The Talisman

sixty again. They were the two longest minutes of his life. He was dreadfully afraid that Sonny and Heck would come back into the common room and order all the boys out to the trucks, and he wanted to get into the bathroom before that happened. But Pedersen wasn’t stupid. If Jack followed Wolf too closely, Pedersen might suspect something.
    At last Jack got up and walked across the room toward the door. It seemed impossibly far away, and his heavy feet seemed to bring him no closer; it was like an optical illusion.
    Pedersen looked up. ‘Where you going, snotface?’
    ‘Bathroom,’ Jack said. His tongue was dry. He had heard of people’s mouths getting dry when they were afraid, but their tongues ?
    ‘They’ll be upstairs in a minute,’ Pedersen said, nodding toward the end of the hall, where the stairs led down to the chapel, the studio, and Gardener’s office. ‘You better hold it and water Far Field.’
    ‘I got to take a crap,’ Jack said desperately.
    Sure. And maybe you and your big stupid friend like to pull each other’s dorks a little before you start the day. Just to sort of perk yourselves up. Go sit down.
    ‘Well, go on, then,’ Pedersen said crossly. ‘Don’t just stand there and whine about it.’
    He looked back at his magazine. Jack crossed the hall and stepped into the bathroom.
    3
    Wolf had picked the wrong stall – he was halfway down the line, his big, clunky workshoes unmistakable under the door. Jack pushed in. It was cramped with the two of them, and he was very aware of Wolf’s strong, clearly animal odor.
    ‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s try it.’
    ‘Jack, I’m scared.’
    Jack laughed shakily. ‘I’m scared, too.’
    ‘How do we—’
    ‘I don’t know. Give me your hands.’ That seemed like a good start.
    Wolf put his hairy hands – paws, almost – in Jack’s hands, and Jack felt an eerie strength flow from them into him. Wolf’s strength wasn’t gone after all, then. It had simply gone underground, as a spring will sometimes go underground in a savagely hot season.
    Jack closed his eyes.
    ‘ Want to get back,’ he said. ‘ Want to get back, Wolf. Help me!’
    ‘I do,’ Wolf breathed. ‘I will if I can! Wolf!’
    ‘Here and now.’
    ‘Right here and now!’
    Jack squeezed Wolf’s paw-hands tighter. He could smell Lysol. Somewhere he could hear a car passing. A phone rang. He thought, I am drinking the magic juice. In my mind I’m drinking it, right here and now I’m drinking it, I can smell it, so purple and so thick and new, I can taste it, I can feel my throat closing on it –
    As the taste filled his throat, the world swayed under them, around them. Wolf cried out, ‘Jacky, it’s working!’
    It startled him out of his fierce concentration and for a moment he became aware that it was only a trick, like trying to get to sleep by counting sheep, and the world steadied again. The smell of the Lysol flooded back. Faintly he heard someone answer the phone querulously:‘Yes, hello, who is it?’
    Never mind, it’s not a trick, not a trick at all – it’s magic. It’s magic and I did it before when I was little and I can do it again, Speedy said so that blind singer Snowball said so, too, THE MAGIC JUICE IS IN MY MIND –
    He bore down with all his force, all his effort of will . . . and the ease with which they flipped was stupefying, as if a punch aimed at something which looked like granite hit a cleverly painted papier-mâché shell instead, so that the blow you thought would break all your knuckles instead encountered no resistance at all.
    4
    To Jack, with his eyes screwed tightly shut, it felt as if the floor had first crumbled under his feet . . . and then disappeared completely.
    Oh shit we’re going to fall anyway , he thought dismally.
    But it wasn’t really a fall, only a minor sideslip. A moment later he and Wolf were standing firmly, not on hard bathroom tile but on dirt.
    A reek of sulphur mingled with what smelled like raw sewage flooded in. It was a deathly smell, and Jack thought it meant the end of all hope.
    ‘Jason! What’s that smell ?’ Wolf groaned. ‘Oh Jason that smell , can’t stay here, Jacky, can’t stay—’
    Jack’s eyes snapped open. At the same moment Wolf let go of Jack’s hands and blundered forward, his own eyes still tightly shut. Jack saw that Wolf’s ill-fitting chinos and checked shirt had been replaced by the Oshkosh biballs in which Jack had originally seen the big herdsman. The John