A flicker of unease on Pedersen's face; a cramp of outright fear on Casey's. They stopped . . . they actually stopped. Jack felt a moment of wild, stupid hope. The boys stared at him with the unease of men looking at a mad dog which can be brought down . . . but which may bite someone badly first.
'Stand aside, boys,' a powerful, mellow voice said, and they moved aside willingly, relief lighting their faces. It was Reverend Gardener. Reverend Gardener would know how to handle this.
He came toward the cornered boys, dressed this morning in charcoal slacks and a white satin shirt with full, almost Byronic, sleeves. In his hand he held that black hypodermic case.
He looked at Jack and sighed. 'Do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality, Jack?'
Jack bared his teeth at him.
Gardener nodded sadly, as if this were no more than he had expected.
'Well, all boys are bad,' he said. 'It's axiomatic.'
He opened the case. The hypo glittered.
'I think that you and your friend have been doing something even worse than sodomy, however,' Gardener went on in his mellow, regretful voice. 'Going to places better left to your elders and betters, perhaps.'
Sonny Singer and Hector Bast exchanged a startled, uneasy look.
'I think that some of this evil . . . this perversity . . . has been my own fault.' He took the hypo out, glanced at it, and then took out a vial. He handed the case to Warwick and filled the hypo. 'I have never believed in forcing my boys to confess, but without confession there can be no decision for Christ, and with no decision for Christ, evil continues to grow. So, although I regret it deeply, I believe that the time to ask has ended and the time to demand in God's name has come. Pedersen. Peabody. Warwick. Casey. Hold them!'
The boys surged forward on his command like trained dogs. Jack got in one blow at Peabody, and then his hands were grabbed and pinned.
'Led me hid imb!' Sonny cried in his new, muffled voice. He elbowed through the crowd of goggling boys, his eyes glittering with hate. 'I wand to hid imb!'
'Not now,' Gardener said. 'Later, perhaps. We'll pray on it, won't we, Sonny?'
'Yeah.' The glitter in Sonny's eyes had become positively feverish. 'I'mb going to bray on id all day.'
Like a man who is finally waking up after a very long sleep, Wolf grunted and looked around. He saw Jack being held, saw the hypodermic needle, and peeled Pedersen's arm off Jack as if it had been the arm of a child. A surprisingly strong roar came from his throat.
'No! Let him GO!'
Gardener danced in toward Wolf's blind side with a fluid grace that reminded Jack of Osmond turning on the carter in that muddy stableyard. The needle flashed and plunged. Wolf wheeled, bellowing as if he had been stung . . . which, in a way, was just what had happened to him. He swept a hand at the hypo, but Gardener avoided the sweep neatly.
The boys, who had been looking on in their dazed Sunlight Home way, now began to stampede for the door, looking alarmed. They wanted no part of big, simple Wolf in such a rage.
'Let him GO! Let . . . him . . . let him . . .'
'Wolf!'
'Jack . . . Jacky . . .'
Wolf looked at him with puzzled eyes that shifted like strange kaleidoscopes from hazel to orange to a muddy red. He held his hairy hands out to Jack, and then Hector Bast stepped up behind him and clubbed him to the floor.
'Wolf! Wolf!' Jack stared at him with wet, furious eyes. 'If you killed him, you son of a bitch - '
'Shhh, Mr. Jack Parker,' Gardener whispered in his ear, and Jack felt the needle sting his upper arm. 'Just be quiet now. We're going to get a little sunlight in your soul. And maybe then we'll see how you like pulling a loaded wagon up the spiral road. Can you say hallelujah?'
That one word followed him down into dark oblivion.
Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .
CHAPTER 26 Wolf in the Box
1
Jack was awake for quite a long time before they knew he was awake, but he became aware of who he was and what had happened and what his situation was now only by degrees - he was, in a way, like the soldier who has survived a fierce and prolonged artillery barrage. His arm throbbed where Gardener had punched the hypodermic into it. His head ached so badly that his very eyeballs seemed to pulse. He was ragingly thirsty.
He advanced a step up the ladder of awareness when he tried to touch the hurt place on his upper right arm with his left hand. He couldn't do it. And the reason he couldn't do it was that his arms were somehow wrapped around himself. He could smell old, mouldy canvas - it was the smell of a Boy Scout tent found in an attic after many dark years. It was only then (although he had been looking at it stupidly through his mostly lidded eyes for the last ten minutes) that he understood what he was wearing. It was a strait-jacket.
Ferd would have figured that out quicker, Jack-O, he thought, and thinking of Ferd had a focusing effect on his mind in spite of the crushing headache. He stirred a little and the bolts of pain in his head and the throb in his arm made him moan. He couldn't help it.