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NOT MANY HOURS later, Jack finds hi down the ray autumn sky On either side of hi stand, the Annie Oakley Shooting Gallery, the Pitch-Til-U-Win Rain has fallen and ; the air is sharp with moisture Not far away, he can hear the lonely thunder of waves hurling thele of beach Fro It should be cheerful, but to Jack it is dread set to erous place He passes a boarded-up ride A sign out front reads: THE SPEEDY OPOPANAX WILL RE-

OPEN MEMORIAL DAY 1982 ¡ª SEE YA THEN!

Opopanax, Jack thinks, only he is no longer Jack; now he’s Jacky He’s Jacky-boy, and he and his mother are on the run From whom? Froan

Speedy, Jack thinks, and as if he has given a telepathic cue, a war "When the red red robin co, / There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old sweet song"

No, Jack thinks I don’t want to see you I don’t want to hear your old sweet song You can’t be here anyway, you’re dead Dead on the Santa Monica Pier Old bald black o-round horse

Oh, but no When the old cop logic comes back it takes hold like a tumor, even in dreams, and it doesn’t take much of it to realize that this isn’t Santa Monica ¡ª it’s too cold and too old This is the land of ago, when Jacky and the Queen of the B’s fled out of California like the fugitives they had becoot to the other coast, the place where Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer ¡ª

No, I don’t think of this, I never think of this

¡ª had come to die

"Wake up, wake up you sleepyhead!"

The voice of his old friend

Friend, my ass He’s the one who put me on the road of trials, the one who came between ot et out of bed!"

Way-gup, way-gup, way-gup Tiet back to your not-so-sweet used-to-be

"No," Jacky whispers, and then the midway ends Ahead is the carousel, sort of like the one on the Santa Monica Pier and sort of like the one he reo It is a hybrid, in other words, a dream specialty, neither here nor there But there’s nohorses with his guitar on his knee Jacky-boy would know that face anywhere, and all the old love rises in his heart He fights it, but that is a fight few people win, especially not those who have been turned back to the age of twelve

"Speedy!" he cries

The old man looks at him and his brown face cracks open in a smile "Travelin’ Jack!" he says "How I have missed you, son"

"I’ve missed you, too," he says "But I don’t travel anyestures at his ically restored boy’s body, clad in jeans and a T-shirt "This is just a dreaot ayou that for sorin is sly in the middle, exasperated at the corners "Don’t play the fool with me, Jacky Sent you the feathers, didn’t I? Sent you a robin’s egg, didn’t I? Sent you more’n one"

"Why can’t people leave me alone?" Jack asks His voice is suspiciously close to a whine Not a pretty sound "YouHenryDale"

"Quit on it now," Speedy says, growing stern "Ain’t got no h Ain’t it?"

"Speedy ¡ª "

"You got your job and I got mine Same job, too Don’t you whine at me, Jack, and don’t make me chase you no mo’ You’re a coppice-man, same as ever was"

"I’m retired ¡ª "

"Shit on your retired! The kids he killed, that’s bad enough The kids he o on, that’s worse But the one he’s got" Speedy leans forward, dark eyes blazing in his dark face "That boy has got to be brought back, and soon If you can’t get hiot to kill him yourself, little as I like to think of it Because he’s a Breaker A powerful one One ht need?" Jack asks

"The Cri wants to take down?"

Speedy looks at hiain instead of answering "There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old sweet song"

"Speedy, I can’t!"

The tune ends in a discordant jangle of strings Speedy looks at twelve-year-old Jack Saith a coldness that chills the boy inward all the way to the hidden ain, Speedy Parker’s faint southern accent has deepened It has filled with a conteet busy now, hear me? Y’all quit whinin’ and cryin’ and slackin’ off Y’all pick up yo’ guts froet busy!"

