Wolves of the Calla

Part I

ONE

When Roland and Eddie entered Our Lady of Serenity the following morning, daylight was only a distant rumor on the northeast horizon. Eddie lit their way down the center aisle with a 'sener, his lips pressed tightly together. The thing they had come for was humming. It was a sleepy hum, but he hated the sound of it just the same. The church itself felt freaky. Empty, it seemed too big, somehow. Eddie kept expecting to see ghostly figures (or perhaps a complement of the vagrant dead) sitting in the pews and looking at them with otherworldly disapproval.

But the hum was worse.

When they reached the front, Roland opened his purse and took out the bowling bag which Jake had kept in his knapsack until yesterday. The gunslinger held it up for a moment and they could both read what was printed on the side: NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES.

"Not a word from now until I tell you it's all right," Roland said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Roland pressed his thumb into the groove between two of the floorboards and the hidey-hole in the preacher's cove sprang open. He lifted the top aside. Eddie had once seen a movie on TV about guys disposing of live explosives during the London Blitz - UXB , it had been called - and Roland's movements now recalled that film strongly to his mind. And why not? If they were right about what was in this hiding place - and Eddie knew they were - then it was an unexploded bomb.

Roland folded back the white linen surplice, exposing the box. The hum rose. Eddie's breath stopped in his throat. He felt the skin all over his body grow cold. Somewhere close, a monster of nearly unimaginable malevolence had half-opened one sleeping eye.

The hum dropped back to its former sleepy pitch and Eddie breathed again.

Roland handed him the bowling bag, motioning for Eddie to hold it open. With misgivings (part of him wanted to whisper in Roland's ear that they should forget the whole thing), Eddie did as he was bidden. Roland lifted the box out, and once again the hum rose. In the rich, if limited, glow of the 'sener, Eddie could see sweat on the gunslinger's brow. He could feel it on his own. If Black Thirteen awoke and pitched them out into some black limbo...

I won't go. I'll fight to stay with Susannah .

Of course he would. But he was still relieved when Roland slipped the elaborately carved ghostwood box into the queer metallic bag they'd found in the vacant lot. The hum didn't disappear entirely, but subsided to a barely audible drone. And when Roland gently pulled the drawstring running around the top of the bag, closing its mouth, the drone became a distant whisper. It was like listening to a seashell.

Eddie sketched the sign of the cross in front of himself. Smiling faintly, Roland did the same.

Outside the church, the northeast horizon had brightened appreciably  -  there would be real daylight after all, it seemed.

"Roland."

The gunslinger turned toward him, eyebrows raised. His left fist was closed around the bag's throat; he was apparently not willing to trust the weight of the box to the bag's drawstring, stout as it looked.

"If we were todash when we found that bag, how could we have picked it up?"

Roland considered this. Then he said, "Perhaps the bag is todash, too."

"Still?"

Roland nodded. "Yes, I think so. Still."

"Oh." Eddie thought about it. "That's spooky."

"Changing your mind about revisiting New York, Eddie?" Eddie shook his head. He was scared, though. Probably more scared than he'd been at any time since standing up in the aisle of the Barony Coach to riddle Blaine.

TWO

By the time they were halfway along the path leading to the Doorway Cave (It's upsy , Henchick had said, and so it had been, and so it was), it was easily ten o' the clock and remarkably warm. Eddie stopped, wiped the back of his neck with his bandanna, and looked out over the twisting arroyos to the north. Here and there he could see black, gaping holes and asked Roland if they were the garnet mines. The gunslinger told him they were. "

"And which one have you got in mind for the kiddies? Can we see it from here?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Roland drew the single gun he was wearing and pointed it. "Look over the sight."

Eddie did and saw a deep draw which made the shape of a jagged double S . It was filled to the top with velvety shadows; he guessed there might be only half an hour or so at midday when the sun reached the bottom. Farther to the north, it appeared to dead-end against a massive rock-face. He supposed the mine entrance was there, but it was too dark to make out. To the southeast this arroyo opened on a dirt track that wound its way back to East Road. Beyond East Road were fields sloping down to fading but still green plots of rice. Beyond the rice was the river.

"Makes me think of the story you told us," Eddie said. "Eye-bolt Canyon."

"Of course it does."

"No thinny to do the dirty work, though."

"No," Roland agreed. "No thinny."

"Tell me the truth: Are you really going to stick this town's kids in a mine at the end of a dead-end arroyo?"

"No."

"The folken think you... that we mean to do that. Even the dish-throwing ladies think that."

"I know they do," Roland said. "I want them to."

"Why?"

"Because I don't believe there's anything supernatural about the way the Wolves find the children. After hearing Gran-pere Jaffords's story, I don't think there's anything supernatural about the Wolves , for that matter. No, there's a rat in this particular corn-crib. Someone who goes squealing to the powers that be in Thunderclap."

"Someone different each time, you mean. Each twenty-three or twenty-four years."

"Yes."

"Who'd do that?" Eddie asked. "Who could do that?"

"I'm not sure, but I have an idea."

"Took? Kind of a handed-down thing, from father to son?"

"If you're rested, Eddie, I think we'd better press on."

"Overholser? Maybe that guy Telford, the one who looks like a TV cowboy?"

Roland walked past him without speaking, his new shor'boots gritting on the scattered pebbles and rock-splinters. From his good left hand, the pink bag swung back and forth. The thing inside was still whispering its unpleasant secrets.

"Chatty as ever, good for you," Eddie said, and followed him.

THREE

The first voice which arose from the depths of the cave belonged to the great sage and eminent junkie.

"Oh, wookit the wittle sissy!" Henry moaned. To Eddie, he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge's dead partner in A Christmas Carol , funny and scary at the same time. "Does the wittle sissy think he's going back to Noo-Ork? You'll go a lot farther than that if you try it, bro. Better hunker where you are...just do your little carvings... be a good little homo..." The dead brother laughed. The live one shivered.

"Eddie?" Roland asked.

"Listen to your brother, Eddie!" his mother cried from the cave's dark and sloping throat. On the rock floor, scatters of small bones gleamed. "He gave up his life for you, his whole life , the least you could do is listen to him!"

"Eddie, are you all right?"

Now came the voice of Csaba Drabnik, known in Eddie's crowd as the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Csaba was telling Eddie to give him a cigarette or he'd pull Eddie's fuckin pants down. Eddie tore his attention away from this frightening but fascinating gabble with an effort.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess so."

"The voices are coming from your own head. The cave finds them and amplifies them somehow. Sends them on. It's a little upsetting, I know, but it's meaningless."

"Why'd you let em kill me, bro?" Henry sobbed. "I kept thinking you'd come, but you never did!"

"Meaningless," Eddie said. "Okay, got it. What do we do now?"

"According to both stories I've heard of this place - Callahan's and Henchick's - the door will open when I open the box."

Eddie laughed nervously. "I don't even want you to take the box out of the bag , how's that for chickenshit?"

"If you've changed your mind..."

Eddie was shaking his head. "No. I want to go through with it." He flashed a sudden, bright grin. "You're not worried about me scoring, are you? Finding the man and getting high?"

From deep in the cave, Henry exulted, "It's China White, bro! Them niggers sell the best!"

"Not at all," Roland said. "There are plenty of things I am worried about, but you returning to your old habits isn't one of them."

"Good." Eddie stepped a little farther into the cave, looking at the free-standing door. Except for the hieroglyphics on the front and the crystal knob with the rose etched on it, this one looked exactly like the ones on the beach. "If you go around - ?"

"If you go around, the door's gone," Roland said. "There is a hell of a drop-off, though... all the way to Na'ar, for all I know. I'd mind that, if I were you."

"Good advice, and Fast Eddie says thankya." He tried the crystal doorknob and found it wouldn't budge in either direction. He had expected that, too. He stepped back.

Roland said, "You need to think of New York. Of Second Avenue in particular, I think. And of the time. The year of nineteen and seven-seven."

"How do you think of a year ?"

When Roland spoke, his voice betrayed a touch of impatience. "Think of how it was on the day you and Jake followed Jake's earlier self, I suppose."

Eddie started to say that was the wrong day, it was too early, then closed his mouth. If they were right about the rules, he couldn't go back to that day, not todash, not in the flesh, either. If they were right, time over there was somehow hooked to time over here, only running a little faster. If they were right about the rules... if there were rules...

Well, why don't you just go and see?

"Eddie? Do you want me to try hypnotizing you?" Roland had drawn a shell from his gunbelt. "It can make you see the past more clearly."

"No. I think I better do this straight and wide-awake."

Eddie opened and closed his hands several times, taking and releasing deep breaths as he did so. His heart wasn't running particularly fast - was going slow, if anything - but each beat seemed to shiver through his entire body. Christ, all this would have been so much easier if there were just some controls you could set, like in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine or that movie about the Morlocks!

"Hey, do I look all right?" he asked Roland. "I mean, if I land on Second Avenue at high noon, how much attention am I going to attract?"

"If you appear in front of people," Roland said, "probably quite a lot. I'd advise you to ignore anyone who wants to palaver with you on the subject and vacate the area immediately."

"That much I know. I meant how do I look clotheswise?"

Roland gave a small shrug. "I don't know, Eddie. It's your city, not mine."

