Stephen King – The Dark Tower

“I’ll do as you say, gunslinger. No matter how the tale falls when the pages grow thin.”

King’s voice was itself growing thin. Roland thought he would soon fall into

unconsciousness. “I’m sorry for your friends, truly I am.”

“Thank you,” Roland said, still restraining the urge to put his hands around the writer’s

neck and choke the life out of him. He started to stand, but King said something that

stopped him.

“Did you listen forher song, as I told you to do? For the Song of Susannah?”

“I…yes.”

Now King forced himself up on one elbow, and although his strength was clearly failing,

his voice was dry and strong. “She needs you. And you need her. Leave me alone now.

Save your hate for those who deserve it more. I didn’t make your ka any more than I made

Gan or the world, and we both know it. Put your foolishness behind you—and your

grief—and do as you’d have me do.” King’s voice rose to a rough shout; his hand shot out

and gripped Roland’s wrist with amazing strength.“Finish the job!”

At first nothing came out when Roland tried to reply. He had to clear his throat and start

again. “Sleep, sai—sleep and forget everyone here except the man who hit you.”

King’s eyes slipped closed. “Forget everyone here except the man who hit me.”

“You were taking your walk and this man hit you.”

“Walking…and this man hit me.”

“No one else was here. Not me, not Jake, not the woman.”

“No one else,” King agreed. “Just me and him. Will he say the same?”

“Yar. Very soon you’ll sleep deep. You may feel pain later, but you feel none now.”

“No pain now. Sleep deep.” King’s twisted frame relaxed on the pine needles.

“Yet before you sleep, listen to me once more,” Roland said.

“I’m listening.”

“A woman may come to y—wait. Do’ee dream of love with men?”

“Are you asking if I’m gay? Maybe a latent homosexual?” King sounded weary but

amused.

“I don’t know.” Roland paused. “I think so.”

“The answer is no,” King said. “Sometimes I dream of love with women. A little less now that I’m older…and probably not at all for awhile, now. That fucking guy really beat me

up.”

Not near so bad as he beat up mine,Roland thought bitterly, but he didn’t say this.

“If’ee dream only of love with women, it’s a woman that may come to you.”

“Do you say so?” King sounded faintly interested.

“Yes. If she comes, she’ll be fair. She may speak to you about the ease and pleasure of the

clearing. She may call herself Morphia, Daughter of Sleep, or Selena, Daughter of the

Moon. She may offer you her arm and promise to take you there. You must refuse.”

“I must refuse.”

“Even if you are tempted by her eyes and breasts.”

“Even then,” King agreed.

“Why will you refuse, sai?”

“Because the Song isn’t done.”

At last Roland was satisfied. Mrs. Tassenbaum was kneeling by Jake. The gunslinger

ignored both her and the boy and went to the man sitting slumped behind the wheel of the

motor-carriage that had done all the damage. This man’s eyes were wide and blank, his

mouth slack. A line of drool hung from his beard-stubbly chin.

“Do you hear me, sai?”

The man nodded fearfully. Behind him, both dogs had grown silent. Four bright eyes

regarded the gunslinger from between the seats.

“What’s your name?”

“Bryan, do it please you—Bryan Smith.”

No, it didn’t please him at all. Here was yet one more he’d like to strangle. Another car

passed on the road, and this time the person behind the wheel honked the horn as he or she

passed. Whatever their protection might be, it had begun to grow thin.

“Sai Smith, you hit a man with your car or truckomobile or whatever it is thee calls it.”

Bryan Smith began to tremble all over. “I ain’t never had so much as a parking ticket,” he

whined, “and I have to go and run into the most famous man in the state! My dogs ’us fightin—”

“Your lies don’t anger me,” Roland said, “but the fear which brings them forth does. Shut

thy mouth.”

Bryan Smith did as told. The color was draining slowly but steadily from his face.

“You were alone when you hit him,” Roland said. “No one here but you and the storyteller.

Do you understand?”

“I was alone. Mister, are you a walk-in?”

“Never mind what I am. You checked him and saw that he was still alive.”

“Still alive, good,” Smith said. “I didn’t mean to hurt nobody, honest.”

“He spoke to you. That’s how you knew he was alive.”

“Yes!” Smith smiled. Then he frowned. “What’d he say?”

“You don’t remember. You were excited and scared.”

“Scared and excited. Excited and scared. Yes I was.”

“You drive now. As you drive, you’ll wake up, little by little. And when you get to a house

or a store, you’ll stop and say there’s a man hurt down the road. A man who needs help.

Tell it back, and be true.”

“Drive,” he said. His hands caressed the steering wheel as if he longed to be gone

immediately. Roland supposed he did. “Wake up, little by little. When I get to a house or

store, tell them Stephen King’s hurt side o’ the road and he needs help. I know he’s still

alive because he talked to me. It was an accident.” He paused. “It wasn’t my fault. He was

walking in the road.” A pause. “Probably.”

Do I care upon whom the blame for this mess falls?Roland asked himself. In truth he did

not. King would go on writing either way. And Roland almost hoped hewould be blamed,

for it was indeed King’s fault; he’d had no business being out here in the first place.

“Drive away now,” he told Bryan Smith. “I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

Smith started the van with a look of profound relief. Roland didn’t bother watching him go.

He went to Mrs. Tassenbaum and fell on his knees beside her. Oy sat by Jake’s head, now

silent, knowing his howls could no longer be heard by the one for whom he grieved. What

the gunslinger feared most had come to pass. While he had been talking to two men he

didn’t like, the boy whom he loved more than all others—more than he’d loved anyone

ever in his life, even Susan Delgado—had passed beyond him for the second time. Jake was dead.

Five

“He talked to you,” Roland said. He took Jake in his arms and began to rock him gently

back and forth. The ’Rizas clanked in their pouch. Already he could feel Jake’s body

growing cool.

“Yes,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“He told me to come back for you ‘after the business here is done.’ Those were his exact

words. And he said, ‘Tell my father I love him.’ ”

Roland made a sound, choked and miserable, deep in his throat. He was remembering how

it had been in Fedic, after they had stepped through the door.Hile, Father, Jake had said.

Roland had taken him in his arms then, too. Only then he had felt the boy’s beating heart.

He would give anything to feel it beat again.

“There was more,” she said, “but do we have time for it now, especially when I could tell

you later?”

Roland took her point immediately. The story both Bryan Smith and Stephen King knew

was a simple one. There was no place in it for a lank, travel-scoured man with a big gun,

nor a woman with graying hair; certainly not for a dead boy with a bag of sharp-edged

plates slung over his shoulder and a machine-pistol in the waistband of his pants.

The only question was whether or not the woman would come back at all. She was not the

first person he had attracted into doing things they might not ordinarily have done, but he

knew things might look different to her once she was away from him. Asking for her

promise—Do you swear to come back for me, sai? Do you swear on this boy’s stilled

heart?—would do no good. She could mean every word here and then think better of it

once she was over the first hill.

Yet when he’d had a chance to take the shopkeeper who owned the truck, he didn’t. Nor

had he swapped her for the old man cutting the grass at the writer’s house.

“Later will do,” he said. “For now, hurry on your way. If for some reason you feel you

can’t come back here, I’ll not hold it against you.”

“Where would you go on your own?” she asked him. “Where would youknow to go? This

isn’t your world. Is it?”

Roland ignored the question. “If there are people still here the first time you come

back—peace officers, guards o’ the watch, bluebacks, I don’t know—drive past without stopping. Come back again in half an hour’s time. If they’re still here, drive on again. Keep doing that until they’re gone.”