Jack steps back A heavy hand falls on his shoulder and he thinks, It’s Uncle Morgan Hiot to do it all over again ¡ª

But that is a boy’s thought, and this is a man’s dream Jack Sawyer as he is now thrusts the child’s acquiescing despair away No, not at all I deny that I have put those faces and those places aside It was hard work, and I won’t see it all undone by a few phantos, and one bad drearew up

He turns, ready to fight, but no one’s there Lying behind him on the boardwalk, on its side like a dead pony, is a boy’s bicycle There’s a license plate on the back reading BIG MAC Scattered around it are shiny crow’s feathers And now Jack hears another voice, cold and cracked, ugly and un that touched hiht, asswipe Stay out of it You uts fro hole opens in the boardwalk just in front of the bike It widens like a startled eye It continues to widen, and Jack dives for it It’s the way back The way out The conteht, jackoff," it says "Run! Run fro! Run for your hter, and it is the hter which follows Jack Sawyer down into the darkness betorlds

Hours later, Jack stands naked at his bedroohten in the east He’s been awake since four He can’t re, but even now they have not quite broken), yet enough of it lingers for hi: the corpse on the Santa Monica Pier upset him so badly that he quit his job because it reminded him of someone he once knew

"All of that never happened," he tells the co day in a falsely patient voice "I had a kind of preadolescent breakdown, brought on by stress My rabbed me, and we ran all the way to the East Coast All the way to New Ha back to the Great Happy Place to die Turned out to be oddamn actress midlife crisis, but what does a kid knoas stressed I had dreahs

"I dreas, the sound shrill and broken in the shadowy room

Jack Sawyer screams

"I woke you up," Fred Marshall says, and Jack knows at once that thisin his wifeless, sonless ho at photo albu salt into the wounds but unable to quit

"No," Jack says, "actually I was ¡ª "

He stops The phone’s beside the bed and there’s a pad beside the phone There’s a note written on the pad Jack must have written it, since he’s the only one here ¡ª ella-fucking-ment’ry, my dear Watson ¡ª but it isn’t in his handwriting At some point in his drea

The Tower The Beams If the Beams are broken, Jacky-boy, if the Beams are broken and the Tower falls

There’s no more There is only poor old Fred Marshall, who has discovered how quickly things can go bad in the sunniest midwestern life Jack’s s while his ery fros, but that doesn’t bother Fred; he si with none of the stops and drops that folks usually eht Fred is just getting it out, unloading, and even in his own distressed state Jack realizes that Fred Marshall of 16 Robin Hood Lane, that sweet little Cape Cod honey of a hos don’t turn around for him soon, he won’t need to visit his wife in Ward D of French County Lutheran; they’ll be roommates

And it is their proposed visit to Judy of which Fred is speaking, Jack realizes He quits trying to interrupt and si down at the note he has written to himself as he does so Tower and Beah the roof beam, carpenters?

" ¡ª know I said I’d pick you up at nine but Dr Spiegleleht with a lot of yelling and screaet up the wall-paper and eat it andher on a new ht have said Paleuys ever sleep and said we should be able to see her around four he thinks she’ll be more stabilized by four and we could see her then so could I pick you up at three or maybe you have ¡ª "

"Three would be fine," Jack says quietly

" ¡ª other stuff to do other plans I’d understand that but I could come by if you don’t it’s o alone ¡ª "

"I’ll be waiting for you," Jack said "We’ll go in ht maybe I’d hear from Ty or from whoever snatched hileman he’s my wife’s doctor up there at ¡ª "

"Fred, I’ to find your boy"

Jack is appalled at this bald assurance, at the suicidal confidence he hears in his own voice, but it serves at least one purpose: bringing Fred’s flood of dead words to an end There is blessed silence from the other end of the line

At last, Fred speaks in a tre whisper "Oh, sir If only I could believe that"

"I want you to try," Jack says "And maybe we can find your wife’s mind while we’re at it"

Maybe both are in the same place, he thinks, but this he does not say

Liquid sounds coun to cry

"Fred"

"Yes?"

