piercing scream. Three or four people who had been browsing the aisles turned with expressions of astonishment, and one of them hit the floor in a dead faint. Chip had time to register that it was Rhoda Beemer, eldest daughter of one of the two women who'd been killed in here on That Day. Then it seemed to him that time had folded back on itself and it was Ruth herself lying there with a can of creamed corn rolling free of one relaxing hand. He heard a bullet buzz over his head like an angry bee and skidded to a stop, hands raised.
"Don't shoot, mister!" he heard himself bawl in the thin, wavering voice of an old man. "Take whatever's in the register but don't shoot me!"
"Turn around," said the voice of the man who had turned Chip's world turtle on That Day, the man who'd almost gotten him killed (he'd been in the hospital over in Bridgton for two weeks, by the living Jesus) and had now reappeared like an old monster from some child's closet. "The rest of you on the floor, but you turn around, shopkeeper. Turn around and see me.
"See me very well."
THREE
The man swayed from side to side, and for a moment Roland thought he would faint instead of turning. Perhaps some survival-
oriented part of his brain suggested that fainting was more likely to get him killed, for the shopkeeper managed to keep his feet and did finally turn and face the gunslinger. His dress was eerily similar to what he'd been wearing the last time Roland was here; it could have been the same black tie and butcher's apron, tied up high on his midriff. His hair was still slicked back along his skull, but now it was wholly white instead of salt-andpepper.
Roland remembered the way blood had dashed back from the left side of the shopkeeper's temple as a bullet-one fired by Andolini himself, for all the gunslinger knew-grooved him. Now there was a grayish knot of scar-tissue there. Roland guessed the man combed his hair in a way that would display that mark rather than hide it. He'd either had a fool's luck that day or been saved by ka. Roland thought ka the more likely.
Judging from the sick look of recognition in the shopkeeper's eyes, he thought so, too.
"Do you have a cartomobile, a truckomobile, or a tacksee?"
Roland asked, holding the barrel of his gun on the shopkeeper's middle.
Jake stepped up beside Roland. "What are you driving?" he asked the shopkeeper. "That's what he means."
"Truck!" the shopkeeper managed. "International Harvester pickup! It's outside in the lot!" He reached under his apron so suddenly that Roland came within an ace of shooting him. The shopkeeper-mercifully-didn't seem to notice. All of the store's customers were now lying prone, including the woman who'd been at the counter. Roland could smell the meat she had been in the process of trading for, and his stomach rumbled. He was tired, hungry, overloaded with grief, and there were too many things to think about, too many by far. His mind couldn't keep up. Jake would have said he needed to "take a time-out," but he didn't see any time-outs in their immediate future.
The shopkeeper was holding out a set of keys. His fingers were trembling, and the keys jingled. The late-afternoon sun slanting in the windows struck them and bounced complicated reflections into the gunslinger's eyes. First the man in the white apron had plunged a hand out of sight without asking permission (and not slowly); now this, holding up a bunch of reflective metal objects as if to blind his adversary. It was as if he were trying to get killed. But it had been that way on the day of the ambush, too, hadn't it? The storekeeper (quicker on his feet then, and without that widower's hump in his back) had followed him and Eddie from place to place like a cat who won't stop getting under your feet, seemingly oblivious to the bullets flying all around them (just as he'd seemed oblivious of the one that grooved the side of his head). At one point, Roland remembered, he had talked about his son, almost like a man in a barbershop making conversation while he waits his turn to sit under the scissors. A ka-mai, then, and such were often safe from harm. At least until ka tired of their antics and swatted them out of the world.