Eddie could have demurred. Brooklyn was his city. Had been, anyway. As a rule he hadn't gone into Manhattan from one month to the next, thought of it almost as another country. Still, he supposed he knew what Roland meant. He inventoried himself and saw a plain flannel shirt with horn buttons above dark-blue jeans with burnished nickel rivets instead of copper ones, and a button-up fly. (Eddie had seen zippers in Lud, but none since.) He reckoned he would pass for normal on the street. New York normal, at least. Anyone who gave him a second look would think cafe waiter/artist-wannabe playing hippie on his day off. He didn't think most people would even bother with the first look, and that was absolutely to the good. But there was one thing he could add -

"Have you got a piece of rawhide?" he asked Roland.

From deep in the cave, the voice of Mr. Tubther, his fifth-grade teacher, cried out with lugubrious intensity. "You had potential! You were a wonderful student, and look at what you turned into! Why did you let your brother spoil you?"

To which Henry replied, in sobbing outrage: "He let me die! He killed me!"

Roland swung his purse off his shoulder, put it on the floor at the mouth of the cave beside the pink bag, opened it, rummaged through it. Eddie had no idea how many things were in there; he only knew he'd never seen the bottom of it. At last the gunslinger found what Eddie had asked for and held it out.

While Eddie tied back his hair with the hank of rawhide (he thought it finished off the artistic-hippie look quite nicely), Roland took out what he called his swag-bag, opened it, and began to empty out its contents. There was the partially depleted sack of tobacco Callahan had given him, several kinds of coin and currency, a sewing kit, the mended cup he had turned into a rough compass not far from Shardik's clearing, an old scrap of map, and the newer one the Tavery twins had drawn. When the bag was empty, he took the big revolver with the sandalwood grip from the holster on his left hip. He rolled the cylinder, checked the loads, nodded, and snapped the cylinder back into place. Then he put the gun into the swag-bag, yanked the lacings tight, and tied them in a clove hitch that would come loose at a single pull. He held the bag out to Eddie by the worn strap.

At first Eddie didn't want to take it. "Nah, man, that's yours."

"These last weeks you've worn it as much as I have. Probably more."

"Yeah, but this is New York we're talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals."

"They won't steal from you. Take the gun."

Eddie looked into Roland's eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. "You've got a feeling."

"A hunch, yes."

"Ka at work?"

Roland shrugged. "It's always at work."

"All right," Eddie said. "And Roland - if I don't make it back, take care of Suze."

"Your job is to make sure I don't have to."

No , Eddie thought. My job is to protect the rose .

He turned to the door. He had a thousand more questions, but Roland was right, the time to ask them was done.

"Eddie, if you really don't want to - "

"No," he said. "I do want to." He raised his left hand and gave a thumbs-up. "When you see me do that, open the box."

"All right."

Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door with unfound written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he'd read a novel called The Door Into Summer , by... who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Paul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison... Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who'd written The Door Into Summer . Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy, the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxema and Stri-Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library. Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It's 1977 and he's thirteen and on Second Avenue and the taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew Mama's, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing -  what else? - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." The sidewalk is crowded. It's late afternoon and people are going home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels are in their gunna because the workday is done and they're going home. Everyone seems to be smiling because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it's summer in the city and somewhere there's the sound of a jack hammer, like on that old Lovin Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of '77, the cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was less before and it'll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher on board hasn't blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won't be much longer if he doesn't stop messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be successful for almost another year). He's thirteen. It's 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It's the summer after the Summer of the Tall Ships. It's a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it's Mungo Jerry singing "In the Summertime," and -

Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let's go . Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.

Eddie's ears were immediately assaulted by a sweetly dissonant jangle of chimes. His eyes began to water. In front of him, the free-standing door clicked open and the cave was suddenly illuminated by strong sunlight. There was the sound of beeping horns and the rat-a-tat-tat of a jackhammer. Not so long ago he had wanted a door like this so badly that he'd almost killed Roland to get it. And now that he had it, he was scared to death.

The todash chimes felt as if they were tearing his head apart. If he listened to that for long, he'd go insane. Go if you're going , he thought.

He stepped forward, through his gushing eyes seeing three hands reach out and grasp four doorknobs. He pulled the door toward him and golden late-day sunlight dazzled his eyes. He could smell gasoline and hot city air and someone's aftershave.

Hardly able to see anything, Eddie stepped through the unfound door and into the summer of a world from which he was now fan-gon, the exiled one.

FOUR

It was Second Avenue, all right; here was the Blimpie's, and from behind him came the cheery sound of that Mungo Jerry song with the Caribbean beat. People moved around him in a flood - uptown, downtown, all around the town. They paid no attention to Eddie, partly because most of them were only concentrating on getting out of town at the end of another day, mostly because in New York, not noticing other people was a way of life.

Eddie shrugged his right shoulder, settling the strap of Roland's swag-bag there more firmly, then looked behind him. The door back to Calla Bryn Sturgis was there. He could see Roland sitting at the mouth of the cave with the box open on his lap.

Those fucking chimes must be driving him crazy , Eddie thought. And then, as he watched, he saw the gunslinger remove a couple of bullets from his gunbelt and stick them in his ears. Eddie grinned. Good move, man . At least it had helped to block out the warble of the thinny back on 1-70. Whether it worked now or whether it didn't, Roland was on his own. Eddie had things to do.

He turned slowly on his little spot of the sidewalk, then looked over his shoulder again to verify the door had turned with him. It had. If it was like the other ones, it would now follow him everywhere he went. Even if it didn't, Eddie didn't foresee a problem; he wasn't planning on going far. He noticed something else, as well: that sense of darkness lurking behind everything was gone. Because he was really here, he supposed, and not just todash. If there were vagrant dead lurking in the vicinity, he wouldn't be able to see them.

Once more shrugging the swag-bag's strap further up on his shoulder, Eddie set off for The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

FIVE

People moved aside for him as he walked, but that wasn't quite enough to prove he was really here; people did that when you were todash, too. At last Eddie provoked an actual collision with a young guy toting not one briefcase but two  - a Big Coffin Hunter of the business world if Eddie had ever seen one.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" Mr. Businessman squawked when their shoulders collided.

"Sorry, man, sorry," Eddie said. He was here, all right. "Say, could you tell me what day - "

But Mr. Businessman was already gone, chasing the coronary he'd probably catch up to around the age of forty-five or fifty, from the look of him. Eddie remembered the punchline of an old New York joke: "Pardon me, sir, can you tell me how to get to City Hall, or should I just go fuck myself?" He burst out laughing, couldn't help it.

Once he had himself back under control, he got moving again. On the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he saw a man looking into a shop window at a display of shoes and boots. This guy was also wearing a suit, but looked considerably more relaxed than the one Eddie had bumped into. Also he was carrying only a single briefcase, which Eddie took to be a good omen.

"Cry your pardon," Eddie said, "but could you tell me what day it is?"

"Thursday," the window-shopper said. "The twenty-third of June."

"1977?"

The window-shopper gave Eddie a little half-smile, both quizzical and cynical, plus a raised eyebrow. "1977, that's correct. Won't be 1978 for... gee, another six months. Think of that."

Eddie nodded. "Thankee-sai."

"Nothing," Eddie said, and hurried on.

Only three weeks to July fifteenth, give or take , he thought. That's cutting it too goddam close for comfort .

Yes, but if he could persuade Calvin Tower to sell him the lot today, the whole question of time would be moot. Once, a long time ago, Eddie's brother had boasted to some of his friends that his little bro could talk the devil into setting himself on fire, if he really set his mind to it. Eddie hoped he still had some of that persuasiveness. Do a little deal with Calvin Tower, invest in some real estate, then maybe take a half-hour time-out and actually enjoy that New York groove a little bit. Celebrate. Maybe get a chocolate egg-cream, or -

The run of his thoughts broke off and he stopped so suddenly that someone bumped into him and then swore. Eddie barely felt the bump or heard the curse. The dark-gray Lincoln Town Car was parked up there again - not in front of the fire hydrant this time, but a couple of doors down.

Balazar's Town Car.

Eddie started walking again. He was suddenly glad Roland had talked him into taking one of his revolvers. And that the gun was fully loaded.

SIX

The chalkboard was back in the window (today's special was a New England Boiled Dinner consisting of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Frost - for dessert, your choice of Mary McCarthy or Grace Metalious), but the sign hanging in the door read sorry we're closed. According to the digital bank-clock up the street from Tower of Power Records, it was 3:14 p.m. Who shut up shop at quarter past three on a weekday afternoon?

Someone with a special customer, Eddie reckoned. That was who.

He cupped his hands to the sides of his face and looked into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. He saw the small round display table with the children's books on it. To the right was the counter that looked as if it might have been niched from a turn-of-the-century soda fountain, only today no one was sitting there, not even Aaron Deepneau. The cash register was likewise unattended, although Eddie could read the words on the orange tab sticking up in its window: no sale.

Place was empty. Calvin Tower had been called away, maybe there'd been a family emergency -

He's got an emergency, all right , the gunslinger's cold voice spoke up in Eddie's head. It came in that gray auto-carriage. And look again at the counter, Eddie. Only this time why don't you actually use your eyes instead of just letting the light pour through them ?

Sometimes he thought in the voices of other people. He guessed lots of people did that - it was a way of changing perspective a little, seeing stuff from another angle. But this didn't feel like that kind of pretending. This felt like old long, tall, and ugly actually talking to him inside his head.