"You’re cohty sniff; a miserable cry that is mostly choked back Jack has some comprehension of how empty Fred Marshall’s houseis bad enough

"My place in Norway Valley Come past Roy’s Store, over Tamarack Creek ¡ª "

"I knohere it is" A faint edge of ilad to hear it

"Good I’ll see you"

"You bet" Jack hears a ghost of Fred’s salesman cheer, and it twists his heart

"What tiinal assurance: "Three"

"That’s right We’ll take my truck Maybe have a bite of supper at Gertie’s Kitchen on our way back Good-bye, Fred"

"Good-bye, sir And thank you"

Jack hangs up the phone Looks a er at hisand wonders what you’d call such a thing in cop-speak Autoforgery? He snorts, then cru dressed He will drink a glass of juice, then go out walking for an hour or so Blow all the bad dreams out of his head And bloay the sound of Fred Marshall’s awful droning voice while he’s at it Then, after a shower, he ht not call Dale Gilbertson and ask if there have been any developet involved in this, there’ll be a lot of paperwork to catch up onhe’ll want to reinterview the parentstake a look at the old folks’ home close to where the Marshall kid disappeared

With his hts, actually, although if this had been suggested to him, he would have strenuously denied it), Jack al on the welcome mat just outside his front door It’s where Buck Evitz, the postes to leave, but it’s not gone six-thirty yet, and Buck won’t be along in his little blue truck for another three hours

Jack bends down and cautiously picks the package up It’s the size of a shoe box, covered with brown paper that has been cut raggedly and secured not with tape but with big drools of red sealing wax In addition to this, there are co secured with a child’s oversized bow There’s a cluster of sta various birds (No robins, however; Jack notes this with understandable relief) There’s soht about those stamps, but at first Jack doesn’t see what it is He’s too focused on the address, which is spectacularly not right There’s no box number, no RFD number, no zip code No nale word, scrawled in large capital letters:

J A C K Y

Looking at those bedraggled letters, Jack i a Sharpie ue poked from the corner of some lunatic’s mouth His heartbeat has sped up to double-ti this," he breathes "I aood reasons, coppicee of the top right through the brown paper, and nutters have been known to put bombs in shoe boxes He’d be crazy to open it, but he has an idea he will open it, just the sah, at least he’ll be able to opt out of the Fishere to listen for ticking, fully aware that ticking bombs are as out-of-date as Betty Boop cartoons He hears nothing, but he does see what’s wrong with the stamps, which aren’t stamps at all Someone has carefully cut the front panels froar packets and taped thehter escapes Jack Soht Soar packets than to staotten here? Who left it (with the fake sta his confused dreams? And who, in this part of the world, could possibly know hione

No they ain’t, Travelin’ Jack, a voice whispers Not by half Ti, boy Start by seein’ what’s in that box

Resolutely ignoring his own erously stupid, Jack snaps the twine and uses his thuh the sloppy blobs of red wax Who uses sealing wax in this day and age, anyway? He sets the wrapping paper aside So else for the forensics boys, maybe

It isn’t a shoe box but a sneaker box A New Balance sneaker box, to be exact Size 5 A child’s size And at that, Jack’s heart speeds up to triple-ti up on his forehead His gorge and sphincter are both tightening up This is also faet cocked and locked, ready to look at so awful And this will be awful Jack has no doubt about it, and no doubt about who the package is from

This is my last chance to back out, he thinks After this it’s all aboard and heigh-ho for thethe wherever

But even that is a lie, he realizes Dale will be looking for him at the police station on Su to Jack’s place at three o’clock and they are going to see the Mad Housewife of Robin Hood Lane The backout point has already coone Jack still isn’t sure how it happened, but it looks like he’s back in harness And if Henry Leyden has the teratulate him on this, Jack thinks, he’ll probably kick Henry’s blind ass for him

A voice from his dream whispers up from beneath the floorboards of Jack’s consciousness like a whiff of rotten air ¡ª I’ll strew your guts from Racine to La Riviere ¡ª but this bothers hiar-pack stamps and the laboriously printed letters of his old nickname He has dealt with crazies before Not to mention his share of threats

He sits down on the steps with the sneaker box on his thighs Beyond hiray Bunny Boettcher, son of Too, and now a fine h stubble Above it, the sky has just begun to brighten Not a single cloud as yet marks its calm no-color Somewhere a bird calls out Jack breathes deeply and thinks, If this is where I go out, I could do worse A lot worse

Then, very carefully, he takes the lid off the box and sets it aside Nothing explodes But it looks as if soht Then he realizes that it’s been packed with shiny black crow feathers, and his aroose bumps

He reaches toward them, then hesitates He wants to touch those feathers about as much as he’d want to touch the corpse of a half-decayed plague victi beneath theloves in the front hall closet ¡ª

