by Stephen King
“All right.”
“One…two…three.” Onthree, King’s head lolled forward. His chin rested on his chest. A line of silver drool ran from his mouth and swung like a pendulum.
“So now we know something,” Roland said to Eddie. “Something crucial, maybe. He was touched by the Crimson King when he was just a child, but it seems that we won him over to our side. Oryou did, Eddie. You and my old friend, Bert. In any case, it makes him rather special.”
“I’d feel better about my heroism if I remembered it,” Eddie said. Then: “You realize that when this guy was seven, I wasn’t even born?”
Roland smiled. “Ka is a wheel. You’ve been turning on it under different names for a long time. Cuthbert for one, it seems.”
“What’s this about the Crimson King being ‘Tower-pent’?”
“I have no idea.”
Roland turned back to Stephen King. “How many times do you think the Lord of Discordia has tried to kill you, Stephen? Kill you and halt your pen? Shut up your troublesome mouth? Since that first time in your aunt and uncle’s barn?”
King seemed to try counting, then shook his head. “Delah,” he said.Many.
Eddie and Roland exchanged a glance.
“And does someone always step in?” Roland asked.
“Nay, sai, never think it. I’m not helpless. Sometimes I step aside.”
Roland laughed at that—the dry sound of a stick broken over a knee. “Do you know what you are?”
King shook his head. His lower lip had pooched out like that of a sulky child.
“Do you know what you are?”
“The father first. The husband second. The writer third. Then the brother. After brotherhood I am silent. Okay?”
“No. Not oh-kay. Do you know what you are?”
A long pause. “No. I told you all I can. Stop asking me.”
“I’ll stop when you speak true. Do you know—”
“Yes, all right, I know what you’re getting at. Satisfied?”
“Not yet. Tell me what—”
“I’m Gan, orpossessed by Gan, I don’t know which, maybe there’s no difference.” King began to cry. His tears were silent and horrible. “But it’s not Dis, I turned aside from Dis, Irepudiate Dis, and that should be enough but it’s not, ka is never satisfied, greedy old ka, that’s whatshe said, isn’t it? What Susan Delgado said before you killed her, or I killed her, or Gan killed her. ‘Greedy old ka, how I hate it.’ Regardless of who killed her,I made her say that, I, for I hate it, so I do. I buck against ka’s goad, and will until the day I go into the clearing at the end of the path.”
Roland sat at the table, white at the sound of Susan’s name.
“And still ka comes to me, comesfrom me, I translate it, ammade to translate it, ka flows out of my navel like a ribbon. I am not ka, I am not the ribbon, it’s just what comes through me and I hate it I hate it! The chickens were full ofspiders, do you understand that, full ofspiders! ”
“Stop your snivelment,” Roland said (with a remarkable lack of sympathy, to Eddie’s way of thinking), and King stilled.
The gunslinger sat thinking, then raised his head.
“Why did you stop writing the story when I came to the Western Sea?”
“Are you dumb? BecauseI don’t want to be Gan! I turned aside from Dis, I should be able to turn aside from Gan, as well. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love to write stories, but I don’t want to writeyour story. I’m always afraid. He looks for me. The Eye of the King.”
“But not since you stopped,” Roland said.
“No, since then he looks for me not, he sees me not.”
“Nevertheless, you must go on.”
King’s face twisted, as if in pain, then smoothed out into the previous look of sleep.
Roland raised his mutilated right hand. “When you do, you’ll start with how I lost my fingers. Do you remember?”
“Lobstrosities,” King said. “Bit them off.”
“And how do you know that?”
King smiled a little and made a gentlewissshhh ing sound. “The wind blows,” said he.
“Gan bore the world and moved on,” Roland replied. “Is that what you mean to say?”
“Aye, and the world would have fallen into the abyss if not for the great turtle. Instead of falling, it landed on his back.”
“So we’re told, and we all say thank ya. Start with the lobstrosities biting off my fingers.”
“Dad-a-jum, dad-a-jingers, goddam lobsters bit off your fingers,” King said, and actually laughed.
