"So Cal Tower. . . what? Just went in and started browsing?" Eddie couldn't believe it, and at the same time he could. Tower had been balky about leaving New York even after Jack and George Biondi had threatened to burn his most valuable books right in front of his eyes. And once he and Deepneau got here, the fool had signed up for general delivery at the post office - or at least his friend Aaron had, and as far as the bad guys were concerned, one was as good as the other. Callahan had left him a note telling him to stop advertising his presence in East Stoneham. How stupid can you be??? had been the Pere's final communication to sai Tower, and the answer seemed to be more stupid than a bag of hammers.
"Ayuh," Cullum said. "Only he did a lot more'n browse. " His eyes, as blue as Roland's, were twinkling. "Bought a couple of hundred dollars' worth of readin material. Paid with traveler's checks. Then he gut her to give him a list of other used bookstores in the area. There's quite a few, if you add in Notions in Norway and that Your Trash, My Treasure place over in Fryeburg. Plus he got her to write down the names of some local folks who have book collections and sometimes sell out of their houses. Jane was awful excited. Talked about it all over town, she did. "
Eddie put a hand to his forehead and groaned. That was the man he'd met, all right, that was Calvin Tower to the life. What had he been thinking? That once he "gut" north of Boston he was safe?
"Can you tell us how to find him?" Roland asked.
"Oh, I c'n do better'n that. I can take you right to where they're stayin. "
Roland had been tossing the ball from hand to hand. Now he stopped and shook his head. "No. You'll be going somewhere else. "
"Where?"
"Anyplace you'll be safe," Roland said. "Beyond that, sai, I don't want to know. Neither of us do. "
"Well call me Sam, I say goddam. Dunno's I like that much. "
"Doesn't matter. Time is short. " Roland considered, then said: "Do you have a cartomobile?"
Cullum looked momentarily puzzled, then grinned. "Yep, a cartomobile and a truckomobile both. I'm loaded. " The last word came outludded.
"Then you'll lead us to Tower's Dimity Road place in one while Eddie. . . " Roland paused for a moment. "Eddie, do you still remember how to drive?"
"Roland, you're hurtin my feelings. "
Roland, never a very humorous fellow even at the best of times, didn't smile. He returned his attention to the dan-tete - little savior - ka had put in their way, instead. "Once we've found Tower, you'll go your course, John. That's any course that isn't ours. Take a little vacation, if it does ya. Two days should be enough, then you can return to your business. " Roland hoped their own business here in East Stoneham would be done by sundown, but didn't want to hex them by saying so.
"I don't think you understand that this is my busy season," Cullum said. He held out his hands and Roland tossed him the ball. "I got a boathouse to paint. . . a barn that needs shinglin - "
"If you stay with us," Roland said," you'll likely never shingle another barn. "
Cullum looked at him with an eyebrow cocked, clearly trying to gauge Roland's seriousness and not much liking what he saw.
While this was going on, Eddie found himself returning to the question of whether or not Roland had ever actually seen Tower with his own eyes. And now he realized that his first answer to that question had been wrong - Rolandhad seen Tower.
Sure he did. It was Roland who pulled that bookcase full of Tower's first editions into the Doorway Cave. Roland was looking right at him. What he saw was probably distorted, but. . .
That train of thought drifted away, and by the seemingly inevitable process of association, Eddie's mind returned to Tower's precious books, such rarities asThe Dogan, by Benjamin Slightman, Jr. , and'Salem's Lot, by Stephen King.
"I'll just get m'keys and we're off," Cullum said, but before he could turn away, Eddie said: "Wait. "
Cullum looked at him quizzically.
"We've got a little more to talk about, I think. " And he held up his hands for the baseball.
"Eddie, our time is short," Roland said.
"I know that," Eddie said. Probably better than you, since it's my woman the clock's running out on. "If I could, I'd leave that asshole Tower to Jack and concentrate on getting back to Susannah. But ka won't let me do that. Your damned old ka. "
"We need - "
"Shut up. " He had never said such a thing to Roland in his life, but now the words came out on their own, and he felt no urge to call them back. In his mind, Eddie heard a ghostly Calla-chant:Commala-come-come, the palaver's not done.
"What's on your mind?" Cullum asked him.
"A man named Stephen King. Do you know that name?"
And saw by Cullum's eyes that he did.
Three
"Eddie," Roland said. He spoke in an oddly tentative way the younger man had never heard before. He's as at sea as I am. Not a comforting thought. "Andolini may still be looking for us. More important, he may be looking for Tower, now that we've slipped through his fingers. . . and as sai Cullum has made perfectly clear, Tower has made himself easy to find. "
"Listen to me," Eddie replied. "I'm playing a hunch here, but a hunch isnot all this is. We've met one man, Ben Slightman, who wrote a book in another world. Tower's world. This world. And we've met another one, Donald Callahan, who was acharacter in a book from another world. Again,this world. " Cullum had tossed him the ball and now Eddie flipped it underhand, and hard, to Roland. The gunslinger caught it easily.
"This might not seem like such a big deal to me, except we've beenhaunted by books, haven't we?The Dogan. The Wizard of Oz. Charlie the Choo-Choo. Even Jake's Final Essay. And now'Salem's Lot. I think that if this Stephen King is real - "
"Oh, he's real, all right," Cullum said. He glanced out his window toward Keywadin Pond and the sound of the sirens on the other side. At the pillar of smoke, now diffusing the blue sky with its ugly smudge. Then he held his hands up for the baseball. Roland threw it in a soft arc whose apogee almost skimmed the ceiling. "And I read that book you're all het up about. Got it up to the City, at Bookland. Thought it was a corker, too. "
"A story about vampires. "
"Ayuh, I heard him talkin about it on the radio. Said he got the idea fromDracula. "
"You heard the writer on the radio," Eddie said. He was having that through-the-looking-glass, down-the-rabbit-hole, off-on-a-comet feeling again, and tried to ascribe it to the Percodan. It wouldn't work. All at once he felt strangely unreal to himself, a shade you could almost see through, as thin as. . . well, as thin as a page in a book. It was no help to realize that this world, lying in the summer of 1977 on time's beam, seemed real in a way all the other wheres and whens - including his own - did not. And that feeling was totally subjective, wasn't it? When you came right down to it, how did anyone know they weren't a character in some writer's story, or a transient thought in some bus-riding schmoe's head, or a momentary mote in God's eye? Thinking about such stuff was crazy, and enough such thinking coulddrive you crazy.
And yet. . .
Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key.
Keys, my specialty,Eddie thought. And then:King's a key, isn't he? Calla, Callahan. Crimson King, Stephen King. Is Stephen King the Crimson King of this world?
Roland had settled. Eddie was sure it hadn't been easy for him, but the difficult had ever been R
oland's specialty. "If you have questions to ask, have at it. " And made the twirling gesture with his right hand.
"Roland, I hardly know where to start. The ideas I've got are so big. . . so. . . I don't know, so fundamentally fuckingscary. . . "