"Fuck the gloves," Jack says, and du beside him on the porch There’s a flood of feathers, which swirl a bit even in the perfectly stillair Then a thump as the object around which the feathers were packed lands on Jack’s porch The s baloney

Someone has delivered a child’s bloodstained sneaker chez Sawyer on Norway Valley Road Sonawed at it pretty briskly, and evenof bloody white cotton ¡ª that would be a sock And inside the sock, tatters of skin This is a child’s New Balance sneaker with a child’s foot inside it, one that has been badly used by some ani hi him If you want in, come on in The water’s fine, Jacky-boy, the water is fine

Jack gets up His heart is haether to count The beads of sweat on his forehead have swelled and broken and gone running down his face like tears, his lips and hands and feet are numbyet he tells himself he is cale abutments and freeway underpasses in LA Nor is this his first severed body part Once, in 1997, he and his partner Kirby Tessier found a single testicle sitting on top of a toilet tank in the Culver City public library like an ancient soft-boiled egg So he tells hiets up and walks down the porch steps He walks past the hood of his burgundy-colored Dodge Ram with the world-class sound system inside; he walks past the bird hotel he and Dale put up at the edge of the north field a month or two after Jack moved into this, the most perfect house in the universe He tells himself he is calm He tells himself that it’s evidence, that’s all Just one man’s noose that the Fisherman will eventually put around his own neck He tells hiirl na his sockless ankles and the cuffs of his pants, knows that any sort of extended stroll through the hay stubble is going to ruin a five-hundred-dollar pair of Gucci loafers And so what if it does? He’s rich well beyond the point of vulgarity; he can have asis he’s calht him a shoe box with a huht, but he’s calm It’s evidence, that’s all And he? He is a coppiceet a little air, needs to clear his nose of the rotted baloney s out of the box ¡ª

Jack ins to hurry on a little faster There is a sense of approaching cli in hisready to breakor changeor change back

That last idea is particularly alar higher, arh the stubble, a diagonal that starts at the driveway and ht end anywhere Canada, maybe Or the North Pole Whitedoze, flutter up in lacy swirls and then slump back into the cut stubble

He runs faster, away fro on the porch of the perfect house, away fro cliin to rise in hissnippet of sound track Faces and voices he has ignored for twenty years or more When these faces rise or those voices mutter, he has until now told hihtened boy who caught his mother’s neurotic terror like a cold andJack Sawyer at its center None of it was real, and it was forgotten by the time he was sixteen By then he was cal across his north field like a lunatic, leaving that dark track and those clouds of startledit calmly

Narrow face, narrow eyes under a tilted white paper cap: If you can runwhen I need one, you can have the job Smokey Updike, from Oatley, New York, where they drank the beer and then ate the glass Oatley, where there’d been so in the tunnel outside of town and where S eyes, false smile, brilliant white suit: I’ve ht Gardener, an Indiana preacher whose name had also been Osmond Oshtened eyes of a boy asn’t a boy at all: This is a bad place, Jacky, Wolf knows And it was, it was a very bad place They put hiood old Wolf in a box, and finally they killed him Wolf died of a disease called Aasps "Wolf, ah, God, I’m sorry!"

Faces and voices, all those faces and voices, rising in front of his eyes, dinning into his ears, de hie of being washed away like a breakwater before a tidal wave

Nausea roars through hiain, and this time it fills the back of his throat with a taste he reh wine And suddenly it’s New Haain He and Speedy are standing beside the carousel again, all those frozen horses ("All carousel horses is na out a bottle of wine and telling hio over, flip over ¡ª

"No!" Jack cries, knowing it’s already too late "I don’t want to go over!"

