Chip gave a hearty laugh, took the sliced turkey off the scale, and put it on a piece of white paper. He was glad to leave the subject of Jet Skis behind, as he had one on order from Viking Motors ("The Boys with the Toys") in Oxford himself.
"I know what you mean! That fella Gore, too slick!" Mrs.
Tassenbaum was nodding endiusiastically, and so Chip decided to lay on a little more. Never hurt, by Christ. "His hair, for instance-how can you trust a man who puts that much goo in his-"
That was when the bell over the door jingled. Chip looked up. Saw. And froze. A goddamned lot of water had gone under the bridge since That Day, but Wendell "Chip" McAvoy knew the man who'd caused all the trouble the moment he stepped through the door. Some faces you simply never forgot. And hadn't he always known, deep in his heart's most secret place, that the man with die terrible blue eyes hadn't finished his business and would be back?
Back for him?
That idea broke his paralysis. Chip turned and ran. He got no more than three steps along the inside of the counter before a shot rang out, loud as thunder in the store-the place was bigger and fancier than it had been in '77, thank God for his father's insistence on extravagant insurance coverage-and Mrs. Tassenbaum uttered a piercing scream. Three or four people who had been browsing the aisles turned with expressions of astonishment, and one of them hit the floor in a dead faint. Chip had time to register that it was Rhoda Beemer, eldest daughter of one of the two women who'd been killed in here on That Day. Then it seemed to him that time had folded back on itself and it was Ruth herself lying there with a can of creamed corn rolling free of one relaxing hand. He heard a bullet buzz over his head like an angry bee and skidded to a stop, hands raised.
"Don't shoot, mister!" he heard himself bawl in the thin, wavering voice of an old man. "Take whatever's in the register but don't shoot me!"
"Turn around," said the voice of the man who had turned Chip's world turtle on That Day, the man who'd almost gotten him killed (he'd been in the hospital over in Bridgton for two weeks, by the living Jesus) and had now reappeared like an old monster from some child's closet. "The rest of you on the floor, but you turn around, shopkeeper. Turn around and see me.
"See me very well."
THREE
The man swayed from side to side, and for a moment Roland thought he would faint instead of turning. Perhaps some survival-
oriented part of his brain suggested that fainting was more likely to get him killed, for the shopkeeper managed to keep his feet and did finally turn and face the gunslinger. His dress was eerily similar to what he'd been wearing the last time Roland was here; it could have been the same black tie and butcher's apron, tied up high on his midriff. His hair was still slicked back along his skull, but now it was wholly white instead of salt-andpepper.
Roland remembered the way blood had dashed back from the left side of the shopkeeper's temple as a bullet-one fired by Andolini himself, for all the gunslinger knew-grooved him. Now there was a grayish knot of scar-tissue there. Roland guessed the man combed his hair in a way that would display that mark rather than hide it. He'd either had a fool's luck that day or been saved by ka. Roland thought ka the more likely.
Judging from the sick look of recognition in the shopkeeper's eyes, he thought so, too.
"Do you have a cartomobile, a truckomobile, or a tacksee?"
Roland asked, holding the barrel of his gun on the shopkeeper's middle.
Jake stepped up beside Roland. "What are you driving?" he asked the shopkeeper. "That's what he means."