“Yes.”
“Would have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d died, Roland son of Steven.”
“I know. Eddie and my other friends, as well.” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of the gunslinger’s mouth. “Then, after the lobstrosities—”
“Eddie comes, Eddie comes,” King interrupted, and made a dreamy little flapping gesture with his right hand, as if to say he knew all that and Roland shouldn’t waste his time. “The Prisoner the Pusher the Lady of Shadows. The butcher the baker the candle-mistaker.” He smiled. “That’s how my son Joe says it. When?”
Roland blinked, caught by surprise.
“When, when,when? ” King raised his hand and Eddie watched with surprise as the toaster, the waffle maker, and the drainer full of clean dishes rose and floated in the sunshine.
“Are you asking me when you should start again?”
“Yes, yes,yes! ” A knife rose out of the floating dish drainer and flew the length of the room. There it stuck, quivering, in the wall. Then everything settled back into place again.
Roland said, “Listen for the song of the Turtle, the cry of the Bear.”
“Song of Turtle, cry of Bear. Maturin, from the Patrick O’Brian novels. Shardik from the Richard Adams novel.”
“Yes. If you say so.”
“Guardians of the Beam.”
“Yes.”
“Ofmy Beam.”
Roland looked at him fixedly. “Do you say so?”
“Yes.”
“Then let it be so. When you hear the song of the Turtle or the cry of the Bear, then you must start again.”
“When I open my eye to your world, he sees me.” A pause.“It.”
“I know. We’ll try to protect you at those times, just as we intend to protect the rose.”
King smiled. “I love the rose.”
“Have you seen it?” Eddie asked.
“Indeed I have, in New York. Up the street from the U.N. Plaza Hotel. It used to be in the deli. Tom and Jerry’s. In the back. Now it’s in the vacant lot where the deli was.”
“You’ll tell our story until you’re tired,” Roland said. “When you can’t tell any more, when the Turtle’s song and the Bear’s cry grow faint in your ears, then will you rest. And when you can begin again, youwill begin again. You—”
“Roland?”
“Sai King?”
“I’ll do as you say. I’ll listen for the song of the Turtle and each time I hear it, I’ll go on with the tale. If I live. But you must listen, too. Forher song.”
“Whose?”
“Susannah’s. The baby will kill her if you aren’t quick. And your ears must be sharp.”
Eddie looked at Roland, frightened. Roland nodded. It was time to go.
“Listen to me, sai King. We’re well-met in Bridgton, but now we must leave you.”
“Good,” King said, and he spoke with such unfeigned relief that Eddie almost laughed.
“You will stay here, right where you are, for ten minutes. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll wake up. You’ll feel very well. You won’t remember that we were here, except in the very deepest depths of your mind.”
“In the mudholes.”
“The mudholes, do ya. On top, you’ll think you had a nap. A wonderful, refreshing nap. You’ll get your son and go to where you’re supposed to go. You’ll feel fine. You’ll go on with your life. You’ll
write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story. Do you understand?”
“Yar,” King said, and he sounded so much like Roland when Roland was gruff and tired that Eddie’s back pricked up in gooseflesh again. “Because what’s seen can’t be unseen. What’s known can’t be unknown.” He paused. “Save perhaps in death.”
“Aye, perhaps. Every time you hear the song of the Turtle—if that’s what it sounds like to you—you’ll start on our story again. The only real story you have to tell. And we’ll try to protect you.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know, but we’ll try—”
“It’s notthat. I’m afraid of not being able to finish.” His voice lowered. “I’m afraid the Tower will fall and I’ll be held to blame.”
“That is up to ka, not you,” Roland said. “Or me. I’ve satisfied myself on that point. And now—” He nodded to Eddie, and stood up.
“Wait,” King said.
Roland looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I am allowed mail privileges, but only once.”
Sounds like a guy in a POW camp,Eddie mused. And aloud: “Who allows you mail privileges, Steve-O?”