The world tilts the other way and he falls into the grass on his hands and knees with his eyes squeezed shut He doesn’t need to open them; the richer, deeper s he needs to know That, and the sense of co motion and decision has in so) the arrival of this very entlerass under a le particle of pollution He is weeping He knohat has happened, and he is weeping His heart bursts with fear and joy

This is Jack Sawyer twenty years along, grown to be a ain at last

It is the voice of his old friend Richard ¡ª sometimes known as Rational Richard ¡ª that saves him Richard as he is now, head of his o firm (Sloat & Associates, Ltd), not Richard as he hen Jack perhaps knew hi vacation days on Seabrook Island, in South Carolina The Richard of Seabrook Island had been iinative, quick-spoken, fast on his feet,shadow The current Richard, Corporate Law Richard, is thinning on top, thick in theand Bushination, so brilliantly playful in those Seabrook Island days, like a troublesome fly Richard Sloat’s life has been one of reduction, Jack has so has been added (probably in law school): the po on the phone, which is now Richard’s vocal signature This sound starts with the lips closed, then opens out as Richard’s lips spring wide,him look like an absurd co with his eyes shut in the vast green reach of what used to be his very own north field, s the new, deeper sed for so fiercely without even realizing it, Jack hears Richard Sloat begin speaking in the middle of his head What a relief those words are! He knows it’s only his ownRichard’s voice, but it’s still wonderful If Richard were here, Jack thinks he’d embrace his old friend and say, May you pontificate forever, Richie-boy Sheep bray and all

Rational Richard says: You realize you’re drea, Jack, don’t you?ba-haaaathe stress of opening that package no doubtba-haaaano doubt caused you to pass out, and that in turn has causedba-HAAAA!the drea now

Down on his knees, eyes still closed and hair hanging in his face, Jack says, "In other words, it’s e used to call ¡ª "

Correct! What we used to callba-haaaa"Seabrook Island stuff" But Seabrook Island was a long tiet back on your feet, and re out of the ordinaryb’haa!it’s not really there

"Not really there," Jack murmurs He stands up and opens his eyes

He knows from the very first look that it is really here, but he holds Richard’s pompous I-look-thirty-five-but-I’ himself with it Thus he is able toout for real, or ¡ª perhaps ¡ª cracking up entirely

Above him, the sky is an infinitely clear dark blue Around hih; there has been no Bunny Boettcher in this part of creation to cut it In fact, there is no house back the way he ca off to one side

Where are the flyingup into the sky, then shakes his head briskly No flying men; no two-headed parrots; no olves All that was Seabrook Island stuff, a neurosis he picked up from his mother and even passed on to Richard for a while It was all nothing butba-haaabullshit

He accepts this, knowing at the sa what’s all around hi and sweet, mixed with the more flowery smell of clover and the deeper, basso profundo smell of black earth The endless sound of the crickets in this grass, living their unthinking cricket lives The fluttering white field le telephone wire or electrical cable or jet contrail

What strikes Jack most deeply, however, is the perfection of the field around him There’s a rass crushed to the ground But there is no path leading to the circle, not a ht have dropped out of the sky That’s impossible, of course, more Seabrook Island stuff, but ¡ª

"I did sort of fall out of the sky, though," Jack says in a remarkably steady voice "I came here from Wisconsin I flipped here"

Richard’s voice protests this strenuously, exploding in a flurry of hrruood old Rational Richard, doing his Rational Richard thing inside his head Richard had lived through stuff like this once before and come out the other side with his mind more or less intactbut he’d been twelve They’d both been twelve that fall, and when you’re twelve, thein a slow circle, seeing nothing but open fields (the roarray woods beyond the else To the southwest, there’s a dirt road about a mile away Beyond it, at the horizon or perhaps just beyond, the perfect summer sky is a little stained with smoke

Not woodstoves, Jack thinks, not in July, but maybe small manufactories And

He hears a whistle ¡ª three long blasts e in his chest, and the corners of his rin

"The Mississippi’s that way, by God," he says, and around hiree "That’s the Mississippi, or whatever they call it over here And the whistle, friends and neighbors ¡ª "

Twosummer day They are faint with distance, yes, but up close they would beone Maybe a paddle wheeler"

Jack begins to walk toward the road, telling hi a bit of that but using it as an acrobat uses his balance pole After he’s gone a hundred yards or so, he turns and looks back A dark line cuts through the ti straight to where he is It is the e The only mark of it Far to the left (in fact almost behind him now) are the barn and the winde, Jack thinks At least that’s what they are in the world of Chevrolets, Mideast warfare, and the Oprah Winfrey show

