The Waste Lands by Stephen King

  22

  JAKE TALKED THE SUN down.

  He told them everything he could remember, beginning with My Understanding of Truth and ending with the monstrous doorkeeper which had literally come out of the woodwork to attack him. The other three listened without a single interruption.

  When he was finished, Roland turned to Eddie, his eyes bright with a mixture of emotions Eddie initially took for wonder. Then he realized he was looking at powerful excitement . . . and deep fear. His mouth went dry. Because if Roland was afraid--"Do you still doubt that our worlds overlap each other, Eddie?"

  He shook his head. "Of course not. I walked down the same street, and I did it in his clothes! But . . . Jake, can I see that book? Charlie the Choo-Choo?"

  Jake reached for his pack, but Roland stayed his hand. "Not yet," he said. "Go back to the vacant lot, Jake: Tell that part once more. Try to remember everything."

  "Maybe you should hypnotize me," Jake said hesitantly. "Like you did before, at the. way station."

  Roland shook his head. "There's no need. What happened to you in that lot was the most important thing ever to happen in your life, Jake. In all our lives. You can remember everything."

  So Jake went through it again. It was clear to all of them that his experience in the vacant lot where Tom and Gerry's once had stood was the secret heart of the ka-tet they shared. In Eddie's dream, the Artistic Deli had still been standing; in Jake's reality it had been torn down, but in both cases it was a place of enormous, talismanic power. Nor did Roland doubt that the vacant lot with its broken bricks and shattered glass was another version of what Susannah knew as the Drawers and the place he had seen at the end of his vision in the place of bones.

  As he told this part of his story for the second time, speaking very slowly now, Jake found that what the gunslinger had said was true: he could remember everything. His recall improved until he almost seemed to be reliving the experience. He told them of the sign which said that a building called Turtle Bay Condominiums was slated to stand on the spot where Tom and Gerry's had once stood. He even remembered the little poem which had been spray-painted on the fence, and recited it for them: "See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

  On his shell he holds the earth.

  If you want to run and play,

  Come along the BEAM today."

  Susannah murmured, "His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind . . . isn't that how it went, Roland?"

  "What?" Jake asked. "How what went?"

  "A poem I learned as a child," Roland said. "It's another connection, one that really tells us something, although I'm not sure it's anything we need to know . . . still, one never knows when a little understanding may come in handy."

  "Twelve portals connected by six Beams," Eddie said. "We started at the Bear. We're only going as far as the middle--to the Tower--but if we went all the way to the other end, we'd come to the Portal of the Turtle, wouldn't we?"

  Roland nodded. "I'm sure we would."

  "Portat of the Turtle," Jake said thoughtfully, rolling the words in his mouth, seeming to taste them. Then he finished by telling them again about the gorgeous voice of the choir, his realization that there were faces and stories and histories everywhere, and his growing belief that he had stumbled on something very like the core of all existence. Last of all, he told them again about finding the key and seeing the rose. In the totality of his recall, Jake began to weep, although he seemed unaware of it.

  "When it opened," he said, "I saw the middle was the brightest yellow you ever saw in your life. At first I thought it was pollen and it only looked bright because everything in that lot looked bright. Even looking at the old candy-wrappers and beer-bottles was like looking at the greatest paintings you ever saw. Only then I realized it was a sun. I know it sounds crazy, but that's what it was. Only it was more than one. It was--"

  "It was all suns," Roland murmured. "It was everything real."

  "Yes! And it was right--but it was wrong, too. I can't explain how it was wrong, but it was. It was like two heartbeats, one inside of the other, and the one inside had a disease. Or an infection. And then I fainted."

  23

  "You SAW THE SAME thing at the end of your dream, Roland, didn't you?" Susannah asked. Her voice was soft with awe. "The blade of grass you saw near the end of it . . . you thought that blade was purple because it was splattered with paint."

