"Gorry," John whispered. In his awe, not even his seamed face could keep him from looking like a child. "Walk-ins! And where is it you're from, can you tell me that?" He looked at Eddie, laughed the way people do when they are admitting you've put a good one over on them, and said: "NotBrooklyn. "
"But Iam from Brooklyn," Eddie said. The only thing was it hadn't beenthis world's Brooklyn, and he knew that now. In the world he came from, a children's book namedCharlie the Choo-Choo had been written by a woman named Beryl Evans; in this one it had been written by someone named Claudia y Inez Bachman. Beryl Evans sounded real and Claudia y Inez Bachman sounded phony as a three-dollar bill, yet Eddie was coming more and more to believe that Bachman was the true handle. And why? Because it came as part of this world.
"Iam from Brooklyn, though. Just not the...well...the same one."
John Cullum was still looking at them with that wide-eyed child's expression of wonder. "What about those other fellas? The ones who were waiting for you? Are they...?"
"No," Roland said. "Not they. No more time for this, John - not now." He got cautiously to his feet, grabbed an overhead beam, and stepped out of the boat with a little wince of pain. John followed and Eddie came last. The two other men had to help him. The steady throb in his right calf had receded a little bit, but the leg was stiff and numb, hard to control.
"Let's go to your place," Roland said. "There's a man we need to find. With the blessing, you may be able to help us do that."
He may be able to help us in more ways than that,Eddie thought, and followed them back into the sunlight, gimping along on his bad leg with his teeth gritted.
At that moment, Eddie thought he would have slain a saint in exchange for a dozen aspirin tablets.
STAVE: Commala-loaf-leaven!
They go to hell or up to heaven!
When the guns are shot and the fire's hot,
You got to poke em in the oven.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-seven!
Salt and yow' for leaven!
Heat em up and knock em down
And poke em in the oven.
8th Stanza: A Game of Toss
One
In the winter of 1984 - 85, when Eddie's heroin use was quietly sneaking across the border from the Land of Recreational Drugs and into the Kingdom of Really Bad Habits, Henry Dean met a girl and fell briefly in love. Eddie thought Sylvia Goldover was a SkankEl Supremo (smelly armpits and dragon breath wafting out from between a pair of Mick Jagger lips), but kept his mouth shut becauseHenry thought she was beautiful, and Eddie didn't want to hurt Henry's feelings. That winter the young lovers spent a lot of time either walking on the windswept beach at Coney Island or going to the movies in Times Square, where they would sit in the back row and wank each other off once the popcorn and the extra-large box of Goobers were gone.
Eddie was philosophic about the new person in Henry's life; if Henry could work his way past that awful breath and actually tangle tongues with Sylvia Goldover, more power to him. Eddie himself spent a lot of those mostly gray three months alone and stoned in the Dean family apartment. He didn't mind; liked it, in fact. If Henry had been there, he would have insisted on TV and would have ragged Eddie constantly about his story-tapes. ("Oh boy! Eddie's gonna wissen to his wittle sto-wy about theelves and theogs and the cute wittlemidgets! ") Always calling the orcs the ogs, and always calling the Ents "the scawwy walkingtwees. " Henry thought made-up shit was queer. Eddie had sometimes tried to tell him there was nothing more made-up than the crud they showed on afternoon TV, but Henry wasn't having any of that; Henry could tell you all about the evil twins onGeneral Hospital and the equally evil stepmother onThe Guiding Light.