King’s brow wrinkled. “Gan?” he asked. “Is it Gan?” Then, like the sun breaking through on a foggy morning, his brow smoothed out and he smiled. “I think it’sme! ” he said. “I can send a letter to myself…perhaps even a small package…but only once.” His smile broadened into an engaging grin. “All of this…sort of like a fairy-tale, isn’t it?”
“Yes indeed,” Eddie said, thinking of the glass palace they’d come to straddling the Interstate in Kansas.
“What would you do?” Roland asked. “To whom would you send mail?”
“To Jake,” King said promptly.
“And what would you tell him?”
King’s voice became Eddie Dean’s voice. It wasn’t an approximation; it wasexact. The sound turned Eddie cold.
“Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee,” King lilted, “not to worry, you’ve got the key!”
They waited for more, but it seemed there was no more. Eddie looked at Roland, and this time it was the younger man’s turn to twirl his fingers in the let’s-go gesture. Roland nodded and they started for the door.
“That was fucking-A creepy,” Eddie said.
Roland didn’t reply.
Eddie stopped him with a touch on the arm. “One other thing occurs to me, Roland. While he’s hypnotized, maybe you ought to tell him to quit drinking and smoking. Especially the ciggies. He’s a fiend for them. Did you see this place? Fuckin ashtrays everywhere.”
Roland looked amused. “Eddie, if one waits until the lungs are fully formed, tobacco prolongs life, not shortens it. It’s the reason why in Gilead everyone smoked but the very poorest, and even they had their shuckies, like as not. Tobacco keeps away ill-sick vapors, for one thing. Many dangerous insects, for another. Everyone knows this.”
“The Surgeon General of the United States would be delighted to hear what everyone in Gilead knows,” Eddie said dryly. “What about the booze, then? Suppose he rolls his Jeep over some drunk night, or gets on the Interstate going the wrong way and head-ons someone?”
Roland considered it, then shook his head. “I’ve meddled with his mind—and ka itself—as much as I intend to. As much as Idare to. We’ll have to keep checking back over the years in any…why do you shake your head at me? The tale spins fromhim! ”
“Maybe so, but we won’t be able to check on him for twenty-two years unless we decide to abandon Susannah…and I’ll never do that. Once we jump ahead to 1999, there’s no coming back. Not in this world.”
For a moment Roland made no reply, just looked at the man leaning his behind against his kitchen counter, asleep on his feet with his eyes open and his hair tumbled on his brow. Seven or eight minutes from now King would awaken with no memory of Roland and Eddie…always assuming they were gone, that was. Eddie didn’t seriously believe the gunslinger would leave Suze hung out on the line…but he’d let Jake drop, hadn’t he? Let Jake drop into the abyss, once upon a time.
“Then he’ll have to go it alone,” Roland said, and Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Sai King.”
“Yes, Roland.”
“Remember—when you hear the song of the Turtle, you must put aside all other things and tell this story.”
“I will. At least I’ll try.”
“Good.”
Then the writer said: “The ball must be taken off the board and broken.”
Roland frowned. “Which ball? Black Thirteen?”
“If it wakes, it will become the most dangerous thing in the universe. And it’s waking now. In some other place. Some other where and when.”
“Thank you for your prophecy, sai King.”
“Dad-a-shim, dad-a-shower. Take the ball to the double Tower.”
To this Roland shook his head in silent bewilderment.
Eddie put a fist to his forehead and bent slightly. “Hile, wordslinger.”
King smiled faintly, as if this were ridiculous, but said nothing.
“Long days and pleasant nights,” Roland told him. “You don’t need to think about the chickens anymore.”
An expression of almost heartbreaking hope spread across Stephen King’s bearded face. “Do you really say so?”
“I really do. And may we meet again on the path before we all meet in the clearing.” The gunslinger turned on his bootheel and left the writer’s house.
Eddie took a final look at the tall, rather stooped man standing with his narrow ass propped against the counter. He thought:The next time I see you, Stevie—if I do—your beard will be mostly white and there’ll be lines around your face…and I’ll still be young. How’s your blood-pressure, sai? Good to go for the next twenty-two years? Hope so. What about your ticker? Does cancer run in your family, and if it does, how deep?
