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(“Tell you the truth, you’re just about the only human I’ve ever seen this far west who was still going west,” Wolf said).
(“My mother bit her hands and toes for a month after she knew for certain that he took her,” Wolf told Jack matter-of-factly)
Wolf smiled so openly—and yet so wistfully—that Jack was moved to take his hand.
But Uncle Tommy had been fond of quoting a Chinese proverb that went: The man whose life you save is your responsibility for the rest of your life.
The railway and the dead station with its staring glassless windows must have seemed like dreadful parodies of themselves to Richard—yet more bits of the past destroyed in the wake of everything he was learning or admitting about his father. Richard’s entire life, as much as Jack’s, had begun to fold into the pattern of the Territories, and Richard had been given much less preparation for this transformation.
“If you know the answers, why ask the questions?” Jack asked. “Oh Jason, what a dumb thing to say. I’m sorry, Richie—I guess I was hoping that you didn’t see it. Yeah, I suppose there’ll be more of them up there. Let’s just not get too close to them.”
From down there the Talisman pulled at him as surely as if it were a giant with its hands on his clothes. The nexus of all possible worlds. He would take Richard into that hell—and fight for his life with all his strength—if he had to haul him along by the ankles. And Richard must have seen this determination in Jack, for, scratching at his sides and shoulders, he toiled along beside him.
I’m going to do this, Jack said to himself, and tried to ignore how greatly he was merely trying to bolster his courage. If I have to go through a dozen different worlds, I’m going to do it.
“Our troubles are going to have troubles with us,” said Richard, quoting—surely unconsciously—from Dr. Seuss.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son?
