"Take a deep breath," said the man with the hard sunburned face. His brilliant blue eyes fastened upon hers, and when they did it was hard to think of anything else. Also, the sensation was pleasant. If this is hypnosis, she thought, they ought to teach it in the public schools. "Hold it, then let it out. And then drive us, for your father's sake."
She pulled in a deep breath as instructed, and suddenly the day seemed brighter-nearly brilliant. And she could hear faint singing voices. Lovely voices. Was the truck's radio on, tuned to some opera program? No time to check. But it was nice, whatever it was. As calming as the deep breath.
Mrs. Tassenbaum pushed in the clutch and re-started the engine. This time she found Reverse on the first try and backed into the road almost smoothly. Her first effort at a forward gear netted her Second instead of First and the truck almost stalled when she eased the clutch out, but then the engine seemed to take pity on her. With a wheeze of loose pistons and a manic rapping from beneath the hood, they began rolling north toward the Stoneham-Lovell line.
"Do you know where Turtleback Lane is?" Roland asked her. Ahead of them, near a sign marked MILLION DOLLAR CAMPGROUND, a battered blue minivan swung out onto the road.
"Yes," she said.
"You're sure?" The last thing the gunslinger wanted was to waste precious time casting about for the back road where King lived.
"Yes. We have friends who live there. The Beckhardts."
For a moment Roland could only grope, knowing he'd heard the name but not where. Then he got it. Beckhardt was the name of the man who owned the cabin where he and Eddie had had their final palaver with John Cullum. He felt a fresh stab of grief in his heart at the thought of Eddie as he'd been on that thundery afternoon, still so strong and vital.
"All right," he said. "I believe you."
She glanced at him across the boy sitting between. 'You're in one hell of a hurry, mister-like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. What very important date are you almost too late for?"
Roland shook his head. "Never mind, just drive." He looked at the clock on the dashboard, but it didn't work, had stopped in the long-ago with the hands pointed at (of course) 9:19. "It may not be too late yet," he said, while ahead of them, unheeded, the blue van began to pull away. It strayed across the white line of Route 7 into the southbound lane and Mrs.
Tassenbaum almost committed a bon mot-something about people who started drinking before five-but then the blue van pulled back into the northbound lane, breasted the next hill, and was gone toward the town of Lovell.
Mrs. Tassenbaum forgot about it. She had more interesting things to think about. For instance-
"You don't have to answer what I'm going to ask now if you don't want to," she said, "but I admit that I'm curious: are you boys walk-ins?"
FIVE
Bryan Smith has spent the last couple of nights-along with his rottweilers, litter-twins he has named Bullet and Pistol-in the Million Dollar Campground, just over the Lovell-Stoneham line. It's nice there by the river (the locals call the rickety wooden structure spanning the water Million Dollar Bridge, which Bryan understands is a joke, and a pretty funny one, by God). Also, folks-hippie-types down from the woods in Sweden, Harrison, and Waterford, mostly-sometimes show up there with drugs to sell. Bryan likes to get mellow, likes to get down, may it doya, and he's down this Saturday afternoon … not a lot, not the way he likes, but enough to give him a good case of the munchies.
They have those Marses'Bars at the CenterLovell Store. Nothing better for the munchies than those.
He pulls out of the campground and onto Route 7 without so much as a glance in either direction, then says "Whoops, forgot again!"
No traffic, though. Later on-especially after the Fourth of July and until Labor Day-there'll be plenty of traffic to contend with, even out here in the boonies, and he'll probably stay closer to home. He knows he isn't much of a driver; one more speeding ticket or fender-bender and he'll probably lose his license for six months. Again.
No problem this time, though; nothing coming but an oldpick-emup, and that baby's almost half a mile back.
"Eat my dust, cowboy!" he says, and giggles. He doesn't know why he said cowboy when the word in his mind was muthafuckah, as in eat my dust muthafuckah, but it sounds good. It sounds right. He sees he's drifted into the other lane and corrects his course.
"Back on the road again!" he cries, and lets loose another highpitched giggle. Back on the road again is a good one, and he always uses it
°n girls. Another good one is when you twist the wheel from side to side, making your car loop back and forth, and you say Ahh jeez, musta had too much cough-syrup! He knows lots of lines like this, even once thought of writing a book called Crazy Road Jokes, wouldn't that be a sketch, Bryan Smith writing a book just like that guy King over in Lovell!
