Stephen King – The Dark Tower

“Will they notice me going back and forth?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Will they?”

She considered, then almost smiled. “The cops in this part of the world? Probably not.”

He nodded, accepting her judgment. “When you feel it’s safe, stop. You won’t see me, but

I’ll see you. I’ll wait until dark. If you’re not here by then, I go.”

“I’ll come for you, but I won’t be driving that miserable excuse for a truck when I do,” she

said. “I’ll be driving a Mercedes-Benz S600.” She said this with some pride.

Roland had no idea what a Mercedes-Bends was, but he nodded as though he did. “Go.

We’ll talk later, after you come back.”

If you come back,he thought.

“I think you may want this,” she said, and slipped his revolver back into its holster.

“Thankee-sai.”

“You’re welcome.”

He watched her go to the old truck (which he thought she’d rather come to like, despite her

dismissive words) and haul herself up by the wheel. And as she did, he realized there was

something he needed, something that might be in the truck.“Whoa!”

Mrs. Tassenbaum had put her hand on the key in the ignition. Now she took it off and

looked at him inquiringly. Roland settled Jake gently back to the earth beneath which he

must soon lie (it was that thought which had caused him to call out) and got to his feet. He

winced and put his hand to his hip, but that was only habit. There was no pain.

“What?” she asked as he approached. “If I don’t go soon—”

It wouldn’t matter if she went at all. “Yes. I know.”

He looked in the bed of the truck. Along with the careless scatter of tools there was a

square shape under a blue tarpaulin. The edges of the tarp had been folded beneath the

object to keep it from blowing away. When Roland pulled the tarp free, he saw eight or ten

boxes made of the stiff paper Eddie called “card-board.” They’d been pushed together to

make the square shape. The pictures printed on the card-board told him they were boxes of

beer. He wouldn’t have cared if they had been boxes of high explosive.

It was the tarpaulin he wanted.

He stepped back from the truck with it in his arms and said, “Nowyou can go.”

She grasped the key that started the engine once more, but did not immediately turn it.

“Sir,” said she, “I am sorry for your loss. I just wanted to tell you that. I can see what that boy meant to you.”

Roland Deschain bowed his head and said nothing.

Irene Tassenbaum looked at him for a moment longer, reminded herself that sometimes

words were useless things, then started the engine and slammed the door. He watched her

drive into the road (her use of the clutch had already grown smooth and sure), making a

tight turn so she could drive north, back toward East Stoneham.

Sorry for your loss.

And now he was alone with that loss. Alone with Jake. For a moment Roland stood

surveying the little grove of trees beside the highway, looking at two of the three who had

been drawn to this place: a man, unconscious, and a boy dead. Roland’s eyes were dry and

hot, throbbing in their sockets, and for a moment he was sure that he had again lost the

ability to weep. The idea horrified him. If he was incapable of tears after all of this—after what he’d regained and then lost again—what good was any of it? So it was an immense

relief when the tears finally came. They spilled from his eyes, quieting their nearly insane

blue glare. They ran down his dirty cheeks. He cried almost silently, but there was a single

sob and Oy heard it. He raised his snout to the corridor of fast-moving clouds and howled a

single time at them. Then he too was silent.

Six

Roland carried Jake deeper into the woods, with Oy padding at his heel. That the bumbler

was also weeping no longer surprised Roland; he had seen him cry before. And the days

when he had believed Oy’s demonstrations of intelligence (and empathy) might be no more

than mimicry had long since passed. Most of what Roland thought about on that short walk

was a prayer for the dead he had heard Cuthbert speak on their last campaign together, the

one that had ended at Jericho Hill. He doubted that Jake needed a prayer to send him on, but

the gunslinger needed to keep his mind occupied, because it did not feel strong just now; if

it went too far in the wrong direction, it would certainly break. Perhaps later he could

indulge in hysteria—or even irina, the healing madness—but not now. He would not break

now. He would not let the boy’s death come to nothing.

The hazy green-gold summerglow that lives only in forests (andold forests, at that, like the

one where the Bear Shardik had rampaged), deepened. It fell through the trees in dusky

beams, and the place where Roland finally stopped felt more like a church than a clearing.

He had gone roughly two hundred paces from the road on a westerly line. Here he set Jake

down and looked about. He saw two rusty beer-cans and a few ejected shell-casings, probably the leavings of hunters. He tossed them further into the woods so the place would

be clean. Then he looked at Jake, wiping away his tears so he could see as clearly as

possible. The boy’s face was as clean as the clearing, Oy had seen to that, but one of Jake’s eyes was still open, giving the boy an evil winky look that must not be allowed. Roland

rolled the lid closed with a finger, and when it sprang back up again (like a balky

windowshade, he thought), he licked the ball of his thumb and rolled the lid shut again.

This time it stayed closed.

There was dust and blood on Jake’s shirt. Roland took it off, then took his own off and put

it on Jake, moving him like a doll in order to get it on him. The shirt came almost to Jake’s knees, but Roland made no attempt to tuck it in; this way it covered the bloodstains on

Jake’s pants.

All of this Oy watched, his gold-ringed eyes bright with tears.

Roland had expected the soil to be soft beneath the thick carpet of needles, and it was. He

had a good start on Jake’s grave when he heard the sound of an engine from the roadside.

Other motor-carriages had passed since he’d carried Jake into the woods, but he recognized

the dissonant beat of this one. The man in the blue vehicle had come back. Roland hadn’t

been entirely sure he would.

“Stay,” he murmured to the bumbler. “Guard your master.” But that was wrong. “Stay and

guard your friend.”

It wouldn’t have been unusual for Oy to repeat the command (S’ay!was about the best he

could manage) in the same low voice, but this time he said nothing. Roland watched him lie

down beside Jake’s head, however, and snap a fly out of the air when it came in for a

landing on the boy’s nose. Roland nodded, satisfied, then started back the way he had

come.

Seven

Bryan Smith was out of his motor-carriage and sitting on the rock wall by the time Roland

got back in view of him, his cane drawn across his lap. (Roland had no idea if the cane was

an affectation or something the man really needed, and didn’t care about this, either.) King

had regained some soupy version of consciousness, and the two men were talking.

“Please tell me it’s just sprained,” the writer said in a weak, worried voice.

“Nope! I’d say that leg’s broke in six, maybe seven places.” Now that he’d had time to

settle down and maybe work out a story, Smith sounded not just calm but almost happy.

“Cheer me up, why don’t you,” King said. The visible side of his face was very pale, but

the flow of blood from the gash on his temple had slowed almost to a stop. “Have you got a

cigarette?”

“Nope,” Smith said in that same weirdly cheerful voice. “Gave em up.”

Although not particularly strong in the touch, Roland had enough of it to know this wasn’t

so. But Smith only had three and didn’t want to share them with this man, who could

probably afford enough cigarettes to fill Smith’s entire van with them.Besides, Smith

thought—

“Besides, folks who been in a accident ain’t supposed to smoke,” Smith said virtuously.

King nodded. “Hard to breathe, anyway,” he said.

“Prolly bust a rib or two, too. My name’s Bryan Smith. I’m the one who hit you. Sorry.”

He held out his hand and—incredibly—King shook it.

“Nothin like this ever happened to me before,” Smith said. “I ain’t ever had so much as a