He walks on, and has almost reached the road when he realizes there is more than smoke in the southwest There is a kind of vibration, as well It beats into his head like the start of a ely variable If he stands with his face pointed dead south, that unpleasant pulse is less Turn east and it’s gone North and it’s alone Then, as he continues to turn, it comes all the way back to full Worse than ever now that he’s noticed it, the way the buzz of a fly or the knock of a radiator in a hotel room is worse after you really start to notice it

Jack turns another slow, full circle South, and the vibration sinks East, it’s gone North, it’s starting to co Southwest and he’s locked in like the SEEK button on a car radio Po A black and nasty vibration like a headache, a smell like ancient smoke

"No, no, no, not s alrass, pants soaked, whitearound his head like a half-assed halo, eyes wide, cheeks once ain It is eerie how he has rejoined his younger (and perhaps better) self "Not s sound again Because the smell ¡ª not in his nose but in the center of his head ¡ª is rotted baloney The smell of Irma Freneau’s half-rotted, severed foot

"I’ it’s not a smell he means He can , he realizes, gone "I’ the Fisherman Either hi, and a hundred yards later he stops again The pulse in his head is indeed gone It has faded out the way radio stations do when the day warms and the temperature thickens It’s a relief

Jack has almost reached the road, which no doubt leads one way to some version of Arden and the other way to versions of Centralia and French Landing, when he hears an irregular drus like a Gene Krupa backbeat

He turns to the left, then shouts in ht Three enor past Jack’s position, rising above the grass, sinking back into it, then rising above it again They look like rabbits crossed with kangaroos Their protruding black eyes stare with coo, their flat feet (white-furred instead of brown) slapping up dust

"Christ!" Jack says, half-laughing and half-sobbing He whacks himself in the center of his forehead with the heel of his palm "What was that, Richie-boy? Got any comments on that?"

Richie, of course does He tells Jack that Jack has just suffered an extremely vividba-haaa!hallucination

"Of course," Jack says "Giant bunny rabbits Get " Then, as he steps out onto the road, he looks toward the southwestern horizon again At the haze of se And do the residents fear as the shadows of the evening coht? Fear the creature that is taking their children? Do they need a coppiceman? Of course they do Of course they ¡ª

So on the road Jack bends down and picks up a Mil-waukee Brewers baseball cap, jarringly out of place in this world of giant hopping range rabbits, but indubitably real Judging from the plastic adjustment band in the back, it’s a child’s baseball cap Jack looks inside, knohat he’ll find, and there it is, carefully inked on the bill: TY MARSHALL The cap’s not as wet as Jack’s jeans, which are soaked withhere on the edge of the road, he thinks, since yesterday The logical assuht Ty this way, but Jack doesn’t believe that Perhaps it is the lingering pulse of vibration that gives rise to a different thought, a different i out this dirt road Under his arus sta there because it’s really too se the adjustment band Doesn’t want Jack to le second Because he is teasing Jack, inviting Jack into the game

"Took the boy in our world," Jack mutters "Escaped with him to this world Stashed hi a fly Alive? Dead? Alive, I think Don’t knohy Maybe it’s just what I want to believe Leave it Then he went to wherever he stashed Irh this world, then flipped back to my world to leave it on the porch Lost the hat on the way, maybe? Lost it off his head?"

Jack doesn’t think so Jack thinks this fuck, this skell, this world-hopping dirtbag, left the cap on purpose Knew that if Jack walked this road he’d find it

Holding the hat to his chest like a Miller Park fan showing respect to the flag during the national anthem, Jack closes his eyes and concentrates It’s easier than he would have expected, but he supposes soe, how to ride a bike, how to flip back and forth betorlds

Boy like you don’t need no cheap wine, anyhow, he hears his old friend Speedy Parker say, and there’s the edge of a laugh in Speedy’s voice At the saain Acar

He steps back, opening his eyes as he does so Catches a glimpse of a tarred road ¡ª Norway Valley Road, but ¡ª

A horn blares and a dusty old Ford slaer side-view mirror less than nine inches froain filled with the faint but pungent odor of hydrocarbons, surfs over Jack’s cheeks and brow, along with sonant voice:

" ¡ª hell out of the road, assshollle ¡ª "

"Resent being called an asshole by soraduate," Jack says in his best Rational Richard voice, and although he adds a po hard Man, he’d aluy!

Please, Jack, spare