8th Stanza: A Game of Toss
One
In the winter of 1984 - 85, when Eddie's heroin use was quietly sneaking across the border from the Land of Recreational Drugs and into the Kingdom of Really Bad Habits, Henry Dean met a girl and fell briefly in love. Eddie thought Sylvia Goldover was a SkankEl Supremo (smelly armpits and dragon breath wafting out from between a pair of Mick Jagger lips), but kept his mouth shut becauseHenry thought she was beautiful, and Eddie didn't want to hurt Henry's feelings. That winter the young lovers spent a lot of time either walking on the windswept beach at Coney Island or going to the movies in Times Square, where they would sit in the back row and wank each other off once the popcorn and the extra-large box of Goobers were gone.
Eddie was philosophic about the new person in Henry's life; if Henry could work his way past that awful breath and actually tangle tongues with Sylvia Goldover, more power to him. Eddie himself spent a lot of those mostly gray three months alone and stoned in the Dean family apartment. He didn't mind; liked it, in fact. If Henry had been there, he would have insisted on TV and would have ragged Eddie constantly about his story-tapes. ("Oh boy! Eddie's gonna wissen to his wittle sto-wy about theelves and theogs and the cute wittlemidgets! ") Always calling the orcs the ogs, and always calling the Ents "the scawwy walkingtwees. " Henry thought made-up shit was queer. Eddie had sometimes tried to tell him there was nothing more made-up than the crud they showed on afternoon TV, but Henry wasn't having any of that; Henry could tell you all about the evil twins onGeneral Hospital and the equally evil stepmother onThe Guiding Light.
In many ways, Henry Dean's great love affair - which ended when Sylvia Goldover stole ninety bucks out of his wallet, left a note sayingI'm sorry, Henry in its place, and took off for points unknown with herold boyfriend - was a relief to Eddie. He'd sit on the sofa in the living room, put on the tapes of John Gielgud reading Tolkien'sRings trilogy, skin-pop along the inside of his right arm, and nod off to the Forests of Mirkwood or the Mines of Moria along with Frodo and Sam.
He'd loved the hobbits, thought he could have cheerfully spent the rest of his life in Hobbiton, where the worst drug going was tobacco and big brothers did not spend entire days ragging on little brothers, and John Cullum's little cottage in the woods returned him to those days and that dark-toned story with surprising force. Because the cottage had a hobbit-hole feel about it. The furniture in the living room was small but perfect: a sofa and two overstuffed chairs with those white doilies on the arms and where the back of your head would rest. The gold-framed black-and-white photograph on one wall had to be Cullum's folks, and the one opposite it had to be his grandparents. There was a framed Certificate of Thanks from the East Stoneham Volunteer Fire Department. There was a parakeet in a cage, twittering amiably, and a cat on the hearth. She raised her head when they came in, gazed greenly at the strangers for a moment, then appeared to go back to sleep. There was a standing ashtray beside what had to be Cullum's easy chair, and in it were two pipes, one a corncob and the other a briar. There was an old-fashioned Emerson record-player/radio (the radio of the type featuring a multi-band dial and a large knurled tuning knob) but no television. The room smelled pleasantly of tobacco and potpourri. As fabulously neat as it was, a single glance was enough to tell you that the man who lived here wasn't married. John Cullum's parlor was a modest ode to the joys of bachelorhood.
"How's your leg?" John asked. " 'Pears to have stopped bleeding, at least, but you got a pretty good hitch in your gitalong. "
Eddie laughed. "It hurts like a son of a bitch, but I can walk on it, so I guess that makes me lucky. "
"Bathroom's in there, if you want to wash up," Cullum said, and pointed.
"Think I better," Eddie said.
The washing-up was painful but also a relief. The wound in his leg was deep, but seemed to have totally missed the bone. The one in his arm was even less of a problem; the bullet had gone right through, praise God, and there was hydrogen peroxide in Cullum's medicine cabinet. Eddie poured it into the hole, teeth bared at the pain, and then went ahead and used the stuff on both his leg and the laceration in his scalp before he could lose his courage. He tried to remember if Frodo and Sam had had to face anything even close to the horrors of hydrogen peroxide, and couldn't come up with anything. Well, of course they'd had elves to heal them, hadn't they?
