In the final days of their long journey, after Bill-just Bill now, no longer Stuttering Bill-dropped them off at the Federal, on the edge of the White Lands, Susannah Dean began to suffer frequent bouts of weeping. She would feel these impending cloudbursts and would excuse herself from the others, saying she had to go into the bushes and do her necessary. And there she would sit on a fallen tree or perhaps just the cold ground, put her hands over her face, and let her tears flow. If Roland knew this was happening-and surely he must have noted her red eyes when she returned to the road-he made no comment.
She supposed he knew what she did.
Her time in Mid-World-and End-World-was almost at an end.
TWO
Bill took them in his fine orange plow to a lonely Quonset hut with a faded sign out front reading
She supposed Federal Outpost 19 was still technically in the White Lands of Empathica, but the air had warmed considerably as Tower Road descended, and the snow on the ground was little more than a scrim. Groves of trees dotted the ground ahead, but Susannah thought the land would soon be almost entirely open, like the prairies of the American Midwest. There were bushes that probably supported berries in warm weather-perhaps even pokeberries-but now they were bare and clattering in the nearly constant wind. Mostly what they saw on either side of Tower Road-which had once been paved but had now been reduced to little more than a pair of broken ruts-were tall grasses poking out of the thin snow-cover. They whispered in the wind and Susannah knew their song: Commalacome-come, journey’s almost done.
“I may go no furdier,” Bill said, shutting down the plow and cutting off Little Richard in mid-rave. “Tell ya sorry, as they say in the Arc O’The Borderlands.”
Their trip had taken one full day and half of another, and during that time he had entertained them with a constant stream of what he called “golden oldies.” Some of these were not old at all to Susannah; songs like “Sugar Shack” and “Heat Wave” had been current hits on the radio when she’d returned from her little vacation in Mississippi. Others she had never heard at all. The music was stored not on records or tapes but on beautiful silver discs Bill called “ceedees.” He pushed them into a slot in the plow’s instrument- cluttered dashboard and the music played from at least eight different speakers. Any music would have sounded fine to her, she supposed, but she was especially taken by two songs she had never heard before. One was a deliriously happy little rocker called “She Loves You.” The other, sad and reflective, was called “Heyjude.” Roland actually seemed to know the latter one; he sang along with it, although the words he knew were different from the ones coming out of the plow’s multiple speakers. When she asked, Bill told her the group was called The Beetles.
“Funny name for a rock-and-roll band,” Susannah said.
Patrick, sitting with Oy in the plow’s tiny rear seat, tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and he held up the pad through which he was currendy working his way. Beneath a picture of Roland in profile, he had printed: BEATLES, not Beetles.
“It’s a funny name for a rock-and-roll band no matter which way you spell it,” Susannah said, and that gave her an idea.
“Patrick, do you have the touch?” When he frowned and raised his hands-I don’t understand, die gesture said-she rephrased the question. “Can you read my mind?”
He shrugged and smiled. This gesture said I don’t know, but she thought Patrick did know. She thought he knew very well.
THREE
They reached “the Federal” near noon, and there Bill served them a fine meal. Patrick wolfed his and then sat off to one side with Oy curled at his feet, sketching the others as they sat around the table in what had once been the common room.
The walls of this room were covered with TV screens-Susannah guessed there were diree hundred or more. They must have been built to last, too, because some were still operating. A few showed the rolling hills surrounding the Quonset, but most broadcast only snow, and one showed a series of rolling lines that made her feel queasy in her stomach if she looked at it too long. The snow-screens, Bill said, had once shown pictures from satellites in orbit around the Earth, but the cameras in those had gone dead long ago. The one with the rolling lines was more interesting. Bill told them that, until only a few months ago, that one had shown the Dark Tower. Then, suddenly, the picture had dissolved into nothing but those lines.
“I don’t think die Red King liked being on television,” Bill told them. “Especially if he knew company might be coming.
Won’t you have another sandwich? There are plenty, I assure you. No? Soup, then? What about you, Patrick? You’re too thin, you know-far, jar too thin.”
Patrick turned his pad around and showed them a picture of Bill bowing in front of Susannah, a tray of neatiy cut sandwiches in one metal hand, a carafe of iced tea in the other. Like all of Patrick’s pictures, it went far beyond caricature, yet had been produced with a speed of hand that was eerie. Susannah applauded. Roland smiled and nodded. Patrick grinned, holding his teeth together so that the others wouldn’t have to look at the empty hole behind them. Then he tossed the sheet back and began something new.
