denly grasped the back of his neck at the pressure-points below the ears and lifted him out of his chair. He was turned around into a cloud of foul breath and treated—if that was the word—to the sterile moonscape of Heck Bast’s face.
“Me and the Reverend was still in Muncie when they
brought your queer troublemaker friend into the hospital,” he said. His fingers pulsed and squeezed, pulsed and squeezed.
The pain was excruciating. Jack moaned and Heck grinned.
The grin allowed bad breath to escape his mouth in even
greater quantities. “Reverend got the news on his beeper.
Janklow looked like a taco that spent about forty-five minutes in a microwave oven. It’s gonna be a while before they put
that boy back together again.”
He’s not talking to me, Jack thought. He’s talking to the whole room. We’re supposed to get the message that Ferd’s still alive.
“You’re a stinking liar,” he said. “Ferd’s—”
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Heck Bast hit him. Jack went sprawling on the floor. Boys
scattered away from him. From somewhere, Donny Keegan
hee-hawed.
There was a roar of rage. Jack looked up, dazed, and shook
his head in an effort to clear it. Heck turned and saw Wolf standing protectively over Jack, his upper lip pulled back, the overhead lights sending weird orange glints off his round
glasses.
“So the dumbhead finally wants to dance,” Heck said, be-
ginning to grin. “Hey, all right! I love to dance. Come on, snotface. Come on over here and let’s dance.”
Still growling, saliva now coating his lower lip, Wolf be-
gan to move forward. Heck moved to meet him. Chairs
scraped across linoleum as people moved back hurriedly to
give them room.
“What’s going on h—”
From the door. Sonny Singer. No need to finish his ques-
tion; he saw what was going on here. Smiling, he pulled the door shut and leaned against it, watching, arms crossed over his narrow chest, his dark narrow face now alight.
Jack switched his gaze back to Wolf and Heck.
“Wolf, be careful!” he shouted.
“I’ll be careful, Jack,” Wolf said, his voice little more than a growl. “I’ll—”
“Let’s dance, asshole,” Heck Bast grunted, and threw a whistling, country-boy roundhouse. It hit Wolf high on the
right cheekbone, driving him backward three or four steps.
Donny Keegan laughed his high, whinnying laugh, which
Jack now knew was as often a signal of dismay as of glee.
The roundhouse was a good, heavy blow. Under other cir-
cumstances, the fight would probably have ended right there.
Unfortunately for Hector Bast, it was also the only blow he landed.
He advanced confidently, big fists up at chest height, and
drove the roundhouse again. This time Wolf ’s arm moved up-
ward and outward to meet it. Wolf caught Heck’s fist.
Heck’s hand was big. Wolf ’s hand was bigger.
Wolf ’s fist swallowed Heck’s.
Wolf ’s fist clenched.
From within it came a sound like small dry sticks first
cracking, then breaking.
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Heck’s confident smile first curdled, then froze solid. A
moment later he began to shriek.
“Shouldn’t have hurt the herd, you bastard,” Wolf whis-
pered. “Oh your Bible this and oh your Bible that— Wolf! —
and all you have to do is hear six verses of The Book of Good Farming to know you never . . .”
Crackle!
“. . . never . . .”
Crunch!
“NEVER hurt the herd.”
Heck Bast fell to his knees, howling and weeping. Wolf
still held Heck’s fist in his own, and Heck’s arm angled up.
Heck looked like a Fascist giving a Heil Hitler salute on his knees. Wolf ’s arm was as rigid as stone, but his face showed no real effort; it was, except for the blazing eyes, almost serene.
Blood began to drip out of Wolf ’s fist.
“Wolf, stop! That’s enough!”
Jack looked around swiftly and saw that Sonny was gone,
the door standing open. Almost all of the boys were on their feet now. They had drawn away from Wolf as far as the room’s walls would allow, their faces awed and fearful. And still the tableau held in the center of the room: Heck Bast on his
knees, arms up and out, his fist swallowed in Wolf ’s, blood pouring onto the floor from Wolf ’s fist.
People crowded back into the doorway. Casey, Warwick,
Sonny Singer, three more big guys. And Sunlight Gardener,
with a small black case, like a glasses-case, in one hand.
