Roland made no reply and the crowd began to disperse.
Some went running, and the others caught that like a cold. They fled in silence, except for a few who were weeping, and soon the dark had swallowed them up.
"Wow," Dinky said. His voice was soft and respectful.
"Roland," Ted said. "What they did wasn't entirely their fault. I thought I had explained that, but I guess I didn't do a very good job."
Roland holstered his revolver. 'You did an excellentjob," he said. "That's why they're still alive."
Now they had the Damli House end of the Mall to themselves again, and Sheemie limped up to Roland. His eyes were round and solemn. "Will you show me where you'd go, dear?"
he asked. "Can you show me the place?"
The place. Roland had been so fixed on the when that he'd scarcely thought of the where. And his memories of the road they had traveled in Lovell were pretty skimpy. Eddie had been driving John Cullum's car, and Roland had been deep in his own thoughts, concentrating on the things he would say to convince the caretaker to help them.
"Did Ted show you a place before you sent him on?" he asked Sheemie.
"Aye, so he did. Only he didn't know he was showing me. It was a baby-picture … I don't know how to tell you, exactly …
stupid head! Full of cobwebbies!" Sheemie made a fist and clouted himself between the eyes.
Roland took the hand before Sheemie could hit himself again and unrolled the fingers. He did this with surprising gentleness. "No, Sheemie. I think I understand. You found a thought … a memory from when he was a little boy."
Ted had come over to them. "Of course that must be it," he said. "I don't know why I didn't see it before now. Too simple, maybe. I grew up in Milford, and the place where I came out in I960 was barely a spit from there in geographical terms.
Sheemie must have found a memory of a carriage-ride, or maybe a trip on the Hartford Trolley to see my Uncle Jim and Aunt Molly in Bridgeport. Something in my subconscious."
He shook his head. "I knew the place where I came out looked familiar, but of course it was years later. The Merritt Parkway wasn't there when I was a boy."
"Can you show me a picture like that?" Sheemie asked Roland hopefully.
Roland thought once more of the place in Lovell where they'd parked on Route 7, the place where he'd called Chevin of Chayven out of the woods, but it simply wasn't sure enough; there was no landmark that made the place only itself and no other. Not one that he remembered, anyway.
Then another idea came. One that had to do with Eddie.
"Sheemie!"
"Aye, Roland of Gilead, Will Dearborn that was!"
Roland reached out and placed his hands on the sides of Sheemie's head. "Close your eyes, Sheemie, son of Stanley."
Sheemie did as he was told, then reached out his own hands and grasped the sides of Roland's head. Roland closed his own eyes.
"See what I see, Sheemie," he said. "See where we would go.
See it very well."
And Sheemie did.
EIGHTEEN
While they stood there, Roland projecting and Sheemie seeing,
Dani Rostov softly called to Jake.
Once he was before her she hesitated, as if unsure what she would say or do. He began to ask her, but before he could, she stopped his mouth with a kiss. Her lips were amazingly soft.
"That's for good luck," she said, and when she saw his look of amazement and understood the power of what she had done, her timidity lessened. She put her arms around his neck
(still holding her scuffed Pooh Bear in one hand; he felt it soft against his back) and did it again. He felt the push of her tiny, hard breasts and would remember the sensation for the rest of his life. Would remember her for the rest of his life.
"And that's for me." She retreated to Ted Brautigan's side, eyes downcast and cheeks burning red, before he could speak.
Not that he could have, even if his life had depended upon it.
His throat was locked shut.
Ted looked at him and smiled. 'You judge the rest of them by the first one," he said. "Take it from me. I know."
Jake could still say nothing. She might have punched him in the head instead of kissing him on the lips. He was that dazed.
NINETEEN
Fifteen minutes later, four men, one girl, a billy-bumbler, and one dazed, amazed (and very tired) boy stood on the Mall.
They seemed to have the grassy quad to themselves; the rest of the Breakers had disappeared completely. From where he stood, Jake could see the lighted window on the first floor of Corbett Hall where Susannah was tending to her man. Thunder rumbled. Ted spoke now as he had in Thundercap Station's office closet, where the red blazer's brass tag read HEAD OF SHIPPING, back when Eddie's death had been unthinkable: 'Join hands. And concentrate."
Jake started to reach for Dani Rostov's hand, but Dinky shook his head, smiling a little. "Maybe you can hold hands with her another day, hero, but right now you're the monkey in the middle. And your dinh's another one."
"You hold hands with each other," Sheemie said. There was a quiet authority in his voice that Jake hadn't heard before.
"That'll help."
Jake tucked Oy into his shirt. "Roland, were you able to show Sheemie-"
"Look," Roland said, taking his hands. The others now made a tight circle around them. "Look. I think you'll see."
A brilliant seam opened in the darkness, obliterating Sheemie and Ted from Jake's view. For a moment it trembled and darkened, and Jake thought it would disappear. Then it grew bright again and spread wider. He heard, very faindy
(the way you heard things when you were underwater), the sound of a car or truck passing in that other world. And saw a building with a small asphalt lot in front of it. Three cars and a pickup truck were parked there.
Daylight! he thought, dismayed. Because if time never ran backward in the Keystone World, that meant that time had slipped. If that was Keystone World, then it was Saturday, the nineteenth of June, in the year-
"Quick!" Ted shouted from the other side of that brilliant hole in reality. "If you're going, go now! He's going to faint! If you're going-"
Roland yanked Jake forward, his purse bouncing on his back as he did so.
Wait! Jake wanted to shout. Wait, I forgot my stuff!
But it was too late. There was the sensation of big hands squeezing his chest, and he felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs. He thought, Pressure change. There was a sensation of falling up and then he was reeling onto the pavement of the parking lot with his shadow tacked to his heels, squinting and grimacing, wondering in some distant part of his mind how long it had been since his eyes had been exposed to plain old natural daylight. Not since entering the Doorway Cave in pursuit of Susannah, maybe.
Very faintly he heard someone-he thought it was the girl who had kissed him-call Good luck, and then it was gone.
Thunderclap was gone, and the Devar-Toi, and the darkness.
They were America-side, in the parking lot of the place to which Roland's memory and Sheemie's power-boosted by the other four Breakers-had taken them. It was die East Stoneham General Store, where Roland and Eddie had been ambushed by Jack Andolini. Only unless there had been some horrible error that had been twenty-two years earlier. This was June 19th of 1999, and the clock in the window (IT's ALWAYS TIME FOR BOAR's HEAD MEATS! was written in a circle around the face) said it was nineteen minutes of four in the afternoon.
Time was almost up.