Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [250]
He passed it to Eddie, who looked at the plastic-protected cover and felt his heart stop.
“What?” Tower asked. He set his coffee cup down with a bang. “What’s wrong?”
Eddie didn’t reply. The cover illustration showed a small rounded building like a Quonset hut, only made of wood and thatched with pine boughs. Standing off to one side was an Indian brave wearing buckskin pants. He was shirtless, holding a tomahawk to his chest. In the background, an old-fashioned steam locomotive was charging across the prairie, boiling gray smoke into a blue sky.
The title of this book was The Dogan. The author was Benjamin Slightman Jr.
From some great distance, Tower was asking him if he was going to faint. From only slightly closer by, Eddie said that he wasn’t. Benjamin Slightman Jr. Ben Slightman the Younger, in other words. And—
He pushed Tower’s pudgy hand away when it tried to take the book back. Then Eddie used his own finger to count the letters in the author’s name. There were, of course, nineteen.
Ten
He swallowed another cup of Tower’s coffee, this time without the Half and Half. Then he took the plastic-wrapped volume in hand once more.
“What makes it special?” he asked. “I mean, it’s special to me because I met someone recently whose name is the same as the name of the guy who wrote this. But—”
An idea struck Eddie, and he turned to the back flap, hoping for a picture of the author. What he found instead was a curt two-line author bio: “BENJAMIN SLIGHTMAN JR. is a rancher in Montana. This is his second novel.” Below this was a drawing of an eagle, and a slogan: BUY WAR BONDS!
“But why’s it special to you? What makes it worth seventy-five hundred bucks?”
Tower’s face kindled. Fifteen minutes before he had been in mortal terror for his life, but you’d never know it looking at him now, Eddie thought. Now he was in the grip of his obsession. Roland had his Dark Tower; this man had his rare books.
He held it so Eddie could see the cover. “The Dogan, right?”
“Right.”
Tower flipped the book open and pointed to the inner flap, also under plastic, where the story was summarized. “And here?”
“ ‘The Dogan,’ ” Eddie read. “ ‘A thrilling tale of the old west and one Indian brave’s heroic effort to survive.’ So?”
“Now look at this!” Tower said triumphantly, and turned to the title page. Here Eddie read:
The Hogan
Benjamin Slightman Jr.
“I don’t get it,” Eddie said. “What’s the big deal?”
Tower rolled his eyes. “Look again.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what—”
“No, look again. I insist. The joy is in the discovery, Mr. Dean. Any collector will tell you the same. Stamps, coins, or books, the joy is in the discovery.”
He flipped back to the cover again, and this time Eddie saw it. “The title on the front’s misprinted, isn’t it? Dogan instead of Hogan.”
Tower nodded happily. “A hogan is an Indian home of the type illustrated on the front. A dogan is…well, nothing. The misprinted cover makes the book somewhat valuable, but now…look at this…”
He turned to the copyright page and handed the book to Eddie. The copyright date was 1943, which of course explained the eagle and the slogan on the author-bio flap. The title of the book was given as The Hogan, so that seemed all right. Eddie was about to ask when he got it for himself.
“They left the ‘Jr.’ off the author’s name, didn’t they?”
“Yes! Yes!” Tower was almost hugging himself. “As if the book had actually been written by the author’s father! In fact, once when I was at a bibliographic convention in Philadelphia, I explained this book’s particular situation to an attorney who gave a lecture on copyright law, and this guy said that Slightman Jr.’s father might actually be able to assert right of ownership over this book because of a simple typographical error! Amazing, don’t you think?”
“Totally,” Eddie said, thinking Slightman the Elder. Thinking Slightman the Younger. Thinking about how Jake had become fast friends with the latter and wondering why this gave him such a bad feeling now, sitting here and drinking coffee