The Dark Tower (Page 76)

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We go for her, Roland had told Jake. Because later on she’ll remember who was there, and be grateful.

But would she? Jake wondered now, in the darkness outside the Clover Tavern. Would she be grateful? It was down to Roland that Eddie Dean was lying on his deathbed at the age of twentyfive or -six, wasn’t it? On the other hand, if not for Roland, she would never have met Eddie in the first place. It was all too confusing.

Like the idea of multiple worlds with New Yorks in every one, it made Jake’s head ache.

Lying there on his deathbed, Eddie had asked his brother Henry why he never remembered to box out.

He’d asked Jack Andolini who hit him with the ugly-stick.

He’d shouted, "Look out, Roland, it’s Big-Nose George, he’s back!"

And "Suze, if you can tell him the one about Dorothy and the Tin Woodman, I’ll tell him all the rest."

And, chilling Jake’s heart: "I do not shoot with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father."

At that last one, Roland had taken Eddie’s hand in the gloom (for the shades had been drawn) and squeezed it. "Aye,

Eddie, you say true. Will you open your eyes and see my face, dear?"

But Eddie hadn’t opened his eyes. Instead, chilling Jake’s heart more deeply yet, the young man who now wore a useless bandage about his head had murmured, "All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one."

After that there was nothing intelligible for awhile, only that ceaseless muttering. Jake had refilled the basin of water, and when he had come back, Roland saw his drawn white face and told him he could go.

"But-"

"Go on and go, sugarbunch," Susannah said. "Only be careful.

Might still be some of em out there, looking for payback."

"But how will I-"

"I’ll call you when it’s time," Roland said, and tapped Jake’s temple with one of the remaining fingers on his right hand.

"You’ll hear me."

Jake had wanted to kiss Eddie before leaving, but he was afraid. Not that he might catch death like a cold-he knew better than that-but afraid that even the touch of his lips might be enough to push Eddie into the clearing at the end of the path.

And then Susannah might blame him.

SIX

Outside in the hallway, Dinky asked him how it was going.

"Real bad," Jake said. "Do you have another cigarette?"

Dinky raised his eyebrows but gave Jake a smoke. The boy tamped it on his thumbnail, as he’d seen the gunslinger do with tailor-made smokes, then accepted a light and inhaled deeply.

The smoke still burned, but not so harshly as the first time. His head only swam a little and he didn’t cough. Pretty soon I’ll be a natural, he thought. If I ever make it back to New York, maybe I can go to work for the Network, in my Dad’s department. I’m already getting good at The Kill.

He lifted the cigarette in front of his eyes, a little white missile with smoke issuing from the top instead of the bottom. The word CAMEL was written just below the filter. "I told myself I’d never do this," Jake told Dinky. "Never in life. And here I am with one in my hand." He laughed. It was a bitter laugh, an adult laugh, and the sound of it coming out of his mouth made him shiver.

"I used to work for this guy before I came here," Dinky said.

"Mr. Sharpton, his name was. He used to tell me that never’s the word God listens for when he needs a laugh."

Jake made no reply. He was thinking of how Eddie had talked about the rooms of ruin. Jake had followed Mia into a room like that, once upon a time and in a dream. Now Mia was dead. Callahan was dead. And Eddie was dying. He thought of all the bodies lying out there under blankets while thunder rolled like bones in the distance. He thought of the man who’d shot Eddie snap-rolling to the left as Roland’s bullet finished him off. He tried to remember the welcoming party for them back in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the music and dancing and colored torches, but all that came clear was the death of Benny Slightman, another friend. Tonight the world seemed made of death.

He himself had died and come back: back to Mid-World and back to Roland. All afternoon he had tried to believe the same thing might happen to Eddie and knew somehow that it would not. Jake’s part in the tale had not been finished. Eddie’s was. Jake would have given twenty years of his life-thirty!-not to believe that, but he did. He supposed he had progged it somehow.

The rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one.

Jake knew a spider. Was Mia’s child watching all of this? Having fun? Maybe rooting for one side or the other, like a f**king Yankee fan in the bleachers?

He is. I know he is. I feel him.

"Are you all right, kiddo?" Dinky asked.

