EIGHT
Each woman halved a sharproot head at forty yards, fifty yards, and sixty.
"Hit the head as high up into the hood as you can get," Roland said. "Hitting them low will do no good."
"Armor, I suppose?" Rosalita asked.
"Aye," Roland said, although that was not the entire truth. He wouldn't tell them what he now understood to
be the entire truth until they needed to know it.
Next came the taters. Sarey Adams got hers at forty yards, clipped it at fifty, and missed entirely at sixty; her
dish sailed high. She uttered a curse that was far from ladylike, then walked head-down to the side of the
privy. Here she sat to watch the rest of the competition. Roland went over and sat beside her. He saw a tear
trickling from the corner of her left eye and down her wind-roughened cheek.
"I've let ye down, stranger. Say sorry."
Roland took her hand and squeezed it. "Nay, lady, nay. There'll be work for you. Just not in the same place as
these others. And you may yet throw the dish."
She gave him a wan smile and nodded her thanks.
Eddie put more sharproot "heads" on the stuffy-guys, then a radish on top of each. The latter were all but
concealed in the shadows thrown by the gunnysack hoods. "Good luck, girls," he said. "Better you than me."
Then he stepped away.
"Start from ten yards this time!" Roland called.
At ten, they all hit. And at twenty. At thirty yards, Susannah threw her plate high, as Roland had instructed
her to do. He wanted one of the Calla women to win this round. At forty yards, Zalia Jaffords hesitated too
long, and the dish she flung chopped the sharproot head in two rather than the radish sitting on top.
"Fuck-commala!" she cried, then clapped her hands to her mouth and looked at Callahan, who was sitting on
the back steps. That fellow only smiled and waved cheerfully, affecting deafness.
She stamped over to Eddie and Jake, blushing to the tips of her ears and furious. "Ye must tell him to give me
another chance, say will ya please," she told Eddie. "I can do it, I know I can do it—"
Eddie put a hand on her arm, stemming the flood. "He knows it, too, Zee. You're in."
She looked at him with burning eyes, lips pressed so tightly together they were almost gone. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," Eddie said. "You could pitch for the Mets, darlin."
Now it was down to Margaret and Rosalita. They both hit the radishes at fifty yards. To Jake, Eddie
murmured: "Buddy, I would have told you that was impossible if I hadn't just seen it."
At sixty yards, Margaret Eisenhart missed cleanly. Rosalita raised her plate over her right shoulder—she was
a lefty—hesitated, then screamed "Riza!" and threw. Sharp-eyed though he was, Roland wasn't entirely sure
if the plate's edge clipped the side of the radish or if the wind toppled it over. In either case, Rosalita raised
her fists over her head and shook them, laughing.
"Fair-day goose! Fair-day goose!" Margaret began calling. The others joined in. Soon even Callahan was
chanting.
Roland went to Rosa and gave her a hug, brief but strong. As he did so he whispered in her ear that while he
had no goose, he might be able to find a certain long-necked gander for her, come evening.
"Well," she said, smiling, "when we get older, we take our prizes where we find them. Don't we?"
Zalia glanced at Margaret. "What did he say to her? Did'ee kennit?"
Margaret Eisenhart was smiling. "Nothing you haven't heard yourself, I'm sure," she said.
NINE
Then the ladies were gone. So was the Pere, on some errand or other. Roland of Gilead sat on the bottom
porch step, looking downhill toward the site of the competition so lately completed. When Susannah asked
him if he was satisfied, he nodded. "Yes, I think all's well there. We have to hope it is, because time's closing
now. Things will happen fast." The truth was that he had never experienced such a confluence of events…
but since Susannah had admitted her pregnancy, he had calmed nevertheless.
You've recalled the truth of ka to your truant mind, he thought. And it happened because this woman showed
a kind of bravery the rest of us couldn't quite muster up.
"Roland, will I be going back out to the Rocking B?" Jake asked.
