by Stephen King
An old story. Every town has its version. The site is usually the local lovers’ lane, or a secluded stretch of riverbank, or the town graveyard. Once the details of what actually happened have been distorted enough to please the morbidly romantic, songs are made. These are usually sung by yearning virgins who play guitar or mando badly and cannot quite stay on key. Choruses tend to include such lachrymose refrains as My-di-I-de-I-de-o, There they died together-o.
The Hambry version of this quaint tale featured lovers named Robert and Francesca, and had happened in the old days, before the world had moved on. The site of the supposed murder-suicide was the Hambry cemetery, the stone with which Francesca’s brains had been dashed out was a slate marker, and the granite wall against which Robert had been leaning when he clipped his blowpipe had been the Thorin mausoleum. (It was doubtful there had been any Thorins in Hambry or Mejis five generations back, but folk-tales are, at best, generally no more than lies set in rhyme.)
True or untrue, the graveyard was considered haunted by the ghosts of the lovers, who could be seen (it was said) walking hand-in-hand among the markers, covered with blood and looking wistful. It was thus seldom visited at night, and was a logical spot for Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, and Susan to meet.
By the time the meeting took place, Roland had begun to feel increasingly worried… even desperate. Susan was the problem-or, more properly put, Susan’s aunt. Even without Rhea’s poisonous letter to help the process along, Cordelia’s suspicions of Susan and Roland had hardened into a near certainty. On a day less than a week before the meeting in the cemetery, Cordelia had begun shrieking at Susan almost as soon as she stepped through the house door with her basket over her arm.
“Ye’ve been with him! Ye have, ye bad girl, it’s written all over yer face!”
Susan, who had that day been nowhere near Roland, could at first only gape at her aunt. “Been with who?”
“Oh, be not coy with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty! Be not coy, I pray! Who does all but wiggle his tongue at ye when he passes our door? Dearborn, that’s who! Dearborn! Dearborn! I’ll say it a thousand times! Oh, shame on ye! Shame! Look at yer trousers! Green from the grass the two of ye have been rolling in, they are! I’m surprised they’re not torn open at the crutch as well!” By then Aunt Cord had been nearly shrieking. The veins in her neck stood out like rope.
Susan, bemused, had looked down at the old khaki pants she was wearing.
“Aunt, it’s paint-don’t you see it is? Chetta and I’ve been making Fair-Day decorations up at Mayor’s House. What’s on my bottom got there when Hart Thorin- not Dearborn but Thorin-came upon me in the shed where the decorations and fireworks are stored. He decided it was as good a time and place as any to have another little wrestle. He got on top of me, shot his squirt into his pants again, and went off happy. Humming, he was.” She wrinkled her nose, although the most she felt for Thorin these days was a kind of sad distaste. Her fear of him had passed.
Aunt Cord, meanwhile, had been looking at her with glittery eyes. For the first time, Susan found herself wondering consciously about Cordelia’s sanity.
“A likely story,” Cordelia whispered at last. There were little beads of perspiration above her eyebrows, and the nestles of blue veins at her temples ticked like clocks. She even had a smell, these days, no matter if she bathed or not-a rancid, acrid one. “Did ye work it out together as ye cuddled afterward, thee and him?”
Susan had stepped forward, grabbed her aunt’s bony wrist, and clapped it to the stain on one of her knees. Cordelia cried out and tried to pull away, but Susan held fast. She then raised the hand to her aunt’s face, holding it there until she knew Cordelia had smelled what was on her palm.
“Does thee smell it. Aunt? Paint! We used it on rice-paper for colored lanterns!”
The tension had slowly gone out of the wrist in Susan’s hand. The eyes looking into hers regained a measure of clarity. “Aye,” she had said at last. “Paint.” A pause. “This time.”
