The Dark Tower (Page 142)

"Olan," said Oy, and the finality in his strange little voice rolled a stone against her heart. She turned bitterly to the old man with the big iron on his hip.

"There," she said. ‘You have your own glammer, don’t you?

Always did. You drew Eddie on to one death, and Jake to a pair of em. Now Patrick, and even the bumbler. Are you happy?"

"No," said he, and she saw he truly was not. She believed she had never seen such sadness and such loneliness on a human face. "Never was I farther from happy, Susannah of New York.

Will you change your mind and stay? Will thee come the last little while with me? That would make me happy."

For a wild moment she thought she would. That she would simply turn the litde electric cart from the door-which was one-sided and made no promises-and go with him to the Dark Tower. Another day would do it; they could camp at midafternoon and thus arrive tomorrow at sunset, as he wanted.

Then she remembered the dream. The singing voices. The young man holding out the cup of hot chocolate-the good kind, mit schlag.

"No," she said softly. "I’ll take my chance and go."

For a moment she thought he would make it easy on her, just agree and let her go. Then his anger-no, his despair-broke in a painful burst. "But you can’t be sure! Susannah, what if the dream itself is a trick and a glammer? What if the things you see even when the door’s open are nothing but tricks and glammers? What if you roll right through and into todash space?"

"Then I’ll light the darkness with thoughts of those I love."

"And that might work," said he, speaking in the bitterest voice she had ever heard. "For the first ten years… or twenty… or even a hundred. And then? What about the rest of eternity?

Think of Oy! Do you think he’s forgotten Jake? Never! Never!

Never in your life! Never in his! He senses something wrong!

Susannah, don’t. I beg you, don’t go. I’ll get on my knees, if that will help." And to her horror, he began to do exactly that.

"It won’t," she said. "And if this is to be my last sight of you-my heart says it is-then don’t let it be of you on your knees. You’re not a kneeling man, Roland, son of Steven, never were, and I don’t want to remember you that way. I want to see you on your feet, as you were in Calla Bryn Sturgis. As you were with your friends at Jericho Hill."

He got up and came to her. For a moment she thought he meant to restrain her by force, and she was afraid. But he only put his hand on her arm for a moment, and then took it away.

"Let me ask you again, Susannah. Are you sureT

She conned her heart and saw that she was. She understood the risks, but yes-she was. And why? Because Roland’s way was the way of the gun. Roland’s way was death for those who rode or walked beside him. He had proved it over and over again, since the earliest days of his quest-no, even before, since overhearing Hax the cook plotting treachery and thus assuring his death by the rope. It was all for the good (for what he called the White), she had no doubt of it, but Eddie still lay in his grave in one world and Jake in another. She had no doubt that much the same fate was waiting for Oy, and for poor Patrick.

Nor would their deaths be long in coming.

"I’m sure," said she.

"All right. Will you give me a kiss?"

She took him by the arm and pulled him down and put her lips on his. When she inhaled, she took in the breath of a thousand years and ten thousand miles. And yes, she tasted death.

But not for you, gunslinger, she thought. For others, but never for you. May I escape your glammer, and may I do fine.;

She was the one who broke their kiss.

"Can you open the door for me?" she asked.

Roland went to it, and took the knob in his hand, and the knob turned easily within his grip.

Cold air puffed out, strong enough to blow Patrick’s long hair back, and with it came a few flakes of snow. She could see grass that was still green beneath light frost, and a path, and an iron fence. Voices were singing "What Child Is This," just as in her dream.

It could be Central Park. Yes, it could be; Central Park of some other world along the axis, perhaps, and not the one she came from, but close enough so that in time she would know no difference.

Or perhaps it was, as he said, a glammer.

Perhaps it was the todash darkness.;;

"It could be a trick," he said, most certainly reading her mind.

"Life is a trick, love a glammer," she replied. "Perhaps we’ll meet again, in the clearing at the end of the path."

"As you say so, let it be so," he told her. He put out one leg, the rundown heel of his boot planted in the earth, and bowed to her. Oy had begun to weep, but he sat firmly beside the gunslinger’s left boot. "Goodbye, my dear."

"Goodbye, Roland." Then she faced ahead, took in a deep breath, and twisted the little cart’s throttle. It rolled smoothly forward.

"Wait.1" Roland cried, but she never turned, nor looked at him again. She rolled through the door. It slammed shut behind her at once with a flat, declamatory clap he knew all too well, one he’d dreamed of ever since his long and feverish walk along the edge of the Western Sea. The sound of the singing was gone and now there was only the lonely sound of the prairie wind.

