'Hey, I didn't mean to get personal or anything.' He stepped forward, an easy, dark-haired young man in a sleeveless down vest and a plaid shirt. 'I especially don't want to make anybody feel funny now, ya know.' He paused, lifted his hands, palm-out. 'Really. I was just thinking that you guys look like you've been on the road awhile.'
Jack glanced at Wolf, who was still hugging himself in embarrassment but also glowering through his round glasses at this figure.
'I've been there myself,' the man said. 'Hey, dig it - the year I got out of good old DHS - Daleville High, you know - I hitched all the way to northern California and all the way back. Anyhow, if you're sort of going west, I can give you a lift.'
'Can't, Jacky.' Wolf spoke in a thunderous stage whisper.
'How far west?' Jack asked. 'We're trying to make it to Springfield. I have a friend in Springfield.'
'Hey, no probleema, seenyor.' He raised his hands again. 'I'm going just this side of Cayuga, right next to the Illinois border. You let me scarf a burger, we gone. Straight shot. An hour and a half, maybe less - you'll be about halfway to Springfield.'
'Can't,' Wolf rasped again.
'There's one problem, okay? I got some stuff on the front seat. One of you guys'll have to ride behind. It's gonna be windy back there.'
'You don't know how great that is,' Jack said, speaking nothing more than the truth. 'We'll see you when you come back out.' Wolf began to dance in agitation. 'Honest. We'll be out here, mister. And thanks.'
He turned to whisper to Wolf as soon as the man went through the doors.
And so when the young man - Bill 'Buck' Thompson, for that was his name - returned to his pick-up carrying the containers for two more Whoppers, he found a sedate-looking Wolf kneeling in the open back, his arms resting on the side panel, mouth open, nose already lifting. Jack was in the passenger seat, crowded by a stack of bulky plastic bags which had been taped, then stapled shut, and then sprayed extensively with room freshener, to judge by the smell. Through the translucent sides the bags were visible long frondlike cuttings, medium green. Clusters of buds grew on these amputated fronds.
'I reckoned you still looked a little hungry,' he said, and tossed another Whopper to Wolf. Then he let himself in on the driver's side, across the pile of plastic bags from Jack. 'Thought he might catch it in his teeth, no reflection on your cousin. Here, take this one, he already pulverized his.'
And a hundred miles west they went, Wolf delirious with joy to have the wind whipping past his head, half-hypnotized by the speed and variety of the odors which his nose caught in flight. Eyes blazing and glowing, registering every nuance of the wind, Wolf twitched from side to side behind the cab, shoving his nose into the speeding air.
Buck Thompson spoke of himself as a farmer. He talked nonstop during the seventy-five minutes he kept his foot near the floor, and never once asked Jack any questions. And when he swung off onto a narrow dirt road just outside the Cayuga town line and stopped the car beside a cornfield that seemed to run for miles, he dug in his shirt pocket and brought out a faintly irregular cigarette rolled in almost tissuelike white paper. 'I've heard of red-eye,' he said. 'But your cousin's ridiculous.' He dropped the cigarette into Jack's hand. 'Have him take some of this when he gets excited, willya? Doctor's orders.'
Jack absently stuffed the joint into his shirt pocket and climbed out of the cab. 'Thanks, Buck,' he called up to the driver.
'Man, I thought I'd seen something when I saw him eat,' Buck said. 'How do you get him to go places? Yell mush! mush! at him?'
Once Wolf realized that the ride was over, he bounded off the back of the truck.
The red pick-up rolled off, leaving a long plume of dust behind it.
'Let's do that again!' Wolf sang out. 'Jacky! Let's do that again!'
'Boy, I wish we could,' Jack said. 'Come on, let's walk for a while. Someone will probably come along.'
He was thinking that his luck had turned, that in no time at all he and Wolf would be over the border into Illinois - and he'd always been certain that things would go smoothly once he got to Springfield and Thayer School and Richard. But Jack's mind was still partially in shed-time, where what is unreal bloats and distorts whatever is real, and when the bad things started to happen again, they happened so quickly that he was unable to control them. It was a long time before Jack saw Illinois, and during that time he found himself back in the shed.
2
The bewilderingly rapid series of events which led to the Sunlight Home began ten minutes after the two boys had walked past the stark little roadsign telling them that they were now in Cayuga, pop. 23,568. Cayuga itself was nowhere visible. To their right the endless cornfield rolled across the land; to their left a bare field allowed them to see how the road bent, then arrowed straight toward the flat horizon. Just after Jack had realized that they would probably have to walk all the way into town to get their next ride, a car appeared on this road, travelling fast toward them.