some sage or other, and if life was od to Ralph Roberts during those years, itlmight have been because he had no other plans to make. He maintained friendships with Toe Wyzer and during those years was his lohn Leydecker, but his best friend Is wife. They went almost everywhere together, had no secrets, and fought so seldom one might just as well have said never. He also had Rosalie the beagle, the rocker that had once been Mr. Chasse's and was now his, and almost daily visits from Natalie (who had begun calling them Ralph and Lois instead of Wall and Roiss, a change neither of them found to be an improvement). And he was healthy, which was maybe the best thing of all. It was just life, full of Short-Time rewards and setbacks, and Ralph lived it with'enjoyment and serenity until mid-March of 1998, when he awoke one morning, glanced at the digital clock beside his bed, and saw it was 5:49 a.m.
He lay quietly beside Lois, not wanting to disturb her by getting up, and wondering what had awakened him.
You know what, Ralph.
No I don't.
Yes, you do. Listen.
So he listened. He listened very carefully. And after awhile he began to hear it in the walls: the low, soft ticking of the deathwatch.
Ralph awoke at 5:47 the following morning, and at 5:44 the morning after that. His sleep was whittled away, minute by minute, as winter slowly loosened its grip on Derry and allowed spring to find its way back in. By May he was hearing the tick of the deathwatch everywhere, but understood it was all coming from one place and simply projecting itself, as a good ventriloquist can project his voice. Before, it had been coming from Carolyn. Now it was coming from him.
He felt none of the terror that had gripped him when he'd been so sure he had developed cancer, and none of the desperation he vaguely remembered from his previous bout of insomnia. He tired more easily and began to find it more difficult to concentrate and remember even simple things, but he accepted What was happening calmly.
"Are you sleeping all right, Ralph?" Lois asked him one day.
"You're getting these big dark circles under your eyes."
"It's the dope I take," Ralph said.
"Very funny, you old poop."
He took her in his arms and hugged her. "Don't worry about me, sweetheart-I'm getting all the sleep I need."
He awoke one morning a week later at 4:02 a.m. with a line of deep heat throbbing in his arm-throbbing in perfect sync with the sound of the deathwatch, which was, of course, nothing more or less than the beat of his own heart. But this new thing wasn't his heart, or at least Ralph didn't think it was; it felt as if an electric filament had been embedded in the flesh of his forearm.
It's the scar, he thought, and then: No, it's the promise. The time of the promise is almost here.
What promise, Ralph? What promise? He didn't know.
One day in early June, Helen and Nat blew in to visit and tell Ralph and Lois about the trip they had taken to Boston with "Aunt Melanie, a bank teller with whom Helen had become close friends.
Helen and Aunt Melanie had gone to some sort of feminist convention while Natalie networked with about a billion new kids in the day-care center, and then Aunt Melanie had left to do some more feminist things in New York and Washington. Helen and Nat had stayed on in Boston for a couple of days, just sightseein "We went to see a movie cartoon," Natalie said. "It was about animals in the woods.
They talked!" She pronounced this last word with Shakespearian grandiosity-talked.
"Movies where animals talk are neat, aren't they?" Lois asked.
"Yes! Also I got this new dress!"
"And a very pretty dress it is," Lois said.
Helen was looking at Ralph. "Are you okay, old chum? You look pale, and you haven't said boo."
"Never better," he said. "I was just thinking how cute you two look in those caps. Did you get them at Fenway Park?"
Both Helen and Nat were wearing Boston Red Sox caps. These were common enough in New England during warm weather ("common as catdirt," Lois would have said), but the sight of them on the heads of these two people filled Ralph with some deep, resonant feeling... and it was tied to a specific image, one he did, at least, understand: the front of the Red Apple Store. Helen, meantime, had