The Dark Tower VII

by Stephen King

  All the rest of him was gone.

  Twelve

  The shadow of the pyramid’s tip had come to touch the road; now the sky in the west changed from the orange of a reaptide bonfire to that cauldron of blood Roland had seen in his dreams ever since childhood. When it did, the call of the Tower doubled, then trebled. Roland felt it reach out and grasp him with invisible hands. The time of his destiny was come.

  Yet there was this boy. This friendless boy. Roland would not leave him to die here at the end of End-World if he could help it. He had no interest in atonement, and yet Patrick had come to stand for all the murders and betrayals that had finally brought him to the Dark Tower. Roland’s family was dead; his misbegotten son had been the last. Now would Eld and Tower be joined.

  First, though—or last—this.

  “Patrick, listen to me,” he said, taking the boy’s shoulder with his whole left hand and his mutilated right. “If you’d live to make all the pictures ka has stored away in your future, ask me not a single question nor ask me to repeat a single thing.”

  The boy looked at him, large-eyed and silent in the red and dying light. And the Song of the Tower rose around them to a mighty shout that was nothing but commala.

  “Go back to the road. Pick up all the cans that are whole. That should be enough to feed you. Go back the way we came. Never leave the road. You’ll do fine.”

  Patrick nodded with perfect understanding. Roland saw he believed, and that was good. Belief would protect him even more surely than a revolver, even one with the sandalwood grips.

  “Go back to the Federal. Go back to the robot, Stuttering Bill that was. Tell him to take you to a door that swings open on America-side. If it won’t open to your hand, draw it open with thy pencil. Do’ee understand?”

  Patrick nodded again. Of course he understood.

  “If ka should eventually lead you to Susannah in any where or when, tell her Roland loves her still, and with all his heart.” He drew Patrick to him and kissed the boy’s mouth. “Give her that. Do’ee understand?”

  Patrick nodded.

  “All right. I go. Long days and pleasant nights. May we meet in the clearing at the end of the path when all worlds end.”

  Yet even then he knew this would not happen, for the worlds would never end, not now, and for him there would be no clearing. For Roland Deschain of Gilead, last of Eld’s line, the path ended at the Dark Tower. And that did him fine.

  He rose to his feet. The boy looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes, clutching his pad. Roland turned. He drew in breath to the bottom of his lungs and let it out in a great cry.

  “NOW COMES ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER! I HAVE BEEN TRUE AND I STILL CARRY THE GUN OF MY FATHER AND YOU WILL OPEN TO MY HAND!”

  Patrick watched him stride to where the road ended, a black silhouette against that bloody burning sky. He watched as Roland walked among the roses, and sat shivering in the shadows as Roland began to cry the names of his friends and loved ones and ka-mates; those names carried clear in that strange air, as if they would echo forever.

  “I come in the name of Steven Deschain, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Cortland Andrus, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Cuthbert Allgood, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Alain Johns, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Jamie DeCurry, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Vannay the Wise, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of Hax the Cook, he of Gilead!

  “I come in the name of David the hawk, he of Gilead and the sky!

  “I come in the name of Susan Delgado, she of Mejis!

  “I come in the name of Sheemie Ruiz, he of Mejis!

  “I come in the name of Pere Callahan, he of Jerusalem’s Lot, and the roads!

  “I come in the name of Ted Brautigan, he of America!

  “I come in the name of Dinky Earnshaw, he of America!

  “I come in the name of Aunt Talitha, she of River Crossing, and will lay her cross here, as I was bid!

  “I come in the name of Stephen King, he of Maine!

  “I come in the name of Oy, the brave, he of Mid-World!

  “I come in the name of Eddie Dean, he of New York!

  “I come in the name of Susannah Dean, she of New York!

  “I come in the name of Jake Chambers, he of New York, whom I call my own true son!

  “I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me.”

  After that came the sound of a horn. It simultaneously chilled Patrick’s blood and exalted him. The echoes faded into silence. Then, perhaps a minute later, came a great, echoing boom: the sound of a door swinging shut forever.

