thought, but sort of halfway between singing and talking. If it were not for the words, he would have enjoyed listening to Speedy’s rough, confident voice.
    Long long way for that boy to go,
    Longer way to come back.
    Speedy cast an almost twinkling look at him over his shoulder.
    ‘Why do you call me that?’ Jack asked him. ‘Why am I Travelling Jack? Because I’m from California?’
    They had reached the pale blue ticket booth at the entrance to the roller-coaster enclosure, and Speedy thrust his hands back in the pockets of his baggy green workpants, spun on his heel, and propped his shoulders on the little blue enclosure. The efficiency and quickness of his movements had a quality almost theatrical – as if, Jack thought, he had known the boy was going to ask that particular question at that precise moment.
    He say he come from California,
    Don he know he gotta go right back . . .
    sang Speedy, his ponderous sculptured face filled with emotion that seemed almost reluctant to Jack.
    Say he come all that way,
    Poor Travellin Jack gotta go right back . . .
    ‘What?’ Jack said. ‘Go back? I think my mom even sold the house – or she rented it or something. I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to do, Speedy.’
    He was relieved when Speedy did not answer him in his chanting, rhythmic sing-song, but said in a normal voice: ‘Bet you