The Talisman

September.’ Jack smiled, looked at scowling Richard in his good-boy clothes, and knew that he would never be able to tell Richard about his father. He simply was not capable of that. If events did it for him, so be it; but he himself did not possess the assassin’s heart required for that particular disclosure.
    His friend continued to frown at Jack, clearly waiting for the story to begin.
    Perhaps to stall the moment when he would have to try to convince Rational Richard of the unbelievable, Jack asked, ‘Is the kid in the next room quitting school? I saw his suitcases on his bed from outside.’
    ‘Well, yes, that’s interesting,’ Richard said. ‘I mean, interesting in the light of what you said. He is leaving – in fact, he’s already gone. Someone is supposed to come for his things, I guess. God knows what kind of a fairy tale you’ll make of this, but the kid next door was Reuel Gardener. The son of that preacher who ran that home you claim you escaped from.’ Richard ignored Jack’s sudden fit of coughing. ‘In most senses, I should say, Reuel was anything but the normal kid next door, and probably nobody here was too sorry to see him go. Just when the story came out about kids dying at that place his father ran, he got a telegram ordering him to leave Thayer.’
    Jack had gotten down the wad of chicken that had tried to choke him. ‘Sunlight Gardener’s son? That guy had a son? And he was here? ’
    ‘He came at the start of the term,’ Richard said simply. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before.’
    Suddenly Thayer School was menacing to Jack in a way that Richard could not begin to comprehend. ‘What was he like? ’
    ‘A sadist,’ Richard said. ‘Sometimes I heard really peculiar noises coming out of Reuel’s room. And once I saw a dead cat on the garbage thing out in back that didn’t have any eyes or ears. When you saw him, you’d think he was the kind of person who might torture a cat. And he sort of smelled like rancid English Leather, I thought.’ Richard was silent for a carefully timed moment, and then asked, ‘Were you really in the Sunlight Home?’
    ‘For thirty days. It was hell, or hell’s next-door neighbor.’ He inhaled, looking at Richard’s scowling but now at least half-convinced face. ‘This is hard for you to swallow, Richard, and I know that, but the guy with me was a werewolf. And if he hadn’t been killed while he was saving my life he’d be here right now.’
    ‘A werewolf. Hair on the palms of his hands. Changes into a blood-thirsty monster every full moon.’ Richard looked musingly around the little room.
    Jack waited until Richard’s gaze returned to him. ‘Do you want to know what I’m doing? Do you want me to tell you why I’m hitchhiking all the way across the country?’
    ‘I’m going to start screaming if you don’t,’ Richard said.
    ‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘I’m trying to save my mother’s life.’ As he uttered it, this sentence seemed to him filled with a wondrous clarity.
    ‘How the hell are you going to do that?’ Richard exploded. ‘Your mother probably has cancer. As my father has been pointing out to you, she needs doctors and science . . . and you hit the road? What are you going to use to save your mother, Jack? Magic?’
    Jack’s eyes began to burn. ‘You got it, Richard old chum.’ He raised his arm and pressed his already damp eyes into the fabric at the crook of his elbow.
    ‘Oh hey, calm down, hey really . . .’ Richard said, tugging frantically at his sweater. ‘Don’t cry, Jack, come on, please, I know it’s a terrible thing, I didn’t mean to . . . it was just that—’ Richard had crossed the room instantly and without noise, and was now awkwardly patting Jack’s arm and shoulder.
    ‘I’m okay,’ Jack said. He lowered his arm. ‘It’s not some crazy fantasy, Richard, no matter how it looks to you.’ He sat up straight. ‘My father called me Travelling Jack, and so did an old man in Arcadia Beach.’ Jack hoped he was right about Richard’s sympathy opening internal doors; when he looked at Richard’s face, he saw that it was true. His friend looked worried, tender, four-square.
    Jack began his story.
    5
    Around the two boys the life of Nelson House went on, both calm and boisterous in the manner of boarding schools, punctuated with shouts and roars and laughter. Footsteps padded past the door but did not stop. From the room above came regular thumps and an occasional drift of