'Just that. Every mile I remember a little less about what happened. It's all getting misty. And I think . . . I think that's the way I want it. Look, are you really sure your mother's okay?'
Three times Jack had tried to call his mother. There was no answer. He was not too worried about this. Things were okay. He hoped. When he got there, she would be there. Sick . . . but still alive. He hoped.
'Yes.'
'Then how come she doesn't answer the phone?'
'Sloat played some tricks with the phones,' Jack said. 'He played some tricks with the help at the Alhambra, too, I bet. She's still okay. Sick . . . but okay. Still there. I can feel her.'
'And if this healing thing works - ' Richard grimaced a little, then plunged. 'You still . . . I mean, you still think she'd let me . . . you know, stay with you guys?'
'No,' Jack said, helping Richard pick up the remains of supper. 'She'll want to see you in an orphanage, probably. Or maybe in jail. Don't be a dork, Richard, of course you can stay with us.'
'Well . . . after all my father did . . .'
'That was your dad, Richie,' Jack said simply. 'Not you.'
'And you won't always be reminding me? You know . . . jogging my memory?'
'Not if you want to forget.'
'I do, Jack. I really do.'
Wolf was coming back.
'You guys ready? Wolf!'
'All ready,' Jack said. 'Listen, Wolf, how about that Scott Hamilton tape I got in Cheyenne?'
'Sure, Jack. Then how about some Creedence?'
' 'Run Through the Jungle,' right?'
'Good tune, Jack! Heavy! Wolf! God-pounding heavy tune!'
'You bet, Wolf.' He rolled his eyes at Richard. Richard rolled his back, and grinned.
The next day they rolled across Nebraska and Iowa; a day later they tooled past the gutted ruin of the Sunlight Home. Jack thought Wolf had taken them past it on purpose, that he perhaps wanted to see the place where his brother had died. He turned up the Creedence tape in the cassette player as loud as it would go, but Jack still thought he heard the sound of Wolf sobbing.
Time - suspended swatches of time. Jack seemed almost to be floating, and there was a feeling of suspension, triumph, valediction. Work honorably discharged.
Around sunset of the fifth day, they crossed into New England.
CHAPTER 47 Journey's End
1
The whole long drive from California to New England seemed, once they had got so far, to have taken place in a single long afternoon and evening. An afternoon that lasted days, an evening perhaps life-long, bulging with sunsets and music and emotions. Great humping balls of fire, Jack thought, I'm really out of it, when he happened for the second time in what he assumed to be about an hour to look at the discreet little clock set in the dashboard - and discovered that three hours had winked past him. Was it even the same day? 'Run Through the Jungle' pumped through the air; Wolf bobbed his head in time, grinning unstoppably, infallibly finding the best roads; the rear window showing the whole sky opening in great bands of twilight color, purple and blue and that particular deep plangent red of the down-going sun. Jack could remember every detail of this long long journey, every word, every meal, every nuance of the music, Zoot Sims or John Fogerty or simply Wolf delighting himself with the noises of the air, but the true span of time had warped itself in his mind to a concentration like a diamond's. He slept in the cushiony backseat and opened his eyes on light or darkness, on sunlight or stars. Among the things he remembered with particular sharpness, once they had crossed into New England and the Talisman began to glow again, signalling the return of normal time - or perhaps the return of time itself to Jack Sawyer - were the faces of people peering into the back seat of the El Dorado (people in parking lots, a sailor and an ox-faced girl in a convertible at a stoplight in a sunny little town in Iowa, a skinny Ohio kid wearing Breaking Away-style bicycle gear) in order to see if maybe Mick Jagger or Frank Sinatra had decided to pay them a call. Nope, just us, folks. Sleep kept stealing him away. Once he awoke (Colorado? Illinois?) to the thumping of rock music, Wolf snapping his fingers while keeping the big car rolling smoothly, a bursting sky of orange and purple and blue, and saw that Richard had somewhere acquired a book and was reading it with the aid of the El Dorado's recessed passenger light. The book was Broca's Brain. Richard always knew what time it was. Jack rolled his eyes upward and let the music, the evening colors, take him. They had done it, they had done everything . . . everything except what they would have to do in an empty little resort town in New Hampshire.