down on sai Collins from their snowbank perch), it didn’t show.
“I got a million questions for yer,” Collins said, “but I’ll start with just one: how in the hell are yers gonna get down offa that snowbank?”
Four
As it turned out, Susannah slid down, using their travois as a sled. She chose the place
where the northwestern end of Odd’s Lane disappeared beneath the snow, because the
embankment was a little shallower there. Her trip was short but not smooth. She hit a large
and crusted snow-boulder three quarters of the way down, fell off the travois, and made the
rest of her descent in a pair of gaudy somersaults, laughing wildly as she fell. The travois
turned over—turned turtle, may it do ya—and spilled their gunna every whichway and hell
to breakfast.
Roland and Oy came leaping down behind. Roland bent over her at once, clearly
concerned, and Oy sniffed anxiously at her face, but Susannah was still laughing. So was
the codger. Daddy Mose would have called his laughter “gay as old Dad’s hatband.”
“I’m fine, Roland—took worse tumbles off my Flexible Flyer when I was a kid, tell ya
true.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Joe Collins agreed. He gave her a look with his good eye to
make sure she was indeed all right, then began to pick up some of the scattered goods,
leaning laboriously over on his stick, his fine white hair blowing around his rosy face.
“Nah, nah,” Roland said, reaching out to grasp his arm. “I’ll do that, thee’ll fall on thy
thiddles.”
At this the old man roared with laughter, and Roland joined him willingly enough. From
behind the cottage, the horse gave another loud whinny, as if protesting all this good
humor.
“ ‘Fall on thy thiddles’! Man, that’s a good one! I don’t have the veriest clue under heaven
what my thiddles are, yet it’s a good one! Ain’t it just!” He brushed the snow off
Susannah’s hide coat while Roland quickly picked up the spilled goods and stacked them
back on their makeshift sled. Oy helped, bringing several wrapped packages of meat in his
jaws and dropping them on the back of the travois.
“That’s a smart little beastie!” Joe Collins said admiringly.
“He’s been a good trailmate,” Susannah agreed. She was now very glad they had stopped;
would not have deprived herself of this good-natured old man’s acquaintance for worlds.
She offered him her clumsily clad right hand. “I’m Susannah Dean—Susannah of New
York. Daughter of Dan.”
He took her hand and shook it. His own hand was ungloved, and although the fingers were
gnarled with arthritis, his grip was strong. “New York, is it! Why, I once hailed from there, myself. Also Akron, Omaha, and San Francisco. Son of Henry and Flora, if it matters to
you.”
“You’re from America-side?” Susannah asked.
“Oh God yes, but long ago and long,” he said. “What’chee might call delah.” His good eye
sparkled; his bad eye went on regarding the snowy wastes with that same dead lack of
interest. He turned to Roland. “And who might you be, my friend? For I’ll call you my
friend same as I would anyone, unless they prove different, in which case I’d belt em with
Bessie, which is what I call my stick.”
Roland was grinning. Was helpless not to, Susannah thought. “Roland Deschain, of Gilead.
Son of Steven.”
“Gilead!Gilead! ” Collins’s good eye went round with amazement. “There’s a name out of
the past, ain’t it? One for the books! Holy Pete, you must be older’n God!”
“Some would say so,” Roland agreed, now only smiling…but warmly.
“And the little fella?” he asked, bending forward. From his pocket, Collins produced two
more gumdrops, one red and one green. Christmas colors, and Susannah felt a faint touch
ofdéjà vu . It brushed her mind like a wing and then was gone. “What’s your name, little
fella? What do they holler when they want you to come home?”
“He doesn’t—”
—talk anymore, although he did oncewas how Susannah meant to finish, but before she
could, the bumbler said: “Oy!” And he said it as brightly and firmly as ever in his time with Jake.
“Good fella!” Collins said, and tumbled the gumdrops into Oy’s mouth. Then he reached
out with that same gnarled hand, and Oy raised his paw to meet it. They shook, well-met
near the intersection of Odd’s Lane and Tower Road.
