by Vincent, Bev
Also, his comrades don’t join him voluntarily; Roland hijacks them from their own worlds without considering the ethics of taking them against their will. He needs them; therefore, they must come. This is the morality of ka.
The object he has struggled to reach with his last ounce of strength is a door, the first of many he will encounter during the months to come. The members of Roland’s ka-tet will take interdimensional doorways for granted, but this is the first such door he has ever encountered during his millennium-long journey. Though he doesn’t know it, another door recently played its part in shaping his destiny. Father Callahan was transported through one from the way station to Calla Bryn Sturgis shortly after Roland left with Jake.
* * *
The Power of Four
Including Roland, the ka-tet of the Dark Tower is composed of four people. King often assembles groups of four: Roland’s youthful ka-tet consisted of himself, Alain, Cuthbert and Jamie. Gran-Pere Jaffords and three others, including Molly Doolin, stood against the Wolves the first time one was killed. Three others accompanied Arthur Eld when he slew Saita, the great snake. Stu, Larry, Ralph and Glen are sent to Las Vegas at the end of The Stand, four friends go hunting in Dreamcatcher, four boys wander abroad in The Body and the four-membered Sawyer Gang enters the Black House. In a vision caused by the rose, Eddie sees four men save a young boy from a monster with one eye, reminiscent of the Sawyer Gang saving Ty Marshall from Mr. Munshun.
* * *
These doors, whether of the magic kind or the more recent technological replacements, stand where no door should be. Their hinges aren’t fastened to anything. The one on the beach appears to be made from solid ironwood, and the doorknob—filigreed with the grinning face of a baboon—looks to be of gold. Written on it in the High Speech are the words THE PRISONER. When Roland walks around the door to examine the other side, it disappears. Only its shadow in the sand is visible. He thinks he’s hallucinating.
The baboon and the words on the door echo the tarot card Walter showed him, but the man in black did not explain the meaning of his fortune. Roland has no idea what is behind this door, but he doesn’t have many options—if he leaves it closed, he’ll die. He has no doubt that it will open to his hand since ka wants him to succeed, just like John Cullum will be there in Maine months later when needed.
Unlike the portals that Roland encounters later, the doors on the beach permit a special kind of access to what lies beyond. Once opened, he sees through the eyes of the person he is supposed to draw. When he crosses the threshold, he enters that person’s body and mind. This may be ka’s way of pointing him at the person of interest on America-side. He likely wouldn’t have given Eddie Dean or Detta Walker much thought as potential ka-mates otherwise, and if he hadn’t entered Jack Mort through the third door he might have believed it was Jake he was after. Also, Roland is inept in New York and he needs the support of the person he enters to function.
As luck would have it, when Roland opens the door, Eddie Dean is looking out the window of an airplane flying from the Bahamas to New York. The view of the Earth far below is nothing Roland could have anticipated, even given his recent astronomy lesson. Overwhelmed, he slams the door shut without considering that it might never open again. He regains his composure and tries a second time.
Roland gets his first glimpse of a world he will visit several more times over the course of his quest. He will never be completely comfortable in this land—Eddie tells him he loses something in the translation when they cross over to New York. The letters in English words swim before his eyes, and he’s never quite sure how things work. Even so, he suspects it’s similar to the way his own world was before it moved on.
“With the simple resolve that had made him the last of them all,” Roland steps through the doorway. When he looks back, he sees his body lying limp on the beach. Only his essence crossed the threshold. As long as he remains on the other side of the doorway, he’s vulnerable to the lobstrosities and any other predators that might happen along.
Roland’s presence is a benevolent possession. He can push himself forward to assert control when he needs to, or pull back to let his host operate normally at other times. Once Roland announces his presence, he and his host will be able to communicate. Mia’s possession of Susannah’s body is similar. She can move forward and back in Susannah’s mind, exerting control when necessary but allowing Susannah to operate normally when Mia doesn’t know what to do. Perhaps Mia entered Susannah through a doorway like this.
