by Stephen King
“I think she’s right,” Jake said. “I think it’s June 19th. That’s when King gets turned into roadkill and even the chance that he might go back to work on the Dark Tower story—our story—is kaput. Gan’s Beam is lost in the overload. Shardik’s Beam is left, but it’s already eroded.” He looked at Roland, his face pale, his lips almost blue. “It’ll snap like a toothpick.”
“Maybe it’s happened already,” Susannah said.
“No,” Roland said.
“How can you be sure?” she asked.
He gave her a wintry, humorless smile. “Because,” he said, “we’d no longer be here.”
NINETEEN
“How can we stop it from happening?” Eddie asked. “That guy Trampas told Ted it was ka.”
“Maybe he got it wrong,” Jake said, but his voice was thin. Trailing. “It was only a rumor, so maybe he got it wrong. And hey, maybe King’s got until July. Or August. Or what about September? It could be September, doesn’t that seem likely? September’s the 9-month, after all …”
They looked at Roland, who was now sitting with his leg stretched out before him. “Here’s where it hurts,” he said, as if speaking to himself. He touched his right hip … then his ribs … last the side of his head. “I’ve been having headaches. Worse and worse. Saw no reason to tell you.” He drew his diminished right hand down his right side. “This is where he’ll be hit. Hip smashed. Ribs busted. Head crushed. Thrown dead into the ditch. Ka … and the end of ka.” His eyes cleared and he turned urgently to Susannah. “What date was it when you were in New York? Refresh me.”
“June first of 1999.”
Roland nodded and looked to Jake. “And you? The same, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then to Fedic …a rest … and on to Thunderclap.” He paused, thinking, then spoke four words with measured emphasis. “There is still time.”
“But time moves faster over there—”
“And if it takes one of those hitches—”
“Ka—”
Their words overlapped. Then they fell quiet again, looking at him again.
“We can change ka,” Roland said. “It’s been done before. There’s always a price to pay—kashume, mayhap—but it can be done.”
“How do we get there?” Eddie asked.
“There’s only one way,” Roland said. “Sheemie must send us.”
Silence in the cave, except for a distant roll of the thunder that gave this dark land its name.
“We have two jobs,” Eddie said. “The writer and the Breakers. Which comes first?”
“The writer,” Jake said. “While there’s still time to save him.”
But Roland was shaking his head.
“Why not?” Eddie cried. “Ah, man, why not? You know how slippery time is over there! And it’s one-way! If we miss the window, we’ll never get another chance!”
“But we have to make Shardik’s Beam safe, too,” Roland said.
“Are you saying Ted and this guy Dinky wouldn’t let Sheemie help us unless we help them first?”
“No. Sheemie would do it for me, I’m sure. But suppose something happened to him while we were in the Keystone World? We’d be stranded in 1999.”
“There’s the door on Turtleback Lane—” Eddie began.
“Even if it’s still there in 1999, Eddie, Ted told us that Shardik’s Beam has already started to bend.” Roland shook his head. “My heart says yonder prison is the place to start. If any of you can say different, I will listen, and gladly.”
They were quiet. Outside the cave, the wind blew.
“We need to ask Ted before we make any final decision,” Susannah said at last.
“No,” Jake said.
“No!” Oy agreed. Zero surprise there; if Ake said it, you could take it to the bumbler bank, as far as Oy was concerned.
“Ask Sheemie,” Jake said. “Ask Sheemie what he thinks we should do.”
Slowly, Roland nodded.
CHAPTER IX:
TRACKS ON THE PATH
ONE
When Jake awoke from a night of troubled dreams, most of them set in the Dixie Pig, a thin and listless light was seeping into the cave. In New York, that kind of light had always made him want to skip school and spend the entire day on the sofa, reading books, watching game-shows on TV, and napping the afternoon away. Eddie and Susannah were curled up together inside a single sleeping-bag. Oy had eschewed the bed which had been left him in order to sleep beside Jake. He was curled into a U, snout on left forepaw. Most people would have thought him asleep, but Jake saw the sly glimmer of gold beneath his lids and knew that Oy was peeking. The gunslinger’s sleeping-bag was unzipped and empty.
