"What?"
"Go for it," Richard whispered weakly. "Move it, chum."
Jack actually laughed. A second later, he was carefully moving downhill past the backs of houses, going through tall horsetail grass toward the beach.
40
Speedy on the Beach
1
At the bottom of the hill, Jack flattened out in the grass and crawled, carrying Richard as he had once carried his backpack. When he reached the border of high yellow weeds alongside the edge of the road, he inched forward on his belly and looked out. Directly ahead of him, on the other side of the road, the beach began. Tall weatherbeaten rocks jutted out of the grayish sand; grayish water foamed onto the shore. Jack looked leftward down the street. A short distance past the hotel, on the inland side of the beach road, stood a long crumbling structure like a sliced-off wedding cake. Above it a wooden sign with a great hole in it read KINGSLAND MOTEL. The Kingsland Motel, Jack remembered, where Morgan Sloat had installed himself and his little boy during his obsessive inspections of the black hotel. A flash of white that was Sunlight Gardener roamed farther up the street, clearly berating several of the black-suited men and flapping his hand toward the hill. He doesn't know I'm down here already, Jack realized as one of the men began to trudge across the beach road, looking from side to side. Gardener made another abrupt, commanding gesture, and the limousine parked at the foot of Main Street wheeled away from the hotel and began to coast alongside the man in the black suit. He unbuttoned his jacket as soon as he hit the sidewalk of Main Street and took out a pistol from a shoulder holster.
In the limousines the drivers turned their heads and stared up the hill. Jack blessed his luck--five minutes later, and a renegade Wolf with an oversized gun would have ended his quest for that great singing thing in the hotel.
He could see only the top two floors of the hotel, and the madly spinning devices attached to the architectural extravagances on the roof. Because of his worm's-eye angle, the breakwater bisecting the beach on the right side of the hotel seemed to rear up twenty feet or more, marching down the sand and on into the water.
COME NOW COME NOW, called the Talisman in words that were not words, but almost physical expressions of urgency.
The man with the gun was now out of sight, but the drivers still stared after him as he went uphill toward Point Venuti's lunatics. Sunlight Gardener lifted his bullhorn and roared, "Root him out! I want him rooted out!" He jabbed the bullhorn at another black-suited man, just raising his binoculars to look down the street in Jack's direction. "You! Pig-brains! Take the other side of the street . . . and root that bad boy out, oh yes, that baddest baddest boy, baddest . . ." His voice trailed away as the second man trotted across the street to the opposite sidewalk, his pistol already lengthening his fist.
It was the best chance he'd ever get, Jack realized--nobody was facing down the length of the beach road. "Hang on tight," he whispered to Richard, who did not move. "Time to boogie." He got his feet up under him, and knew that Richard's back was probably visible above the yellow weeds and tall grass. Bending over, he burst out of the weeds and set his feet on the beach road.
In seconds Jack Sawyer was flat on his stomach in the gritty sand. He pushed himself forward with his feet. One of Richard's hands tightened on his shoulder. Jack wiggled forward across the sand until he had made it behind the first tall outcropping of rock; then he simply stopped moving and lay with his head on his hands, Richard light as a leaf on his back, breathing hard. The water, no more than twenty feet away, beat against the edge of the beach. Jack could still hear Sunlight Gardener screeching about imbeciles and incompetents, his crazy voice drifting down from uphill on Main Street. The Talisman urged him forward, urged him on, on, on. . . .
Richard fell off his back.
"You okay?"
Richard raised a thin hand and touched his forehead with his fingers, his cheekbone with his thumb. "I guess. You see my father?"
Jack shook his head. "Not yet."
"But he's here."
"I guess. He has to be." The Kingsland, Jack remembered, seeing in his mind the dingy facade, the broken wooden sign. Morgan Sloat would have holed up in the hotel he had used so often six or seven years ago. Jack immediately felt the furious presence of Morgan Sloat near him, as if knowing where Sloat was had summoned him up.
"Well, don't worry about him." Richard's voice was paper-thin. "I mean, don't worry about me worrying about him. I think he's dead, Jack."
