Jack got up and ran across the storeroom floor in his stocking feet. A light sweat that felt freezing cold, seemed to cover his entire body.
He opened the door a crack.
Ring, ring, ring, ring.
Then finally: “Hello, Oatley Tap. And this better be good.”
Smokey’s voice. A pause. “Hello?” Another pause. “Fuck
off! ” Smokey hung up with a bang, and Jack heard him recross the floor and then start up the stairs to the small overhead apartment he and Lori shared.
7
Jack looked unbelievingly from the green slip of paper in his left hand to the small pile of bills—all ones—and change by his right. It was eleven o’clock the next morning. Thursday morning, and he had asked for his pay.
“What is this?” he asked, still unable to believe it.
“You can read,” Smokey said, “and you can count. You
don’t move as fast as I’d like, Jack—at least not yet—but
you’re bright enough.”
Now he sat with the green slip in one hand and the money
by the other. Dull anger began to pulse in the middle of his forehead like a vein. GUEST CHECK, the green slip was headed.
It was the exact same form Mrs. Banberry had used in the
Golden Spoon. It read:
1 hmbrg
$1.35
1 hmbrg
$1.35
1 lrg mk
.55
1 gin-ale
.55
Tx
.30
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 170
170
THE TALISMAN
At the bottom the figure $4.10 was written in large numbers and circled. Jack had made nine dollars for his four-to-one stint. Smokey had charged off nearly half of it; what he had left by his right hand was four dollars and ninety cents.
He looked up, furious—first at Lori, who looked away as if
vaguely embarrassed, and then at Smokey, who simply looked
back.
“This is a cheat,” he said thinly.
“Jack, that’s not true. Look at the menu prices—”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it!”
Lori flinched a little, as if expecting Smokey to clout him one . . . but Smokey only looked at Jack with a kind of terrible patience.
“I didn’t charge you for your bed, did I?”
“Bed!” Jack shouted, feeling the hot blood boil up into his cheeks. “Some bed! Cut-open burlap bags on a concrete floor! Some bed! I’d like to see you try to charge me for it, you dirty cheat! ”
Lori made a scared sound and shot a look at Smokey . . .
but Smokey only sat across from Jack in the booth, the thick blue smoke of a Cheroot curling up between them. A fresh paper fry-cook’s hat was cocked forward on Smokey’s narrow
head.
“We talked about you dossing down back there,” Smokey
said. “You asked if it came with the job. I said it did. No mention was made of your meals. If it had been brought up,
maybe something could have been done. Maybe not. Point is,
you never brought it up, so now you got to deal with that.”
Jack sat shaking, tears of anger standing in his eyes. He
tried to talk and nothing came out but a small strangled groan.
He was literally too furious to speak.
“Of course, if you wanted to discuss an employees’ dis-
count on your meals now—”
“Go to hell! ” Jack managed finally, snatching up the four singles and the little strew of change. “Teach the next kid who comes in here how to look out for number one! I’m going! ”
He crossed the floor toward the door, and in spite of his
anger he knew—did not just think but flat-out knew—that he wasn’t going to make the sidewalk.
“Jack.”
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 171
The Road of Trials
171
He touched the doorknob, thought of grasping it and turn-
ing it—but that voice was undeniable and full of a certain
threat. He dropped his hand and turned around, his anger
leaving him. He suddenly felt shrunken and old. Lori had
gone behind the bar, where she was sweeping and humming.
She had apparently decided that Smokey wasn’t going to
work Jack over with his fists, and since nothing else really mattered, everything was all right.
“You don’t want to leave me in the lurch with my weekend
crowd coming up.”
“I want to get out of here. You cheated me.”
“No sir,” Smokey said, “I explained that. If anyone blotted your copybook, Jack, it was you. Now we could discuss your
meals—fifty percent off the food, maybe, and even free sodas.
I never went that far before with the younger help I hire from time to time, but this weekened’s going to be especially hairy, what with all the migrant labor in the county for the apple-picking. And I like you, Jack. That’s why I didn’t clout you one when you raised your voice to me, although maybe I
should have. But I need you over the weekend.”
Jack felt his rage return briefly, and then die away again.
“What if I go anyhow?” he asked. “I’m five dollars to the
good, anyway, and being out of this shitty little town might be just as good as a bonus.”
Looking at Jack, still smiling his narrow smile, Smokey
said, “You remember going into the men’s last night to clean after some guy who whoopsed his cookies?”
Jack nodded.
“You remember what he looked like?”
“Crewcut. Khakis. So what?”
“That’s Digger Atwell. His real name’s Carlton, but he
spent ten years taking care of the town cemeteries, so everyone got calling him Digger. That was—oh, twenty or thirty
years ago. He went on the town cops back around the time
Nixon got elected President. Now he’s Chief of Police.”
Smokey picked up his Cheroot, puffed at it, and looked at
Jack.
“Digger and me go back,” Smokey said. “And if you was
to just walk out of here now, Jack, I couldn’t guarantee that you wouldn’t have some trouble with Digger. Might end up
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 172
172
THE TALISMAN
getting sent home. Might end up picking the apples on the
town’s land—Oatley Township’s got . . . oh, I guess forty
acres of good trees. Might end up getting beat up. Or . . . I’ve heard that ole Digger’s got a taste for kids on the road. Boys, mostly.”
Jack thought of that clublike penis. He felt both sick and
cold.
“In here, you’re under my wing, so to speak,” Smokey
said. “Once you hit the street, who can say? Digger’s apt to be cruising anyplace. You might get over the town line with no sweat. On the other hand, you might just see him pulling up beside you in that big Plymouth he drives. Digger ain’t totally bright, but he does have a nose, sometimes, Or . . . someone might give him a call.”
Behind the bar, Lori was doing dishes. She dried her
hands, turned on the radio, and began to sing along with an old Steppenwolf song.
“Tell you what,” Smokey said. “Hang in there, Jack. Work
the weekend. Then I’ll pack you into my pick-up and drive
you over the town line myself. How would that be? You’ll go out of here Sunday noon with damn near thirty bucks in your poke that you didn’t have coming in. You’ll go out thinking that Oatley’s not such a bad place after all. So what do you say?”
Jack looked into those brown eyes, noted the yellow scle-
ras and the small flecks of red; he noted Smokey’s big, sincere smile lined with false teeth; he even saw with a weird and terrifying sense of déjà vu that the fly was back on the paper fry-cook’s hat, preening and washing its hair-thin forelegs.
He suspected Smokey knew that he knew that everything Updike had said was a lie, and didn’t even care. After working into the early hours of Saturday morning and then Sunday
morning, Jack would sleep until maybe two Sunday after-
noon. Smokey would tell him he couldn’t give him that ride
because Jack had woken up too late; now he, Smokey, was too busy watching the Colts and the Patriots. And Jack would not only be too tired to walk, he would be too afraid that Smokey might lose interest in the Colts and Patriots just long enough to call his good friend Digger Atwell and say, “He’s walking down Mill Road right now, Digger old boy, why don’t you
pick him up? Then get over here for the second half. Free
King_0345444884_6p_01_r1.qxd 8/13/01 1:05 PM Page 173
The Road of Trials
173
beer, but don’t you go puking in my urinal until I get the kid back here.”
That was one scenario. There were others that he could
think of, each a little different, each really the same at bottom.
Smokey Updike’s smile widened a little.
10
Elroy
1
When I was six . . .
The Tap, which had begun to wind down by this time on