The Talisman by Stephen King

2

This time, Jack’s total progress in the Territories had been half a mile west—the distance Wolf had moved his herd so they

could drink in the stream where Wolf himself had later almost been drowned. Over here, he found himself ten miles farther west, as best he could figure. They struggled up the bank—

Wolf actually ended up pulling Jack most of the way—and in

the last of the daylight Jack could see an exit-ramp splitting off to the right some fifty yards up the road. A reflectorized sign read: ARCANUM LAST EXIT IN OHIO STATE LINE 15 MILES.

“We’ve got to hitch,” Jack said.

“Hitch?” Wolf said doubtfully.

“Let’s have a look at you.”

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He thought Wolf would do, at least in the dark. He was still wearing the bib overalls, which now had an actual OSHKOSH

label on them. His homespun shirt had become a machine-

produced blue chambray that looked like an Army-Navy Sur-

plus special. His formerly bare feet were clad in a huge pair of dripping penny loafers and white socks.

Oddest of all, a pair of round steel-rimmed spectacles of

the sort John Lennon used to wear sat in the middle of Wolf ’s big face.

“Wolf, did you have trouble seeing? Over in the Territories?”

“I didn’t know I did,” Wolf said. “I guess so. Wolf! I sure see better over here, with these glass eyes. Wolf, right here and now!” He looked out at the roaring turnpike traffic, and for just a moment Jack saw what he must be seeing: great

steel beasts with huge yellow-white eyes, snarling through the night at unimaginable speeds, rubber wheels blistering the

road. “I see better than I want to,” Wolf finished forlornly.

3

Two days later a pair of tired, footsore boys limped past the MUNICIPAL TOWN LIMITS sign on one side of Highway 32 and

the 10–4 Diner on the other side, and thus into the city of Muncie, Indiana. Jack was running a fever of a hundred and

two degrees and coughing pretty steadily. Wolf ’s face was

swollen and discolored. He looked like a pug that has come

out on the short end in a grudge match. The day before, he

had tried to get them some late apples from a tree growing in the shade of an abandoned barn beside the road. He had actually been in the tree and dropping shrivelled autumn apples into the front of his overalls when the wall-wasps, which had built their nest somewhere in the eaves of the old barn, had found him. Wolf had come back down the tree as fast as he

could, with a brown cloud around his head. He was howling.

And still, with one eye completely closed and his nose beginning to resemble a large purple turnip, he had insisted that Jack have the best of the apples. None of them was very

good—small and sour and wormy—and Jack didn’t feel

much like eating anyway, but after what Wolf had gone

through to get them, he hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

A big old Camaro, jacked in the back so that the nose

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pointed at the road, blasted by them. “Heyyyyy, assholes!”

someone yelled, and there was a burst of loud, beer-fueled

laughter. Wolf howled and clutched at Jack. Jack had thought that Wolf would eventually get over his terror of cars, but now he was really beginning to wonder.

“It’s all right, Wolf,” he said wearily, peeling Wolf ’s arms off for the twentieth or thirtieth time that day. “They’re gone.”

“So loud! ” Wolf moaned. “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! So loud, Jack, my ears, my ears! ”

“Glasspack muffler,” Jack said, thinking wearily: You’d love the California freeways, Wolf. We’ll check those out if we’re still travelling together, okay? Then we’ll try a few stock-car races and motorcycle scrambles. You’ll be nuts about them. “Some guys like the sound, you know. They—”

But he went into another coughing fit that doubled him over.

For a moment the world swam away in gray shades. It came

back very, very slowly.

“Like it,” Wolf muttered. “Jason! How could anyone like it, Jack? And the smells . . .”

Jack knew that, for Wolf, the smells were the worst. They

hadn’t been over here four hours before Wolf began to call it the Country of Bad Smells. That first night Wolf had retched half a dozen times, at first throwing up muddy water from a stream which existed in another universe onto the Ohio

ground, then simply dry-heaving. It was the smells, he ex-

plained miserably. He didn’t know how Jack could stand

them, how anyone could stand them.

Jack knew—coming back from the Territories, you were

bowled over by odors you barely noticed when you were liv-

ing with them. Diesel fuel, car exhausts, industrial wastes, garbage, bad water, ripe chemicals. Then you got used to

them again. Got used to them or just went numb. Only that

wasn’t happening to Wolf. He hated the cars, he hated the

smells, he hated this world. Jack didn’t think he was ever going to get used to it. If he didn’t get Wolf back into the Territories fairly soon, Jack thought he might go crazy. He’ll probably drive me crazy while he’s at it, Jack thought. Not that I’ve got far to go anymore.

A clattering farm-truck loaded with chickens ground by

them, followed by an impatient line of cars, some of them

honking. Wolf almost jumped into Jack’s arms. Weakened by

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the fever, Jack reeled into the brushy, trash-littered ditch and sat down so hard his teeth clicked together.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Wolf said miserably. “God pound me!”

“Not your fault,” Jack said. “Fall out. Time to take five.”

Wolf sat down beside Jack, remaining silent, looking at Jack anxiously. He knew how hard he was making it for Jack; he

knew that Jack was in a fever to move faster, partly to outdis-tance Morgan, but mostly for some other reason. He knew that Jack moaned about his mother in his sleep, and sometimes

cried. But the only time he had cried when awake was after Wolf went a little crazy on the Arcanum turnpike ramp. That was

when he realized what Jack meant by “hitching.” When Wolf

told Jack he didn’t think he could hitch rides—at least not for a while and maybe not ever—Jack had sat down on the top strand of guardrail cable and had wept into his hands. And then he had stopped, which was good . . . but when he took his face out of his hands, he had looked at Wolf in a way that made Wolf feel sure that Jack would leave him in this horrible Country of Bad Smells . . . and without Jack, Wolf would soon go quite mad.

4

They had walked up to the Arcanum exit in the breakdown

lane, Wolf cringing and pawing at Jack each time a car or

truck passed in the deepening dusk. Jack had heard a mock-

ing voice drift back on the slipstream: “Where’s your car, faggots?” He shook it off like a dog shaking water out of his

eyes, and had simply kept going, taking Wolf ’s hand and

pulling him after when Wolf showed signs of lagging or drifting toward the woods. The important thing was to get off the turnpike proper, where hitchhiking was forbidden, and onto

the westbound Arcanum entrance ramp. Some states had le-

galized hitching from the ramps (or so a road-bum with

whom Jack had shared a barn one night had told him), and

even in states where thumbing was technically a crime, the

cops would usually wink if you were on a ramp.

So first, get to the ramp. Hope no state patrol happened

along while you were getting there. What a state trooper

might make of Wolf Jack didn’t want to think about. He

would probably think he had caught an eighties incarnation of Charles Manson in Lennon glasses.

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They made the ramp and crossed over to the westbound

lane. Ten minutes later a battered old Chrysler had pulled up.

The driver, a burly man with a bull neck and a cap which read CASE FARM EQUIPMENT tipped back on his head, leaned over

and opened the door.

“Hop in, boys! Dirty night, ain’t it?”

“Thanks, mister, it sure is,” Jack said cheerfully. His mind was in overdrive, trying to figure out how he could work Wolf into the Story, and he barely noticed Wolf ’s expression.

The man noticed it, however.

His face hardened.

“You smell anything bad, son?”

Jack was snapped back to reality by the man’s tone, which

was as hard as his face. All cordiality had departed it, and he looked as if he might have just wandered into the Oatley Tap to eat a few beers and drink a few glasses.