Jake thought about this for a moment or two, then got up and went outside. Oy followed along, padding quietly over the tamped dirt as Jake walked up the trail.
TWO
Roland looked haggard and unwell, but he was squatting on his hunkers, and Jake decided that if he was limber enough to do that, he was probably okay. He squatted beside the gunslinger, hands dangling loosely between his thighs. Roland glanced at him, said nothing, then looked back toward the prison the staff called Algul Siento and the inmates called the DevarToi. It was a brightening blur beyond and below them. The sun— electric, atomic, whatever—wasn’t shining yet.
Oy plopped down next to Jake with a little whuffing sound, then appeared to go back to sleep. Jake wasn’t fooled.
“Hile and merry-greet-the-day,” Jake said when the silence began to feel oppressive.
Roland nodded. “Merry see, merry be.” He looked as merry as a funeral march. The gunslinger who had danced a furious commala by torchlight in Calla Bryn Sturgis might have been a thousand years in his grave.
“How are you, Roland?”
“Good enough to hunker.”
“Aye, but how are you?”
Roland glanced at him, then reached into his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. “Old and full of aches, as you must know. Would you smoke?”
Jake considered, then nodded.
“They’ll be shorts,” Roland warned. “There’s plenty in my purse I was glad to have back, but not much blow-weed.”
“Save it for yourself, if you want.”
Roland smiled. “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.” He rolled a pair of cigarettes, using some sort of leaf which he tore in two, handed one to Jake, then lit them up with a match he popped alight on his thumbnail. In the still, chill air of Can SteekTete, the smoke hung in front of them, then rose slowly, stacking on the air. Jake thought the tobacco was hot, harsh, and stale, but he said no word of complaint. He liked it. He thought of all the times he’d promised himself he wouldn’t smoke like his father did — never in life—and now here he was, starting the habit. And with his new father’s agreement, if not approval.
Roland reached out a finger and touched Jake’s forehead … his left cheek … his nose … his chin. The last touch hurt a little. “Pimples,” Roland said. “It’s the air of this place.” He suspected it was emotional upset, as well—grief over the Pere—but to let Jake know he thought that would likely just increase the boy’s unhappiness over Callahan’s passing.
“You don’t have any,” Jake said. “Skin’s as clear as a bell. Luck-ee.”
“No pimples,” Roland agreed, and smoked. Below them in the seeping light was the village. The peaceful village, Jake thought, but it looked more than peaceful; it looked downright dead. Then he saw two figures, little more than specks from here, strolling toward each other. Hume guards patrolling the outer run of the fence, he presumed. They joined together into a single speck long enough for Jake to imagine a bit of their palaver, and then the speck divided again. “No pimples, but my hip hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like someone opened it in the night and poured it full of broken glass. Hot glass. But this is far worse.” He touched the right side of his head. “It feels cracked.”
“You really think it’s Stephen King’s
injuries you’re feeling?” Instead of making a verbal reply, Roland laid the forefinger of his left hand across a circle made by the thumb and pinky of his right: that gesture which meant I tell you the truth.
“That’s a bummer,” Jake said. “For him as well as you.”
“Maybe; maybe not. Because, think you, Jake; think you well. Only living things feel pain. What I’m feeling suggests that King won’t be killed instantly. And that means he might be easier to save.”
Jake thought it might only mean King was going to lie beside the road in semi-conscious agony for awhile before expiring, but didn’t like to say so. Let Roland believe what he liked. But there was something else. Something that concerned Jake a lot more, and made him uneasy.
“Roland, may I speak to you dan-dinh?”
The gunslinger nodded. “If you would.” A slight pause. A flick at the left corner of the mouth that wasn’t quite a smile. “If thee would.”
Jake gathered his courage. “Why are you so angry now? What are you angry at ? Or whom?” Now it was his turn to pause. “Is it me?”
Roland’s eyebrows rose, then he barked a laugh. “Not you, Jake. Not a bit. Never in life.”
Jake flushed with pleasure.
