by Stephen King
Roland thought about this for a moment, then shook his head with great firmness. “We saw what the Beam wanted us to see. Where it wants us to go.”
“Roland, did you study this stuff when you were a kid? Did your old pal Vannay teach classes in… I don’t know, The Anatomy of Beams and Bends O’The Rainbow?”
Roland was smiling. ’Yes, I suppose that we were taught such things in both History and Summa Logicales.”
Roland didn’t answer. He was looking out the window of Cullum’s car, still trying to get his breath back-both the physical and the figurative. It really wasn’t that hard to do, not here; being in this part of Bridgton was like being in the neighborhood of a certain vacant lot in Manhattan. Because there was a generator near here. Not sai King, as Roland had first believed, but the potential of sai King… of what sai King might be able to create, given world enough and time. Wasn’t King also being carried on aven kal, perhaps generating the very wave that lifted him?
A man can’t pull himself up by his own bootstraps no matter how hard he tries, Cort had lectured when Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, and Jamie had been little more than toddlers. Cort speaking in the tone of cheery self-assurance that had gradually hardened to harshness as his last group of lads grew toward their trials of manhood. But maybe about bootstraps Cort had been wrong.
Maybe, under certain circumstances, a man could pull himself up by them. Or give birth to the universe from his navel, as Gan was said to have done. As a writer of stories, was King not a creator?
And at bottom, wasn’t creation about making something r o r a nothing-seeing the world in a grain of sand or pulling one’s self up by one’s own bootstraps?
And what was he doing, sitting here and thinking long Philosophical thoughts while two members of his tet were lost?
Get this carriage going,” Roland said, trying to ignore the sweet humming he could hear-whether the Voice of the Beam or the Voice of Gan the Creator, he didn’t know. “We’ve got to get to Turtleback Lane in this town of Lovell and see if we can’t find our way through to where Susannah is.”
And not just for Susannah, either. If Jake succeeded in eluding the monsters in the Dixie Pig, he would also head to where she lay. Of this Roland had no doubt.
Eddie reached for the transmission lever-despite all its gyrations, Cullum’s old Galaxie had never quit running-and then his hand fell away from it. He turned and looked at Roland with a bleak eye.
“What ails thee, Eddie? Whatever it is, spill it quick. The baby’s coming now-may have come already. Soon they’ll have no more use for her!”
“I know,” Eddie said. “But we can’t go to Lovell.” He grimaced as if what he was saying was causing him physical pain.
Roland guessed it probably was. “Not yet.”
TWO
They sat quiet for a moment, listening to the sweedy tuned hum of the Beam, a hum that sometimes became joyous voices.
They sat looking into the thickening shadows in the trees, where a million faces and a million stories lurked, O can you say unfound door, can you say lost.
Eddie half-expected Roland to shout at him-it wouldn’t be the first time-or maybe clout him upside the head, as the gunslinger’s old teacher, Cort, had been wont to do when his pupils were slow or contrary. Eddie almost hoped he would. A good shot to the jaw might clear his head, by Shardik.
Only muddy thinking’s not the trouble and you know it, he thought. Your head is clearer than his. If it wasn % you could let go of this luorld and go on hunting for your lost wife.
At last Roland spoke. “What is it, then? This?” He bent and picked up the folded piece of paper with Aaron Deepneau’s pinched handwriting on it. Roland looked at it for a moment, then flicked it into Eddie’s lap with a little grimace of distaste.
“You know how much I love her,” Eddie said in a low, trained voice. “You know that.”
Roland nodded, but without looking at him. He appeared be staring down at his own broken and dusty boots, and the dirty floor of the passenger-side footwell. Those downcast eyes, that gaze which would not turn to him who’d come almost to idolize Roland of Gilead, sort of broke Eddie Dean’s heart. Yet he pressed on. If there had ever been room for mistakes, it was gone now. This was the endgame.