He turns on the radio (the van yawing onto the soft shoulder to the left of the tarvy, throwing up a rooster-tail of dust, but not quite running into the ditch) and gets Steely Dan, singing 'Hey Nineteen." Good one! Yassuh, wicked good one! He drives a little faster in response to the music. He looks into the rearview mirror and sees his dogs, Bullet and Pistol, looking over the rear seat, bright-eyed. For a moment Bryan thinks they 're looking at him, maybe thinking what a good guy he is, then wonders how he can be so stupid. There's a Styrofoam cooler behind the driver's seat, and a pound of fresh hamburger in it. He means to cook it later over a campfire back at Million Dollar. Yes, and a couple more Morses' Bars for dessert, by the hairy oldJesus! Marses"
Bars are wicked good!
"You boys ne'mine that cooler, "Bryan Smith says, speaking to the dogs he can see in the rear-view mirror. This time the minivan pitches instead ofyaioing, crossing the white line as it climbs a blind grade at fifty miles an hour. Luckily-or unluckily, depending on your point of view-nothing is coming the other way; nothing puts a stop to Bryan Smith's northward progress.
"You ne'mine that hamburg, that's my supper. "He says suppah, as John Cullum would, but the face looking back at the bright-eyed dogs from the rearview mirror is the face ofSheemie Ruiz. Almost exactly.
Sheemie could be Bryan Smith's litter-twin.
SIX
Irene Tassenbaum was driving the truck with more assurance now, standard shift or not. She almost wished she didn't have to turn right a quarter of a mile from here, because that would necessitate using the clutch again, this time to downshift. But that was Turtleback Lane right up ahead, and Turtleback was where these boys wanted to go.
Walk-ins! They said so, and she believed it, but who else would? Chip McAvoy, maybe, and surely the Reverend Peterson from that crazy Church of the Walk-Ins down in Stoneham Corners, but anyone else? Her husband, for instance? Nope. Never.
If you couldn't engrave a thing on a microchip, David Tassenbaum didn't believe it was real. She wondered-not for the first time lately-if forty-seven was too old to think about a divorce.
She shifted back to Second without grinding the gears too much, but then, as she turned off the highway, had to shift all the way down to First when the silly old pickup began to grunt and chug. She thought that one of her passengers would make some sort of smart comment (perhaps the boy's mutant dog would even say fuck again), but all the man in the passenger seat said was, "This doesn't look the same."
"When were you here last?" Irene Tassenbaum asked him.
She considered shifting up to second gear again, then decided to leave things just as they were. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it,"
David liked to say.
"It's been awhile," the man admitted. She had to keep sneaking glances at him. There was something strange and exotic about him-especially his eyes. It was as if they'd seen things she'd never even dreamed of.
Stop it, she told herself. He's probably a drugstore cowboy all the way from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
But she kind of doubted that. The boy was odd, as well-him and his exotic crossbreed dog-but they were nothing compared to the man with the haggard face and the strange blue eyes.
"Eddie said it was a loop," the boy said. "Maybe last time you guys came in from the other end."
The man considered this and nodded. "Would the other end be the Bridgton end?" he asked the woman.
"Yes indeed."
The man with the odd blue eyes nodded. "We're going to the writer's house."
"Cara Laughs," she said at once. "It's a beautiful house.
I've seen it from the lake, but I don't know which driveway-"
"It's nineteen," the man said. They were currently passing the one marked 27. From this end of Turdeback Lane, the numbers would go down rather than up.
"What do you want with him, if I may I be so bold?"
It was the boy who answered. "We want to save his life."
SEVEN
Roland recognized the steeply descending driveway at once, even though he'd last seen it under black, thundery skies, and much of his attention had been taken by the brilliant flying taheen. There was no sign of taheen or other exotic wildlife today. The roof of the house below had been dressed with copper instead of shingles at some point during the intervening years, and the wooded area beyond it had become a lawn, but the driveway was the same, with a sign reading CARA LAUGHS on the lefthand side and one bearing the number 19 in large numerals on the right. Beyond was the lake, sparkling blue in the strong afternoon light.