“I’ll be damned,” Roland said mildly.
“So won’t we all in the end, I reckon, Beam or no Beam,” Joe Collins remarked, letting go of Oy’s paw. “But not today. Now what I say is that we ort to get in where it’s warm and we
can palaver over a cup of coffee—for I have some, so I do—or a pot of ale. I even have
sumpin I call eggnog, if it does ya. It does me pretty fine, especially with a teensy piss o’
rum in it, but who knows? I ain’t reallytasted nuffink in five years or more. Air outta the
Discordia’s done for my taste-buds and for my nose, too. Anyro’, what do you say?” He
regarded them brightly.
“I’d say that sounds pretty damned fine,” Susannah told him. Rarely had she said anything
she meant more.
He slapped her companionably on the shoulder. “A good woman is a pearl beyond price!
Don’t know if that’s Shakespeare, the Bible, or a combination of the t—
“Arrr, Lippy, goddam what used to be yer eyes, where do you thinkyou’re going? Did yer
want to meet these folks, was that it?”
His voice had fallen into the outrageous croon that seems the exclusive property of people
who live alone except for a pet or two. His horse had blundered its way to them and Collins
grabbed her around the neck, petting her with rough affection, but Susannah thought the
beast was the ugliest quadruped she’d seen in her whole life. Some of her good cheer
melted away at the sight of the thing. Lippy was blind—not in one eye but in both—and
scrawny as a scarecrow. As she walked, the rack of her bones shifted back and forth so
clearly beneath her mangy coat that Susannah almost expected some of them to poke
through. For a moment she remembered the black corridor under Castle Discordia with a
kind of nightmarish total recall: the slithering sound of the thing that had followed them,
and the bones. All those bones.
Collins might have seen some of this on her face, for when he spoke again he sounded
almost defensive. “Her an ugly old thing, I know, but when you get as old as she is, I don’t
reckon you’ll be winnin many beauty contests yourself!” He patted the horse’s chafed and
sore-looking neck, then seized her scant mane as if to pull the hair out by the roots
(although Lippy showed no pain) and turned her in the road so she was facing the cottage
again. As he did this, the first flakes of the coming storm skirled down.
“Come on, Lippy, y’old ki’-box and gammer-gurt, ye sway-back nag and lost four-legged
leper! Can’t ye smell the snow in the air? Because I can, and my nose went south years
ago!”
He turned back to Roland and Susannah and said, “I hope y’prove partial to my cookin, so
I do, because I think this is gonna be a three-day blow. Aye, three at least before Demon
Moon shows er face again! But we’re well-met, so we are, and I set my watch and warrant
on it! Ye just don’t want to judge my hospitality by myhorse -pitality! Hee!”
I should hope not,Susannah thought, and gave a little shiver. The old man had turned away,
but Roland gave her a curious look. She smiled and shook her head as if to sayIt’s nothing
—which, of course, it was. She wasn’t about to tell the gunslinger that a spavined nag with
cataracts on her eyes and her ribs showing had given her a case of the whim-whams.
Roland had never called her a silly goose, and by God she didn’t mean to give him cause to
do so n—
As if hearing her thoughts, the old nag looked back and bared her few remaining teeth at
Susannah. The eyes in Lippy’s bony wedge of a head were pus-rimmed plugs of blindness
above her somehow gruesome grin. She whinnied at Susannah as if to sayThink what you
will, blackbird; I’ll be here long after thee’s gone thy course and died thy death . At the
same time the wind gusted, swirling snow in their faces, soughing in the snow-laden firs,
and hooting beneath the eaves of Collins’s little house. It began to die away and then
strengthened again for a moment, making a brief, grieving cry that sounded almost human.
Five
The outbuilding consisted of a chicken-coop on one side, Lippy’s stall on the other, and a
little loft stuffed with hay. “I can get up there and fork it down,” Collins said, “but I take my life in my hands ever time I do, thanks to this bust hip of mine. Now, I can’t make you help