The Talisman

voice Jack had to strain to hear. ‘The Wolfs. I mean, they looked sort of like regular people, but not too much. They looked . . . rough. You know?’
    Jack nodded. He knew.
    ‘I remember I was a little afraid to look into their eyes very closely. Every now and then there’d be these funny flashes of light in them . . . like their brains were on fire. Some of the others . . .’ A light of realization dawned in Richard’s eyes. ‘Some of the others looked like that substitute basketball coach I told you about. The one who wore the leather jacket and smoked.’
    ‘How far is this Point Venuti, Richard?’
    ‘I don’t know, exactly. But we used to do it in a couple of hours, and the train never went very fast. Running speed, maybe, but not much more. It can’t be much more than twenty miles from Camp Readiness, all told. Probably a little less.’
    ‘Then we’re maybe fifteen miles or less from it. From—’
    (from the Talisman)
    ‘Yeah. Right.’
    Jack looked up as the day darkened. As if to show that the pathetic fallacy wasn’t so pathetic after all, the sun now sailed behind a deck of clouds. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees and the day seemed to grow dull – the whippoorwill fell silent.
    9
    Richard saw the sign first – a simple whitewashed square of wood painted with black letters. It stood on the left side of the tracks, and ivy had grown up its post, as if it had been here for a very long time. The sentiment, however, was quite current. It read: GOOD BIRDS MAY FLY; BAD BOYS MUST DIE. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE : GO HOME .
    ‘You can go, Richie,’ Jack said quietly. ‘It’s okay by me. They’ll let you go, no sweat. None of this is your business.’
    ‘I think maybe it is,’ Richard said.
    ‘I dragged you into it.’
    ‘No,’ Richard said. ‘My father dragged me into it. Or fate dragged me into it. Or God. Or Jason. Whoever it was, I’m sticking.’
    ‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s go.’
    As they passed the sign, Jack lashed out with one foot in a passably good kung-fu kick and knocked it over.
    ‘Way to go, chum,’ Richard said, smiling a little.
    ‘Thanks. But don’t call me chum.’
    10
    Although he had begun to look wan and tired again, Richard talked for the next hour as they walked down the tracks and into the steadily strengthening smell of the Pacific Ocean. He spilled out a flood of reminiscences that had been bottled up inside of him for years. Although his face didn’t reveal it, Jack was stunned with amazement . . . and a deep, welling pity for the lonely child, eager for the least scrap of his father’s affection, that Richard was revealing to him, inadvertently or otherwise.
    He looked at Richard’s pallor, the sores on his cheeks and forehead and around his mouth; listened to that tentative, almost whispering voice that nevertheless did not hesitate or falter now that the chance to tell all these things had finally come; and was glad once more that Morgan Sloat had never been his father.
    He told Jack that he remembered landmarks all along this part of the railroad. They could see the roof of a barn over the trees at one point, with a faded ad for Chesterfield Kings on it.
    ‘“Twenty great tobaccos make twenty wonderful smokes,”’ Richard said, smiling. ‘Only, in those days you could see the whole barn.’
    He pointed out a big pine with a double top, and fifteen minutes later told Jack, ‘There used to be a rock on the other side of this hill that looked just like a frog. Let’s see if it’s still there.’
    It was, and Jack supposed it did look like a frog. A little. If you stretched your imagination. And maybe it helps to be three. Or four. Or seven. Or however old he was .
    Richard had loved the railroad, and had thought Camp Readiness was really neat, with its track to run on and its hurdles to jump over and its ropes to climb. But he hadn’t liked Point Venuti itself. After some self-prodding, Richard even remembered the name of the motel at which he and his father had stayed during their time in the little coastal town. The Kingsland Motel, he said . . . and Jack found that name did not surprise him much at all.
    The Kingsland Motel, Richard said, was just down the road from the old hotel his father always seemed interested in. Richard could see the hotel from his window, and he didn’t like it. It was a huge, rambling place with turrets and gables and gambrels and cupolas and towers; brass weathervanes in strange shapes