The Talisman

on, let’s try to push the top off one of these boxes,’ he said, and Richard meekly came toward him.
    After six mighty heaves against the top of one of the crates, Jack finally felt movement and heard the nails creak. Richard continued to strain at his side of the box. ‘That’s all right,’ Jack said to him. Richard seemed even grayer and less healthy than he had before exerting himself. ‘I’ll get it, next push.’ Richard stepped back and almost collapsed over one of the smaller boxes. He straightened himself and began to probe further under the loose tarpaulin.
    Jack set himself before the tall box and clamped his jaw shut. He placed his hands on the corner of the lid. After taking in a long breath, he pushed up until his muscles began to shake. Just before he was going to have to ease up, the nails creaked again and began to slide out of the wood. Jack yelled ‘AAAGH!’ and heaved the top off the box.
    Stacked inside the carton, slimy with grease, were half a dozen guns of a sort Jack had never seen before – like grease-guns metamorphosing into butterflies, half-mechanical, half-insectile. He pulled one out and looked at it more closely, trying to see if he could figure out how it worked. It was an automatic weapon, so it would need a clip. He bent down and used the barrel of the weapon to pry off the top of one of the LENSES cartons. As he had expected, in the second, smaller box stood a little pile of heavily greased clips packed in plastic beads.
    ‘It’s an Uzi,’ Richard said behind him. ‘Israeli machinegun. Pretty fashionable weapon, I gather. The terrorists’ favorite toy.’
    ‘How do you know that?’ Jack asked, reaching in for another of the guns.
    ‘I watch television. How do you think?’
    Jack experimented with the clip, at first trying to fit it into the cavity upside-down, then finding the correct position. Next he found the safety and clicked it off, then on again.
    ‘Those things are so damn ugly,’ Richard said.
    ‘You get one, too, so don’t complain.’ Jack took a second clip for Richard, and after a moment’s consideration took all the clips out of the box, put them in his pockets, tossed two to Richard, who managed to catch them both, and slid the remaining clips into his haversack.
    ‘Ugh,’ Richard said.
    ‘I guess it’s insurance,’ Jack said.
    9
    Richard collapsed on the seat as soon as they got back to the cab – the trips up and down the two ladders and inching along the narrow strip of metal above the wheels had taken nearly all of his energy. But he made room for Jack to sit down and watched with heavy-lidded eyes while his friend started the train rolling again. Jack picked up his serape and began massaging his gun with it.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Rubbing the grease off. You’d better do it, too, when I’m done.’
    For the rest of the day the two boys sat in the open cab of the train, sweating, trying not to take into account the wailing trees, the corrupt stink of the passing landscape, their hunger. Jack noticed that a little garden of open sores had bloomed around Richard’s mouth. Finally Jack took Richard’s Uzi from his hand, wiped it free of grease, and pushed in the clip. Sweat burned saltily in cracks on his lips.
    Jack closed his eyes. Maybe he had not seen those heads peering over the rim of the valley, maybe they were not followed after all. He heard the batteries sizzle and send off a big snapping spark, and felt Richard jump at it. An instant later he was asleep, dreaming of food.
    10
    When Richard shook Jack’s shoulder, bringing him up out of a world in which he had been eating a pizza the size of a truck tire, the shadows were just beginning to spread across the valley, softening the agony of the wailing trees. Even they, bending low and spreading their hands across their faces, seemed beautiful in the low, receding light. The deep red dust shimmered and glowed. The shadows printed themselves out along it, almost perceptibly lengthening. The terrible yellow grass was melting toward an almost mellow orange. Fading red sunlight painted itself slantingly along the rocks at the valley’s rim. ‘I just thought you might want to see this,’ Richard said. A few more small sores seemed to have appeared about his mouth. Richard grinned weakly. ‘It seemed sort of special – the spectrum, I mean.’
    Jack feared that Richard was going to launch into a scientific explanation of the color shift at sunset, but his friend was