Jack looked at his friend with a fresh anxiety: could Richard actually be losing his mind? Certainly Richard was feverish. Up on the hill, Sunlight Gardener bawled "SPREAD OUT!" through his bullhorn.
"You think--"
And then Jack heard another voice, one that had first whispered beneath Gardener's angry command. It was a half-familiar voice, and Jack recognized its timbre and cadence before he had truly identified it. And, oddly, he recognized that the sound of this particular voice made him feel relaxed--almost as if he could stop scheming and fretting now, for everything would be taken care of--before he could name its owner.
"Jack Sawyer," the voice repeated. "Over here, sonny."
The voice was Speedy Parker's.
"I do," Richard said, and closed his puffy eyes again and looked like a corpse washed up by the tide.
I do think my father is dead, Richard meant, but Jack's mind was far from the ravings of his friend. "Over here, Jacky," Speedy called again, and the boy saw that the sound came from the largest group of tall rocks, three joined vertical piles only a few feet from the edge of the water. A dark line, the high-tide mark, cut across the rocks a quarter of the way up.
"Speedy," Jack whispered.
"Yeah-bob," came the reply. "Get yourself over here without them zombies seein you, can you? And bring your frien' along, too."
Richard still lay face-up on the sand, his hand over his face. "Come on, Richie," Jack whispered into his ear. "We have to move a little bit down the beach. Speedy's here."
"Speedy?" Richard whispered back, so quietly Jack had trouble hearing the word.
"A friend. See the rocks down there?" He lifted Richard's head on the reedlike neck. "He's behind them. He'll help us, Richie. Right now, we could use a little help."
"I can't really see," Richard complained. "And I'm so tired . . ."
"Get on my back again." He turned around and nearly flattened out on the sand. Richard's arms came over his shoulders and feebly joined.
Jack peered around the edge of the rock. Down the beach road, Sunlight Gardener stroked his hair into place as he strode toward the front door of the Kingsland Motel. The black hotel reared up awesomely. The Talisman opened its throat and called for Jack Sawyer. Gardener hesitated outside the door of the motel, swept both hands over his hair, shook his head, and turned smartly about and began walking much more rapidly back up the long line of limousines. The bullhorn lifted. "REPORTS EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES!" he screeched. "YOU POINT MEN--TELL ME IF YOU SEE A BUG MOVE! I MEAN IT, YES I DO!"
Gardener was walking away; everybody else watched him. It was time. Jack kicked off away from his shelter of rock and, bending over while he clasped Richard's skimpy forearms, raced down the beach. His feet kicked up scallops of damp sand. The three joined pillars of rocks, which had seemed so close while he talked to Speedy, now appeared to be half a mile away--the open space between himself and them would not close. It was as if the rocks receded while he ran. Jack expected to hear the crack of a shot. Would he feel the bullet first, or would he hear the report before the bullet knocked him down? At last the three rocks grew larger and larger in his vision, and then he was there, falling onto his chest and skidding behind their protection.
"Speedy!" he said, almost laughing in spite of everything. But the sight of Speedy, who was sitting down beside a colorful little blanket and leaning against the middle pillar of rock, killed the laughter in his throat--killed at least half of his hope, too.
2
For Speedy Parker looked
worse than Richard. Much worse. His cracked, leaking face gave Jack a weary nod, and the boy thought that Speedy was confirming his hopelessness. Speedy wore only a pair of old brown shorts, and all of his skin seemed horribly diseased, as if with leprosy.
"Settle down now, ole Travellin Jack," Speedy whispered in a hoarse, crackling voice. "There's lots you got to hear, so open your ears up good."
"How are you?" Jack asked. "I mean . . . Jesus, Speedy . . . is there anything I can do for you?"
He gently placed Richard down on the sand.
"Open your ears, like I said. Don't you go worryin bout Speedy. I ain't too com'fable, the way you see me now, but I can be com'fable again, if you does the right thing. Your little friend's dad put this hurtin on me--on his own boy, too, looks like. Old Bloat don't want his child in that hotel, no sir. But you got to take him there, son. There ain't but one way about it. You got to do it."
