ONE
That night found Jake Chambers sitting disconsolately outside the Clover Tavern at the east end of Main Street in Pleasantville.
The bodies of the guards had been carted away by a robot maintenance crew, and that was at least something of a relief. Oy had been in the boy's lap for an hour or more. Ordinarily he would never have stayed so close for so long, but he seemed to understand that Jake needed him. On several occasions,
Jake wept into the bumbler's fur.
For most of that endless day Jake found himself thinking in two different voices. This had happened to him before, but not for years; not since the time when, as a very young child, he suspected he might have suffered some sort of weird, below-theparental-
radar breakdown.
Eddie's dying, said the first voice (the one that used to assure him there were monsters in his closet, and soon they would emerge to eat him alive). He's in a room in Corbett Hall and Susannah's with him and he won't shut up, but he's dying.
No, denied the second voice (the one that used to assure him-feebly-that there were no such things as monsters).
No, that can't be. Eddie's... Eddie! And besides, he's ka-tet. He might die when we reach the Dark Tower, we might all die when we get there, but not now, not here, that's crazy.
Eddie's dying, replied the first voice. It was implacable. He's got a hole in his head almost big enough to stick your fist in, and he's dying.
To this the second voice could offer only more denials, each weaker than the last.
Not even the knowledge that they had likely saved the Beam
(Sheemie certainly seemed to think they had; he'd crisscrossed the weirdly silent campus of the Devar-Toi, shouting the news-
BEAM SAYS ALL MAYBE WELL! BEAM SAYS THANKYA!-at the top of his lungs) could make Jake feel better. The loss of Eddie was too great a price to pay even for such an outcome.
And the breaking of the tet was an even greater price. Every time Jake thought of it, he felt sick to his stomach and sent up inarticulate prayers to God, to Gan, to the Man Jesus, to any or all of them to do a miracle and save Eddie's life.
He even prayed to the writer.
Save my friend's life and zve'll save yours, he prayed to Stephen King, a man he had never seen. Save Eddie and we won't let that van hit you. I swear it.
Then again he'd think of Susannah screaming Eddie's name, of trying to turn him over, and Roland wrapping his arms around her and saying You mustn't do that, Susannah, you mustn't disturb him, and how she'd fought him, her face crazy, her face changing as different personalities seemed to inhabit it for a moment or two and then flee. I have to help him!'she'd sob in the Susannah-voice Jake knew, and then in another, harsher voice she'd shout Let me go, mahfah! Let me do mah voodoo on him, make mah houngun, he goan git up an walk, you see! Sho! And Roland holding her through all of it, holding her and rocking her while Eddie lay in the street, but not dead, it would have been better, almost, if he'd been dead (even if being dead meant the end of talking about miracles, the end of hope), but Jake could see his dusty fingers twitching and could hear him muttering incoherently, like a man who talks in his sleep.
Then Ted had come, and Dinkyjust behind him, and two or three of the other Breakers trailing along hesitantly behind them. Ted had gotten on his knees beside the struggling, screaming woman and motioned for Dinky to get kneebound on the other side of her. Ted had taken one of her hands, then nodded for Dink to take the other. And something had flowed out of them-something deep and soothing. It wasn't meant for Jake, no, not at all, but he caught some of it, anyway, and felt his wildly galloping heart slow. He looked into Ted Brautigan's face and saw that Ted's eyes were doing their trick, the pupils swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking.
Susannah's cries faltered, subsiding to little hurt groans. She looked down at Eddie, and when she bent her head her eyes had spilled tears onto the back of Eddie's shirt, making dark places, like raindrops. That was when Sheemie appeared from one of the alleys, shouting glad hosannahs to all who would hear him "BEAM SAYS NOT TOO LATE! BEAM SAYS JUST IN TIME, BEAM SAYS THANKYA AND WE MUST LET HIM HEAL!-and limping badly on one foot (none of them thought anything of it then or even noticed it). Dinky murmured to the growing crowd of Breakers looking at the mortally wounded gunslinger, and several went to Sheemie and got him to quiet down. From the main part of the Devar-Toi the alarms continued, but the follow-up fire engines were actually getting the three worst fires (those in Damli House, Warden's House, and Feveral Hall) under control.
What Jake remembered next was Ted's fingers-unbelievably gentle fingers-spreading the hair on the back of Eddie's head and exposing a large hole filled with a dark jelly of blood.