“I keep forgetting how strong the touch has become in you. You’d have made a fine Breaker, no doubt.”
This wasn’t an answer, but Jake didn’t bother saying so. And the idea of being a Breaker made him repress a shiver.
“Don’t you know?” Roland asked. “If thee knows I’m what Eddie calls royally pissed, don’t you know why?”
“I could look, but it wouldn’t be polite.” But it was a lot more than that. Jake vaguely remembered a Bible story about Noah getting loaded on the ark, while he and his sons were waiting out the flood. One of the sons had come upon his old man lying drunk on his bunk, and had laughed at him. God had cursed him for it. To peek into Roland’s thoughts wouldn’t be the same as looking—and laughing—while he was drunk, but it was close.
“Thee’s a fine boy,” Roland said. “Fine and good, aye.” And although the gunslinger spoke almost absently, Jake could have died happily enough at that moment. From somewhere beyond and above them came that resonant CLICK! sound, and all at once the special-effects sunbeam speared down on the DevarToi. A moment later, faintly, they heard the sound of music: “Hey Jude,” arranged for elevator and supermarket. Time to rise and shine down below. Another day of Breaking had just begun. Although, Jake supposed, down there the Breaking never really stopped.
“Let’s have a game, you and I,” Roland proposed. “You try to get into my head and see who I’m angry at. I’ll try to keep you out.”
Jake shifted position slightly. “That doesn’t sound like a fun game to me, Roland.”
“Nevertheless, I’d play against you.”
“All right, if you want to.”
Jake closed his eyes and called up an image of Roland’s tired, stubbled face. His brilliant blue eyes. He made a door between and slightly above those eyes—a little one, with a brass knob—and tried to open it. For a moment the knob turned. Then it stopped. Jake applied more pressure. The knob began to turn again, then stopped once again. Jake opened his eyes and saw that fine beads of sweat had broken on Roland’s brow.
“This is stupid. I’m making your headache worse,” he said.
“Never mind. Do your best.”
My worst, Jake thought. But if they had to play this game, he wouldn’t draw it out. He closed his eyes again and once again saw the little door between Roland’s tangled brows. This time he applied more force, piling it on quickly. It felt a little like arm-wrestling. After a moment the knob turned and the door opened. Roland grunted, then uttered a painful laugh. “That’s enough for me,” he said. “By the gods, thee’s strong!”
Jake paid no attention to that. He opened his eyes. “The writer? King? Why are you mad at him?”
Roland sighed and cast away the smoldering butt of his cigarette; Jake had already finished with his. “Because we have two jobs to do where we should have only one. Having to do the second one is sai King’s fault. He knew what he was supposed to do, and I think that on some level he knew that doing it would keep him safe. But he was afraid. He was tired.” Roland’s upper lip curled. “Now his irons are in the fire, and we have to pull them out. It’s going to cost us, and probably a-dearly.”
“You’re angry at him because he’s afraid? But …” Jake frowned. “But why wouldn’t he be afraid? He’s only a writer. A tale-spinner, not a gunslinger.”
“I know that,” Roland said, “but I don’t think it was fear that stopped him, Jake, or not just fear. He’s lazy, as well. I felt it when I met him, and I’m sure that Eddie did, too. He looked at the job he was made to do and it daunted him and he said to himself, ‘All right, I’ll find an easier job, one that’s more to my liking and more to my abilities. And if there’s trouble, they’ll take care of me. They’ll have to take care of me.’ And so we do.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“No,” Roland agreed, “I didn’t. Not a bit. Nor trusted him. I’ve met tale-spinners before, Jake, and they’re all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell tales because they’re afraid of life.”
“Do you say so?” Jake thought it was a dismal idea. He also thought it had the ring of truth.
“I do. But …” He shrugged. It is what it is, that shrug said.
Kashume, Jake thought. If their ka-tet broke, and it was King’s fault …
If it was King’s fault, what? Take revenge on him? It was a gunslinger’s thought; it was also a stupid thought, like the idea of taking revenge on God.
“But we’re stuck with it,” Jake finished.
