Jack whipped around and looked at Wolf.
Wolf ’s nostrils were flaring like the nostrils of a bear
which smells a blown skunk. His lips were not just pulled
back from his teeth; they were wrinkled back from them, the flesh below his nose stacked in little ridges.
“What is he, retarded?” the man in the CASE FARM EQUIP-
MENT hat asked Jack in a low voice.
“No, ah, he just—”
Wolf began to growl.
That was it.
“Oh, Christ,” the man said in the tones of one who simply
cannot believe this is happening. He stepped on the gas and roared down the exit ramp, the passenger door flopping shut.
His taillights dot-dashed briefly in the rainy dark at the foot of the ramp, sending reflections in smeary red arrows up the
pavement toward where they stood.
“Boy, that’s great,” Jack said, and turned to Wolf, who shrank back from his anger. “That’s just great! If he’d had a CB radio, he’d be on Channel Nineteen right now, yelling for a cop, telling anyone and everyone that there are a couple of loonies trying to hitch a ride out of Arcanum! Jason! Or Jesus! Or Whoever, I don’t care! You want to see some fucking nails get pounded, Wolf? You do that a few more times and
you’ll feel them get pounded! Us! We’ll get pounded!”
Exhausted, bewildered, frustrated, almost used up, Jack ad-
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vanced on the cringing Wolf, who could have torn his head
from his shoulders with one hard, swinging blow if he had
wanted to, and Wolf backed up before him.
“Don’t shout, Jack,” he moaned. “The smells . . . to be in there . . . shut up in there with those smells . . .”
“I didn’t smell anything! ” Jack shouted. His voice broke, his sore throat hurt more than ever, but he couldn’t seem to stop; it was shout or go mad. His wet hair had fallen in
his eyes. He shook it away and then slapped Wolf on the
shoulder. There was a smart crack and his hand began to hurt at once. It was as if he had slapped a stone. Wolf howled
abjectly, and this made Jack angrier. The fact that he was lying made him angrier still. He had been in the Territories less than six hours this time, but that man’s car had smelled like a wild animal’s den. Harsh aromas of old coffee and fresh
beer (there had been an open can of Stroh’s between his legs), an air-freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror that
smelled like dry sweet powder on the cheek of a corpse. And there had been something else, something darker, something
wetter . . .
“Not anything! ” he shouted, his voice breaking hoarsely.
He slapped Wolf ’s other shoulder. Wolf howled again and
turned around, hunching like a child who is being beaten by an angry father. Jack began to slap at his back, his smarting hands spatting up little sprays of water from Wolf ’s overalls.
Each time Jack’s hand descended, Wolf howled. “So you bet-
ter get used to it (Slap!) because the next car to come along might be a cop (Slap!) or it might be Mr. Morgan Bloat in his puke-green BMW (Slap!) and if all you can be is a big baby, we’re going to be in one big fucking world of hurt! (Slap!) Do you understand that?”
Wolf said nothing. He stood hunched in the rain, his back
to Jack, quivering. Crying. Jack felt a lump rise in his own throat, felt his eyes grow hot and stinging. All of this only increased his fury. Some terrible part of him wanted most of all to hurt himself, and knew that hurting Wolf was a wonderful way to do it.
“Turn around!”
Wolf did. Tears ran from his muddy brown eyes behind the
round spectacles. Snot ran from his nose.
“Do you understand me?”
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“Yes,” Wolf moaned. “Yes, I understand, but I couldn’t ride with him, Jack.”
“Why not?” Jack looked at him angrily, fisted hands on his
hips. Oh, his head was aching.
“Because he was dying,” Wolf said in a low voice.
Jack stared at him, all his anger draining away.
“Jack, didn’t you know?” Wolf asked softly. “Wolf! You
couldn’t smell it?”
“No,” Jack said in a small, whistling, out-of-breath voice.
Because he had smelled something, hadn’t he? Something he had never smelled before. Something like a mixture of . . .
It came to him, and suddenly his strength was gone. He sat
down heavily on the guardrail cable and looked at Wolf.
Shit and rotting grapes. That was what that smell had been
like. That wasn’t it a hundred percent, but it was too hideously close.
Shit and rotting grapes.
“It’s the worst smell,” Wolf said. “It’s when people forget how to be healthy. We call it— Wolf! —the Black Disease. I don’t even think he knew he had it. And . . . these Strangers can’t smell it, can they, Jack?”
“No,” he whispered. If he were to be suddenly teleported
back to New Hampshire, to his mother’s room in the Alham-
bra, would he smell that stink on her?
Yes. He would smell it on his mother, drifting out of her
pores, the smell of shit and rotting grapes, the Black Disease.
“We call it cancer,” Jack whispered. We call it cancer and my mother has it.
“I just don’t know if I can hitch,” Wolf said. “I’ll try again if you want, Jack, but the smells . . . inside . . . they’re bad enough in the outside air, Wolf! but inside . . .”
That was when Jack put his face in his hands and wept,
partly out of desperation, mostly out of simple exhaustion.
And, yes, the expression Wolf believed he had seen on Jack’s face really had been there; for an instant the temptation to leave Wolf was more than a temptation, it was a maddening
imperative. The odds against his ever making it to California and finding the Talisman—whatever it might be—had been
long before; now they were so long they dwindled to a point on the horizon. Wolf would do more than slow him down;
Wolf would sooner or later get both of them thrown in jail.
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Probably sooner. And how could he ever explain Wolf to Ra-
tional Richard Sloat?
What Wolf saw on Jack’s face in that moment was a look
of cold speculation that unhinged his knees. He fell on them and held his clasped hands up to Jack like a suitor in a bad Victorian melodrama.
“Don’t go away an’ leave me, Jack,” he wept. “Don’t leave
old Wolf, don’t leave me here, you brought me here, please, please don’t leave me alone. . . .”
Beyond this, conscious words were lost; Wolf was perhaps
trying to talk but all he really seemed able to do was sob. Jack felt a great weariness fall over him. It fit well, like a jacket that one has worn often. Don’t leave me here, you brought me here . . .
There it was. Wolf was his responsibility, wasn’t he? Yes.
Oh yes indeed. He had taken Wolf by the hand and dragged
him out of the Territories and into Ohio and he had the throbbing shoulder to prove it. He had had no choice, of course; Wolf had been drowning, and even if he hadn’t drowned,
Morgan would have crisped him with whatever that lightning-
rod thing had been. So he could have turned on Wolf again,
could have said: Which would you prefer, Wolf old buddy? To be here and scared, or there and dead?
He could, yes, and Wolf would have no answer because
Wolf wasn’t too swift in the brains department. But Uncle
Tommy had been fond of quoting a Chinese proverb that
went: The man whose life you save is your responsibility for the rest of your life.
Never mind the ducking, never mind the fancy footwork;
Wolf was his responsibility.
“Don’t leave me, Jack,” Wolf wept. “Wolf-Wolf! Please
don’t leave good old Wolf, I’ll help you, I’ll stand guard at night, I can do lots, only don’t don’t—”
“Quit bawling and get up,” Jack said quietly. “I won’t leave you. But we’ve got to get out of here in case that guy does send a cop back to check on us. Let’s move it.”
5
“Did you figure out what to do next, Jack?” Wolf asked
timidly. They had been sitting in the brushy ditch just over the
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Muncie town line for more than half an hour, and when Jack
turned toward Wolf, Wolf was relieved to see he was smiling.
It was a weary smile, and Wolf didn’t like the dark, tired circles under Jack’s eyes (he liked Jack’s smell even less—it was a sick smell), but it was a smile.