Two days later a pair of tired, footsore boys limped past the MUNICIPAL TOWN LIMITS sign on one side of Highway 32 and the 10-4 Diner on the other side, and thus into the city of Muncie, Indiana. Jack was running a fever of a hundred and two degrees and coughing pretty steadily. Wolf's face was swollen and discolored. He looked like a pug that has come out on the short end in a grudge match. The day before, he had tried to get them some late apples from a tree growing in the shade of an abandoned barn beside the road. He had actually been in the tree and dropping shrivelled autumn apples into the front of his overalls when the wall-wasps, which had built their nest somewhere in the eaves of the old barn, had found him. Wolf had come back down the tree as fast as he could, with a brown cloud around his head. He was howling. And still, with one eye completely closed and his nose beginning to resemble a large purple turnip, he had insisted that Jack have the best of the apples. None of them was very good - small and sour and wormy - and Jack didn't feel much like eating anyway, but after what Wolf had gone through to get them, he hadn't had the heart to refuse.
A big old Camaro, jacked in the back so that the nose pointed at the road, blasted by them. 'Heyyyyy, ass**les!' someone yelled, and there was a burst of loud, beer-fueled laughter. Wolf howled and clutched at Jack. Jack had thought that Wolf would eventually get over his terror of cars, but now he was really beginning to wonder.
'It's all right, Wolf,' he said wearily, peeling Wolf's arms off for the twentieth or thirtieth time that day. 'They're gone.'
'So loud!' Wolf moaned. 'Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! So loud, Jack, my ears, my ears!'
'Glasspack muffler,' Jack said, thinking wearily: You'd love the California freeways, Wolf. We'll check those out if we're still travelling together, okay? Then we'll try a few stock-car races and motorcycle scrambles. You'll be nuts about them. 'Some guys like the sound, you know. They - ' But he went into another coughing fit that doubled him over. For a moment the world swam away in gray shades. It came back very, very slowly.
'Like it,' Wolf muttered. 'Jason! How could anyone like it, Jack? And the smells . . . '
Jack knew that, for Wolf, the smells were the worst. They hadn't been over here four hours before Wolf began to call it the Country of Bad Smells. That first night Wolf had retched half a dozen times, at first throwing up muddy water from a stream which existed in another universe onto the Ohio ground, then simply dry-heaving. It was the smells, he explained miserably. He didn't know how Jack could stand them, how anyone could stand them.
Jack knew - coming back from the Territories, you were bowled over by odors you barely noticed when you were living with them. Diesel fuel, car exhausts, industrial wastes, garbage, bad water, ripe chemicals. Then you got used to them again. Got used to them or just went numb. Only that wasn't happening to Wolf. He hated the cars, he hated the smells, he hated this world. Jack didn't think he was ever going to get used to it. If he didn't get Wolf back into the Territories fairly soon, Jack thought he might go crazy. He'll probably drive me crazy while he's at it, Jack thought. Not that I've got far to go anymore.
A clattering farm-truck loaded with chickens ground by them, followed by an impatient line of cars, some of them honking. Wolf almost jumped into Jack's arms. Weakened by the fever, Jack reeled into the brushy, trash-littered ditch and sat down so hard his teeth clicked together.
'I'm sorry, Jack,' Wolf said miserably. 'God pound me!'
'Not your fault,' Jack said. 'Fall out. Time to take five.'
Wolf sat down beside Jack, remaining silent, looking at Jack anxiously. He knew how hard he was making it for Jack; he knew that Jack was in a fever to move faster, partly to outdistance Morgan, but mostly for some other reason. He knew that Jack moaned about his mother in his sleep, and sometimes cried. But the only time he had cried when awake was after Wolf went a little crazy on the Arcanum turnpike ramp. That was when he realized what Jack meant by 'hitching.' When Wolf told Jack he didn't think he could hitch rides - at least not for a while and maybe not ever - Jack had sat down on the top strand of guardrail cable and had wept into his hands. And then he had stopped, which was good . . . but when he took his face out of his hands, he had looked at Wolf in a way that made Wolf feel sure that Jack would leave him in this horrible Country of Bad Smells . . . and without Jack, Wolf would soon go quite mad.
4
They had walked up to the Arcanum exit in the breakdown lane, Wolf cringing and pawing at Jack each time a car or truck passed in the deepening dusk. Jack had heard a mocking voice drift back on the slipstream: 'Where's your car, faggots?' He shook it off like a dog shaking water out of his eyes, and had simply kept going, taking Wolf's hand and pulling him after when Wolf showed signs of lagging or drifting toward the woods. The important thing was to get off the turnpike proper, where hitchhiking was forbidden, and onto the westbound Arcanum entrance ramp. Some states had legalized hitching from the ramps (or so a road-bum with whom Jack had shared a barn one night had told him), and even in states where thumbing was technically a crime, the cops would usually wink if you were on a ramp.
So first, get to the ramp. Hope no state patrol happened along while you were getting there. What a state trooper might make of Wolf Jack didn't want to think about. He would probably think he had caught an eighties incarnation of Charles Manson in Lennon glasses.
They made the ramp and crossed over to the westbound lane. Ten minutes later a battered old Chrysler had pulled up. The driver, a burly man with a bull neck and a cap which read CASE FARM EQUIPMENT tipped back on his head, leaned over and opened the door.
'Hop in, boys! Dirty night, ain't it?'
'Thanks, mister, it sure is,' Jack said cheerfully. His mind was in overdrive, trying to figure out how he could work Wolf into the Story, and he barely noticed Wolf's expression.
The man noticed it, however.