Song of Susannah

looked to the right, he saw that the gunslinger was sitting with his talented, long-fingered hands folded peaceably in his lap.

“How does it feel to you?” Eddie asked.

“Quiet.” The word was spoken Calla-fashion: Cahh-it.

“Anyone here?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Danger?”

“Yar. Beside me.”

Eddie looked at him, frowning.

“You, Eddie. You want to kill him, don’t you?”

After a moment, Eddie admitted it was so. This uncovered part of his nature, as simple as it was savage, sometimes made him uneasy, but he could not deny it was there. And who, after all, had brought it out and honed it to a keen edge?

Roland nodded. “There came into my life, after years during which I wandered in the desert as solitary as any anchorite, a whining and self-involved young man whose only ambition was to continue taking a drug which did little but make him sniffle and feel sleepy. This was a posturing, selfish, loudmouthed loutkin with little to recommend him-”

“But good-looking,” Eddie said. “Don’t forget that. The cat was a true sex mo-chine.”

Roland looked at him, unsmiling. “If I could manage not to kill you then, Eddie of New York, you can manage not to kill Calvin Tower now.” And with that, Roland opened the door on his side and got out.

“Well, says you,” Eddie told the interior of Cullum’s car, and then got out himself.

THREE

Cullum was still behind the wheel of his truck when first Roland and then Eddie joined him.

“Place feels empty to me,” he said, “but I see a light on in the kitchen.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie said. “John, I’ve got-”

“Don’t tell me, you got another question. Only person I know who’s got more of em is my grand-nephew Aidan. He just went three. Go on, ask.”

“Could you pinpoint the center of the walk-in activity in this area over the last few years?” Eddie had no idea why he was asking this question, but it suddenly seemed vitally important to him.

Cullum considered, then said: “Turtleback Lane, over in Lovell.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“Ayuh. Do you remember me mentionin my friend Donnie Russert, the history prof from Vandy?”

Eddie nodded.

“Well, after he met one of these fellas in person, he got interested in the phenomenon. Wrote several articles about it, although he said no reputable magazine’d publish em no matter how well documented his facts were. He said that writin about the walk-ins in western Maine taught him something he’d never expected to learn in his old age: that some things people just won’t believe, not even when you can prove em. He used to quote a line from some Greek poet. ’The column of truth has a hole in it.’

“Anyway, he had a map of the seven-town area mounted on one wall of his study: Stoneham, East Stoneham, Water-ford, Lovell, Sweden, Fryeburg, and East Fryeburg. With pins stuck in it for each walk-in reported, do ya see?”

“See very well, say thank ya,” Eddie said.

“And I’d have to say… yeah, Turtleback Lane’s the heart of it. Why, there were six or eight pins right there, and the whole damn rud can’t be more’n two miles long; it’s just a loop that runs off Route 7, along the shore of Kezar Lake, and then back to 7 again.”

Roland was looking at the house. Now he turned to the left, stopped, and laid his left hand on the sandalwood butt of his gun. “John,” he said, “we’re well-met, but it’s time for you to roll out of here.”

“Ayuh? You sure?”

Roland nodded. “The men who came here are fools. It still has the smell of fools, which is partly how I know that they haven’t moved on. You’re not one of that kind.”

John Cullum smiled faintly. “Sh’d hope not,” he said, “but I gut t’thankya for the compliment.” Then he paused and scratched his gray head. “If ’tis a compliment.”

“Don’t get back to the main road and start thinking I didn’t mean what I said. Or worse, that we weren’t here at all, that you dreamed the whole tiling. Don’t go back to your house, not even to pack an extra shirt. It’s no longer safe. Go somewhere else. At least three looks to the horizon.”

Cullum closed one eye and appeared to calculate. “In the fifties, I spent ten miserable years as a guard at the Maine State Prison,” he said, “but I met a hell of a nice man there named-”

Roland shook his head and then put the two remaining fingers of his right hand to his lips. Cullum nodded.