  "You don't understand," Jake said. "It really was purple. When I was seeing it the way it really was, it was purple. Like no grass I ever saw before. The paint was just camouflage. The way the doorkeeper camouflaged itself to look like an old deserted house."

  The sun had reached the horizon. Roland asked Jake if he would now show them Charlie the Choo-Choo and then read it to them. Jake handed the book around. Both Eddie and Susannah looked at the cover for a long time.

  "I had this book when I was a little kid," Eddie said at last. He spoke in the flat tones of utter surety. "Then we moved from Queens to Brooktyn--I wasn't even four years old--and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I felt the same way you do, Jake. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it."

  Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. "I had it, too--how could I ever forget the little girl with my name . . . although of course it was my middle name back in those days. And I felt the same way about the train. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it." She tapped the front of the book with her finger before passing it on to Roland. "I thought that smile was a great big fake."

  Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. "Did you lose yours, too?"

  "Yes."

  "And I'll bet I know when," Eddie said.

  Susannah nodded. "I'll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my head. I had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue's wedding. I had it on the train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn't want it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn't he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?"

  "An amusement park."

  "Yes, of course it was. There's a picture of him hauling kids around that place at the end, isn't there? They're all smiling and laughing, except I always thought they looked like they were screaming to be let off."

  "Yes!" Jake cried. "Yes, that's right! That's just right!"

  "I thought Charlie might take us to his place-wherever he lived--instead of to my aunt's wedding, and never let us go home again."

  "You can't go home again," Eddie muttered, and ran his hands nervously through his hair.

  "All the time we were on that train I wouldn't let go of the book. I even remember thinking, 'If he tries to steal us, I'll rip out his pages until he quits.' But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see the engine. It was a diesel, not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then, after the wedding, that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long time. I never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now." She hesitated, then added: "This could be my copy, for all I know--or Eddie's."

  "Yeah, and probably is," Eddie said. His face was pale and solemn . . . and then he grinned like a kid. " 'See the TURTLE, ain't he keen? All things serve the fuckin Beam.' "

  Roland glanced west. "The sun's going down. Read the story before we lose the light, Jake."

  Jake turned to the first page, showed them the picture of Engineer Bob in Charlie's cab, and began: "'Bob Brooks was an engineer for The Mid-World Railway Company, on the St. Louis to Topeka run . . .' "

  24

  " '. . . AND EVERY Now AND then the children hear him singing his old song in his soft, gruff voice,' " Jake finished. He showed them the last picture-the happy children who might actually have been screaming-and then closed the book. The sun had gone down; the sky was purple.

&nbs
p; "Well, it's not a perfect fit," Eddie said, "more like a dream where the water sometimes runs uphill--but it fits well enough to scare me silly. This is Mid-World--Charlie's territory. Only his name over here isn't Charlie at all. Over here it's Blaine the Mono."

  Roland was looking at Jake. "What do you think?" he asked. "Should we go around the city? Stay away from this train?"

  Jake thought it over, head down, hands working distractedly through Oy's thick, silky fur. "I'd like to," he said at last, "but if I've got this stuff about ka right, I don't think we're supposed to."

  Roland nodded. "If it's ka, questions of what we're supposed to or not supposed to do aren't even in it; if we tried to go around, we'd find circumstances forcing us back. In such cases it's better to give in to the inevitable promptly instead of putting it off. What do you think, Eddie?"

  Eddie thought as long and as carefully as Jake had done. He didn't want anything to do with a talking train that ran by itself, and whether you called it Charlie the Choo-Choo or Blaine the Mono, everything Jake had told them and read them suggested that it might be a very nasty piece of work. But they had a tremendous distance to cross, and somewhere, at the end of it, was the thing they had come to find. And with that thought, Eddie was amazed to discover he knew exactly what he thought, and what he wanted. He raised his head and for almost the first time since he had come to this world, he fixed Roland's faded blue eyes firmly with his hazel ones.

