“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.
FIVE
The coffee he made was better by far than any they’d had in Calla Bryn Sturgis, better than any Roland had had since his days in Mejis, Drop-riding out on the Rim. There were also
strawberries. Cultivated and store-bought, Deepneau said, but Eddie was transported by their
sweetness. The three of them sat in the kitchen of Jaffords Rentals’ Cabin #19, drinking coffee and dipping the big strawberries in the sugarbowl. By the end of their palaver, all three men
looked like assassins who’d dabbled the tips of their fingers in the spilled blood of their latest victim. Deepneau’s unloaded gun lay forgotten on the windowsill.
Deepneau had been out for a walk on the Rocket Road when he heard gunfire, loud and clear,
and then explosions. He’d hurried back to the cabin (not that he was capable of too much hurry in his current condition, he said), and when he saw the smoke starting to rise in the south, had
decided that returning to the boathouse might be wise, after all. By then he was almost positive it was the Italian hoodlum, Andolini, so —
“What do you mean, you returned to the boathouse?” Eddie asked.
Deepneau shifted his feet under the table. He was extremely pallid, with purple patches
beneath his eyes and only a few wisps of hair, fine as dandelion fluff, on his head. Eddie
remembered Tower’s telling him that Deepneau had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of
years ago. He didn’t look great today, but Eddie had seen folks — especially in the City of Lud
— who looked a lot worse. Jake’s old pal Gasher had been just one of them.
“Aaron?” Eddie asked. “What did you mean — ”
“I heard the question,” he said, a trifle irritably. “We got a note via general delivery, or rather Cal did, suggesting we move out of the cabin to someplace adjacent, and keep a lower profile in general. It was from a man named Callahan. Do you know him?”
Roland and Eddie nodded.
“This Callahan . . . you could say he took Cal to the woodshed.”
Cal, Calla, Callahan, Eddie thought, and sighed.
“Cal’s a decent man in most ways, but he does not enjoy being taken to the woodshed. We did move down to the boathouse for a few days . . .” Deepneau paused, possibly engaging in a brief struggle with his conscience. Then he said, “Two days, actually. Only two. And then Cal said we were crazy, being in the damp was making his arthritis worse, and he could hear me wheezing.
‘Next thing I’ll have you in that little shitpot hospital over in Norway,’ he said, ‘with pneumonia as well as cancer.’ He said there wasn’t a chance in hell of Andolini finding us up here, as long as the young guy — you” — he pointed a gnarled and strawberry-stained finger at Eddie — “kept his mouth shut. ‘Those New York hoodlums can’t find their way north of Westport without a
compass,’ he said.”
Eddie groaned. For once in his life he absolutely loathed being right about something.
“He said we’d been very careful. And when I said, ‘Well, somebody found us, this Callahan found us,’ Cal said well of course.” Again the finger pointed at Eddie. ” You must have told Mr.
Callahan where to look for the zip code, and after that it was easy. Then Cal said, ‘And the post office was the best he could do, wasn’t it? Believe me, Aaron, we’re safe out here. No one knows where we are except the rental agent, and she’s back in New York.”
Deepneau peered at them from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, then dipped a strawberry and ate
half of it.
” Is that how you found us? The rental agent?”
“No,” Eddie said. “A local. He took us right to you, Aaron.”
Deepneau sat back. “Ouch.”
“Ouch is right,” Eddie said. “So you moved back into the cabin, and Cal went right on buying books instead of hiding out here and reading one. Correct?”
Deepneau dropped his eyes to the tablecloth. “You have to understand that Cal is very
dedicated. Books are his life.”
“No,” Eddie said evenly, “Cal isn’t dedicated. Cal is obsessed, that’s what Cal is.”
“I understand that you are a scrip,” Roland said, speaking for the first time since Deepneau had led them into the cabin. He had lit another of Cullum’s cigarettes (after plucking the filter off as the caretaker had shown him) and now sat smoking with what looked to Eddie like absolutely no
satisfaction at all.
“A scrip? I don’t . . .”
“A lawyer.”
“Oh. Well, yes. But I’ve been retired from practice since — ”
“We need you to come out of retirement long enough to draw up a certain paper,” Roland said, and then explained what sort of paper he wanted. Deepneau was nodding before the gunslinger
had done more than get started, and Eddie assumed Tower had already told his friend this part of it. That was okay. What he didn’t like was the expression on the old fella’s face. Still, Deepneau let Roland finish. He hadn’t forgotten the basics of relating to potential clients, it seemed, retired or not.
When he was sure Roland was finished, Deepneau said: “I feel I must tell you that Calvin has decided to hold onto that particular piece of property a little longer.”