Eddie looked at the counter again. This time he saw the strew of plastic chessmen on the marble, and the overturned coffee cup. This time he saw the spectacles lying on the floor between two of the stools, one of the lenses cracked.

He felt the first pulse of anger deep in the middle of his head. It was dull, but if past experience was any indicator, the pulses were apt to come faster and harder, growing sharper as they did. Eventually they would blot out conscious thought, and God help anyone who wandered within range of Roland's gun when that happened. He had once asked Roland if this happened to him, and Roland had replied, It happens to all of us . When Eddie had shaken his head and responded that he wasn't like Roland - not him, not Suze, not Jake - the gunslinger had said nothing.

Tower and his special customers were out back, he thought, in that combination storeroom and office. And this time talking probably wasn't what they had in mind. Eddie had an idea this was a little refresher course, Balazar's gentlemen reminding Mr. Tower that the fifteenth of July was coming, reminding Mr. Tower of what the most prudent decision would be once it came.

When the word gentlemen crossed Eddie's mind, it brought another pulse of anger with it. That was quite a word for guys who'd break a fat and harmless bookstore owner's glasses, then take him out back and terrorize him. Gentlemen! Fuck-commala!

He tried the bookshop door. It was locked, but the lock wasn't such of a much; the door rattled in its jamb like a loose tooth. Standing there in the recessed doorway, looking (he hoped) like a fellow who was especially interested in some book he'd glimpsed inside, Eddie began to increase his pressure on the lock, first using just his hand on the knob, then leaning his shoulder against the door in a way he hoped would look casual.

Chances are ninety-four in a hundred that no one's looking at you, anyway. This is New York, right? Can you tell me how to get to City Hall or should I just go fuck myself?

He pushed harder. He was still a good way from exerting maximum pressure when there was a snap and the door swung inward. Eddie entered without hesitation, as if he had every right in the world to be there, then closed the door again. It wouldn't latch. He took a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas off the children's table, ripped out the last page (Never liked the way this one ended, anyway , he thought), folded it three times, and stuck it into the crack between the door and the jamb. Good enough to keep it closed. Then he looked around.

The place was empty, and now, with the sun behind the skyscrapers of the West Side, shadowy. No sound -

Yes. Yes, there was. A muffled cry from the back of the shop. Caution, gentlemen at work , Eddie thought, and felt another pulse of anger. This one was sharper.

He yanked the tie on Roland's swag-bag, then walked toward the door at the back, the one marked employees only. Before he got there, he had to skirt an untidy heap of paperbacks and an overturned display rack, the old-fashioned drugstore kind that turned around and around. Calvin Tower had grabbed at it as Balazar's gents hustled him toward the storage area. Eddie hadn't seen it happen, didn't need to.

The door at the back wasn't locked. Eddie took Roland's revolver out of the swag-bag and set the bag itself aside so it wouldn't get in his way at a crucial moment. He eased the storage-room door open inch by inch, reminding himself of where Tower's desk was. If they saw him he'd charge, screaming at the top of his lungs. According to Roland, you always screamed at the top of your lungs when and if you were discovered. You might startle your enemy for a second or two, and sometimes a second or two made all the difference in the world.

This time there was no need for screaming or for charging. The men he was looking for were in the office area, their shadows once more climbing high and grotesque on the wall behind them. Tower was sitting in his office chair, but the chair was no longer behind the desk. It had been pushed into the space between two of the three filing cabinets. Without his glasses, his pleasant face looked naked. His two visitors were facing him, which meant their backs were to Eddie. Tower could have seen him, but Tower was looking up at Jack Andolini and George Biondi, concentrating on them alone. At the sight of the man's naked terror, another of those pulses went through Eddie's head.

There was the tang of gasoline in the air, a smell which Eddie guessed would frighten even the most stout-hearted shop owner, especially one presiding over an empire of paper. Beside the taller of the two men - Andolini - was a glass-fronted bookcase about five feet high. The door was swung open. Inside were four or five shelves of books, all the volumes wrapped in what looked like clear plastic dust-covers. Andolini was holding up one of them in a way that made him look absurdly like a TV pitchman. The shorter man - Biondi - was holding up a glass jar full of amber liquid in much the same way. Not much question about what it was.

"Please, Mr. Andolini," Tower said. He spoke in a humble, shaken voice. "Please, that's a very valuable book."

"Of course it is," Andolini said. "All the ones in the case are valuable. I understand you've got a signed copy of Ulysses that's worth twenty-six thousand dollars."

"What's that about, Jack?" George Biondi asked. He sounded awed. "What kind of book's worth twenty-six large?"

"I don't know," Andolini said. "Why don't you tell us, Mr. Tower? Or can I call you Cal?"

"My Ulysses is in a safe-deposit box," Tower said. "It's not for sale."

"But these are," Andolini said. "Aren't they? And I see the number 7500 on the flyleaf of this one in pencil. No twenty-six grand, but still the price of a new car. So here's what I'm going to do, Cal. Are you listening?"

Eddie was moving closer, and although he strove to be quiet, he made no effort whatever to conceal himself. And still none of them saw him. Had he been this stupid when he'd been of this world? This vulnerable to what was not even an ambush, properly speaking? He supposed he had been, and knew it was no wonder Roland had at first held him in contempt.

"I... I'm listening."

"You've got something Mr. Balazar wants as badly as you want your copy of Ulysses . And although these books in the glass cabinet are technically for sale, I bet you sell damned few of them, because you just... can't... bear... to part with them. The way you can't bear to part with that vacant lot. So here's what's going to happen. George is going to pour gasoline over this book with 7500 on it, and I'm going to light it on fire. Then I'm going to take another book out of your little case of treasures, and I'm going to ask you for a verbal commitment to sell that lot to the Sombra Corporation at high noon on July fifteenth. Got that?"

"If you give me that verbal commitment, this meeting will come to an end. If you don't give me that verbal commitment, I'm going to burn the second book. Then a third. Then a fourth. After four, sir, I believe my associate here is apt to lose patience."

"You're fucking A," George Biondi said. Eddie was now almost close enough to reach out and touch Big Nose, and still they didn't see him.

"At that point I think we'll just pour gasoline inside your little glass cabinet and set all your valuable books on f - "

Movement at last snagged Jack Andolini's eye. He looked beyond his partner's left shoulder and saw a young man with hazel eyes looking out of a deeply tanned face. The man was holding what looked like the world's oldest, biggest prop revolver. Had to be a prop.

"Who the fuck're - " Jack began.

Before he could get any further, Eddie Dean's face lit up with happiness and good cheer, a look that vaulted him way past handsome and into the land of beauty. "George !" he cried. It was the tone of one greeting his oldest, fondest friend after a long absence. "George Biondi ! Man, you still got the biggest beak on this side of the Hudson! Good to see you, man!"

There is a certain hardwiring in the human animal that makes us respond to strangers who call us by name. When the summoning call is affectionate, we seem almost compelled to respond in kind. In spite of the situation they were in back here, George "Big Nose" Biondi turned, with the beginning of a grin, toward the voice that had hailed him with such cheerful familiarity. That grin was in fact still blooming when Eddie struck him savagely with the butt of Roland's gun. Andolini's eyes were sharp, but he saw little more than a blur as the butt came down three times, the first blow between Biondi's eyes, the second above his right eye, the third into the hollow of his right temple. The first two blows provoked hollow thudding sounds. The last one yielded a soft, sickening smack. Biondi went down like a sack of mail, eyes rolling up to show the whites, lips puckering in a restless way that made him look like a baby who wanted to nurse. The jar tumbled out of his relaxing hand, hit the cement floor, shattered. The smell of gasoline was suddenly much stronger, rich and cloying.

Eddie gave Biondi's partner no time to react. While Big Nose was still twitching on the floor in the spilled gas and broken glass, Eddie was on Andolini, forcing him backward.

SEVEN

For Calvin Tower (who had begun life as Calvin Toren), there was no immediate sense of relief, no Thank God I'm saved feeling. His first thought was They're bad; this new one is worse .

In the dim light of the storage room, the newcomer seemed to merge with his own leaping shadow and become an apparition ten feet tall. One with burning eyeballs starting from their sockets and a mouth pulled down to reveal jaws lined with glaring white teeth that almost looked like fangs. In one hand was a pistol that appeared to be the size of a blunderbuss, the kind of weapon referred to in seventeenth-century tales of adventure as a machine. He grabbed Andolini by the top of his shirt and the lapel of his sport-coat and threw him against the wall. The hoodlum's hip struck the glass case and it toppled over. Tower gave a cry of dismay to which neither of the two men paid the slightest attention.

Balazar's man tried to wriggle away to his left. The new one, the snarling man with his black hair tied back behind him, let him get going, then tripped him and went down on top of him, one knee on the hoodlum's chest. He shoved the muzzle of the blunderbuss, the machine, into the soft shelf under the hoodlum's chin. The hoodlum twisted his head, trying to get rid of it. The new one only dug it in deeper.

In a choked voice that made him sound like a cartoon duck, Balazar's torpedo said, "Don't make me laugh, slick - that ain't no real gun."

The new one - the one who had seemed to merge with his own shadow and become as tall as a giant - pulled his machine out from under the hoodlum's chin, cocked it with his thumb, and pointed it deep into the storage area. Tower opened his mouth to say something, God knew what, but before he could utter a word there was a deafening crash, the sound of a mortar shell going off five feet from some hapless G.I.'s foxhole. Bright yellow flame shot from the machine's muzzle. A moment later, the barrel was back under the hoodlum's chin.

