'Is it going to happen today?' Roland asked. 'Tonight?'
Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. 'I don't know that, either. Not for sure. Tonight? I don't think so. Time … it isn't the same over here as it is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow.' He had been battling panic, but now it broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland's shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. 'But I'm supposed to finish the key, and I haven't, and I'm supposed to do something else, and I don't have a clue about what it is. And if the kid dies, it'll be my fault!'
The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie's and pulled them away from his shirt. 'Get control of yourself.'
'Roland, don't you understand—'
'I understand that whining and puling won't solve your problem. I understand that you have forgotten the face of your father.'
'Quit that bullshit! I don't care dick about my father!' Eddie shouted hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a breaking branch.
Eddie's head rocked back; his eyes widened with shock. He stared at the gunslinger, then slowly raised his hand to touch the reddening handprint on his cheek. 'You bastard!' he whispered. His hand dropped to the butt of the revolver he still wore on his left hip. Susannah tried to put her own hands over it; Eddie pushed them away.
And now I must teach again, Roland thought, only this time I teach for my own life, I think, as well as for his.
Somewhere in the distance a crow hailed its harsh cry into the stillness, and Roland thought for a moment of his hawk, David. Now Eddie was his hawk . . . and like David, he would not scruple to tear out his eye if he gave so much as a single inch.
Or his throat.
'Will you shoot me? Is that how you'd have it end, Eddie?'
'Man, I'm so fucking tired of your jive,' Eddie said. His eyes were blurred with tears and fury.
'You haven't finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You're afraid of finding you can't finish. You're afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not because you're afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You're afraid of what may not come. You're not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself. You haven't forgotten the face of your father. So do it. Shoot me if you dare. I'm tired of watching you blubber.'
'Stop it!' Susannah screamed at him. 'Can't you see he'll do it? Can't you see you're forcing him to do it?'
Roland cut his eyes toward her. 'I'm forcing him to decide.' He looked back at Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stem. 'You have come from the shadow of the heroin and the shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of yourself, if you dare. Come now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it.'
For a moment he thought Eddie was going to do just that, and it would all end right here, on this high ridge, beneath a cloudless summer sky with the spires of the city glimmering on the horizon like blue ghosts. Then Eddie's cheek began to twitch. The firm line of his lips softened and began to tremble. His hand fell from the sandalwood butt of Roland's gun. His chest hitched once … twice . . . three times. His mouth opened and all his despair and terror came out in one groaning cry as he blundered toward the gunslinger.
'I'm afraid, you numb fuck! Don't you understand that? Roland, I'm afraid!'
His feet tangled together, He fell forward. Roland caught him and held him close, smelling the sweat and dirt on his skin, smelling his tears and terror.
The gunslinger embraced him for a moment, then turned him toward Susannah. Eddie dropped to his knees beside her chair, his head hanging wearily. She put a hand on the back of his neck, pressing his head against her thigh, and said bitterly to Roland, 'Sometimes I hate you, big white man.'
Roland placed the heels of his hands against his forehead and pressed hard. 'Sometimes I hate myself.'
'Don't ever stop you, though, do it?'
Roland didn't reply. He looked at Eddie, who lay with his cheek pressed against Susannah's thigh and his eyes tightly shut. His face was a study in misery. Roland fought away the dragging weariness that made him want to leave the rest of this charming discussion for another day. If Eddie was right, there was no other day. Jake was almost ready to make his move. Eddie had been chosen to midwife the boy into this world. If he wasn't prepared to do that, Jake would die at the point of entry, as surely as an infant must strangle if the mother-root is tangled about its neck when the contractions begin,
'Stand up, Eddie.'
For a moment he thought Eddie would simply go on crouching there and hiding his face against the woman's leg. If so, everything was lost . . . and that was ka, too. Then, slowly, Eddie got to his feet. He stood there with everything—hands, shoulders, head, hair—hanging, not good, but he was up, and that was a start.
'Look at me.'
Susannah stirred uneasily, but this time she said nothing.
Slowly, Eddie raised his head and brushed the hair out of his eyes with a trembling hand.
'This is for you. I was wrong to take it at all, no matter how deep my pain.' Roland curled his hand around the rawhide strip and yanked, snapping it. He held the key out to Eddie. Eddie reached for it like a man in a dream, but Roland did not immediately open his hand. 'Will you try to do what needs to be done?'
'Yes.' His voice was almost inaudible.
'Do you have something to tell me?'
'I'm sorry I'm afraid.' There was something terrible in Eddie's voice, something which hurt Roland's heart, and he supposed, he knew what it was: here was the last of Eddie's childhood, expiring painfully among the three of them. It could not be seen, but Roland could hear its weakening cries. He tried to make himself deaf to them.
Something else I've done in the name of the Tower. My score grows ever longer, and the day when it will all have to be totted up, like a longtime drunkard's bill in an alehouse, draws ever nearer. How will I ever pay?
'I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid,' he said.
'Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks.'
'What do you want, then?' Eddie cried. 'You've taken everything else — everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?'
Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chambers's salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon.
After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes.
Roland nodded.
'I have forgotten the face . . .' Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now — Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. 'I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger . . . and I cry your pardon.'
Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. 'Speak not so, gunslinger,' he said in the High Speech. 'Your father sees you very well . . . loves you very well . . . and so do I.'
Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. 'Let's go,' he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which stretched beyond.
16
