Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [241]
“Yeah, but this is New York we’re talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals.”
“They won’t steal from you. Take the gun.”
Eddie looked into Roland’s eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. “You’ve got a feeling.”
“A hunch, yes.”
“Ka at work?”
Roland shrugged. “It’s always at work.”
“All right,” Eddie said. “And Roland—if I don’t make it back, take care of Suze.”
“Your job is to make sure I don’t have to.”
No, Eddie thought. My job is to protect the rose.
He turned to the door. He had a thousand more questions, but Roland was right, the time to ask them was done.
“Eddie, if you really don’t want to—”
“No,” he said. “I do want to.” He raised his left hand and gave a thumbs-up. “When you see me do that, open the box.”
“All right.”
Roland speaking from behind him. Because now it was just Eddie and the door. The door with UNFOUND written on it in some strange and lovely language. Once he’d read a novel called The Door Into Summer, by…who? One of the science-fiction guys he was always dragging home from the library, one of his old reliables, perfect for the long afternoons of summer vacation. Murray Leinster, Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison…Robert Heinlein. He thought it was Heinlein who’d written The Door Into Summer. Henry always ragging him about the books he brought home, calling him the wittle sissy, the wittle bookworm, asking him if he could read and jerk off at the same time, wanting to know how he could sit fuckin still for so long with his nose stuck in some made-up piece of shit about rockets and time machines. Henry older than him. Henry covered with pimples that were always shiny with Noxzema and Stri-Dex. Henry getting ready to go into the Army. Eddie younger. Eddie bringing books home from the library. Eddie thirteen years old, almost the age Jake is now. It’s 1977 and he’s thirteen and on Second Avenue and the taxis are shiny yellow in the sun. A black man wearing Walkman earphones is walking past Chew Chew Mama’s, Eddie can see him, Eddie knows the black man is listening to Elton John singing—what else?—“Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” The sidewalk is crowded. It’s late afternoon and people are going home after another day in the steel arroyos of Calla New York, where they grow money instead of rice, can ya say prime rate. Women looking amiably weird in expensive business suits and sneakers; their high heels are in their gunna because the workday is done and they’re going home. Everyone seems to be smiling because the light is so bright and the air is so warm, it’s summer in the city and somewhere there’s the sound of a jackhammer, like on that old Lovin’ Spoonful song. Before him is a door into the summer of ’77, the cabbies are getting a buck and a quarter on the drop and thirty cents every fifth of a mile thereafter, it was less before and it’ll be more after but this is now, the dancing point of now. The space shuttle with the teacher on board hasn’t blown up. John Lennon is still alive, although he won’t be much longer if he doesn’t stop messing with that wicked heroin, that China White. As for Eddie Dean, Edward Cantor Dean, he knows nothing about heroin. A few cigarettes are his only vice (other than trying to jack off, at which he will not be successful for almost another year). He’s thirteen. It’s 1977 and he has exactly four hairs on his chest, he counts them religiously each morning, hoping for big number five. It’s the summer after the Summer of the Tall Ships. It’s a late afternoon in the month of June and he can hear a happy tune. The tune is coming from the speakers over the doorway of the Tower of Power record shop, it’s Mungo Jerry singing “In the Summertime,” and—
Suddenly it was all real to him, or as real as he thought he needed it to be. Eddie raised his left hand and popped up his thumb: let’s go. Behind him, Roland had sat down and eased the box out of the pink bag. And when Eddie gave him the thumbs-up, the gunslinger opened the box.
Eddie’s ears were immediately