"I got somethin might help out," Cullum said when Eddie re-appeared. The old guy disappeared into the next room and returned with a brown prescription bottle. There were three pills inside it. He tipped them into Eddie's palm and said, "This is from when I fell down on the ice last winter and busted my goddam collarbone. Percodan, it's called. I dunno if there's any good left in em or not, but - "
Eddie brightened. "Percodan, huh?" he asked, and tossed the pills into his mouth before John Cullum could answer.
"Don't you want some water with those, son?"
"Nope," Eddie said, chewing enthusiastically. "Neat's a treat. "
A glass case full of baseballs stood on a table beside the fireplace, and Eddie wandered over to look at it. "Oh my God," he said, "you've got a signed Mel Parnell ball! And a Lefty Grove! Holy shit!"
"Those ain't nothing," Cullum said, picking up the briar pipe. "Look up on t' top shelf. " He took a sack of Prince Albert tobacco from the drawer of an endtable and began to fill his pipe. As he did so, he caught Roland watching him. "Do ya smoke?"
Roland nodded. From his shirt pocket he took a single bit of leaf. "P'raps I might roll one. "
"Oh, I can do ya better than that," Cullum said, and left the room again. The room beyond was a study not much bigger than a closet. Although the Dickens desk in it was small, Cullum had to sidle his way around it.
"Holy shit," Eddie said, seeing the baseball Cullum must have meant. "Autographed by the Babe!"
"Ayuh," Cullum said. "Not when he was a Yankee, either, I got no use for baseballs autographed by Yankees. That 'us signed when Ruth was still wearing a Red Sox. . . " He broke off. "Here they are, knew I had em. Might be stale, but it's a lot staler where there's none, my mother used to say. Here you go, mister. My nephew left em. He ain't hardly old enough to smoke, anyway. "
Cullum handed the gunslinger a package of cigarettes, three-quarters full. Roland turned them thoughtfully over in his hand, then pointed to the brand name. "I see a picture of a dromedary, but that isn't what this says, is it?"
Cullum smiled at Roland with a kind of cautious wonder. "No," he said. "That word'sCamel. It means about the same. "
"Ah," Roland said, and tried to look as if he understood. He took one of the cigarettes out, studied the filter, then put the tobacco end in his mouth.
"No, turn it around," Cullum said.
"Say true?"
"Ayuh. "
"Jesus, Roland! He's got a Bobby Doerr. . . two Ted Williams balls. . . a Johnny Pesky. . . a Frank Malzone. . . "
"Those names don't mean anything to you, do they?" John Cullum asked Roland.
"No," Roland said. "My friend. . . thank you. " He took a light from the match sai Cullum offered. "My friend hasn't been on this side very much for quite awhile. I think he misses it. "
"Gorry," Cullum said. "Walk-ins! Walk-ins inmy house! I can't hardly believe it!"
"Where's Dewey Evans?" Eddie asked. "You don't have a Dewey Evans ball. "
"Pardon?" Cullum asked. It came outpaaa-aaadon.
"Maybe they don't call him that yet," Eddie said, almost to himself. "Dwight Evans? Right fielder?"
"Oh. " Cullum nodded. "Well, I only have the best in that cabinet, don't you know. "
"Dewey fills the bill, believe me," Eddie said. "Maybe he's not worthy of being in the John Cullum Hall of Fame yet, but wait a few years. Wait until '86. And by the way, John, as a fan of the game, I want to say two words to you, okay?"
"Sure," Cullum said. It came out exactly as the word was said in the Calla: SHO -ah.
Roland, meanwhile, had taken a drag from his smoke.
He blew it out and looked at the cigarette, frowning.
"The words areRoger Clemens, " Eddie said. "Remember that name. "
"Clemens," John Cullum said, but dubiously. Faintly, from the far side of Keywadin Pond, came the sound of more sirens. "Roger Clemens, ayuh, I'll remember. Who is he?"
"You're gonna want him in here, leave it at that," Eddie said, tapping the case. "Maybe on the same shelf with the Babe. "
Cullum's eyes gleamed. "Tell me somethin, son. Have the Red Sox won it all yet? Have they - "
"This isn't a smoke, it's nothing but murky air," Roland said. He gave Cullum a reproachful look that was so un-Roland that it made Eddie grin. "No taste to speak of at all. People here actuallysmoke these?"