The Talisman

go ahead, dummy,’ Heck Bast said, laughing a little. ‘Don’t listen to him. Go on and try me, if you want. I always like a little warm-up before dinner.’
    Singer glanced at Wolf and said, ‘Leave the dummy alone, Heck. He’s just the body.’ He nodded at Jack. ‘There’s the head . There’s the head we got to change.’ He looked down at Jack, hands on his knees, like an adult bending to pass a pleasant word or two with a very small child. ‘And we will change it, Mr Jack Parker. You can believe it.’
    Deliberately, Jack said, ‘Piss off, you bullying asshole.’
    Singer recoiled as if slapped, a flush rising out of his collar, up his neck, and into his face. With a growl, Heck Bast stepped forward.
    Singer grabbed Bast’s arm. Still looking at Jack, he said, ‘Not now. Later.’
    Jack got to his feet. ‘You want to watch out for me,’ he said quietly to them both, and although Hector Bast only glowered, Sonny Singer looked almost scared. For a moment he seemed to see something in Jack Sawyer’s face that was both strong and forbidding – something that had not been there almost two months ago, when a much younger boy had set the small seafront town of Arcadia Beach to his back and had begun walking west.
    4
    Jack thought that Uncle Tommy might have described dinner – not unkindly – as consisting of American Grange Hall Cuisine. The boys sat at long tables and were served by four of their number, who had changed into clean mess-whites following the confession period.
    Following another prayer, chow was duly brought on. Big glass bowls full of home-baked beans were passed up and down the four tables, steaming platters of cheap red hotdogs, tureens of canned pineapple chunks, lots of milk in plain cartons marked DONATED COMMODITIES and INDIANA STATE DAIRY COMMISSION .
    Wolf ate with grim concentration, his head down, a piece of bread always in one hand to serve as a combination pusher and mopper. As Jack watched, he gobbled five hotdogs and three helpings of the bullet-hard beans. Thinking of the small room with its closed window, Jack wondered if he were going to need a gas-mask tonight. He supposed so – not that he was likely to be issued one. He watched dismally as Wolf slopped a fourth helping of beans onto his plate.
    Following dinner, all the boys rose, formed lines, and cleared the tables. As Jack took his dishes, a Wolf-decimated loaf of bread, and two milk-pitchers out into the kitchen, he kept his eyes wide open. The stark labels on the milk cartons had given him an idea.
    This place wasn’t a prison, and it wasn’t a workhouse. It was probably classed as a boarding school or something, and the law would demand that some sort of state inspectors must keep an eye on it. The kitchen would be a place where the State of Indiana’s eye would fall most often. Bars on the windows upstairs, okay. Bars on the kitchen windows? Jack didn’t think so. They would raise too many questions.
    The kitchen might make a good jumping-off point for an escape attempt, so Jack studied it carefully.
    It looked a lot like the cafeteria kitchen at his school in California. The floor and walls were tiled, the big sinks and counters stainless steel. The cupboards were nearly the size of vegetable bins. An old conveyor-belt dishwasher stood against one wall. Three boys were already operating this hoary antique under the supervision of a man in cook’s whites. The man was narrow, pallid, and possessed of a ratlike little face. An unfiltered cigarette was pasted to his upper lip, and that identified him in Jack’s mind as a possible ally. He doubted if Sunlight Gardener would let any of his own people smoke cigarettes.
    On the wall, he saw a framed certificate which announced that this public kitchen had been rated acceptable under standards set by the State of Indiana and the U.S. Government.
    And no, there were no bars on the frosted-glass windows.
    The ratlike man looked over at Jack, peeled his cigarette off his lower lip, and tossed it into one of the sinks.
    ‘New fish, you and your buddy, huh?’ he asked. ‘Well, you’ll be old fish soon enough. The fish get old real quick here in the Sunlight Home, don’t they, Sonny?’
    He grinned insolently at Sonny Singer. It was quite obvious that Singer did not know how to cope with such a smile; he looked confused and unsure, just a kid again.
    ‘You know you’re not supposed to talk to the boys, Rudolph,’ he said.
    ‘You can just cram it up your