by Stephen King
Would it surprise you, after all we’ve seen together and all the secrets we’ve learned, to know that at quarter past five that afternoon,
Mrs. Tassenbaum pulled Chip McAvoy’s old truck into the driveway of a house we’ve already visited? Probably not, because ka is a wheel, and all it knows how to do is roll. When last we visited here, in 1977, both it and the boathouse on the shore of Keywadin Pond were white with green trim. The Tassenbaums, who bought the place in ’94, had painted it an entirely pleasing shade of cream (no trim; to Irene Tassenbaum’s way of thinking, trim is for folks who can’t make up their minds). They have also put a sign reading SUNSET COTTAGE on a post at the head of the driveway, and as far as Uncle Sam’s concerned it’s part of their mailing address, but to the local folk, this house at the south end of Keywadin Pond will always be the old John Cullum place.
She parked the truck beside her dark red Benz and went inside, mentally rehearsing what she’d tell David about why she had the local shopkeeper’s pickup, but Sunset Cottage hummed with the peculiar silence only empty places have; she picked up on it immediately. She had come back to a lot of empty places-apartments at the beginning, bigger and bigger houses as time went by-over the years. Not because David was out drinking or womanizing, good Lord forbid. No, he and his friends had usually been out in one garage or another, one basement workshop or another, drinking cheap wine and discount beer from the Beverage Barn, creating the Internet plus all the software necessary to support it and make it user-friendly. The profits, although most would not believe it, had only been a side-effect.
The silence to which their wives so often came home was another. After awhile all that humming silence kind of got to you, made you mad, even, but not today. Today she was delighted the house was just hers.
Are you going to sleep with Marshal Dillon, if he wants you?
It wasn’t a question she even had to think about. The answer was yes, she would sleep with him if he wanted her: sideways, backward, doggy-style, or straight-up fuck, if that was his pleasure. He wouldn’t-even if he hadn’t been grieving for his young
(sai? son?)
friend, he wouldn’t have wanted to sleep with her, she with her wrinkles, she with her hair going gray at the roots, she with the spare tire which her designer clothes could not quite conceal. The very idea was ludicrous.
But yes. If he wanted her, she would.
She looked on the fridge and there, under one of the magnets that dotted it (WE ARE POSITHONICS, BUILDING THE FUTURE ONE CIRCUIT AT A TIME, this one said) was a brief note.
Ree-
You wanted me to relax, so I’m relaxing (dammit!).
I.e. gone fishin’ with Sonny Emerson, t’other end of the lake, ayuh, ayuh. Will be back by 7 unless the bugs are too bad. If I bring you a bass, will you cook amp; clean?
D.
PS: Something going on at the store big enufto rate 3 police cars. WALK-INS, maybe???? © If you hear, fill me in.
She’d told him she was going to the store this afternoon-eggs and milk that she’d of course never gotten-and he had nodded. Yes dear, yes dear. But his note held no hint of worry, no sense that he even remembered what she’d said. Well, what else did she expect? When it came to David, info entered ear A, info exited ear B. Welcome to Genius World.
She turned the note over, plucked a pen from a teacup filled with them, hesitated, then wrote:
David,
Something has happened, and I have to be gone for awhile. 2 days at least, I think maybe 3 or 4. Please don’t worry about me and don’t call anyone. ESPECIALLY NOT POLICE. It’s a stray cat thin?
Would he understand that? She thought he would if he remembered how they’d met. At die Santa Monica ASPCA, that had been, ainong the stacked rows of kennels in back: love blooms as the mongrels yap. It sounded like James Joyce to her, by God. He had brought in a stray dog he’d found on a suburban street near the apartment where he was staying with half a dozen egghead friends. She’d been looking for a kitten to liven up what was an essentially friendless life. He’d had all his hair then. As for her, she’d thought women who dyed theirs mildly amusing. Time was a thief, and one of the first things it took was your sense of humor.
She hesitated, then added Love you,
Ree Was that true any longer? Well, let it stand, either way.
Crossing out what you’d written in ink always looked ugly. She put the note back on the fridge with the same magnet to hold it in place.
She got the keys to the Mercedes out of the basket by the door, then remembered the rowboat, still tied up at the little stub of dock behind the store. It would be all right there. But then she thought of something else, someuiing the boy had told her. He doesn’t know about money.
She went into the pantry, where they always kept a slim roll of fifties (there were places out here in the boondocks where she would be willing to swear they’d never even heard of MasterCard) and took three. She started away, shrugged, went back, and took the other three, as well. Why not? She was living dangerously today.
On her way out, she paused again to look at the note. And then, for absolutely no reason she could understand, she took the Positronics magnet away and replaced it with an orange slice. Then she left.
Never mind the future. For the time being, she had enough to keep her occupied in the present.
NINE
The emergency bucka was gone, bearing the writer to die nearest hospital or infirmary, Roland assumed. Peace officers had come just as it left, and they spent perhaps half an hour talking with Bryan Smith. The gunslinger could hear the palaver from where he was, just over the first rise. The bluebacks’ questions were clear and calm, Smith’s answers litde more than mumbles.
