by Stephen King
Jake considered these things. As he did, his face gradually brightened with relief. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes.” Roland tried not to show how much this question hurt and angered him. He understood, after all, why the boy would ask. “I promise and swear to my promise. Does it do ya?”
“Yes! It does me fine!”
Roland nodded. “I’m not doing this because I’m convinced it’s the right thing but because you are, Jake. I—”
“Wait a second, whoa, wait,” Jake said. His smile was fading. “Don’t try to put all this on me. I never—”
“Spare me such nonsense.” Roland used a dry and distant tone Jake had seldom heard. “You ask part of a man’s decision. I allow it—must allow it—because ka has decreed you take a man’s part in great matters. You opened this door when you questioned my judgment. Do you deny that?”
Jake had gone from pale to flushed to pale once more. He looked badly frightened, and shook his head without speaking a single word. Ah, gods, Roland thought, I hate every part of this. It stinks like a dying man’s shit.
In a quieter tone he said, “No, you didn’t ask to be brought here. Nor did I wish to rob you of your childhood. Yet here we are, and ka stands to one side and laughs. We must do as it wills or pay the price.”
Jake lowered his head and spoke two words in a trembling whisper: “I know.”
“You believe Susannah should be told. I, on the other hand, don’t know what to do—in this matter I’ve lost my compass. When one knows and one does not, the one who does not must bow his head and the one who does must take responsibility. Do you understand me, Jake?”
“Yes,” Jake whispered, and touched his curled hand to his brow.
“Good. We’ll leave that part and say thankya. You’re strong in the touch.”
“I wish I wasn’t!” Jake burst out.
“Nevertheless. Can you touch her?”
“Yes. I don’t pry—not into her or any of you—but sometimes I do touch her. I get little snatches of songs she’s thinking of, or thoughts of her apartment in New York. She misses it. Once she thought, ‘I wish I’d gotten a chance to read that new Allen Drury novel that came from the book club.’ I think Allen Drury must be a famous writer from her when.”
“Surface things, in other words.”
“Yes.”
“But you could go deeper.”
“I could probably watch her undress, too,” Jake said glumly, “but it wouldn’t be right.”
“Under these circumstances, it is right, Jake. Think of her as a well where you must go every day and draw a single dipperful to make sure the water’s still sweet. I want to know if she changes. In particular I want to know if she’s planning alleyo.”
Jake looked at him, round-eyed. “To run away? Run away where?”
Roland shook his head. “I don’t know. Where does a cat go to drop her litter? In a closet? Under the barn?”
“What if we tell her and the other one gets the upper hand? What if Mia goes alleyo, Roland, and drags Susannah along with her?”
Roland didn’t reply. This, of course, was exactly what he was afraid of, and Jake was smart enough to know it.
Jake was looking at him with a certain understandable resentment…but also with acceptance. “Once a day. No more than that.”
“More if you sense a change.”
“All right,” Jake said. “I hate it, but I asked you dan-dinh. Guess you got me.”
“It’s not an arm-wrestle, Jake. Nor a game.”
“I know.” Jake shook his head. “It feels like you turned it around on me somehow, but okay.”
I did turn it around on you, Roland thought. He supposed it was good none of them knew how lost he was just now, how absent the intuition that had carried him through so many difficult situations. I did…but only because I had to.
“We keep quiet now, but we tell her before the Wolves come,” Jake said. “Before we have to fight. That’s the deal?”
Roland nodded.
“If we have to fight Balazar first—in the other world—we still have to tell her before we do. Okay?”
“Yes,” Roland said. “All right.”
“I hate this,” Jake said morosely.
Roland said, “So do I.”
Three
Eddie was sittin and whittlin on the Jaffordses’ porch, listening to some confused story of Gran-pere’s and nodding in what he hoped were the right places, when Roland and Jake rode up. Eddie put away his knife and sauntered down the steps to meet them, calling back over his shoulder for Suze.