There were little white flecks in it. Jake had wanted to believe those flecks were bits of bone. Better than thinking they might be flecks of Eddie's brain.
At the sight of this terrible head-wound Susannah leaped to her feet and began to scream again. Began to struggle. Ted and Dinky (who was paler than paste) exchanged a glance, tightened their grip on her hands, and once more sent the
(peace ease quiet wait calm slow peace)
soothing message that was as much colors-cool blue shading to quiet ashes of gray-as it was words. Roland, meanwhile, held her shoulders.
"Can anything be done for him?" Roland asked Ted. "Anything at all?"
"He can be made comfortable," Ted said. "We can do that much, at least." Then he pointed toward the Devar. "Don't you still have work there to finish, Roland?"
For a moment Roland didn't quite seem to understand that. Then he looked at the bodies of the downed guards, and did. 'Yes," he said. "I suppose I do. Jake, can you help me? If the ones left were to find a new leader and regroup... that wouldn't do at all."
"What about Susannah?" Jake had asked.
"Susannah's going to help us see her man to a place where he can be at his ease, and die as peacefully as possible," said Ted Brautigan. "Aren't you, dear heart?"
She'd looked at him with an expression that was not quite vacant; the understanding (and the pleading) in that gaze went into Jake's heart like the tip of an icicle. "Must he die?" she had asked him.
Ted had lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. 'Yes," he said. "He must die and you must bear it."
"Then you have to do something for me," she said, and touched Ted's cheek with her fingers. To Jake those fingers looked cold. Cold.
"What, love? Anything I can." He took hold of her fingers and wrapped them
(peace ease quiet wait calm slow peace)
"Stop what you're doing, unless I tell you different," said she.
He looked at her, surprised. Then he glanced at Dinky, who only shrugged. Then he looked back at Susannah.
"You mustn't use your good-mind to steal my grief," Susannah told him, "for I'd open my mouth and drink it to the dregs. Every drop."
For a moment Ted only stood with his head lowered and a frown creasing his brow. Then he looked up and gave her the sweetest smile Jake had ever seen.
"Aye, lady," Ted replied. "We'll do as you ask. But if you need us... whenyon need us..."
"I'll call," Susannah said, and once more slipped to her knees beside the muttering man who lay in the street.
TWO
As Roland and Jake approached the alley which would take them back to the center of the Devar-Toi, where they would put off mourning their fallen friend by taking care of any who might still stand against them, Sheemie reached out and plucked the sleeve of Roland's shirt.
"Beam says thankya, Will Dearborn that was." He had blown out his voice with shouting and spoke in a hoarse croak. "Beam says all may yet be well. Good as new. Better."
"That's fine," Roland said, and Jake supposed it was. There had been no real joy then, however, as there was no real joy now. Jake kept thinking of the hole Ted Brautigan's gende fingers had exposed. That hole filled with red jelly.
Roland put an arm around Sheemie's shoulders, squeezed him, gave him a kiss. Sheemie smiled, delighted. "I'll come with you, Roland. Will'ee have me, dear?"
"Not this time," Roland said.
"Why are you crying?" Sheemie asked. Jake had seen the happiness draining from Sheemie's face, being replaced with worry. Meanwhile, more Breakers were returning to Main Street, milling around in little groups. Jake had seen consternation in the expressions they directed toward the gunslinger
... 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.
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 fucking 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.
"Ted says to tell you it's almost June 19th America-side, please and thankya. Also that time could slip a notch."
Roland nodded. 'Yet we'll wait for this to be finished, I think. It won't be much longer, and we owe him that."
"How much longer?" Jake murmured.
"I don't know. I thought he might be gone before you got here, even if you ran-"
"I did, once I got to the grassy part-"
"-but, as you see..."
"He fights hard," Susannah said, and that this was the only thing left for her to take pride in made Jake cold. "My man fights hard. Mayhap he still has a word to say."
TEN
And so he did. Five endless minutes after Jake had slipped into the bedroom, Eddie's eyes opened. "Sue..." He said,
"Su... sie-"
She leaned close, still holding his hands, smiling into his face, all her concentration fiercely narrowed. And with an effort Jake wouldn't have believed possible, Eddie freed one of his hands, swung it a little to the right, and grasped the tight kinks of her curls. If the weight of his arm pulled at the roots and hurt her, she showed no sign. The smile that bloomed on her mouth was joyous, welcoming, perhaps even sensuous.
"Eddie! Welcome back!"
