The Talisman

He had probably gone to high school here in town, played football, knocked up a Catholic cheerleader and married her, and the cheerleader had gotten fat on chocolates and Stouffer’s frozen dinners; just another Oatley oaf, just –
    But his eyes turned yellow.
    Stop it! They did not!
    Yet there was something about him that made Jack think of what had happened when he was coming into town . . . what had happened in the dark.
    The fat man who had called Jack an asshole shrank back from the rangy man in the Levi’s and the clean white T-shirt. Randolph Scott started toward Jack. His big, veined hands swung at his sides.
    His eyes sparkled an icy blue . . . and then began to change, to moil and lighten.
    ‘Kid,’ he said, and Jack fled with clumsy haste, butting the swinging door open with his fanny, not caring who he hit.
    Noise pounced on him. Kenny Rogers was bellowing an enthusiastic redneck paean to someone named Reuben James. ‘ You allus turned your other CHEEK, ’ Kenny testified to this room of shuffling, sullen-faced drunks, ‘ and said there’s a better world waitin for the MEEK! ’ Jack saw no one here who looked particularly meek. The Genny Valley Boys were trooping back onto the bandstand and picking up their instruments. All of them but the pedal-steel player looked drunk and confused . . . perhaps not really sure of where they were. The pedal-steel player only looked bored.
    To Jack’s left, a woman was talking earnestly on the Tap’s pay phone – a phone Jack would never touch again if he had his way about it, not for a thousand dollars. As she talked, her drunken companion probed and felt inside her half-open cowboy shirt. On the big dancefloor, perhaps seventy couples groped and shuffled, oblivious of the current song’s bright up-tempo, simply squeezing and grinding, hands gripping buttocks, lips spit-sealed together, sweat running down cheeks and making large circles under the armpits.
    ‘Well thank Gawd ,’ Lori said, and flipped up the hinged partition at the side of the bar for him. Smokey was halfway down the bar, filling up Gloria’s tray with gin-and-tonics, vodka sours, and what seemed to be beer’s only competition for the Oatley Town Drink: Black Russians.
    Jack saw Randolph Scott come out through the swinging door. He glanced toward Jack, his blue eyes catching Jack’s again at once. He nodded slightly, as if to say: We’ll talk. Yessirree. Maybe we’ll talk about what might or might not be in the Oatley tunnel. Or about bullwhips. Or sick mothers. Maybe we’ll talk about how you’re gonna be in Genny County for a long, long time . . . maybe until you’re an old man crying over a shopping cart. What do you think, Jacky?
    Jack shuddered.
    Randolph Scott smiled, as if he had seen the shudder . . . or felt it. Then he moved off into the crowd and the thick air.
    A moment later Smokey’s thin, powerful fingers bit into Jack’s shoulder – hunting for the most painful place and, as always, finding it. They were educated, nerve-seeking fingers.
    ‘Jack, you just got to move faster,’ Smokey said. His voice sounded almost sympathetic, but his fingers dug and moved and probed. His breath smelled of the pink Canada Mints he sucked almost constantly. His mail-order false teeth clicked and clacked. Sometimes there was an obscene slurping as they slipped a little and he sucked them back into place. ‘You got to move faster or I’m going to have to light a fire under your ass. You understand what I’m saying?’
    ‘Y-yeah,’ Jack said. Trying not to moan.
    ‘All right. That’s good, then.’ For an excruciating second Smokey’s fingers dug even deeper, grinding with a bitter enthusiasm at the neat little nest of nerves there. Jack did moan. That was good enough for Smokey. He let up.
    ‘Help me hook this keg up, Jack. And let’s make it fast. Friday night, people got to drink.’
    ‘Saturday morning,’ Jack said stupidly.
    ‘Then too. Come on.’
    Jack somehow managed to help Smokey lift the keg into the square compartment under the bar. Smokey’s thin, ropey muscles bulged and writhed under his Oatley Tap T-shirt. The paper fry-cook’s hat on his narrow weasel’s head stayed in place, its leading edge almost touching his left eyebrow, in apparent defiance of gravity. Jack watched, holding his breath, as Smokey flicked off the red plastic breather-cap on the keg. The keg breathed more gustily than it should have done . . . but it didn’t foam. Jack let his