He felt extraordinarily good this morning. His fears of the night before had blown away, as our most extravagant night-fears often do; like the Pere’s Type One and Type Two vampires, those fears seemed especially allergic to daylight. For one thing, all the Jaffords children had been present and accounted for at breakfast. For another, there was indeed a shoat missing from the barn. Tian had asked Eddie and Susannah if they’d heard anything in the night, and nodded with gloomy satisfaction when both of them shook their heads.
“Aye. The mutie strains’ve mostly run out in our part of the world, but not in the north. There are packs of wild dogs that come down every fall. Two weeks ago they was likely in Calla Amity; next week we’ll be shed of em and they’ll be Calla Lockwood’s problem. Silent, they are. It’s not quiet I mean, but mute. Nothin in here.” Tian patted a hand against his throat. “Sides, it ain’t like they didn’t do me at least some good. I found a hell of a big barn-rat out there. Dead as a rock. One of em tore its head almost clean off.”
“Nasty,” Hedda had said, pushing her bowl away with a theatrical grimace.
“You eat that porridge, miss,” Zalia said. “It’ll warm’ee while you’re hanging out the clothes.”
“Maw-Maw, why-y-yy?”
Eddie had caught Susannah’s eye and tipped her a wink. She winked back, and everything was all right. Okay, so she’d done a little wandering in the night. Had a little midnight snack. Buried the leavings. And yes, this business of her being pregnant had to be addressed. Of course it did. But it would come out all right, Eddie felt sure of it. And by daylight, the idea that Susannah could ever hurt a child seemed flat-out ridiculous.
“Hile, Roland. Jake.” Eddie turned to where Zalia had come out onto the porch. She dropped a curtsy. Roland took off his hat, held it out to her, and then put it back on.
“Sai,” he asked her, “you stand with your husband in the matter of fighting the Wolves, aye?”
She sighed, but her gaze was steady enough. “I do, gunslinger.”
“Do you ask aid and succor?”
The question was spoken without ostentation—almost conversationally, in fact—but Eddie felt his heart gave a lurch, and when Susannah’s hand crept into his, he squeezed it. Here was the third question, the key question, and it hadn’t been asked of the Calla’s big farmer, big rancher, or big businessman. It had been asked of a sodbuster’s wife with her mousy brown hair pulled back in a bun, a smallhold farmer’s wife whose skin, although naturally dark, had even so cracked and coarsened from too much sun, whose housedress had been faded by many washings. And it was right that it should be so, perfectly right. Because the soul of Calla Bryn Sturgis was in four dozen smallhold farms just like this, Eddie reckoned. Let Zalia Jaffords speak for all of them. Why the hell not?
“I seek it and say thankya,” she told him simply. “Lord God and Man Jesus bless you and yours.”
Roland nodded as if he’d been doing no more than passing the time of day. “Margaret Eisenhart showed me something.”
“Did she?” Zalia asked, and smiled slightly. Tian came plodding around the corner, looking tired and sweaty, although it was only nine in the morning. Over one shoulder was a busted piece of harness. He wished Roland and Jake a good day, then stood by his wife, a hand around her waist and resting on her hip.
“Aye, and told us the tale of Lady Oriza and Gray Dick.”
“ ’Tis a fine tale,” she said.
“It is,” Roland said. “I’ll not fence, lady-sai. Will’ee come out on the line with your dish when the time comes?”
Tian’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He looked at his wife like a man who has suddenly been visited by a great revelation.
“Aye,” Zalia said.
Tian dropped the harness and hugged her. She hugged him back, briefly and hard, then turned to Roland and his friends once more.
Roland was smiling. Eddie was visited by a faint sense of unreality, as he always was when he observed this phenomenon. “Good. And will you show Susannah how to throw it?”
Zalia looked thoughtfully at Susannah. “Would she learn?”
“I don’t know,” Susannah said. “Is it something I’m supposed to learn, Roland?”
“Yes.”
“When, gunslinger?” Zalia asked.
Roland calculated. “Three or four days from now, if all goes well. If she shows no aptitude, send her back to me and we’ll try Jake.”
Jake started visibly.