Roland considered, then shrugged. "Do you want to?"
"Yes, but this time I want to take the Ruger." Jake's face pinked a little, but his voice remained steady. He had
awakened with this idea, as if the dreamgod Roland called Nis had brought it to him in his sleep. "I'll put it at
the bottom of my bedroll and wrap it in my extra shirt. No one needs to know it's there." He paused. "I don't
want to show it off to Benny, if that's what you're thinking."
The idea had never crossed Roland's mind. But what was in Jake's mind? He posed the question, and Jake's
answer was the sort one gives when one has charted the likely course of a discussion well in advance.
"Do you ask as my dinh?"
Roland opened his mouth to say yes, saw how closely Eddie and Susannah were watching him, and
reconsidered. There was a difference between keeping secrets (as each of them had in his own way kept the
secret of Susannah's pregnancy) and following what Eddie called "a hunch." The request under Jake's request
was to be on a longer rope. Simple as that. And surely Jake had earned the right to a little more rope. This
was not the same boy who had come into Mid-World shivering and terrified and nearly naked.
"Not as your dinh," he said. "As for the Ruger, you may take it anywhere, and at any time. Did you not bring
it to the tet in the first place?"
"Stole it," Jake said in a low voice. He was staring at his knees.
"You took what you needed to survive," Susannah said. "There's a big difference. Listen, sugar—you're not
planning to shoot anyone, are you?"
"Not planning to, no."
"Be careful," she said. "I don't know what you've got in your head, but you be careful."
"And whatever it is, you better get it settled in the next week or so," Eddie told him.
Jake nodded, then looked at Roland. "When are you planning to call the town meeting?"
"According to the robot, we have ten days left before the Wolves come. So…" Roland calculated briefly.
"Town gathering in six days. Will that suit you?"
Jake nodded again.
"Are you sure you don't want to tell us what's on your mind?"
"Not unless you ask as dinh," Jake said. "It's probably nothing, Roland. Really."
Roland nodded dubiously and began rolling another smoke. Having fresh tobacco was wonderful. "Is there
anything else? Because, if there isn't—"
"There is, actually," Eddie said.
"What?"
"I need to go to New York," Eddie said. He spoke casually, as if proposing no more than a trip to the
mercantile to buy a pickle or a licorice stick, but his eyes were dancing with excitement. "And this time I'll
have to go in the flesh. Which means using the ball more direcdy, I guess. Black Thirteen. I hope to hell you
know how to do it, Roland."
"Why do you need to go to New York?" Roland asked. "This I do ask as dinh."
"Sure you do," Eddie said, "and I'll tell you. Because you're right about time getting short. And because the
Wolves of the Calla aren't the only ones we have to worry about."
"You want to see how close to July fifteenth it's getting," Jake said. "Don't you?"
"Yeah," Eddie said. "We know from when we all went todash that time is going faster in that version of New
York, 1977. Remember the date on the piece of The New York Times I found in the doorway?"
"June second," Susannah said.
"Right. We're also pretty sure that we can't double back in time in that world; it's later every time we go there.
Right?"
Jake nodded emphatically. "Because that world's not like the others… unless maybe it was just being sent
todash by Black Thirteen that made us feel that way?"
"I don't think so," Eddie said. "That little piece of Second Avenue between the vacant lot and maybe on up to
Sixtieth is a very important place. I think it's a doorway. One big doorway."
Jake Chambers was looking more and more excited. "Not all the way up to Sixtieth. Not that far. Second
Avenue between Forty-sixth and Fifty-fourth, that's what I think. On the day I left Piper, I felt something
change when I got to Fifty-fourth Street.
It's those eight blocks. The stretch with the record store on it, and Chew Chew Mama, and The Manhattan
Restaurant of the Mind. And the vacant lot, of course. That's the other end. It… I don't know…"
Eddie said, "Being there takes you into a different world. Some kind of key world. And I think that's why
time always runs one way—"
Roland held up his hand. "Stop."
