hear me? Limbo. Nowhere. We’re gonna see Judge Fairchild,
he’s the magistrate, and if you don’t tell us the truth, you’re gonna pay some big fuckin consequences. Upstairs. Move it!”
At the top of the stairs the policeman pushed a door open.
A middle-aged woman in wire glasses and a black dress
looked up from a typewriter placed sideways against the far wall. “Two more runaways,” the policeman said. “Tell him
we’re here.”
She nodded, picked up her telephone, and spoke a few
words. “You may go in,” the secretary said to them, her eyes wandering from Wolf to Jack and back again.
The cop pushed them across the anteroom and opened the
door to a room twice as large, lined with books on one long wall, framed photographs and diplomas and certificates on
another. Blinds had been lowered across the long windows
opposite. A tall skinny man in a dark suit, a wrinkled white shirt, and a narrow tie of no discernible pattern stood up behind a chipped wooden desk that must have been six feet
long. The man’s face was a relief map of wrinkles, and his
hair was so black it must have been dyed. Stale cigarette
smoke hung visibly in the air. “Well, what have we got here, Franky?” His voice was startlingly deep, almost theatrical.
“Kids I picked up on French Lick Road, over by Thomp-
son’s place.”
Judge Fairchild’s wrinkles contorted into a smile as he
looked at Jack. “You have any identification papers on you, son?”
“No sir,” Jack said.
“Have you told Officer Williams here the truth about
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everything? He doesn’t think you have, or you wouldn’t be
here.”
“Yes sir,” Jack said.
“Then tell me your story.” He walked around his desk, dis-
turbing the flat layers of smoke just over his head, and half-sat, half-leaned on the front corner nearest Jack. Squinting, he lit a cigarette—Jack saw the Judge’s recessed pale eyes peering at him through the smoke and knew there was no charity
in them.
It was the pitcher plant again.
Jack drew in a large breath. “My name is Jack Parker. He’s
my cousin, and he’s called Jack, too. Jack Wolf. But his real name is Philip. He was staying with us in Daleville because his dad’s dead and his mother got sick. I was just taking him back to Springfield.”
“Simple-minded, is he?”
“A little slow,” Jack said, and glanced up at Wolf. His
friend seemed barely conscious.
“What’s your mother’s name?” the Judge asked Wolf. Wolf
did not respond in any way. His eyes were clamped shut and
his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“She’s named Helen,” Jack said. “Helen Vaughan.”
The Judge eased himself off the desk and walked slowly
over to Jack. “Have you been drinking, son? You’re a little unsteady.”
“No.”
Judge Fairchild came to within a foot of Jack and bent
down. “Let me smell your breath.”
Jack opened his mouth and exhaled.
“Nope. No booze.” The Judge straightened up again. “But
that’s the only thing you were telling the truth about, isn’t it?
You’re trying to string me along, boy.”
“I’m sorry we were hitching,” Jack said, aware that he had
to speak with great caution now. Not only might what he said determine whether he and Wolf were to be let free, but he
was having a little trouble forming the words themselves—
everything seemed to be happening with great slowness. As
in the shed, the seconds had wandered off the metronome. “In fact, we hardly ever hitch because Wolf—Jack, that is—hates being in cars. We’ll never do it again. We haven’t done anything wrong, sir, and that really is the truth.”
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“You don’t understand, sonny,” the Judge said, and his far-
off eyes gleamed again. He’s enjoying this, Jack understood.
Judge Fairchild moved slowly back behind his desk. “Hitch-
ing rides isn’t the issue. You two boys are out on the road by yourself, coming from nowhere, going nowhere—real targets
for trouble.” His voice was like dark honey. “Now we have
here in this country what we think is a most unusual facil-
ity—state-approved and state-funded, by the way—which
might have been set up expressly for the benefit of boys like yourselves. It’s called the Sunlight Gardener Scripture Home for Wayward Boys. Mr. Gardener’s work with young fellows
in trouble has been nothing short of miraculous. We’ve sent him some tough cases, and in no time at all he has those boys on their knees begging Jesus for forgiveness. Now I’d say that was pretty special, wouldn’t you?”