Roland of Gilead sat in front of the door, which already looked tired and unimportant. It would never open again. He put his face in his hands. It occurred to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now.

NINETEEN

Later-because there’s always a later, isn’t there?-he made breakfast and forced himself to eat his share. Patrick ate heartily, then withdrew to do his necessary while Roland packed up.

There was a third plate, and it was still full. "Oy?" Roland asked, tipping it toward the billy-bumbler. "Will’ee not have at least a bite?"

Oy looked at the plate, then backed away two firm steps.

Roland nodded and tossed away the uneaten food, scattering it into the grass. Mayhap Mordred would come along in good time, and find something to his liking.

At mid-morning they moved on, Roland pulling Ho Fat II and Patrick walking along beside with his head hung low. And soon the beat of the Tower filled the gunslinger’s head again.

Very close now. That steady, pulsing power drove out all thoughts of Susannah, and he was glad. He gave himself to the steady beating and let it sweep away all his thoughts and all his sorrow.

Commala-come-come, sang the Dark Tower, now just over the horizon. Commala-come-come, gunslinger may ya come.

Commala-come-Roland, the journey’s nearly done.

Chapter II:MORDRED

ONE

The dan-tete was watching when the long-haired fellow they were now traveling with grabbed Susannah’s shoulder to point out the dancing orange hobs in the distance. Mordred watched as she whirled, pulling one of the White Daddy’s big revolvers.

For a moment the far-seeing glass eyes he’d found in the house on Odd’s Lane trembled in Mordred’s hand, that was how hard he was rooting for his Blackbird Mommy to shoot the Artist. How the guilt would have bitten into her! Like the blade of a dull hatchet, yar! It was even possible that, overcome by the horror of what she had done, she’d’ve put the barrel of the gun to her own head and pulled the trigger a second time, and how would Old White Daddy like waking up to that?

All, children are such dreamers.

It didn’t happen, of course, but there had been much more to watch. Some of it was hard to see, though. Because it wasn’t just excitement that made the binoculars tremble. He was dressed warmly now, in layers of Dandelo’s hume clothes, but he was still cold. Except when he was hot. And either way, hot or cold, he trembled like a toothless old gaffer in a chimney corner.

This state of affairs had been growing gradually worse since he left Joe Collins’s house behind. Fever roared in his bones like a blizzard wind. Mordred was no longer a-hungry (for Mordred no longer had an appetite), but Mordred was a-sick, a-sick, a-sick.

In truth, he was afraid Mordred might be a-dying.

Nonetheless he watched Roland’s party with great interest, and once the fire was replenished, he saw even better. Saw the door come into being, although he could not read the symbols there writ upon. He understood that the Artist had somehow drawn it into being-what a godlike talent that was! Mordred longed to eat him just on the chance such a talent might be transmittable! He doubted it, the spiritual side of cannibalism was greatly overrated, but what harm in seeing for one’s self?

He watched their palaver. He saw-and also understood-her plea to the Artist and the Mutt, her whining entreaties

(come with me so I don’t have to go alone, come on, be a sport, in fact be a couple of sports, oh boo-hoo)

and rejoiced in her sorrow and fury when the plea was rejected by both boy and beast; Mordred rejoiced even though he knew it would make his own job harder. (A little harder, anyway; how much trouble could a mute young man and a billybumbler really give him, once he changed his shape and made his move?) For a moment he thought that, in her anger, she might shoot Old White Daddy with his own gun, and that Mordred did mtf want. Old White Daddy was meant to be his. The voice from the Dark Tower had told him so. A-sick he surely was, a-dying he might be, but Old White Daddy was still meant to be his meal, not the Blackbird Mommy’s. Why, she’d leave the meat to rot without taking a single bite! But she didn’t shoot him. Instead she kissedhim… Mordred didn’t want to see that, it made him feel sicker than ever, and so he put the binoculars aside. He lay in the grass amid a little clump of alders, trembling, hot and cold, trying not to puke (he had spent the entire previous day puking and shitting, it seemed, until the muscles of his midsection ached with the strain of sending such heavy traffic in two directions at once and nothing came up his throat but thick, mucusy strings and nothing out of his backside but brown stew and great hollow farts), and when he looked through the binoculars again, it was just in time to see the back end of the little electric cart disappear as the Blackbird Mommy drove it through the door. Something swirled out around it. Dust, maybe, but he thought snow. There was also singing. The sound of it made him feel almost as sick as seeing her kiss Old White Gunslinger Daddy. Then the door slammed shut behind her and the singing was gone and the gunslinger just sat there near it, with his face in his hands, boohoo, sob-sob.