The Dark Tower (Page 75)

… and a certain dazed curiosity… and, in some cases, clear dislike. Hate, almost. He had seen no gratitude, not so much as a speck of gratitude, and for that he’d hated them.

"My friend is hurt," Roland had said. "I cry for him,

Sheemie. And for his wife, who is my friend. Will you go to Ted and sai Dinky, and try to soothe her, should she ask to be soothed?"

"If you want, aye! Anything for you!"

"Thankee-sai, son of Stanley. And help if they move my friend."

"Your friend Eddie! Him who lays hurt!"

"Aye, his name is Eddie, you say true. Will you help Eddie?"

"Aye!"

"And there’s something else-"

"Aye?" Sheemie asked, then seemed to remember something.

"Aye! Help you go away, travel far, you and your friends!

Ted told me. ‘Make a hole,’ he said, ‘like you did for me."

Only they brought him back. The bad ‘uns. They’d not bring you back, for the bad ‘uns are gone! Beam’s at peace!" And Sheemie laughed, a jarring sound to Jake’s grieving ear.

To Roland’s too, maybe, because his smile was strained.

"In time, Sheemie… although I think Susannah may stay here, and wait for us to return."

If we do return, Jake thought.

"But I have another chore you may be able to do. Not helping someone travel to that other world, but like that, a little. I’ve told Ted and Dinky, and they’d tell you, once Eddie’s been put at his ease. Will you listen?"

"Aye! And help, if I can!"

Roland clapped him on the shoulder. "Good!" Then Jake and the gunslinger had gone in a direction that might have been north, headed back to finish what they had begun.

THREE

They flushed out another fourteen guards in the next three hours, most of them humes. Roland surprised Jake-a little-by only killing the two who shot at them from behind the fire engine that had crashed with one wheel stuck in the cellar bulkhead. The rest he disarmed and then gave parole, telling them that any Devar-Toi guards still in the compound when the late-afternoon change-of-shifts horn blew would be shot out of hand.

"But where will we go?" asked a taheen with a snowy-white rooster’s head below a great floppy-red coxcomb (he reminded Jake a little of Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon character).

Roland shook his head. "I care not where you fetch," he said, "as long as you’re not here when the next horn blows, kennit.

You’ve done hell’s work here, but hell’s shut, and I mean to see it will never open this particular set of doors again."

"What do you mean?" asked the rooster-taheen, almost timidly, but Roland wouldn’t say, had only told the creature to pass on the message to any others he might run across.

Most of the remaining taheen and can-toi left Algul Siento in pairs and triplets, going without argument and nervously looking back over their shoulders every few moments. Jake thought they were right to be afraid, because his dinh’s face that day had been abstract with thought and terrible with grief.

Eddie Dean lay on his deathbed, and Roland of Gilead would not bear crossing.

"What are you going to do to the place?" Jake asked after the afternoon horn had blown. They were making their way past the smoking husk of Damli House (where the robot firemen had posted signs every twenty feet reading OFF-LIMITS PENDING FIRE DEPT. INVESTIGATION), on their way to see Eddie.

Roland only shook his head, not answering the question.

On the Mall, Jake spied six Breakers standing in a circle, holding hands. They looked like folks having a seance. Sheemie was there, and Ted, and Dani Rostov; there also was a young woman, an older one, and a stout, bankerly-looking man.

Beyond, lying with their feet sticking out under blankets, was a line of the nearly fifty guards who had died during the brief action.

"Do you know what they’re doing?" Jake asked, meaning the seance-folken-the ones behind them were just being dead, a job that would occupy them from now on.

Roland glanced toward the circle of Breakers briefly. "Yes."

"What?"

"Not now," said the gunslinger. "Now we’re going to pay our respects to Eddie. You’re going to need all the serenity you can manage, and that means emptying your mind."

FOUR

Now, sitting with Oy outside the empty Clover Tavern with its neon beer-signs and silent jukebox, Jake reflected on how right Roland had been, and how grateful Jake himself had been when, after forty-five minutes or so, the gunslinger had looked at him, seen his terrible distress, and excused him from the room where Eddie lingered, giving up his vitality an inch at a time, leaving the imprint of his remarkable will on every last inch of his life’s tapestry.

