The Talisman

sweeping through him, and tonight when the moon rose he felt sure it would sweep him away.
    Over and over again he reiterated that he didn’t want to hurt Jack, that he would rather kill himself than hurt Jack.
    4
    Daleville was the closest small town. Jack got there shortly after the courthouse clock struck noon, and went into the True Value hardware store. One hand was stuffed into his pants pocket, touching his depleted roll of bills.
    ‘Help you, son?’
    ‘Yes sir,’ Jack said. ‘I want to buy a padlock.’
    ‘Well, step over here and let’s us have a look. We’ve got Yales, and Mosslers, and Lok-Tites, and you name it. What kind of padlock you want?’
    ‘A big one,’ Jack said, looking at the clerk with his shadowed, somehow disquieting eyes. His face was gaunt but still persuasive in its odd beauty.
    ‘A big one,’ the clerk mused. ‘And what would you be wanting it for, might I ask?’
    ‘My dog,’ Jack said steadily. A Story. Always they wanted a Story. He had gotten this one ready on the way in from the shed where they had spent the last two nights. ‘I need it for my dog. I have to lock him up. He bites.’
    5
    The padlock he picked out cost ten dollars, leaving Jack with about ten dollars to his name. It hurt him to spend that much, and he almost went for a cheaper item . . . and then he had a memory of how Wolf had looked the night before, howling at the moon with orange fire spilling from his eyes.
    He paid the ten dollars.
    He stuck out his thumb at every passing car as he hurried back to the shed, but of course none of them stopped. Perhaps he looked too wild-eyed, too frantic. He certainly felt wild-eyed and frantic. The newspaper the hardware store clerk had let him look at promised sunset at six o’clock p.m. on the dot. Moonrise was not listed, but Jack guessed seven, at the latest. It was already one p.m., and he had no idea where he was going to put Wolf for the night.
    You have to lock me up, Jack , Wolf had said. Have to lock me up good. Because if I get out, I’ll hurt anything I can run down and catch hold of. Even you, Jack. Even you. So you have to lock me up and keep me locked up, no matter what I do or what I say. Three days, Jack, until the moon starts to get thin again. Three days . . . even four, if you’re not completely sure.
    Yes, but where? It had to be someplace away from people, so no one would hear Wolf if – when , he amended reluctantly – he began to howl. And it had to be someplace a lot stronger than the shed they had been staying in. If Jack used his fine new ten-dollar padlock on the door of that place, Wolf would bust right out through the back.
    Where?
    He didn’t know, but he knew he had only six hours to find a place . . . maybe less.
    Jack began to hurry along even faster.
    6
    They had passed several empty houses to come this far, had even spent the night in one, and Jack watched all the way back from Daleville for the signs of lack of occupancy: for blank uncovered windows and FOR SALE signs, for grass grown as high as the second porch step and the sense of lifelessness common to empty houses. It was not that he hoped he could lock Wolf into some farmer’s bedroom for the three days of his Change. Wolf would be able to knock down the door of the shed. But one farmhouse had a root cellar; that would have worked.
    A stout oaken door set into a grassy mound like a door in a fairy tale, and behind it a room without walls or ceiling – an underground room, a cave no creature could dig its way out of in less than a month. The cellar would have held Wolf, and the earthen floor and walls would have kept him from injuring himself.
    But the empty farmhouse, and the root cellar, must have been at least thirty or forty miles behind them. They would never make it back there in the time remaining before moonrise. And would Wolf still be willing to run forty miles, especially for the purpose of putting himself in a foodless solitary confinement, so close to the time of his Change?
    Suppose, in fact, that too much time had passed. Suppose that Wolf had come too close to the edge and would refuse any sort of imprisonment? What if that capering, greedy underside of his character had climbed up out of the pit and was beginning to look around this odd new world, wondering where the food was hiding? The big padlock threatening to rip the seams out of Jack’s pocket would be useless.
    He could turn around, Jack realized. He could walk back to Daleville and keep