Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [93]
“I don’t know,” Jake said.
“You picked it up in the lot, just after Susannah screamed,” Roland said. “I saw you.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah. I guess maybe I did. Because it was where the key was, before.”
“What is it, sugar?”
“Some kind of bag.” He held it by the straps. “I’d say it was my bowling bag, but that’s back at the lanes, with my ball inside it. Back in 1977.”
“What’s written on the side?” Eddie asked.
But they couldn’t make it out. The clouds had closed in again and there was no moonlight. They walked back to their camp together, slowly, shaky as invalids, and Roland built up the fire. Then they looked at the writing on the side of the rose-pink bowling bag.
NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES
was what it said.
“That’s not right,” Jake said. “Almost, but not quite. What it says on my bag is NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-TOWN LANES. Timmy gave it to me one day when I bowled a two-eighty-two. He said I wasn’t old enough for him to buy me a beer.”
“A bowling gunslinger,” Eddie said, and shook his head. “Wonders never cease, do they?”
Susannah took the bag and ran her hands over it. “What kind of weave is this? Feels like metal. And it’s heavy.”
Roland, who had an idea what the bag was for—although not who or what had left it for them—said, “Put it in your knapsack with the books, Jake. And keep it very safe.”
“What do we do next?” Eddie asked.
“Sleep,” Roland said. “I think we’re going to be very busy for the next few weeks. We’ll have to take our sleep when and where we find it.”
“But—”
“Sleep,” Roland said, and spread out his skins.
Eventually they did, and all of them dreamed of the rose. Except for Mia, who got up in the night’s last dark hour and slipped away to feast in the great banquet hall. And there she feasted very well.
She was, after all, eating for two.
Part Two
Telling Tales
Chapter I:
The Pavilion
One
If anything about the ride into Calla Bryn Sturgis surprised Eddie, it was how easily and naturally he took to horseback. Unlike Susannah and Jake, who had both ridden at summer camp, Eddie had never even petted a horse. When he’d heard the clop of approaching hooves on the morning after what he thought of as Todash Number Two, he’d felt a sharp pang of dread. It wasn’t the riding he was afraid of, or the animals themselves; it was the possibility—hell, the strong probability—of looking like a fool. What kind of gunslinger had never ridden a horse?
Yet Eddie still found time to pass a word with Roland before they came. “It wasn’t the same last night.”
Roland raised his eyebrows.
“It wasn’t nineteen last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean.”
“I don’t know, either,” Jake put in, “but he’s right. Last night New York felt like the real deal. I mean, I know we were todash, but still…”
“Real,” Roland had mused.
And Jake, smiling, said: “Real as roses.”
Two
The Slightmans were at the head of the Calla’s party this time, each leading a pair of mounts by long hacks. There was nothing very intimidating about the horses of Calla Bryn Sturgis; certainly they weren’t much like the ones Eddie had imagined galloping along the Drop in Roland’s tale of long-ago Mejis. These beasts were stubby, sturdy-legged creatures with shaggy coats and large, intelligent eyes. They were bigger than Shetland ponies, but a very long cast from the fiery-eyed stallions he had been expecting. Not only had they been saddled, but a proper bedroll had been lashed to each mount.
As Eddie walked toward his (he didn’t need to be told which it was, he knew: the roan), all his doubts and worries fell away. He only asked a single question, directed at Ben Slightman the Younger after examining the stirrups. “These are going to be too short for me, Ben—can you show me how to make them longer?”
When the boy dismounted to do it himself, Eddie shook his head. “It’d be best if I learned,