“I’d go to her this minute if I thought it was the right thing to do. Roland, this second! But we have to finish our business in this world. Because this world is one-way. Once we leave today,
July 9th, 1977, we can never come here again. We-”
“Eddie, we’ve been through all of this.” Still not looking at him.
“Yes, but do you understand it? Only one bullet to shoot, one
“Riza to throw. That’s why we came to Bridgton in the first place! God knows I wanted to go to Turtleback Lane as soon as John Cullum told us about it, but I thought we had to see the writer, and talk to him. And I was right, wasn’t I?” Almost pleading now. “Wasn’t I?”
Roland looked at him at last, and Eddie was glad. This was hard enough, wretched enough, without having to bear the turned-away, downcast gaze of his dinh.
“And it may not matter if we stay a little longer. If we concentrate on those two women lying together on those two beds,
Roland-if we concentrate on Suze and Mia as we last saw them-then it’s possible we can cut into their history at that point. Isn’t it?”
After a long, considering moment during which Eddie wasn t conscious of drawing a single breath, the gunslinger nodded. Such could not happen if on Turtleback Lane they ound what the gunslinger had come to think of as an “old-ones or” because such doors were dedicated, and always came out e same place. But were they to find a magic door somewhere aong Turtleback Lane in Lovell, one that had been left behind en the Prim receded, then yes, they might be able to cut in where they wanted. But such doors could be tricky, too; this they had found out for themselves in the Cave of Voices, when the door there had sent Jake and Callahan to New York instead of Roland and Eddie, thereby scattering all their plans into the Land of Nineteen.
“What else must we do?” Roland said. There was no anger in his voice, but to Eddie he sounded both tired and unsure.
“Whatever it is, it’s gonna be hard. That much I guarantee you.”
Eddie took the bill of sale and gazed at it as grimly as any Hamlet in the history of drama had ever stared upon the skull of poor Yorick. Then he looked back at Roland. “This gives us title to the vacant lot with the rose in it. We need to get it to Moses Carver of Holmes Dental Industries. And where is he? We don’t know.”
“For that matter, Eddie, we don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
Eddie voiced a wild laugh. “You say true, I say thankya!
Why don’t I turn us around, Roland? I’ll drive us back to Stephen King’s house. We can cadge twenty or thirty bucks off him-because, brother, I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t have a crying dime between the two of us-but more important, we can get him to write us a really good hardboiled private eye, someone who looks like Bogart and kicks ass like Clint Eastwood. Let him track down this guy Carver for us!”
He shook his head as if to clear it. The hum of the voices sounded sweetly in his ears, the perfect antidote to the ugly todash chimes.
“I mean, my wife is in bad trouble somewhere up the line, for all I know she’s being eaten alive by vampires or vampire bugs, and here I sit beside a country road with a guy whose most basic skill is shooting people, trying to work out how I’m going to start a fucking corporation!”
“Slow down,” Roland said. Now that he was resigned to staying in this world a little longer, he seemed calm enough.
“Tell me what it is you feel we need to do before we can shake the dirt of this where and when from our heels for good.”
So Eddie did.
THREE
Roland had heard a good deal of it before, but hadn’t fully understood what a difficult position they were in. They owned the vacant lot on Second Avenue, yes, but their basis for o
wnership was a holographic document that would look mighty shaky in a court o’ legal, especially if the powers-that-be from the Sombra Corporation started throwing lawyers at them.
Eddie wanted to get the writ of trade to Moses Carver, if he could, along with the information that his goddaughter, Odetta Holmes-missing for thirteen years by the summer of 1977-was alive and well and wanted above all things for Carver to assume guardianship, not just of the vacant lot itself, but of a certain rose growing wild within its borders.
Moses Carver-if still alive-had to be convinced enough by what he heard to fold the so-called Tet Corporation into Holmes Industries (or vice-versa). More! He had to dedicate what was left of his life (and Eddie had an idea Carver might be Aaron Deepneau’s age by now) to building a corporate giant whose only real purpose was to thwart two other corporate giants, Sombra and North Central Positronics, at every turn. To strangle them if possible, and keep them from becoming a monster that would leave its destroyer’s track across all the dying expanse of Mid-World and mortally wound the Dark Tower itself.
