them their trespasses and to help them become better people, Heck Bast rapped out, “For-Jesussakeamen,” and sat down.
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 353
A Collision of Worlds
353
“Thank you, Heck,” Gardener said. He had taken an arm-
less chair, had turned it around backward, and was sitting on it like a range-ridin cowpoke in a John Ford Western. He was at his most charming tonight; the sterile, self-referring craziness Jack had seen that morning was almost gone. “Let us
have a dozen confessions, please. No more than that. Will you lead us, Andy?”
Warwick, an expression of ludicrous piety on his face,
took Heck’s place.
“Thank you, Reverend Gardener,” he said, and then looked
at the boys. “Confession,” he said. “Who will start?”
There was a rustling stir . . . and then hands began to go
up. Two . . . six . . . nine of them.
“Roy Owdersfelt,” Warwick said.
Roy Owdersfelt, a tall boy with a pimple the size of a tu-
mor on the end of his nose, stood up, twisting his rawboned hands in front of him. “I stole ten bucks from my momma’s
purse last year!” he announced in a high, screamy voice. One scabbed, grimy hand wandered up to his face, settled on the pimple, and gave it a fearful tweak. “I took it down to The Wizard of Odds and I turned it into quarters and I played all these different games like Pac-Man and Laser Strike until it was gone! That was money she had put away against the gas
bill, and that’s how come for a while they turned off our
heat!” He blinked around at them. “And my brother got sick
and had to go in the hospital up in Indianapolis with pneumonia! Because I stole that money!
“That’s my confession.”
Roy Owdersfelt sat down.
Sunlight Gardener said, “Can Roy be forgiven?”
In unison the boys replied, “Roy can be forgiven.”
“Can anyone here forgive him, boys?”
“No one here.”
“Who can forgive him?”
“God through the power of His only begotten Son, Jesus.”
“Will you pray to Jesus to intercede for you?” Gardener
asked Roy Owdersfelt.
“Sure am gonna!” Roy Owdersfelt cried in an unsteady
voice, and tweaked the pimple again. Jack saw that Roy Ow-
dersfelt was weeping.
“And the next time your momma comes here are you going
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 354
354
THE TALISMAN
to tell your momma that you know you sinned against her and your little brother and against the face of God and you’re just as sorry a boy as ever there was?”
“You bet!”
Sunlight Gardener nodded to Andy Warwick.
“Confession,” Warwick said.
Before confession was over at six o’clock, almost every-
one except Jack and Wolf had his hand up, hoping to relate
some sin to those gathered. Several confessed petty theft.
Others told of stealing liquor and drinking until they threw up. There were, of course, many tales of drugs.
Warwick called on them, but it was Sunlight Gardener
they looked to for approval as they told . . . and told . . . and told.
He’s got them liking their sins, Jack thought, troubled.
They love him, they want his approval, and I guess they only get it if they confess. Some of these sad sacks probably even make their crimes up.
The smells from the dining hall had been getting stronger.
Wolf ’s stomach rumbled furiously and constantly next to
Jack. Once, during one boy’s tearful confession of having
hooked a Penthouse magazine so he could look at those filthy pictures of what he called “sexed-out women,” Wolf ’s stomach rumbled so loudly that Jack elbowed him.
Following the last confession of the evening, Sunlight Gar-
dener offered a short, melodious prayer. Then he stood in the doorway, informal and yet resplendent in his jeans and white silk shirt, as the boys filed out. As Jack and Wolf passed, he closed one of his hands around Jack’s wrist.
“I’ve met you before.” Confess, Sunlight Gardener’s eyes demanded.
And Jack felt an urge to do just that.
Oh yes, we know each other, yes. You whipped my back
bloody.
“No,” he said.
“Oh yes,” Gardener said. “Oh yes. I’ve met you before. In
California? In Maine? Oklahoma? Where?”
Confess.
“I don’t know you,” Jack said.
Gardener giggled. Inside his own head, Jack suddenly
knew, Sunlight Gardener was jigging and dancing and snap-
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 355
A Collision of Worlds
355
ping a bullwhip. “So Peter said when he was asked to identify Jesus Christ,” he said. “But Peter lied. So do you, I think. Was it in Texas, Jack? El Paso? Was it in Jerusalem in another life?
