Eddie wrenched the locking bar aside, and used Roland’s knife to cut the elastic cords. Then he drew the wheelchair out of the trunk, examined it, unfolded it, and engaged the support which ran across the back at seat-level. “Voila!” he said.
Susannah had propped herself on one hand-Jake thought she looked a little like the woman in this Andrew Wyeth painting he liked, Christina ’s World-and was examining the chair with some wonder.
“God almighty, it looks so little ’ light!”
“Modem technology at its finest, darlin,” Eddie said. “It’s what we fought Vietnam for. Hop in.” He bent to help her. She didn’t resist him, but her face was set and frowning as he lowered her into the seat. Like she expected the chair to collapse under her, Jake thought. As she ran her hands over the arms of her new ride, her face gradually relaxed.
Jake wandered off a little, walking down another row of cars, running his fingers over their hoods, leaving trails of dust. Oy padded after him, pausing once to lift his leg and squirt a tire, as if he had been doing it all his life.
“Make you homesick, honey?” Susannah asked from behind Jake. “Probably thought you’d never see an honest-to-God American automobile again, am I right?”
Jake considered this and decided she was not right. It had never crossed his mind that he would remain in Roland’s world forever; that he might never see another car. He didn’t think that would bother him, actually, but he also didn’t think it was in the cards. Not yet, anyway. There was a certain vacant lot in the New York when he had come from. It was on the comer of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. Once there had been a deli there-Tom and Gerry’s, Party Platters Our Specialty-but now it was just rubble, and weeds, and broken glass, and…
… and a rose. Just a single wild rose growing in a vacant lot where a bunch of condos were scheduled to go up at some point, but Jake had an idea that there was nothing quite like it growing anywhere else on Earth. Maybe not on any of those other worlds Roland had mentioned, either. There were roses as one approached the Dark Tower; roses by the billion, according to Eddie, great bloody acres of them. He had seen them in a dream. Still, Jake suspected that his rose was different even from those… and that until its fate was decided, one way or the other, he was not done with the world of cars and TVs and policemen who wanted to know if you had any identification and what your parents’ names were.
And speaking of parents, I may not be done with them, either, Jake thought. The idea hurried his heartbeat with a mixture of hope and alarm.
They stopped halfway down the row of cars, Jake staring blankly across a wide street (Gage Boulevard, he assumed) as he considered these things. Now Roland and Eddie caught up to them.
“This baby’s gonna be great after a couple of months pushing the Iron Maiden,” Eddie said with a grin. “Bet you could damn near puff it along.” He blew a deep breath at the back of the wheelchair to demonstrate. Jake thought of telling Eddie that there were probably others back there in the “crip spaces” with motors in them, then realized what Eddie must have known right away: their batteries would be dead.
Susannah ignored him for the time being; it was Jake she was interested in. “You didn’t answer me, sug. All these cars get you homesick?”
“Nah. But I was curious about whether or not they were all cars I knew. I thought maybe… if this version of 1986 grew out of some other world than my 1977, there’d be a way to tell. But I can’t tell. Because things change so dam fast. Even in nine years…” He shrugged, then looked at Eddie. “You might be able to, though. I mean, you actually lived in 1986.”
Eddie grunted. “I lived through it, but I didn’t exactly observe it. I was fucked to the sky most of the time. Still… I suppose…”
Eddie started pushing Susannah along the smooth macadam of the parking lot again, pointing to cars as they passed them. “Ford Explorer… Chevrolet Caprice… and that one there’s an old Pontiac, you can tell because of the split grille-”
“Pontiac Bonneville,” Jake said. He was amused and a little touched by the wonder in Susannah’s eyes-most of these cars must look as futuristic to her as Buck Rogers scout-ships. That made him wonder how Roland felt about them, and Jake looked around.
The gunslinger showed no interest in the cars at all. He was gazing across the street, into the park, toward the turnpike… except Jake didn’t think he was actually looking at any of those things. Jake had an idea that Roland was simply looking into his own thoughts. If so, the expression on his face suggested that he wasn’t finding anything good there.
“That’s one of those little Chrysler K’s,” Eddie said, pointing, “and that’s a Subaru. Mercedes SEL 450, excellent, the car of champions… Mustang… Chrysler Imperial, good shape but must be older'n God-”
“Watch it, boy,” Susannah said, with a touch of what Jake thought was real asperity in her voice. “I recognize that one. Looks new to me.”
“Sorry, Suze. Really. This one’s a Cougar… another Chevy… and one more… Topeka loves General Motors, big fuckin surprise there… Honda Civic… VW Rabbit… a Dodge… a Ford… a-”
Eddie stopped, looking at a little car near the end of the row, white with red trim. “A Takuro,” he said, mostly to himself. He went around to look at the trunk. “A Takuro Spirit, to be exact. Ever hear of that make and model, Jake of New York?"
Jake shook his head.
“Me, neither,” he said. “Me fucking neither.”
Eddie began pushing Susannah toward Gage Boulevard (Roland with them but still mostly off in his own private world, walking when they walked, stopping where they stopped). Just shy of the lot’s automated entrance (stop TAKE TICKET), Eddie halted.
“At this rate, we’ll be old before we get to yonder park and dead before we raise the turnpike,” Susannah said.
This time Eddie didn’t apologize, didn’t seem even to hear her. He was looking at the bumper sticker on the front of a rusty old AMC Pacer. The sticker was blue and white, like the little wheelchair signs marking the “crip spaces.” Jake squatted for a better look, and when Oy dropped his head on Jake’s knee, the boy stroked him absently. With his other hand he reached out and touched the sticker, as if to verify its reality. kansas city monarchs, it said. The 0 in Monarchs was a baseball with speedlines drawn out behind it, as if it were leaving the park.
Eddie said: “Check me if I’m wrong on this, sport, because I know almost zilch about baseball west of Yankee Stadium, but shouldn’t that say Kansas City Royals? You know, George Brett and all that?”
Jake nodded. He knew the Royals, and he knew Brett, although he had been a young player in Jake’s when and must have been a fairly old one in Eddie’s.
“Kansas City Athletics, you mean,” Susannah said, sounding bewildered. Roland ignored it all; he was still cruising in his own personal ozone layer.
“Not by '86, darlin,” Eddie said kindly. “By '86 the Athletics were in Oakland.” He glanced from the bumper sticker to Jake. “Minor-league team, maybe?” he asked. “Triple A?”
“The Triple A Royals are still the Royals,” Jake said. “They play in Omaha. Come on, let’s go.”
And although he didn’t know about the others, Jake himself went on with a lighter heart. Maybe it was stupid, but he was relieved. He didn’t believe that this terrible plague was waiting up ahead for his world, because there were no Kansas City Monarchs in his world. Maybe that wasn’t enough information upon which to base a conclusion, but it felt true. And it was an enormous relief to be able to believe that his mother and father weren’t slated to die of a germ people called Captain Trips and be burned in a… a landfill, or something.
Except that wasn’t quite a sure thing, even if this wasn’t the 1986 version of his 1977 world. Because even if this awful plague had happened in a world where there were cars called Takuro Spirits and George Brett played for the K.C. Monarchs, Roland said the trouble was spreading… that things like the superflu were eating through the fabric of existence like battery acid eating its way into a piece of cloth.