“Well, I f’git what his name is, but he lives over in Vermont, and I’m sure I’ll remember it-maybe where he lives, too-by the time I get acrost the New Hampshire state line.”

Something about this speech struck Eddie as a little false, but he couldn’t put his finger on just why, and he decided in the end that he was just being paranoid. John Cullum was a straight arrow… wasn’t he? “May you do well,” he said, and gripped the old man’s hand. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

“Same to you boys,” Cullum said, and then shook with Roland. He held the gunslinger’s three-fingered right hand a moment longer. “Was it God saved my life back there, do ya think? When the bullets first started flyin?”

“Yar,” the gunslinger said. “If you like. And may he go with you now.”

“As for that old Ford of mine-”

“Either right here or somewhere nearby,” Eddie said. “You’ll find it, or someone else will. Don’t worry.”

Cullum grinned. “That’s pretty much what I was gonna tell you.”

“Vaya con Dios,” Eddie said.

Cullum grinned. “Goes back double, son. You want to watch out for those walk-ins.” He paused. “Some of em aren’t very nice. From all reports.”

Cullum put his truck in gear and drove away. Roland watched him go and said, “Dan-tete.”

Eddie nodded. Dan-tete. Little savior. It was as good a way to describe John Cullum-now as gone from their lives as the old people of River Crossing-as any other. And he was gone, wasn’t he? Although there’d been something about the way he’d talked of his friend in Vermont…

Paranoia.

Simple paranoia.

Eddie put it out of his mind.

FOUR

Since there was no car present and hence no driver’s-side floormat beneath which to look, Eddie intended to explore under the porch step. But before he could take more than a single stride in that direction, Roland gripped his shoulder in one hand and pointed with the other. What Eddie saw was a brushy slope going down to the water and the roof of what was probably another boathouse, its green shingles covered with a layer of dry needles.

“Someone there,” Roland said, his lips barely moving. “Probably the lesser of the two fools, and watching us. Raise your hands.”

“Roland, do you think that’s safe?”

“Yes.” Roland raised his hands. Eddie thought of asking him upon what basis he placed his belief, and knew the answer without asking: intuition. It was Roland’s specialty. With a sigh, Eddie raised his own hands to his shoulders.

“Deepneau!” Roland called out in the direction of the boathouse. “Aaron Deepneau! We’re friends, and our time is short! If that’s you, come out! We need to palaver!”

There was a pause, and then an old man’s voice called: “What’s your name, mister?”

“Roland Deschain, of Gilead and the line of the Eld. I think you know it.”

“And your trade?”

“I deal in lead!” Roland called, and Eddie felt goose-bumps pebble his arms.

A long pause. Then: “Have they killed Calvin?”

“Not that we know of,” Eddie called back. “If you know something we don’t, why don’t you come on out here and tell us?”

“Are you the guy who showed up while Cal was dickering with that prick Andolini?”

Eddie felt another throb of anger at the word dickering. At the slant it put on what had actually been going down in Tower’s back room. “A dicker? Is that what he told you it was?” And then, without waiting for Aaron Deepneau to answer: “Yeah, I’m that guy. Come out here and let’s talk.”

No answer. Twenty seconds slipped by. Eddie pulled in breath to call Deepneau again. Roland put a hand on Eddie’s arm and shook his head. Another twenty seconds went by, and then there was the rusty shriek of a spring as a screen door was pushed open. A tall, skinny man stepped out of the boathouse, blinking like an owl. In one hand he held a large black automatic pistol by the barrel. Deepneau raised it over his head. “It’s a Beretta, and unloaded,” he said. “There’s only one clip and it’s in the bedroom, under my socks. Loaded guns make me nervous. Okay?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. These folken were their own worst enemas, as Henry might have said.

“Fine,” Roland said. “Just keep coming.'’

And-wonders never ceased, it seemed-Deepneau did.