Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [59]
2
“Hey, Walt?” Jack said as he glided up behind him on his bike. “It’s me, Jack.”
Walt stopped and turned. “Jack? That really you?”
Jack realized he probably couldn’t see his face in the dark.
“Yeah, Walt. Where are you headed?”
“Home.”
“You’re headed the wrong way.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Johnson’s back that way.”
“It is?”
He didn’t seem all there. Then again, he never seemed all there, but tonight he was less there than usual.
“Want me to show you a shortcut back?”
He nodded. “Yeah. A shortcut would be good. I’m tired.”
The shortcut would not only be quicker but would keep them off the road. Jack didn’t want to be spotted.
They crossed 206 and started walking north. Walt was sort of shuffling. Jack walked his bike beside him, not wanting to admit that he’d been watching, but feeling like he was going to explode if he didn’t ask about it.
Finally he took a deep breath and said, “I … I saw what happened back there.”
Walt kept looking straight ahead. “Where?”
“At the Lonely Pine … in Miriam’s room.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw you touch the baby.”
Walt looked down at his right hand—his ungloved right hand.
“Oh man.” He pulled a glove from a pocket and wriggled his hand back into it. Then he looked at Jack. “How could you…?”
“I saw you go in. I…” Might as well get it out in the open. “I peeked through the window.”
“Shouldn’t’ve done that. It’s not right. People got a right to their privacy.”
He was absolutely right. Seemed like Jack had been prying into a number of privacies lately.
“I’m not proud of it, but I just had to look. And I’ve got to ask: Can you heal people, Walt?”
He didn’t answer right away, just shuffled along. Finally he said, “Kind of.”
Jack felt a surge of excitement. If this was true, if such a thing was really possible …
“What do you mean, ‘kind of’?”
“Okay, yeah. I’ve done it.”
“How?”
“Don’t know. A dying grunt passed it to me in Nam, not long after we took back Hue. I was set to end my tour and I couldn’t wait to get home. I think it wanted to come to America.”
“It?”
“Yeah. The healing power. It worked when it wanted to. It came and went when it damn well pleased. When it came, I couldn’t turn it off; and when it was gone, I couldn’t turn it on. But I found a way to put it to sleep.”
He pulled a pint bottle from the side pocket of his fatigue jacket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long pull.
“Applejack?” Jack said.
“Any kinda booze. It won’t work when I’m half lit.”
“That’s why you’re always drinking? So you can’t heal?” Jack felt disappointment tingeing his wonder. “But Walt … think of the good you could be doing.”
Walt took another gulp, and Jack resisted the temptation to knock the bottle from his hand.
“You don’t understand, Jack. There’s a price to pay. It’s yin and yang, man, like a cosmic scale that’s gotta be balanced, like TANSTAAFL.”
“Tan-what?”
“TANSTAAFL. It’s from a sci-fi book I read. It stands for ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.’ And that’s what it is with this thing, this power inside me. The healings don’t come free, Jack. Somebody pays, somebody always pays. And that somebody is me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I. But when I found I could knock it out with hooch, I started drinking every day.”
Jack was confused. “But … then … does that mean you didn’t heal the baby?”
“I think I did. I could feel the power awake and ready, felt the little shock when I touched her.”
“But the applejack—”
“I kept thinking about that baby and knew I couldn’t let her go through life like that, so I put the booze aside today. It woke up. Now I gotta put it back to sleep.”
Just like last month, when Mrs. C had told him to stop drinking because he might be “needed.”
He took another swig as they reached the turnoff into the woods. Jack glanced ahead and saw a deer lying on the shoulder, its head twisted at an unnatural angle. Big roadkill. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d come out, hadn’t looked that way. A thought struck.
“Can you