The Talisman

Jack sleeps in a haystack. Even though the Territories are frightening, he is relieved to be out of Oatley. The next morning, he speaks with a man named Henry who is traveling by cart. He knows the man isn’t speaking English, but he can still understand it. The man asks if Jack is going to the market and gives him a ride, along with his wife and a three-year old boy named Jason, who sits on Jack’s lap and pulls his hair. Jack answers the wife’s questions but is careful not to reveal too much. He says he is going to the village of California to live with his aunt Helen. Henry wants to know if Jack’s father was “political.” He lets Jack off and says he can’t afford to know more about him.

When Jack takes out his money to count it, he sees that it has turned into sticks with joints, the local currency. He watches other people buy things to get a sense of how much goods cost. They break knuckles off the sticks to pay. Jack buys meat and walks across the market. He sees his mother’s face woven into rugs at one stall. The rug salesman asks if anything is wrong, and shows Jack a mirror. In the reflection, Jack’s blue eyes are now brown. His hair is a mane, and he has long ears. The mirror is a trick, with cloth donkey ears glued to its sides. The man gives Jack the mirror for free.

Next, Jack watches a two-headed parrot in a cage. The left head asks questions that the right head answers. Amused, he buys an apple and milk before leaving the market. Hours later, he stares at a tower in the distance. He remembers Farren saying that even God avoids the Outposts. Despite the warning, Jack finds the land shockingly beautiful, and the tower is at least 500 feet high. Suddenly, a man jumps from the tower and opens his wings. Soon there are 50 men in the sky, shaking with the effort of flight. Jack remembers watching a ballet practice with his mother. He thought the dancers were killing themselves as they stood on their toes and trembled with exhaustion. That evening, he doesn’t want to leave the Territories. As he tries to sleep, he wonders if his father did something here that led to Jerry Bledsoe’s death. He wonders if he could change things in his own world without meaning to. He suddenly sees a vision of Elroy driving Morgan’s diligence, holding a whip with a hoof. Elroy is heading west, chasing after Jack. He quickly gets off the road and drinks the magic juice.

Days later, a man named Buddy Parkins picks Jack up as he is hitchhiking. Buddy doesn’t believe Jack’s cover story and asks if Jack is a runaway. Buddy doesn’t understand why, but he thinks Jack is beautiful in ways that neither of them understand, as if he senses that Jack has a grand destiny. Buddy drops Jack off outside the town of Zanesville.

After he gets out, Jack remembers seeing a newspaper article about a disaster in Angola, New York, where an earthquake killed five people. Jack realizes that it was the day he flipped there after watching the men in the sky. He worries that his flipping between worlds led to the earthquake. At the Buckeye Mall, Jack watches other kids going about their days and thinks he is no longer like them. He buys shoes, then calls his mother from a payphone. He tells her that he’s on his way to see Richard in Illinois. Lily tells him that she got rid of Sloat two days prior. Suddenly there is a whine of static on the phone, then Sloat’s voice tells him to get home on the other end of the receiver. He calls Jack a murderer and the telephone fixture drops off the wall. Jack runs outside, where he sees an old, blind musician who reminds him of Speedy.

The old man begins playing a song on his guitar. A football player, trying to impress the girls he is with, slaps Jack on the back, which causes him to upset the man’s coin cup. Jack picks up coins out of the gutter and puts them back in his cup. When he sees a silver dollar, Jack starts to cry about his situation. He tells the old man that he killed the men from Rainbird Tower, which was hit by the Angola earthquake. The man says that Jack is not a murderer, and that there is a difference between a “hard choice and criminal behavior” (251). The he begins to sing, and his voice is beautiful. Cops appear and address the man as Snowball. Jack leaves before they can talk to him. Soon, a cop car pulls alongside him, hauling Snowball in the back. Jack believes that Snowball winks at him behind the dark glasses.

Jack heads west on Interstate 70. One day later he is hiding from a man who picked him up: Emory W. Light, who offered him 50 dollars. Jack is experienced enough that he anticipates sexual advances from men like Light when they give him a ride. After rebuffing the man’s offer, Jack gets out at a rest stop and hides in the woods, waiting for Light to leave. When he finally exits the woods, he sees Sloat’s BMW in the parking lot. Jack quickly drinks one of the two remaining swallows in the bottle.