"Don't bullshit... a bullshitter," he whispered. "I'm goin, sweetheart, not comin."
"That's just plain sil-"
"Hush," he whispered, and she did. The hand caught in her hair pulled. She brought her face to his willingly and kissed his living lips one last time. "I... will... wait for you," he said, forcing each word out with immense effort.
Jake saw beads of sweat surface on his skin, the dying body's last message to the living world, and that was when the boy's heart finally understood what his head had known for hours. He began to cry. They were tears that burned and scoured. When Roland took his hand, Jake squeezed it fiercely. He was frightened as well as sad. If it could happen to Eddie, it could happen to anybody. It could happen to him.
"Yes, Eddie. I know you'll wait," she said.
"In... "He pulled in another of those great, wretched, rasping breaths. His eyes were as brilliant as gemstones. "In the clearing." Another breath. Hand holding her hair. Lamplight casting them both in its mystic yellow circle. "The one at the end of the path."
"Yes, dear." Her voice was calm now, but a tear fell on Eddie's cheek and ran slowly down to the line of jaw. "I hear you very well. Wait for me and I'll find you and we'll go together. I'll be walking then, on my own legs."
Eddie smiled at her, then turned his eyes to Jake.
"Jake... to me."
No, Jake thought, panicked, no, I can't, I can't.
But he was already leaning close, into that smell of the end. He could see the fine line of grit just below Eddie's hairline turning to paste as more tiny droplets of sweat sprang up.
"Wait for me, too," Jake said through numb lips. "Okay,
Eddie? We'll all go on together. We'll be ka-tet, just like we were." He tried to smile and couldn't. His heart hurt too much for smiling. He wondered if it might not explode in his chest, the way stones sometimes exploded in a hot fire. He had learned that little fact from his friend Benny Slightman. Benny's death had been bad, but this was a thousand times worse. A million.
Eddie was shaking his head. "Not... so fast, buddy." He drew in another breath and then grimaced, as if the air had grown quills only he could feel. He whispered then-not from weakness, Jake thought later, but because this was just between them. "Watch... for Mordred. Watch... Dandelo."
"Dandelion? Eddie, I don't-"
"Dandelo." Eyes widening. Enormous effort. "Protect... your... dinh... from Mordred. From Dandelo. You... Oy. Your job." His eyes cut toward Roland, then back to Jake.
"Shhh." Then: "Protect..."
"I... I will. We will."
Eddie nodded a little, then looked at Roland. Jake moved aside and the gunslinger leaned in for Eddie's word to him.
ELEVEN
Never, ever, had Roland seen an eye so bright, not even on Jericho Hill, when Cuthbert had bade him a laughing goodbye.
Eddie smiled. "We had... some times."
Roland nodded again.
"You... you..." But this Eddie couldn't finish. He raised one hand and made a weak twirling motion.
"I danced," Roland said, nodding. "Danced the commala."
Yes, Eddie mouthed, then drew in another of those whooping, painful breaths. It was the last.
"Thank you for my second chance," he said. "Thank you...
Father."
That was all. Eddie's eyes still looked at him, and they were still aware, but he had no breath to replace the one expended on that final word, that father. The lamplight gleamed on the hairs of his bare arms, turning them to gold. The thunder murmured.
Then Eddie's eyes closed and he laid his head to one side. His work was finished. He had left the path, stepped into the clearing. They sat around him a-circle, but ka-tet no more.
TWELVE
And so, thirty minutes later.
Roland, Jake, Ted, and Sheemie sat on a bench in the middle of the Mall. Dani Rostov and the bankerly-looking fellow were nearby. Susannah was in the bedroom of the proctor's suite, washing her husband's body for burial. They could hear her from where they were sitting. She was singing. All the songs seemed to be ones they'd heard Eddie singing along the trail.
One was "Born to Run." Another was "The Rice Song," from Calla Bryn Sturgis.
"We have to go, and right away," Roland said. His hand had gone to his hip and was rubbing, rubbing. Jake had seen him take a botde of aspirin (gotten God knew where) from his purse and dry-swallow three. "Sheemie, will you send us on?"
Sheemie nodded. He had limped to the bench, leaning on Dinky for support, and still none of them had had a chance to look at the wound on his foot. His limp seemed so minor compared to their other concerns; surely if Sheemie Ruiz were to die this night it would be as a result of opening a makeshift door between Thunder-side and America. Another strenuous act of teleportation might be lethal to him-what was a sore foot compared to that?
