[“Put ’er there, Mr. L. “I Lachesis looked at Ralph’s hand for so long that Ralph began to think he wasn’t going to be able to actually do it, although he clearly wanted to. Then, timidly, he put out his own small hand and allowed Ralph’s larger one to close over it. There was a tingling vibration in Ralph’s flesh as their auras first mingled, then merged… and in that merging he saw a series of swift, beautiful silver patterns. They reminded him of the Japanese characters on Ed’s scarf.
He pumped Lachesis’s hand twice, slowly and formally, then released it. Lachesis’s look of apprehension had been replaced by a large goony smile. He turned to his partner.
[His force is almost completely unguarded during this ceremoni.”
felt it.” It’s quite wonderful.ll Clotho inched his own hand out to meet Ralph’s, and in the instant before they touched, Mr. C. closed his eyes like a man expecting a painful injection.
Lachesis, meanwhile, was shaking hands with Lois and grinning like a vaudeville hoofer taking an encore.
Clotho appeared to steel himself, then seized Ralph’s hand. He flagged it once, firmly. Ralph grinned.
[“Take her easy, Mr. C.] Clotho withdrew his hand. He seemed to be searching for the proper response.
[Thank you, Ralph. I will take her any way I can get her.
Correct?] Ralph burst out laughing. Clotho, now turning to shake hands with Lois, gave him a puzzled smile, and Ralph clapped him on the back.
[“You got it right, Mr. C. -absolutely right-“He slipped his arm around Lois and gave the little bald doctors a final curious look.
[“I’ll be seeing you fellows again, won’t I?”] Clotho: [Yes, Ralph.] Ralph: [“Well, that’s fine. About seventy years from now would be good for me” why don’t you boys)just put it down on your calendar?”] They responded with the smiles of politicians, which didn’t surprise him much. Ralph gave them a little bow, then put his arms around Lois’s shoulders and watched as Mr, C. and Mr. L. walked slowly down the hill. Lachesis opened the door of the slightly warped Portosan marked MEN; Clotho stood in the open doorway of WOMEN.
Lachesis smiled and waved. Clotho lifted the long-bladed scissors in a queer sort of salute.
Ralph and Lois waved back.
The bald doctors stepped inside and closed the doors.
Lois wiped her streaming eyes and turned to Ralph.
[“Is that it? It is, isn’t it?”] Ralph nodded.
[“What do we do now?”] He held out his arm.
[“May I see you home, madam?”]
Smiling, she clasped his forearm just below the elbow.
[“Thank you, sir. You may.”] They left Strawford Park that way, returning to the Short-Time level as they came out on Harris Avenue, slipping back down to their normal place in the scheme of things with no fuss or botherwithout, in fact, even being aware they were doing it until it was done.
Derry groaned with panic and sweated with excitement. Sirens wailed, people shouted from second-storey windows to friends on the sidewalks below, and on every street-corner people had clustered to watch the fire on the other side of the valle, Ralph and Lois paid no attention to the tumult and hooraw. They walked slowly up Up-Mile Hill, increasingly aware of their exhaustion; it seemed to come piling into them like softly thrown bags of sand. The pool of white light marking the Red Apple Store’s parking lot seemed an impossible distance away, although Ralph knew it was only three blocks, and short ones, at that.
To make matters worse, the temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees since that morning, the wind was blowing hard, and neither of them was dressed for the weather. Ralph suspected this might be the leading edge of autumn’s first big gale, and that in Derry, Indian summer was over.
Faye Chapin, Don Veazie, and Stan Eberly came hurrying do-,n the hill toward them, obviously bound for Strawford Park. The fieldglasses Old Dor sometimes used to watch planes taxi, land, and take off were bouncing around Faye’s neck. With Don, who was balding and heavyset, in the middle, their resemblance to a more famous trio was inescapable.
The Three Stooges of the Apocalypse, Ralph thought, and grinned.
“Ralph!” Faye exclaimed. He was breathing fast, almost panting.
The wind blew his hair into his eyes and he raked it back impatiently.
“Goddam Civic Center blew up! Someone bombed it from a light plane! We heard there’s a thousand people dead “I heard about the same,” Ralph agreed gravely. “In fact, Lois and I have just been down at the park, having a look. You can see straight across the valley from there, you know.”
“Christ, I know that, I’ve lived here all my damn life, haven’t I?
Where do you think we’re going? Come on back with us!”
“Lois and I were just headed up to her house to see what they’ve got about it on TV. Maybe we’ll join you later.”
“Okay, we-jeepers-creepers, Ralph, what’d you do milo your head?
“For a moment Ralph drew a blank-what had he done to his head?-and then, in an instant of nightmarish recall, he saw Ed’s snarling mouth and mad eyes. Oh no, don’t, Ed had screamed at him.
You’ll spoil everything.
“We were running to get a better look and Ralph ran into a tree,” Lois said. “He’s lucky not to be in the hospital.”
Don laughed at that, but in the half-distracted manner of a fellow who has bigger fish to fry. Faye wasn’t paying attention to them at all. Stan Eberly was, however, and Stan didn’t laugh. He was looking at them with close, puzzled curiosity.
“Lois,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you know you’ve got a sneaker tied to your wrist?”
She looked down at it. Ralph looked down at it. Then Lois looked up and gave Stan a dazzling, eye-frying smile. “Yes!” she said.
“It’s an interesting look, isn’t it? Sort of a… a life-sized charm bracelet!”
“Yeah,” Stan said. “Sure.” But he wasn’t looking at the sneaker anymore; now he was looking at Lois’s face. Ralph wondered how in hell they were going to explain how they looked tomorrow, when there were no shadows between the streetlights to hide them.
“Come on!” Faye cried impatiently. “Let’s get going!”
They hurried off (Stan gave them one last doubtful glance over his shoulder as they went). Ralph listened after them, almost expecting Don Veazie to give out a nyuck-nyuck or two.
“Boy, that sounded so dumb,” Lois said, “but I had to say something, didn’t I?”
“You did fine.”
“Well, when I open my mouth, something always seems to fall out,” she said. “It’s one of my two great talents, the other being the ability to clean out an entire Whitman’s Sampler during a two-hour TV movie.” She untied Helen’s sneaker and looked at it. “She’s safe, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Ralph agreed, and reached for the sneaker. As he did, he realized he already had something in his left hand. The fingers had been clamped down so long that they were creaky and reluctant to open.
When they finally did, he saw the marks of his nails pressed into the flesh of his palm. The first thing he was aware of was that, while his own wedding ring was still in its accustomed place, Ed’s was gone.
It had seemed a perfect fit, but apparently it had slipped off his finger at some point during the last half an hour, just the same, Maybe not, a voice whispered, and Ralph was amused to realize that it wasn’t Carolyn’s this time. This time the voice in his had belonged to Bill McGovern. Maybe it just disappeared. You know, poof But he didn’t think so. He had an idea that Ed’s wedding band might have been invested with powers that hadn’t necessarily died with Ed. The Ring Bilbo Baggins had found and reluctantly given up to his grandson, Frodo, had had a way of going where it wanted to… and when. Perhaps Ed’s ring wasn’t all that different.
Before he could consider this idea further, Lois traded Helen’s sneaker for the thing in his hand: a small stiff crumple of paper. She smoothed it out and looked at it. Her curiosity slowly changed to solemnity.