Roland understands immediately that the person he inhabits is an addict. He identifies the symptoms with those of Nort the Weedeater from Tull. The baboon on Walter’s tarot card symbolizes—in part—the young man’s affliction. Eddie is a heroin addict who is going “cool turkey” long enough to smuggle two pounds of cocaine from the Bahamas. In preparation for this trip, he stopped shooting up so his conspicuous needle tracks could heal.
The cocaine taped under his armpits will be exchanged for heroin for him and his older brother, Henry—mostly for Henry, who could never have stayed straight long enough to make the trip. Roland learns from Eddie’s mind that his addiction was largely brought about by Henry’s negative influence. Though Roland claims to be slow and unimaginative, he often exhibits flashes of insight that defy this characterization, which was pounded into him by his father and teachers in much the same way Eddie’s self-esteem was damaged by his mother and brother.
Eddie isn’t weak; he has a weakness—Henry. When his contact in Nassau—where Sombra Corporation is incorporated—tries several times to cheat him during the cash-for-drugs transaction, Eddie calls his bluff and bullies the man into completing the exchange as negotiated. Roland, who has access to Eddie’s memories, recognizes his deep steel. Eddie reminds him “achingly” of his old friend Cuthbert Allgood.
Eddie notices his eyes changing color in the bathroom mirror when Roland asserts his influence, but he shrugs it off as a withdrawal-induced hallucination. The scenes where Roland coexists within Eddie’s mind are among the cleverest in the book. Roland is addled and weakened from fever. Eddie’s mind isn’t terribly clear, either, but Roland finds it easier to think inside what he considers “a cleaner vessel than his own.” At times, Eddie experiences things through ten senses and feels with two sets of nerves.
Roland doesn’t know all the rules of doorway travel yet. While Eddie sleeps, he performs a few experiments. He learns that he can take things from Eddie’s world to his and back again, but he can’t bring things that originate in his world into Eddie’s. Later, he will discover that if he travels through the doorway in person instead of hitchhiking via Eddie’s mind, he can transport things—like his guns—from Mid-World to Earth.
Though Roland doesn’t understand much of what is happening in Eddie’s world, he knows that Eddie will be in big trouble if they don’t do something about the drugs. One of the flight attendants has her eye on Eddie, and he doesn’t stand a chance of getting past Customs. Eddie is Roland’s only potential source for medicine to cure his infection. To get the medicine, he has to get Eddie through Customs, which means hiding the drugs on the beach. He can’t do this without Eddie’s cooperation, and he must establish contact without sending his host into a screaming fit of terror. Time is running out. The plane has landed and is taxiing toward the terminal.
Their first exchanges are awkward, partly because Roland speaks archaic English and has to search Eddie’s mind for words to describe the situation, and partly because Eddie is paranoid enough to believe he’s going mad. By the time the airplane reaches the gate, Roland has convinced Eddie that it’s in his best interest to obey the voice in his head. He talks Eddie into the bathroom and instructs him to walk through the magic doorway into his world, where they race to rid Eddie of the drugs that have been so meticulously taped to his body.
The flight crew pounds on the door, threatening to break it in. Roland’s recent injuries complicate their task, but he manages to get Eddie, sans cocain
e, back through the door seconds before the lavatory door bursts open. Though Roland is frustrated with Eddie’s clumsiness, Eddie thinks quickly enough to come up with a somewhat plausible explanation for the situation once he’s back in the airplane lavatory.
Eddie also withstands a two-hour Customs interrogation. The agents know he was up to something, but they can neither prove it nor intimidate him into making a mistake. His innate strength is only partly responsible for the way he handles them. Roland’s presence empowers him. Eddie isn’t alone. He fears the stranger inhabiting him, but he likes him, too, and suspects that in time he could love him as he loved his brother.
Roland doesn’t love Eddie, nor does he trust him very much. Though Eddie displays some inner strength, his addiction tells Roland he is a weak vessel. Everything he’s accomplished so far was driven by self-preservation. Roland exhibits the same emotional detachment he had for Jake near the end. As he tells himself in the voice of Cort, “You did yourself ill to feel well of those to whom ill must eventually be done.” He doesn’t hide his own self-interest from Eddie very well, who knows he’s ultimately expendable in Roland’s eyes.