  And after that came silence.

  Thirteen

  Patrick sat where he was at the base of the pyramid, shivering, until Old Star and Old Mother rose in the sky. The song of the roses and the Tower hadn’t ceased, but it had grown low and sleepy, little more than a murmur.

  At last he went back to the road, gathered as many whole cans as he could (there was a surprising number of them, considering the force of the explosion that had demolished the cart), and found a deerskin sack that would hold them. He realized he had forgotten his pencil and went back to get it.

  Beside the pencil, gleaming in the starlight, was Roland’s watch.

  The boy took it with a small (and nervous) hoot of glee. He put it in his pocket. Then he went back to the road and slung his little sack of gunna over his shoulder.

  I can tell you that he walked until nearly midnight, and that he looked at the watch before taking his rest. I can tell you that the watch had stopped completely. I can tell you that, come noon of the following day, he looked at it again and saw that it had begun to run in the correct direction once more, albeit very slowly. But of Patrick I can tell you no more, not whether he made it back to the Federal, not whether he found Stuttering Bill that was, not whether he eventually came once more to America-side. I can tell you none of these things, say sorry. Here the darkness hides him from my storyteller’s eye and he must go on alone.

  Susannah in New York

  (Epilogue)

  No one takes alarm as the little electric cart slides out of nowhere an inch at a time until it’s wholly here in Central Park; no one sees it but us. Most of those here are looking skyward, as the first snowflakes of what will prove to be a great pre-Christmas snowstorm come skirling down from a white sky. The Blizzard of ’87, the newspapers will call it. Visitors to the park who aren’t watching the snowfall begin are watching the carolers, who are from public schools far uptown. They are wearing either dark red blazers (the boys) or dark red jumpers (the girls). This is the Harlem School Choir, sometimes called The Harlem Roses in the Post and its rival tabloid, the New York Sun. They sing an old hymn in gorgeous doo-wop harmony, snapping their fingers as they make their way through the staves, turning it into something that sounds almost like early Spurs, Coasters, or Dark Diamonds. They are standing not too far from the environment where the polar bears live their city lives, and the song they’re singing is “What Child Is This.”

  One of those looking up into the snow is a man Susannah knows well, and her heart leaps straight up to heaven at the sight of him. In his left hand he’s holding a large paper cup and she’s sure it contains hot chocolate, the good kind mit schlag.

  For a moment she’s unable to touch the controls of the little cart, which came from another world. Thoughts of Roland and Patrick have left her mind. All she can think of is Eddie—Eddie in front of her right here and now, Eddie alive again. And if this is not the Keystone World, not quite, what of that? If Co-Op City is in Brooklyn (or even in Queens!) and Eddie drives a Takuro Spirit instead of a Buick Electra, what of those things? It doesn’t matter. Only one thing would, and it’s that which keeps her hand from rising to the throttle and trundling the cart toward him.

 
What if he doesn’t recognize her?

  What if when he turns he sees nothing but a homeless black lady in an electric cart whose battery will soon be as flat as a sat-on hat, a black lady with no money, no clothes, no address (not in this where and when, say thankee sai) and no legs? A homeless black lady with no connection to him? Or what if he does know her, somewhere far back in his mind, yet still denies her as completely as Peter denied Jesus, because remembering is just too hurtful?

  Worse still, what if he turns to her and she sees the burned-out, fucked-up, empty-eyed stare of the longtime junkie? What if, what if, and here comes the snow that will soon turn the whole world white.

  Stop thy grizzling and go to him, Roland tells her. You didn’t face Blaine and the taheen of Blue Heaven and the thing under Castle Discordia just to turn tail and run now, did you? Surely you’ve got a moit more guts than that.

  But she isn’t sure she really does until she sees her hand rise to the throttle. Before she can twist it, however, the gunslinger’s voice speaks to her again, this time sounding wearily amused.

  Perhaps there’s something you want to get rid of first, Susannah?

