Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,43

because it sounds a little on-pleasant. You know, like calling Negroes ‘blacks’ or gay folks ‘fruits.’ I know I’m just a poor ignorant pickaninny from the dark ages of 1964, but—”

“There.” Eddie pointed at a rank of signs marking the parking-row closest to the station. There were actually two signs to a post, the top of each pair blue and white, the bottom red and white. When they drew a little closer, Jake saw the one on top was a wheelchair symbol. The one on the bottom was a warning: $200 FINE FOR IMPROPER USE OF HANDICAPPED PARKING SPACE. STRICTLY ENFORCED BY TOPEKA P.D.

“See there!” Susannah said triumphantly. “They shoulda done that a long time ago! Why, back in my when, you’re lucky if you can get your damn wheelchair through the doors of anything smaller than the Shop ’n Save. Hell, lucky if you can get it up over the curbs! And special parking? Forget it, sugar!”

The lot was jammed almost to capacity, but even with the end of the world at hand, only two cars that didn’t have little wheelchair symbols on their license plates were parked in the row Eddie had called “the crip spaces.”

Jake guessed that respecting the “crip spaces” was just one of those things that got a mysterious lifelong hold on people, like putting zip-codes on letters, parting your hair, or brushing your teeth before breakfast.

“And there it is!” Eddie cried. “Hold your cards, folks, but I think we have a Bingo!”

Still carrying Susannah on his hip—a thing he would have been incapable of doing for any extended period of time even a month ago—Eddie hurried over to a boat of a Lincoln. Strapped on the roof was a complicated-looking racing bicycle; poking out of the half-open trunk was a wheelchair. Nor was this the only one; scanning the row of “crip spaces,” Jake saw at least four more wheelchairs, most strapped to roof-racks, some stuffed into the backs of vans or station wagons, one (it looked ancient and fearsomely bulky) thrown into the bed of a pickup truck.

Eddie set Susannah down and bent to examine the rig holding the chair in the trunk. There were a lot of crisscrossing elastic cords, plus some sort of locking bar. Eddie drew the Ruger Jake had taken from his father’s desk drawer. “Fire in the hole,” he said cheerfully, and before any of them could even think of covering their ears, he pulled the trigger and blew the lock off the security-bar. The sound went rolling into the silence, then echoed back. The warbling sound of the thinny returned with it, as if the gunshot had snapped it awake. Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it? Jake thought, and grimaced with distaste. Half an hour ago, he wouldn’t have believed that a sound could be as physically upsetting, as . . . well, the smell of rotting meat, say, but he believed it now. He looked up at the turnpike signs. From this angle he could see only their tops, but that was enough to confirm that they were shimmering again. It throws some kind of field, Jake thought. The way mixers and vacuum cleaners make static on the radio or TV, or the way that cyclotron gadget made the hair on my arms stand up when Mr. Kingery brought it to class and then asked for volunteers to come up and stand next to it.

Eddie wrenched the locking bar aside, and used Roland’s knife to cut the elastic cords. Then he drew the wheelchair out of the trunk, examined it, unfolded it, and engaged the support which ran across the back at seat-level. “Voila!” he said.

Susannah had propped herself on one hand—Jake thought she looked a little like the woman in this Andrew Wyeth painting he liked, Christina’s World—and was examining the chair with some wonder.

“God almighty, it looks so little ’n light!”

“Modern technology at its finest, darlin,” Eddie said. “It’s what we fought Vietnam for. Hop in.” He bent to help her. She didn’t resist him, but her face was set and frowning as he lowered her into the seat. Like she expected the chair to collapse under her, Jake thought. As she ran her hands over the arms of her new ride, her face gradually relaxed.

Jake wandered off a little, walking down another row of cars, running his fingers over their hoods, leaving trails of dust. Oy padded after him, pausing once to lift his leg and squirt a tire, as if he had been doing