Roland tells himself that he will release the three destined to help him once he reaches the Tower. They might even be able to return to their original times and places, but he’s honest enough with himself to admit that’s unlikely. “Neither, however, could the thought of the treachery he contemplated turn him aside from his course.” The morality of ka strikes again.
The man in black’s voice chides him for his callousness. Roland has already sacrificed Jake in the name of the Tower, and now he’s prepared to condemn those he draws “to something you would not have for yourself: a lifetime in an alien world, where they may die as easily as animals in a zoo set free in a wild place.”
It will be some time before Roland can see that there may be more important things than his quest, even though the future of all universes depends on his success. Eddie, weak and unworldly, identifies within Roland a common spirit. “You’re a Tower junkie,” he tells him.
Roland returns to his body long enough to move it away from the rising tide. As long as the doorway is open, it keeps pace with him regardless of which side he’s on. However, when he intends to pass through it, some intuition tells it to stop moving. Though he’s never seen a door like this before, Roland understands its truths. He could cross the threshold physically, but if he did so and the door closed, he would be trapped on the other side. Eddie will have to be on the beach the next time it closes, because it will never open again.
After the Customs agents release him, Eddie gets food and Anacin for Roland. The painkiller isn’t enough to heal his infection, but it buys them a little extra time. Government agents are following Eddie, and drug lord Enrico Balazar’s people are also watching him. One of Balazar’s associates is Ginelli, presumably a member of the same family as Richard Ginelli, who appeared in the Bachman novel Thinner and died in 1983.
Balazar is curious to learn how Eddie made it through Customs and what became of the cocaine. He’s not a man who likes mysteries, and is aware the cops may have turned Eddie. For leverage, he takes Henry Dean into “protective custody.” Once he finds out what happened to his drugs, he’ll have no more use for the Dean brothers.
King’s reliance on coincidence becomes more obvious in this book. Things happen when they best suit Roland’s quest. He found the first door on the beach when he needed it. If he had entered Eddie a couple of hours later, Eddie probably would have already been in custody or dead. His followers will eventually learn that coincidence is part of Roland’s existence.
Balazar’s headquarters is more Eddie’s realm than Roland’s, so the gunslinger steps back and lets Eddie operate, ready to take control if things go bad. Eddie knows about dishonor among thieves, so he pits members of Balazar’s gang against each other by playing a game of interdimensional sleight of hand. He doesn’t know that his brother is already dead from an accidental drug overdose administered by his minders.
Eddie’s bravura performance makes his impromptu plan work. Exposure to Roland gives him newfound confidence; so much so that Balazar barely recognizes him as the drug addict they sent to the Bahamas. Eddie tells Balazar that the drugs have already been delivered and Jack Andolini, Balazar’s lieutenant, is hiding them in the bathroom. He strips naked to prove he has nothing up his sleeves, and goes into the bathroom with Andolini to fetch the drugs.
Eddie’s simple plan is almost foiled by Roland’s wet ammunition. He pulls Andolini through the doorway and Roland draws his gun, but the hammer falls on a dud. Andolini, a professional killer, quickly recovers his wits. He has Roland dead to rights when Eddie—still naked—saves the gunslinger’s life by whacking Andolini with a rock. Andolini’s bullet goes wild, except “[w]hen you feel the wind of the slug on your cheek, you can’t really call it wild.”
Roland returns the favor by shooting the gun from Andolini’s hand. His bullet strikes at the exact second Andolini pulls the trigger, causing it to explode in his face. Blinded, Andolini staggers into the claws of the waiting lobstrosities. This isn’t the last they will see of Andolini, though. Roland and Eddie will face him again ten years in the past via another doorway.
Roland still needs medicine, so he and Eddie have to go back through the doorway. Eddie—who is still naked—has no chance of surviving alone against Balazar’s men, so Roland returns with Eddie physically. Only one of Roland’s hands is of any use to him, so he gives a gun to Eddie, something he couldn’t bring himself to do with Jake when they battled the Slow Mutants beneath the mountain.3
If Eddie needed any motivation for the gun battle that ensues, he gets it when they return to the bathroom. While he’s gathering packets of antibiotic from the medicine cabinet, he overhears one of the men report that Henry is dead. “I want to go to war,” he tells Roland.