Roland saw no reason to stop working. If the blues came back here and found him, he would deal with them. Just incapacitate them, unless they made that impossible; gods knew there had been enough killing. But he would bury his dead, one way or another.
He would bury his dead.
The lovely green-gold light of the clearing deepened. Mosquitoes found him but he did not stop what he was doing in order to slap them, merely let them drink their fill and then lumber off, heavy with dieir freight of blood. He heard engines starting as he finished hand-digging the grave, die smooth roar of two cars and the more uneven sound of Smith’s vanmobile.
He had heard the voices of only two peace officers, which meant that, unless there had been a third blueback with nothing to say, they were allowing Smith to drive away by himself.
Roland thought this rather odd, but-like the question of whether or not King was paralyzed-it was none of his matter or mind. All diat mattered was diis; all diat mattered was seeing to his own.
He made three trips to collect stones, because a grave dug by hand must necessarily be a shallow one and animals, even in such a tame world as this, are always hungry. He stacked the stones at the head of the hole, a scar lined with earth so rich it could have been black satin. Oy lay by Jake’s head, watching die gunslinger come and go, saying nothing. He’d always been different from his kind as they were since the world had moved on; Roland had even speculated that it was Oy’s extraordinary chattiness that had caused the others in his tet to expel him, and not gently, either. When they’d come upon this fellow, not too far from the town of River Crossing, he’d been scrawny to the point of starvation, and with a half-healed bite-mark on one flank. The bumbler had loved Jake from the first: “That’s as clear as Earth needs,” Cort might have said (or Roland’s own father, for that matter). And it was to Jake the bumbler had talked the most. Roland had an idea that Oy might fall mostly silent now that the boy was dead, and this thought was another way of defining what was lost.
He remembered the boy standing before the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis in the torchlight, his face young and fair, as if he would live forever. / am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine, he had said, and oh, aye, for here he was in the Ninety and Nine, with his grave all
dug, clean and ready for him.
Roland began to weep again. He put his hands over his face and rocked back and forth on his knees, smelling the sweet aromatic needles and wishing he had cried off before ka, that old and patient demon, had taught him the real price of his quest.
He would have given anything to change what had happened, anything to close this hole with nothing in it, but this was the world where time ran just one way.
TEN
When he had gained control of himself again, he wrapped Jake carefully in the blue tarpaulin, fashioning a kind of hood around the still, pale face. He would close that face away for good before refilling the grave, but not until.
“Oy?” he asked. “Will you say goodbye?”
Oy looked at Roland, and for a moment the gunslinger wasn’t sure he understood. Then the bumbler extended his neck and caressed the boy’s cheek a last time with his tongue. “I,
Ake,” he said: Bye, Jake or I ache, it came to the same.
The gunslinger gathered the boy up (how light he was, this boy who had jumped from the barn loft with Benny Slightman, and stood against the vampires with Pere Callahan, how curiously light; as if the growing weight of him had departed with his life) and lowered him into the hole. A crumble of dirt spilled down one cheek and Roland wiped it away. That done, he closed his eyes again and diought. Then, at last-haltingly-he began. He knew that any translation into the language of this place would be clumsy, but he did the best he could. If Jake’s spirit-man lingered near, it was this language that he would understand.
“Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
“Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
“Death is speechless, so hear my speech.”
The words drifted away into the haze of green and gold.
Roland let them, then set upon the rest. He spoke more quickly now.
“This is Jake, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
“May the forgiving glance of S’mana heal his heart. Say please.
“May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of this earth. Say please.
“Surround him, Gan, with light.
“Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
“If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
“If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
“May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends that were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
“This is Jake, who lived well, loved his own, and died as ka would have it.
“Each man owes a death. This is Jake. Give him peace.”
He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.
I cannot bear to let him go.
But once again, that cruel paradox: if he didn’t, the sacrifice was in vain.
Roland opened his eyes and said, “Goodbye, Jake. I love you, dear.”
Then he closed the blue hood around the boy’s face against the rain of earth that must follow.
ELEVEN
When the grave was filled and the rocks placed over it, Roland walked back to the clearing by the road and examined the tale the various tracks told, simply because there was nothing else to do. When that meaningless task was finished, he sat down on a fallen log. Oy had stayed by the grave, and Roland had an idea he might bide there. He would call the bumbler when Mrs.
Tassenbaum returned, but knew Oy might not come; if he didn’t, it meant that Oy had decided to join his friend in the clearing. The bumbler would simply stand watch by Jake’s grave until starvation (or some predator) took him. The idea deepened Roland’s sorrow, but he would bide by Oy’s decision.
Ten minutes later the bumbler came out of the woods on his own and sat down by Roland’s left boot. “Good boy,” Roland said, and stroked the bumbler’s head. Oy had decided to live.
It was a small thing, but it was a good thing.
