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“They understood honor, yes,” Roland said slowly, thinking of all the vanished others.

“Did it get them any further than gunslinging got my brother?”

The gunslinger said nothing.

“I know you,” Eddie said. “I seen lots of guys like you. You’re just another kook singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ with a flag in one hand and a gun in the other. I don’t want no honor. I just want a chicken dinner and fix. In that order. So I’m telling you: go on through. You can. But the minute you’re gone, I’m gonna kill the rest of you.”

The gunslinger said nothing.

Eddie smiled crookedly and brushed the tears from his cheeks with the backs of his hands. “You want to know what we call this back home?”

“What?”

“A Mexican stand-off.”

For a moment they only looked at each other, and then Roland looked sharply into the doorway. They had both been partially aware—Roland rather more than Eddie—that there had been another of those swerves, this time to the left. Here was an array of sparkling jewelry. Some was under protective glass but because most wasn’t, the gunslinger supposed it was trumpery stuff . . . what Eddie would have called costume jewelry. The dark brown hands examined a few things in what seemed an only cursory manner, and then another salesgirl appeared. There had been some conversation which neither of them really noticed, and the Lady (some Lady, Eddie thought) asked to see something else. The salesgirl went away, and that was when Roland’s eyes swung sharply back.

The brown hands reappeared, only now they held a purse. It opened. And suddenly the hands were scooping things—seemingly, almost certainly, at random—into the purse.

“Well, you’re collecting quite a crew, Roland,” Eddie said, bitterly amused. “First you got your basic white junkie, and then you got your basic black shoplif—”

But Roland was already moving toward the doorway between the worlds, moving swiftly, not looking at Eddie at all.

“I mean it!” Eddie screamed. “You go through and I’ll cut your throat, I’ll cut your fucking thr—”

Before he could finish, the gunslinger was gone. All that was left of him was his limp, breathing body lying upon the beach.

For a moment Eddie only stood there, unable to believe that Roland had done it, had really gone ahead and done this idiotic thing in spite of his promise—his sincere fucking guarantee, as far as that went—of what the consequences would be.

He stood for a moment, eyes rolling like the eyes of a frightened horse at the onset of a thunderstorm . . . except of course there was no thunderstorm, except for the one in the head.

All right. All right, goddammit.

There might only be a moment. That was all the gunslinger might give him, and Eddie damned well knew it. He glanced at the door and saw the black hands freeze with a gold necklace half in and half out of a purse that already glittered like a pirate’s cache of treasure. Although he could not hear it, Eddie sensed that Roland was speaking to the owner of the black hands.

He pulled the knife from the gunslinger’s purse and then rolled over the limp, breathing body which lay before the doorway. The eyes were open but blank, rolled up to the whites.

“Watch, Roland!” Eddie screamed. That monotonous, idiotic, never-ending wind blew in his ears. Christ, it was enough to drive anyone bugshit. “Watch very closely! I want to complete your fucking education! I want to show you what happens when you fuck over the Dean brothers!”

He brought the knife down to the gunslinger’s throat.

CHAPTER 2

Ringing the Changes

1

August, 1959:

When the intern came outside half an hour later, he found Julio leaning against the ambulance which was still parked in the emergency bay of Sisters of Mercy Hospital on 23rd Street. The heel of one of Julio’s pointy-toed boots was hooked over the front fender. He had changed to a pair of glaring pink pants and a blue shirt with his name written in gold stitches over the left pocket: his bowling league outfit.