  She looks down and sees Roland’s weapon stuck through her crossbelt, like a Mexican bandido’s pistola, or a pirate’s cutlass. She pulls it free, amazed at how good it feels in her hand…how brutally right. Parting from this, she thinks, will be like parting from a lover. And she doesn’t have to, does she? The question is, what does she love more? The man or the gun? All other choices will flow from this one.

  On impulse she rolls the cylinder and sees that the rounds inside look old, their casings dull.

  These’ll never fire, she thinks…and, without knowing why, or precisely what it means: These are wets.

  She sights up the barrel and is queerly saddened—but not surprised—to find that the barrel lets through no light. It’s plugged. Has been for decades, from the look of it. This gun will never fire again. There is no choice to be made, after all. This gun is over.

  Susannah, still holding the revolver with the sandalwood grips in one hand, twists the throttle with the other. The little electric cart—the one she named Ho Fat III, although that is already fading in her mind—rolls soundlessly forward. It passes a green trash barrel with KEEP LITTER IN ITS PLACE! stenciled on the side. She tosses Roland’s revolver into this litter barrel. Doing it hurts her heart, but she never hesitates. It’s heavy, and sinks into the crumpled fast-food wrappers, advertising circulars, and discarded newspapers like a stone into water. She is still enough of a gunslinger to bitterly regret throwing away such a storied weapon (even if the final trip between worlds has spoiled it), but she’s already become enough of the woman who’s waiting for her up ahead not to pause or look back once the job is done.

  Before she can reach the man with the paper cup, he turns. He is indeed wearing a sweatshirt that says I DRINK NOZZ-A-LA!, but she barely registers that. It’s him: that’s what she registers. It’s Edward Cantor Dean. And then even that becomes secondary, because what she sees in his eyes is all she has feared. It’s total puzzlement. He doesn’t know her.

  Then, tentatively, he smiles, and it is the smile she remembers, the one she always loved. Also he’s clean, she knows it at once. She sees it in his face. Mostly in his eyes. The carolers from Harlem sing, and he holds out the cup of hot chocolate.

  “Thank God,” he says. “I’d just about decided I’d have to drink this myself. That the voices were wrong and I was going crazy after all. That…well…” He trails off, looking more than puzzled. He looks afraid. “Listen, you are here for me, aren’t you? Please tell me I’m not making an utter ass of myself. Because, lady, right now I feel as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

  “You’re not,” she says. “Making an ass of yourself, I mean.” She’s remembering Jake’s story about the voices he heard arguing in his mind, one yelling that he was dead, the other that he was alive. Both of them utterly convinced. She has at least some idea of how terrible that must be, because she knows a little about other voices. Strange voices.

  “Thank God,” he says. “Your name is Susannah?”

  “Yes,” she says. “My name is Susannah.”

  Her throat is terribly dry, but the words come out, at least. She takes the cup from him and sips the hot chocolate through the cream. It is sweet and good, a taste of this world. The sound of the honking cabs, their drivers hurrying to make their day before the snow shuts them down, is equally good. Grinning, he reaches out and wipes a tiny dab of the cream from the tip of her nose. His touch is electric, and she sees that he feels it, too. It occurs to her that he is going to kiss her again for the first time, and sleep with her again for the first time, and fall in love with her again for the first time. He may know those things because voices have told him, but she knows them for a far better reason: because those things have already happened. Ka is a wheel, Roland said, and now she knows it’s true. Her memories of

  (Mid-World)

  the gunslinger’s where and when are growing hazy, but she thinks she will remember just enough to know it’s all happened before, and there is something incredibly sad about this.

  But at the same time, it’s good.

  It’s a damn miracle, is what it is.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  “No, I’m okay. Why?”

  “You shivered.”

  “It’s the sweetness of the cream.” Then, looking at him as she does it, she pokes her tongue out and licks a bit of the nutmeg-dusted foam.

  “If you aren’t cold now, you will be,” he says. “WRKO says the temperature’s gonna drop twenty degrees tonight. So I bought you something.” From his back pocket he takes a knitted cap, the kind you can pull down over your ears. She looks at the front of it and sees the words there printed in red: MERRY CHRISTMAS.