The litter-bearing party Ted Brautigan had organized had borne the young gunslinger to Corbett Hall, where he was laid in the spacious bedroom of the first-floor proctor’s suite.

The litter-bearers lingered in the dormitory’s courtyard, and as the afternoon wore on, the rest of the Breakers joined them.

When Roland and Jake arrived, a pudgy red-haired woman stepped into Roland’s way.

Lady, I wouldn’t do that,]ake had thought. Not this afternoon.

In spite of the day’s alarums and excursions, this woman-who’d looked to Jake like the Lifetime President of his mother’s garden club-had found time to put on a fairly heavy coat of makeup: powder, rouge, and lipstick as red as the side of a Devar fire engine. She introduced herself as Grace Rumbelow (formerly of Aldershot, Hampshire, England) and demanded to know what was going to happen next-where they would go, what they would do, who would take care of them. The same questions the rooster-headed taheen had asked, in other words.

"For we have been taken care of," said Grace Rumbelow in ringing tones (Jake had been fascinated with how she said

"been," so it rhymed with "seen"), "and are in no position, at least for the time being, to care for ourselves."

There were calls of agreement at this.

Roland looked her up and down, and something in his face had robbed the lady of her measured indignation. "Get out of my road," said the gunslinger, "or I’ll push you down."

She grew pale beneath her powder and did as he said without uttering another word. A birdlike clatter of disapproval followed Jake and Roland into Corbett Hall, but it didn’t start until the gunslinger was out of their view and they no longer had to fear falling beneath the unsettling gaze of his blue eyes. The Breakers reminded Jake of some kids with whom he’d gone to school at Piper, classroom nitwits willing to shout out stuff like this test sucks or bite my bag… but only when the teacher was out of the room.

The first-floor hallway of Corbett was bright with fluorescent lights and smelled strongly of smoke from Damli House and Feveral Hall. Dinky Earnshaw was seated in a folding chair to the right of the door marked PROCTOR’s SUITE, smoking a cigarette.

He looked up as Roland and Jake approached, Oy trotting along in his usual position just behind Jake’s heel.

"How is he?" Roland asked.

"Dying, man," Dinky said, and shrugged.

"And Susannah?"

"Strong. Once he’s gone-" Dinky shrugged again, as if to say it could go either way, any way.

Roland knocked quietly on the door.

"Who is it?" Susannah’s voice, muffled.

"Roland and Jake," the gunslinger said. "Will you have us?"

The question was met with what seemed to Jake an unusually long pause. Roland, however, didn’t seem surprised. Neither did Dinky, for that matter.

At last Susannah said: "Come in."

They did.

FIVE

Sitting with Oy in the soothing dark, waiting for Roland’s call,

Jake reflected on the scene that had met his eyes in the darkened room. That, and the endless three-quarters of an hour before Roland had seen his discomfort and let him go, saying he’d call Jake back when it was "time."

Jake had seen a lot of death since being drawn to Mid-World; had dealt it; had even experienced his own, although he remembered very little of that. But this was the death of a kamate, and what had been going on in the bedroom of the proctor’s suite just seemed poindess. And endless. Jake wished with all his heart that he’d stayed outside with Dinky; he didn’t want to remember his wisecracking, occasionally hot-tempered friend this way.

For one thing, Eddie looked worse than frail as he lay in the proctor’s bed with his hand in Susannah’s; he looked old and

(Jake hated to think of it) stupid. Or maybe the word was senile. His mouth had folded in at the corners, making deep dimples. Susannah had washed his face, but the stubble on his cheeks made them look dirty anyway. There were big purple patches beneath his eyes, almost as though that bastard Prentiss had beaten him up before shooting him. The eyes themselves were closed, but they rolled almost ceaselessly beneath the thin veils of his lids, as though Eddie were dreaming.

And he talked. A steady low muttering stream of words.

Some of the things he said Jake could make out, some he couldn’t. Some of them made at least minimal sense, but a lot of it was what his friend Benny would have called ki’come: utter nonsense. From time to time Susannah would wet a rag in the basin on the table beside the bed, wring it out, and wipe her husband’s brow and dry lips. Once Roland got up, took the basin, emptied it in the bathroom, refilled it, and brought it back to her. She thanked him in a low and perfectly pleasant tone of voice. A little later Jake had freshened the water, and she thanked him in the same way. As if she didn’t even know they were there.