Top, Steve? Do you know them?” Eddie looked at King, saw the incomprehension, and smiled.
“I guess it’s not their when quite yet. Or if it is, you haven’t found out about them.”
Roland twirled his fingers: Go on, go on. And gave Eddie a look that suggested he stop interrupting.
“Anyway, from Roland coming into Tull, the story slips back another notch to tell how Nort, the weed-eater, died and was resurrected by Walter. You see what buzzed me about it, don’t you?
The early part of it was all told in reverse gear. It was bass-ackwards.”
Roland had no interest in the technical aspects that seemed to fascinate King; this was his life they were talking about, after all, his life, and to him it had all been moving forward. At least until he’d reached the Western Sea, and the doors through which he had drawn his traveling
companions.
But Stephen King knew nothing of the doors, it seemed. He had written of the way station, and
Roland’s meeting with Jake Chambers; he had written of their trek first into the mountains and
then through them; he had written of Jake’s betrayal by the man he had come to trust and to love.
King observed the way Roland hung his head during this part of the tale, and spoke with odd
gentleness. “No need to look so ashamed, Mr. Deschain. After all, I was the one who made you do it.”
But again, Roland wondered about that.
King had written of Roland’s palaver with Walter in the dusty golgotha of bones, the telling of the Tarot and the terrible vision Roland had had of growing right through the roof of the
universe. He had written of how Roland had awakened following that long night of fortune-
telling to find himself years older, and Walter nothing but bones. Finally, King said, he’d written of Roland going to the edge of the water and sitting there. “You said, ‘I loved you, Jake’ ”
Roland nodded matter-of-factly. “I love him still.”
“You speak as though he actually exists.”
Roland looked at him levelly. “Do I exist? Do you?”
King was silent.
“What happened then?” Eddie asked.
“Then, señor, I ran out of story — or got intimidated, if you like that better — and stopped.”
Eddie also wanted to stop. He could see the shadows beginning to lengthen in the kitchen and
wanted to get after Susannah before it was too late. He thought both he and Roland had a pretty good idea of how to get out of this world, suspected Stephen King himself could direct them to
Turtle-back Lane in Lovell, where reality was thin and — according to John Cullum, at least —
the walk-ins had been plentiful of late. And King would be happy to direct them. Happy to get
rid of them. But they couldn’t go just yet, and in spite of his impatience Eddie knew it.
“You stopped because you lost your lineout,” Roland said.
“Outline. And no, not really.” King had gone after his third beer, and Eddie thought it was no wonder the man was getting pudgy in the middle; he’d already consumed the caloric equivalent
of a loaf of bread, and was starting on Loaf #2. “I hardly ever work from an outline. In fact . . .
don’t hold me to this, but that might have been the only time. And it got too big for me. Too
strange. Also you became a problem, sir or sai or whatever you call yourself.” King grimaced.
“Whatever form of address that is, I didn’t make it up.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Roland remarked.
“You started as a version of Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name.”
“In the Spaghetti Westerns,” Eddie said. “Jesus, of course! I watched a hundred of em at the Majestic with my brother Henry, when Henry was still at home. I went by myself or with this
friend of mine, Chuggy Coter, when Henry was in the Nam. Those were guy flicks.”
King was grinning. ‘Yeah,” he said, “but my wife went ape for em, so go figure.”
“Cool on her!” Eddie exclaimed.
“Yeah, Tab’s a cool kitty.” King looked back at Roland. “As The Man With No Name — a fantasy version of Clint Eastwood — you were okay. A lot of fun to partner up with.”
“Is that how you think of it?”
“Yes. But then you changed. Right under my hand. It got so I couldn’t tell if you were the hero, the antihero, or no hero at all. When you let the kid drop, that was the capper.”
“You said you made me do that.”
Looking Roland straight in the eyes — blue meeting blue amid the endless choir of voices —
King said: “I lied, brother.”
TEN
There was a little pause while they all thought that over. Then King said, “You started to scare me, so I stopped writing about you. Boxed you up and put you in a drawer and went on to a
series of short stories I sold to various men’s magazines.” He considered, then nodded. “Things changed for me after I put you away, my friend, and for the better. I started to sell my stuff.
Asked Tabby to marry me. Not long after that I started a book called Carrie. It wasn’t my first novel, but it was the first one I sold, and it put me over the top. All that after saying goodbye Roland, so long, happy trails to you. Then what happens? I come around the corner of my house
one day six or seven years later and see you standing in my fucking driveway, big as Billy-be-
damned, as my mother used to say. And all I can say now is that thinking you’re a hallucination brought on by overwork is the most optimistic conclusion I can draw. And I don’t believe it. How can I?” King’s voice was rising, becoming reedy. Eddie didn’t mistake it for fear; this was outrage. “How can I believe it when I see the shadows you cast, the blood on your leg — ” He pointed to Eddie. “And the dust on your face?” This time to Roland. ‘You’ve taken away my goddam options, and I can feel my mind . . . I don’t know . . . tipping? Is that the word? I think it is. Tipping.”
“You didn’t just stop,” Roland said, ignoring this last completely for the self-indulgent nonsense it probably was.
“No?”
“I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.
And one day while you were doing that, you felt something pushing back.”
King considered this for what seemed to Eddie like a very long time. Then he nodded. ‘You
could be right. It was more than the usual going-dry feeling, for sure. I’m used to that, although it doesn’t happen as often as it used to. It’s . . . I don’t know, one day you just start having less fun while you’re sitting there, tapping the keys. Seeing less clearly. Getting less of a buzz from
telling yourself the story. And then, to make things worse, you get a new idea, one that’s all bright and shiny, fresh off the showroom floor, not a scratch on her. Completely unfucked-up by you, at least as of yet. And . . . well . . .”
“And you felt something pushing back.” Roland spoke in the same utterly flat tone.
“Yeah.” King’s voice had dropped so low Eddie could barely hear him. “NO TRESPASSING.
DO NOT ENTER. HIGH VOLTAGE.” He paused. “Maybe even DANGER OF DEATH.”
You wouldn’t like that faint shadow I see swirling around you, Eddie thought. That black nimbus. No, sai, I don’t think you’d like that at all, and what am I seeing? The cigarettes? The beer? Something else addictive you maybe have a taste for? A car accident one drunk night? And how far ahead? How many years?
He looked at the clock over the Kings’ kitchen table and was dismayed to see that it was quarter to four in the afternoon. “Roland, it’s getting late. This man’s got to get his kid.” And we’ve got to find my wife before Mia has the baby they seem to be sharing and the Crimson King has no more use for the Susannah part of her.
Roland said, “Just a little more.” And lowered his head without saying anything. Thinking.
Trying to decide which questions were the right questions. Maybe just one right question. And it was important, Eddie knew it was, because they’d never be able to return to the ninth day of July in the year 1977. They might be able to revisit that day in some other world, but not in this one.
And would Stephen King exist in any of those other worlds? Eddie thought maybe not. Probably not.
While Roland considered, Eddie asked King if the name Blaine meant anything special to him.