by Stephen King
He found himself thinking (with a mild sense of wonder) of Ms. Avery's English class. The hanging yellow globes with ghostly dead flies lying in their bellies. Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery's voice. Outs at noon-what would be plain old lunch in a plain old public school. Sitting at his desk afterward and trying to stay awake. Was that boy, that neat Piper School boy, actually going out to the north of a farming town called Calla Bryn Sturgis to battle child-stealing monsters? Could that boy be lying dead thirty-six hours from now with his guts in a steaming pile behind him, blown out of his back and into the dirt by something called a sneetch? Surely that wasn't possible, was it? The housekeeper, Mrs. Shaw, had cut the crusts off his sandwiches and sometimes called him 'Bama. His father had taught him how to calculate a fifteen percent tip. Such boys surely did not go out to die with guns in their hands. Did they?
"I bet you get twenty!" Benny said. "Boy, I wish I could be with you! We'd fight side by side! Pow! Pow! Pow! Then we'd reload!"
Jake sat up and looked at Benny with real curiosity. "Would you?" he asked. "If you could?"
Benny thought about it. His face changed, was suddenly older and wiser. He shook his head. "Nah. I'd be scared. Aren't you really scared? Say true?"
"Scared to death," Jake said simply.
"Of dying?"
"Yeah, but I'm even more scared of fucking up."
"You won't."
Easy for you to say, Jake thought.
"If I have to go with the little kids, at least I'm glad my father's going, too," Benny said. "He's taking his bah. You ever seen him shoot?"
"No."
"Well, he's good with it. If any of the Wolves get past you guys, he'll take care of them. He'll find that gill-place on their chests, and pow!"
What if Benny knew the gill-place was a lie? Jake wondered. False information this boy's father would hopefully pass on? What if he knew-
Eddie spoke up in his head, Eddie with his wise-ass Brooklyn accent in full flower. Yeah, and if fish had bicycles, every fuckin river'd be the Tour de France.
"Benny, I really have to try to get some sleep."
Benny lay back down. Jake did the same, and resumed looking up at the ceiling. All at once he hated it that Oy was on Benny's bed, that Oy had taken so naturally to the other boy. All at once he hated everything about everything. The hours until morning, when he could pack, mount his borrowed pony, and ride back to town, seemed to stretch out into infinity.
"Jake?"
"What, Benny, what?"
"I'm sorry. I just wanted to say I'm glad you came here. We had some fun, didn't we?"
"Yeah," Jake said, and thought: No one would believe he's older than me. He sounds about… I don't know… five, or something. That was mean, but Jake had an idea that if he wasn't mean, he might actually start to cry. He hated Roland for sentencing him to this last night at the Rocking B. "Yeah, fun big-big."
"I'm gonna miss you. But I'll bet they put up a statue of you guys in the Pavilion, or something." Guys was a word Benny had picked up from Jake, and he used it every chance he got.
"I'll miss you, too," Jake said.
"You're lucky, getting to follow the Beam and travel places. I'll probably be here in this shitty town the rest of my life."
No, you won't. You and your Da' are going to do plenty of wandering… if you're lucky and they let you out of town, that is. What you're going to do, I think, is spend the rest of your life dreaming about this shitty little town. About a place that was home. And it's my doing. I saw... and I told. But what else could I do?
"Jake?"
He could stand no more. It would drive him mad. "Go to sleep, Benny. And let me go to sleep."
"Okay."
Benny rolled over to face the wall. In a little while his breathing slowed. A little while after that, he began snoring. Jake lay awake until nearly midnight, and then he went to sleep, too. And had a dream. In it Roland was down on his knees in the dust of East Road, facing a great horde of oncoming Wolves that stretched from the bluffs to the river. He was trying to reload, but both of his hands were stiff and one was short two fingers. The bullets fell uselessly in front of him. He was still trying to load his great revolver when the Wolves rode him down.
THIRTEEN
Dawn of Wolf's Eve. Eddie and Susannah stood at the window of the Pere's guest room, looking down the slope of lawn to Rosa's cottage.