On Golgotha, the place of the skull?”
“I tell you—”
“Yes, yes, I know, we’ve only just met.” Another giggle.
Wolf, Jack saw, had shied as far away from Sunlight Gardener as the doorway would allow. It was the smell. The gagging,
cloying smell of the man’s cologne. And under it, the smell of craziness.
“I never forget a face, Jack. I never forget a face or a place.
I’ll remember where we met.”
His eyes flicked from Jack to Wolf—Wolf whined a little
and pulled back—and then back to Jack again.
“Enjoy your dinner, Jack,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner,
Wolf. Your real life at the Sunlight Home begins tomorrow.”
Halfway to the stairs, he turned and looked back.
“I never forget a place or a face, Jack. I’ll remember.”
Coldly, Jack thought, God, I hope not. Not until I’m about two thousand miles away from this fucking pris—
Something slammed into him hard. Jack flew out into the
hall, pinwheeling his arms madly for balance. He hit his head on the bare concrete floor and saw a tangled shower of stars.
When he was able to sit up, he saw Singer and Bast stand-
ing together, grinning. Behind them was Casey, his gut
pouching out his white turtleneck. Wolf was looking at Singer and Bast, and something in his tensed-down posture alarmed
Jack.
“No, Wolf!” he said sharply.
Wolf slumped.
“No, go ahead, dummy,” Heck Bast said, laughing a little.
“Don’t listen to him. Go on and try me, if you want. I always liked a little warmup before dinner.”
Singer glanced at Wolf and said, “Leave the dummy alone,
Heck. He’s just the body.” He nodded at Jack. “There’s the
head. There’s the head we got to change.” He looked down at Jack, hands on his knees, like an adult bending to pass a
pleasant word or two with a very small child. “And we will
change it, Mr. Jack Parker. You can believe it.”
Deliberately, Jack said, “Piss off, you bullying asshole.”
Singer recoiled as if slapped, a flush rising out of his col-
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 356
356
THE TALISMAN
lar, up his neck, and into his face. With a growl, Heck Bast stepped forward.
Singer grabbed Bast’s arm. Still looking at Jack, he said,
“Not now. Later.”
Jack got to his feet. “You want to watch out for me,” he
said quietly to them both, and although Hector Bast only
glowered, Sonny Singer looked almost scared. For a moment
he seemed to see something in Jack Sawyer’s face that was
both strong and forbidding—something that had not been
there almost two months ago, when a much younger boy had
set the small seafront town of Arcadia Beach to his back and had begun walking west.
4
Jack thought that Uncle Tommy might have described
dinner—not unkindly—as consisting of American Grange
Hall Cuisine. The boys sat at long tables and were served by four of their number, who had changed into clean mess-whites following the confession period.
Following another prayer, chow was duly brought on. Big
glass bowls full of home-baked beans were passed up and
down the four tables, steaming platters of cheap red hotdogs, tureens of canned pineapple chunks, lots of milk in plain cartons marked DONATED COMMODITIES and INDIANA STATE DAIRY
COMMISSION.
Wolf ate with grim concentration, his head down, a piece
of bread always in one hand to serve as a combination pusher and mopper. As Jack watched, he gobbled five hotdogs and
three helpings of the bullet-hard beans. Thinking of the small room with its closed window, Jack wondered if he were going to need a gas-mask tonight. He supposed so—not that he was
likely to be issued one. He watched dismally as Wolf slopped a fourth helping of beans onto his plate.
Following dinner, all the boys rose, formed lines, and
cleared the tables. As Jack took his dishes, a Wolf-decimated loaf of bread, and two milk-pitchers out into the kitchen, he kept his eyes wide open. The stark labels on the milk cartons had given him an idea.
This place wasn’t a prison, and it wasn’t a workhouse. It
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 357
A Collision of Worlds
357
was probably classed as a boarding school or something, and the law would demand that some sort of state inspectors must keep an eye on it. The kitchen would be a place where the