Speedy seemed to be fading in and out as he talked to Jack, who wanted to scream or wail more than he had at any time since the death of Wolf. His eyes smarted, and he knew he wanted to cry. "I know, Speedy," he said. "I figured that out."
"You a good boy," the old man said. He cocked his head back and regarded Jack carefully. "You the one, all right. The road laid its mark on you, I see. You the one. You gonna do it."
"How's my mom, Speedy?" Jack asked. "Please tell me. She's still alive, isn't she?"
"You can call her soon's you can, find out she's okay," Speedy answered. "But first you got to get it, Jack. Because if you don't get it, she be dead. And so be Laura, the Queen. She be dead, too." Speedy hitched himself up, wincing, to straighten his back. "Let me tell you. Most everybody at the court gave up on her--gave her up for dead already." His face expressed his disgust. "They all afraid of Morgan. Because they know Morgan'll take they skin off they backs if they don't swear allegiance to him now. While Laura still got a few breaths in her. But out in the far Territories, two-legged snakes like Osmond and his gang been goin around, tellin folks she already dead. And if she dies, Travellin Jack, if she dies . . ." He levelled his ruined face at the boy. "Then we got black horror in both worlds. Black horror. And you can call your momma. But first you has to get it. You has to. It's all that's left, now."
Jack did not have to ask him what he meant.
"I'm glad you understand, son." Speedy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone.
A second later his eyes slowly opened again. "Destinies. That's what all this is about. More destinies, more lives, than you know. You ever hear the name Rushton? I suspect you might have, all this time gone by."
Jack nodded.
"All those destinies be the reason your momma brought you all the way to the Alhambra Hotel, Travellin Jack. I was just sittin and waitin, knowin you'd show up. The Talisman pulled you here, boy. Jason. That's a name you heard, too, I spect."
"It's me," Jack said.
"Then get the Talisman. I brought this l'il thing along, he'p you out some." He wearily picked up the blanket, which, Jack saw, was of rubber and therefore not a blanket after all.
Jack took the bundle of rubber from Speedy's charred-looking hand. "How can I get into the hotel, though?" he asked. "I can't get over the fence, and I can't swim in with Richard."
"Blow it up." Speedy's eyes had closed again.
Jack unfolded the object. It was an inflatable raft in the shape of a legless horse.
"Recognize her?" Speedy's voice, ruined as it was, bore a nostalgic lightness. "You and me picked her up, sometime back. I explained about the names."
Jack suddenly remembered coming to Speedy, that day that seemed filled with slashes of black and white, and finding him sitting inside a round shed, repairing the merry-go-round horses. You be takin liberties with the Lady, but I guess she ain't gonna mind if you're helpin me get her back where she belongs. Now that, too, had a larger meaning. Another piece of the world locked into place for Jack. "Silver Lady," he said.
Speedy winked at him, and again Jack had the eerie sense that everything in his life had conspired to get him to precisely this point. "Your friend here all right?" It was--almost--a deflection.
"I think so." Jack looked uneasily at Richard who had rolled on his side and was breathing shallowly, his eyes shut.
"Then long's you think so, blow up ole Silver Lady here. You gotta bring that boy in with you no matter what. He's a part of it, too."
Speedy's skin seemed to be getting worse as they sat on the beach--it had a sickly ash-gray tinge. Before Jack put the air nozzle to his mouth he asked, "Can't I do anything for you, Speedy?"
"Sure. Go to the Point Venuti drugstore and fetch me a bottle of Lydia Pinkham's ointment." Speedy shook his head. "You know how to he'p Speedy Parker, boy. Get the Talisman. That's all the he'p I need."
Jack blew into the nozzle.
3
A very short time later he was pushing in the stopper located beside the tail of a raft shaped like a four-foot-long rubber horse with an abnormally broad back.
"I don't know if I'll be able to get Richard on this thing," he said, not complaining but merely thinking out loud.
"He be able to follow orders, ole Travellin Jack. Just sit behind him, kind of he'p hold him on. That's all he needs."
And in fact Richard had pulled himself into the lee of the standing rocks and was breathing smoothly and regularly through his open mouth. He might have been either asleep or awake, Jack could not tell which.
"All right," Jack said. "Is there a pier or something out behind that place?"
