Song of Susannah (Page 58)

Eddie allowed himself to be led back into the cabin’s combination kitchen and sitting room. Did he himself understand what he was talking about? Or how Aaron Deepneau – presumably a lifelong New Yorker – could assert with such casual assurance that Co-Op City was in the Bronx when Eddie knew it to be in Brooklyn?

Not entirely, but he understood enough to scare the hell out of him. Other worlds. Perhaps an infinite number of worlds, all of them spinning on the axle that was the Tower. All of them were similar, but therewere differences. Different politicians on the currency. Different makes of automobiles – Takuro Spirits instead of Datsuns, for instance – and different major league baseball teams. In these worlds, one of which had been decimated by a plague called the superflu, you could time-hop back and forth, past and future. Because…

Because in some vital way, they aren’t the real world. Or if they’re real, they’re not the key world.

Yes, that felt closer. He had come from one of those other worlds, he was convinced of it. So had Susannah. And Jakes One and Two, the one who had fallen and the one who had been literally pulled out of the monster’s mouth and saved.

But this world was the key world. And he knew it because he was a key-makerby trade:Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

Beryl Evans? Not quite real. Claudia y Inez Bachman? Real.

World with Co-Op City in Brooklyn? Not quite real. World with Co-Op City in the Bronx? Real, hard as it was to swallow.

And he had an idea that Callahan had crossed over from the real world to one of the others long before he had embarked on his highways in hiding; had crossed without even knowing it. He’d said something about officiating at some little boy’s funeral, and how, after that…

"After that he said everything changed," Eddie said as he sat down. "Thateverything changed. "

"Yes, yes," Aaron Deepneau said, patting him on the shoulder. "Sit quietly now."

"Pere went from a seminary in Boston to Lowell, real. ‘Salem’s Lot, not real. Made up by a writer named – "

"I’m going to get a cold compress for your forehead."

"Good idea," Eddie said, closing his eyes. His mind was whirling. Real, not real. Live, Memorex. John Cullum’s retired professor friend was right: the column of truthdid have a hole in it.

Eddie wondered if anyone knew how deep that hole went.

Nine

It was a different Calvin Tower who came back to the cabin with Roland fifteen minutes later, a quiet and chastened Calvin Tower. He asked Deepneau if Deepneau had written a bill of sale, and when Deepneau nodded, Tower said nothing, only nodded back. He went to the fridge and returned with several cans of Blue Ribbon beer and handed them around. Eddie refused, not wanting to put alcohol on top of the Percs.

Tower did not offer a toast, but drank off half his beer at a single go. "It isn’t every day I get called the scum of the earth by a man who promises to make me a millionaire and also to relieve me of my heart’s heaviest burden. Aaron, will this thing stand up in court?"

Aaron Deepneau nodded. Rather regretfully, Eddie thought.

"All right, then," Tower said. Then, after a pause: "All right, let’s do it." But still he didn’t sign.

Roland spoke to him in that other language. Tower flinched, then signed his name in a quick scrawl, his lips tucked into a line so narrow his mouth seemed almost not to be there. Eddie signed for the Tet Corporation, marveling at how strange the pen felt in his hand – he couldn’t remember when last he had held one.

When the thing was done, sai Tower reverted – looked at Eddie and cried in a cracked voice that was almost a shriek, "There! I’m a pauper! Give me my dollar! I’m promised a dollar! I feel a need to take a shit coming on and I need something to wipe my ass with!"

Then he put his hands over his face. He sat like that for several seconds, while Roland folded the signed paper (Deepneau had witnessed both signatures) and put it in his pocket.

When Tower lowered his hands again, his eyes were dry and his face was composed. There even seemed to be a touch of color in his formerly ashy cheeks. "I think I actually do feel a little better," he said. He turned to Aaron. "Do you suppose these twocockuhs might be right?"

"I think it’s a real possibility," Aaron said, smiling.

Eddie, meanwhile, had thought of a way to find out for sure if it really was these two men who would save Callahan from the Hitler Brothers – or almost for sure. One of them had said…

"Listen," he said. "There’s a certain phrase, Yiddish, I think.Gai cocknif en yom. Do you know what it means? Either of you?"

Deepneau threw back his head and laughed. "Yeah, it’s Yiddish, all right. My Ma used to say it all the time when she was mad at us. It means go shit in the ocean."

Eddie nodded at Roland. In the next couple of years, one of these men – probably Tower – would buy a ring with the wordsEx Libris carved into it. Maybe – how crazy wasthis  – because Eddie Dean himself had put the idea into Cal Tower’s head. And Tower – selfish, acquisitive, miserly, book-greedy Calvin Tower – would save Father Callahan’s life while that ring was on his finger. He was going to be shit-scared (Deepneau, too), but he was going to do it. And –

At that point Eddie happened to look at the pen with which Tower had signed the bill of sale, a perfectly ordinary Bic Clic, and the enormous truth of what had just happened struck home. They owned it. They owned the vacant lot.They, not the Sombra Corporation.They owned the rose!

He felt as if he’d just taken a hard shot to the head. The rose belonged to the Tet Corporation, which was the firm of Deschain, Dean, Dean, Chambers & Oy. It was now their responsibility, for better or for worse. This round they had won. Which did not change the fact that he had a bullet in his leg.