“I think she’ll do fine, though. I never knew a gunslinger who didn’t take to new weapons like birds to a new pond. And I must have at least one who can either throw the dish or shoot the bah, for we are four with only three guns we can rely on. And I like the dish. I like it very well.”
“I’ll show what I can, sure,” Zalia said, and gave Susannah a shy look.
“Then, in nine days’ time, you and Margaret and Rosalita and Sarey Adams will come to the Old Fella’s house and we’ll see what we’ll see.”
“You have a plan?” Tian asked. His eyes were hot with hope.
“I will by then,” Roland said.
Four
They rode toward town four abreast at that same ambling gait, but where the East Road crossed another, this one going north and south, Roland pulled up. “Here I leave you for a little while,” he told them. He pointed north, toward the hills. “Two hours from here is what some of the Seeking Folk call Manni Calla and others call Manni Redpath. It’s their place by either name, a little town within the larger one. I’ll meet with Henchick there.”
“Their dinh,” Eddie said.
Roland nodded. “Beyond the Manni village, another hour or less, are a few played-out mines and a lot of caves.”
“The place you pointed out on the Tavery twins’ map?” Susannah asked.
“No, but close by. The cave I’m interested in is the one they call Doorway Cave. We’ll hear of it from Callahan tonight when he finishes his story.”
“Do you know that for a fact, or is it intuition?” Susannah asked.
“I know it from Henchick. He spoke of it last night. He also spoke of the Pere. I could tell you, but it’s best we hear it from Callahan himself, I think. In any case, that cave will be important to us.”
“It’s the way back, isn’t it?” Jake said. “You think it’s the way back to New York.”
“More,” the gunslinger said. “With Black Thirteen, I think it might be the way to everywhere and everywhen.”
“Including the Dark Tower?” Eddie asked. His voice was husky, barely more than a whisper.
“I can’t say,” Roland replied, “but I believe Henchick will show me the cave, and I may know more then. Meanwhile, you three have business in Took’s, the general store.”
“Do we?” Jake asked.
“You do.” Roland balanced his purse on his lap, opened it, and dug deep. At last he came out with a leather drawstring bag none of them had seen before.
“My father gave me this,” he said absently. “It’s the only thing I have now, other than the ruins of my younger face, that I had when I rode into Mejis with my ka-mates all those years ago.”
They looked at it with awe, sharing the same thought: if what the gunslinger said was true, the little leather bag had to be hundreds of years old. Roland opened it, looked in, nodded. “Susannah, hold out your hands.”
She did. Into her cupped palms he poured perhaps ten pieces of silver, emptying the bag.
“Eddie, hold out yours.”
“Uh, Roland, I think the cupboard’s bare.”
“Hold out your hands.”
Eddie shrugged and did so. Roland tipped the bag over them and poured out a dozen gold pieces, emptying the bag.
“Jake?”
Jake held out his hands. From the pocket in the front of the poncho, Oy looked on with interest. This time the bag disgorged half a dozen bright gemstones before it was empty. Susannah gasped.
“They’re but garnets,” Roland said, almost apologetically. “A fair medium of exchange out here, from what they say. They won’t buy much, but they will buy a boy’s needs, I think.”
“Cool!” Jake was grinning broadly. “Say thankya! Big-big!”
They looked at the empty sack with silent wonder, and Roland smiled. “Most of the magic I once knew or had access to is gone, but you see a little lingers. Like soaked leaves in the bottom of a teapot.”
“Is there even more stuff inside?” Jake asked.
“No. In time, there might be. It’s a grow-bag.” Roland returned the ancient leather sack to his purse, came out with the fresh supply of tobacco Callahan had given him, and rolled a smoke. “Go in the store. Buy what you fancy. A few shirts, perhaps—and one for me, if it does ya; I could use one. Then you’ll go out on the porch and take your ease, as town folk do. Sai Took won’t care much for it, there’s nothing he’d like to see so well as our backs going east toward Thunderclap, but he’ll not shoo you off.”
“Like to see him try,” Eddie grunted, and touched the butt of Roland’s gun.
