Song of Susannah

“You said that if I could tell you the name written on that piece of paper, you’d sell me the lot. For one dollar. And with the understanding that you’d be getting a great deal more-millions-between now and… 1985, let’s say.”

Tower barked a laugh. “Why not offer me the Brooklyn Bridge while you’re at it?”

“You made a promise. And now your father watches you attempt to break it.”

Calvin Tower shrieked: “I DENY EVERY WORD YOU SAY!”

“Deny and be damned,” Eddie said. “And now I’m going to tell you something, Cal, something I know from my own beat-up but still beating heart. You’re eating a bitter meal. You don’t know that because someone told you it was sweet and your own tastebuds are numb.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about! You’re crazy!”

“No,” Aaron said. “He’s not. You’re the one who’s crazy if you don’t listen to him. I think… I think he’s giving you a chance to redeem the purpose of your life.”

“Give it up,” Eddie said. “Just once listen to the better angel instead of to the other one. That other one hates you, Cal. It only wants to kill you. Believe me, I know.”

Silence in the cabin. From the pond came the cry of a loon. From across it came the less lovely sound of sirens.

Calvin Tower licked his lips and said, “Are you telling the truth about Andolini? Is he really in this town?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. Now he could hear the whuppa-whuppa-whup of an approaching helicopter. A TV news chopper? Wasn’t this still about five years too early for such things, especially up here in the boondocks?

The bookstore owner’s eyes shifted to Roland. Tower had been surprised, and he’d been guilt-tripped with a vengeance, but the man was already regaining some of his composure. Eddie could see it, and he reflected (not for the first time) on how much simpler life would be if people would stay in the pigeonholes where you originally put them. He did not want to waste time thinking of Calvin Tower as a brave man, or as even second cousin to the good guys, but maybe he was both those things. Damn him.

“You’re truly Roland of Gilead?”

Roland regarded him through rising membranes of cigarette smoke. ’You say true, I say thank ya.”

“Roland of the Eld?”

“Yes.”

“Son of Steven?”

“Yes.”

“Grandson of Alaric?’

Roland’s eyes flickered with what was probably surprise. Eddie himself was surprised, but what he mostly felt was a kind of tired relief. The questions Tower was asking could mean only two things. First, more had been passed down to him than just Roland’s name and trade of hand. Second, he was coming around.

“Of Alaric, aye,” Roland said, “him of the red hair.”

“I don’t know anything about his hair, but I know why he went to Garlan. Do you?”

“To slay a dragon.”

“And did he?”

“No, he was too late. The last in that part of the world had been slain by another king, one who was later murdered.”

Now, to Eddie’s even greater surprise, Tower haltingly addressed Roland in a language that was a second cousin to English at best. What Eddie heard was something like Had heet Rol-uh, fa heet gun, fa heet hak, fa-had gun?

Roland nodded and replied in the same tongue, speaking slowly and carefully. When he was finished, Tower sagged against the wall and dropped his bag of books unheeded to the floor. “I’ve been a fool,” he said.

No one contradicted him.

“Roland, would you step outside with me? I need… I… need…” Tower began to cry. He said something else in that not-English language, once more ending on a rising inflection, as if asking a question.

Roland got up without replying. Eddie also got up, wincing at the pain in his leg. There was a slug in there, all right, he could feel it. He grabbed Roland’s arm, pulled him down, and whispered in the gunslinger’s ear: “Don’t forget that Tower and Deepneau have an appointment at the Turtle Bay Washateria, four years from now. Tell him Forty-seventh Street, between Second and First. He probably knows the place. Tower and Deepneau were… are… will be the ones who save Don Callahan’s life. I’m almost sure of it.”

Roland nodded, then crossed to Tower, who initially cringed away and then straightened with a conscious effort. Roland took his hand in the way of the Calla, and led him outside.

When they were gone, Eddie said to Deepneau, “Draw up the contract. He’s selling.”

Deepneau regarded him skeptically. ’You really think so?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I really do.”

SEVEN

Drawing the contract didn’t take long. Deepneau found a pad in the kitchen (there was a cartoon beaver on top of each sheet, and the legend dam important things to do) and wrote it on that, pausing every now and then to ask Eddie a question.

