TEN
The boy-Jake-had fallen back against the seat with his hands lying limp at his sides. The peculiar dog was looking anxiously up into the kid’s face, but the kid didn’t see him. His eyes were closed, and Irene Tassenbaum at first thought he’d fainted.
“Son?…Jake?”
“I have him,” the boy said without opening his eyes. “Not Stephen King-I can’t touch him-but the other one. I have to slow him down. How can I slow him down?”
Mrs. Tassenbaum had listened to her husband enough at work-holding long, muttered dialogues with himself-to know a self-directed enquiry when she heard one. Also, she had no idea of whom the boy was speaking, only that it wasn’t Stephen King. Which left about six billion other possibilities, globally speaking.
Nevertheless, she did answer, because she knew what always slowed her down.
“Too bad he doesn’t need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
ELEVEN
Strawberries aren’t out in Maine, not this early in the season, but there are raspberries. Justine Anderson (of May brook, New York) and Elvira Toothaker (her Lovell friend) are walking along the side of Route 7
(which Elvira still calls The Old Fryeburg Road) with their plastic buckets, harvesting from the bushes which run for at least half a mile along the old rock wall. Garrett McKeen built that wall a hundred years ago, and it is to Garrett’s great-grandson that RolandDeschain ofGilead is speaking at this very moment. Ka is a wheel, doya not kennit.
The two women have enjoyed their hour’s walk, not because either of them has any great love of raspberries (Justine reckons she won’t even eat hers; the seeds get caught in her teeth) but because it’s given them a chance to catch up on their respective families and to laugh a little together about the years when their friendship was new and probably the most important thing in either girl’s life. They met at Vassar College
(a thousand years ago, so it does seem) and carried the Daisy Chain together at graduation the year they were juniors. This is what they are talking about when the blue minivan-it is a 1985 Dodge Caravan,
Justine recognizes the make and model because her oldest son had one just like it when his tribe started growing-comes around the curve by Melder’s German Restaurant and Brathaus. It’s all over the road, looping from side to side, first spuming up dust from the southbound shoulder, then plunging giddily across the tar and spuming up more from the northbound one. The second time it does this-rolling toward them now, and coming at a pretty damned good clip-Justine thinks it may actually go into the ditch and turn over (“turn turtle,” they used to say back in the forties, when she and Elvira had been at Vassar), but the driver hauls it back on the road just before that can happen.
“Look out, that person’s drunk or something!” Justine says, alarmed. She pulls Elvira back, but they find their way blocked by the old wall with its dressing of raspberry bushes. The thorns catch at their slacks (thank goodness neither of us was wearing shorts, Justine will think later… when she has time to think) and pull out little puffs of cloth.
Justine is thinking she should put an arm around her friend’s shoulder and tumble them both over the thigh-high wall-do a backflip, just like in gym class all those years ago-but before she can make up her mind to do it, the blue van is by them, and at the moment it passes, it’s more or less on the road and not a danger to them.
Justine watches it go by in a muffled blare of rock music, her heart thumping heavily in her chest, the taste of something her body has dumped- adrenaline would be the most likely possibility-flat and metallic on her tongue. And halfway up the hill the little blue van once again lurches across the white line. The driver corrects the drift… no, overcorrects. Once mare the blue van is on the righthand shoulder, spuming up yellow dust for fifty yards.
“Gosh, I hope Stephen King sees that asshole, “Elvira says. They have passed the writer half a mile or so back, and said hello. Probably everyone in town has seen him on his afternoon walk, at one time or another.
As if the driver of the blue van has heard Elvira Toothaker call him an asshole, the van’s brakelights flare. The van suddenly pulls all the way off the mad and stops. When the door opens, the ladies hear a louder blast of rock and roll music. They also hear the driver-a man-yelling at someone (Elvira and Justine just pity the person stuck driving with that guy on such a beautiful June afternoon). “You leave ’at alone!” he shouts. “That ain’t yoahs, y ’hear? “And then the driver reaches back into the van, brings out a cane, and uses it to help him over the rock wall and into the bushes. The van sits rumbling on the soft shoulder, driver’s door open, emitting blue exhaust from one end and rock from the other.
“What’s he doing?” Justine asks, a little nervously.
“Taking a leak would be my guess, “her friend replies. “But if Mr.
King back there is lucky, maybe doing Number Two, instead. That might give him time to get off Route 7 and back onto Turtleback Lane.”
Suddenly Justine doesn’t feel like picking berries anymore. She wants to go back home and have a strong cup of tea.
The man comes limping briskly out of the bushes and uses his cane to help him back over the rock wall.
“Iguess he didn’t need to Number Two, “Elvira says, and as the bad driver climbs back into his blue van, the two going-on-old women look at each other and burst into giggles.
TWELVE
Roland watched the old man give the woman instructions-something about using Warrington’s Road as a shortcut-and then Jake opened his eyes. To Roland the boy looked unutterably weary.
“I was able to make him stop and take a leak,” he said.
“Now he’s fixing something behind his seat. I don’t know what it is, but it won’t keep him busy for long. Roland, this is bad.
We’re awfully late. We have to go.”
Roland looked at the woman, hoping that his decision not to replace her behind the wheel with die old man had been die right one. “Do you know where to go? Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said. “Up Warrington’s to Route 7. We sometimes go to dinner at Warrington’s. I know that road.”
“Can’t guarantee you’ll cut his path goin that way,” said the caretaker, “but it seems likely.” He bent down to pick up his hat and began to brush bits of freshly cut grass from it. He did this with long, slow strokes, like a man caught in a dream. “Ayuh, seems likely t’me.” And then, still like a man who dreams awake, he tucked his hat beneath his arm, raised a fist to his forehead, and bent a leg to the stranger with the big revolver on his hip. Why would he not?
The stranger was surrounded by white light.
THIRTEEN
When Roland pulled himself back into the cab of the storekeeper’s truck-a chore made more difficult by the rapidly escalating pain in his right hip- his hand came down on Jake’s leg, and just like that he knew what Jake had been keeping back, and why. He had been afraid that knowing might cause the gunslinger’s focus to drift. It was not ka- shume the boy had felt, or Roland would have felt it, too. How could there be ka-shume among them, with the tet already broken? Their special power, something greater than all of them, perhaps drawn from the Beam itself, was gone. Now they were just three friends (four, counting the bumbler) united by a single purpose. And they could save King. Jake knew it. They could save the writer and come a step closer to saving the Tower by doing so. But one of them was going to die doing it.
Jake knew that, too.
FOURTEEN
An old saying-one taught to him by his father-came to Roland then: Ifka will say so, let it be so. Yes; all right; let it be so.
During the long years he had spent on the trail of the man in black, the gunslinger would have sworn nothing in the universe could have caused him to renounce the Tower; had he not literally killed his own mother in pursuit of it, back at the start of his terrible career? But in those years he had been friendless, childless, and (he didn’t like to admit it, but it was true) heartless. He had been bewitched by that cold romance the loveless mistake for love. Now he had a son and he had been given a second chance and he had changed. Knowing that one of them must die in order to save the writer-that their fellowship must be reduced again, and so soon-would not make him cry off. But he would make sure that Roland of Gilead, not Jake of New York, provided the sacrifice this time.
Did the boy know that he’d penetrated his secret? No time to worry about that now.
Roland slammed the truckomobile’s door shut and looked at the woman. “Is your name Irene?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Drive, Irene. Do it as if Lord High Splitfoot were on your trail with rape on his mind, do ya I beg. Out Warrington’s Road. If we don’t see him
