Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

Tower picked up the cup with his shaking hand (no rings on it, Eddie noticed-no rings on either hand) and drained it. Eddie couldn't understand why the man would choose to drink such so-so brew black. As far as Eddie himself was concerned, the really good taste was the Half and Half. After the months he had spent in Roland's world (or perhaps whole years had been sneaking by), it tasted as rich as heavy cream.

"Better?" Eddie asked.

"Yes." Tower looked out the window, as if expecting the return of the gray Town Car that had jerked and swayed away just ten minutes before. Then he looked back at Eddie. He was still frightened of the young man, but the last of his outright terror had departed when Eddie stowed the huge pistol back inside what he called "my friend's swag-bag." The bag was made of a scuffed, no-color leather, and closed along the top with lacings rather than a zipper. To Calvin Tower, it seemed that the young man had stowed the more frightening aspects of his personality in the "swag-bag" along with the oversized revolver. That was good, because it allowed Tower to believe that the kid had been bluffing about killing whole hoodlum families as well as the hoodlums themselves.

"Where's your pal Deepneau today?" Eddie asked.

"Oncologist. Two years ago, Aaron started seeing blood in the toilet bowl when he moved his bowels. A younger man, he thinks 'Goddam hemorrhoids' and buys a tube of Preparation H. Once you're in your seventies, you assume the worst. In his case it was bad but not terrible. Cancer moves slower when you get to be his age; even the Big C gets old. Funny to think of, isn't it? Anyway, they baked it with radiation and they say it's gone, but Aaron says you don't turn your back on cancer. He goes back every three months, and that's where he is. I'm glad. He's an old cockuh but still a hothead."

I should introduce Aaron Deepneau to Jamie Jaffords , Eddie thought. They could play Castles instead of chess, and yarn away the days of the Goat Moon .

Tower, meanwhile, was smiling sadly. He adjusted his glasses on his face. For a moment they stayed straight, and then they tilted again. The tilt was somehow worse than the crack; made Tower look slightly crazy as well as vulnerable. "He's a hothead and I'm a coward. Perhaps that's why we're friends-we fit around each other's wrong places, make something that's almost whole."

"Say maybe you're a little hard on yourself," Eddie said.

"I don't think so. My analyst says that anyone who wants to know how the children of an A-male father and a B-female mother turn out would only have to study my case-history. He also says-"

"Cry your pardon, Calvin, but I don't give much of a shit about your analyst. You held onto the lot up the street, and that's good enough for me."

"I don't take any credit for that," Calvin Tower said morosely. "It's like this"-he picked up the book that he'd put down beside the coffee-maker-"and the other ones he threatened to burn. I just have a problem letting things go. When my first wife said she wanted a divorce and I asked why, she said, 'Because when I married you, I didn't understand. I thought you were a man. It turns out you're a packrat.'"

"The lot is different from the books," Eddie said.

"Is it? Do you really think so?" Tower was looking at him, fascinated. When he raised his coffee cup, Eddie was pleased to see that the worst of his shakes had subsided.

"Don't you?"

"Sometimes I dream about it," Tower said. "I haven't actually been in there since Tommy Graham's deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball. I dream there's a field of flowers in there. A field of roses. And instead of just to First Avenue, it goes on forever. Funny dream, huh?"

Eddie was sure that Calvin Tower did indeed have such dreams, but he thought he saw something else in the eyes hiding behind the cracked and tilted glasses. He thought Tower was letting this dream stand for all the dreams he would not tell.

"Funny," Eddie agreed. "I think you better pour me another slug of that mud, beg ya I do. We'll have us a little palaver."

Tower smiled and once more raised the book Andolini had meant to charbroil. "Palaver. It's the kind of thing they're always saying in here."

"Do you say so?"

"Uh-huh."

Eddie held out his hand. "Let me see."

At first Tower hesitated, and Eddie saw the bookshop owner's face briefly harden with a misery mix of emotions.

"Come on, Cal, I'm not gonna wipe my ass with it."

"No. Of course not. I'm sorry." And at that moment Tower looked sorry, the way an alcoholic might look after a particularly destructive bout of drunkenness. "I just… certain books are very important to me. And this one is a true rarity."

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.

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?"

" ' TheDogan ,' " 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:

"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"