“Walk it to em, son!” the old man in the wheelchair shrilled. “They got it coming, by Christ!”

I was sure they did, but they had me outnumbered and my ammo was gone. When you’re dealing with teenagers, the only possible way to win in such a situation is to show no fear, only genuine adult outrage. You just keep coming, and that was what I did. I seized young Master Fuck Off by the front of his ragged tee-shirt with my right hand and snatched the slingshot away from him with the left. He stared at me, wide-eyed, and put up no resistance.

“You chickenshit,” I said, getting my face right up into his . . . and never mind the nose that wasn’t. He smelled sweaty and pot-smoky and deeply dirty. “How chickenshit do you have to be to go after an old man in a wheelchair?”

“Who are y—”

“Charlie Fucking Chaplin. I went to France just to see the ladies dance. Now get out of here.”

“Give me back my—”

I knew what he wanted and bonked the center of his forehead with it. It started one of his sores trickling and must have hurt like hell, because his eyes filled with tears. This disgusted me and filled me with pity, but I tried to show neither. “You get nothing, chickenshit, except a chance to get out of here before I rip your worthless balls off your no doubt diseased scrote and stuff them into the hole where your nose used to be. One chance. Take it.” I drew in breath, then screamed it out at his face in a spray of noise and spit: “Run!”

I watched them go, feeling shame and exultation in roughly equal parts. The old Jake had been great at quelling rowdy study halls on Friday afternoons before vacations, but that was about as far as his skills went. The new Jake, however, was part George. And George had been through a lot.

From behind me came a heavy bout of coughing. It made me think of Al Templeton. When it stopped, the old man said, “Fella, I would have pissed five years’ worth of kidney rocks just to see those vile dinks take to their heels like that. I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got a little Glenfiddich left in my pantry—the real stuff—and if you push me out of this goddam hole in the road and roll me home, I’ll share it with you.”

The moon had gone in again, but as it came back out through the ragged clouds, I saw his face. He was wearing a long white beard and had a cannula stuffed up his nose, but even after five years, I had no trouble at all recognizing the man who had gotten me into this mess.

“Hello, Harry,” I said.

CHAPTER 31

1

He still lived on Goddard Street. I rolled him up the ramp to the porch, where he produced a fearsome bundle of keys. He needed them. The front door had no less than four locks.

“Do you rent or own?”

“Oh, it’s all mine,” he said. “Such as it is.”

“Good for you.” Before, he had rented.

“You still haven’t told me how you know my name.”

“First, let’s have that drink. I can use one.”

The door opened on a parlor that took up the front half of the house. He told me to whoa, as if I were a horse, and lit a Coleman lantern. By its light I saw furniture of the type that is called “old but serviceable.” There was a beautiful braided rug on the floor. No GED diploma on any of the walls—and of course no framed theme titled “The Day That Changed My Life”—but there were a great many Catholic icons and lots of pictures. It was with no surprise that I recognized some of the people in them. I had met them, after all.

“Lock that behind you, would you?”

I closed us off from the dark and disturbing Lisbon Falls, and ran both bolts.

“Deadbolt, too, if you don’t mind.”

I twisted it and heard a heavy clunk. Harry, meanwhile, was rolling around his parlor and lighting the same sort of long-chimneyed kerosene lamps I vaguely remembered seeing in my gramma Sarie’s house. It was a better light for the room than the Coleman lamp, and when I killed its hot white glow, Harry Dunning nodded approvingly.

“What’s your name, sir? You already know mine.”

“Jake Epping. Don’t suppose that rings any bells with you, does it?” He considered, then shook his head. “Should it?”

“Probably not.”

He stuck out his hand. It shook slightly with some incipient palsy. “I’ll shake with you, just the same. That could have been nasty.”

I shook his hand gladly. Hello, new friend. Hello, old friend.

“Okay, now that we got that took care of, we can drink with clear consciences. I’ll get us that single malt.” He started for the kitchen, rolling his wheels with arms that were a little shaky but still strong. The chair had a small motor, but either it didn’t work or he was saving the battery. He looked back over his shoulder at me. “Not dangerous, are you? I mean, to me?”

“Not to you, Harry.” I smiled. “I’m your good angel.”

“This is fucking peculiar,” he said. “But these days, what isn’t?” He went into the kitchen. Soon more light glowed. Homey orange-yellow light. In here, everything seemed homey. But out there . . . in the world . . .

Just what in the hell had I done?

2

“What’ll we drink to?” I asked when we had our glasses in hand.

“Better times than these. Will that work for you, Mr. Epping?”

“It works fine. And make it Jake.”

We clinked. Drank. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had anything stronger than Lone Star beer. The whisky was like hot honey.

“No electricity?” I asked, looking around at the lamps. He had turned them all low, presumably to save on oil.

He made a sour face. “Not from around here, are you?”

A question I’d heard before, from Frank Anicetti, at the Fruit. On my very first trip into the past. Then I’d told a lie. I didn’t want to do that now.

“I don’t quite know how to answer that, Harry.”

He shrugged it off. “We’re supposed to get juice three days a week, and this is supposed to be one of the days, but it cut off around six P.M. I believe in Province Electric like I believe in Santa Claus.”

As I considered this, I remembered the stickers on the cars. “How long has Maine been a part of Canada?”

He gave me a how-crazy-are-you look, but I could see he was enjoying this. The strangeness of it and also the there-ness of it. I wondered when he’d last had a real conversation with someone.

“Since 2005. Did someone bump you on the head, or something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” I went to his wheelchair, dropped on the knee that still bent willingly and without pain, and showed him the place on the back of my head where the hair had never grown back. “I took a bad beating a few months ago—”