Eddie stopped, looking at Roland expectantly, smiling a little. Roland was not smiling. Some of his previous
sense of well-being had passed away. Too much to do, gods damn it. And not enough time in which to do it.
"You want to see how near time has run to the day the agreement becomes null and void," he said. "Have I
got that right?"
"You do."
"You don't need to go to New York physically to do that, Eddie. Todash would serve nicely."
"Todash would do fine to check the day and the month, sure, but there's more. We've been dumb about that
vacant lot, you guys. I mean really dumb."
TEN
Eddie believed they could own the vacant lot without ever touching Susannah's inherited fortune; he thought
Callahan's story showed quite clearly how it could be done. Not the rose; the rose was not to be owned (by
them or anyone) but to be protected. And they could do it. Maybe.
Frightened or not, Calvin Tower had been waiting in that deserted laundrymat to save Pere Callahan's bacon.
And frightened or not, Calvin Tower had refused—as of May 31st, 1977, anyway—to sell his last piece of
real property to the Sombra Corporation. Eddie thought that Calvin Tower was, in the words of the song,
holding out for a hero.
Eddie had also been thinking about the way Callahan had hidden his face in his hands the first time he
mentioned Black Thirteen. He wanted it the hell out of his church… but so far he'd kept it anyway. Like the
bookshop owner, the Pere had been holding out. How stupid they had been to assume Calvin Tower would
ask millions for his lot! He wanted to be shed of it. But not until the right person came along. Or the right katet.
"Suziella, you can't go because you're pregnant," Eddie said. "Jake, you can't go because you're a kid. All
other questions aside, I'm pretty sure you couldn't sign the kind of contract I've been thinking about ever
since Callahan told us his story. I could take you with me, but it sounds like you've got something you want
to check into over here. Or am I wrong about that?"
"You're not wrong," Jake said. "But I'd almost go with you, anyway. This sounds really good."
Eddie smiled. "Almost only counts with grenados and horseshoes, kid. As for sending Roland, no offense,
boss, but you're not all that suave in our world. You… um… lose something in the translation."
Susannah burst out laughing.
"How much are you thinking of offering him?" Jake asked. "I mean, it has to be something, doesn't it?"
"A buck," Eddie said. "I'll probably have to ask Tower to loan it to me, but—"
"No, we can do better than that," Jake said, looking serious. "I've got five or six dollars in my knapsack, I'm
pretty sure." He grinned. "And we can offer him more, later on. When things kind of settle down on this
side."
"If we're still alive," Susannah said, but she also looked excited. "You know what, Eddie? You just might be a
genius."
"Balazar and his friends won't be happy if sai Tower sells us his lot," Roland said.
"Yeah, but maybe we can persuade Balazar to leave him alone," Eddie said. A grim little smile was playing
around the corners of his mouth. "When it comes right down to it, Roland, Enrico Balazar's the kind of guy I
wouldn't mind killing twice."
"When do you want to go?" Susannah asked him.
"The sooner the better," Eddie said. "For one thing, not knowing how late it is over there in New York is
driving me nuts. Roland? What do you say?"
"I say tomorrow," Roland said. "We'll take the ball up to the cave, and then we'll see if you can go through
the door to Calvin Tower's where and when. Your idea is a good one, Eddie, and I say thankya."
Jake said, "What if the ball sends you to the wrong place? The wrong version of 1977, or…" He hardly knew
how to finish. He was remembering how thin everything had seemed when Black Thirteen had first taken
them todash, and how endless darkness seemed to be waiting behind the painted surface realities around
them. "… or someplace even farther?" he finished.
"In that case, I'll send back a postcard." Eddie said it with a shrug and a laugh, but for just a moment Jake
saw how frightened he was. Susannah must have seen it, too, because she took Eddie's hand in both of hers
and squeezed it.
"Hey, I'll be fine," Eddie said.
"You better be," Susannah replied. "You just better."
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