The Waste Lands (Page 14)

“I don’t understand any of this,” Susannah said worriedly. “I think,” Roland said, “that I’m just beginning to.” He threw more wood on the fire, sending thick sheaves of red sparks spiralling up into the dark sky, and then settled back between them. “I’ll tell you a story that’s true,” he said, “and then I’ll tell you a story that isn’t true . . . but should be.

“I bought a mule in Pricetown, and when I finally got to lull, the last town before the desert, it was still fresh . . .”

So THE GUNSLINGER EMBARKED on the most recent part of his long tale. Eddie had heard isolated fragments of the story, but he listened in utter fascination, as did Susannah, for whom it was completely new. He told them about the bar with the endless game of Watch Me going on in the corner, the piano player named Sheb, the woman named Allie with the scar on her forehead . . . and about Nort, the weed-eater who had died and then been brought back to some sort of tenebrous life by the man in black. He told them about Sylvia Pittston, that avatar of religious insanity, and about the final apocalyptic slaughter, in which he, Roland the Gunslinger, had killed every man, woman, and child in town. “Holy crispy crap!” Eddie said in a low, shaky voice. “Now I know why you were so low on shells, Roland.”

“Be quiet!” Susannah snapped. “Let him finish!” Roland went on, telling his story as stolidly as he had crossed the desert after passing the hut of the last Dweller, a young man whose wild, strawberry-colored hair had reached almost to his waist. He told them about how his mule had finally died. He even told them about how the Dweller’s pet bird, Zoltan, had eaten the mule’s eyes.

He told them about the long desert days and the short desert nights which had come next, and how he had followed the cool remains of Walter’s campfires, and how he had come at last, reeling and dying of dehydration, to the way station. “It was empty. It had been empty, I think, since the days when yonder great bear was still a newly made thing. I stayed a night and pushed on. That’s what happened . . . but now I’ll tell you another story.” “The one that isn’t true but should be?” Susannah asked. Roland nodded. “In this made-up story—this fable—a gunslinger named Roland met a boy named Jake at the way station. This boy was from your world, from your city of New York, and from a when some-place between Eddie’s 1987 and Odetta Holmes’s 1963.”

Eddie was leaning forward eagerly. “Is there a door in this story, Roland? A door marked THE BOY, or something like that?” Roland shook his head. “The boy’s doorway was death. He was on his way to school when a man—a man I believed to be Walter—pushed him into the street, where he was run over by a car. He heard this man say something like ‘Get out of the way, let me through, I’m a priest.’ Jake saw this man—just for an instant—and then he was in my world.”

The gunslinger paused, looking into the fire. “Now I want to leave this story of the boy who was never there and go back to what really happened for a minute. All right?” Eddie and Susannah exchanged a puzzled glance and then Eddie made an “after you, my dear Alphonse” gesture with his hand. “As I have said, the way station was deserted. There was, however, a pump that still worked. It was at the back of the stable where the coach-horses were kept. I followed my ears to it, but I would have found it even if it had been completely silent. I swelled the water, you see. After enough time in the desert, when you are on the edge of dying from thirst, you can really do that. I drank and then slept. When I woke, I drank again. I wanted to push on at once—the need to do that was like a fever. The medicine you brought me from your world—the astin—is wonderful stuff, Eddie, but there are fevers beyond the power of any medicine to cure, and this was one of them. I knew my body needed rest, but it still took every ounce of my willpower to stay there even one night. In the morning I felt rested, and so I refilled my waterskins and pushed on. I took nothing from that place but water. That’s the most important part of what really happened.”

Susannah spoke in her most reasonable, pleasant, and Odetta Holmes—like voice. “All right, that’s what really happened. You refilled your waterskins and went on. Now tell us the rest of what didn’t happen, Roland.” The gunslinger put the jawbone in his lap for a moment, curled his hands into fists, and rubbed his eyes with them—a curiously childlike gesture. Then he grasped the jawbone again, as if for courage, and went on. “I hypnotized the boy who wasn’t there,” he said. “I did it with one of my shells. It’s a trick I’ve known for years, and I learned it from a very unlikely source—Marten, my father’s court magician. The boy was a good subject. While he was tranced, he told me the circumstances of his death, as I’ve told them to you. When I’d gotten as much of his story as I felt I could without upsetting or actually hurting him, I gave him a command that he should not remember anything about his dying when he woke up again.”

“Who’d want to?” Eddie muttered.

Roland nodded. “Who, indeed? The boy passed from his trance directly into a natural sleep. I also slept. When we woke, I told the boy that I meant to catch the man in black. He knew who I meant; Walter had also stopped at the way station. Jake was afraid and hid from him. I’m sure Walter knew he was there, but it suited his purpose to pretend he didn’t. He left the boy behind like a set trap.

“I asked him if there was anything to eat there. It seemed to me there must be. He looked healthy enough, and the desert climate is wonderful when it comes to preserving things. He had a little dried meat, and he said there was a cellar. He hadn’t explored that, because he was afraid.” The gunslinger looked at them grimly. “He was right to be afraid. I found food . . . and I also found a Speaking Demon.”