Stephen King – The Dark Tower

horizon and then disappearing over it.

“Those are roads!” she said. “Someone’s plowed a couple of roads down there, Roland!”

He nodded. “I thought so, but I wanted to hear you say it. I see something else, as well.”

“What? Your eyes are sharper than mine, and by a lot.”

“When we get a little closer, you’ll see for yourself.”

He tried to rise and she tugged impatiently at his arm. “Don’t you play that game with me.

What is it?”

“Roofs,” he said, giving in to her. “I think there are cottages down there. Mayhap even a

town.”

“People? Are you sayingpeople ?”

“Well, it looks like there’s smoke coming from one of the houses. Although it’s hard to tell

for sure with the sky so white.”

She didn’t know if she wanted to see people or not. Certainly such would complicate

things. “Roland, we’ll have to be careful.”

“Yes,” he said, and went back to the tow-band again. Before he picked it up, he paused to

readjust his gunbelt, dropping the holster a bit so it lay more comfortably near his left hand.

An hour later they came to the intersection of the lane and the road. It was marked by a

snowbank easily eleven feet high, one that had been built by some sort of plow. Susannah

could see tread-marks, like those made by a bulldozer, pressed into the packed snow.

Rising out of this hardpack was a pole. The street sign on top was no different from those

she’d seen in all sorts of towns; at intersections in New York City, for that matter. The one indicating the short road said

ODD’S LANE.

It was the other that thrilled her heart, however.

TOWER ROAD,

it read.

Three

All but one of the cottages clustered around the intersection were deserted, and many lay

in half-buried heaps, broken beneath the weight of accumulating snow. One, however—it

was about three-quarters of the way down the lefthand arm of Odd’s Lane—was clearly

different from the others. The roof had been mostly cleared of its potentially crushing

weight of snow, and a path had been shoveled from the lane to the front door. It was from

the chimney of this quaint, tree-surrounded cottage that the smoke was issuing,

feather-white. One window was lit a wholesome butter-yellow, too, but it was the smoke

that captured Susannah’s eye. As far as she was concerned, it was the final touch. The only

question in her mind was who would answer the door when they knocked. Would it be

Hansel or his sister Gretel? (And were those two twins? Had anyone ever researched the

matter?) Perhaps it would be Little Red Riding Hood, or Goldilocks, wearing a guilty

goatee of porridge.

“Maybe we should just pass it by,” she said, aware that she had dropped her voice to a

near-whisper, even though they were still on the high snowbank created by the plow. “Give

it a miss and say thank ya.” She gestured to the sign readingTOWER ROAD . “We’ve got

a clear way, Roland—maybe we ought to take it.”

“And if we should, do you think that Mordred will?” Roland asked. “Do you think he’ll simply pass by and leave whoever lives there in peace?”

Here was a question that hadn’t even occurred to her, and of course the answer was no. If

Mordred decided he could kill whoever was in the cottage, he’d do it. For food if the

inhabitants were edible, but food would only be a secondary consideration. The woods

behind them had been teeming with game, and even if Mordred hadn’t been able to catch

his own supper (and in his spider form, Susannah was sure he would have been perfectly

capable of doing that), they had left the remains of their own meals at a good many camps.

No, he would come out of the snowy uplands fed…but not happy. Not happy at all. And so

woe to whoever happened to be in his path.

On the other hand,she thought…only therewas no other hand, and all at once it was too

late, anyway. The front door of the cottage opened, and an old man came out onto the stoop.

He was wearing boots, jeans, and a heavy parka with a fur-lined hood. To Susannah this

latter garment looked like something that might have been purchased at the Army-Navy

Surplus Store in Greenwich Village.

The old man was rosy-cheeked, the picture of wintry good health, but he limped heavily,

depending on the stout stick in his left hand. From behind his quaint little cottage with its fairy-tale plume of smoke came the piercing whinny of a horse.

