“I think I see what we should do next right over there,”
Jack said. “I was thinking about it just a few days ago, when I got my new sneakers.”
He bowed his feet. He and Wolf regarded the sneakers in
depressed silence. They were scuffed, battered, and dirty. The left sole was bidding a fond adieu to the left upper. Jack had owned them for . . . he wrinkled his forehead and thought.
The fever made it hard to think. Three days. Only three days since he had picked them out of the bargain bin of the Fayva store. Now they looked old. Old.
“Anyway . . .” Jack sighed. Then he brightened. “See that
building over there, Wolf?”
The building, an explosion of uninteresting angles in gray
brick, stood like an island in the middle of a giant parking lot.
Wolf knew what the asphalt in that parking lot would smell
like: dead, decomposing animals. That smell would almost
suffocate him, and Jack would barely notice it.
“For your information, the sign there said Town Line Six-
plex,” Jack said. “It sounds like a coffee pot, but actually it’s a movie with six shows. There ought to be one we like.” And in the afternoon, there won’t be many people there and that’s good because you have this distressing habit of going Section Eight, Wolf. “Come on.” He got unsteadily to his feet.
“What’s a movie, Jack?” Wolf asked. He had been a dread-
ful problem to Jack, he knew—such a dreadful problem that
he now hesitated to protest about anything, or even express unease. But a frightening intuition had come to him: that going to a movie and hitching a ride might be the same thing.
Jack called the roaring carts and carriages “cars,” and
“Chevys,” and “Jartrans,” and “station-wagons” (these latter, Wolf thought, must be like the coaches in the Territories
which carried passengers from one coach-station to the next).
Might the bellowing, stinking carriages also be called
“movies”? It sounded very possible.
“Well,” Jack said, “it’s easier to show you than to tell you. I think you’ll like it. Come on.”
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Jack stumbled coming out of the ditch and went briefly to
his knees. “Jack, are you okay?” Wolf asked anxiously.
Jack nodded. They started across the parking lot, which
smelled just as bad as Wolf had known it would.
6
Jack had come a good part of the thirty-five miles between
Arcanum, Ohio, and Muncie, Indiana, on Wolf ’s broad back.
Wolf was frightened of cars, terrified of trucks, nauseated by the smells of almost everything, apt to howl and run at sudden loud noises. But he was also almost tireless. As far as that goes, you can strike the “almost,” Jack thought now. So far as I know, he is tireless.
Jack had moved them away from the Arcanum ramp as fast
as he could, forcing his wet, aching legs into a rusty trot. His head had been throbbing like a slick, flexing fist inside his skull, waves of heat and cold rushing through him. Wolf
moved easily to his left, his stride so long that he was keeping up with Jack easily by doing no more than a moderately fast walk. Jack knew that he had maybe gotten paranoid about the cops, but the man in the CASE FARM EQUIPMENT hat had looked really scared. And pissed.
They hadn’t gone even a quarter of a mile when a deep,
burning stitch settled into his side and he asked Wolf if he could give him a piggyback for a while.
“Huh?” Wolf asked.
“You know,” Jack said, and pantomimed.
A big grin had overspread Wolf ’s face. Here at last was
something he understood; here was something he could do.
“You want a horsey back!” he cried, delighted.
“Yeah, I guess . . .”
“Oh, yeah! Wolf! Here and now! Used to give em to my
litter-brothers! Jump up, Jack!” Wolf bent down, holding his curved hands ready, stirrups for Jack’s thighs.
“Now when I get too heavy, just put me d—”
Before he could finish, Wolf had swept him up and was
running lightly down the road with him into the dark—really running. The cold, rainy air flipped Jack’s hair back from his hot brow.
“Wolf, you’ll wear yourself out!” Jack shouted.
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“Not me! Wolf! Wolf! Runnin here and now!” For the first
time since they had come over, Wolf sounded actually happy.
He ran for the next two hours, until they were west of Ar-
canum and travelling along a dark, unmarked stretch of two-
lane black-top. Jack saw a deserted barn standing slumped in a shaggy, untended field, and they slept there that night.
Wolf wanted nothing to do with downtown areas where the
traffic was a roaring flood and the stinks rose up to heaven in a noxious cloud, and Jack didn’t want anything to do with
them, either. Wolf stuck out too much. But he had forced one stop, at a roadside store just across the Indiana line, near Har-risville. While Wolf waited nervously out by the road, hunkering down, digging at the dirt, getting up, walking around in a stiff little circle, then hunkering again, Jack bought a newspaper and checked the weather page carefully. The next full
moon was on October 31st—Halloween, that was fitting
enough. Jack turned back to the front page so he could see
what day it was today . . . yesterday, that had been now. It had been October 26th.
7
Jack pulled open one of the glass doors and stepped inside the lobby of the Town Line Sixplex. He looked around sharply at Wolf, but Wolf looked—for the moment, at least—pretty
much okay. Wolf was, in fact, cautiously optimistic . . . at least for the moment. He didn’t like being inside a building, but at least it wasn’t a car. There was a good smell in here—
light and sort of tasty. Or would have been, except for a bitter, almost rancid undersmell. Wolf looked left and saw a glass
box full of white stuff. That was the source of the good light smell.
“Jack,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“I want some of that white stuff, please. But none of the
pee.”
“Pee? What are you talking about?”
Wolf searched for a more formal word and found it.
“Urine.” He pointed at a thing with a light going off and on inside it. BUTTERY FLAVORING, it read. “That’s some kind of urine, isn’t it? It’s got to be, the way it smells.”
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Jack smiled tiredly. “A popcorn without the fake butter,
right,” he said. “Now pipe down, okay?”
“Sure, Jack,” Wolf said humbly. “Right here and now.”
The ticket-girl had been chewing a big wad of grape-
flavored bubble gum. Now she stopped. She looked at Jack,
then at Jack’s big, hulking companion. The gum sat on her
tongue inside her half-open mouth like a large purple tumor.
She rolled her eyes at the guy behind the counter.
“Two, please,” Jack said. He took out his roll of bills, dirty, tag-eared ones with an orphan five hiding in the middle.
“Which show?” Her eyes moved back and forth, back and
forth, Jack to Wolf and Wolf to Jack. She looked like a
woman watching a hot table-tennis match.
“What’s just starting?” Jack asked her.
“Well . . .” She glanced down at the paper Scotch-taped
beside her. “There’s The Flying Dragon in Cinema Four. It’s a kung-fu movie with Chuck Norris.” Back and forth went her
eyes, back and forth, back and forth. “Then, in Cinema Six, there’s a double feature. Two Ralph Bakshi cartoons. Wizards and The Lord of the Rings.”
Jack felt relieved. Wolf was nothing but a big, overgrown
kid, and kids loved cartoons. This could work out after all.
Wolf would maybe find at least one thing in the Country of
Bad Smells that would amuse him, and Jack could sleep for
three hours.
“That one,” he said. “The cartoons.”
“That’ll be four dollars,” she said. “Bargain Matinee prices end at two.” She pushed a button and two tickets poked out of a slot with a mechanical ratcheting noise. Wolf flinched backward with a small cry.
The girl looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“You jumpy, mister?”
“No, I’m Wolf,” Wolf said. He smiled, showing a great
many teeth. Jack would have sworn that Wolf showed more
teeth now when he smiled than he had a day or two ago. The
girl looked at all those teeth. She wet her lips.
“He’s okay. He just—” Jack shrugged. “He doesn’t get off
the farm much. You know.” He gave her the orphan five. She
handled it as if she wished she had a pair of tongs to do it with.
“Come on, Wolf.”
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