“Maybe we should have left the writ O’Trade with sai Deepneau,”
Roland mused when he had heard Eddie through to the end. “At least he could have located this Carver and sought him out and told our tale for us.”
“No, we did right to keep it.” This was one of the few things of which Eddie was completely sure. “If we’d left this piece of paper with Aaron Deepneau, it’d be ashes in the wind by now.”
“You believe Tower would have repented his bargain and talked his friend into destroying it?”
“I know it,” Eddie said. “But even if Deepneau could stand up to his old friend going yatta-yatta-yatta in his ear for on end-’Burn it, Aaron, they coerced me and now they mean to screw me, you know it as well as I do, burn it and we’ll call die cops on those momsers’-do you think Moses Carver would believe such a crazy story?”
Roland smiled bleakly. “I don’t diink his belief would be an issue, Eddie. Because, think thee a moment, how much of our crazy story has Aaron Deepneau actually heard)”
“Not enough,” Eddie agreed. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands against them. Hard. “I can only think of one person who could actually convince Moses Carver to do the things we’d have to ask, and she’s otherwise occupied. In the year of ’99. And by then, Carver’s gonna be as dead as Deepneau and maybe Tower himself.”
“Well, what can we do without her? What will satisfy you?”
Eddie was thinking that perhaps Susannah could come back to 1977 without them, since she, at least, hadn’t visited it yet. Well… she’d come here todash, but he didn’t think that exactly counted. He supposed she might be barred from 1977
solely on the grounds that she was ka-tet with him and Roland.
Or some other grounds. Eddie didn’t know. Reading the fine print had never been his strong point. He turned to ask Roland what he thought, but Roland spoke before he got a chance.
“What about our dan-tete?” he asked.
Although Eddie understood the term-it meant baby god or little savior-he did not at first understand what Roland meant by it. Then he did. Had not their Waterford dan-tete loaned them the very car they were sitting in, say thankya?
“Cullum? Is that who you’re talking about, Roland? The guy with the case of autographed baseballs?”
“You say true,” Roland replied. He spoke in that dry tone which indicated not amusement but mild exasperation. “Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm for the idea.”
“But… you told him to go away! And he agreed to go!”
“And how enthusiastic would you say he was about visiting his friend in Vermong?”
“Mont,” Eddie said, unable to suppress a smile. Yet, smiling or not, what he felt most strongly was dismay. He thought that scraping sound he heard in his imagination was Roland’s o-fingered right hand, prospecting around at the very bottom of the barrel.
Roland shrugged as if to say he didn’t care if Cullum had noken of going to Vermont or Barony o’ Garlan. “Answer my question.”
“Well…”
Cullum actually hadn’t expressed much enthusiasm for the idea at all. He had from the very first reacted more like one of them than one of the grass-eaters among whom he lived (Eddie recognized grass-eaters very easily, having been one himself until Roland first kidnapped him and then began his homicidal lessons). Cullum had been clearly intrigued by the gunslingers, and curious about their business in his little town. But Roland had been very emphatic abovit what he wanted, and folks had a way of following his orders.
Now he made a twirling motion with his right hand, his old impatient gesture. Hurry, for your father’s sake. Shit or get off the commode.
“I guess he really didn’t want to go,” Eddie said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s still at his house in East Stoneham.”
“He is, though. He didn’t go.”
Eddie managed to keep his mouth from dropping open only with some effort. “How can you know that? Can you touch him, is that it?”
Roland shook his head.
“Then how-”
“Ka.”
“Ka? Ka?” Just what the fuck does iki mean?”
Roland’s face was haggard and tired, the skin pale beneath his tan. “Who else do we know in this part of the world?”