Ten minutes after that, a dark red car rolled almost silently up to the place where King had been struck and Jake killed. It pulled over. Roland opened the door on the passenger side and got in, still wincing against pain that wasn’t there. Oy jumped up between his feet without being asked, lay down with his nose against his flank, and appeared to go to sleep.
“Did you see to your boy?” Mrs. Tassenbaum asked, pulling away.
“Yes. Thankee-sai.”
“I guess I can’t put a marker there,” she said, “but later on I could plant something. Is there something you think he might like?”
Roland looked up, and for the first time since Jake’s death, he smiled. ’Yes,” he said. “A rose.”
TWELVE
They rode for almost twenty minutes without speaking. She stopped at a small store over the Bridgton town line and pumped gas: MOBIL, a brand Roland recognized from his wanderings.
When she went in to pay, he looked up at los dngeles, running clear and true across the sky. The Path of the Beam, and stronger already, unless that was just his imagination. He supposed it didn’t matter if it was. If the Beam wasn’t stronger now, it soon would be. They had succeeded in saving it, but Roland felt no gladness at the idea.
When Mrs. Tassenbaum came out of the store, she was holding a singlet-style shirt with a picture of a bucka-wagon on it-a real bucka-wagon-and words written in a circle. He could make out HOME, but nothing else. He asked her what the words said.
“BRIDGTON OLD HOME DAYS, JULY 27TH TO JULY 30TH, 1999,”
she told him. “It doesn’t really matter what it says as long as it covers your chest. Sooner or later we’ll want to stop, and there’s a saying we have in these parts: ’No shirt, no shoes, no service.”
Your boots look beat-up and busted down, but I guess they’ll get you through the door of most places. But topless? Huh-uh, no way Jose. I’ll get you a better shirt later on-one with a collar-and some decent pants, too. Those jeans are so dirty I bet they’d stand up on their own.” She engaged in a brief (but furious)
interior debate, then plunged. ’You’ve got I’m going to say roughly two billion scars. And that’s just on the part of you I can see.”
Roland did not respond to this. “Do you have money?” he asked.
“I got three hundred dollars when I went back to the house to get my car, and I had thirty or forty with me. Also credit cards, but your late friend said to use cash as long as I could. Until you go on by yourself, if possible. He said there might be folks looking for you. He called them ’low men.’”
Roland nodded. Yes, there would be low men out there, and after all he and his ka-tet had done to thwart the plans of their master, they’d be twice as eager to have his head. Preferably smoking, and on the end of a stick. Also the head of sai Tassenbaum, if they found out about her.
“What else did Jake tell you?” Roland asked.
“That I must take you to New York City, if you wanted to go there. He said there’s a door there that will take you to a place called Faydag.”
“Was there more?”
“Yes. He said there was another place you might want to go before you used the door.” She gave him a timid litde sideways glance. “Is there?”
He considered this, then nodded.
“He also spoke to the dog. It sounded as if he was giving the dog… orders? Instructions?” She looked at him doubtfully.
“Could that be?”
Roland thought it could. The woman Jake could only ask.
As for Oy… well, it might explain why the bumbler hadn’t stayed by the grave, much as he might have wanted to.
For awhile they traveled in silence. The road they were on led to a much busier one, filled with cars and trucks running at high speed in many lanes. She had to stop at a tollbooth and give money to get on. The toll-taker was a robot with a basket for an arm. Roland tho
ught he might be able to sleep, but he saw Jake’s face when he closed his eyes. Then Eddie’s, with the useless bandage covering his forehead. If this is what comes when I dose my eyes, he thought, what will my dreams be like?
He opened his eyes again and watched as she drove down a smooth, paved ramp, slipping into the heavy flow of traffic without a pause. He leaned over and looked up through the window on his side. There were the clouds, los dngeles, traveling above them, in the same direction. They were still on the Path of the Beam.
THIRTEEN
“Mister? Roland?”
She thought he had been dozing with his eyes open. Now he turned to her from where he sat in the passenger bucket seat with his hands in his lap, the good one folded over the mutilated one, hiding it. She thought she had never seen anyone who looked less like he belonged in a Mercedes-Benz. Or any automobile. She also thought she had never seen a man who looked so tired.
But he’s not used up. I don’t think he’s anywhere near used up, although he may think otherwise.
“The animal… Oy?”
“Oy, yes.” The bumbler looked up at the sound of his name, but didn’t repeat it as he might have done only yesterday.
“Is it a dog? It isn’t, exactly, is it?”
“He, not it. And no, he’s not a dog.”
Irene Tassenbaum opened her mouth, then closed it again.
This was difficult, because silence in company did not come naturally to her. And she was with a man she found attractive, even in his grief and exhaustion (perhaps to some degree because of those things). A dying boy had asked her to take this man to New York City, and get him to the places he needed to go once they were there. He’d said that his friend knew even less about New York than he did about money, and she believed that was true. But she also believed this man was dangerous.
She wanted to ask more questions, but what if he answered them? She understood that the less she knew, the better her chance, once he was gone, of merging into the life she’d been living at quarter to four this afternoon. To merge the way you merged onto the turnpike from a side road. That would be best.