Song of Susannah

TWELVE

Roland knew what he was doing, had done it before, and the bullet hadn’t gone deep. The whole thing was over in ninety seconds, but it was the longest minute and a half in Eddie’s life. At last Roland tapped the pliers on one of Eddie’s closed hands. When Eddie managed to unroll his fingers, the gunslinger dropped a flattened slug into it. “Souvenir,” he said. “Stopped right on the bone. That was the scraping that you heard.”

Eddie looked at the mashed piece of lead, then flicked it across the linoleum floor like a marble. “Don’t want it,” he said, and wiped his brow.

Tower, ever the collector, picked up the cast-off slug. Deepneau, meanwhile, was examining the toothmarks in his belt with silent fascination.

“Cal,” Eddie said, getting up on his elbows. ’You had a book in your case-”

“I want those books back,” Tower said immediately. “You better be taking care of them, young man.”

“I’m sure they’re in great condition,” Eddie said, telling himself once more to bite his tongue if he had to. Or grab Aaron’s belt and bite that again, if your tongue won’t do.

“They better be, young man; now they’re all I have left.”

“Yes, along with the forty or so in your various safe deposit boxes,” Aaron Deepneau said, completely ignoring the vile look his friend shot him. “The signed Ulysses is probably the best, but there are several gorgeous Shakespeare folios, a complete set of signed Faulkners-”

“Aaron, would you please be quiet?”

“-and a Huckleberry Finn that you could turn into a Mercedes-Benz sedan any day of the week,” Deepneau finished.

“In any case, one of them was a book called ’salem’s Lot,” Eddie said. “By a man named-”

“Stephen King,” Tower finished. He gave the slug a final look, then put it on the kitchen table next to the sugarbowl. “I’ve been told he lives close to here. I’ve picked up two copies of Lot and also three copies of his first novel, Carrie. I was hoping to take a trip to Bridgton and get them signed. I suppose now that won’t happen.”

“I don’t understand what makes it so valuable,” Eddie said, and then: “Ouch, Roland, that hurts!”

Roland was checking the makeshift bandage around the wound in Eddie’s leg. “Be still,” he said.

Tower paid no attention to this. Eddie had turned him once more in the direction of his favorite subject, his obsession, his darling. What Eddie supposed Gollum in the Tolkien books would have called “his precious.”

“Do you remember what I told you when we were discussing The Hogan, Mr. Dean? Or The Dogan, if you prefer? I said that the value of a rare book-like that of a rare coin or a rare stamp-is created in different ways. Sometimes it’s just an autograph-”

“Your copy of ’salem’s Lot isn’t signed.”

“No, because this particular author is very young and not very well known. He may amount to something one day, or he may not.” Tower shrugged, almost as if to say that was up to ka. “But this particular book… well, the first edition was only seventy-five hundred copies, and almost all of them sold in New England.”

“Why? Because the guy who wrote it is from New England?”

“Yes. As so often happens, the book’s value was created entirely by accident. A local chain decided to promote it heavily. They even produced a TV commercial, which is almost unheard-of at the local retail level. And it worked. Bookland of Maine ordered five thousand copies of the first edition-almost seventy per cent-and sold nearly every single one. Also, as with The Hogan, there were misprints in the front matter. Not the title, in this case, but on the flap. You can tell an authentic first of ’salem’s Lot by the clipped price-at the last minute, Doubleday decided to raise the price from seven-ninety-five to eight-ninety-five-and by the name of the priest in the flap copy.”

Roland looked up. “What about the name of the priest?”

“In the book, it’s Father Callahan. But on the flap someone wrote Father Cody, which is actually the name of the town’s doctor.”

“And that’s all it took to bump the price of a copy from nine bucks to nine hundred and fifty,” Eddie marveled.

Tower nodded. “That’s all-scarcity, clipped flap, misprint. But there’s also an element of speculation in collecting rare editions which I find… quite exciting.”

“That’s one word for it,” Deepneau said dryly.

“For instance, suppose this man King becomes famous or critically acclaimed? I admit the chances are small, but suppose that did happen? Available first editions of his second book are so rare that, instead of being worth seven hundred and fifty dollars, my copy might be worth ten times that.” He frowned at Eddie. “So you’d better be taking good care of it.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Eddie said, and wondered what Calvin Tower would think if he knew that one of the book’s characters had it on a shelf in his arguably fictional rectory. Said rectory in a town that was the fraternal twin of one in an old movie starring Yul Brynner as Roland’s twin, and introducing Horst Buchholz as Eddie’s.

He’d think you were crazy, that’s what he’d think.

Eddie got to his feet, swayed a little, and gripped the kitchen table. After a few moments the world steadied.

