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 getdown,may it do ya, 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 Center Lovell 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 old pick-em-up, and that baby’s
almost half a mile back.
“Eat my dust, cowboy!” he says, and giggles. He doesn’t know why he saidcowboywhen
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 againis a
good one, and he always uses it on 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 thatbe 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,wickedgood 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
Marses’ Bars for dessert, by the hairy old Jesus! Marses’ Bars are wickedgood!
“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 of yawing, 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 sayssuppah,as John Cullum would, but
the face looking back at the bright-eyed dogs from the rearview mirror is the face of
Sheemie 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, andshe 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 gearstoo 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 sayfuck 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 Turtleback 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 readingCARA LAUGHS on the lefthand side and one bearing the number19 in large numerals on the right. Beyond was the lake, sparkling blue in the strong
afternoon light.
From the lawn came the blat of a hard-working small engine. Roland looked at Jake and
was dismayed by the boy’s pale cheeks and wide, frightened eyes.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“He’s not here, Roland. Not him, not any of his family. Just the man cutting the grass.”
“Nonsense, you can’t—” Mrs. Tassenbaum began.
“Iknow! ” Jake shouted at her. “Iknow, lady!”
Roland was looking at Jake with a frank and horrified sort of fascination…but in his
current state, the boy either did not understand the look or missed it entirely.
Why are you lying, Jake?the gunslinger thought. And then, on the heels of that:He’s not.
“What if it’s already happened?” Jake demanded, and yes, he was worried about King, but
Roland didn’t think that wasall he was worried about. “What if he’s dead and his family’s
not here because the police called them, and—”
“It hasn’t happened,” Roland said, but that was all of which he was sure.What do you
know, Jake, and why won’t you tell me?
There was no time to wonder about it now.
Eight
The man with the blue eyes sounded calm as he spoke to the boy, but he didn’tlook calm to
Irene Tassenbaum; not at all. And those singing voices she’d first noticed outside the East
Stoneham General Store had changed. Their song was still sweet, but wasn’t there a note of
desperation in it now, as well? She thought so. A high, pleading quality that made her
temples throb.
“How can youknow that?” the boy called Jake shouted at the man—his father, she
assumed. “How can you be so fucking sure?”
Instead of answering the kid’s question, the one called Roland looked ather . Mrs.
Tassenbaum felt the skin of her arms and back break out in gooseflesh.
“Drive down, sai, may it do ya.”
She looked doubtfully at the steep slope of the Cara Laughs driveway. “If I do, I might not
get this bucket of bolts back up.”
“You’ll have to,” Roland said.
Nine
The man cutting the grass was King’s bondservant, Roland surmised, or whatever passed
for such in this world. He was white-haired under his straw hat but straight-backed and hale, wearing his years with little effort. When the truck drove down the steep driveway to the