"He's found something with her," Susannah said. "I'm glad for him."
Eddie nodded. "How you feeling?"
She smiled up at him. "I'm fine," she said, and meant it. "What about you, sugar?"
"I'll miss sleeping in a real bed with a roof over my head, and I'm anxious to get to it, but otherwise I'm fine, too."
"Things go wrong, you won't have to worry about the accommodations."
"That's true," Eddie said, "but I don't think they're going to go wrong. Do you?"
Before she could answer, a gust of wind shook the house and whistled beneath the eaves. The seminon saying good day to ya, Eddie guessed.
"I don't like that wind," she said. "It's a wild-card."
Eddie opened his mouth.
"And if you say anything about ka, I'll punch you in the nose."
Eddie closed his mouth again and mimed zipping it shut. Susannah went to his nose anyway, a brief touch of knuckles like a feather. "We've got a fine chance to win," she said. "They've had everything their own way for a long time, and it's made em fat. Like Blaine."
"Yeah. Like Blaine."
She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. "But things could go wrong, so I want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you." She spoke simply, with no drama.
"I know you do," he said, "but I'll be damned if I know why."
"Because you make me feel whole," she said. "When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood movie producers made up to sell more tickets back in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out."
Eddie laughed.
"Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You… Eddie, you fill me up." She took his hand and began to lead him back to the bed. "And right now I'd like you to fill me up the other way."
"Suze, is it safe?"
"I don't know," she said, "and I don't care."
They made love slowly, the pace only building near the end. She cried out softly against his shoulder, and in the instant before his own climax blotted out reflection, Eddie thought: I'm going to lose her if I'm not careful. I don't know how I know that… but I do. She'll just disappear.
"I love you, too," he said when they were finished and lying side by side again.
"Yes." She took his hand. "I know. I'm glad."
"It's good to make someone glad," he said. "I didn't use to know that."
"It's all right," Susannah said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "You learn fast."
FOURTEEN
There was a rocker in Rosa's little living room. The gunslinger sat in it naked, holding a clay saucer in one hand. He was smoking and looking out at the sunrise. He wasn't sure he would ever again see it rise from this place.
Rosa came out of the bedroom, also naked, and stood in the doorway looking at him. "How're y'bones, tell me, I beg?"
Roland nodded. "That oil of yours is a wonder."
'"Twon'tlast."
"No," Roland said. "But there's another world-my friends' world-and maybe they have something there that will. I've got a feeling we'll be going there soon."
"More fighting to do?"
"I think so, yes."
"You won't be back this way in any case, will you?"
Roland looked at her. "No."
"Are you tired, Roland?"
"To death," said he.
"Come back to bed a little while, then, will ya not?"
He crushed out his smoke and stood. He smiled. It was a younger man's smile. "Say thankya."
"Thee's a good man, Roland of Gilead."
He considered this, then slowly shook his head. "All my life I've had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow."
She held out a hand to him. "Come ye, Roland. Come commala." And he went to her.
FIFTEEN
Early that afternoon, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan rode out the East Road-which was actually a north road at this point along the winding Devar-Tete Whye-with shovels concealed in the bedrolls at the backs of their saddles. Susannah had been excused from this duty on account of her pregnancy. She had joined the Sisters of Oriza at the Pavilion, where a larger tent was being erected and preparations for a huge evening meal were already going forward. When they left, Calla Bryn Sturgis had already begun to fill up, as if for a Fair-Day. But there was no whooping and hollering, no impudent rattle of firecrackers, no rides being set up on the Green. They had seen neither Andy nor Ben Slightman, and that was good.
"Tian?" Roland asked Eddie, breaking the rather heavy silence among them.
"He'll meet me at the rectory. Five o'clock."
"Good," Roland said. "If we're not done out here by four, you're excused to ride back on your own."
"I'll go with you, if you like," Callahan said. The Chinese believed that if you saved a man's life, you were responsible for him ever after. Callahan had never given the idea much thought, but after pulling Eddie back from the ledge above the Doorway Cave, it seemed to him there might be truth in the notion.
