And he understands instinctively that this is almost certainly true. He has stumbled upon a great, possibly endless, confluence of worlds. They are all America, but they are all different. There are highways which lead through them,and he can see them.

He walks rapidly to the Leabrook end of the footbridge, then pauses again.Suppose I can’t find my way back? he thinks. Suppose I get lost and wander and never find my way back to the America where Fort Lee is on the west side of the George Washington Bridge and Gerald Ford (of all people!) is the President of the United States?

And then he thinks:So what if I do? So fucking what?

When he steps off on the Jersey side of the footbridge he’s grinning, truly lighthearted for this first time since the day he presided over Danny Glick’s grave in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot. A couple of boys with fishing poles are walking toward him. “Would one of you young fellows care to welcome me to New Jersey?” Callahan asks, grinning more widely than ever.

“Welcome to En-Jay, man,” one of them says, willingly enough, but both of them give Callahan a wide berth and a careful look. He doesn’t blame them, but it doesn’t cut into his splendid mood in the slightest. He feels like a man who has been let out of a gray and cheerless prison on a sunny day. He begins to walk faster, not turning around to give the skyline of Manhattan a single goodbye glance. Why would he? Manhattan is the past. The multiple Americas which lie ahead of him, those are the future.

He is in Leabrook. There are no chimes. Later there will be chimes and vampires; later there will be more messages chalked on sidewalks and sprayed on brick walls (not all about him, either). Later he will see the low men in their outrageous red Cadillacs and green Lincolns and purple Mercedes-Benz sedans, low men with red flashgun eyes, but not today. Today there is sunshine in a new America on the west side of a restored footbridge across the Hudson.