“When it comes to the hoodoos, I’m an old hand,” Eddie said. “I don’t know exactly what’s on your mind, but whatever it is, this would be an excellent time to stop thinking about it.”

That, Jake decided, was probably good advice. They walked across the street together. Toward Gage Park and one of the greatest shocks of Jake’s life.

2

Passing under the wrought-iron arch with GAGE PARK written on it in old-fashioned, curlicued letters, they found themselves on a brick path leading through a garden that was half English Formal and half Ecuadoran Jungle. With no one to tend it through the hot Midwestern summer, it had run to riot; with no one to tend it this fall, it had run to seed. A sign just inside the arch proclaimed this to be the Reinisch Rose Garden, and there were roses, all right; roses everywhere. Most had gone over, but some of the wild ones still throve, making Jake think of the rose in the vacant lot at Forty-sixth and Second with a longing so deep it was an ache.

Off to one side as they entered the park was a beautiful old-time carousel, its prancing steeds and racing stallions now still on their posts. The carousel’s very silence, its flashing lights and steamy calliope music stilled forever, gave Jake a chill. Hung over the neck of one horse, dangling from a rawhide strip, was some kid’s baseball glove. Jake was barely able to look at it.

Beyond the carousel, the foliage grew even thicker, strangling the path until the travellers edged along single-file, like lost children in a fairy-tale wood. Thorns from overgrown and unpruned rosebushes tore at Jake’s clothes. He had somehow gotten into the lead (probably because Roland was still deep inside his own thoughts), and that was why he saw Charlie the Choo-Choo first.

His only thought while approaching the narrow-gauge train-tracks which crossed the path—they were little more than toy tracks, really—was of the gunslinger saying that ka was like a wheel, always rolling around to the same place again. We’re haunted by roses and trains, he thought. Why? I don’t know. I guess it’s just another rid—

Then he looked to his left, and “OhgoodnesstoChrist” fell out of his mouth, all in one word. The strength ran out of his legs and he sat down. His voice sounded watery and distant to his own ears. He didn’t quite faint, but the color drained out of the world until the running-to-riot foliage on the west side of the park looked almost as gray as the autumn sky overhead.