“I know. We’ll try to protect you at those times, just as we intend to protect the rose.”
King smiled. “I love the rose.”
“Have you seen it?” Eddie asked.
“Indeed I have, in New York. Up the street from the U.N. Plaza Hotel. It used to be in the deli.
Tom and Jerry’s. In the back. Now it’s in the vacant lot where the deli was.”
“You’ll tell our story until you’re tired,” Roland said. “When you can’t tell any more, when the Turtle’s song and the Bear’s cry grow faint in your ears, then will you rest. And when you can
begin again, you will begin again. You — ”
“Roland?”
“Sai King?”
“I’ll do as you say. I’ll listen for the song of the Turtle and each time I hear it, I’ll go on with the tale. If 1 live. But you must listen, too. For her song.”
“Whose?”
“Susannah’s. The baby will kill her if you aren’t quick. And your ears must be sharp.”
Eddie looked at Roland, frightened. Roland nodded. It was time to go.
“Listen to me, sai King. We’re well-met in Bridgton, but now we must leave you.”
“Good,” King said, and he spoke with such unfeigned relief that Eddie almost laughed.
“You will stay here, right where you are, for ten minutes. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll wake up. You’ll feel very well. You won’t remember that we were here, except in the very deepest depths of your mind.”
“In the mudholes.”
“The mudholes, do ya. On top, you’ll think you had a nap. A wonderful, refreshing nap. You’ll get your son and go to where you’re supposed to go. You’ll feel fine. You’ll go on with your life.
You’ll write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story.
Do you understand?”
“Yar,” King said, and he sounded so much like Roland when Roland was gruff and tired that Eddie’s back pricked up in gooseflesh again. “Because what’s seen can’t be unseen. What’s
known can’t be unknown.” He paused. “Save perhaps in death.”
“Aye, perhaps. Every time you hear the song of the Turtle — if that’s what it sounds like to you — you’ll start on our story again. The only real story you have to tell. And we’ll try to
protect you.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know, but we’ll try — ”
“It’s not that. I’m afraid of not being able to finish.” His voice lowered. “I’m afraid the Tower will fall and I’ll be held to blame.”
“That is up to ka, not you,” Roland said. “Or me. I’ve satisfied myself on that point. And now
— ” He nodded to Eddie, and stood up.
“Wait,” King said.
Roland looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I am allowed mail privileges, but only once.”
Sounds like a guy in a POW camp, Eddie mused. And aloud: “Who allows you mail privileges, Steve-O?”
King’s brow wrinkled. “Gan?” he asked. “Is it Gan?” Then, like the sun breaking through on a foggy morning, his brow smoothed out and he smiled. “I think it’s me! ” he said. “I can send a letter to myself . . . perhaps even a small package . . . but only once.” His smile broadened into an engaging grin. “All of this . . . sort of like a fairy-tale, isn’t it?”
“Yes indeed,” Eddie said, thinking of the glass palace they’d come to straddling the Interstate in Kansas.
“What would you do?” Roland asked. “To whom would you send mail?”
“To Jake,” King said promptly.
“And what would you tell him?”
King’s voice became Eddie Dean’s voice. It wasn’t an approximation; it was exact. The sound turned Eddie cold.
“Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee,” King lilted, “not to worry, you’ve got the key!”
They waited for more, but it seemed there was no more. Eddie looked at Roland, and this time
it was the younger man’s turn to twirl his fingers in the let’s-go gesture. Roland nodded and they started for the door.
“That was fucking-A creepy,” Eddie said.
Roland didn’t reply.
Eddie stopped him with a touch on the arm. “One other thing occurs to me, Roland. While he’s hypnotized, maybe you ought to tell him to quit drinking and smoking. Especially the ciggies.
He’s a fiend for them. Did you see this place? Fuckin ashtrays everywhere.”
Roland looked amused. “Eddie, if one waits until the lungs are fully formed, tobacco prolongs life, not shortens it. It’s the reason why in Gilead everyone smoked but the very poorest, and
even they had their shuckies, like as not. Tobacco keeps away ill-sick vapors, for one thing.
Many dangerous insects, for another. Everyone knows this.”
“The Surgeon General of the United States would be delighted to hear what everyone in
Gilead knows,” Eddie said dryly. “What about the booze, then? Suppose he rolls his Jeep over some drunk night, or gets on the Interstate going the wrong way and head-ons someone?”
Roland considered it, then shook his head. “I’ve meddled with his mind — and ka itself — as much as I intend to. As much as I dare to. We’ll have to keep checking back over the years in any . . . why do you shake your head at me? The tale spins from him! ”
“Maybe so, but we won’t be able to check on him for twenty-two years unless we decide to
abandon Susannah . . . and I’ll never do that. Once we jump ahead to 1999, there’s no coming
back. Not in this world.”
For a moment Roland made no reply, just looked at the man leaning his behind against his kitchen counter, asleep on his feet with his eyes open and his hair tumbled on his brow. Seven or eight minutes from now King would awaken with no memory of Roland and Eddie . . . always
assuming they were gone, that was. Eddie didn’t seriously believe the gunslinger would leave
Suze hung out on the line . . . but he’d let Jake drop, hadn’t he? Let Jake drop into the abyss, once upon a time.
“Then he’ll have to go it alone,” Roland said, and Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Sai King.”
“Yes, Roland.”
“Remember — when you hear the song of the Turtle, you must put aside all other things and
tell this story.”
“I will. At least I’ll try.”
“Good.”
Then the writer said: “The ball must be taken off the board and broken.”
Roland frowned. “Which ball? Black Thirteen?”
“If it wakes, it will become the most dangerous thing in the universe. And it’s waking now. In some other place. Some other where and when.”
“Thank you for your prophecy, sai King.”
“Dad-a-shim, dad-a-shower. Take the ball to the double Tower.”
To this Roland shook his head in silent bewilderment.
Eddie put a fist to his forehead and bent slightly. “Hile, wordslinger.”
King smiled faintly, as if this were ridiculous, but said nothing.
“Long days and pleasant nights,” Roland told him. “You don’t need to think about the chickens anymore.”
An expression of almost heartbreaking hope spread across Stephen King’s bearded face. “Do
you really say so?”
“I really do. And may we meet again on the path before we all meet in the clearing.” The gunslinger turned on his bootheel and left the writer’s house.
Eddie took a final look at the tall, rather stooped man standing with his narrow ass propped
against the counter. He thought: The next time I see you, Stevie — if I do — your beard will be mostly white and there’ll be lines around your face . . . and I’ll still be young. How’s your blood-pressure, sai? Good to go for the next twenty-two years? Hope so. What about your ticker? Does cancer run in your family, and if it does, how deep?
There was time for none of these questions, of course. Or any others. Very soon the writer would be waking up and going on with his life. Eddie followed his dinh out into the latening
afternoon and closed the door behind him. He was beginning to think that, when ka had sent
them here instead of to New York City, it had known what it was doing, after all.
TWELVE
Eddie stopped on the driver’s side of John Cullum’s car and looked across the roof at the
gunslinger. “Did you see that thing around him? That black haze?”
“The todana, yes. Thank your father that it’s still faint.”
“What’s a todana? Sounds like todash.”
Roland nodded. “It’s a variation of the word. It means deathbag. He’s been marked.”
“Jesus,” Eddie said.
“It’s faint, I tell you.”
“But there.”
Roland opened his door. “We can do nothing about it. Ka marks the time of each man and
woman. Let’s move, Eddie.”
But now that they were actually ready to get rolling again, Eddie was queerly reluctant to go.
He had a sense of things unfinished with sai King. And he hated the thought of that black aura.