The Talisman

something else entirely.
    ‘I’ll be more companionable when you get back,’ she said. ‘That’s a promise.’
    And what she was really saying was I want to scream, I can’t take any more of this, get out, get out!
    ‘Should I bring you anything?’
    She shook her head, smiling toughly at him, and he had to leave the room, though he no longer had any stomach for breakfast either. Jack wandered down the corridor to the elevators. Once again, there was only one place to go, but this time he knew it before he ever reached the gloomy lobby and the ashen, censorious desk clerk.
    4
    Speedy Parker was not in the small red-painted shack of an office; he was not out on the long pier, in the arcade where the two old boys were back playing Skee-Ball as if it were a war they both knew they would lose; he was not in the dusty vacancy beneath the roller coaster. Jack Sawyer turned aimlessly in the harsh sunlight, looking down the empty avenues and deserted public places of the park. Jack’s fear tightened itself up a notch. Suppose something had happened to Speedy? It was impossible, but what if Uncle Morgan had found out about Speedy (found out what, though?) and had . . . Jack mentally saw the WILD CHILD van careering around a corner, grinding its gears and picking up speed.
    He jerked himself into motion, hardly knowing which way he meant to go. In the bright panic of his mood, he saw Uncle Morgan running past a row of distorting mirrors, turned by them into a series of monstrous and deformed figures. Horns grew on his bald brow, a hump flowered between his fleshy shoulders, his wide fingers became shovels. Jack veered sharply off to the right, and found himself moving toward an oddly shaped, almost round building of white slat-like boards.
    From within it he suddenly heard a rhythmic tap tap tap . The boy ran toward the sound – a wrench hitting a pipe, a hammer striking an anvil, a noise of work. In the midst of the slats he found a doorknob and pulled open a fragile slat-door.
    Jack went forward into striped darkness, and the sound grew louder. The darkness changed form around him, altered its dimensions. He stretched out his hands and touched canvas. This slid aside; instantly, glowing yellow light fell about him. ‘Travellin Jack,’ said Speedy’s voice.
    Jack turned toward the voice and saw the custodian seated on the ground beside a partially dismantled merry-go-round. He held a wrench in his hand, and before him a white horse with a foamy mane lay impaled by a long silver stake from pommel to belly. Speedy gently put the wrench on the ground. ‘Are you ready to talk now, son?’ he asked.

CHAPTER FOUR
JACK GOES OVER
----
    1
    ‘Yes, I’m ready now,’ Jack said in a perfectly calm voice, and then burst into tears.
    ‘Say, Travellin Jack,’ Speedy said, dropping his wrench and coming to him. ‘Say, son, take her easy, take her easy now . . .’
    But Jack couldn’t take her easy. Suddenly it was too much, all of it, too much, and it was cry or just sink under a great wave of blackness – a wave which no bright streak of gold could illuminate. The tears hurt, but he sensed the terror would kill him if he did not cry it out.
    ‘You do your weepin, Travellin Jack,’ Speedy said, and put his arms around him. Jack put his hot, swollen face against Speedy’s thin shirt, smelling the man’s smell – something like Old Spice, something like cinnamon, something like books that no one has taken out of the library in a long time. Good smells, comforting smells. He groped his arms around Speedy; his palms felt the bones in Speedy’s back, close to the surface, hardly covered by scant meat.
    ‘You weep if it put you easy again,’ Speedy said, rocking him. ‘Sometimes it does. I know. Speedy knows how far you been, Travellin Jack, and how far you got to go, and how you tired. So you weep if it put you easy.’
    Jack barely understood the words – only the sounds of them, soothing and calming.
    ‘My mother’s really sick,’ he said at last against Speedy’s chest. ‘I think she came here to get away from my father’s old partner. Mr Morgan Sloat.’ He sniffed mightily, let go of Speedy, stepped back, and rubbed at his swollen eyes with the heels of his hands. He was surprised at his lack of embarrassment – always before, his tears had disgusted and shamed him . . . it was almost like peeing your pants. Was that because his mother had always been so tough? He supposed that was part of it, all right;