At the very last minute, the boy and thebumbler had eluded them. For yet a little while longer the core of Roland’ska-tet remained unbroken.

Chapter VI:

On Turtleback Lane

One

See this, I do beg ya, and see it verywell, for it’s one of the most beautiful places that still remain in America.

I’d show you a homely dirt lane runningalong a heavily wooded switchback ridge in western Maine, its north and southends spilling onto Route 7 about two miles apart. Just west of this ridge, likea jeweler’s setting, is a deep green dimple in the landscape. At the bottom ofit—the stone in the setting—is Kezar Lake. Like all mountain lakes,it may change its aspect half a dozen times in the course of a single day, forhere the weather is beyond prankish; you could call it half-mad and beperfectly accurate. The locals will be happy to tell you about ice-cream snowflurries that came to this part of the world once in late August (that would be1948) and once spang on the Glorious Fourth (1959). They’ll be even moredelighted to tell you about the tornado that came blasting across the lake’sfrozen surface in January of 1971, sucking up snow and creating a whirlingmini-blizzard that crackled with thunder in its middle. Hard to believe suchcrazy-jane weather, but you could go and see Gary Barker, if you don’t believeme; he’s got the pictures to prove it.

Today the lake at the bottom of the dimpleis blacker than homemade sin, not just reflecting the thunderheads massingoverhead but amplifying their mood. Every now and then a splinter of silverstreaks across that obsidian looking-glass as lightning stabs out of the cloudsoverhead. The sound of thunder rolls through the congested sky west to east,like the wheels of some great stone bucka rolling down an alley in the sky. Thepines and oaks and birches are still and all the world holds its breath. Allshadows have disappeared. The birds have fallen silent. Overhead another ofthose great waggons rolls its solemn course, and in itswake—hark!—we hear an engine. Soon enough John Cullum’s dusty FordGalaxie appears with Eddie Dean’s anxious face rising behind the wheel and theheadlights shining in the premature gathering dark.

Two

Eddie opened his mouth to ask Roland howfar they were going, but of course he knew. Turtleback Lane’s south end wasmarked by a sign bearing a large black 1, and each of the driveways splittingoff lakeward to their left bore another, higher number. They caught glimpses ofthe water through the trees, but the houses themselves were below them on theslope and tucked out of sight. Eddie seemed to taste ozone and electric greasewith every breath he drew, and twice patted the hair on the nape of his neck,sure it would be standing on end. It wasn’t, but knowing it didn’t change thenervous, witchy feeling of exhilaration that kept sweeping through him,lighting up his solar plexus like an overloaded circuit-breaker and spreadingout from there. It was the storm, of course; he just happened to be one ofthose people who feel them coming along the ends of their nerves. But neverone’s approach as strongly as this.

It’s not all the storm, and you know it.

No, of course not. Although he thought allthose wild volts might somehow have facilitated his contact with Susannah. Itcame and went like the reception you sometimes got from distant radio stationsat night, but since their meeting with

(Ye Child of Roderick, ye spoiled, yelost)

Chevin of Chayven, it had become muchstronger. Because this whole part of Maine was thin, he suspected, and close tomany worlds. Just as their ka-tet was close to whole again. For Jake was withSusannah, and the two of them seemed to be safe enough for the time being, witha solid door between them and their pursuers. Yet there was something ahead ofthose two, as well—something Susannah either didn’t want to talk about orcouldn’t make clear. Even so, Eddie had sensed both her horror of it and herterror that it might come back, and he thought he knew what it was: Mia’s baby.Which had been Susannah’s as well in some way he still didn’t fully understand.Why an armed woman should be afraid of an infant, Eddie didn’t know, but he wassure that if she was, there must be a good reason for it.

They passed a sign that said FENN, 11, andanother that said ISRAEL, 12. Then they came around a curve and Eddie stampedon the Galaxie’s brakes, bringing the car to a hard and dusty stop. Parked atthe side of the road beside a sign reading BECKHARDT, 13, was a familiar Fordpickup truck and an even more familiar man leaning nonchalantly against thetruck’s rust-spotted longbed, dressed in cuffed bluejeans and an ironed bluechambray shirt buttoned all the way to the closeshaved, wattled neck. He alsowore a Boston Red Sox cap tilted just a little to one side as if to say Igot the drop on you, partner. He was smoking a pipe, the blue smoke risingand seeming to hang suspended around his seamed and good-humored face on thebreathless pre-storm air.

All this Eddie saw with the clarity of hisamped-up nerves, aware that he was smiling as you do when you come across anold friend in a strange place—the Pyramids of Egypt, the marketplace inold Tangiers, maybe an island off the coast of Formosa, or Turtleback Lane inLovell on a thunderstruck afternoon in the summer of 1977. And Roland was alsosmiling. Old long, tall, and ugly—smiling! Wonders never ceased, itseemed.

They got out of the car and approached JohnCullum. Roland raised a fist to his forehead and bent his knee a little. “Hile,John! I see you very well.”

“Ayuh, see you, too,” John Cullum said.“Clear as day.” He skimmed a salute outward from beneath the brim of his capand above the tangle of his eyebrows. Then he dipped his chin in Eddie’sdirection. “Young fella.”

“Long days and pleasant nights,” Eddiesaid, and touched his knuckles to his brow. He was not from this world, notanymore, and it was a relief to give up the pretense.

“That’s a pretty thing to say,” Johnremarked. Then: “I beat you here. Kinda thought I might.”

Roland looked around at the woods on bothsides of the road, and at the lane of gathering darkness in the sky above it.“I don’t think this is quite the place…?” In his voice was the barest touch ofa question.

“Nope, it ain’t quite the place you want tofinish up,” John agreed, puffing his pipe. “I passed where you want to finishup on m’way in, and I tell you this: if you mean to palaver, we better do ithere rather than there. You go up there, you won’t be able t’do nawthin butgape. I tell you, I ain’t never seen the beat of it.” For a moment his faceshone like the face of a child who’s caught his first firefly in a jar andEddie saw that he meant every word.

“Why?” he asked. “What’s up there? Is itwalk-ins? Or is it a door?” The idea occurred to him… and then seized him. “It isa door, isn’t it? And it’s open!”

John began to shake his head, then appearedto reconsider. “Might be a door,” he said, stretching the noun out until itbecame something luxurious, like a sigh at the end of a long hard day: doe-ahh.“Doesn’t exactly look like a door, but… ayuh. Could be. Somewhere inthat light?” He appeared to calculate. “Ayuh. But I think you boys want topalaver, and if we go up there to Cara Laughs, there won’t be no palaver; justyou standin there with your jaws dropped.” Cullum threw back his head andlaughed. “Me, too!”

“What’s Cara Laughs?” Eddie asked.

John shrugged. “A lot of folks withlakefront properties name their houses. I think it’s because they pay s’muchfor em, they want a little more back. Anyway, Cara’s empty right now. Familynamed McCray from Washington D.C. owns it, but they gut it up for sale. They’verun onto some hard luck. Fella had a stroke, and she…” He made a bottle-tippingmotion.