The Talisman by Stephen King

own, just young enough to be at everyone’s mercy and to be

anyone’s meat—anyone from a psychotic like Osmond to a

humorless old Lutheran like Elbert Palamountain, whose idea of a pretty fair work-day was to slog and squelch through

gluey fields for twelve hours during a steady cold downpour of October rain, and to sit bolt-upright in the cab of his International Harvester truck during lunch hour, eating onion

sandwiches and reading from the Book of Job.

Jack had no urge to “get” them, although he had a strange

idea that if he wanted to, he could—that he was gaining some sort of power, almost like an electrical charge. It sometimes seemed to him that other people knew that, too—that it was in their faces when they looked at him. But he didn’t want to get them; he only wanted to be left alone. He—

The blind man was feeling around himself for the spilled

money, his pudgy hands moving gently over the pavement, al-

most seeming to read it. He happened on a dime, set his cup back up again, and dropped the dime in. Plink!

Faintly, Jack heard one of the princesses: “Why do they let him stay there, he’s so gross, you know?”

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Even more faintly still: “Yeah, rilly! ”

Jack got down on his knees and began to help, picking up

coins and putting them into the blind man’s cup. Down here, close to the old man, he could smell sour sweat, mildew, and some sweet bland smell like corn. Smartly dressed mall shop-pers gave them a wide berth.

“Thankya, thankya,” the blind man croaked monotonously.

Jack could smell dead chili on his breath. “Thankya, blessya, God blessya, thankya.”

He is Speedy.

He’s not Speedy.

What finally forced him to speak—and this was not really

so odd—was remembering just how little of the magic juice

he had left. Barely two swallows now. He did not know if, after what had happened in Angola, he could ever bring himself to travel in the Territories again, but he was still determined to save his mother’s life, and that meant he might have to.

And, whatever the Talisman was, he might have to flip into

the other world to get it.

“Speedy?”

“Blessya, thankya, God blessya, didn’t I hear one go over

there?” He pointed.

“Speedy! It’s Jack!”

“Ain’t nothin speedy round here, boy, No sir.” His hands began to whisper-walk along the concrete in the direction he had just pointed. One of them found a nickel and he dropped it into the cup. His other happened to touch the shoe of a

smartly dressed young woman who was passing by. Her

pretty, empty face wrinkled in almost painful disgust as she drew away from him.

Jack picked the last coin out of the gutter. It was a silver dollar—a big old cartwheel with Lady Liberty on one side.

Tears began to spill out of his eyes. They ran down his

dirty face and he wiped them away with an arm that shook.

He was crying for Thielke, Wild, Hagen, Davey, and Heidel.

For his mother. For Laura DeLoessian. For the carter’s son lying dead in the road with his pockets turned out. But most of all for himself. He was tired of being on the road. Maybe

when you rode it in a Cadillac it was a road of dreams, but when you had to hitch it, riding on your thumb and a story

that was just about worn out, when you were at everybody’s

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mercy and anyone’s meat, it was nothing but a road of trials.

Jack felt that he had been tried enough . . . but there was no way to cry it off. If he cried it off, the cancer would take his mother, and Uncle Morgan might well take him.

“I don’t think I can do it, Speedy,” he wept. “I don’t think so, man.”

Now the blind man groped for Jack instead of the spilled

coins. Those gentle, reading fingers found his arm and closed around it. Jack could feel the hard pad of callus in the tip of each finger. He drew Jack to him, into those odors of sweat and heat and old chili. Jack pressed his face against Speedy’s chest.

“Hoo, boy. I don’t know no Speedy, but it sounds like you

puttin an awful lot on him. You—”

“I miss my mom, Speedy,” Jack wept, “and Sloat’s after

me. It was him on the phone inside the mall, him. And that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing was in Angola . . . the Rainbird Towers . . . earthquake . . . five men . . . me, I did it, Speedy, I killed those men when I flipped into this world, I killed them just like my dad and Morgan Sloat killed Jerry Bledsoe that time! ”

Now it was out, the worst of it. He had sicked up the stone of guilt that had been in his throat, threatening to choke him, and a storm of weeping seized him—but this time it was relief rather than fear. It was said. It had been confessed. He was a murderer.

“Hooo- eeee! ” the black man cried. He sounded perversely delighted. He held Jack with one thin, strong arm, rocked

him. “You tryin to carry you one heavy load, boy. You sure

am. Maybe you ought to put some of it down.”

“I killed em,” Jack whispered. “Thielke, Wild, Hagen,

Davey . . .”

“Well, if yo friend Speedy was here,” the black man said,

“whoever he might be, or wherever he might be in this wide old world, he might tell you that you cain’t carry the world on yo shoulders, son. You cain’t do that. No one can. Try to carry the world on yo shoulders, why, first it’s gonna break yo back, and then it’s gonna break you sperrit.”

“I killed—”

“Put a gun to their heads and shot somebodies, didya?”

“No . . . the earthquake . . . I flipped. . . .”

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“Don’t know nothin bout dat,” the black man said. Jack had pulled away from him a bit and was staring up into the

black man’s seamed face with wondering curiosity, but

the black man had turned his head toward the parking lot. If he was blind, then he had picked out the smoother, slightly more powerful beat of the police car’s engine from the others as it approached, because he was looking right at it. “All I know is you seem to have this idear of ‘moider’ a little broad.

Prolly if some fella dropped dead of a heart-attack goin

around us as we sit here, you’d think you killed him. ‘Oh

look, I done moidered that fella on account of where I was sittin, oh woe, oh dooom, oh gloooooom, oh this . . . oh that! ’ ”

As he spoke this and that, the blind man punctuated it with a quick change from G to C and back to G again. He laughed,

pleased with himself.

“Speedy—”

“Nothin speedy round here,” the black man reiterated, and

then showed yellow teeth in a crooked grin. “ ’Cept maybe

how speedy some folks are to put the blame on themselves for things others might have got started. Maybe you runnin, boy, and maybe you bein chased.”

G-chord.

“Maybe you be just a little off- base.”

C-chord, with a nifty little run in the middle that made

Jack grin in spite of himself.

“Might be somebody else gettin on yo case.”

Back down to G again, and the blind man laid his guitar

aside (while, in the police car, the two cops were flipping to see which of them would actually have to touch Old Snowball if he wouldn’t get into the back of the cruiser peaceably).

“Maybe dooom and maybe gloooooom and maybe this and maybe that . . .” He laughed again, as if Jack’s fears were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“But I don’t know what could happen if I—”

“No one ever knows what could happen if they do any-

thing, do dey?” the black man who might or might not be

Speedy Parker broke in. “No. Dey do not. If you thought about it, you’d stay in yo house all day, ascairt to come out! I don’t know yo problems, boy. Don’t want to know em. Could

be crazy, talkin bout earthquakes and all. But bein as how you helped me pick up my money and didn’t steal none—I

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counted every plinkety-plink, so I know—I’ll give you some advice. Some things you cain’t help. Sometimes people get

killed because somebody does somethin . . . but if somebody didn’t do that somethin, a whole lot of more people would have got killed. Do you see where I’m pushin, son?”