"I'll try," he said. "I'll try my very hardest, so I will."
"Those who helped us look into New York will help us do this," Ted said.
It was Ted who had figured out how to determine the current when on America-side of the Keystone World. He, Dinky,
Fred Worthington (the bankerly-looking man), and Dani Rostov had all been to New York, and were all able to summon up clear mental images of Times Square: the lights, the crowds, the movie marquees... and, most important, the giant news-ticker which broadcast the events of the day to the crowds below, making a complete circuit of Broadway and Forty-eighth Street every thirty seconds or so. The hole had opened long enough to inform them that UN forensics experts were examining supposed mass graves in Kosovo, that Vice President Gore had spent the day in New York City campaigning for President, that Roger Clemens had struck out thirteen Texas Rangers but the Yankees had still lost the night before.
With the help of the rest, Sheemie could have held the hole open a good while longer (the others had been staring into the brilliance of that bustling New York night with a kind of hungry amazement, not Breaking now but Opening, Seeing), only there turned out to be no need for that. Following the baseball score, the date and time had gone speeding past them in brilliant yellow-green letters a story high: JUNE 18,1999 9:19 PM.
Jake opened his mouth to ask how they could be sure they had been looking into Keystone World, the one where Stephen King had less than a day to live, and then shut it again. The answer was in the time, stupid, as the answer always was: the numbers comprising 9:19 also added up to nineteen.
THIRTEEN
"And how long ago was it that you saw this?" Roland asked.
Dinky calculated. "Had to've been five hours, at least. Based on when the change-of-shifts horn blew and the sun went out for the night."
Which should make it two-thirty in the morning right now on the other side, Jake calculated, counting the hours on his fingers.
Thinking was hard now, even simple addition slowed by constant thoughts of Eddie, but he found he could do it if he really tried. Only you can't depend on its only being five hours, because time goes faster on America-side. That may change now that the Breakers have quit beating up on the Beam-it may equalize-but probably not yet. Right now it's probably still running fast.
And it might slip.
One minute Stephen King could be sitting in front of his typewriter in his office on the morning of June 19th, fine as paint, and the next... boom! Lying in a nearby funeral parlor that evening, eight or twelve hours gone by in a flash, his grieving family sitting in their own circle of lamplight and trying to decide what kind of service King would've wanted, always assuming that information wasn't in his will; maybe even trying to decide where he'd be buried. And die Dark Tower? Stephen King's version of the Dark Tower? Or Gan's version, or the Prims version? Lost forever, all of them. And that sound you hear? Why, that must be the Crimson King, laughing and laughing and laughing from somewhere deep in the Discordia. And maybe Mordred the Spider-Boy, laughing along with him.
For the first time since Eddie's death, something besides grief came to the forefront of Jake's mind. It was a faint ticking sound, like the one the Sneetches had made when Roland and Eddie programmed them. Just before giving them to Haylis to plant, this had been. It was the sound of time, and time was not their friend.
"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.
Roland faced them with his arms folded over his chest.
"Who speaks for you?" he asked. "If one speaks, let him come forward now, for our time here is up."
A gray-haired gentleman-another bankerly-looking fellow, in truth-stepped forward. He was wearing gray suitpants, a white shirt open at the collar, and a gray vest, also open.
The vest sagged. So did the man wearing it.
"You've taken our lives from us," he said. He spoke these words with a kind of morose satisfaction-as if he'd always known it would come to this (or something like this). "The lives we knew. What will you give back in return, Mr. Gilead?"
There was a rumble of approval at this. Jake Chambers heard it and was suddenly more angry than ever before in his life. His hand, seemingly of its own accord, stole to the handle of the Coyote machine-pistol, caressed it, and found a cold comfort in its shape. Even a brief respite from grief. And Roland knew, for he reached behind him without looking and put his hand on top of Jake's. He squeezed until Jake let loose of the gun.
"I'll tell you what I'll give, since you ask," Roland said. "I
meant to have this place, where you have fed on the brains of helpless children in order to destroy the universe, burned to the ground; aye, every stick of it. I intended to set certain flying balls that have come into our possession to explode, and blow apart anything that would not burn. I intended to point you the way to the River Whye and the green Callas which lie beyond it, and set you on with a curse my father taught me: may you live long, but not in good health."
A resentful murmur greeted this, but not an eye met Roland's own. The man who had agreed to speak for them (and even in his rage, Jake gave him points for courage) was swaying on his feet, as if he might soon faint away.
