side of one of the idling trucks. If it hadn’t been there, he would have fallen down.
“All right,” Sonny said . . . the words came out in a breathy rush that was close to a whine. “All right, all right, forget it.”
His thin face grew arrogant again. “Reverend Gardener told
me if you said no that I should tell you that your friend’s screaming for you. Do you get it?”
“I know who he’s screaming for.”
“Get in the truck!” Pedersen said grimly, barely looking at them as he passed by . . . but when he passed Sonny, Pedersen grimaced as though he had smelled something rotten.
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Jack could hear Wolf screaming even after the trucks got
rolling, though the mufflers on both were little more than
scallops of iron lace and the engines blatted stridently. Nor did Wolf ’s screams fade. He had made some sort of connection with Wolf ’s mind now, and he could hear Wolf screaming even after the work parties had reached Far Field. The understanding that these screams were only in his mind did nothing at all to improve matters.
Around lunchtime, Wolf fell silent, and Jack knew, sud-
denly and with no doubt at all, that Gardener had ordered him taken out of the Box before his screams and howls attracted the wrong sort of attention. After what had happened to Ferd, he wouldn’t want any attention at all focused on the Sunlight Home.
When the work parties returned that late afternoon, the
door of the Box was standing open and the Box was empty.
Upstairs in the room they shared, Wolf was lying on the lower bunk. He smiled wanly as Jack came in.
“How’s your head, Jack? Bruise looks a little better. Wolf!”
“Wolf, are you all right?”
“Screamed, didn’t I? Couldn’t help it.”
“Wolf, I’m sorry,” Jack said. Wolf looked strange—too
white, somehow diminished.
He’s dying, Jack thought. No, his mind corrected; Wolf had been dying ever since they had flipped into this world to escape Morgan. But now he was dying faster. Too white . . .
diminished . . . but . . .
Jack felt a creeping chill.
Wolf ’s bare legs and arms weren’t really bare; they were
downed with a fine pelt of hair. It hadn’t been there two nights ago, he was sure of that.
He felt an urge to rush over to the window and stare out,
searching for the moon, trying to make sure he hadn’t some-
how misplaced about seventeen days.
“It’s not the time of the Change, Jacky,” Wolf said. His
voice was dry, somehow husked-out. The voice of an invalid.
“But I started to change in that dark smelly place they put me in. Wolf! I did. Because I was so mad and scared. Because I was yelling and screaming. Yelling and screaming can make
the Change all by themselves, if a Wolf does it long enough.”
Wolf brushed at the hair on his legs. “It’ll go away.”
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“Gardener set a price for letting you out,” Jack said, “but I couldn’t pay it. I wanted to, but . . . Wolf . . . my mother . . .”
His voice blurred and wavered toward tears.
“Shhh, Jacky. Wolf knows. Right here and now.” Wolf
smiled his terrible wan smile again, and took Jack’s hand.
24
Jack Names the Planets
1
Another week in the Sunlight Home, praise God. The moon
put on weight.
On Monday, a smiling Sunlight Gardener asked the boys to
bow their heads and give thanks to God for the conversion of their brother Ferdinand Janklow. Ferd had made a soul-decision for Christ while recuperating in Parkland Hospital, Sunlight said, his smile radiant. Ferd had made a collect call to his parents and told them he wanted to be a soul-winner for the Lord, and they prayed for guidance right there over the long-distance line, and his parents had come to pick him up that very day. Dead and buried under some frosty Indiana field . . . or over in the Territories, perhaps, where the Indiana State Patrol could never go.
Tuesday was too coldly rainy for field-work. Most of the
boys had been allowed to stay in their rooms and sleep or
read, but for Jack and Wolf, the period of harassment had begun. Wolf was lugging load after load of garbage from the
barn and the sheds out to the side of the road in the driving rain. Jack had been set to work cleaning toilets. He supposed that Warwick and Casey, who had assigned him this duty,
thought they were giving him a really nasty job to do. It was obvious that they’d never seen the men’s room of the world-famous Oatley Tap.
Just another week at the Sunlight Home, can you say oh-
yeah.
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Hector Bast returned on Wednesday, his right arm in a cast
up to the elbow, his big, doughy face so pallid that the pimples on it stood out like garish dots of rouge.
“Doctor says I may never get the use of it back,” Heck Bast said. “You and your numbnuts buddy have got a lot to answer for, Parker.”
“You aiming to have the same thing happen to your other
hand?” Jack asked him . . . but he was afraid. It was not just a desire for revenge he saw in Heck’s eyes; it was a desire to commit murder.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Heck said. “Sonny says they took
most of the mean out of him in the Box. Sonny says he’ll do anything to keep from going back in. As for you—”
Heck’s left fist flashed out. He was even clumsier with his left hand than with his right, but Jack, stunned by the big boy’s pallid rage, never saw it coming. His lips spread into a weird smile under Heck’s fist and broke open. He reeled back against the wall.
A door opened and Billy Adams looked out.
“Shut that door or I’ll see you get a helping!” Heck screamed, and Adams, not anxious for a dose of assault and
battery, complied in a hurry.
Heck started toward Jack. Jack pushed groggily away from
the wall and raised his fists. Heck stopped.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Heck said. “Fighting with
a guy that’s only got one good hand.” Color rushed up into his face.
Footsteps rattled on the third floor, heading toward the
stairs. Heck looked at Jack. “That’s Sonny. Go on. Get out of here. We’re gonna get you, my friend. You and the dummy
both. Reverend Gardener says we can, unless you tell him
whatever it is he wants to know.”
Heck grinned.
“Do me a favor, snotface. Don’t tell him.”
2
They had taken something out of Wolf in the Box, all right, Jack thought. Six hours had passed since his hallway confrontation with Heck Bast. The bell for confession would ring soon, but for now Wolf was sleeping heavily in the bunk be-
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low him. Outside, rain continued to rattle off the sides of the Sunlight Home.
It wasn’t meanness, and Jack knew it wasn’t just the Box
that had taken it. Not even just the Sunlight Home. It was this whole world. Wolf was, simply, pining for home. He had lost most of his vitality. He smiled rarely and laughed not at all.
When Warwick yelled at him at lunch for eating with his fingers, Wolf cringed.
It has to be soon, Jacky. Because I’m dying. Wolf’s dying.
Heck Bast said he wasn’t afraid of Wolf, and indeed there
seemed nothing left to be afraid of; it seemed that crushing Heck’s hand had been the last strong act of which Wolf was
capable.
The confession bell rang.
That night, after confession and dinner and chapel, Jack
and Wolf came back to their room to find both of their beds dripping wet and reeking of urine. Jack went to the door,
yanked it open, and saw Sonny, Warwick, and a big lunk
named Van Zandt standing in the hall, grinning.
“Guess we got the wrong room, snotface,” Sonny said.
“Thought it had to be the toilet, on account of the turds we always see floating around in there.”
Van Zandt almost ruptured himself laughing at this sally.
Jack stared at them for a long moment, and Van Zandt
stopped laughing.
“Who you looking at, turd? You want your fucking nose
broke off?”
Jack closed the door, looked around, and saw Wolf asleep
in his wet bunk with all his clothes on. Wolf ’s beard was coming back, but still his face looked pale, the skin stretched and shiny. It was an invalid’s face.
Leave him alone, then, Jack thought wearily. If he’s that tired, let him sleep in it.