But the voice on the other end was already speaking. As a child of the late eighties, Eddie knew this did not bode well.
"-have reached John Cullum of Cullum Caretakin and Camp Checkin," said Cullum's voice in its familiar slow Yankee drawl. "I gut called away kinda sudden, don'tcha know, and can't say with any degree a' certainty just when I'll be back. If this inconveniences ya, I beg pa'aad'n, but you c'n call Gary Crowell, at 926-5555, or Junior Barker, at 929-4211."
Eddie's initial dismay had departed-depaa-aated, Cullum himself would have said-right around the time the man's wavery recorded voice was telling Eddie that he, Cullum, couldn't say with any degree of certainty when he'd be back.
Because Cullum was right there, in his hobbity little cottage on the western shore of Keywadin Pond, either sitting on his overstuffed hobbity sofa or in one of the two similarly overstuffed hobbity chairs. Sitting there and monitoring messages on his no-doubt-clunky mid-seventies answering machine. And Eddie knew this because... well... Because he just knew.
The primitive recording couldn't completely hide the sly humor that had crept into Cullum's voice by the end of the message.
"Coss, if you're still set on talkin to nobody but yours truly, you c'n leave me a message at the beep. Keep it short." The final word came out shawt.
Eddie waited for the beep and then said, "It's Eddie Dean,
John. I know you're there, and I think you've been waiting for my call. Don't ask me why I think that, because I don't really know, but-"
There was a loud click in Eddie's ear, and then Cullum's voice-his live voice-said, "Hello there, son, you takin good care of my car?"
For a moment Eddie was too bemused to reply, for Cullum's Downeast accent had turned the question into something quite different: You takin good care ofmyka?
"Boy?" Cullum asked, suddenly concerned. 'You still on the wire?"
"Yeah," Eddie said, "and so are you. I thought you were going to Vermont, John."
"Well, I tell you what. This place ain't seen a day this excitin prob'ly since South Stoneham Shoe burnt down in 1923. The cops've gut all the ruds out of town blocked off."
Eddie was sure they were letting folks through the roadblocks if they could show proper identification, but he ignored that issue in favor of something else. "Want to tell me you couldn't find your way out of that town without seeing a single cop, if it suited your fancy?"
There was a brief pause. In it, Eddie became aware of someone at his elbow. He didn't turn to look; it was Roland. Who else in this world would smell-subtly but unquestionably-of another world?
"Oh, well," Cullum said at last. "Maybe I do know a woods road or two that come out over in Lovell. It's been a dry summer, n I guess I could get m'truck up em."
"One or two?"
"Well, say three or four." A pause, which Eddie didn't break.
He was having too much fun. "Five or six," Cullum amended, and Eddie chose not to respond to this, either. "Eight," Cullum said at last, and when Eddie laughed, Cullum joined in. "What's on your mind, son?"
Eddie glanced at Roland, who was holding out a tin of aspirin between die two remaining fingers of his right hand.
Eddie took it gratefully. "I want you to come over to Lovell," he said to Cullum. "Seems like we might have a litde more palavering to do, after all."
"Ayuh, and it seems like I musta known it," Cullum said,
"although it was never right up on the top of my mind; up there I kep' thinkin 'I'll be gettin on the road to Montpelier soon," and still I kep' findin one more thing and one more diing to do around here. If you'da called five minutes ago, you woulda gotten a busy-I 'us on the phone to Charlie Beemer. It was his wife 'n sister-in-law that got killed in the market, don't you know. And then I thought, 'What the hell, I'll just give the whole place a good sweep before I put my gear in the back of the truck and go.' Notfiin up on top is what I'm sayin, but down underneath I guess I been waitin for your call ever since I got back here. Where'll you be? Turtleback Lane?"
Eddie popped open the aspirin tin and looked greedily at the little line-up of tablets. Once a junkie, always a junkie, he reckoned. Even when it came to this stuff. "Ayuh," he said, with his tongue only pardy in his cheek; he had become quite the mimic of regional dialects since meeting Roland on a Delta jet descending into Kennedy Airport. 'You said that lane was nothing but a two-mile loop off Route 7, didn't you?"
"So I did. Some very nice homes along Turtleback." A brief, reflective pause. "And a lot of em for sale. There's been quite a number of walk-ins in that part of the world just lately. As I may have also mentioned. Such things make folks nervous, and rich folks, at least, c'n afford to get away from what makes it ha'ad to sleep at night."