Fifteen minutes later, four men, one girl, a billy-bumbler, and one dazed, amazed (and very tired) boy stood on the Mall.
They seemed to have the grassy quad to themselves; the rest of the Breakers had disappeared completely. From where he stood, Jake could see the lighted window on the first floor of Corbett Hall where Susannah was tending to her man. Thunder rumbled. Ted spoke now as he had in Thundercap Station's office closet, where the red blazer's brass tag read HEAD OF SHIPPING, back when Eddie's death had been unthinkable: 'Join hands. And concentrate."
Jake started to reach for Dani Rostov's hand, but Dinky shook his head, smiling a little. "Maybe you can hold hands with her another day, hero, but right now you're the monkey in the middle. And your dinh's another one."
"You hold hands with each other," Sheemie said. There was a quiet authority in his voice that Jake hadn't heard before.
"That'll help."
Jake tucked Oy into his shirt. "Roland, were you able to show Sheemie-"
"Look," Roland said, taking his hands. The others now made a tight circle around them. "Look. I think you'll see."
A brilliant seam opened in the darkness, obliterating Sheemie and Ted from Jake's view. For a moment it trembled and darkened, and Jake thought it would disappear. Then it grew bright again and spread wider. He heard, very faindy
(the way you heard things when you were underwater), the sound of a car or truck passing in that other world. And saw a building with a small asphalt lot in front of it. Three cars and a pickup truck were parked there.
Daylight! he thought, dismayed. Because if time never ran backward in the Keystone World, that meant that time had slipped. If that was Keystone World, then it was Saturday, the nineteenth of June, in the year-
"Quick!" Ted shouted from the other side of that brilliant hole in reality. "If you're going, go now! He's going to faint! If you're going-"
Roland yanked Jake forward, his purse bouncing on his back as he did so.
Wait! Jake wanted to shout. Wait, I forgot my stuff!
But it was too late. There was the sensation of big hands squeezing his chest, and he felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs. He thought, Pressure change. There was a sensation of falling up and then he was reeling onto the pavement of the parking lot with his shadow tacked to his heels, squinting and grimacing, wondering in some distant part of his mind how long it had been since his eyes had been exposed to plain old natural daylight. Not since entering the Doorway Cave in pursuit of Susannah, maybe.
Very faintly he heard someone-he thought it was the girl who had kissed him-call Good luck, and then it was gone.
Thunderclap was gone, and the Devar-Toi, and the darkness.
They were America-side, in the parking lot of the place to which Roland's memory and Sheemie's power-boosted by the other four Breakers-had taken them. It was die East Stoneham General Store, where Roland and Eddie had been ambushed by Jack Andolini. Only unless there had been some horrible error that had been twenty-two years earlier. This was June 19th of 1999, and the clock in the window (IT's ALWAYS TIME FOR BOAR's HEAD MEATS! was written in a circle around the face) said it was nineteen minutes of four in the afternoon.
Time was almost up.
Part Three:IN THIS HAZE OF GREEN AND GOLD
Chapter I:MRS. TASSENBAUM DRIVES SOUTH
ONE
The fact of his own almost unearthly speed of hand never occurred to Jake Chambers. All he knew was that when he staggered out of the Devar-Toi and back into America, his shirt-belled out into a pregnant curve by Oy's weight-was pulling out of his jeans. The bumbler, who never had much luck when it came to passing between the worlds (he'd nearly been squashed by a taxicab the last time), tumbled free. Almost anyone else in the world would have been unable to prevent that fall (and in fact it very likely wouldn't have hurt Oy at all), but Jake wasn't almost anyone. Ka had wanted him so badly that it had even found its way around death to put him at Roland's side. Now his hands shot out with a speed so great that they momentarily blurred away to nothing. When they reappeared, one was curled into the thick shag at the nape of Oy's neck and the other into the shorter fur at the rump end of his long back. Jake set his friend down on the pavement. Oy looked up at him and gave a single short bark. It seemed to express not one idea but two: thanks, and don't do that again.
"Come on," Roland said. "We have to hurry."
Jake followed him toward the store, Oy falling in at his accustomed place by the boy's left heel. There was a sign hanging in the door from a little rubber suction cup. It read WE'RE OPEN, so COME IN 'N VISIT, just as it had in 1977. Taped in the window to the left of the door was this:
COME ONE COME ALL
TO THE 1ST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
BEANHOLE BEAN SUPPER
Saturday June 19th, 1999
Intersection Route 7 amp; Klatt Road PARISH HOUSE (In Back)
5 PM-7:30 PM
AT 1st CONGO
"WE'RE ALWAYS GLAD TO SEEYA, NAYiAH!"