After a fierce gunfight, Balazar and all of his men are killed. In a final insult, one of Balazar’s men throws Henry’s severed head at Eddie. Roland hears the approaching police sirens and knows it’s time to retreat through the doorway. He knows, too, that Eddie must come with him. Eddie asks what’s on the other side of the door for him. “If you can tell me, maybe I’ll come. But if you lie, I’ll know.”
Roland issues Eddie’s call to adventure, the part of a quest when a character is challenged to leave his familiar surroundings for the unknown. He tells Eddie that death probably awaits him at the end of the journey. But it won’t be boring, he promises. “If we win through, Eddie, you’ll see something beyond all the beliefs of all your dreams.”
Roland could drag Eddie through the doorway, but he leaves the decision up to the young man he still calls prisoner. “He had seen this hag-ridden man behave with all the dignity of a born gunslinger in spite of his addiction.” In a wisecracking tone that Roland will grow to despise, Eddie says he “doesn’t have anything else planned for tonight, anyway.” Once through the doorway, he remembers the heroin that is likely in Balazar’s desk and turns to go back for it.
“That part of your life is over, Eddie . . . your need will pass.” With these words, Roland closes the door. Both of them forget about the cocaine that is still hidden on the beach, but it’s unlikely this drug would have done much to satisfy Eddie’s need for heroin, anyway.
Roland’s life is in Eddie’s hands in the following days. Time means little to either of them as Roland fights his infection and Eddie suffers intense heroin withdrawal. They can smell each other’s illnesses. Both have the same choice, which echoes Red’s sentiments in “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”: “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” [DS]
Ironically, all Eddie can find for them to eat are the lobstrosities that poisoned and mutilated Roland. Eddie hates the gunslinger for kidnapping him to a place where he has no hope of finding drugs to cure his craving. Even so, he builds a travois and drags Roland north, the direction Roland intuitively knows they must go. Roland is tempted to ridicule the crude c
arrier, but he realizes Cort would probably have grudgingly approved of Eddie’s resourcefulness.
Eddie contemplates suicide in the dreary nighttime hours. The only thing that keeps him going is the knowledge that without him, Roland will die, too. “After you’re really on your feet again, I may, like, re-examine my options.”
During their rest periods, Eddie talks about the life he left behind. Roland understands that his unbalanced relationship with his brother—eight years his senior—and their mother robbed him of his self-esteem. Eddie had been hooked on the drug of trust that Henry knew how to use and push so well. By the end Henry had been so badly hooked on drugs that their roles reversed. “Now Eddie held Henry’s hand crossing streets.”
Having told his story—to Roland, but also to himself for the first time—Eddie awaits Roland’s response, but Roland has no use for philosophy. If the gunslinger were prone to introspection and questioning the cosmos, he would have asked himself why he had been blessed with a companion who “seems to promise weakness or strangeness or even outright doom.” The question, however, never forms in Roland’s mind. Eddie’s past is irrelevant. All he knows—all he cares to know—is that Eddie is here with him now. “[W]hat’s past is past, and what’s ahead is ahead. The second is ka, and takes care of itself,” a sentiment Eddie will grow to despise.
The antibiotics combat Roland’s infection enough so that Eddie no longer has to drag him along the beach. Long before Eddie can see it, Roland detects the next doorway almost a full day’s walk away.
For Roland, the portal labeled THE LADY OF SHADOWS represents his next companion. Eddie sees it as a way back to his own world and to the heroin he still craves. Roland knows what Eddie has in mind, and for the first time in his life Roland lets someone strip him of one of his weapons.4 When it comes to his ka-tet, Roland always allows the other person to make his or her own decisions. He knew that Eddie might be weak, but he isn’t stupid. Entrusting ka to set them on the right path, Roland places his life entirely in fate’s hands.