“Aye. That wouldn’t stop me from kicking his yellow, lazy ass if I got the chance, though.”
Jake burst out laughing at that, and the gunslinger smiled. Then Roland got to his feet with a grimace, both hands planted on the ball of his right hip. “Bugger,” he growled.
“Hurts bad, huh?”
“Never mind my aches and mollies. Come with me. I’ll show you something more interesting.”
Roland, limping slightly, led Jake to where the path curled around the flank of the lumpy little mountain, presumably bound for the top. Here the gunslinger tried to hunker, grimaced, and settled to one knee, instead. He pointed to the ground with his right hand. “What do you see?”
Jake also dropped to one knee. The ground was littered with pebbles and fallen chunks of rock. Some of this talus had been disturbed, leaving marks in the scree. Beyond the spot where they knelt side by side, two branches of what Jake thought was a mesquite bush had been broken off. He bent forward and smelled the thin and acrid aroma of the sap. Then he examined the marks in the scree again. There were several of them, narrow and not too deep. If they were tracks, they certainly weren’t human tracks. Or those of a desert-dog, either.
“Do you know what made these?” Jake asked. “If you do, just say it—don’t make me arm-rassle you for it.”
Roland gave him a brief grin. “Follow them a little. See what you find.”
Jake rose and walked slowly along the marks, bent over at the waist like a boy with a stomach-ache. The scratches in the talus went around a boulder. There was dust on the stone, and scratches in the dust—as if something bristly had brushed against the boulder on its way by.
There were also a couple of stiff black hairs.
Jake picked one of these up, then immediately opened his fingers and blew it off his skin, shivering with revulsion as he did it. Roland watched this keenly.
“You look like a goose just walked over your grave.”
“It’s awful!” Jake heard a faint stutter in his voice. “Oh God, what was it? What was w-watching us?”
“The one Mia called Mordred.” Roland’s voice hadn’t changed, but Jake found he could hardly bring himself to look into the gunslinger’s eyes; they were that bleak. “The chap she says I fathered.”
“He was
here? In the night?”
Roland nodded.
“Listening … ?” Jake couldn’t finish.
Roland could. “Listening to our palaver and our plans, aye, I think so. And Ted’s tale as well.”
“But you don’t know for sure. Those marks could be anything.” Yet the only thing Jake could think of in connection with those marks, now that he’d heard Susannah’s tale, were the legs of a monster spider.
“Go thee a little further,” Roland said.
Jake looked at him questioningly, and Roland nodded. The wind blew, bringing them the Muzak from the prison compound (now he thought it was “Bridge Over Troubled Water”), also bringing the distant sound of thunder, like rolling bones.
“What—”
“Follow,” Roland said, nodding to the stony talus on the slope of the path.
Jake did, knowing this was another lesson—with Roland you were always in school. Even when you were in the shadow of death there were lessons to be learned.
On the far side of the boulder, the path carried on straight for about thirty yards before curving out of sight once more. On this straight stretch, those dash-marks were very clear. Groups of three on one side, groups of four on the other.
“She said she shot off one of its legs,” Jake said.
“So she did.”
Jake tried to visualize a seven-legged spider as big as a human baby and couldn’t do it. Suspected he didn’t want to do it.
Beyond the next curve there was a desiccated corpse in the path. Jake was pretty sure it had been flayed open, but it was hard to tell. There were no innards, no blood, no buzzing flies. Just a lump of dirty, dusty stuff that vaguely—very vaguely— resembled something canine.
Oy approached, sniffed, then lifted his leg and pissed on the remains. He returned to Jake’s side with the air of one who has concluded some important piece of business.
“That was our visitor’s dinner last night,” Roland said.
Jake was looking around. “Is he watching us now? What do you think?”
Roland said, “I think growing boys need their rest.”
Jake felt a twinge of some unpleasant emotion and put it behind him without much examination. Jealousy? Surely not. How could he be jealous of a thing that had begun life by eating its own mother? It was blood-kin to Roland, yes—his true son, if you wanted to be picky about it—but that was no more than an accident.