When they were finished, Deepneau looked at Eddie’s sweat-shiny face and said, “I have some Percocet tablets. Would you like some?”

“You bet,” Eddie said. If he took them now, he thought-hoped-he would be ready for what he wanted Roland to do when Roland got back. The bullet was still in there, in there for sure, and it had to come out. “How about four?”

Deepneau’s eyes measured him.

“I know what I’m doing,” Eddie said. Then added: “Unfortunately.”

EIGHT

Aaron found a couple of children’s Band-Aids in the cabin’s medicine chest (Snow White on one, Bambi on another) and put them over the hole in Eddie’s arm after pouring another shot of disinfectant into the wound’s entry and exit points. Then, while drawing a glass of water to go with the painkillers, he asked Eddie where he came from. “Because,” he said, “although you wear that gun with authority, you sound a lot more like Cal and me than you do him.”

Eddie grinned. “There’s a perfectly good reason for that. I grew up in Brooklyn. Co-Op City.” And thought: Suppose I were to tell you that I’m there right now, as a matter of fact? Eddie Dean, the world’s horniest fifteen-year-old, running wild in the streets? For that Eddie Dean, the most important thing in the world is getting laid. Such things as the fall of the Dark Tower and some ultimate baddie named the Crimson King won’t bother me for another-

Then he saw the way Aaron Deepneau was looking at him and came out of his own head in a hurry. “What? Have I got a booger hanging out of my nose, or something?”

“Co-Op City’s not in Brooklyn,” Deepneau said. He spoke as one does to a small child. “Co-Op City’s in the Bronx. Always has been.”

“That’s-” Eddie began, meaning to add ridiculous, but before he could get it out, the world seemed to waver on its axis. Again he was overwhelmed by that sense of fragility, that sense of the entire universe (or an entire continuum of universes) made of crystal instead of steel. There was no way to speak rationally of what he was feeling, because there was nothing rational about what was happening.

“There are more worlds than these,” he said. “That was what Jake told Roland just before he died. ’Go, then-there are other worlds than these.’ And he must have been right, because he came back.”

“Mr. Dean?” Deepneau looked concerned. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but you’ve come over very pale. I think you should sit down.”

Eddie allowed himself to be led back into the cabin’s combination kitchen and sitting room. Did he himself understand what he was talking about? Or how Aaron Deepneau-presumably a lifelong New Yorker-could assert with such casual assurance that Co-Op City was in the Bronx when Eddie knew it to be in Brooklyn?

Not entirely, but he understood enough to scare the hell out of him. Other worlds. Perhaps an infinite number of worlds, all of them spinning on the axle that was the Tower. All of them were similar, but there were differences. Different politicians on the currency. Different makes of automobiles-Takuro Spirits instead of Datsuns, for instance-and different major league baseball teams. In these worlds, one of which had been decimated by a plague called the super-flu, you could time-hop back and forth, past and future. Because…

Because in some vital way, they aren’t the real world. Or if they’re real, they’re not the key world.

Yes, that felt closer. He had come from one of those other worlds, he was convinced of it. So had Susannah. And Jakes One and Two, the one who had fallen and the one who had been literally pulled out of the monster’s mouth and saved.

But this world was the key world. And he knew it because he was a key-maker by trade: Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.”

Beryl Evans? Not quite real. Claudia y Inez Bachman? Real.

World with Co-Op City in Brooklyn? Not quite real. World with Co-Op City in the Bronx? Real, hard as it was to swallow.

And he had an idea that Callahan had crossed over from the real world to one of the others long before he had embarked on his highways in hiding; had crossed without even knowing it. He’d said something about officiating at some little boy’s funeral, and how, after that…

'After that he said everything changed,” Eddie said as he sat down. “That everything changed.”

“Yes, yes,” Aaron Deepneau said, patting him on the shoulder. “Sit quietly now.”

“Pere went from a seminary in Boston to Lowell, real. ’salem’s Lot, not real. Made up by a writer named-”

“I’m going to get a cold compress for your forehead.”

“Good idea,” Eddie said, closing his eyes. His mind was whirling. Real, not real. Live, Memorex. John Cullum’s retired professor friend was right: the column of truth did have a hole in it.

Eddie wondered if anyone knew how deep that hole went.