Roland pointed left, then turned right himself. He and Eddie stood back to back on the loading dock with about six feet between them, guns raised to their cheeks like men about to commence a duel. Mr. Flannel Shirt hopped off the end of the dock, spry as a cricket, and seized the chrome crank on the side of the old diesel pump. He began to spin it rapidly. The numbers in their little windows spun backward, but instead of returning to all zeros, they froze at 0 0 1 9. Mr. Flannel Shirt tried the crank again. When it refused to turn, he shrugged and yanked the nozzle out of its rusty cradle.

“John, no!” Chip cried. He was still standing in the doorway of his storeroom and holding up his hands, one clean and the other bloody all the way up the forearm.

“Get out of the way, Chip, or you’re gonna—”

Two men dashed around Eddie’s side of the East Stoneham General Store. Both were dressed in jeans and flannel shirts, but unlike Chip’s shirt, these looked brand-new, with the creases still in the sleeves. Purchased especially for the occasion, Eddie had no doubt. And one of the goons Eddie recognized quite well; had last seen him in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, Calvin Tower’s bookshop. Eddie had also killed this fellow once before. Ten years in the future, if you could believe it. In The Leaning Tower, Balazar’s joint, and with the same gun he now held in his hand. A snatch of old Bob Dylan lyric occurred to him, something about the price you had to pay to keep from going through everything twice.

“Hey, Big Nose!” Eddie cried (as he seemed to each time he saw this particular piece of pond scum). “How you doing, pal?” In truth, George Biondi did not appear to be doing well at all. Not even his mother would have considered him much more than presentable, even on his best day (that humungous beak), and now his features were puffed and dis-colored by bruises that had only just begun to fade. The worst of them was right between the eyes.

I did that, Eddie thought. In the back of Tower’s bookstore. It was true, but it also seemed like something that had happened a thousand years ago.

“You,” said George Biondi. He seemed too stunned to even raise his gun. “You. Here.”

“Me here,” Eddie agreed. “As for you, you should have stayed in New York.” With that said, he blew George Biondi’s face off. His friend’s face, too.

Flannel Shirt squeezed the pump handle’s pistol grip and dark diesel sprayed from the nozzle. It doused Chip, who cawed indignantly and then staggered out onto the loading dock. “Stings!” he shouted. “Gorry, don’t that sting! Quit it, John!”

John did not. Another three men came dashing around Roland’s side of the store, took one look at the gunslinger’s calm and awful face, tried to backtrack. They were dead before they could do more than get the heels of their new country walking shoes planted. Eddie thought of the half-dozen cars and the big Winnebago that had been parked across the street and had time to wonder just how many men Balazar had sent on this little expedition. Certainly not just his own guys. How had he paid for the imports?