"Better you stay with us," Roland said. "Eddie can take care of this. I've got another job for you out here. Besides digging, I mean."
"Oh? And what might that be?" Callahan asked.
Roland pointed at the dust-devils twisting and whirling ahead of them on the road. "Pray away this damned wind. And the sooner the better. Before tomorrow morning, certainly."
"Are you worried about the ditch?" Jake asked.
"The ditch'll be fine," Roland said. "It's the Sisters' Orizas I'm worried about. Throwing the plate is delicate work under the best of circumstances. If it's blowing up a gale out here when the Wolves come, the possibilities for things to go wrong-" He tossed his hand at the dusty horizon, giving it a distinctive (and fatalistic) Calla twist. "Delah."
Callahan, however, was smiling. "I'll be glad to offer a prayer," he said, "but look east before you grow too concerned. Doya, I beg."
They turned that way in their saddles. Corn-the crop now over, the picked plants standing in sloping, skeletal rows-ran down to the rice-fields. Beyond the rice was the river. Beyond the river was the end of the borderlands. There, dust-devils forty feet high spun and jerked and sometimes collided. They made the ones dancing on their side of die river look like naughty children by comparison.
"The seminon often reaches the Whye and then turns back," Callahan said. "According to the old folks, Lord Seminon begs Lady Oriza to make him welcome when he reaches the water and she often bars his passage out of jealousy. You see-"
"Seminon married her sissa," Jake said. "Lady Riza wanted him for herself-a marriage of wind and rice-and she's still p.o.'d about it."
"How did you know that?" Callahan asked, both amused and astonished.
"Benny told me," Jake said, and said no more. Thinking of their long discussions (sometimes in the hayloft, sometimes lazing on the bank of the river) and their eager exchanges of legend made him feel sad and hurt.
Callahan was nodding. "That's the story, all right. I imagine it's actually a weather phenomenon-cold air over there, warm air rising off the water, something like that-but whatever it is, this one shows every sign of going back where it came from."
The wind dashed grit in his face, as if to prove him wrong, and Callahan laughed. "This'll be over by first light tomorrow, I almost guarantee you. But-"
"Almost's not good enough, Pere."
"What I was going to say, Roland, is that since I know almost's not good enough, I'll gladly send up a prayer."
"Tell ya thanks." The gunslinger turned to Eddie, and pointed the first two fingers of his left hand at his own face. "The eyes, right?"
"The eyes," Eddie agreed. "And the password. If it's not nineteen, it'll be ninety-nine."
"You don't know that for sure."
"I know," Eddie said.
"Still… be careful."
"I will."
A few minutes later they reached the place where, on their right, a rocky track wandered off into the arroyo country, toward the Gloria and Redbirds One and Two. The folken assumed that the buckas would be left here, and they were correct. They also assumed that the children and their minders would then walk up the track to one mine or the other. In this they were wrong.
Soon three of them were digging on the west side of the road, a fourth always standing watch. No one came-the folken from this far out were already in town-and the work went quickly enough. At four o'clock, Eddie left the others to finish up and rode back to town to meet Tian Jaffords with one of Roland's revolvers holstered on his hip.
SIXTEEN
Tian had brought his bah. When Eddie told him to leave it on the Pere's porch, the farmer gave him an unhappy, uncertain stare.
"He won't be surprised to see me packing iron, but he might have questions if he saw you with that thing," Eddie said. This was it, the true beginning of their stand, and now that it had come, Eddie felt calm. His heart was beating slowly and steadily. His vision seemed to have clarified; he could see each shadow cast by each individual blade of grass on the rectory lawn. "He's strong, from what I've heard. And very quick when he needs to be. Let it be my play."
"Then why am I here?"
Because even a smart robot won't expect trouble if I've got a clodhopper like you with me was the actual answer, but giving it wouldn't be very diplomatic.
"Insurance," Eddie said. "Come on."
They walked down to the privy. Eddie had used it many times during the last few weeks, and always with pleasure-there were stacks of soft grasses for the clean-up phase, and you didn't have to concern yourself with poison flurry-but he'd not examined the outside closely until now. It was a wood structure, tall and solid, but he had no doubt Andy could demolish it in short order if he really wanted to. If they gave him a chance to.