Jack swallowed. His mouth felt drier than it had been in
the shed. “Ah, sir, it’s really urgent that we get to Springfield.
Everybody’s going to wonder—”
“I very much doubt that,” said the Judge, smiling with all
his wrinkles. “But I’ll tell you what. As soon as you two wags are on your way to the Sunlight Home, I’ll telephone Springfield and try to get the number of this Helen . . . Wolf, is it?
Or is it Helen Vaughan?”
“Vaughan,” Jack said, and a red-hot blush covered his face
like a fever.
“Yes,” the Judge said.
Wolf shook his head, blinking, and then put a hand on
Jack’s shoulder.
“Coming around are you, son?” the Judge asked. “Could
you tell me your age?”
Wolf blinked again, and looked at Jack.
“Sixteen,” Jack said.
“And you?”
“Twelve.”
“Oh. I would have taken you for several years older. All the more reason for seeing you get help now before you get in
real deep trouble, wouldn’t you say, Franky?”
“Amen,” the policeman said.
“You boys come back here in a month,” said the Judge.
“Then we’ll see if your memory is any better. Why are your
eyes so bloodshot?”
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“They feel kind of funny,” Jack said, and the policeman
barked. He had laughed, Jack realized a second later.
“Take them away, Franky,” the Judge said. He was already
picking up the telephone. “You’re going to be different boys thirty days from now. Depend on it.”
While they walked down the steps of the redbrick Municipal
Building, Jack asked Franky Williams why the Judge had
asked for their ages. The cop paused on the bottom step and half-turned to glare up at Jack out of his blazing face. “Old Sunlight generally takes em in at twelve and turns em loose at nineteen.” He grinned. “You tellin me you never heard him on the radio? He’s about the most famous thing we got around
here. I’m pretty sure they heard of old Sunlight Gardener
even way over in Daleville.” His teeth were small discolored pegs, irregularly spaced.
3
Twenty minutes later they were in farmland again.
Wolf had climbed into the back seat of the police car with
surprisingly little fuss. Franky Williams had pulled his sap from his belt and said, “You want this again, you fuckin
freak? Who knows, it might make you smart.” Wolf had trem-
bled, Wolf ’s nose had wrinkled up, but he had followed Jack into the car. He had immediately clapped his hand over his
nose and begun breathing through his mouth. “We’ll get away from this place, Wolf,” Jack had whispered into his ear. “A couple of days, that’s all, and we’ll see how to do it.” “No chatter” came from the front seat.
Jack was strangely relaxed. He was certain that they would
find a way to escape. He leaned back against the plastic seat, Wolf ’s hand wrapped around his, and watched the fields go by.
“There she is,” Franky Williams called from the front seat.
“Your future home.”
Jack saw a meeting of tall brick walls planted surrealisti-
cally amidst the fields. Too tall to see over, the walls around the Sunlight Home were topped with three strands of barbed
wire and shards of broken glass set in cement. The car was
now driving past exhausted fields bordered with fences in
which strands of barbed and smooth wire alternated.
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“Got sixty acres out here,” Williams said. “And all of it is either walled or fenced—you better believe it. Boys did it
themselves.”
A wide iron gate interrupted the expanse of wall where the
drive turned into the Home’s property. As soon as the police car turned into the drive the gates swung open, triggered by some electronic signal. “TV camera,” the policeman explained. “They’re a-waitin for you two fresh fish.”
Jack leaned forward and put his face to the window. Boys
in denim jackets worked in the long fields to either side, hoe-ing and raking, pushing wheelbarrows.
“You two shitheads just earned me twenty bucks,”
Williams said. “Plus another twenty for Judge Fairchild. Ain’t that great?”
21
The Sunlight Home
1
The Home looked like something made from a child’s blocks,
Jack thought—it had grown randomly as more space was