"The Callas still lie in that direction," Roland said, and pointed. "If you go, some-many, even-may die on the way, for there are animals out there that are hungry, and what water there is may be poison. I've no doubt the Calla-folken will know who you are and what you've been about even if you lie, for they have the Manni among them and the Manni see much. Yet you may find forgiveness there rather than death, for the capacity for forgiveness in the hearts of such people is beyond the capacity of hearts such as yours to understand. Or mine, for that matter.
"That they would put you to work and that the rest of your lives would pass not in the comfort you've known but in toil and sweat I have no doubt, yet I urge you to go, if only to find some redemption for what you have done."
"We didn't know what we were doing, ye chary man!" a woman in the back yelled furiously.
"YOU KNEW!" Jake shouted back, screaming so loudly that he saw black dots in front of his eyes, and Roland's hand was once again instantly over his to stay his draw. Would he actually have sprayed the crowd with the Coyote, bringing more death to this terrible place? He didn't know. What he did know was that a gunslinger's hands were sometimes not under his control once a weapon was in them. "Don't you dare say you didn't! You knew!"
"I'll give this much, may it do ya," Roland said. "My friends and I-those who survive, although I'm sure the one who lies dead yonder would agree, which is why I speak as I do-will let this place stand. There's food enough to see you through the rest of your lives, I have no doubt, and robots to cook it and wash your clothes and even wipe your asses, if that's what you think you need. If you prefer purgatory to redemption, then stay here.
Were I you, I'd make the trek instead. Follow the railroad tracks out of the shadows. Tell them what you did before they can tell you, and get on your knees with your heads bared, and beg their forgiveness."
"Never!" someone shouted adamantly, but Jake thought some of the others looked unsure.
"As you will," said Roland. "I've spoken my last word on it, and the next who speaks back to me may remain silent ever after, for one of my friends is preparing another, her husband, to lie in the ground and I am full of grief and rage. Would you speak more? Would you dare my rage? If so, you dare this." He drew his gun and laid it in the hollow of his shoulder. Jake stepped up beside him, at last drawing his own.
There was a moment of silence, and then the man who had spoken turned away.
"Don't shoot us, mister, you've done enough," someone said bitterly.
Roland made no reply and the crowd began to disperse.
Some went running, and the others caught that like a cold. They fled in silence, except for a few who were weeping, and soon the dark had swallowed them up.
"Wow," Dinky said. His voice was soft and respectful.
"Roland," Ted said. "What they did wasn't entirely their fault. I thought I had explained that, but I guess I didn't do a very good job."
Roland holstered his revolver. 'You did an excellentjob," he said. "That's why they're still alive."
Now they had the Damli House end of the Mall to themselves again, and Sheemie limped up to Roland. His eyes were round and solemn. "Will you show me where you'd go, dear?"
he asked. "Can you show me the place?"
The place. Roland had been so fixed on the when that he'd scarcely thought of the where. And his memories of the road they had traveled in Lovell were pretty skimpy. Eddie had been driving John Cullum's car, and Roland had been deep in his own thoughts, concentrating on the things he would say to convince the caretaker to help them.
"Did Ted show you a place before you sent him on?" he asked Sheemie.
"Aye, so he did. Only he didn't know he was showing me. It was a baby-picture... I don't know how to tell you, exactly...
stupid head! Full of cobwebbies!" Sheemie made a fist and clouted himself between the eyes.
Roland took the hand before Sheemie could hit himself again and unrolled the fingers. He did this with surprising gentleness. "No, Sheemie. I think I understand. You found a thought... a memory from when he was a little boy."
Ted had come over to them. "Of course that must be it," he said. "I don't know why I didn't see it before now. Too simple, maybe. I grew up in Milford, and the place where I came out in I960 was barely a spit from there in geographical terms.
Sheemie must have found a memory of a carriage-ride, or maybe a trip on the Hartford Trolley to see my Uncle Jim and Aunt Molly in Bridgeport. Something in my subconscious."
He shook his head. "I knew the place where I came out looked familiar, but of course it was years later. The Merritt Parkway wasn't there when I was a boy."
"Can you show me a picture like that?" Sheemie asked Roland hopefully.
Roland thought once more of the place in Lovell where they'd parked on Route 7, the place where he'd called Chevin of Chayven out of the woods, but it simply wasn't sure enough; there was no landmark that made the place only itself and no other. Not one that he remembered, anyway.