“That’s enough, I said!” Jack took one look at the newcomers and raced toward Wolf. “Right here and now! Right here and now!”
“All right,” Wolf said quietly. He let go of Heck’s hand, and Jack saw a horrible crushed thing that looked like a mangled pinwheel. Heck’s fingers stuck off at jagged angles. Heck
mewled and held his destroyed hand against his chest.
“All right, Jack.”
The six of them grabbed Wolf. Wolf made a half-turn,
slipped one arm free, pushed, and suddenly Warwick went
rattling against the wall. Someone screamed.
“Hold him!” Gardener yelled. “Hold him! Hold him, for
Jesus’ sake!” He was opening the flat black case.
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“No, Wolf!” Jack shouted. “Quit it!”
For a moment Wolf went on struggling, and then he
slumped back, allowing them to push him to the wall. To Jack they looked like Lilliputians clinging to Gulliver. Sonny
looked afraid of Wolf at last.
“Hold him,” Gardener repeated, taking a glittering hypo-
dermic out of the flat case. That mincing, almost coy smile had come onto his face. “Hold him, praise Jesus!”
“You don’t need that,” Jack said.
“Jack?” Wolf looked suddenly frightened. “Jack? Jack? ”
Gardener, headed for Wolf, pushed Jack as he went by.
There was good whipcord muscle in that push. Jack went
reeling into Morton, who squealed and shrank away as if Jack were contaminated. Belatedly, Wolf began to struggle again—
but they were six, and that was too many. Perhaps, when the Change was on him, it wouldn’t have been.
“Jack!” he howled. “Jack! Jack!”
“Hold him, praise God,” Gardener whispered, his lips
skinned back brutally from his teeth, and plunged the hypo-
dermic into Wolf ’s arm.
Wolf went rigid, threw his head back, and howled.
Kill you, you bastard, Jack thought incoherently. Kill you, kill you, kill you.
Wolf struggled and thrashed. Gardener stood back, watch-
ing coldly. Wolf got a knee up into Casey’s expansive gut.
Casey whoofed air out, staggered backward, then came back. A minute or two later, Wolf began first to flag . . . then to sag.
Jack got to his feet, weeping with rage. He tried to plunge toward the knot of white turtlenecks holding his friend—as he watched he saw Casey swing a fist into Wolf ’s drooping face, and saw blood begin to pour from Wolf ’s nose.
Hands held him back. He struggled, then looked around
and saw the frightened faces of the boys he picked rocks with in Far Field.
“I want him in the Box,” Gardener said as Wolf ’s knees fi-
nally buckled. He looked slowly around at Jack. “Unless . . .
perhaps you’d like to tell me where we’ve met before, Mr.
Parker?”
Jack stood looking down at his feet, saying nothing. His
eyes stung and burned with hot, hateful tears.
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“The Box, then,” Gardener said. “You may feel different
when he starts to vocalize, Mr. Parker.”
Gardener strode out.
5
Wolf was still screaming in the Box when Jack and the other boys were marched down to morning-chapel. Sunlight Gardener’s eyes seemed to dwell ironically on Jack’s pale,
strained face. Perhaps now, Mr. Parker?
Wolf, it’s my mother, my mother—
Wolf was still screaming when Jack and the other boys
scheduled for field-work were split into two groups and
marched out to the trucks. As he passed near the Box, Jack
had to suppress an urge to jam his hands over his ears. Those growls, those gibbering sobs.
All at once Sonny Singer was at his shoulder.
“Reverend Gardener’s in his office waiting to take your
confession right this minute, snotface,” he said. “Told me to tell you he’ll let the dummy out of the Box the minute you tell him what he wants to know.” Sonny’s voice was silky, his face dangerous.
Wolf, screaming and howling to be let out, pounding the
home-riveted iron sides of the Box with a fury of blows.
Ah, Wolf, she’s my MOTHER—
“I can’t tell him what he wants to know,” Jack said. He
turned suddenly toward Sonny, turning the force of whatever had come into him in the Territories upon Sonny. Sonny took two giant steps backward, his face dismayed and sickly
scared. He tripped over his own feet and stumbled into the