  "I want to stand in that field of roses, and I want to see the Tower that stands there. I don't know what comes next. Mourners please omit flowers, probably, and for all of us. But I don't care. I want to stand there. I guess I don't care if Blaine's the devil and the train runs through hell itself on the way to the Tower. I vote we go."

  Roland nodded and turned to Susannah.

  "Well, I didn't have any dreams about the Dark Tower," she said, "so I can't deal with the question on that level--the level of desire, I suppose you'd say. But I've come to believe in ka, and I'm not so numb that I can't feel it when someone starts rapping on my head with his knuckles and saying, 'That way, idiot.' What about you, Roland? What do you think?"

  "I think there's been enough talk for one day, and it's time to let it go until tomorrow."

  "What about Riddle-De-Dum!--" Jake asked, "do you want to look at that?"

  "There'll be time enough for that another day," Roland said. "Let's get some sleep."

  25

  BUT THE GUNSLINGER LAY long awake, and when the rhythmic drumming began again, he got up and walked back to the road. He stood looking toward the bridge and the city. He was every inch the diplomat Susannah had suspected, and he had known the train was the next step on the road they must travel almost from the moment he had heard of it . . . but he'd felt it would be unwise to say so. Eddie in particular hated to feel pushed; when he sensed that was being done, he simply lowered his head, planted his feet, made his silly jokes, and balked like a mule. This time he wanted what Roland wanted, but he was still apt to say day if Roland said night, and night if Roland said day. It was safer to walk softly, and surer to ask instead of telling.

  He turned to go back . . . and his hand dropped to his gun as he saw a dark shape standing on the edge of the road, looking at him. He didn't draw, but it was a near thing.

  "I wondered if you'd be able to sleep after that little performance," Eddie said. "Guess the answer's no."

  "I didn't hear you at all, Eddie. You're learning . . . only this time you almost got a bullet in the gut for your pains."

  "You didn't hear me because you have a lot on your mind." Eddie joined him, and even by starlight, Roland saw he hadn't fooled Eddie a bit. His respect for Eddie continued to grow. It was Cuthbert Eddie reminded him of, but in many ways he had already surpassed Cuthbert.

  If I underestimate him, Roland thought, I'm apt to come away with a bloody paw. And if let him down, or do something that looks to him like a double-cross, he'll probably try to kill me.

  "What's on your mind, Eddie?"

  "You. Us. I want you to know something. I guess until tonight I just assumed that you knew already. Now I'm not so sure."

  "Tell me, then." He thought again: How like Cuthbert he is!

  "We're with you because we have to be--that's your goddamned ka. But we're also with you because we want to be. I know that's true of me and Susannah, and I'm pretty sure it's true of Jake, too. You've got a good brain, me old khef-mate, but I think you must keep it in a bomb-shelter, because it's bitchin hard to get through sometimes. I want to see it, Roland. Can you dig what I'm telling you? I want to see the Tower." He looked closely into Roland's face, apparently did not see what he'd hoped to find there, and raised his hands in exasperation. "What I mean is I want you to let go of my ears."

  "Let go of your ears?"

  "Yeah. Because you don't have to drag me anymore. I'm coming of my own accord. We're coming of our own accord. If you died in your sleep tonight, we'd bury you and then go on. We probably wouldn't last long, but we'd die in the path of the Beam. Now do you understand?"

  "Yes. Now I do."

  "You say you understand me, and I think you do . . . but do you believe me, as well?"

  Of course, he thought. Where else do you have to go, Eddie, in this world that's so strange to you? And what else could you do? You'd make a piss-poor farmer.

  But that was mean and unfair, and he knew it. Denigrating free will by confusing it with ka was worse than blasphemy; it was tiresome and stupid. "Yes," he said. "I believe you. Upon my soul, I do."

  "Then stop behaving like we're a bunch of sheep and you're the shepherd walking along behind us, waving a crook to make sure we don't trot our stupid selves off the road and into a quicksand bog. Open your mind to us. If we're going to die in the city or on that train, I want to die knowing I was more than a marker on your game-board."

