The Dark Tower (Page 78)

"He’s right," Jake said. "We have to go while we can still do something."

Ted: "Will Susannah-"

"No," Roland said. "Susannah will stay here, and you’ll help her bury Eddie. Do you agree?"

"Yes," Ted said. "Of course, if that’s how you’d have it."

"If we’re not back in…" Roland calculated, one eye squinted shut, the other looking off into the darkness. "If we’re not back by this time on the night after next, assume that we’ve come back to End-World at Fedic." Yes, assumeFedic, Jake thought. Of course. Because what good would it do to make the other, even more logical assumption, that we’re either dead or lost between the worlds, todashforever’?

"Do’ee ken Fedic?" Roland was asking.

"South of here, isn’t it?" asked Worthington. He had wandered over with Dani, the pre-teen girl. "Or what was south?

Trampas and a few of the other can-toi used to talk of it as though it were haunted."

"It’s haunted, all right," Roland said grimly. "Can you put Susannah on a train to Fedic in the event that we’re not able to come back here? I know that at least some trains must still run, because of-"

"The Greencloaks?" Dinky said, nodding. "Or the Wolves, as you think of them. All the D-line trains still run. They’re automated."

"Are they monos? Do they talk?" Jake asked. He was thinking of Blaine.

Dinky and Ted exchanged a doubtful look, then Dinky returned his attention to Jake and shrugged. "How would we know? I probably know more about D-cups than D-lines, and I think that’s true of everyone here. The Breakers, at least. I suppose some of the guards might know something more. Or that guy." He jerked a thumb at Tassa, who was still sitting on the stoop of Warden’s House, head in hands.

"In any case, we’ll tell Susannah to be careful," Roland murmured to Jake. Jake nodded. He supposed that was the best they could do, but he had another question. He made a mental note to ask either Ted or Dinky, if he got a chance to do so without being overheard by Roland. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Susannah behind-every instinct of his heart cried out against it-but he knew she would refuse to leave Eddie unburied, and Roland knew it, too. They could make her come, but only by binding and gagging her, and that would only make things worse than they were already.

"It might be," Ted said, "that a few Breakers would be interested in taking the train-trip south with Susannah."

Dani nodded. "We’re not exactly loved around here for helping you out," she said. "Ted and Dinky are getting it the worst, but somebody spit at me half an hour ago, while I was in my room, getting this." She held up a battered-looking and clearly much-loved Pooh Bear. "I don’t think diey’ll do anything while you guys are around, but after you go… "She shrugged.

"Man, I don’t get that," Jake said. "They’re free.’"

"Free to do what?" Dinky asked. "Think about it. Most of them were misfits on America-side. Fifth wheels. Over here we were VIPs, and we got the best of everything. Now all that’s gone. When you think about it that way, is it so hard to understand?"

"Yes," Jake said bluntly. He supposed he didn’t want to understand.

"They lost something else, too," Ted told them quietly.

"There’s a novel by Ray Bradbury called Fahrenheit 451. ‘It was a pleasure to burn’ is that novel’s first line. Well, it was a pleasure to Break, as well."

Dinky was nodding. So were Worthington and Dani Rostov.

Even Sheemie was nodding his head.

FOURTEEN

Eddie lay in that same circle of light, but now his face was clean and the top sheet of the proctor’s bed had been folded neatly down to his midsection. Susannah had dressed him in a clean white shirt she’d found somewhere (in the proctor’s closet was Jake’s guess), and she must have found a razor, too, because his cheeks were smooth. Jake tried to imagine her sitting here and shaving the face of her dead husband-singing "Commala-come-come, the rice has just begun" as she did it-and at first he couldn’t. Then, all at once, the image came to him, and it was so powerful that he had to struggle once again to keep from bursting into sobs.

She listened quietly as Roland spoke to her, sitting on the side of the bed, hands folded in her lap, eyes downcast. To the gunslinger she looked like a shy virgin receiving a marriage proposal.

When he had finished, she said nothing.

"Do you understand what I’ve told you, Susannah?"

"Yes," she said, still without looking up. "I’m to bury my man.

Ted and Dinky will help me, if only to keep their friends-" she gave this word a bitterly sarcastic litde twist that actually encouraged Roland a bit; she was in there after all, it seemed "-from taking him away from me and lynching his body from a sour apple tree."