"What do you think now, Jack?" the new one panted. "Still think it's a fake? Tell you whatI think: the next time I pull this trigger, your brains are going all the way to Hoboken."

EIGHT

Eddie saw fear in Jack Andolini's eyes, but no panic. This didn't surprise him. It had been Jack Andolini who'd collared him after the cocaine mule-delivery from Nassau had gone wrong. This version of him was younger - ten years younger - but no prettier. Andolini, once dubbed Old Double-Ugly by the great sage and eminent junkie Henry Dean, had a bulging caveman's forehead and a jutting Alley Oop jaw to match. His hands were so huge they looked like caricatures. Hair sprouted from the knuckles. He looked like Old Double-Stupid as well as Old Double-Ugly, but he was far from dumb. Dummies didn't work their way up to become the second-in-command to guys like Enrico Balazar. And while Jack might not be that yet in this when, he would be by 1986, when Eddie would come flying back into JFK with about two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Bolivian marching-powder under his shirt. In that world, that where and when, Andolini had become Il Roche's field-marshal. In this one, Eddie thought there was a very good chance he was going to take early retirement. From everything . Unless, that was, he played it perfectly.

Eddie shoved the barrel of the pistol deeper under Andolini's chin. The smell of gas and gunpowder was strong in the air, for the time being overwhelming the smell of books. Somewhere in the shadows there was an angry hiss from Sergio, the bookstore cat. Sergio apparently didn't approve of loud noises in his domain.

Andolini winced and twisted his head to the left. "Don't, man... that thing's hot!"

"Not as hot as where you'll be five minutes from now," Eddie said. "Unless you listen to me, Jack. Your chances of getting out of this are slim, but not quite none. Will you listen?"

"I don't know you. How do you know us?"

Eddie took the gun out from beneath Old Double-Ugly's chin and saw a red circle where the barrel of Roland's revolver had pressed. Suppose I told you that it's your ka to meet me again, ten years from now ? And to be eaten by lobstrosities ? That they'll start with the feet inside your Gucci loafers and work their way up ? Andolini wouldn't believe him, of course, any more than he'd believed Roland's big old revolver would work until Eddie had demonstrated the truth. And along this track of possibility - on this level of the Tower - Andolini might not be eaten by lobstrosities. Because this world was different from all the others. This was Level Nineteen of the Dark Tower. Eddie felt it. Later he would ruminate on it, but not now. Now the very act of thinking was difficult. What he wanted right now was to kill both of these men, then head over to Brooklyn and tune up on the rest of Balazar's tet. Eddie tapped the barrel of the revolver against one of Andolini's jutting cheekbones. He had to restrain himself from really going to work on that ugly mug, and Andolini saw it. He blinked and wet his lips. Eddie's knee was still on his chest. Eddie could feel it going up and down like a bellows.

"You didn't answer my question," Eddie said. "What you did instead was ask a question of your own. The next time you do that, Jack, I'm going to use the barrel of this gun to break your face. Then I'll shoot out one of your kneecaps, turn you into a jackhopper for the rest of your life. I can shoot off a good many parts of you and still leave you able to talk. And don't play dumb with me. You're not dumb - except maybe in your choice of employer - and I know it. So let me ask you again: Will you listen to me?"

"What choice do I have?"

Moving with that same blurry, spooky speed, Eddie swept Roland's gun across Andolini's face. There was a sharp crack as his cheekbone snapped. Blood began to flow from his right nostril, which to Eddie looked about the size of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. Andolini cried out in pain, Tower in shock.

Eddie socked the muzzle of the pistol back into the soft place under Andolini's chin. Without looking away from him, Eddie said: "Keep an eye on the other one, Mr. Tower. If he starts to stir, you let me know."

"Who are you?" Tower almost bleated.

"A friend. The only one you've got who can save your bacon. Now watch him and let me work."

"A-All right."

Eddie Dean turned his full attention back to Andolini. "I laid George out because George is stupid. Even if he could carry the message I need carried, he wouldn't believe it. And how can a man convince others of what he doesn't believe himself?"

"Got a point there," Andolini said. He was looking up at Eddie with a kind of horrified fascination, perhaps finally seeing this stranger with the gun for what he really was. For what Roland had known he was from the very beginning, even when Eddie Dean had been nothing but a wetnose junkie shivering his way through heroin withdrawal. Jack Andolini was seeing a gunslinger.

"You bet I do," Eddie said. "And here's the message I want you to carry: Tower's off-limits."

Jack was shaking his head. "You don't understand. Tower has something somebody wants. My boss agreed to get it. He promised. And my boss always - "

"Always keeps his promises, I know," Eddie said. "Only this time he won't be able to, and that's not going to be his fault. Because Mr. Tower has decided not to sell his vacant lot up the street to The Sombra Corporation. He's going to sell it to the... mmm... to the Tet Corporation, instead. Got that?"

"Mister, I don't know you, but I know my boss. He won't stop."

"He will. Because Tower won't have anything to sell. The lot will no longer be his. And now listen even more closely, Jack. Listen ka-me, not ka-mai." Wisely, not foolishly.

Eddie leaned down. Jack stared up at him, fascinated by the bulging eyes - hazel irises, bloodshot whites - and the savagely grinning mouth which was now the distance of a kiss from his own.

"Mr. Calvin Tower has come under the protection of people more powerful and more ruthless than you could ever imagine, Jack. People who make Il Roche look like a hippie flower-child at Woodstock. You have to convince him that he has nothing to gain by continuing to harass Calvin Tower, and everything to lose."

"I can't - "

"As for you, know that the mark of Gilead is on this man. If you ever touch him again - if you ever even step foot in this shop again - I'll come to Brooklyn and kill your wife and children. Then I'll find your mother and father, and I'll kill them. Then I'll kill your mother's sisters and your father's brothers. Then I'll kill your grandparents, if they're still alive. You I'll save for last. Do you believe me?"

Jack Andolini went on staring into the face above him - the bloodshot eyes, the grinning, snarling mouth - but now with mounting horror. The fact was, he did believe. And whoever he was, he knew a great deal about Balazar and about this current deal. About the current deal, he might know more than Andolini knew himself.

"There's more of us," Eddie said, "and we're all about the same thing: protecting..." He almost said protecting the rose . "... protecting Calvin Tower. We'll be watching this place, we'll be watching Tower, we'll be watching Tower's friends - guys like Deepneau." Eddie saw Andolini's eyes flicker with surprise at that, and was satisfied. "Anybody who comes here and even raises his voice to Tower, we'll kill their whole families and them last. That goes for George, for 'Cimi Dretto, Tricks Postino... for your brother Claudio, too."

Andolini's eyes widened at each name, then winced momentarily shut at the name of his brother. Eddie thought that maybe he'd made his point. Whether or not Andolini could convince Balazar was another question. But in a way it doesn't even matter , he thought coldly. Once Tower's sold us the lot, it doesn't really matter what they do to him, does it ?

"How do you know so much>" Andolini asked.

"That doesn't matter. Just pass on the message. Tell Balazar to tell his friends at Sombra that the lot is no longer for sale. Not to them, it isn't. And tell him that Tower is now under the protection of folk from Gilead who carry hard calibers."

"Hard - ?"

"I mean folk more dangerous than any Balazar has ever dealt with before," Eddie said, "including the people from the Sombra Corporation. Tell him that if he persists, there'll be enough corpses in Brooklyn to fill Grand Army Plaza. And many of them will be women and children. Convince him."

"I... man, I'll try."

Eddie stood up, then backed up. Curled in the puddles of gasoline and the strews of broken glass, George Biondi was beginning to stir and mutter deep in his throat. Eddie gestured to Jack with the barrel of Roland's pistol, telling him to get up.

"You better try hard," he said.

NINE

Tower poured them each a cup of black coffee, then couldn't drink his. His hands were shaking too badly. After watching him try a couple of times (and thinking about a bomb-disposal character in UXB who lost his nerve), Eddie took pity on him and poured half of Tower's coffee into his own cup.

"Try now," he said, and pushed the half-cup back to the bookshop owner. Tower had his glasses on again, but one of the bows had been twisted and they sat crookedly on his face. Also, there was the crack running across the left lens like a lightning bolt. The two men were at the marble counter, Tower behind it, Eddie perched on one of the stools. Tower had carried the book Andolini had threatened to burn first out here with him, and put it down beside the coffee-maker. It was as if he couldn't bear to let it out of his sight.

Tower picked up the cup with his shaking hand (no rings on it, Eddie noticed - no rings on either hand) and drained it. Eddie couldn't understand why the man would choose to drink such so-so brew black. As far as Eddie himself was concerned, the really good taste was the Half and Half. After the months he had spent in Roland's world (or perhaps whole years had been sneaking by), it tasted as rich as heavy cream.

"Better?" Eddie asked.

"Yes." Tower looked out the window, as if expecting the return of the gray Town Car that had jerked and swayed away just ten minutes before. Then he looked back at Eddie. He was still frightened of the young man, but the last of his outright terror had departed when Eddie stowed the huge pistol back inside what he called "my friend's swag-bag." The bag was made of a scuffed, no-color leather, and closed along the top with lacings rather than a zipper. To Calvin Tower, it seemed that the young man had stowed the more frightening aspects of his personality in the "swag-bag" along with the oversized revolver. That was good, because it allowed Tower to believe that the kid had been bluffing about killing whole hoodlum families as well as the hoodlums themselves.