“Can you walk on it?” Roland asked.

“I was before, wasn’t I?”

“No one was digging around in there before.”

Eddie took a few experimental steps, then nodded. His shin flared with pain each time he shifted his weight to his right leg, but yes-he could walk on it.

“I’ll give you the rest of my Percocet,” Aaron said. “I can get more.”

Eddie opened his mouth to say yeah, sure, bring it on, and then saw Roland looking at him. If Eddie said yes to Deepneau’s offer, the gunslinger wouldn’t speak up and cause Eddie to lose face… but yes, his dinh was watching.

Eddie thought of the speech he’d made to Tower, all that poetic stuff about how Calvin was eating a bitter meal. It was true, poetic or not. But that apparently wouldn’t stop Eddie from sitting back down to that same dinner himself. First a few Percodan, then a few Percocet. Both of them too much like horse for comfort. So how long would it be before he got tired of kissing his sister and started looking for some real pain relief?

“I think I’ll skip the Peres,” Eddie said. “We’re going to Bridgton-”

Roland looked at him, surprised. “We are?”

“We are. I can pick up some aspirin on the way.”

“Astin,” Roland said, with unmistakable affection.

“Are you sure?” Deepneau asked.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I am.” He paused, then added: “Say sorry.”

THIRTEEN

Five minutes later the four of them stood in the needle-carpeted dooryard, listening to sirens and looking at the smoke, which had now begun to thin. Eddie was bouncing the keys to John Cullum’s Ford impatiently in one hand. Roland had asked him twice if this trip to Bridgton was necessary, and Eddie had told him twice that he was almost sure it was. The second time he’d added (almost hopefully) that as dinh, Roland could overrule him, if he wished.

“No. If you think we should go see this tale-spinner, we will. I only wish you knew why.”

“I think that when we get there, we’ll both understand.”

Roland nodded, but still looked dissatisfied. “I know you’re as anxious as I am to leave this world-this level of the Tower. For you to want to go against that, your intuition must be strong.”

It was, but there was something else, as well: he’d heard from Susannah again, the message once more coming from her version of the Dogan. She was a prisoner in her own body-at least Eddie thought that was what she was trying to tell him-but she was in the year 1999 and she was all right.

This had happened while Roland was thanking Tower and Deepneau for their help. Eddie was in the bathroom. He’d gone in to take a leak, but suddenly forgot all about that and simply sat on the toilet’s closed lid, head bent, eyes closed. Trying to send a message back to her. Trying to tell her to slow Mia down if she possibly could. He’d gotten the sense of daylight from her-New York in the afternoon-and that was bad. Jake and Callahan had gone through the Unfound Door into New York at night; this Eddie had seen with his own eyes. They might be able to help her, but only if she could slow Mia down.

Burn up the day, he sent to Susannah… or tried to. You have to burn up the day before she takes you to wherever she’s supposed to have the kid. Do you hear me? Suze, do you hear me? Answer if you hear me! Jake and Pere Callahan are coming and you have to hold on!

June, a sighing voice had replied. June of 1999. The girls walk around with their bellies showing and-

Then came Roland’s knock on the bathroom door, and Roland’s voice asking if Eddie was ready to roll. Before the day was over they’d make their way to Turtleback Lane in the town of Lovell-a place where walk-ins were common, according to John Cullum, and reality was apt to be correspondingly thin-but first they were going to make a trip to Bridgton, and hopefully meet the man who seemed to have created Donald Callahan and the town of ’salem’s Lot.

Be a hoot if King was out in California, writing the movie version, or something, Eddie thought, but he didn’t believe that was going to be the case. They were still on the Path of the Beam, in the way of ka. So, presumably, was sai King.

“You boys want to take it very easy,” Deepneau told them. “There are going to be a lot of cops around. Not to mention Jack Andolini and whatever remains of his merry band.”

“Speaking of Andolini,” Roland said, “I think the time has come for the two of you to go somewhere he isn’t.”

Tower bristled. Eddie could have predicted it. “Go now? You must be joking! I have a list of almost a dozen people in the area who collect books-buy, sell, trade. Some know what they’re doing, but others…” He made a clipping gesture, as if shearing an invisible sheep.

“There’ll be people selling old books out of their barns over in Vermont, too,” Eddie said. “And you want to remember how easy it was for us to find you. It was you who made it easy, Cal.”

“He’s right,” Aaron said, and when Calvin Tower made no reply, only turned his sulky face down to regard his shoes, Deepneau looked at Eddie again. “But at least Cal and I have driver’s licenses to show, should we be stopped by the local or the state police. I’m guessing neither of you do.”

“That would be correct,” Eddie said.