The Talisman

selling hymn sheets and flowers and Reverend Gardener’s pamphlets, and the other one on duty at the airport. Anyhow, we got thirty days to turn you two scumbags around and make you see how dirty and filthy and diseased your crummy lives were before you came here, and this is where we start, right now exactly.’
    Singer stood up, his face the color of a blazing autumn leaf, and delicately set the tips of his fingers atop his desk. ‘Empty your pockets. Right now.’
    ‘Right here and now,’ Wolf mumbled, as if by rote.
    ‘TURN EM OUT!’ Singer shouted. ‘I WANT TO SEE IT ALL!’
    Bast stepped up beside Wolf. Reverend Gardener, having seen Franky Williams to his car, drifted expressively into Jack’s vicinity.
    ‘Personal possessions tend to tie our boys too much to the past, we’ve found,’ Gardener purred to Jack. ‘Destructive. We find this a very helpful tool.’
    ‘EMPTY YOUR POCKETS!’ Singer bawled, now nearly in a straightforward rage.
    Jack pulled from his pockets the random detritus of his time on the road. A red handkerchief Elbert Palamountain’s wife had given him when she’d seen him wipe his nose on his sleeve, two matchbooks, the few dollars and scattered change that was all of his money – a total of six dollars and forty-two cents – the key to room 407 of the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. He closed his fingers over the three objects he intended to keep. ‘I guess you want my pack, too,’ he said.
    ‘Sure, you sorry little fart,’ Singer ranted, ‘of course we want your foul backpack, but first we want whatever you’re trying to hide. Get it out – right now.’
    Reluctantly Jack took Speedy’s guitar-pick, the croaker marble, and the big wheel of the silver dollar from his pocket and put them into the nest of the handkerchief. ‘They’re just good-luck stuff.’
    Singer snatched up the pick. ‘Hey, what’s this? I mean, what is it?’
    ‘Fingerpick.’
    ‘Yeah, sure.’ Singer turned it over in his fingers, sniffed it. If he had bitten it, Jack would have slugged him in the face. ‘Fingerpick. You tellin me the truth?’
    ‘A friend of mine gave it to me,’ Jack said, and suddenly felt as lonely and adrift as he ever had during these weeks of travelling. He thought of Snowball outside the shopping mall, who had looked at him with Speedy’s eyes, who in some fashion Jack did not understand had actually been Speedy Parker. Whose name he had just adopted for his own.
    ‘Bet he stole it,’ Singer said to no one in particular, and dropped the pick back into the handkerchief beside the coin and the marble. ‘Now the knapsack.’ When Jack had unshouldered the backpack, handed it over, Singer pawed through it for some minutes in growing distaste and frustration. The distaste was caused by the condition of the few clothes Jack had left, the frustration by the reluctance of the pack to yield up any drugs.
    Speedy, where are you now?
    ‘He’s not holding,’ Singer complained. ‘You think we should do a skin search?’
    Gardener shook his head. ‘Let us see what we can learn from Mr Wolf.’
    Bast shouldered up even closer. Singer said, ‘Well?’
    ‘He doesn’t have anything in his pockets,’ Jack said.
    ‘I want those pockets EMPTY! EMPTY!’ Singer yelled. ‘ON THE TABLE!’
    Wolf tucked his chin into his chest and clamped his eyes shut.
    ‘You don’t have anything in your pockets, do you?’ Jack asked.
    Wolf nodded once, very slowly.
    ‘He’s holding! The dummy’s holding!’ Singer crowed. ‘Come on, you big dumb idiot, get the stuff out on the table.’ He clapped his hands sharply together twice. ‘Oh wow, Williams never searched him! Fairchild never did! This is incredible – they’re going to look like such morons.’
    Bast shoved his face up to Wolf’s and snarled, ‘If you don’t empty your pockets onto that table in a hurry, I’m going to tear your face off.’
    Jack softly said, ‘Do it, Wolf.’
    Wolf groaned. Then he removed his balled right hand from its overall pocket. He leaned over the desk, brought his hand forward, and opened his fingers. Three wooden matches and two small water-polished stones, grained and striated and colorful, fell out onto the leather. When his left hand opened, two more pretty little stones rolled alongside the others.
    ‘Pills!’ Singer snatched at them.
    ‘Don’t be an idiot, Sonny,’ Gardener said.
    ‘You made me look like a jerk,’ Singer said in low but vehement tones to Jack as soon as they