  Roland felt anger heat his cheeks, but he had never been much good at self-deception. He wasn't angry because Eddie was wrong but because Eddie had seen through him. Roland had watched him come steadily forward, leaving his prison further and further behind--and Susannah, too, for she had also been imprisoned--and yet his heart had never quite accepted the evidence of his senses. His heart apparently wanted to go on seeing them as different, lesser creatures.

  Roland drew in deep air. "Gunslinger, I cry your pardon."

  Eddie nodded. "We're running into a whole hurricane of trouble here . . . I feel it, and I'm scared to death. But it's not your trouble, it's our trouble. Okay?"

  "Yes."

  "How bad do you think it can get in the city?"

  "I don't know. I only know that we have to try and protect Jake, because the old auntie said both sides would want him. Some of it depends on how long it takes us to find this train. A lot more depends on what happens when we find it. If we had two more in our party, I'd put Jake in a moving box with guns on every side of him. Since we don't, we'll move in column--me first, Jake pushing Susannah behind, and you on drogue."

  "How much trouble, Roland? Make a guess."

  "I can't."

  "I think you can. You don't know the city, but you know how the people in your world have been behaving since things started to fall apart. How much trouble?"

  Roland turned toward the steady sound of the drumbeats and thought it over. "Maybe not too much. I'd guess the fighting men who are still there are old and demoralized. It may be that you have the straight of it, and some will even offer to help us on our way, as the River Crossing ka-tet did. Mayhap we won't see them at all--they'll see us, see we're packing iron, and just put their heads down and let us go our way. If that fails, I'm hoping that they'll scatter like rats if we gun a few."

  "And if they decide to make a fight of it?"

  Roland smiled grimly. "Then, Eddie, we'll all remember the faces of our fathers."

  Eddie's eyes gleamed in the darkness, and Roland was once more reminded forcibly of Cuthbert--Cuthbert who had once said he would believe in ghosts when he could catch one in hi
s teeth, Cuthbert with whom he had once scattered breadcrumbs beneath the hangman's gibbet.

  "Have I answered all your questions?"

  "Nope--but I think you played straight with me this time."

  . "Then goodnight, Eddie."

  "Goodnight."

  Eddie turned and walked away. Roland watched him go. Now that he was listening, he could hear him . . . but just barely. He started back himself, then turned toward the darkness where the city of Lud was.

  He's what the old woman called a Pube. She said both sides would want him.

  You won't let me drop this time?

  No. Not this time, not ever again.

  But he knew something none of the others did. Perhaps, after the talk he'd just had with Eddie, he should tell them . . . yet he thought he would keep the knowledge to himself a little while longer.

  In the old tongue which had once been his world's lingua franca, most words, like khef and ka, had many meanings. The word char, however--char as in Charlie the Choo-Choo--had only one.

  Char meant death.

  V

  BRIDGE AND CITY

  1

  THEY CAME UPON THE downed airplane three days later.

  Jake pointed it out first at midmorning--a flash of light about ten miles away, as if a mirror lay in the grass. As they drew closer, they saw a large dark object at the side of the Great Road.

  "It looks like a dead bird," Roland said. "A big one."

  "That's no bird," Eddie said. "That's an airplane. I'm pretty sure the glare is sunlight bouncing off the canopy."

  An hour later they stood silently at the edge of the road, looking at the ancient wreck. Three plump crows stood on the tattered skin of the fuselage, staring insolently at the newcomers. Jake pried a cobble from the edge of the road and shied it at them. The crows lumbered into the air, cawing indignantly.

  One wing had broken off in the crash and lay thirty yards away, a shadow like a diving board in the tall grass. The rest of the plane was pretty much intact. The canopy had cracked in a starburst pattern where the pilot's head had struck it. There was a large, rust-colored stain there.

  Oy trotted over to where three rusty propeller blades rose from the grass, sniffed at them, then returned hastily to Jake.