“No one, but-”
Then it’s him.” Roland spoke flatly, as if stating some obvious fact of life for a child: up is over your head, down is where your feet stick to the earth.
Eddie got ready to tell him that was stupid, nothing more an rank superstition, then didn’t. Putting aside Deepneau, and the hideous Jack Andolini, John Cullum was the only person tiiey knew in this part of the world
(or on diis level of the Tower, if you preferred to diink of it that way). And, after the things Eddie had seen in the last few months-hell, in the last week-who was he to sneer at superstition?
“All right,” Eddie said. “I guess we better try it.”
“How do we get in touch?”
“We can phone him from Bridgton. But in a story, Roland, a minor character like John Cullum would never come in off die bench to save the day. It wouldn’t be considered realistic.”
“In life,” Roland said, “I’m sure it happens all the time.”
And Eddie laughed. What the hell else could you do? It was just so perfecdy Roland.
FOUR
BRIDGTON HIGH STREET 1
HIGHLAND LAKE 2
HARRISON 3
WATERFORD6
SWEDEN 9
LOVELL18
FRYEBURG24
They had just passed this sign when Eddie said, “Root around in the glove-compartment a little, Roland. See if ka or the Beam or whatever left us a little spare change for the pay phone.”
“Glove-? Do you mean this panel here?”
“Yeah.”
Roland first tried to turn the chrome button on the front, then got with the program and pushed it. The inside was a mare’s nest that hadn’t been improved by the Galaxie’s brief period of weighdessness. There were credit card receipts, a very old tube of what Eddie identified as “tooth-paste” (Roland could make out the words HOLMES DENTAL on it quite clearly), a fottergraff showing a smiling little girl-Cullum’s niece, mayhap-on a pony, a stick of what he first took for explosive (Eddie said it was a road flare, for emergencies), a magazine that appeared to be called YANKME… and a cigar-box.
Roland couldn’t quite make out the word on this, although he thought it might be trolls. He showed the box to Eddie, whose eyes lit up.
“That says TOLLS,” he said. “Maybe you’re right about Cullum and ka. Open it up, Roland, do it please ya.”
The child who had given this box as a gift had crafted a loving
(and rather clumsy) catch on the front to hold it closed.
Roland slipped the catch, opened the box, and showed Eddie a great many silver coins. “Is it enough to call sai Cullum’s house?”
> “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Looks like enough to call Fairbanks,
Alaska. It won’t help us a bit, though, if Cullum’s on the road to Vermont.”
FIVE
The Bridgton town square was bounded by a drug store and a pizza-joint on one side; a movie theater (The Magic Lantern)
and a department store (Reny’s) on the other. Between the theater and the department store was a little plaza equipped with benches and three pay phones.
Eddie swept through Cullum’s box of toll-change and gave Roland six dollars in quarters. “I want you to go over there,” he said, pointing at the drug store, “and get me a tin of aspirin. Will you know it when you see it?”
“Astin. I’ll know it.”
“The smallest size they have is what I want, because six bucks really isn’t much money. Then go next door, to that place that says Bridgton Pizza and Sandwiches. If you’ve still got at least sixteen of those money-coins left, tell them you want a hoagie.”
Roland nodded, which wasn’t good enough for Eddie. “Let me hear you say it.”
“Hoggie.”
“Hoagie.”
“HOOG-gie”
“Ho-” Eddie quit. “Roland, let me hear you say ’poorboy.’”
“Poor boy.”
“Good. If you have at least sixteen quarters left, ask for a poorboy. Can you say ’lots of mayo’?”
“Lots of mayo.”
“Yeah. If you have less than sixteen, ask for a salami and cheese sandwich. Sandwich, not a popkin.”
“Salommy sanditch.”
“Close enough. And don’t say anything else unless you absolutely have to.”
Roland nodded. Eddie was right, it would be better if he did not speak. People only had to look at him to know, in their secret hearts, that he wasn’t from these parts. They also had a tendency to step away from him. Better he not exacerbate that.