"Where's your pal Deepneau today?" Eddie asked.

"Oncologist. Two years ago, Aaron started seeing blood in the toilet bowl when he moved his bowels. A younger man, he thinks 'Goddam hemorrhoids' and buys a tube of Preparation H. Once you're in your seventies, you assume the worst. In his case it was bad but not terrible. Cancer moves slower when you get to be his age; even the Big C gets old. Funny to think of, isn't it? Anyway, they baked it with radiation and they say it's gone, but Aaron says you don't turn your back on cancer. He goes back every three months, and that's where he is. I'm glad. He's an old cockuh but still a hothead."

I should introduce Aaron Deepneau to Jamie Jaffords , Eddie thought. They could play Castles instead of chess, and yarn away the days of the Goat Moon .

Tower, meanwhile, was smiling sadly. He adjusted his glasses on his face. For a moment they stayed straight, and then they tilted again. The tilt was somehow worse than the crack; made Tower look slightly crazy as well as vulnerable. "He's a hothead and I'm a coward. Perhaps that's why we're friends - we fit around each other's wrong places, make something that's almost whole."

"Say maybe you're a little hard on yourself," Eddie said.

"I don't think so. My analyst says that anyone who wants to know how the children of an A-male father and a B-female mother turn out would only have to study my case-history. He also says - "

"Cry your pardon, Calvin, but I don't give much of a shit about your analyst. You held onto the lot up the street, and that's good enough for me."

"I don't take any credit for that," Calvin Tower said morosely. "It's like this" - he picked up the book that he'd put down beside the coffee-maker - "and the other ones he threatened to burn. I just have a problem letting things go. When my first wife said she wanted a divorce and I asked why, she said, 'Because when I married you, I didn't understand. I thought you were a man. It turns out you're a packrat.'"

"The lot is different from the books," Eddie said.

"Is it? Do you really think so?" Tower was looking at him, fascinated. When he raised his coffee cup, Eddie was pleased to see that the worst of his shakes had subsided.

"Don't you?"

"Sometimes I dream about it," Tower said. "I haven't actually been in there since Tommy Graham's deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball. I dream there's a field of flowers in there. A field of roses. And instead of just to First Avenue, it goes on forever. Funny dream, huh?"

Eddie was sure that Calvin Tower did indeed have such dreams, but he thought he saw something else in the eyes hiding behind the cracked and tilted glasses. He thought Tower was letting this dream stand for all the dreams he would not tell.

"Funny," Eddie agreed. "I think you better pour me another slug of that mud, beg ya I do. We'll have us a little palaver."

Tower smiled and once more raised the book Andolini had meant to charbroil. "Palaver. It's the kind of thing they're always saying in here."

"Do you say so?"

"Uh-huh."

Eddie held out his hand. "Let me see."

At first Tower hesitated, and Eddie saw the bookshop owner's face briefly harden with a misery mix of emotions.

"Come on, Cal, I'm not gonna wipe my ass with it."

"No. Of course not. I'm sorry." And at that moment Tower looked sorry, the way an alcoholic might look after a particularly destructive bout of drunkenness. "I just... certain books are very important to me. And this one is a true rarity."

He passed it to Eddie, who looked at the plastic-protected cover and felt his heart stop.

"What?" Tower asked. He set his coffee cup down with a bang. "What's wrong?"

Eddie didn't reply. The cover illustration showed a small rounded building like a Quonset hut, only made of wood and thatched with pine boughs. Standing off to one side was an Indian brave wearing buckskin pants. He was shirtless, holding a tomahawk to his chest. In the background, an old-fashioned steam locomotive was charging across the prairie, boiling gray smoke into a blue sky.

The title of this book was The Dogan . The author was Benjamin Slightman Jr.

From some great distance, Tower was asking him if he was going to faint. From only slightly closer by, Eddie said that he wasn't. Benjamin Slightman Jr. Ben Slightman the Younger, in other words. And -

He pushed Tower's pudgy hand away when it tried to take the book back. Then Eddie used his own finger to count the letters in the author's name. There were, of course, nineteen.

TEN

He swallowed another cup of Tower's coffee, this time without the Half and Half. Then he took the plastic-wrapped volume in hand once more.

"What makes it special?" he asked. "I mean, it's special to me because I met someone recently whose name is the same as the name of the guy who wrote this. But - "

An idea struck Eddie, and he turned to the back flap, hoping for a picture of the author. What he found instead was a curt two-line author bio: "BENJAMIN SLIGHTMAN, JR. is a rancher in Montana. This is his second novel." Below this was a drawing of an eagle, and a slogan: buy war bonds!

"But why's it special to you ? What makes it worth seventy-five hundred bucks?"

Tower's face kindled. Fifteen minutes before he had been in mortal terror for his life, but you'd never know it looking at him now, Eddie thought. Now he was in the grip of his obsession. Roland had his Dark Tower; this man had his rare books.

He held it so Eddie could see the cover. "The Dogan , right?"

"Right."

Tower flipped the book open and pointed to the inner flap, also under plastic, where the story was summarized. "And here?"

" 'TheDogan ,' " Eddie read. " 'A thrilling tale of the old west and one Indian brave's heroic effort to survive.' So?"

"Now look at this!" Tower said triumphantly, and turned to the title page. Here Eddie read:

The Hogan

Benjamin Slightman Jr.

"I don't get it," Eddie said. "What's the big deal?"

Tower rolled his eyes. "Look again."

"Why don't you just tell me what - "

"No, look again. I insist. The joy is in the discovery, Mr. Dean. Any collector will tell you the same. Stamps, coins, or books, the joy is in the discovery."

He flipped back to the cover again, and this time Eddie saw it. "The title on the front's misprinted, isn't it? Dogan instead of Hogan"

Tower nodded happily. "A hogan is an Indian home of the type illustrated on the front. A dogan is... well, nothing. The misprinted cover makes the book somewhat valuable, but now... look at this..."

He turned to the copyright page and handed the book to Eddie. The copyright date was 1943, which of course explained the eagle and the slogan on the author-bio flap. The title of the book was given as The Hogan , so that seemed all right. Eddie was about to ask when he got it for himself.

"They left the 'Jr.' off the author's name, didn't they?"

"Yes! Yes!" Tower was almost hugging himself. "As if the book had actually been written by the author's father! In fact, once when I was at a bibliographic convention in Philadelphia, I explained this book's particular situation to an attorney who gave a lecture on copyright law, and this guy said that Slightman Jr.'s father might actually be able to assert right of ownership over this book because of a simple typographical error! Amazing, don't you think?"

"Totally," Eddie said, thinking Slightman the Elder . Thinking Slightman the Younger . Thinking about how Jake had become fast friends with the latter and wondering why this gave him such a bad feeling now, sitting here and drinking coffee in little old Calla New York.

At least he took the Ruger , Eddie thought.

"Are you telling me that's all it takes to make a book valuable?" he asked Tower. "One misprint on the cover, a couple more inside, and all at once the thing's worth seventy-five hundred bucks?"

"Not at all," Tower said, looking shocked. "But Mr. Slightman wrote three really excellent Western novels, all taking the Indians' point of view. The Hogan is the middle one. He became a big bug in Montana after the war - some job having to do with water and mineral rights - and then, here is the irony, a group of Indians killed him. Scalped him, actually. They were drinking outside a general store - "

A general store named Took's , Eddie thought. I'd bet my watch and warrant on it .

" - and apparendy Mr. Slightman said something they took objection to, and... well, there goes your ballgame."

"Do all your really valuable books have similar stories?" Eddie asked. "I mean, some sort of coincidence makes them valuable, and not just the stories themselves?"

Tower laughed. "Young man, most people who collect rare books won't even open their purchases. Opening and closing a book damages the spine. Hence damaging the resale price."

"Doesn't that strike you as slightly sick behavior?"

"Not at all," Tower said, but a tell tale red blush was climbing his cheeks. Part of him apparently took Eddie's point. "If a customer spends eight thousand dollars for a signed first edition of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles , it makes perfect sense to put that book away in a safe place where it can be admired but not touched. If the fellow actually wants to read the story, let him buy a Vintage paperback."

"You believe that," Eddie said, fascinated. "You actually believe that."

"Well... yes. Books can be objects of great value. That value is created in different ways. Sometimes just the author's signature is enough to do it. Sometimes - as in this case - it's a misprint. Sometimes it's a first print-run - a first edition - that's extremely small. And does any of this have to do with why you came here, Mr. Dean? Is it what you wanted to... to palaver about?"

"No, I suppose not." But what exactly had he wanted to palaver about? He'd known - it had all been perfectly clear to him as he'd herded Andolini and Biondi out of the back room, then stood in the doorway watching them stagger to the Town Car, supporting each other. Even in cynical, mind-your-own-business New York, they had drawn plenty of looks. Both of them had been bleeding, and both had had the same stunned What the hell HAPPENED tome look in their eyes. Yes, then it had been clear. The book - and the name of the author - had muddied up his thinking again. He took it from Tower and set it facedown on the counter so he wouldn't have to look at it. Then he went to work regathering his thoughts.