Since then, Susan had all too often turned her head to see a narrow-hipped figure gliding after her in the street, or one of her aunt’s many friends marking her course with suspicious eyes. When she rode on the Drop, she now always had the sensation of being watched. Twice before the four of them came together in the graveyard, she had agreed to meet Roland and his friends. Both times she had been forced to break off, the second at the very last moment. On that occasion she had seen Brian Hockey’s eldest son watching her in an odd, intent way. It had only been intuition… but strong intuition.
What made matters worse for her was that she was as frantic for a meeting as Roland himself, and not just for palaver. She needed to see his face, and to clasp one of his hands between both of hers. The rest, sweet as it was, could wait, but she needed to see him and touch him; needed to make sure he wasn’t Just a dream spun by a lonely, frightened girl to comfort herself.
In the end, Maria had helped her-gods bless the little maid, who perhaps understood more than Susan could ever guess. It was Maria who had gone to Cordelia with a note saying that Susan would be spending the night in the guest wing at Seafront. The note was from Olive Thorin, and in spite of all her suspicions, Cordelia could not quite believe it a forgery. As it was not. Olive had written it, listlessly and without questions, when Susan asked.
“What’s wrong with my niece?” Cordelia had snapped. “She tired, sai. And with the dolor de garganta.”
“Sore throat? So close before Fair-Day? Ridiculous! I don’t believe it! Susan’s never sick!”
“Dolor de garganta,” Maria repeated, impassive as only a peasant woman can be in the face of disbelief, and with that Cordelia had to be satisfied. Maria herself had no idea what Susan was up to, and that was just the way Susan liked it.
She’d gone over the balcony, moving nimbly down the fifteen feet of tangled vines growing up the north side of the building, and through the rear servants’ door in the wall. There Roland had been waiting, and after two warm minutes with which we need not concern ourselves, they rode double on Rusher to the graveyard, where Cuthbert and Alain waited, full of expectation and nervous hope.
3
Susan looked first at the placid blond one with the round face, whose name was not Richard Stockworth but Alain Johns. Then at the other one-he from whom she had sensed such doubt of her and perhaps even anger at her. Cuthbert Allgood was his name.
They sat side by side on a fallen gravestone which had been overrun with ivy, their feet in a little brook of mist. Susan slid from Rusher’s back and approached them slowly. They stood up. Alain made an In-World bow, leg out, knee locked, heel stiffly planted. “Lady,” he said. “Long days-”
Now the other was beside him-thin and dark, with a face that would have been handsome had it not seemed so restless. His dark eyes were really quite beautiful.
“- and pleasant nights,” Cuthbert finished, doubling Alain’s bow. I he two of them looked so like comic courtiers in a Fair-Day sketch that Susan laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Then she curtseyed to them deeply, spreading her arms to mime the skirts she wasn’t wearing. “And may you have twice the number, gentlemen.”
Then they simply looked at each other, three young people who were uncertain exactly how to proceed. Roland didn’t help; he sat astride K usher and only watched carefully.
Susan took a tentative step forward, not laughing now. There were still dimples at the comers of her lips, but her eyes were anxious.
“I hope you don’t hate me,” she said. “I’d understand it if you did- I’ve come into your plans… and between the three of you, as well-but I couldn’t help it.” Her hands were still out at her sides. Now she raised them to Alain and Cuthbert, palms up. “I love him.”
“We don’t hate you,” Alain said. “Do we, Bert?”
For a terrible moment Cuthbert was silent, looking over Susan’s shoulder, seeming to study the waxing Demon Moon. She felt her heart stop. Then his gaze returned to her and he gave a smile of such sw
eetness that a confused but brilliant thought (If I’d met this one first-, it began) shot through her mind like a comet.
“Roland’s love is my love,” Cuthbert said. He reached out, took her hands, and drew her forward so she stood between him and Alain like a sister with her two brothers. “For we have been friends since we wore cradle-clothes, and we’ll continue as friends until one of us leaves the path and enters the clearing.” Then he grinned like a kid. “Mayhap we’ll all find the end of the path together, the way things are going.”
“And soon,” Alain added.
