“In life,” Roland said, “I’m sure ithappens all the time.”

And Eddie laughed. What the hell else couldyou do? It was just so perfectly Roland.

Four

BRIDGTON HIGH STREET1

HIGHLAND LAKE 2

HARRISON 3

WATERFORD 6

SWEDEN 9

LOVELL 18

FRYEBURG 24

They had just passed this sign when Eddiesaid, “Root around in the glove-compartment a little, Roland. See if ka or theBeam or whatever left us a little spare change for the pay phone.”

“Glove—? Do you mean this panelhere?”

“Yeah.”

Roland first tried to turn the chromebutton on the front, then got with the program and pushed it. The inside was amare’s nest that hadn’t been improved by the Galaxie’s brief period ofweightlessness. There were credit card receipts, a very old tube of what Eddieidentified as “tooth-paste” (Roland could make out the words HOLMES DENTALon it quite clearly), a fottergraff showing a smiling littlegirl—Cullum’s niece, mayhap—on a pony, a stick of what he firsttook for explosive (Eddie said it was a road flare, for emergencies), amagazine that appeared to be called YANKME… and a cigar-box. Roland couldn’tquite make out the word on this, although he thought it might be trolls.He showed the box to Eddie, whose eyes lit up.

“That says TOLLS,” he said. “Maybe you’reright about Cullum and ka. Open it up, Roland, do it please ya.”

The child who had given this box as a gifthad crafted a loving (and rather clumsy) catch on the front to hold it closed.Roland slipped the catch, opened the box, and showed Eddie a great many silvercoins. “Is it enough to call sai Cullum’s house?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Looks like enough tocall Fairbanks, Alaska. It won’t help us a bit, though, if Cullum’s on the roadto Vermont.”

Five

The Bridgton town square was bounded by adrug store and a pizza-joint on one side; a movie theater (The Magic Lantern)and a department store (Reny’s) on the other. Between the theater and thedepartment store was a little plaza equipped with benches and three pay phones.

Eddie swept through Cullum’s box oftoll-change and gave Roland six dollars in quarters. “I want you to go overthere,” he said, pointing at the drug store, “and get me a tin of aspirin. Willyou know it when you see it?”

“Astin. I’ll know it.”

“The smallest size they have is what Iwant, because six bucks really isn’t much money. Then go next door, to thatplace that says Bridgton Pizza and Sandwiches. If you’ve still got at leastsixteen of those money-coins left, tell them you want a hoagie.”

Roland nodded, which wasn’t good enough forEddie. “Let me hear you say it.”

“Hoggie.”

“Hoagie.”

“HOOG-gie.”

“Ho—” Eddie quit. “Roland, let mehear you say ‘poorboy.’”

“Poor boy.”

“Good. If you have at least sixteenquarters left, ask for a poorboy. Can you say ‘lots of mayo’?”

“Lots of mayo.”

“Yeah. If you have less than sixteen, askfor a salami and cheese sandwich. Sandwich, not a popkin.”

“Salommy sanditch.”

“Close enough. And don’t say anything elseunless you absolutely have to.”

Roland nodded. Eddie was right, it would bebetter if he did not speak. People only had to look at him to know, in theirsecret hearts, that he wasn’t from these parts. They also had a tendency tostep away from him. Better he not exacerbate that.

The gunslinger dropped a hand to his lefthip as he turned toward the street, an old habit that paid no comfort thistime; both revolvers were in the trunk of Cullum’s Galaxie, wrapped in theircartridge belts.

Before he could get going again, Eddiegrabbed his shoulder. The gunslinger swung round, eyebrows raised, faded eyeson his friend.

“We have a saying in our world,Roland—we say so-and-so was grasping at straws.”

“And what does it mean?”

“This,” Eddie said bleakly. “What we’redoing. Wish me good luck, fella.”

Roland nodded. “Aye, so I do. Both of us.”

He began to turn away and Eddie called himback again. This time Roland wore an expression of faint impatience.

“Don’t get killed crossing the street,”Eddie said, and then briefly mimicked Cullum’s way of speaking. “Summahfolks’re thicker’n ticks on a dog. And they’re not ridin hosses.”

“Make your call, Eddie,” Roland said, andthen crossed Bridgton’s high street with slow confidence, walking in the samerolling gait that had taken him across a thousand other high streets in athousand small towns.

Eddie watched him, then turned to thetelephone and consulted the directions. After that he lifted the receiver anddialed the number for Directory Assistance.

Six

He didn’t go, the gunslinger had said,speaking of John Cullum with flat certainty. And why? Because Cullum was the endof the line, there was no one else for them to call. Roland of Gilead’s damnedold ka, in other words.

After a brief wait, the DirectoryAssistance operator coughed up Cullum’s number. Eddie tried to memorizeit—he’d always been good at remembering numbers, Henry had sometimescalled him Little Einstein—but this time he couldn’t be confident of hisability. Something seemed to have happened either to his thinking processes ingeneral (which he didn’t believe) or to his ability to remember certain artifactsof this world (which he sort of did). As he asked for the number a secondtime—and wrote it in the gathered dust on the phone kiosk’s littleledge—Eddie found himself wondering if he’d still be able to read anovel, or follow the plot of a movie from the succession of images on a screen.He rather doubted it. And what did it matter? The Magic Lantern next door wasshowing Star Wars, and Eddie thought that if he made it to the end ofhis life’s path and into the clearing without another look at Luke Skywalkerand another listen to Darth Vader’s noisy breathing, he’d still be pretty muchokay.

“Thanks, ma’am,” he told the operator, andwas about to dial again when there was a series of explosions behind him. Eddiewhirled, heart-rate spiking, right hand dipping, expecting to see Wolves, orharriers, or maybe that son of a bitch Flagg—

What he saw was a convertible filled withlaughing, goofy-faced high school boys with sunburned cheeks. One of them hadjust tossed out a string of firecrackers left over from the Fourth ofJuly—what kids their age in Calla Bryn Sturgis would have called bangers.

If I’d had a gun on my hip, I might haveshot a couple of those bucks, Eddie thought. You want to talk goofy,start with that. Yes. Well. And maybe he might not have. Either way, he hadto admit the possibility that he was no longer exactly safe in the morecivilized quarters.

“Live with it,” Eddie murmured, then addedthe great sage and eminent junkie’s favorite advice for life’s little problems:“Deal.”

He dialed John Cullum’s number on theold-fashioned rotary phone, and when a robot voice—Blaine the Mono’sgreat-great-great-great-great-grandmother, mayhap—asked him to depositninety cents, Eddie dropped in a buck. What the hell, he was saving the world.

The phone rang once… rang twice… and waspicked up!

“John!” Eddie almost yelled. “Good fuckingdeal! John, this is—”

But the voice on the other end was alreadyspeaking. As a child of the late eighties, Eddie knew this did not bode well.

“—have reached John Cullum of CullumCaretakin and Camp Checkin,” said Cullum’s voice in its familiar slow Yankeedrawl. “I gut called away kinda sudden, don’tcha know, and can’t say with anydegree a’ certainty just when I’ll be back. If this inconveniences ya, I begpa’aad’n, but you c’n call Gary Crowell, at 926-5555, or Junior Barker, at929-4211.”