"The first and most important thing, Mr. Tower, is that you have to get out of New York until July fifteenth. Because they'll be back. Probably not those guys specifically, but some of the other guys Balazar uses. And they'll be more eager than ever to teach you and me a lesson. Balazar's a despot." This was a word Eddie had learned from Susannah - she had used it to describe the Tick-Tock Man. "His way of doing business is to always escalate. You slap him, he slaps back twice as hard. Punch him in the nose, he breaks your jaw. You toss a grenade, he tosses a bomb."

Tower groaned. It was a theatrical sound (although probably not meant that way), and under other circumstances, Eddie might have laughed. Not under these. Besides, everything he'd wanted to say to Tower was coming back to him. He could do this dicker, by God. He would do this dicker.

"Me they probably won't be able to get at. I've got business elsewhere. Over the hills and far away, may ya say so. Your job is to make sure they won't be able to get at you, either."

"But surely... after what you just did... and even if they didn't believe you about the women and children..." Tower's eyes, wide behind his crooked spectacles, begged Eddie to say that he had really not been serious about creating enough corpses to fill Grand Army Plaza. Eddie couldn't help him there.

"Cal, listen. Guys like Balazar don't believe or disbelieve. What they do is test the limits. Did I scare Big Nose? No, just knocked him out. Did I scare Jack? Yes. And it'll stick, because Jack's got a little bit of imagination. Will Balazar be impressed that I scared Ugly Jack? Yes... but just enough to be cautious."

Eddie leaned over the counter, looking at Tower earnestly.

"I don't want to kill kids, okay? Let's get that straight. In... well, in another place, let's leave it at that, in another place me and my friends are going to put our lives on the line to save kids . But they're human kids. People like Jack and Tricks Postino and Balazar himself, they're animals. Wolves on two legs. And do wolves raise human beings? No, they raise more wolves. Do male wolves mate with human women? No, they mate with female wolves. So if I had to go in there - and I would if I had to - I'd tell myself I was cleaning out a pack of wolves, right down to the smallest cub. No more than that. And no less."

"My God he means it," Tower said. He spoke low, and all in a breath, and to the thin air.

"I absolutely do, but it's neither here nor there," Eddie said. "The point is, they'll come after you. Not to kill you, but to turn you around in their direction again. If you stay here, Cal, I think you can look forward to a serious maiming at the very least. Is there a place you can go until the fifteenth of next month? Do you have enough money? I don't have any, but I guess I could get some."

In his mind, Eddie was already in Brooklyn. Balazar guardian-angeled a poker game in the back room of Bernie's Barber Shop, everybody knew that. The game might not be going on during a weekday, but there'd be somebody back there with cash. Enough to -

"Aaron has some money," Tower was saying reluctantly. "He's offered a good many times. I've always told him no. He's also always telling me I need to go on a vacation. I think by this he means I should get away from the fellows you just turned out. He is curious about what they want, but he doesn't ask. A hothead, but a gentleman hothead." Tower smiled briefly. "Perhaps Aaron and I could go on a vacation together, young sir. After all, we might not get another chance."

Eddie was pretty sure the chemo and radiation treatments were going to keep Aaron Deepneau up and on his feet for at least another four years, but this was probably not the time to say so. He looked toward the door of The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind and saw the other door. Beyond it was the mouth of the cave. Sitting there like a comic-strip yogi, just a cross-legged silhouette, was the gunslinger. Eddie wondered how long he'd been gone over there, how long Roland had been listening to the muffled but still maddening sound of the todash chimes.

"Would Atlantic City be far enough, do you think?" Tower asked timidly.

Eddie Dean almost shuddered at the thought. He had a brief vision of two plump sheep - getting on in years, yes, but still quite tasty - wandering into not just a pack of wolves but a whole city of them.

"Not there," Eddie said. "Anyplace but there."

"What about Maine or New Hampshire? Perhaps we could rent a cottage on a lake somewhere until the fifteenth of July."

Eddie nodded. He was a city boy. It was hard for him to imagine the bad guys way up in northern New England, wearing those checkered caps and down vests as they chomped their pepper sandwiches and drank their Ruffino. "That'd be better," he said. "And while you're there, you might see if you could find a lawyer."

Tower burst out laughing. Eddie looked at him, head cocked, smiling a little himself. It was always good to make folks laugh, but it was better when you knew what the fuck they were laughing at .

"I'm sorry," Tower said after a moment or two. "It's just that Aaron ivas a . lawyer. His sister and two brothers, all younger, are still lawyers. They like to boast that they have the most unique legal letterhead in New York, perhaps in the entire United States. It reads simply 'deepneau.' "

"That speeds things up," Eddie said. "I want you to have Mr. Deepneau draw up a contract while you're vacationing in New England - "

"Hiding in New England," Tower said. He suddenly looked morose. "Holed up in New England."

"Call it whatcha wanna," Eddie said, "but get that paper drawn up. You're going to sell that lot to me and my friends. To the Tet Corporation. You're just gonna get a buck to start with, but I can almost guarantee you that in the end you'll get fair market value."

He had more to say, lots, but stopped there. When he'd held his hand out for the book, The Dogan or The Hogan or whatever it was, an expression of miserly reluctance had come over Tower's face. What made the look unpleasant was the undercurrent of stupidity in it... and not very far under, either. Oh God, he's gonna fight me on this. After everything that's happened, he's still gonna fight me on it. And why? Because he really is apackrat .

"You can trust me, Cal," he said, knowing trust was not exactly the issue. "I set my watch and warrant on it. Hear me, now. Hear me, I beg."

"I don't know you from Adam. You walk in off the street - "

" - and save your life, don't forget that part."

Tower's face grew set and stubborn. "They weren't going to kill me. You said that yourself."

"They were gonna burn your favorite books. Your most valuable ones."

"Not my most valuable. Also, that might have been a bluff."

Eddie took a deep breath and let it out, hoping his suddenly strong desire to lean across the counter and sink his fingers into Tower's fat throat would depart or at least subside. He reminded himself that if Tower hadn't been stubborn, he probably would have sold the lot to Sombra long before now. The rose would have been plowed under. And the Dark Tower? Eddie had an idea that when the rose died, the Dark Tower would simply fall... like the one in Babel when God had gotten tired of it and wiggled His finger. No waiting around another hundred or thousand years for the machinery running the Beams to quit. Just ashes, ashes, we all fall down. And then? Hail the Crimson King, lord of todash darkness.

"Cal, if you sell me and my friends your vacant lot, you're off the hook. Not only that, but you'll eventually have enough money to run your little shop for the rest of your life." He had a sudden thought. "Hey, do you know a company called Holmes Dental?"

Tower smiled. "Who doesn't? I use their floss. And their toothpaste. I tried the mouthwash, but it's too strong. Why do you ask?"

"Because Odetta Holmes is my wife. I may look like Froggy the Gremlin, but in truth I'm Prince Fuckin Charming."

Tower was quiet for a long time. Eddie curbed his impatience and let the man think. At last Tower said, "You think I'm being foolish. That I'm being Silas Marner, or worse, Ebenezer Scrooge."

Eddie didn't know who Silas Marner was, but he took Tower's point from the context of the discussion. "Let's put it this way," he said. "After what you've just been through, you're too smart not to know where your best interests lie."

"I feel obligated to tell you that this isn't just mindless miserliness on my part; there's an element of caution, as well. I know that piece of New York is valuable, any piece of Manhattan is, but it's not just that. I have a safe out back. There's something in it. Something perhaps even more valuable than my copy of Ulysses ."

"Then why isn't it in your safe-deposit box?"

"Because it's supposed to be here," Tower said. "It's always been here. Perhaps waiting for you, or someone like you. Once, Mr. Dean, my family owned almost all of Turtle Bay, and... well, wait. Will you wait?"

"Yes," Eddie said.

What choice?

ELEVEN

When Tower was gone, Eddie got off the stool and went to the door only he could see. He looked through it. Dimly, he could hear chimes. More clearly he could hear his mother. "Why don't you get out of there?" she called dolorously. "You'll only make things worse, Eddie - you always do."

That's my Ma , he thought, and called the gunslinger's name.

Roland pulled one of the bullets from his ear. Eddie noted the oddly clumsy way he handled it - almost pawing at it, as if his fingers were stiff - but there was no time to think about it now.

"Are you all right?" Eddie called.

"Do fine. And you?"

"Yeah, but... Roland, can you come through? I might need a little help."

Roland considered, then shook his head. "The box might close if I did. Probably would close. Then the door would close. And we'd be trapped on that side."

"Can't you prop the damn thing open with a stone or a bone or something?"

"No," Roland said. "It wouldn't work. The ball is powerful."

And it's working on you , Eddie thought. Roland's face looked haggard, the way it had when the lobstrosities' poison had been inside him.

"All right," he said.

"Be as quick as you can."

"I will."

TWELVE

When he turned around, Tower was looking at him quizzically. "Who were you talking to?"

Eddie stood aside and pointed at the doorway. "Do you see anything there, sai?"

Calvin Tower looked, started to shake his head, then looked longer. "A shimmer," he said at last. "Like hot air over an incinerator. Who's there? What's there?"

"For the time being, let's say nobody. What have you got in your hand?"

Tower held it up. It was an envelope, very old. Written on it in copperplate were the words Stephen Toren and Dead Letter . Below, carefully drawn in ancient ink, were the same symbols that were on the door and the box:

New we might be getting somewhere , Eddie thought.