"Better than a pier, Jacky. Once you gets out beyond the breakwater, you'll see big pilins--they built part of the hotel right out over the water. You'll see a ladder down in them pilins. Get Richard there up the ladder and you be on the big deck out back. Big windows right there--the kind of windows that be doors, you know? Open up one of them window-doors and you be in the dinin room." He managed to smile. "Once you in the dinin room, I reckon you'll be able to sniff out the Talisman. And don't be afraid of her, sonny. She's been waitin for you--she'll come to your hand like a good hound."
"What's to stop all these guys from coming in after me?"
"Shoo, they can't go in the black hotel." Disgust with Jack's stupidity was printed in every line on Speedy's face.
"I know, I mean in the water. Why wouldn't they come after me with a boat or something?"
Now Speedy managed a painful but genuine smile. "I think you gonna see why, Travellin Jack. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, hee hee. Don't worry bout that now--just remember what I told you and get to gettin, hear?"
"I'm already there," Jack said, and edged toward the rocks to peer around at the beach road and the hotel. He had managed to get across the road and to Speedy's cover without being seen: surely he could drag Richard the few feet down to the water and get him on the raft. With any luck at all, he should be able to make it unseen all the way to the pilings--Gardener and the men with binoculars were concentrating on the town and the hillside.
Jack peeked around the side of one of the tall columns. The limousines still stood before the hotel. Jack put his head out an inch or two farther to look across the street. A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motel--he was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel.
A whistle began to shrill, as high and insistent as a woman's scream.
"Move!" Speedy whispered hoarsely.
Jack jerked his head up and saw at the top of the grassy rise behind the crumbling houses a black-suited man blasting away at the whistle and pointing straight downhill at him. The man's dark hair swayed around his shoulders--hair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death.
"FOUND HIM! FOUND HIM!" Gardener bawled. "SHOOT HIM! A THOUSAND DOLLARS TO THE BROTHER WHO BRINGS ME HIS BALLS!"
Jack recoiled back into the safety of the rocks. A half-second later a bullet spanged off the front of the middle pillar just before the sound of
the shot reached them. So now I know, Jack thought as he grabbed Richard's arm and pulled him toward the raft. First you get knocked down, then you hear the gun go off.
"You gotta go now," Speedy said in a breathless rush of words. "In thirty seconds, there's gonna be a lot more shootin. Stay behind the breakwater as long's you can and then cut over. Get her, Jack."
Jack gave Speedy a frantic, driven look as a second bullet smacked into the sand before their little redoubt. Then he pushed Richard down in the front of the raft and saw with some satisfaction that Richard had enough presence of mind to grasp and hang on to the separate rubbery tufts of the mane. Speedy lifted his right hand in a gesture both wave and blessing. On his knees Jack gave the raft a shove which sent it almost to the edge of the water. He heard another trilling blast of the whistle. Then he scrambled to his feet. He was still running when the raft hit the water, and was wet to the waist when he pulled himself into it.
Jack paddled steadily out to the breakwater. When he reached the end, he turned into unprotected open water and began paddling.
4
After that, Jack concentrated on his paddling, firmly putting out of his mind any considerations of what he would do if Morgan's men had killed Speedy. He had to get under the pilings, and that was that. A bullet hit the water, causing a tiny eruption of droplets about six feet to his left. He heard another ricochet off the breakwater with a ping. Jack paddled forward with his whole strength.
Some time, he knew not how long, went by. At last he rolled off the side of the raft and swam to the back, so that he could push it even faster by scissoring his legs. An almost imperceptible current swept him nearer his goal. At last the pilings began, high crusty columns of wood as thick around as telephone poles. Jack raised his chin out of the water and saw the immensity of the hotel lifting itself above the wide black deck, leaning out over him. He glanced back and to his right, but Speedy had not moved. Or had he? Speedy's arms looked different. Maybe--
There was a flurry of movement on the long grassy descent behind the row of falling-down houses. Jack looked up and saw four of the men in black suits racing down toward the beach. A wave slapped the raft, almost taking it from his grasp. Richard moaned. Two of the men pointed toward him. Their mouths moved.