The Talisman

there.’
    3
    ‘Bullshit,’ Sloat said.
    ‘I mean it. I’ve had the feeling, once or twice when I was there, that I was near to somewhere else – the Territories’ Territories.’
    Yes , Jack thought, that’s right, it has to be, the Daydreams’ Daydreams, someplace even more beautiful, and on the other side of that is the Daydreams’ Daydreams’ Daydreams, and on the other side of that is another place, another world nicer still . . . He realized for the first time that he had become very sleepy.
    The Daydreams’ Daydreams
    And then he was almost immediately asleep, the heavy little taxi in his lap, his whole body simultaneously weighty with sleep, anchored to the strip of wooden floor, and so blissfully light.
    The conversation must have continued – there must have been much that Jacky missed. He rose and fell, heavy and light, through the second whole side of Daddy Plays the Horn , and during that time Morgan Sloat must at first have argued – gently, but with what squeezings of his fists, what contortions of his forehead! – for his plan; then he must have allowed himself to seem persuadable, then finally persuaded by his partner’s doubts. At the end of this conversation, which returned to the twelve-year-old Jacky Sawyer in the dangerous borderland between Oatley, New York, and a nameless Territories village, Morgan Sloat had allowed himself to seem not only persuaded but positively grateful for the lessons. When Jack woke up, the first thing he heard was his father asking, ‘Hey, did Jack disappear or something?’ and the second thing was Uncle Morgan saying, ‘Hell, I guess you’re right, Phil. You have a way of seeing right to the heart of things, you’re great the way you do that.’
    ‘Where the hell is Jack?’ his father said, and Jack stirred behind the couch, really waking up now. The black taxi thudded to the floor.
    ‘Aha,’ Uncle Morgan said. ‘Little pitchers and big ears, peut-être ?’
    ‘You behind there, kiddo?’ his father said. Noises of chairs pushing back across the wooden floor, of men standing up.
    He said, ‘ Oooh ,’ and slowly lifted the taxi back into his lap. His legs felt stiff and uncomfortable – when he stood, they would tingle.
    His father laughed. Footsteps came toward him. Morgan Sloat’s red, puffy face appeared over the top of the couch. Jack yawned and pushed his knees into the back of the couch. His father’s face appeared beside Sloat’s. His father was smiling. For a moment, both of those grown-up adult male heads seemed to be floating over the top of the couch. ‘Let’s move on home, sleepyhead,’ his father said. When the boy looked into Uncle Morgan’s face, he saw calculation sink into his skin, slide underneath his jolly-fat-man’s cheeks like a snake beneath a rock. He looked like Richard Sloat’s daddy again, like good old Uncle Morgan who always gave spectacular Christmas and birthday presents, like good old sweaty Uncle Morgan, so easy not to notice. But what had he looked like before? like a human earthquake, like a man crumbling apart over the fault-line behind his eyes, like something all wound up and waiting to explode . . .
    ‘How about a little ice cream on the way home, Jack?’ Uncle Morgan said to him. ‘That sound good to you?’
    ‘Uh,’ Jack said.
    ‘Yeah, we can stop off at that place in the lobby,’ his father said.
    ‘Yummy-yummy-yum,’ Uncle Morgan said. ‘Now we’re really talking about synergy,’ and smiled at Jack once more.
    This happened when he was six, and in the midst of his weightless tumble through limbo, it happened again – the horrible purple taste of Speedy’s juice backed up into his mouth, into the passages behind his nose, and all of that languid afternoon of six years before replayed itself out in his mind. He saw it just as if the magic juice brought total recall, and so speedily that he lived through that afternoon in the same few seconds which told him that this time the magic juice really was going to make him vomit.
    Uncle Morgan’s eyes smoking, and inside Jack, a question smoking too, demanding and demanding to finally come out . . .
    Who played
    What changes what changes
    Who plays those changes, daddy?
    Who
    killed Jerry Bledsoe? The magic juice forced itself into the boy’s mouth, stinging threads of it nauseatingly trickled into his nose, and just as Jack felt loose earth beneath his hands he gave up and vomited rather than drown. What killed Jerry Bledsoe? Foul