“You won’t need that,” Roland said. “Custom alone will keep him behind his counter, minding his till. That, and the temper of the town.”
“It’s going our way, isn’t it?” Susannah said.
“Yes, Susannah. If you asked them straight on, as I asked sai Jaffords, they’d not answer, so it’s best not to ask, not yet. But yes. They mean to fight. Or to let us fight for them. Which can’t be held against them. Fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves is our job.”
Eddie opened his mouth to tell Roland what Gran-pere had told him, then closed it again. Roland hadn’t asked him, although that had been the reason he had sent them to the Jaffordses’. Nor, he realized, had Susannah asked him. She hadn’t mentioned his conversation with old Jamie at all.
“Will you ask Henchick what you asked Mrs. Jaffords?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” Roland said. “Him I’ll ask.”
“Because you know what he’ll say.”
Roland nodded and smiled again. This was not a smile that held any comfort; it was as cold as sunlight on snow. “A gunslinger never asks that question until he knows what the answer will be,” he said. “We meet at the Pere’s house for the evening meal. If all goes well, I’ll be there just when the sun comes a-horizon. Are you all well? Eddie? Jake?” A slight pause. “Susannah?”
They all nodded. Oy nodded, too.
“Then until evening. Do ya fine, and may the sun never fall in your eyes.”
He gigged his horse and turned off on the neglected little road leading north. They watched him go until he was out of sight, and as always when he was gone and they were on their own, the three of them shared a complex feeling that was part fear, part loneliness, and part nervous pride.
They rode on toward town with their horses a little closer together.
Five
“Nayyup, nayyup, don’tchee bring that dairty bumble-beast in ’ere, don’tchee never!” Eben Took cried from his place behind the counter. He had a high, almost womanish voice; it scratched the dozy quiet of the mercantile like splinters of glass. He was pointing at Oy, who was peering from the front pocket of Jake’s poncho. A dozen desultory shoppers, most of them women dressed in homespun, turned to look.
Two farm workers, dressed in plain brown shirts,
dirty white pants, and zoris, had been standing at the counter. They backed away in a hurry, as if expecting the two outworlders carrying guns to immediately slap leather and blow sai Took all the way to Calla Boot Hill.
“Yessir,” Jake said mildly. “Sorry.” He lifted Oy from the pocket of the poncho and set him down on the sunny porch, just outside the door. “Stay, boy.”
“Oy stay,” the bumbler said, and curled his clockspring of a tail around his haunches.
Jake rejoined his friends and they made their way into the store. To Susannah, it smelled like ones she’d been in during her time in Mississippi: a mingled aroma of salted meat, leather, spice, coffee, mothballs, and aged cozenry. Beside the counter was a large wooden barrel with the top slid partway aside and a pair of tongs hanging on a nail nearby. From the keg came the strong and tearful smell of pickles in brine.
“No credit!” Took cried in that same shrill, annoying voice. “Ah en’t ever give credit to no one from away and Ah never will! Say true! Say thankya!”
Susannah grasped Eddie’s hand and gave it a warning squeeze. Eddie shook it off impatiently, but when he spoke, his voice was as mild as Jake’s had been. “Say thankya, sai Took, we’d not ask it.” And recalled something he’d heard from Pere Callahan: “Never in life.”
There was a murmur of approval from some of those in the store. None of them was any longer making even the slightest pretense of shopping. Took flushed. Susannah took Eddie’s hand again and this time gave him a smile to go with the squeeze.
At first they shopped in silence, but before they finished, several people—all of whom had been at the Pavilion two nights before—said hello and asked (timidly) how they did. All three said they did fine. They got shirts, including two for Roland, denim pants, underwear singlets, and three sets of shor’boots which looked ugly but serviceable. Jake got a bag of candy, picking it out by pointing while Took put it in a bag of woven grass with grudging and disagreeable slowness. When he tried to buy a sack of tobacco and some rolling papers for Roland, Took refused him with all too evident pleasure. “Nayyup, nayyup, Ah’ll not sell smokeweed to a boy. Never have done.”