It's joy that holds them up.
That was what mattered. It was joy that held them up, no matter if the wings grew out of their backs or were somehow held on with buckles and clamps. Because what he saw, even from this distance, was the same sort of effort he had seen in the loft on lower Wilshire that day. All that profligate investment of energy to effect a splendid, momentary reversal of natural law. That such a reversal should demand so much and last such a short time was terrible; that people would go for it anyway was both terrible and wonderful.
And it's all just a game, he thought and suddenly felt sure of it. A game, or maybe not even that - maybe it was only practice for a game, the way that all the sweat and trembling exhaustion in the Wilshire loft that day had just been practice. Practice for a show that only a few people would probably care to attend and which would probably close quickly.
Joy, he thought again, standing now, his face turned up to look at the flying men in the distance, the wind spilling his hair across his forehead. His time of innocence was fast approaching its end (and, if pressed, even Jack would have reluctantly agreed that he felt such an end approaching - a boy couldn't go on the road for long, couldn't go through many experiences such as the one he had gone through in Oatley, and expect to remain an innocent), but in those moments as he stood looking into the sky, innocence seemed to surrounded him, like the young fisherman during his brief moment of epiphany in the Elizabeth Bishop poem, everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow.
Joy - damn, but that's a cheerful little word.
Feeling better than he had since all of this began - and only God knew just how long ago that had been - Jack set off along the Western Road again, his step light, his face wreathed in that same silly, splendid grin. Every now and then he looked back over his shoulder, and he was able to see the fliers for a very long time. The Territories air was so clear it almost seemed to magnify. And even after he could no longer see them, that feeling of joy remained, like a rainbow inside his head.
7
When the sun began to go down, Jack realized he was putting off his return to the other world - to the American Territories - and not just because of how terrible the magic juice tasted, either. He was putting it off because he didn't want to leave here.
A streamlet had flowed out of the grasslands (where small groves of trees had again begun to appear - billowy trees with oddly flat tops, like eucalyptus trees) and had hooked a right so that it flowed along beside the road. Farther off, to the right and ahead, was a huge body of water. It was so huge, in fact, that until the last hour or so Jack had thought it was a patch of sky that somehow had a slightly bluer color than the rest. But it wasn't sky; it was a lake. A great lake, he thought, smiling at the pun. He guessed that in the other world that would be Lake Ontario.
He felt good. He was headed in the right direction - maybe a little too far north, but he had no doubt that the Western Road would bend away from that direction soon enough. That feeling of almost manic joy - what he had defined as cheerfulness - had mellowed to a lovely sort of calm serenity, a feeling that seemed as clear as the Territories air. Only one thing marred his good feeling, and that was the memory
(six, is six, Jack was six)
of Jerry Bledsoe. Why had his mind given him such a hard time about coughing that memory up?
No - not the memory . . . the two memories. First me and Richard hearing Mrs. Feeny telling her sister that the electricity came out and cooked him, that it melted his glasses all over his nose, that she heard Mr. Sloat talking on the phone and he said so . . . and then being behind the couch, not really meaning to snoop or eavesdrop, and hearing my dad say 'Everything has consequences, and some of those consequences might be on the uncomfortable side.' And something surely made Jerry Bledsoe uncomfortable, didn't it? When your glasses end up melted all over your nose, I'd say you'd been through something mildly uncomfortable, yes
Jack stopped. Stopped dead.
What are you trying to say?
You know what I'm trying to say, Jack. Your father was gone that day - he and Morgan both. They were over here. Where, over here? I think they were at the same spot over here where their building is in California, over in the American Territories. And they did something, or one of them did. Maybe something big, maybe no more than tossing a rock . . .or burying an apple core in the dirt. And it somehow . . . it echoed over there. It echoed over there and it killed Jerry Bledsoe.
Jack shivered. Oh yes, he supposed he knew why it had taken his mind so long to cough up the memory - the toy taxi, the murmur of the men's voices, Dexter Gordon blowing his horn. It hadn't wanted to cough it up. Because