“There’s a fleet of vehicles out back,” Bill said, “and while many of them no longer run, some still do. I can give you a truck with four-wheel drive, and while I cannot assure you it will run smoothly, I believe you can count on it to take you as far as the Dark Tower, which is no more than one hundred and twenty wheels from here.”
Susannah felt a great and fluttery lift-drop in her stomach.
One hundred and twenty wheels was a hundred miles, perhaps even a bit less. They were close. So close it was scary.
“You would not want to come upon the Tower after dark,”
Bill said. “At least I shouldn’t think so, considering the new resident.
But what’s one more night camped at the side of the road to such great travelers as yourselves? Not much, I should say! But even with one last night on the road (and barring breakdowns, which the gods know are always possible), you’d have your goal in sight by mid-morning of tomorrowday.”
Roland considered this long and carefully. Susannah had to tell herself to breathe while he did so, because part of her didn’t want to.
I’m not ready, that part thought. And there was a deeper part-a part that remembered every nuance of what had become a recurring (and evolving) dream-that thought something else: I’m not meant to go at all. Not all the way.
At last Roland said: “I thank you, Bill-we all say thank you,
I’m sure-but I think we’ll pass on your kind offer. Were you to ask me why, I couldn’t say. Only that part of me thinks that tomorrowday’s too soon. That part of me thinks we should go the rest of the way on foot, just as we’ve already traveled so far.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. “I’m not ready to be there yet.
Not quite ready.”
You too, Susannah marveled. You too.
“I need a little more time to prepare my mind and my heart. Mayhap even my soul.” He reached into his back pocket and brought out the photocopy of the Robert Browning poem that had been left for them in Dandelo’s medicine chest.
“There’s something writ in here about remembering the old times before coming to the last battle… or the last stand. It’s well-said. And perhaps, really, all I need is what this poet speaks of-a draught of earlier, happier sights. I don’t know. But unless Susannah objects, I believe we’ll go on foot.”
“Susannah doesn’t object,” she said quietly. “Susannah thinks it’s just what the doctor ordered. Susannah only objects to being dragged along behind like a busted tailpipe.”
Roland gave her a grateful (if distracted) smile-he seemed to have gone away from her somehow during these last few days-and then turned back to Bill. “I wonder if you have a cart I could pull? For we’ll have to take at least some gunna… and there’s Patrick. He’ll have to ride part of the time.”
Patrick looked indignant. He cocked an arm in front of him, made a fist, and flexed his muscle. The result-a tiny goose-egg rising on the biceps of his drawing-arm-seemed to shame him, for he dropped it quickly.
Susannah smiled and reached out to pat his knee. “Don’t look like that, sugar. It’s not your fault that you spent God knows how long caged up like Hansel and Gretel in die witch’s house.”
“I’m sure I have such a thing,” Bill said, “and a batterypowered version for Susannah. What I don’t have, I can make.
It would take an hour or two at most.”
Roland was calculating. “If we leave here with five hours of daylight ahead of us, we might be able to make twelve wheels by sunset. What Susannah would call nine or ten miles. Another five days at that rather leisurely speed would bring us to the Tower I’ve spent my life searching for. I’d come to it around sunset if possible, for that’s when I’ve always seen it in my dreams.
Susannah?”
And the voice inside-that deep voice-whispered: Four nights. Four nights to dream. That should be enough. Maybe more than enough. Of course, ka would have to intervene. If they had indeed outrun its influence, that wouldn’t-couldn’t-happen.
But Susannah now thought ka reached everywhere, even to die Dark Tower. Was, perhaps, embodied by the Dark Tower.
“That’s fine,” she told him in a faint voice.
“Patrick?” Roland asked. “What do you say?”
Patrick shrugged and flipped a hand in their direction, hardly looking up from his pad. Whatever they wanted, that gesture said. Susannah guessed that Patrick understood little about die Dark Tower, and cared less. And why would he care? He was free of the monster, and his belly was full. Those things were enough for him. He had lost his tongue, but he could sketch to his heart’s content. She was sure that to Patrick, that seemed like more than an even trade. And yet… and yet…