"And then?"

"Either you’ll find a way to come back here and we’ll return to Fedic together, or Ted and Dinky will put me on the train and I’ll go there alone."

Jake didn’t just hate the cold disconnection in her voice; it terrified him, as well. ‘You know why we have to go back to the other side, don’t you?" he asked anxiously. "I mean, you knoiu, don’t you?"

"To save the writer while there’s still time." She had picked up one of Eddie’s hands, and Jake noted with fascination that his nails were perfectly clean. What had she used to get die dirt out from beneath them, he wondered-had the proctor had one of those little nail-care gadgets, like the one his father always kept on a keychain in his pocket? "Sheemie says we’ve saved the Beam of Bear and Turtle. We think we’ve saved the rose. But there’s at least one more job to do. The writer. The lazybones writer." Now she did look up, and her eyes flashed.

Jake suddenly thought it might be good that Susannah wouldn’t be with them when-if-they met sai Stephen King.

"You bettah save him," she said. Both Roland and Jake could hear old sneak-thief Detta creeping into her voice. "After what’s happened today, youjust bettah. And this time, Roland, you tell him not to stop with his writin. Not come hell, high water, cancer, or gangrene of the dick. Never mind worryin about the Pulitzer Prize, neither. You tell him to go on and be donewith his motherfuckin story."

"I will pass the message on," Roland said.

She nodded.

"You’ll come to us when this job is finished," Roland said, and his voice rose just slightly on the last word, almost turning it into a question. ‘You’ll come with us and finish the final job, won’t you?"

"Yes," she said. "Not because I want to-all the spit and git is out of me-but because it wanted me to." Gently, very gently, she put Eddie’s hand back on his chest with the other one. Then she pointed a finger at Roland. The tip trembled minutely. "Just don’t start up with any of that we are ka-tet, we are one from many crap. Because those days are gone. Ain’t they?"

"Yes," Roland said. "But the Tower still stands. And waits."

"Lost my taste for that, too, big boy." Not quite los’mah tase fo’dat, too, but almost. "Tell you the truth."

But Jake realized that she was not telling the truth. She hadn’t lost her desire to see the Dark Tower any more than Roland had. Any more than Jake had himself. Their tet might be broken, but ka remained. And she felt it just as they did.

FIFTEEN

They kissed her (and Oy licked her face) before leaving.

"You be careful, Jake," Susannah said. "Come back safe, hear? Eddie would have told you the same."

"I know," Jake said, and then kissed her again. He was smiling because he could hear Eddie telling him to watch his ass, it was cracked already, and starting to cry once more for the same reason. Susannah held him tight a moment longer, then let him go and turned back to her husband, lying so still and cold in the proctor’s bed. Jake understood that she had little time for Jake Chambers or Jake Chambers’s grief just now. Her own was too big.

SIXTEEN

Outside the suite, Dinky waited by the door. Roland was walking on with Ted, the two of them already at the end of the corridor and deep in conversation. Jake supposed they were headed back to the Mall, where Sheemie (with a little help from the others) would attempt to send them once more to America-side. That reminded him of something.

"The D-line trains go south," Jake said. "Or what’s supposed to be south-is that right?"

"More or less, partner," Dinky said. "Some of the engines have got names, like Delicious Rain or Spirit of the Snow Country, but they’ve all got letters and numbers."

"Does the D stand for Dandelo?" Jake asked.

Dinky looked at him with a puzzled frown. "Dandelo? What in the hell is that?"

Jake shook his head. He didn’t even want to tell Dinky where he’d heard the word.

"Well, I don’t know, not for sure," Dinky said as they resumed walking, "but I always assumed the D stood for Discordia.

Because that’s where all the trains supposedly end up, you know-somewhere deep in the universe’s baddest Badlands."

Jake nodded. D for Discordia. That made sense. Sort of, anyway.

"You didn’t answer my question," Dinky said. "What’s a Dandelo?"

"Just a word I saw written on the wall in Thunderclap Station.

It probably doesn’t mean anything."

SEVENTEEN

Outside Corbett Hall, a delegation of Breakers waited. They looked grim and frightened. Dfor Dandelo, Jake thought. Dfor Discordia. Also Dfor desperate.