"Once this envelope held the will of my great-great-great grandfather," Calvin Tower said. "It was dated March 19th, 1846. Now there's nothing but a single piece of paper with a name written upon it. If you can tell me what that name is, young man, I'll do as you ask."

And so , Eddie mused, it comes down to another riddle . Only this time it wasn't four lives that hung upon the answer, but all of existence.

Thank God it's an easy one , he thought.

"It's Deschain," Eddie said. "The first name will be either Roland, the name of my dinh, or Steven, the name of his father."

All the blood seemed to fall out of Calvin Tower's face. Eddie had no idea how the man was able to keep his feet. "My dear God in heaven," he said.

With trembling fingers, he removed an ancient and brittle piece of paper from the envelope, a time traveler that had voyaged over a hundred and thirty-one years to this where and when. It was folded. Tower opened it and put it on the counter, where they could both read the words Stefan Toren had written in the same firm copperplate hand:

Roland Deschain, of Giliad.

The line of ELD

GUNSLINGER

THIRTEEN

There was more talk, about fifteen minutes' worth, and Eddie supposed at least some of it was important, but the real deal had gone down when he'd told Tower the name his three-times-great-grandfather had written on a slip of paper fourteen years before the Civil War got rolling.

What Eddie had discovered about Tower during their palaver was dismaying. He harbored some respect for the man (for any man who could hold out for more than twenty seconds against Balazar's goons), but didn't like him much. There was a kind of willful stupidity about him. Eddie thought it was self-created and maybe propped up by his analyst, who would tell him about how he had to take care of himself, how he had to be the captain of his own ship, the author of his own destiny, respect his own desires, all that blah-blah. All the little code words and terms that meant it was all right to be a selfish fuck. That it was noble, even. When Tower told Eddie that Aaron Deepneau was his only friend, Eddie wasn't surprised. What surprised him was that Tower had any friends at all. Such a man could never be ka-tet, and it made Eddie uneasy to know that their destinies were so tightly bound together.

You'll just have to trust to ka. It's what ka's for, isn't it?

Sure it was, but Eddie didn't have to like it.

FOURTEEN

Eddie asked if Tower had a ring with Ex Liveris on it. Tower looked puzzled, then laughed and told Eddie he must mean Ex Libris . He rummaged on one of his shelves, found a book, showed Eddie the plate in front. Eddie nodded.

"No," Tower said. "But it'd be just the thing for a guy like me, wouldn't it?" He looked at Eddie keenly. "Why do you ask?"

But Tower's future responsibility to save a man now exploring the hidden highways of multiple Americas was a subject Eddie didn't feel like getting into right now. He'd come as close to blowing the guy's mind as he wanted to, and he had to get back through the unfound door before Black Thirteen wore Roland away to a frazzle.

"Never mind. But if you see one, you ought to pick it up. One more thing and then I'm gone."

"What's that?"

"I want your promise that as soon as I leave, you'll leave."

Tower once more grew shifty. It was the side of him Eddie knew he could come to outright loathe, given time. "Why... to tell you the truth, I don't know if I can do that. Early evenings are often a very busy time for me... people are much more prone to browse once the workday's over... and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air , Irwin Shaw's novel about radio and the McCarthy era... I'll have to at least skim through my appointment calendar, and..."

He droned on, actually gathering steam as he descended toward trivialities.

Eddie said, very mildly: "Do you like your balls, Calvin? Are you maybe as attached to them as they are to you?"

Tower, who'd been wondering about who would feed Sergio if he just pulled up stakes and ran, now stopped and looked at him, puzzled, as if he had never heard this simple one-syllable word before.

Eddie nodded helpfully. "Your nuts. Your sack. Your stones. Your cojones . The old sperm-firm. Your testicles ."

"I don't see what - "

Eddie's coffee was gone. He poured some Half and Half into the cup and drank that, instead. It was very tasty. "I told you that if you stayed here, you could look forward to a serious maiming. That's what I meant. That's probably where they'll start, with your balls. To teach you a lesson. As to when it happens, what that mostly depends on is traffic."

"Traffic." Tower said it with a complete lack of vocal expression.

"That's right," Eddie said, sipping his Half and Half as if it were a thimble of brandy. "Basically how long it takes Jack Andolini to drive back out to Brooklyn and then how long it takes Balazar to load up some old beater of a van or panel truck with guys to come back here. I'm hoping Jack's too dazed to just phone. Did you think Balazar'd wait until tomorrow? Convene a little brain-trust of guys like Kevin Blake and 'Cimi Dretto to discuss the matter?" Eddie raised first one finger and then two. The dust of another world was beneath the nails. "First, they got no brains; second, Balazar doesn't trust em."

"What he'll do, Cal, is what any successful despot does: he'll react right away, quick as a flash. The rush-hour traffic will hold em up a little, but if you're still here at six, half past at the latest, you can say goodbye to your balls. They'll hack them off with a knife, then cauterize the wound with one of those little torches, those Bernz-O-Matics - "

"Stop," Tower said. Now instead of white, he'd gone green. Especially around the gills. "I'll go to a hotel down in the Village. There are a couple of cheap ones that cater to writers and artists down on their luck, ugly rooms but not that bad. I'll call Aaron, and we'll go north tomorrow morning."

"Fine, but first you have to pick a town to go to," Eddie said. "Because I or one of my friends may need to get in touch with you."

"How am I supposed to do that? I don't know any towns in New England north of Westport, Connecticut!"

"Make some calls once you get to the hotel in the Village," Eddie said. "You pick the town, and then tomorrow morning, before you leave New York, send your pal Aaron up to your vacant lot. Have him write the zip code on the board fence." An unpleasant thought struck Eddie. "You have zip codes, don't you? I mean, they've been invented, right?"

Tower looked at him as if he were crazy. "Of course they have."

" 'Kay. Have him put it on the Forty-sixth street side, all the way down where the fence ends. Have you got that?"

"Yes, but - "

"They probably won't have your bookshop staked out tomorrow morning - they'll assume you got smart and blew - but if they do, they won't have the lot staked out, and if they have the lot staked out, it'll be the Second Avenue side. And if they have the Forty-sixth Street side staked out, they'll be looking for you, not him."

Tower was smiling a little bit in spite of himself. Eddie relaxed and smiled back. "But... ? If they're also looking for Aaron?"

"Have him wear the sort of clothes he doesn't usually wear. If he's a blue jeans man, have him wear a suit. If he's a suit man - "

"Have him wear blue jeans."

"Correct. And sunglasses wouldn't be a bad idea, assuming the day isn't cloudy enough to make them look odd. Have him use a black felt-tip. Tell him it doesn't have to be artistic. He just walks to the fence, as if to read one of the posters. Then he writes the numbers and off he goes. And tell him for Christ's sake don't fuck up."

"And how are you going to find us once you get to Zip Code Whatever?"

Eddie thought of Took's, and their palaver with the folken as they sat in the big porch rockers. Letting anyone who wanted to have a look and ask a question.

"Go to the local general store. Have a little conversation, tell anyone who's interested that you're in town to write a book or paint pictures of the lobster-pots. I'll find you."

"All right," Tower said. "It's a good plan. You do this well, young man."

I was made for it , Eddie thought but didn't say. What he said was, "I have to be going. I've stayed too long as it is."

"There's one thing you have to help me do before you go," Tower said, and explained.

Eddie's eyes widened. When Tower had finished - it didn't take long - Eddie burst out, "Aw, you're shittin!"

Tower tipped his head toward the door to his shop, where he could see that faint shimmer. It made the passing pedestrians on Second Avenue look like momentary mirages. "There's a door there. You as much as said so, and I believe you. I can't see it, but I can see something ."

"You're insane," Eddie said. "Totally gonzo." He didn't mean it - not precisely - but less than ever he liked having his fate so firmly woven into the fate of a man who'd make such a request. Such a demand .

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not," Tower said. He folded his arms over his broad but flabby chest. His voice was soft but the look in his eyes was adamant. "In either case, this is my condition for doing all that you say. For falling in with your madness, in other words."

"Aw, Cal, for God's sake! God and the Man Jesus! I'm only asking you to do what Stefan Toren's will told you to do."

The eyes did not soften or cut aside as they did when Tower was waffling or preparing to fib. If anything, they grew stonier yet. "Stefan Toren's dead and I'm not. I've told you my condition for doing what you want. The only question is whether or not - "

"Yeah, yeah, YEAF! " Eddie cried, and drank off the rest of the white stuff in his cup. Then he picked up the carton and drained that, for good measure. It looked like he was going to need the strength. "Come on," he said. "Let's do it."

FIFTEEN

Roland could see into the bookshop, but it was like looking at things on the bottom of a fast-running stream. He wished Eddie would hurry. Even with the bullets buried deep in his ears he could hear the todash chimes, and nothing blocked the terrible smells: now hot metal, now rancid bacon, now ancient melting cheese, now burning onions. His eyes were watering, which probably accounted for at least some of the wavery look of things seen beyond the door.

Far worse than the sound of the chimes or the smells was the way the ball was insinuating itself into his already compromised joints, filling them up with what felt like splinters of broken glass. So far he'd gotten nothing but a few twinges in his good left hand, but he had no illusions; the pain there and everywhere else would continue to increase for as long as the box was open and Black Thirteen shone out unshielded. Some of the pain from the dry twist might go away once the ball was hidden again, but Roland didn't think all of it would. And this might only be the beginning.

