The Talisman

Chicken. At the latter, Jack and Richard got dinners; Wolf got a Family-Style Bucket and ate all twenty-one pieces. From the sounds, he ate most of the bones as well. This made Jack think of Wolf and the popcorn. Where had that been? Muncie. The outskirts of Muncie – the Town Line Sixplex. Just before they had gotten their asses slammed into the Sunlight Home. He grinned . . . and then felt something like an arrow slip into his heart. He looked out the window so Richard wouldn’t see the gleam of his tears.
    They stopped on the second night in Julesburg, Colorado, and Wolf cooked them a huge picnic supper on a portable barbecue he produced from the trunk. They ate in a snowy field by starlight, bundled up in heavy parkas bought out of the guitar-case stash. A meteor-shower flashed overhead, and Wolf danced in the snow like a child.
    ‘I love that guy,’ Richard said thoughtfully.
    ‘Yeah, me too. You should have met his brother.’
    ‘I wish I had.’ Richard began to gather up the trash. What he said next flummoxed Jack almost completely. ‘I’m forgetting a lot of stuff, Jack.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Just that. Every mile I remember a little less about what happened. It’s all getting misty. And I think . . . I think that’s the way I want it. Look, are you really sure your mother’s okay?’
    Three times Jack had tried to call his mother. There was no answer. He was not too worried about this. Things were okay. He hoped. When he got there, she would be there. Sick . . . but still alive. He hoped.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then how come she doesn’t answer the phone?’
    ‘Sloat played some tricks with the phones,’ Jack said. ‘He played some tricks with the help at the Alhambra, too, I bet. She’s still okay. Sick . . . but okay. Still there. I can feel her.’
    ‘And if this healing thing works—’ Richard grimaced a little, then plunged. ‘You still . . . I mean, you still think she’d let me . . . you know, stay with you guys?’
    ‘No,’ Jack said, helping Richard pick up the remains of supper. ‘She’ll want to see you in an orphanage, probably. Or maybe in jail. Don’t be a dork, Richard, of course you can stay with us.’
    ‘Well . . . after all my father did . . .’
    ‘That was your dad, Richie,’ Jack said simply. ‘Not you.’
    ‘And you won’t always be reminding me? You know . . . jogging my memory?’
    ‘Not if you want to forget.’
    ‘I do, Jack. I really do.’
    Wolf was coming back.
    ‘You guys ready? Wolf!’
    ‘All ready,’ Jack said. ‘Listen, Wolf, how about that Scott Hamilton tape I got in Cheyenne?’
    ‘Sure, Jack. Then how about some Creedence?’
    ‘“Run Through the Jungle”, right?’
    ‘Good tune, Jack! Heavy! Wolf! God-pounding heavy tune!’
    ‘You bet, Wolf.’ He rolled his eyes at Richard. Richard rolled his back, and grinned.
    The next day they rolled across Nebraska and Iowa; a day later they tooled past the gutted ruin of the Sunlight Home. Jack thought Wolf had taken them past it on purpose, that he perhaps wanted to see the place where his brother had died. He turned up the Creedence tape in the cassette player as loud as it would go, but Jack still thought he heard the sound of Wolf sobbing.
    Time – suspended swatches of time. Jack seemed almost to be floating, and there was a feeling of suspension, triumph, valediction. Work honorably discharged.
    Around sunset of the fifth day, they crossed into New England.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
    JOURNEY’S END
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    1
    The whole long drive from California to New England seemed, once they had got so far, to have taken place in a single long afternoon and evening. An afternoon that lasted days, an evening perhaps life-long, bulging with sunsets and music and emotions. Great humping balls of fire, Jack thought, I’m really out of it , when he happened for the second time in what he assumed to be about half an hour to look at the discreet little clock set in the dashboard – and discovered that three hours had winked past him. Was it even the same day? ‘Run Through the Jungle’ pumped through the air; Wolf bobbed his head in time, grinning unstoppably, infallibly finding the best roads; the rear window showing the whole sky opening in great bands of twilight color, purple and blue and that particular deep plangent red of the down-going sun. Jack could remember every detail of this long long journey, every word, every meal, every nuance of the music, Zoot Sims or John Fogerty or simply Wolf