Rosa came to the back door of her cottage and looked out at them, holding a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. "How do ya, Eddie?"
"Fine so far, Rosie, but you better go back inside. There's gonna be a scuffle."
"Say true? I've got a stack of plates-"
"I don't think Rizas'd help much in this case," Eddie said. "I guess it wouldn't hurt if you stood by, though."
She nodded and went back inside without another word.
The men sat down, flanking the open door of the privy with its new bolt-lock. Tian tried to roll a smoke. The first one fell apart in his shaking fingers and he had to try again. "I'm not good at this sort of thing," he said, and Eddie understood he wasn't talking about the fine art of cigarette-making.
"It's all right."
Tian peered at him hopefully. "Do ya say so?"
"I do, so let it be so."
Promptly at six o'clock (The bastard's probably got a clock set tight down to millionths of a second inside him, Eddie thought), Andy came around the rectory-house, his shadow trailing out long and spidery on the grass in front of him. He saw them. His blue eyes flashed. He raised a hand in greeting. The setting sun reflected off his arm, making it look as though it had been dipped in blood. Eddie raised his own hand in return and stood up, smiling. He wondered if all the thinking-machines that still worked in this rundown world had turned against their masters, and if so, why.
"Just be cool and let me
do the talking," he said out of the corner of his mouth.
"Yes, all right."
"Eddie!" Andy cried. "Tian Jaffords! How good to see you both! And weapons to use against the Wolves! My! Where are they?"
"Stacked in the shithouse," Eddie said. "We can get a wagon down here once they're out, but they're heavy… and there isn't much room to move around in there…"
He stood aside. Andy came on. His eyes were flashing, but not in laughter now. They were so brilliant Eddie had to squint- it was like looking at flashbulbs.
"I'm sure I can get them out," Andy said. "How good it is to help! How often I've regretted how little my programming allows me to…"
He was standing in the privy door now, bent slightly at the thighs to get his metallic barrel of a head below the level of the jamb. Eddie drew Roland's gun. As always, the sandalwood grip felt smooth and eager against his palm.
"Cry your pardon, Eddie of New York, but I see no guns."
"No," Eddie agreed. "Me either. Actually all I see is a fucking traitor who teaches songs to the kids and then sends them to be-"
Andy turned with terrible liquid speed. To Eddie's ears the hum of the servos in his neck seemed very loud. They were standing less than three feet apart, point-blank range. "May it do ya fine, you stainless-steel bastard," Eddie said, and fired twice. The reports were deafening in the evening stillness. Andy's eyes exploded and went dark. Tian cried out.
"NO!"Andy screamed in an amplified voice. It was so loud that it made the gunshots seem no more than popping corks by comparison. "NO, MY EYES, I CAN'T SEE, OH NO, VISION ZERO, MY EYES, MY EYES-"
The scrawny stainless-steel arms flew up to the shattered sockets, where blue sparks were now jumping erratically. Andy's legs straightened, and his barrel of a head ripped through the top of the privy's doorway, throwing chunks of board left and right.
"NO, NO, NO, I CAN'T SEE, VISION ZERO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, AMBUSH, ATTACK, I'M BLIND, CODE 7, CODE 7, CODE 7!"
"Help me push him, Tian!" Eddie shouted, dropping the gun back into its holster. But Tian was frozen, gawking at the robot (whose head had now vanished inside the broken doorway), and Eddie had no time to wait. He lunged forward and planted his outstretched palms on the plate giving Andy's name, function, and serial number. The robot was amazingly heavy (Eddie's first thought was that it was like pushing a parking garage), but it was also blind, surprised, and off-balance. It stumbled backward, and suddenly the amplified words cut off. What replaced them was an unearthly shrieking siren. Eddie thought it would split his head. He grabbed the door and swung it shut. There was a huge, ragged gap at the top, but the door still closed flush. Eddie ran the new bolt, which was as thick as his wrist.