The Talisman

the loden coat’s pockets and pulled the coat tightly around him. Myles P. Kiger of Ogden, Illinois, stared straight ahead.
    ‘Ahem,’ Kiger said, exactly like a man in a comic book.
    ‘Thanks for the coat,’ Jack said. ‘Really. I’ll be grateful to you whenever I wear it.’
    ‘Sure, okay,’ Kiger said, ‘forget it.’ But for a second his face was oddly like poor Donny Keegan’s, back in the Sunlight Home. ‘There’s a place up ahead,’ Kiger said. His voice was choppy, abrupt, full of phony calm. ‘We can get some lunch, if you like.’
    ‘I don’t have any money left,’ Jack said, a statement exactly two dollars and thirty-eight cents shy of the truth.
    ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Kiger had already snapped on his turn indicator.
    They drove into a windswept, nearly empty parking lot before a low gray structure that looked like a railway car. A neon sign above the central door flashed EMPIRE DINER . Kiger pulled up before one of the diner’s long windows and they left the car. This coat would keep him warm, Jack realized. His chest and arms seemed protected by woolen armor. Jack began to move toward the door under the flashing sign, but turned around when he realized that Kiger was still standing beside the car. The gray-haired man, only an inch or two taller than Jack, was looking at him over the car’s top.
    ‘Say,’ Kiger said.
    ‘Look, I’d be happy to give you your coat back,’ Jack said.
    ‘No, that’s yours now. I was just thinking I’m not really hungry after all, and if I keep on going I can make pretty good time, get home a little earlier.’
    ‘Sure,’ Jack said.
    ‘You’ll get another ride here. Easy. I promise. I wouldn’t drop you here if you were going to be stranded.’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Hold on. I said I’d get you lunch, and I will.’ He put his hand in his trouser pocket, then held a bill out across the top of the car to Jack. The chill wind ruffled his hair and flattened it against his forehead. ‘Take it.’
    ‘No, honest,’ Jack said. ‘It’s okay. I have a couple dollars.’
    ‘Get yourself a good steak,’ Kiger said, and was leaning across the top of the car, holding out the bill as if offering a life preserver, or reaching for one.
    Jack reluctantly came forward and took the bill from Kiger’s extended fingers. It was a ten. ‘Thanks a lot. I mean it.’
    ‘Here, why don’t you take the paper, too, have something to read? You know, if you have to wait a little or something.’ Kiger had already opened his door, and leaned inside to pluck a folded tabloid newspaper off the back seat. ‘I’ve already read it.’ He tossed it over to Jack.
    The pockets of the loden coat were so roomy that Jack could slip the folded paper into one of them.
    Myles P. Kiger stood for a moment beside his open car door, squinting at Jack. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re going to have an interesting life,’ he said.
    ‘It’s pretty interesting already,’ Jack said truthfully.
     
    Salisbury steak was five dollars and forty cents, and it came with french fries. Jack sat at the end of the counter and opened the newspaper. The story was on the second page – the day before, he had seen it on the first page of an Indiana newspaper. ARRESTS MADE , RELATED TO SHOCK HORROR DEATHS . Local Magistrate Ernest Fairchild and Police Officer Frank B. Williams of Cayuga, Indiana, had been charged with misuse of public monies and acceptance of bribes in the course of the investigation of the deaths of six boys at the Sunlight Gardener Scripture Home for Wayward Boys. The popular evangelist Robert ‘Sunlight’ Gardener had apparently escaped from the grounds of the Home shortly before the arrival of the police, and while no warrants had as yet been issued for his arrest he was urgently being sought for questioning. WAS HE ANOTHER JIM JONES ? asked a caption beneath a picture of Gardener at his most gorgeous, arms outspread, hair falling in perfect waves. Dogs had led the State Police to an area near the electrified fences where boys’ bodies had been buried without ceremony – five bodies, it appeared, most of them so decomposed that identification was not possible. They would probably be able to identify Ferd Janklow. His parents would be able to give him a real burial, all the while wondering what they had done wrong, exactly; all the while wondering just how their love for Jesus had condemned their brilliant, rebellious son.
    When the Salisbury steak came,