Jack suddenly realized that he was trembling, and had been for some time. He balled his hands into fists, and felt the trembling displace itself into his stomach.
He was not sure that he wanted ever to see the Daydream place, but he looked questioningly over at Speedy, who had perched himself on the school chair. 'It isn't anyplace in Africa, is it?'
'Well, I don't know. Could be. I got my own name for it, son. I just call it the Territories.'
Jack looked back up at the photograph - the long, dimpled plain, the low brown mountains. The Territories. That was right; that was its name.
They have magic like we have physics, right? An agrarian monarchy . . . modern weapons to the right guys over there . . . Uncle Morgan plotting. His father answering, putting on the brakes: We have to be careful about the way we go in there, partner . . . remember, we owe them, by which I mean we really owe them . . .
'The Territories,' he said to Speedy, tasting the name in his mouth as much as asking a question.
'Air like the best wine in a rich man's cellar. Soft rain. That's the place, son.'
'You've been there, Speedy?' Jack asked, fervently hoping for a straightforward answer.
But Speedy frustrated him, as Jack had almost known he would. The custodian smiled at him, and this time it was a real smile, not just a subliminal flare of warmth.
After a moment Speedy said, 'Hell, I never been outside these United States, Travellin Jack. Not even in the war. Never got any farther than Texas and Alabama.'
'How do you know about the . . . the Territories?' The name was just beginning to fit his mouth.
'Man like me, he hear all kinds of stories. Stories about two-headed parrots, men that fly with their own wings, men who turn into wolves, stories about queens. Sick queens.'
. . . magic like we have physics, right?
Angels and werewolves. 'I've heard stories about werewolves,' Jack said. 'They're even in cartoons. That doesn't mean anything, Speedy.'
'Probably it don't. But I heard that if a man pulls a radish out of the ground, another man half a mile away will be able to smell that radish - the air so sweet and clear.'
'But angels . . . '
'Men with wings.'
'And sick queens,' Jack said, meaning it as a joke - man, this is some dumb place you make up, broom jockey. But the instant he spoke the words, he felt sick himself. He had remembered the black eye of a gull fixing him with his own mortality as it yanked a clam from its shell: and he could hear hustlin, bustlin Uncle Morgan asking if Jack could put Queen Lily on the line.
Queen of the Bs. Queen Lily Cavanaugh.
'Yeah,' Speedy said softly. 'Troubles everywhere, son. Sick Queen . . . maybe dyin. Dyin, son. And a world or two waitin out there, just waitin to see if anyone can save her.'
Jack stared at him open-mouthed, feeling more or less as if the custodian had just kicked him in the stomach. Save her? Save his mother? The panic started to flood toward him once again - how could he save her? And did all this crazy talk mean that she really was dying, back there in that room?
'You got a job, Travellin Jack,' Speedy told him. 'A job that ain't gonna let you go, and that's the Lord's truth. I wish it was different.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Jack said. His breath seemed to be trapped in a hot little pocket situated at the base of his neck. He looked into another corner of the small red room and in the shadow saw a battered guitar propped against the wall. Beside it lay the neat tube of a thin rolled-up mattress. Speedy slept next to his guitar.
'I wonder,' Speedy said. 'There comes times, you know what I mean, you know more than you think you know. One hell of a lot more.'
'But I don't - ' Jack began, and then pulled himself up short. He had just remembered something. Now he was even more frightened - another chunk of the past had rushed out at him, demanding his attention. Instantly he was filmed with perspiration, and his skin felt very cold - as if he had been misted by a fine spray from a hose. This memory was what he had fought to repress yesterday morning, standing before the elevators, pretending that his bladder was not about to burst.
'Didn't I say it was time for a little refreshment?' Speedy asked, reaching down to push aside a loose floorboard.
Jack again saw two ordinary-looking men trying to push his mother into a car. Above them a huge tree dipped scalloped fronds over the automobile's roof.
Speedy gently extracted a pint bottle from the gap between the floorboards. The glass was dark green, and the fluid inside looked black. 'This gonna help you, son. Just a little taste all you need - send you some new places, help you get started findin that job I told you bout.'
'I can't stay, Speedy,' Jack blurted out, now in a desperate hurry to get back to the Alhambra. The old man visibly checked the surprise in his face, then slid the bottle back under the loose floorboard. Jack was already on his feet. 'I'm worried,' he said.
'Bout your mom?'
Jack nodded, moving backward toward the open door.