Free Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King Page B

and saw a similar expression on Oy’s face. Somehow that made the whole thing even funnier.
    “What the fuck ?” Eddie asked.
    “Instant replay,” Jake said, and laughed harder. It came out sounding goofy as shit, but he didn’t care. He felt goofy. “It’s like when we watched Roland in the Great Hall of Gilead, only this is New York and it’s May 31st, 1977! It’s the day I took French Leave from Piper! Instant replay, baby!”
    “French—?” Eddie began, but Jake didn’t give him a chance to finish. He was struck by another realization. Except struck was too mild a word. He was buried by it, like a man who just happens to beon the beach when a tidal wave rolls in. His face blazed so brightly that Eddie actually took a step back.
    “The rose!” he whispered. He felt too weak in the diaphragm to speak any louder, and his throat was as dry as a sandstorm. “Eddie, the rose !”
    “What about it?”
    “This is the day I see it!” He reached out and touched Eddie’s forearm with a trembling hand. “I go to the bookstore . . . then to the vacant lot. I think there used to be a delicatessen—”
    Eddie was nodding and beginning to look excited himself. “Tom and Jerry’s Artistic Deli, corner of Second and Forty-sixth—”
    “The deli’s gone but the rose is there! That me walking down the street is going to see it, and we can see it, too !”
    At that, Eddie’s own eyes blazed. “Come on, then,” he said. “We don’t want to lose you. Him. Whoever the fuck.”
    “Don’t worry,” Jake said. “I know where he’s going.”
TWO
    The Jake ahead of them—New York Jake, spring-of-1977 Jake—walked slowly, looking everywhere, clearly digging the day. Mid-World Jake remembered exactly how that boy had felt: the sudden relief when the arguing voices in his mind
    (I died!)
    (I didn’t!)
    had finally stopped their squabbling. Back by the board fence that had been, where the two businessmen had been playing tic-tac-toe with a Mark Cross pen. And, of course, there had been the relief of being away from the Piper School and the insanity of his Final Essay for Ms. Avery’s English class. The Final Essay counted a full twenty-five per cent toward each student’s final grade, Ms. Avery had made that perfectly clear, and Jake’s had been gibberish. The fact that his teacher had later given him an A+ on it didn’t change that, only made it clear that it wasn’t just him; the whole world was losing its shit, going nineteen.
    Being out from under all that—even for a little while—had been great. Of course he was digging the day.
    Only the day’s not quite right, Jake thought—the Jake walking along behind his old self. Something about it . . .
    He looked around but couldn’t figure it out. Late May, bright summer sun, lots of strollers and window-shoppers on Second Avenue, plenty of taxis, the occasional long black limo; nothing wrong with any of this.
    Except there was.
    Everything was wrong with it.
THREE
    Eddie felt the kid twitch his sleeve. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Jake asked.
    Eddie looked around. In spite of his own adjustment problems (his involved coming back to a New York that was clearly a few years behind hiswhen), he knew what Jake meant. Something was wrong.
    He looked down at the sidewalk, suddenly sure he wouldn’t have a shadow. They’d lost their shadows like the kids in one of the stories . . . one of the nineteen fairy tales . . . or was it maybe something newer, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Peter Pan ? One of what might be called the Modern Nineteen?
    Didn’t matter in any case, because their shadows were there.
    Shouldn’t be, though, Eddie thought. Shouldn’t be able to see our shadows when it’s this dark.
    Stupid thought. It wasn’t dark. It was morning, for Christ’s sake, a bright May morning, sunshine winking off the chrome of passing cars and the windows of the stores on the east side of Second Avenue brightly enough to make you