The Talisman

there and that’s good because you have this distressing habit of going Section Eight, Wolf. ‘Come on.’ He got unsteadily to his feet.
    ‘What’s a movie, Jack?’ Wolf asked. He had been a dreadful problem to Jack, he knew – such a dreadful problem that he now hesitated to protest about anything, or even express unease. But a frightening intuition had come to him: that going to a movie and hitching a ride might be the same thing. Jack called the roaring carts and carriages ‘cars’, and ‘Chevys’, and ‘Jartrans’, and ‘station-wagons’ (these latter, Wolf thought, must be like the coaches in the Territories which carried passengers from one coach-station to the next). Might the bellowing, stinking carriages also be called ‘movies’? It sounded very possible.
    ‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘it’s easier to show you than to tell you. I think you’ll like it. Come on.’
    Jack stumbled coming out of the ditch and went briefly to his knees. ‘Jack, are you okay?’ Wolf asked anxiously.
    Jack nodded. They started across the parking lot, which smelled just as bad as Wolf had known it would.
    6
    Jack had come a good part of the thirty-five miles between Arcanum, Ohio, and Muncie, Indiana, on Wolf’s broad back. Wolf was frightened of cars, terrified of trucks, nauseated by the smells of almost everything, apt to howl and run at sudden loud noises. But he was also almost tireless. As far as that goes, you can strike the ‘almost’ , Jack thought now. So far as I know, he is tireless .
    Jack had moved them away from the Arcanum ramp as fast as he could, forcing his wet, aching legs into a rusty trot. His head had been throbbing like a slick, flexing fist inside his skull, waves of heat and cold rushing through him. Wolf moved easily to his left, his stride so long that he was keeping up with Jack easily by doing no more than a moderately fast walk. Jack knew that he had maybe gotten paranoid about the cops, but the man in the CASE FARM EQUIPMENT hat had looked really scared. And pissed.
    They hadn’t gone even a quarter of a mile when a deep, burning stitch settled into his side and he asked Wolf if he could give him a piggyback for a while.
    ‘Huh?’ Wolf asked.
    ‘You know,’ Jack said, and pantomimed.
    A big grin had overspread Wolf’s face. Here at last was something he understood; here was something he could do .
    ‘You want a horsey back!’ he cried, delighted.
    ‘Yeah, I guess . . .’
    ‘Oh, yeah! Wolf! Here and now! Used to give em to my litter-brothers! Jump up, Jack!’ Wolf bent down, holding his curved hands ready, stirrups for Jack’s thighs.
    ‘Now when I get too heavy, just put me d—’
    Before he could finish, Wolf had swept him up and was running lightly down the road with him into the dark – really running. The cold, rainy air flipped Jack’s hair back from his hot brow.
    ‘Wolf, you’ll wear yourself out!’ Jack shouted.
    ‘Not me! Wolf! Wolf! Runnin here and now!’ For the first time since they had come over, Wolf sounded actually happy. He ran for the next two hours, until they were well west of Arcanum and travelling along a dark, unmarked stretch of two-lane blacktop. Jack saw a deserted barn standing slumped in a shaggy, untended field, and they slept there that night.
    Wolf wanted nothing to do with downtown areas where the traffic was a roaring flood and the stinks rose up to heaven in a noxious cloud, and Jack didn’t want anything to do with them, either. Wolf stuck out too much. But he had forced one stop, at a roadside store just across the Indiana line, near Harrisville. While Wolf waited nervously out by the road, hunkering down, digging at the dirt, getting up, walking around in a stiff little circle, then hunkering again, Jack bought a newspaper and checked the weather page carefully. The next full moon was on October 31st – Halloween, that was fitting enough. Jack turned back to the front page so he could see what day it was today . . . yesterday, that had been now. It had been October 26th.
    7
    Jack pulled open one of the glass doors and stepped inside the lobby of the Town Line Sixplex. He looked around sharply at Wolf, but Wolf looked – for the moment, at least – pretty much okay. Wolf was, in fact, cautiously optimistic . . . at least for the moment. He didn’t like being inside a building, but at least it wasn’t a car. There was a good smell in here – light and sort of tasty. Or would have been, except for a bitter, almost