“Sure, Lippy, I see em!” the old man cried, turning in that direction. “I got a’least one good eye left, ain’t I?” Then he turned back to where Roland stood on the snowbank with

Susannah and Oy flanking him. He raised his stick in a salute that seemed both merry and

unafraid. Roland raised his own hand in return.

“Looks like we’re in for some palaver whether we want it or not,” said Roland.

“I know,” she replied. Then, to the bumbler: “Oy, mind your manners now, you hear?”

Oy looked at her and then back at the old man without making a sound. On the subject of

minding his manners he’d keep his own counsel awhile, it seemed.

The old man’s bad leg was clearlyvery bad—“Next door to nuthin,” Daddy Mose Carver

would have said—but he got on well enough with his stick, moving in a sideways hopping

gait that Susannah found both amusing and admirable. “Spry as a cricket” was another of

Daddy Mose’s many sayings, and perhaps this one fit yonder old man better. Certainly she

saw no harm or danger in a white-haired fellow (the hair was long and baby-fine, hanging

to the shoulders of his anorak) who had to hop along on a stick. And, as he drew closer, she

saw that one of his eyes was filmed white with a cataract. The pupil, which was faintly

visible, seemed to look dully off to their left. The other, however, regarded the newcomers

with lively interest as the inhabitant of the cottage hopped down Odd’s Lane toward them.

The horse whinnied again and the old man waved his stick wildly against the white,

low-lying sky. “Shut up ya haybox, ya turd-factory, y’old clap-cunt gammer-gurt, ain’t you

ever seen cump’ny before? Was ya born in a barn, hee-hee? (For if y’wasn’t, I’m a

blue-eyed baboon, which there ain’t no such thing!)”

Roland snorted with genuine laughter, and the last of Susannah’s watchful apprehension

departed. The horse whinnied again from the outbuilding behind the cottage—it was

nowhere near grand enough to be called a barn—and the old man waved his stick at it once

more, almost falling to the snowpack in the process. His awkward but nonetheless rapid

gait had now brought him halfway to their location. He saved himself from what would

have been a nasty tumble, took a large sidle-hop using the stick for a prop, then waved it

cheerily in their direction.

“Hile, gunslingers!” the old man shouted. His lungs, at least, were admirable.

“Gunslingers on pilgrimage to the Dark Tower, so y’are, so ya must be, for don’t I see the

big irons with the yaller grips? And the Beam be back, fair and strong, for I feel it and

Lippy do, too! Spry as a colt she’s been ever since Christmas, or what I call Christmas, not

having a calendar nor seen Sainty Claus, which I wouldn’t expect, for have I been a good

boy? Never! Never! Good boys go to heaven, and all my friends be in t’other place, toastin

marshmallows and drinkin Nozzy spiked with whiskey in the devil’s den! Arrr, ne’mine,

my tongue’s caught in the middle and runs on both ends! Hile to one, hile to t’other, and

hile to the little furry gobbins in between! Billy-bumbler as I live and breathe!Yow, ain’t it good to see ya! Joe Collins is my name, Joe Collins of Odd’s Lane, plenty odd m’self,

one-eyed and lame I am, but otherwise at your service!”

He had now reached the snowbank marking the spot where Tower Road ended…or where

it began, depending on your point of view and the direction you were traveling, Susannah

supposed. He looked up at them, one eye bright as a bird’s, the other looking off into the

white wastes with dull fascination.

“Long days and pleasant nights, yar, so say I, and anyone who’d say different, they ain’t here anyway, so who gives a good goddam what they say?” From his pocket he took what

could only be a gumdrop and tossed it up. Oy grabbed it out of the air easily:Snap! and

gone.

At this both Rolandand Susannah laughed. It felt strange to laugh, but it was a good feeling, like finding something of value long after you were sure it was lost forever. Even Oy

appeared to be grinning, and if the horse bothered him (it trumpeted again as they looked