The Talisman

while you was up there—’
    He said no more; he didn’t have to. Jack had a sudden, appalling picture of himself tumbling out of that clear, cloudless sky, a screaming boy-projectile in jeans with a red-and-white-striped rugby shirt, a sky-diver with no parachute.
    ‘You walk ,’ Speedy said. ‘And thumb what rides you think you can . . . but you got to be careful because there’s strangers out there. Some are just crazy people, sissies that would like to touch you or thugs that would like to mug you. But some are real Strangers, Travellin Jack. They people with a foot in each world – they look that way and this like a goddamn Janus-head. I’m afraid they gonna know you comin before too long has passed. And they’ll be on the watch.’
    ‘Are they’ – he groped – ‘Twinners?’
    ‘Some are. Some aren’t. I can’t say no more right now. But you get across if you can. Get across to the other ocean. You travel in the Territories when you can and you’ll get across faster. You take the juice—’
    ‘I hate it!’
    ‘Never mind what you hate,’ Speedy said sternly. ‘You get across and you’re gonna find a place – another Alhambra. You got to go in that place. It’s a scary place, a bad place. But you got to go in.’
    ‘How will I find it?’
    ‘It will call you. You’ll hear it loud and clear, son.’
    ‘Why?’ Jack asked. He wet his lips. ‘Why do I have to go there, if it’s so bad?’
    ‘Because,’ Speedy said, ‘that’s where the Talisman is. Somewhere in that other Alhambra.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
    ‘You will,’ Speedy said. He stood up, then took Jack’s hand. Jack rose. The two of them stood face-to-face, old black man and young white boy.
    ‘Listen,’ Speedy said, and his voice took on a slow, chanting rhythm. ‘Talisman be given unto your hand, travellin Jack. Not too big, not too small, she look just like a crystal ball. Travellin Jack, ole Travellin Jack, you be goin to California to bring her back. But here’s your burden, here’s your cross: drop her, Jack, and all be lost.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack repeated with a scared kind of stubbornness. ‘You have to—’
    ‘No,’ Speedy said, not unkindly. ‘I got to finish with that carousel this morning, Jack, that’s what I got to do. Got no time for any more jaw-chin. I got to get back and you got to get on. Can’t tell you no more now. I guess I’ll be seein you around. Here . . . or over there.’
    ‘But I don’t know what to do !’ Jack said as Speedy swung up into the cab of the old truck.
    ‘You know enough to get movin,’ Speedy said. ‘You’ll go to the Talisman, Jack. She’ll draw you to her.’
    ‘I don’t even know what a Talisman is!’
    Speedy laughed and keyed the ignition. The truck started up with a big blue blast of exhaust. ‘Look it up in the dictionary!’ he shouted, and threw the truck into reverse.
    He backed up, turned around, and then the truck was rattling back toward Arcadia Funworld. Jack stood by the curb, watching it go. He had never felt so alone in his life.

CHAPTER FIVE
JACK AND LILY
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    1
    When Speedy’s truck turned off the road and disappeared beneath the Funworld arch, Jack began to move toward the hotel. A Talisman. In another Alhambra. On the edge of another ocean. His heart seemed empty. Without Speedy beside him, the task was mountainous, so huge; vague, too – while Speedy had been talking, Jack had had the feeling of almost understanding that macaroni of hints and threats and instructions. Now it was close to just being macaroni. The Territories were real, though. He hugged that certainty as close as he could, and it both warmed and chilled him. They were a real place, and he was going there again. Even if he did not really understand everything yet – even if he was an ignorant pilgrim, he was going. Now all he had to do was to try to convince his mother. ‘Talisman,’ he said to himself, using the word as the thing, and crossed empty Boardwalk Avenue and jumped up the steps onto the path between the hedges. The darkness of the Alhambra’s interior, once the great door had swung shut, startled him. The lobby was a long cave – you’d need a fire just to separate the shadows. The pale clerk flickered behind the long desk, stabbing at Jack with his white eyes. A message there: yes. Jack swallowed and turned away. The message made him stronger, it increased him, though its