"No," Jake said. "Not all right." And Dinky nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable answer. Well, Jake thought, probably he expected it. He’s a telepath, after all.

As if to underline this, Dinky had asked who Mordred was.

"You don’t want to know," Jake said. "Believe me." He snuffed his cigarette half-smoked ("All your lung cancer’s right here, in die last quarter-inch," his father used to say in tones of absolute certainty, pointing to one of his own filterless cigarettes like a TV pitchman) and left Corbett Hall. He used the back door, hoping to avoid the cluster of waiting, anxious Breakers, and in that he had succeeded. Now he was in Pleasantville, sitting on the curb like one of the homeless people you saw back in New York, waiting to be called. Waiting for the end.

He thought about going into the tavern, maybe to draw himself a beer (surely if he was old enough to smoke and to kill people from ambush he was old enough to drink a beer),

maybe just to see if the jukebox would play without change. He bet that Algul Siento had been what his Dad had claimed America would become in time, a cashless society, and that old Seeberg was rigged so you only had to push the buttons in order to start the music. And he bet that if he looked at the song-strip next to 19, he’d see "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," by Elton John.

He got to his feet, and that was when the call came. Nor was he the only one who heard it; Oy let go a short, hurt-sounding yip. Roland might have been standing right next to them.

To me, Jake, and hurry. He’s going.

SEVEN

Jake hurried back down one of the alleys, skirted the stillsmoldering Warden’s House (Tassa the houseboy, who had either ignored Roland’s order to leave or hadn’t been informed of it, was sitting silently on the stoop in a kilt and a sweatshirt, his head in his hands), and began to trot up the Mall, sparing a quick and troubled glance at the long line of dead bodies. The little seance-circle he’d seen earlier was gone.

I won’t cry, he promised himself grimly. If I’m old enough to smoke and think about drawing myself a beer, I’m old enough to control my stupid eyes. I won’t cry.

Knowing he almost certainly would.

EIGHT

Sheemie and Ted had joined Dinky outside the proctor’s suite.

Dinky had given up his seat to Sheemie. Ted looked tired, but Sheemie looked like shit on a cracker to Jake: eyes bloodshot again, a crust of dried blood around his nose and one ear, cheeks leaden. He had taken off one of his slippers and was massaging his foot as though it pained him. Yet he was clearly happy. Maybe even exalted.

"Beam says all may yet be well, youngjake," Sheemie said.

"Beam says not too late. Beam says thankya."

"That’s good," Jake said, reaching for the doorknob. He barely heard what Sheemie was saying. He was concentrating

(won’t cry and make it harder for her)

on controlling his emotions once he was inside. Then Sheemie said something that brought him back in a hurry.

"Not too late in the Real World, either," Sheemie said. "We know. We peeked. Saw the moving sign. Didn’t we, Ted?"

"Indeed we did." Ted was holding a can of Nozz-A-La in his lap. Now he raised it and took a sip. "When you get in there,

Jake, tell Roland that if it’s June 19th of ’99 you’re interested in, you’re still okay. But the margin’s commencing to get a little thin."

"I’ll tell him," Jake said.

"And remind him that time sometimes slips over there.

Slips like an old transmission. That’s apt to continue for quite awhile, regardless of the Beam’s recovery. And once the 19th is gone…"

"It can never come again," Jake said. "Not there. We know."

He opened the door and slipped into the darkness of the proctor’s suite.

NINE

A single circle of stringent yellow light, thrown by the lamp on the bedtable, lay upon Eddie Dean’s face. It cast the shadow of his nose on his left cheek and turned his closed eyes into dark sockets. Susannah was kneeling on the floor beside him, holding both of his hands in both of hers and looking down at him. Her shadow ran long upon the wall. Roland sat on the other side of the bed, in deep shadow. The dying man’s long, muttered monologue had ceased, and his respiration had lost all semblance of regularity. He would snatch a deep breath, hold it, then let it out in a lengthy, whistling whoosh. His chest would lie still so long that Susannah would look up into his face, her eyes shining with anxiety until the next long, tearing breath had begun.

Jake sat down on the bed next to Roland, looked at Eddie, looked at Susannah, then looked hesitantly into the gunslinger’s face. In the gloom he could see nothing there except weariness.

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