As if to congratulate him on his intuition, a baleful flare of pain setded into his right hip and began to throb there. To Roland it felt like a bag filled with warm liquid lead. He began to massage it with his right hand... as if that would do any good.

"Roland!" The voice was bubbly and distant - like the things he could see beyond the door, it seemed to be underwater - but it was unmistakably Eddie's. Roland looked up from his hip and saw that Eddie and Tower had carried some sort of case over to the unfound door. It appeared to be filled with books. "Roland, can you help us?"

The pain had settled so deeply into his hips and knees that Roland wasn't even sure he could get up... but he did it, and fluidly. He didn't know how much of his condition Eddie's sharp eyes might have already seen, but Roland didn't want them to see any more. Not, at least, until their adventures in Calla Bryn Sturgis were over.

"When we push it, you pull!"

Roland nodded his understanding, and the bookcase slid forward. There was one strange and vertiginous moment when the half in the cave was firm and clear and the half still back in The Manhattan Bookstore of the Mind shimmered unsteadily. Then Roland took hold of it and pulled it through. It juddered and squalled across the floor of the cave, pushing aside little piles of pebbles and bones.

As soon as it was out of the doorway, the lid of the ghost-wood box began to close. So did the door itself.

"No, you don't," Roland murmured. "No, you don't, you bastard." He slipped the remaining two fingers of his right hand into the narrowing space beneath the lid of the box. The door stopped moving and remained ajar when he did. And enough was enough. Now even his teeth were buzzing. Eddie was having some last little bit of palaver with Tower, but Roland no longer cared if they were the secrets of the universe.

"Eddie!" he roared. "Eddie, to me!"

And, thankfully, Eddie grabbed his swag-bag and came. The moment he was through the door, Roland closed the box. The unfound door shut a second later with a flat and undramatic clap. The chimes ceased. So did the jumble of poison pain pouring into Roland's joints. The relief was so tremendous that he cried out. Then, for the next ten seconds or so, all he could do was lower his chin to his chest, close his eyes, and struggle not to sob.

"Say thankya," he managed at last. "Eddie, say thankya."

"Don't mention it. Let's get out of this cave, what do you think?"

"I think yes," Roland said. "Gods, yes."

SIXTEEN

"Didn't like him much, did you?" Roland asked.

Ten minutes had passed since Eddie's return. They had moved a little distance down from the cave, then stopped where the path twisted through a small rocky inlet. The roaring gale that had tossed back their hair and plastered their clothes against their bodies was here reduced to occasional prankish gusts. Roland was grateful for them. He hoped they would excuse the slow and clumsy way he was building his smoke. Yet he felt Eddie's eyes upon him, and the young man from Brooklyn - who had once been almost as dull and unaware as Andolini and Biondi - now saw much.

"Tower, you mean."

Roland tipped him a sardonic glance. "Of whom else would I speak? The cat?"

Eddie gave a brief grunt of acknowledgment, almost a laugh. He kept pulling in long breaths of the clean air. It was good to be back. Going to New York in the flesh had been better than going todash in one way - that sense of lurking darkness had been gone, and the accompanying sense of thinness  -  but God, the place stank . Mostly it was cars and exhaust (the oily clouds of diesel were the worst), but there were a thousand other bad smells, too. Not the least of them was the aroma of too many human bodies, their essential polecat odor not hidden at all by the perfumes and sprays the folken put on themselves. Were they unconscious of how bad they smelled, all huddled up together as they were? Eddie supposed they must be. Had been himself, once upon a time. Once upon a time he couldn't wait to get back to New York, would have killed to get there.

"Eddie? Come back from Nis!" Roland snapped his fingers in front of Eddie Dean's face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "As for Tower... no, I didn't like him much. God, sending his books through like that! Making his lousy first editions part of his condition for helping to save the fucking universe!"

"He doesn't think of it in those terms... unless he does so in his dreams. And you know they'll burn his shop when they get there and find him gone. Almost surely. Pour gasoline under the door and light it. Break his window and toss in a grenado, either manufactured or homemade. Do you mean to tell me that never occurred to you?"

Of course it had. "Well, maybe."

It was Roland's turn to utter the humorous grunting sound. "Not much may in that be . So he saved his best books. And now, in Doorway Cave, we have something to hide the Pere's treasure behind. Although I suppose it must be counted our treasure now."

"His courage didn't strike me as real courage," Eddie said. "It was more like greed."

"Not all are called to the way of the sword or the gun or the ship," Roland said, "but all serve ka."

"Really? Does the Crimson King? Or the low men and women Callahan talked about?"

Roland didn't reply.

Eddie said, "He may do well. Tower, I mean. Not the cat."

"Very amusing," Roland said dryly. He scratched a match on the seat of his pants, cupped the flame, lit his smoke.

"Thank you, Roland. You're growing in that respect. Ask me if I think Tower and Deepneau can get out of New York City clean."

"Do you?"

"No, I think they'll leave a trail. We could follow it, but I'm hoping Balazar's men won't be able to. The one I worry about is Jack Andolini. He's creepy-smart. As for Balazar, he made a contract with this Sombra Corporation."

"Took the king's salt."

"Yeah, I guess somewhere up the line he did," Eddie said. He had heard King instead of king, as in Crimson King. "Balazar knows that when you make a contract, you have to fill it or have a damned good reason why not. Fail and word gets out. Stories start to circulate about how so-and-so's going soft, losing his shit. They've still got three weeks to find Tower and force him to sell the lot to Sombra. They'll use it. Balazar's not the FBI, but he is a connected guy, and... Roland, the worst thing about Tower is that in some ways, none of this is real to him. It's like he's mistaken his life for a life in one of his storybooks. He thinks things have got to turn out all right because the writer's under contract."

"You think he'll be careless."

Eddie voiced a rather wild laugh. "Oh, I know he'll be careless. The question is whether or not Balazar will catch him at it"

"We're going to have to monitor Mr. Tower. Mind him for safety's sake. That's what you think, isn't it?"

"Yer-bugger!" Eddie said, and after a moment's silent consideration, both of them burst out laughing. When the fit had passed, Eddie said: "I think we ought to send Callahan, if he'll go. You probably think I'm crazy, but - "

"Not at all," Roland said. "He's one of us... or could be. I felt that from the first. And he's used to traveling in strange places. I'll put it to him today. Tomorrow I'll come up here with him and see him through the doorway - "

"Let me do it," Eddie said. "Once was enough for you. At least for awhile."

Roland eyed him carefully, then pitched his cigarette over the drop. "Why do you say so, Eddie?"

"Your hair's gotten whiter up around here." Eddie patted the crown of his own head. "Also, you're walking a little stiff. It's better now, but I'd guess the old rheumatiz kicked in on you a little. Fess up."

"All right, I fess," Roland said. If Eddie thought it was no more than old Mr. Rheumatiz, that was not so bad.

"Actually, I could bring him up tonight, long enough to get the zip code," Eddie said. "It'll be day again over there, I bet."

"None of us is coming up this path in the dark. Not if we can help it."

Eddie looked down the steep incline to where the fallen boulder jutted out, turning fifteen feet of their course into a tightrope-walk. "Point taken."

Roland started to get up. Eddie reached out and took his arm. "Stay a couple of minutes longer, Roland. Do ya."

Roland sat down again, looking at him.

Eddie took a deep breath, let it out. "Ben Slightman's dirty," he said. "He's the tattletale. I'm almost sure of it."

"Yes, I know."

Eddie looked at him, wide-eyed. "You know ? How could you possibly - "

"Let's say I suspected."

"How?"

"His spectacles," Roland said. "Ben Slightman the Elder's the only person in Calla Bryn Sturgis with spectacles. Come on, Eddie, day's waiting. We can talk as we walk."

SEVENTEEN

They couldn't, though, not at first, because the path was too steep and narrow. But later, as they approached the bottom of the mesa, it grew wider and more forgiving. Talk once more became practical, and Eddie told Roland about the book, The Dogan or The Hogan , and the author's oddly disputable name. He recounted the oddity of the copyright page (not entirely sure that Roland grasped this part), and said it had made him wonder if something was pointing toward the son, too. That seemed like a crazy idea, but -

"I think that if Benny Slightman was helping his father inform on us," Roland said, "Jake would know."

"Are you sure he doesn't?" Eddie asked.

This gave Roland some pause. Then he shook his head. "Jake suspects the father."

"He told you that?"

"He didn't have to."

They had almost reached the horses, who raised their heads alertly and seemed glad to see them.

"He's out there at the Rocking B," Eddie said. "Maybe we ought to take a ride out there. Invent some reason to bring him back to the Pere's..." He trailed off, looking at Roland closely. "No?"

"No." '

"Why not?"

"Because this is Jake's part of it."

"That's hard, Roland. He and Benny Slightman like each other. A lot. If Jake ends up being the one to show the Calla what his Dad's been doing - "

"Jake will do what he needs to do," Roland said. "So will we all."

"But he's still just a boy, Roland. Don't you see that?"

"He won't be for much longer," Roland said, and mounted up. He hoped Eddie didn't see the momentary wince of pain that cramped his face when he swung his right leg over the saddle, but of course Eddie did.