lumber off, heavy with their freight of blood. He heard engines starting as he finished
hand-digging the grave, the smooth roar of two cars and the more uneven sound of Smith’s
van-mobile. He had heard the voices of only two peace officers, which meant that, unless
there had been a third blueback with nothing to say, they were allowing Smith to drive
away by himself. Roland thought this rather odd, but—like the question of whether or not
King was paralyzed—it was none of his matter or mind. All that mattered was this; all that
mattered was seeing to his own.
He made three trips to collect stones, because a grave dug by hand must necessarily be a
shallow one and animals, even in such a tame world as this, are always hungry. He stacked
the stones at the head of the hole, a scar lined with earth so rich it could have been black
satin. Oy lay by Jake’s head, watching the gunslinger come and go, saying nothing. He’d
always been different from his kind as they were since the world had moved on; Roland
had even speculated that it was Oy’s extraordinary chattiness that had caused the others in
his tet to expel him, and not gently, either. When they’d come upon this fellow, not too far
from the town of River Crossing, he’d been scrawny to the point of starvation, and with a
half-healed bite-mark on one flank. The bumbler had loved Jake from the first: “That’s as
clear as Earth needs,” Cort might have said (or Roland’s own father, for that matter). And it was to Jake the bumbler had talked the most. Roland had an idea that Oy might fall mostly
silent now that the boy was dead, and this thought was another way of defining what was
lost.
He remembered the boy standing before the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis in the torchlight,
his face young and fair, as if he would live forever.I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the
Line of Eld, the ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine, he had said, and oh, aye, for here he was in
the Ninety and Nine, with his grave all dug, clean and ready for him.
Roland began to weep again. He put his hands over his face and rocked back and forth on
his knees, smelling the sweet aromatic needles and wishing he had cried off before ka, that
old and patient demon, had taught him the real price of his quest. He would have given
anything to change what had happened, anything to close this hole with nothing in it, but
this was the world where time ran just one way.
Ten
When he had gained control of himself again, he wrapped Jake carefully in the blue
tarpaulin, fashioning a kind of hood around the still, pale face. He would close that face
away for good before refilling the grave, but not until.
“Oy?” he asked. “Will you say goodbye?”
Oy looked at Roland, and for a moment the gunslinger wasn’t sure he understood. Then
the bumbler extended his neck and caressed the boy’s cheek a last time with his tongue. “I,
Ake,” he said:Bye, Jake orI ache, it came to the same.
The gunslinger gathered the boy up (how light he was, this boy who had jumped from the
barn loft with Benny Slightman, and stood against the vampires with Pere Callahan, how
curiously light; as if the growing weight of him had departed with his life) and lowered him
into the hole. A crumble of dirt spilled down one cheek and Roland wiped it away. That
done, he closed his eyes again and thought. Then, at last—haltingly—he began. He knew
that any translation into the language of this place would be clumsy, but he did the best he
could. If Jake’s spirit-man lingered near, it was this language that he would understand.
“Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
“Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
“Death is speechless, so hear my speech.”
The words drifted away into the haze of green and gold. Roland let them, then set upon the
rest. He spoke more quickly now.
“This is Jake, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
“May the forgiving glance of S’mana heal his heart. Say please.
“May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of this earth. Say please.
“Surround him, Gan, with light.
“Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
“If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
“If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
“May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking
soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends that were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
“This is Jake, who lived well, loved his own, and died as ka would have it.
“Each man owes a death. This is Jake. Give him peace.”
He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not
understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.
I cannot bear to let him go.
But once again, that cruel paradox: if he didn’t, the sacrifice was in vain.
Roland opened his eyes and said, “Goodbye, Jake. I love you, dear.”
Then he closed the blue hood around the boy’s face against the rain of earth that must
follow.
Eleven
When the grave was filled and the rocks placed over it, Roland walked back to the clearing by the road and examined the tale the various tracks told, simply because there was nothing
else to do. When that meaningless task was finished, he sat down on a fallen log. Oy had
stayed by the grave, and Roland had an idea he might bide there. He would call the bumbler
when Mrs. Tassenbaum returned, but knew Oy might not come; if he didn’t, it meant that
Oy had decided to join his friend in the clearing. The bumbler would simply stand watch by
Jake’s grave until starvation (or some predator) took him. The idea deepened Roland’s
sorrow, but he would bide by Oy’s decision.
Ten minutes later the bumbler came out of the woods on his own and sat down by
Roland’s left boot. “Good boy,” Roland said, and stroked the bumbler’s head. Oy had
decided to live. It was a small thing, but it was a good thing.
Ten minutes after that, a dark red car rolled almost silently up to the place where King had
been struck and Jake killed. It pulled over. Roland opened the door on the passenger side
and got in, still wincing against pain that wasn’t there. Oy jumped up between his feet
without being asked, lay down with his nose against his flank, and appeared to go to sleep.
“Did you see to your boy?” Mrs. Tassenbaum asked, pulling away.
“Yes. Thankee-sai.”
“I guess I can’t put a marker there,” she said, “but later on I could plant something. Is there something you think he might like?”
Roland looked up, and for the first time since Jake’s death, he smiled. “Yes,” he said. “A
rose.”
Twelve
They rode for almost twenty minutes without speaking. She stopped at a small store over
the Bridgton town line and pumped gas:MOBIL , a brand Roland recognized from his
wanderings. When she went in to pay, he looked up atlos ángeles, running clear and true
across the sky. The Path of the Beam, and stronger already, unless that was just his
imagination. He supposed it didn’t matter if it was. If the Beam wasn’t stronger now, it
soon would be. They had succeeded in saving it, but Roland felt no gladness at the idea.
When Mrs. Tassenbaum came out of the store, she was holding a singlet-style shirt with a
picture of a bucka-wagon on it—areal bucka-wagon—and words written in a circle. He
could make outHOME , but nothing else. He asked her what the words said.
“BRIDGTON OLD HOME DAYS, JULY27TH TO JULY30TH, 1999,” she told him. “It
doesn’t really matter what it says as long as it covers your chest. Sooner or later we’ll want to stop, and there’s a saying we have in these parts: ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service.’ Your
boots look beat-up and busted down, but I guess they’ll get you through the door of most
places. But topless? Huh-uh, no way José. I’ll get you a better shirt later on—one with a
collar—and some decent pants, too. Those jeans are so dirty I bet they’d stand up on their own.” She engaged in a brief (but furious) interior debate, then plunged. “You’ve got I’m
going to say roughly two billion scars. And that’s just on the part of you I can see.”
Roland did not respond to this. “Do you have money?” he asked.
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