Eddie nodded. There was a great deal aboutthis Tower-chasing business he didn’t understand, but there were also things heknew without asking. One was that the core of the walk-in activity in this partof the world was the house on Turtleback Lane John Cullum had identified asCara Laughs. And when they got there, they’d find the identifying number at thehead of the driveway was 19.

He looked up and saw the storm-cloudsmoving steadily west above Kezar Lake. West toward the White Mountains,too—what was almost surely called the Discordia in a world not far fromhere—and along the Path of the Beam.

Always along the Path of the Beam.

“What do you suggest, John?” Roland asked.

Cullum nodded at the sign readingBECKHARDT. “I’ve care-took for Dick Beckhardt since the late fifties,” he said.“Helluva nice man. He’s in Wasin’ton now, doin something with the Carteradministration.” Caaa-tah. “I got a key. I think maybe we ought to go ondown there. It’s warm n dry, and I don’t think it’s gonna be either one outhere before long. You boys c’n tell your tale, and I c’n listen—which isa thing I do tol’ably well—and then we can all take a run up to Cara. I…well I just never…” He shook his head, took his pipe out of his mouth,and looked at them with naked wonder. “I never seen the beat of it, I tell you.It was like I didn’t even know how to look at it.”

“Come on,” Roland said. “We’ll all ridedown in your cartomobile, if it does ya.”

“Does me just fine,” John said, and gotinto the back.

Three

Dick Beckhardt’s cottage was half a miledown, pine-walled, cozy. There was a pot-bellied stove in the living room and abraided rug on the floor. The west-facing wall was glass from end to end andEddie had to stand there for a moment, looking out, in spite of the urgency oftheir errand. The lake had gone a shade of dead ebony that was somehow frightening—likethe eye of a zombie, he thought, and had no idea why he thought it. He hadan idea that if the wind picked up (as it would surely do when the rain came),the whitecaps would ruffle the surface and make it easier to look at. Wouldtake away that look of something looking back at you.

John Cullum sat at Dick Beckhardt’s tableof polished pine, took off his hat, and held it in the bunched fingers of hisright hand. He looked at Roland and Eddie gravely. “We know each other prettydamn well for folks who haven’t known each other very damn long,” he said.“Wouldn’t you say that’s so?”

They nodded. Eddie kept expecting the windto begin outside, but the world went on holding its breath. He was willing tobet it was going to be one hellacious storm when it came.

“Folks gut t’know each other that way inthe Army,” John said. “In the war.” Aaa-my. And war too Yankeefor representation. “Way it always is when the chips’re down, I sh’d judge.”

“Aye,” Roland agreed. “ ‘Gunfire makesclose relations,’ we say.”

“Do ya? Now I know you gut things to tellme, but before you start, there’s one thing I gut to tell you. And I sh’d smilen kiss a pig if it don’t please you good n hard.”

“What?” Eddie asked.

“County Sheriff Eldon Royster took fourfellas into custody over in Auburn couple of hours ago. Seems as though theywas tryin to sneak past a police roadblock on a woods road and gut stuck fortheir trouble.” John put his pipe in his mouth, took a wooden match from hisbreast pocket, and set his thumb against the tip. For the moment, however, hedidn’t flick it; only held it there. “Reason they ‘us tryin to sneak around isthey seemed to have quite a fair amount of fire-power.” Fiah-powah.“Machine-guns, grenades, and some of that stuff they call C-4. One of em was afella I b’lieve you mentioned—Jack Andolini?” And with that he popped theDiamond Bluetip alight.

Eddie collapsed back in one of saiBeckhardt’s prim Shaker chairs, turned his head up to the ceiling, and bellowedlaughter at the rafters. When he was tickled, Roland reflected, no one couldlaugh like Eddie Dean. At least not since Cuthbert Allgood had passed into theclearing. “Handsome Jack Andolini, sitting in a county hoosegow in the State ofMaine!” he said. “Roll me in sugar and call me a fuckin jelly-doughnut! If onlymy brother Henry was alive to see it.”

Then Eddie realized that Henry probably wasalive right now—some version of him, anyway. Assuming the Dean brothersexisted in this world.

“Ayuh, thought that’d please ya,” Johnsaid, drawing the flame of the rapidly blackening match down into the bowl ofhis pipe. It clearly pleased him, too. He was grinning almost too hard tokindle his tobacco.

“Oh deary-dear,” Eddie said, wiping hiseyes. “That makes my day. Almost makes my year.”

“I gut somethin else for ya,” John said,“but we’ll let her be for now.” The pipe was at last going to his satisfactionand he settled back, eyes shifting between the two strange, wandering men hehad met earlier that day. Men whose ka was now entwined with his own, for betteror worse, and richer or poorer. “Right now I’d like t’hear your story. And justwhat it is you’d have me do.”

“How old are you, John?” Roland asked him.

“Not s’ old I don’t still have a little getup n go,” John replied, a trifle coldly. “What about y’self, chummy? How manytimes you ducked under the pole?”

Roland gave him a smile—the kind thatsaid point taken, now let’s change the subject. “Eddie will speak forboth of us,” he said. They had decided on this during their ride from Bridgton.“My own tale’s too long.”

“Do you say so,” John remarked.

“I do,” Roland said. “Let Eddie tell youhis story, as much as he has time for, and we’ll both tell what we’d have youdo, and then, if you agree, he’ll give you one thing to take to a man namedMoses Carver… and I’ll give you another.”

John Cullum considered this, then nodded.He turned to Eddie.

Eddie took a deep breath. “The first thingyou ought to know is that I met this guy here in a middle of an airplane flightfrom Nassau, the Bahamas, to Kennedy Airport in New York. I was hooked onheroin at the time, and so was my brother. I was muling a load of cocaine.”

“And when might this have been, son?” JohnCullum asked.

“The summer of 1987.”

They saw wonder on Cullum’s face but noshade of disbelief. “So you do come from the future! Gorry!” He leanedforward through the fragrant pipe-smoke. “Son,” he said, “tell your tale. Anddon’tcha skip a goddam word.”

Four

It took Eddie almost an hour and ahalf—and in the cause of brevity he did skip some of the things thathad happened to them. By the time he’d finished, a premature night had settledon the lake below them. And still the threatening storm neither broke nor movedon. Above Dick Beckhardt’s cottage thunder sometimes rumbled and sometimescracked so sharply they all jumped. A stroke of lightning jabbed directly intothe center of the narrow lake below them, briefly illuminating the entiresurface a delicate nacreous purple. Once the wind arose, making voices movethrough the trees, and Eddie thought It’ll come now, surely it will comenow, but it did not. Nor did the impending storm leave, and this queersuspension, like a sword hanging by the thinnest of threads, made him think ofSusannah’s long, strange pregnancy, now terminated. At around seven o’clock thepower went out and John looked through the kitchen cabinets for a supply ofcandles while Eddie talked on—the old people of River Crossing, the madpeople in the city of Lud, the terrified people of Calla Bryn Sturgis, wherethey’d met a former priest who seemed to have stepped directly out of a book.John put the candles on the table, along with crackers and cheese and a bottleof Red Zinger iced tea. Eddie finished with their visit to Stephen King,telling how the gunslinger had hypnotized the writer to forget their visit, howthey had briefly seen their friend Susannah, and how they had called JohnCullum because, as Roland said, there was no one else in this part of the worldthey could call. When Eddie fell silent, Roland told of meeting Chevinof Chayven on their way to Turtleback Lane. The gunslinger laid the silvercross he’d shown Chevin on the table by the plate of cheese, and John poked thefine links of the chain with one thick thumbnail.