  “Bought it in Brendio’s, on Fifth Avenue,” he says.

  Susannah has never heard of Brendio’s. Brentano’s, maybe—the bookstore—but not Brendio’s. But of course in the America where she grew up, she never heard of Nozz-A-La or Takuro Spirit automobiles, either. “Did your voices tell you to buy it?” Teasing him a little now.

  He blushes. “Actually, you know, they sort of did. Try it on.”

  It’s a perfect fit.

  “Tell me something,” she says. “Who’s the President? You’re not going to tell me it’s Ronald Reagan, are you?”

  He looks at her incredulously for a moment, and then smiles. “What? That old actor who used to host Death Valley Days on TV? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. I always thought you were the one who was kidding about Ronnie Reagan, Eddie.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That’s okay, just tell me who the President is.”

  “Gary Hart,” he says, as if speaking to a child. “From Colorado. He almost dropped out of the race in 1980—as I’m sure you know—over that Monkey Business business. Then he said ‘Fuck em if they can’t take a joke’ and hung on in there. Ended up winning in a landslide.”

  His smile fades a little as he studies her.

  “You’re not kidding me, are you?”

  “Are you kidding me about the voices? The ones you hear in our head? The ones that wake you up at two in the morning?”

  Eddie looks almost shocked. “How can you know that?”

  “It’s a long story. Maybe someday I’ll tell you.” If I can still remember, she thinks.

  “It’s not just the voices.”

  “No?”

  “No. I’ve been dreaming of you. For months now. I’ve been waiting for you. Listen, we don’t know each other…this is crazy…but do you have a place to stay? You don’t, do you?”

  She shakes her head. Doing a passable John Wayne (or maybe it’s Blaine the train she’s imitating), she says: “Ah’m a stranger here in Dodge, pilgrim.”

  Her heart is pounding slowly and heavily in her chest, but she feels a rising joy. This is going to be a
ll right. She doesn’t know how it can be, but yes, it’s going to be just fine. This time ka is working in her favor, and the force of ka is enormous. This she knows from experience.

  “If I asked how I know you…or where you come from…” He pauses, looking at her levelly, and then says the rest of it. “Or how I can possibly love you already…?”

  She smiles. It feels good to smile, and it no longer hurts the side of her face, because whatever was there (some sort of scar, maybe—she can’t quite remember) is gone. “Sugar,” she tells him, “it’s what I said: a long story. You’ll get some of it in time, though…what I remember of it. And it could be that we still have some work to do. For an outfit called the Tet Corporation.” She looks around and then says, “What year is this?”

  “1987,” he says.

  “And do you live in Brooklyn? Or maybe the Bronx?”

  The young man whose dreams and squabbling voices have led him here—with a cup of hot chocolate in his hand and a MERRY CHRISTMAS hat in his back pocket—bursts out laughing. “God, no! I’m from White Plains! I came in on the train with my brother. He’s right over there. He wanted a closer look at the polar bears.”

  The brother. Henry. The great sage and eminent junkie. Her heart sinks.

  “Let me introduce you,” he says.

  “No, really, I—”

  “Hey, if we’re gonna be friends, you gotta be friends with my kid brother. We’re tight. Jake! Hey, Jake!”

  She hasn’t noticed the boy standing down by the railing which guards the sunken polar bears’ environment from the rest of the park, but now he turns and her heart takes a great, giddy leap in her chest. Jake waves and ambles toward them.

  “Jake’s been dreaming about you, too,” Eddie tells her. “It’s the only reason I know I’m not going crazy. Any crazier than usual, at least.”

  She takes Eddie’s hand—that familiar, well-loved hand. And when the fingers close over hers, she thinks she will die of joy. She will have many questions—so will they—but for the time being she has only one that feels important. As the snow begins to fall more thickly around them, landing in his hair and in his lashes and on the shoulders of his sweatshirt, she asks it.