Then another idea came. One that had to do with Eddie.
"Sheemie!"
"Aye, Roland of Gilead, Will Dearborn that was!"
Roland reached out and placed his hands on the sides of Sheemie's head. "Close your eyes, Sheemie, son of Stanley."
Sheemie did as he was told, then reached out his own hands and grasped the sides of Roland's head. Roland closed his own eyes.
"See what I see, Sheemie," he said. "See where we would go.
See it very well."
And Sheemie did.
EIGHTEEN
While they stood there, Roland projecting and Sheemie seeing,
Dani Rostov softly called to Jake.
Once he was before her she hesitated, as if unsure what she would say or do. He began to ask her, but before he could, she stopped his mouth with a kiss. Her lips were amazingly soft.
"That's for good luck," she said, and when she saw his look of amazement and understood the power of what she had done, her timidity lessened. She put her arms around his neck
(still holding her scuffed Pooh Bear in one hand; he felt it soft against his back) and did it again. He felt the push of her tiny, hard breasts and would remember the sensation for the rest of his life. Would remember her for the rest of his life.
"And that's for me." She retreated to Ted Brautigan's side, eyes downcast and cheeks burning red, before he could speak.
Not that he could have, even if his life had depended upon it.
His throat was locked shut.
Ted looked at him and smiled. 'You judge the rest of them by the first one," he said. "Take it from me. I know."
Jake could still say nothing. She might have punched him in the head instead of kissing him on the lips. He was that dazed.
NINETEEN
Fifteen minutes later, four men, one girl, a billy-bumbler, and one dazed, amazed (and very tired) boy stood on the Mall.
They seemed to have the grassy quad to themselves; the rest of the Breakers had disappeared completely. From where he stood, Jake could see the lighted window on the first floor of Corbett Hall where Susannah was tending to her man. Thunder rumbled. Ted spoke now as he had in Thundercap Station's office closet, where the red blazer's brass tag read HEAD OF SHIPPING, back when Eddie's death had been unthinkable: 'Join hands. And concentrate."
Jake started to reach for Dani Rostov's hand, but Dinky shook his head, smiling a little. "Maybe you can hold hands with her another day, hero, but right now you're the monkey in the middle. And your dinh's another one."
"You hold hands with each other," Sheemie said. There was a quiet authority in his voice that Jake hadn't heard before.
"That'll help."
Jake tucked Oy into his shirt. "Roland, were you able to show Sheemie-"
"Look," Roland said, taking his hands. The others now made a tight circle around them. "Look. I think you'll see."
A brilliant seam opened in the darkness, obliterating Sheemie and Ted from Jake's view. For a moment it trembled and darkened, and Jake thought it would disappear. Then it grew bright again and spread wider. He heard, very faindy
(the way you heard things when you were underwater), the sound of a car or truck passing in that other world. And saw a building with a small asphalt lot in front of it. Three cars and a pickup truck were parked there.
Daylight! he thought, dismayed. Because if time never ran backward in the Keystone World, that meant that time had slipped. If that was Keystone World, then it was Saturday, the nineteenth of June, in the year-
"Quick!" Ted shouted from the other side of that brilliant hole in reality. "If you're going, go now! He's going to faint! If you're going-"
Roland yanked Jake forward, his purse bouncing on his back as he did so.
Wait! Jake wanted to shout. Wait, I forgot my stuff!
But it was too late. There was the sensation of big hands squeezing his chest, and he felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs. He thought, Pressure change. There was a sensation of falling up and then he was reeling onto the pavement of the parking lot with his shadow tacked to his heels, squinting and grimacing, wondering in some distant part of his mind how long it had been since his eyes had been exposed to plain old natural daylight. Not since entering the Doorway Cave in pursuit of Susannah, maybe.
Very faintly he heard someone-he thought it was the girl who had kissed him-call Good luck, and then it was gone.
Thunderclap was gone, and the Devar-Toi, and the darkness.
They were America-side, in the parking lot of the place to which Roland's memory and Sheemie's power-boosted by the other four Breakers-had taken them. It was die East Stoneham General Store, where Roland and Eddie had been ambushed by Jack Andolini. Only unless there had been some horrible error that had been twenty-two years earlier. This was June 19th of 1999, and the clock in the window (IT's ALWAYS TIME FOR BOAR's HEAD MEATS! was written in a circle around the face) said it was nineteen minutes of four in the afternoon.
Time was almost up.
