The Talisman

beginning to twist and plate and harden.
    The door banged open, letting in a raucous flood of the Oak Ridge Boys.
    ‘Jack, if you don’t quit lollygagging, I’m going to have to make you sorry,’ Smokey said from behind Randolph Scott. Scott stepped backward. No melting, hardening hooves here; his hands were just hands again – big and powerful, their backs crisscrossed with prominent ridged veins. There was another milky, swirling sort of blink that didn’t involve the eyelids at all . . . and then the man’s eyes were not yellow but a simple faded blue. He gave Jack a final glance and then headed toward the men’s room.
    Smokey came toward Jack now, his paper cap tipped forward, his narrow weasel’s head slightly inclined, his lips parted to show his alligator teeth.
    ‘Don’t make me speak to you again,’ Smokey said. ‘This is your last warning, and don’t you think I don’t mean it.’
    As it had against Osmond, Jack’s fury suddenly rose up – that sort of fury, closely linked as it is to a sense of hopeless injustice, is perhaps never as strong as it is at twelve – college students sometimes think they feel it, but it is usually little more than an intellectual echo.
    This time it boiled over.
    ‘I’m not your dog, so don’t you treat me like I am,’ Jack said, and took a step toward Smokey Updike on legs that were still rubbery with fear.
    Surprised – possibly even flabbergasted – by Jack’s totally unexpected anger, Smokey backed up a step.
    ‘Jack, I’m warning you—’
    ‘No, man. I’m warning you ,’ Jack heard himself say. ‘I’m not Lori. I don’t want to be hit. And if you hit me, I’m going to hit you back, or something.’
    Smokey Updike’s discomposure was only momentary. He had most assuredly not seen everything – not living in Oatley, he hadn’t – but he thought he had, and even for a minor leaguer, sometimes assurance can be enough.
    He reached out to grab Jack’s collar.
    ‘Don’t you smart off to me, Jack,’ he said, drawing Jack close. ‘As long as you’re in Oatley, my dog is just what you are. As long as you’re in Oatley I’ll pet you when I want and I’ll beat you when I want.’
    He administered a single neck-snapping shake. Jack bit his tongue and cried out. Hectic spots of anger now glowed in Smokey’s pale cheeks like cheap rouge.
    ‘You may not think that is so right now, but Jack, it is. As long as you’re in Oatley you’re my dog, and you’ll be in Oatley until I decide to let you go. And we might as well start getting that learned right now.’
    He pulled his fist back. For a moment the three naked sixty-watt bulbs which hung in this narrow hallway sparkled crazily on the diamond chips of the horseshoe-shaped pinky ring he wore. Then the fist pistoned forward and slammed into the side of Jack’s face. He was driven backward into the graffiti-covered wall, the side of his face first flaring and then going numb. The taste of his own blood washed into his mouth.
    Smokey looked at him – the close, judgemental stare of a man who might be thinking about buying a heifer or a lottery number. He must not have seen the expression he wanted to see in Jack’s eye, because he grabbed the dazed boy again, presumably the better to center him for a second shot.
    At that moment a woman shrieked, from the Tap, ‘No, Glen! No!’ There was a tangle of bellowing male voices, most of them alarmed. Another woman screamed – a high, drilling sound. Then a gunshot.
    ‘Shit on toast !’ Smokey cried, enunciating each word as carefully as an actor on a Broadway stage. He threw Jack back against the wall, whirled, and slammed out through the swinging door. The gun went off again and there was a scream of pain.
    Jack was sure of only one thing – the time had come to get out. Not at the end of tonight’s shift, or tomorrow’s, or on Sunday morning. Right now .
    The uproar seemed to be quieting down. There were no sirens, so maybe nobody had gotten shot . . . but, Jack remembered, cold, the millhand who looked like Randolph Scott was still down in the men’s can.
    Jack went into the chilly, beer-smelling storeroom, knelt by the kegs, and felt around for his pack. Again there was that suffocating certainty, as his fingers encountered nothing but thin air and the dirty concrete floor, that one of them – Smokey or Lori – had seen him hide the pack and had taken it. All the better to keep you in Oatley, my dear. Then relief, almost as