“Just so long,” Susan Delgado finished, “as my Aunt Cordelia doesn’t come along as our chaperone.”
4
“We are ka-tet,” Roland said. “We are one from many.”
He looked at each in turn, and saw no disagreement in their eyes. They had repaired to the mausoleum, and their breath smoked from their mouths and noses. Roland squatted on his hunkers, looking at the other three, who sat in a line on a stone meditation bench flanked by skeletal bouquets in stone pots. The floor was scattered with the petals of dead roses. Cuthbert and Alain, on either side of Susan, had their arms around her in quite unselfconscious fashion. Again Roland thought of one sister and two protective brothers.
“We’re greater than we were,” Alain said. “I feel that very strongly.”
“I do, too,” Cuthbert said. He looked around. “And a fine meeting-place, as well. Especially for such a ka-tet as ours.”
Roland didn’t smile; repartee had never been his strong suit. “Let’s talk about what’s going on in Hambry,” he said, “and then we’ll talk about the immediate future.”
“We weren’t sent here on a mission, you know,” Alain said to Susan. “We were sent by our fathers to get us out of the way, that’s all. Roland excited the enmity of a man who is likely a cohort of John Parson’s-”
“Excited the enmity of,'” Cuthbert said. “That’s a good phrase. Round. I intend to remember it and use it at every opportunity.”
“Control yourself,” Roland said. “I’ve no desire to be here all night.”
“Cry your pardon, O great one,” Cuthbert said, but his eyes danced in a decidedly unrepentant way.
“We came with carrier pigeons for the sending and receiving of messages,” Alain went on, “but I think the pigeons were laid on so our parents could be sure we were all right.”
“Yes,” Cuthbert said. “What Alain’s trying to say is that we’ve been caught by surprise. Roland and I have had… disagreements… about how to go on. He wanted to wait. I didn’t. I now believe he was right.”
“But for the wrong reasons,” Roland said in a dry tone. “In any case, we’ve settled our differences.”
Susan was looking back and forth between them with something like alarm. What her gaze settled upon was the bruise on Roland’s lower left jaw, clearly visible even in the faint light which crept through the half-open sepultura door. “Settled them how?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Roland said. “Farson intends a battle, or perhaps a series of them, in the Shaved Mountains, to the northwest of Gilead. To the forces of the Affiliation moving toward him, he will seem trapped. In a more ordinary course of things, that might even have been true. Farson intends to engage them, trap them, and destroy them with the weapons of the Old People. These he will drive with oil from Citgo. The oil in the tankers we saw, Susan.”
“Where will it be refined so Farson can use it?”
“Someplace west of here along his route,” Cuthbert said. “We think very likely the Vi Castis. Do you know it? It’s mining country.”
“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never actually been out of Hambry in my life.” She looked levelly at Roland. “I think that’s to change soon.”
“There’s a good deal of machinery left over from the days of the Old People in those mountains,” Alain said. “Most is up in the draws and canyons, they say. Robots and killer lights-razor-beams, such are called, because they’ll cut you clean in half if you run into them. The gods know what else. Some of it’s undoubtedly just legend, but where there’s smoke, there’s often fire. In any case, it seems the most likely spot for refining.”
“And then they’d take it on to where Farson’s waiting,” Cuthbert said. “Not that that part matters to us; we’ve got all we can handle right here in Mejis.”
“I’ve been waiting in order to get it all,” Roland said. “Every bit of their damned plunder.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, our friend is just a wee nubbin ambitious,” Cuthbert said, and winked.
Roland paid no attention. He was looking in the direction of Eyebolt Canyon. There was no noise from there this night; the wind had shifted onto its autumn course and away from town. “If we can fire the oil, the rest will go up with it… and the oil is the most important thing, anyway. I want to destroy it, then I want to get the hell out of here. The four of us.”
“They mean to move on Reaping Day, don’t they?” Susan asked.
“Oh yes, it seems so,” Cuthbert said, then laughed. It was a rich, infectious sound-the laughter of a child-and as he did it, he rocked back and forth and held his stomach as a child would.