There was time for none of these questions, of course. Or any others. Very soon the writer would be waking up and going on with his life. Eddie followed his dinh out into the latening afternoon and closed the door behind him. He was beginning to think that, when ka had sent them here instead of to New York City, it had known what it was doing, after all.
Twelve
Eddie stopped on the driver’s side of John Cullum’s car and looked across the roof at the gunslinger. “Did you see that thing around him? That black haze?”
“The todana, yes. Thank your father that it’s still faint.”
“What’s a todana? Sounds like todash.”
Roland nodded. “It’s a variation of the word. It means deathbag. He’s been marked.”
“Jesus,” Eddie said.
“It’s faint, I tell you.”
“But there.”
Roland opened his door. “We can do nothing about it. Ka marks the time of each man and woman. Let’s move, Eddie.”
But now that they were actually ready to get rolling again, Eddie was queerly reluctant to go. He had a sense of things unfinished with sai King. And he hated the thought of that black aura.
“What about Turtleback Lane, and the walk-ins? I meant to ask him—”
“We can find it.”
“Are you sure? Because I think we need to go there.”
“I think so, too. Come on. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
Thirteen
The taillights of the old Ford had hardly cleared the end of the driveway before Stephen King opened his eyes. The first thing he did was look at the clock. Almost four. He should have been rolling after Joe ten minutes ago, but the nap he’d taken had done him good. He felt wonderful. Refreshed. Cleaned out in some weird way. He thought,If every nap could do that, taking them would be a national law.
Maybe so, but Betty Jones was going to be seriously worried if she didn’t see the Cherokee turning into her yard by four-thirty. King reached for the phone to call her, but his eyes fell to the pad on the desk below it, instead. The sheets were headed CALLING ALL BLOWHA
RDS. A little something from one of his sisters-in-law.
Face going blank again, King reached for the pad and the pen beside it. He bent and wrote:
Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.
He paused, looking fixedly at this, then wrote:
Dad-a-chud, dad-a-ched, see it, Jake! The key is red!
He paused again, then wrote:
Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, give this boy a plastic key.
He looked at what he had written with deep affection. Almost love. God almighty, but he felt fine! These lines meant nothing at all, and yet writing them afforded a satisfaction so deep it was almost ecstasy.
King tore off the sheet.
Balled it up.
Ate it.
It stuck for a moment in his throat and then—ulp!—down it went. Good deal! He snatched the
(ad-a-chee)
key to the Jeep off the wooden key-board (which was itself shaped like a key) and hurried outside. He’d get Joe, they’d come back here and pack, they’d grab supper at Mickey Kee’s in South Paris. Correction, Mickey-Dee’s.He felt he could eat a couple of Quarter Pounders all by himself. Fries, too.Damn, but he felt good!
When he reached Kansas Road and turned toward town, he flipped on the radio and got the McCoys, singing “Hang On, Sloopy”—always excellent. His mind drifted, as it so often did while listening to the radio, and he found himself thinking of the characters from that old story,The Dark Tower. Not that there were many left; as he recalled, he’d killed most of them off, even the kid. Didn’t know what else to do with him, probably. That was usually why you got rid of characters, because you didn’t know what else to do with them. What had his name been, Jack? No, that was the haunted Dad inThe Shining. TheDark Tower kid had beenJake. Excellent choice of name for a story with a Western motif, something right out of Wayne D. Overholser or Ray Hogan. Was it possible Jake could come back into that story, maybe as a ghost? Of course he could. The nice thing about tales of the supernatural, King reflected, was that nobody had toreally die. They could always come back, like that guy Barnabas onDark Shadows. Barnabas Collins had been a vampire.
“Maybe thekid comes back as a vampire,” King said, and laughed. “Watch out, Roland, dinner is served and dinner be you!” But that didn’t feel right. What, then? Nothing came, but that was all right. In time, something might. Probably when he least expected it; while feeding the cat or changing the baby or just walking dully along, as Auden said in that poem about suffering.