Song of Susannah

“Are you asleep, Stephen?” Roland asked.

“Aye.”

“Go deeper.'

'All right.”

“I’ll count to three. On three you’ll be as deep as you can go.”

“All right.”

“One… two… three.” On three, King’s head lolled forward. His chin rested on his chest. A line of silver drool ran from his mouth and swung like a pendulum.

“So now we know something,” Roland said to Eddie. “Something crucial, maybe. He was touched by the Crimson King when he was just a child, but it seems that we won him over to our side. Or you did, Eddie. You and my old friend, Bert. In any case, it makes him rather special.”

“I’d feel better about my heroism if I remembered it,” Eddie said. Then: “You realize that when this guy was seven, I wasn’t even born?”

Roland smiled. “Ka is a wheel. You’ve been turning on it under different names for a long time. Cuthbert for one, it seems.”

“What’s this about the Crimson King being ’Tower-pent’?”

“I have no idea.”

Roland turned back to Stephen King. “How many times do you think the Lord of Discordia has tried to kill you, Stephen? Kill you and halt your pen? Shut up your troublesome mouth? Since that first time in your aunt and uncle’s barn?”

King seemed to try counting, then shook his head. “Delah,” he said. Many.

Eddie and Roland exchanged a glance.

“And does someone always step in?” Roland asked.

“Nay, sai, never think it. I’m not helpless. Sometimes I step aside.”

Roland laughed at that-the dry sound of a stick broken over a knee. “Do you know what you are?”

King shook his head. His lower lip had pooched out like that of a sulky child.

“Do you know what you are?”

“The father first. The husband second. The writer third. Then the brother. After brotherhood I am silent. Okay?”

“No. Not oh-kay. Do you know what you are?”

A long pause. “No. I told you all I can. Stop asking me.”

“I’ll stop when you speak true. Do you know-”

“Yes, all right, I know what you’re getting at. Satisfied?”

“Not yet. Tell me what-”

“I’m Gan, or possessed by Gan, I don’t know which, maybe there’s no difference.” King began to cry. His tears were silent and horrible. “But it’s not Dis, I turned aside from Dis, I repudiate Dis, and that should be enough but it’s not, ka is never satisfied, greedy old ka, that’s what she said, isn’t it? What Susan Delgado said before you killed her, or I killed her, or Gan killed her. ’Greedy old ka, how I hate it.’ Regardless of who killed her, I made her say that, I, for I hate it, so I do. I buck against ka’s goad, and will until the day I go into the clearing at the end of the path.”

Roland sat at the table, white at the sound of Susan’s name.

“And still ka comes to me, comes from me, I translate it, am made to translate it, ka flows out of my navel like a ribbon. I am not ka, I am not the ribbon, it’s just what comes through me and I hate it I hate it! The chickens were full of spiders, do you understand that, full of spiders! ”

“Stop your snivelment,” Roland said (with a remarkable lack of sympathy, to Eddie’s way of thinking), and King stilled.

The gunslinger sat thinking, then raised his head.

“Why did you stop writing the story when I came to the Western Sea?”

“Are you dumb? Because I don’t want to be Gan! I turned aside from Dis, I should be able to turn aside from Gan, as well. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love to write stories, but I don’t want to write your story. I’m always afraid. He looks for me. The Eye of the King.”

“But not since you stopped,” Roland said.

“No, since then he looks for me not, he sees me not.”

“Nevertheless, you must go on.”

King’s face twisted, as if in pain, then smoothed out into the previous look of sleep.

Roland raised his mutilated right hand. “When you do, you’ll start with how I lost my fingers. Do you remember?”

“Lobstrosities,” King said. “Bit them off.”

“And how do you know that?”

King smiled a little and made a gentle wissshhhing sound. “The wind blows,” said he.

“Gan bore the world and moved on,” Roland replied. “Is that what you mean to say?”

“Aye, and the world would have fallen into the abyss if not for the great turtle. Instead of falling, it landed on his back.”

“So we’re told, and we all say thank ya. Start with the lobstrosities biting off my fingers.”

“Dad-a-jum, dad-ajingers, goddam lobsters bit off your fingers,” King said, and actually laughed.

“Yes.'

'Would have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d died, Roland son of Steven.”

“I know. Eddie and my other friends, as well.” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of the gunslinger’s mouth. “Then, after the lobstrosities-”

“Eddie comes, Eddie comes,” King interrupted, and made a dreamy little flapping gesture with his right hand, as if to say he knew all that and Roland shouldn’t waste his time. “The Prisoner the Pusher the Lady of Shadows. The butcher the baker the candle-mistaker.” He smiled. “That’s how my son Joe says it. When?”

Roland blinked, caught by surprise.

“When, when, when?” King raised his hand and Eddie watched with surprise as the toaster, the waffle maker, and the drainer full of clean dishes rose and floated in the sunshine.

“Are you asking me when you should start again?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” A knife rose out of the floating dish drainer and flew the length of the room. There it stuck, quivering, in the wall. Then everything settled back into place again.

Roland said, “Listen for the song of the Turtle, the cry of the Bear.”

“Song of Turtle, cry of Bear. Maturin from the Patrick O’Brian novels. Shardik from the Richard Adams novel.”

“Yes. If you say so.”

“Guardians of the Beam.”

“Yes.”

“Of my Beam.”

Roland looked at him fixedly. “Do you say so?”

“Yes.”

“Then let it be so. When you hear the song of the Turtle or the cry of the Bear, then you must start again.”

“When I open my eye to your world, he sees me.” A pause. “It.”

“I know. We’ll try to protect you at those times, just as we intend to protect the rose.”

King smiled. “I love the rose.'

'Have you seen it?” Eddie asked.

“Indeed I have, in New York. Up the street from the U.N. Plaza Hotel. It used to be in the deli. Tom and Jerry’s. In the back. Now it’s in the vacant lot where the deli was.”

“You’ll tell our story until you’re tired,” Roland said. “When you can’t tell any more, when the Turtle’s song and the Bear’s cry grow faint in your ears, then will you rest. And when you can begin again, you will begin again. You-”

“Roland?”

“Sai King?”

“I’ll do as you say. I’ll listen for the song of the Turtle and each time I hear it, I’ll go on with the tale. If 1 live. But you must listen, too. For her song.”

“Whose?”

“Susannah’s. The baby will kill her if you aren’t quick. And your ears must be sharp.”

Eddie looked at Roland, frightened. Roland nodded. It was time to go.

“Listen to me, sai King. We’re well-met in Bridgton, but now we must leave you.”

“Good,” King said, and he spoke with such unfeigned relief that Eddie almost laughed.

“You will stay here, right where you are, for ten minutes. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll wake up. You’ll feel very well. You won’t remember that we were here, except in the very deepest depths of your mind.”

“In the mudholes.”

“The mudholes, do ya. On top, you’ll think you had a nap. A wonderful, refreshing nap. You’ll get your son and go to where you’re supposed to go. You’ll feel fine. You’ll go on with your life. You’ll write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story. Do you understand?”

“Yar,” King said, and he sounded so much like Roland when Roland was gruff and tired that Eddie’s back pricked up in gooseflesh again. “Because what’s seen can’t be unseen. What’s known can’t be unknown.” He paused. “Save perhaps in death.”

“Aye, perhaps. Every time you hear the song of the Turtle-if that’s what it sounds like to you-you’ll start on our story again. The only real story you have to tell. And we’ll try to protect you.”

“I’m afraid.”

“I know, but we’ll try-”