Susan looked puzzled. “What? What is it?”
“I can’t tell,” he said, chortling. “It’s too rich for me. I’ll laugh all the way through it, and Roland will be annoyed. You do it, Al. Tell Susan about our visit from Deputy Dave.”
“He came out to see us at the Bar K,” Alain said, smiling himself. “Talked to us like an uncle. Told us Hambry-folk don’t care for outsiders at their Fairs, and we’d best keep right to our place on the day of the full moon.”
“That’s insane!” Susan spoke indignantly, as one is apt to when one hears one’s hometown unjustly maligned. “We welcome strangers to our fairs, so we do, and always have! We’re not a bunch of… of savages!”
“Soft, soft,” Cuthbert said, giggling. “We know that, but Deputy Dave don’t know we know, do he? He knows his wife makes the best white tea for miles around, and after that Dave’s pretty much at sea. Sheriff Herk knows a leetle more, I sh’d judge, but not much.”
“The pains they’ve taken to warn us off means two things,” Roland said. “The first is that they intend to move on Reaping Fair-Day, just as you said, Susan. The second is that they think they can steal Parson’s goods right out from under our noses.”
“And then perhaps blame us for it afterward,” Alain said.
She looked curiously from one to the other, then said: “What have you planned, then?”
“To destroy what they’ve left at Citgo as bait of our own and then to strike them where they gather,” Roland said quietly. “That’s Hanging Rock. At least half the tankers they mean to take west are there already. They’ll have a force of men. As many as two hundred, perhaps, although I think it will turn out to be less. I intend that all these men should die.”
“If they don’t, we will,” Alain said.
“How can the four of us kill two hundred soldiers?”
“We can’t. But if we can start one or two of the clustered tankers burning, we think there’ll be an explosion-mayhap a fearful one. The surviving soldiers will be terrified, and the surviving leaders infuriated. They’ll see us, because we’ll let ourselves be seen…”
Alain and Cuthbert were watching him breathlessly. The rest they had either been told or had guessed, but this part was the counsel Roland had, until now, kept to himself.
“What then?” she asked, frightened. “What then?”
“I think we can lead them into Eyebolt Canyon,” Roland said. “I think we can lead them into the thinny.”
5
Thunderstruck silence greeted this. Then, not without respect, Susan said:
“You’re mad.”
“No,” Cuthbert said thoughtfully. “He’s not. You’re thinking about that little cut in the canyon wall, aren’t you, Roland? The one just before the jog in the canyon floor.”
Roland nodded
. “Four could scramble up that way without too much trouble. At the top, we’ll pile a fair amount of rock. Enough to start a landslide down on any that should try following us.”
“That’s horrible,” Susan said.
“It’s survival,” Alain replied. “If they’re allowed to have the oil and put it to use, they’ll slaughter every Affiliation man that gets in range of their weapons. The Good Man takes no prisoners.”
“I didn’t say wrong, only horrible.”
They were silent for a moment, four children contemplating the murders of two hundred men. Except they wouldn’t all be men; many (perhaps even most) would be boys roughly their own ages.
At last she said, “Those not caught in your rockslide will only ride back out of the canyon again.”
“No, they won’t.” Alain had seen the lay of the land and now understood the matter almost completely. Roland was nodding, and there was a trace of a smile on his mouth.
“Why not?”
“The brush at the front of the canyon. We’re going to set it on fire, aren’t we, Roland? And if the prevailing winds are prevailing that day… the smoke…”
“It’ll drive them the rest of the way in,” Roland agreed. “Into the thinny.”
“How will you set the brush-pile alight?” Susan asked. “I know it’s dry, but surely you won’t have time to use a sulfur match or your flint and steel.”
“You can help us there,” Roland said, “just as you can help us set the tankers alight. We can’t count on touching off the oil with just our guns, you know; crude oil is a lot less volatile than people might think. And Sheemie’s going to help you, I hope.”