The Talisman

hear the Elroy-thing screaming now, but the scream seemed far away, as if it were on one end of the Oatley tunnel and he, Jack, were falling rapidly toward the other end. And this time there was a sense of falling and he thought: Oh my God what if I just flipped my stupid self over a cliff or off a mountain over there?
    He held on to the pack and the bottle, his eyes screwed desperately shut, waiting for whatever might happen next – Elroy-thing or no Elroy-thing, Territories or oblivion – and the thought which had haunted him all night came swinging back like a dancing carousel horse – Silver Lady, maybe Ella Speed. He caught it and rode it down in a cloud of the magic juice’s awful smell, holding it, waiting for whatever would happen next, feeling his clothes change on his body.
    Six oh yes when we were all six and nobody was anything else and it was California who blows that sax daddy is it Dexter Gordon or is it is it what does Mom mean when she says we’re living on a fault-line and where where oh where do you go Daddy you and Uncle Morgan oh Daddy sometimes he looks at you like like oh like there is a fault-line in his head and an earthquake going on behind his eyes and you’re dying in it oh Daddy!
    Falling, twisting, turning in the middle of limbo, in the middle of a smell like a purple cloud, Jack Sawyer, John Benjamin Sawyer, Jacky, Jacky
    – was six when it started to happen, and who blew that sax, Daddy? Who blew it when I was six, when Jacky was six, when Jacky –

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DEATH OF JERRY BLEDSOE
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    1
    was six . . . when it really started, Daddy, when the engines that eventually pulled him to Oatley and beyond began to chug away. There had been loud saxophone music. Six. Jacky was six . At first his attention had been entirely on the toy his father had given him, a scale model of a London taxi – the toy car was heavy as a brick, and on the smooth wooden floors of the new office a good push sent it rumbling straight across the room. Late afternoon, first grade all the way on the other side of August, a neat new car that rolled like a tank on the strip of bare wood behind the couch, a contented, relaxed feeling in the air-conditioned office . . . no more work to do, no more phone calls that couldn’t wait until the next day. Jack pushed the heavy toy taxi down the strip of bare wood, barely able to hear the rumbling of the solid rubber tires under the soloing of a saxophone. The black car struck one of the legs of the couch, spun sideways, and stopped. Jack crawled down the length of the couch after it. His father had his feet up on his desk, and Uncle Morgan had parked himself in one of the chairs on the other side of the couch. Each man nursed a drink; soon they would put down their glasses, switch off the turntable and the amplifier, and go downstairs to their cars.
    when we were all six and nobody was anything else and it was California
    ‘Who’s playing that sax?’ he heard Uncle Morgan ask, and, half in a reverie, heard that familiar voice in a new way: something whispery and hidden in Morgan Sloat’s voice coiled into Jacky’s ear. He touched the top of the toy taxi and his fingers were as cold as if it were of ice, not English steel.
    ‘That’s Dexter Gordon, is who that is,’ his father answered. His voice was as lazy and friendly as it always was, and Jack slipped his hand around the heavy taxi.
    ‘Good record.’
    ‘ Daddy Plays the Horn . It is a nice old record, isn’t it?’
    ‘I’ll have to look for it.’ And then Jack thought he knew what that strangeness in Uncle Morgan’s voice was all about – Uncle Morgan didn’t really like jazz at all, he just pretended to in front of Jack’s father. Jack had known this fact about Morgan Sloat for most of his childhood, and he thought it was silly that his father couldn’t see it too. Uncle Morgan was never going to look for a record called Daddy Plays the Horn , he was just flattering Phil Sawyer – and maybe the reason Phil Sawyer didn’t see it was that like everyone else he never paid quite enough attention to Morgan Sloat. Uncle Morgan, smart and ambitious (‘smart as a wolverine, sneaky as a courthouse lawyer,’ Lily said), good old Uncle Morgan deflected observation – your eye just sort of naturally slid off him. When he was a kid, Jacky would have bet, his teachers would have had trouble even remembering his name.
    ‘Imagine what this guy would be like over there,’ Uncle Morgan said, for