upon a time not so long ago hadn’t he himself thought everything in the world but heroin pale
and unimportant? Hadn’t he believed everything in the world that wasn’t heroin up for barter or sale? Had he not come to a point when he would literally have pimped his own mother in order
to get the next fix? Wasn’t that why he was so angry?
“That lot on the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street was never yours,” Eddie said.
“Not your father’s, or his father’s, all the way back to Stefan Toren. You were only custodians, the same way I’m custodian of the gun I wear.”
“I deny that!”
“Do you?” Aaron asked. “How strange. I’ve heard you speak of that piece of land in almost those exact words — ”
” Aaron, shut up! ”
” — many times,” Deepneau finished calmly.
There was a pop. Eddie jumped, sending a fresh throb of pain up his leg from the hole in his
shin. It was a match. Roland was lighting another cigarette. The filter lay on the oilcloth covering the table with two others. They looked like little pills.
“Here is what you said to me,” Eddie said, and all at once he was calm. The rage was out of him, like poison drawn from a snakebite. Roland had let him do that much, and despite his
bleeding tongue and bleeding palms, he was grateful.
“Anything I said . . . I was under stress . . . I was afraid you might kill me yourself!”
“You said you had an envelope from March of 1846. You said there was a sheet of paper in
the envelope, and a name written on the paper. You said — ”
” I deny — ”
“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.