Song of Susannah - Stephen King [62]
John led them onto the way into the woods and quickly down it, away from the rising pillars of thick dark smoke and the approaching whine of the sirens.
* * *
Four
They hadn’t gone even a quarter of a mile before Eddie began seeing blue glints through the trees. The path was slippery with pine needles, and when they came to the final slope—the one leading down to a long and narrow lake of surpassing loveliness—Eddie saw that someone had built a birch railing. Beyond it was a stub of dock jutting out into the water. Tied to the dock was a motorboat.
“That’s mine,” John said. “I come over for m’groceries and a bite of lunch. Didn’t expect no excitement.”
“Well, you got it,” Eddie said.
“Ayuh, that’s a true thing. Mind this last bit, if you don’t want to go on your keister.” John went nimbly down the final slope, holding the rail for balance and sliding rather than walking. On his feet was a pair of old scuffed workboots that would have looked perfectly at home in Mid-World, Eddie thought.
He went next himself, favoring his bad leg. Roland brought up the rear. From behind them came a sudden explosion, as sharp and limber as that first high-powered rifleshot but far louder.
“That’d be Chip’s propane,” John said.
“Cry pardon?” Roland asked.
“Gas,” Eddie said quietly. “He means gas.”
“Ayuh, stove-gas,” John agreed. He stepped into his boat, grabbed the Evinrude’s starter-cord, gave it a yank. The engine, a sturdy little twenty-horse sewing machine of a thing, started on the first pull. “Get in here, boys, and let’s us vacate t’ area,” he grunted.
Eddie got in. Roland paused for a moment to tap his throat three times. Eddie had seen him perform this ritual before when about to cross open water, and reminded himself to ask about it. He never got the chance; before the question occurred to him again, death had slipped between them.
* * *
Five
The skiff moved as quietly and as gracefully over the water as any motor-powered thing can, skating on its own reflection beneath a sky of summer’s most pellucid blue. Behind them the plume of dark smoke sullied that blue, rising higher and higher, spreading as it went. Dozens of folk, most of them in shorts or bathing costumes, stood upon the banks of this little lake, turned in the smoke’s direction, hands raised to shade against the sun. Few if any marked the steady (and completely unshowy) passage of the motorboat.
“This is Keywadin Pond, just in case you were wonderin,” John said. He pointed ahead of them, where another gray tongue of dock stuck out. Beside this one was a neat little boathouse, white with green trim, its overhead door open. As they neared it, Roland and Eddie could see both a canoe and a kayak bobbing inside, at tether.
“Boathouse is mine,” the man in the flannel shirt added. The boat in boathouse came out in a way impossible to reproduce with mere letters—bwut would probably come closest—but which both men recognized. It was the way the word was spoken in the Calla.
“Looks well-kept,” Eddie said. Mostly to be saying something.
“Oh, ayuh,” John said. “I do caretakin, camp-checkin, some rough carpenterin. Wouldn’t look good f’business if I had a fallin-down boathouse, would it?”
Eddie smiled. “Suppose not.”
“My place is about half a mile back from the water. Name’s John Cullum.” He held out his right hand to Roland, continuing to steer a straight course away from the rising pillar of smoke and toward the boathouse with the other.
Roland took