was entirely possible. In any case, her eyes had adjusted and she could see them better
herself. Their great shaggy heads. Even their black eyes.
“There hasn’t been a herd of buffalo that size in America for almost a hundred years,” she
said.
“Aye?” Still only polite interest. “But they’re in plenty here, I should say. If a little tet of
em comes within pistol-shot range, let’s take a couple. I’d like to taste some fresh meat that isn’t deer. Would you?”
She let her smile answer for her. Roland smiled back. And it occurred to her again that
soon she would see him no more, this man she’d believed was either a mirage or a daemon
before she had come to know him both an-tet and dan-dinh. Eddie was dead, Jake was dead,
and soon she would see Roland of Gilead no more. Would he be dead, as well? Would she?
She looked up into the glare of the sun, wanting him to mistake the reason for her tears if
he saw them. And they moved on into the southeast of that great and empty land, into the
ever-strengthening beat-beat-beat that was the Tower at the axis of all worlds and time
itself.
Beat-beat-beat.
Commala-come-come, journey’s almost done.
That night she stood the first watch, then awakened Roland at midnight.
“I think he’s out there someplace,” she said, pointing into the northwest. There was no
need to be more specific; it could only be Mordred. Everyone else was gone. “Watch well.”
“I will,” he said. “And if you hear a gunshot,wake well. And fast.”
“You can count on it,” said she, and lay down in the dry winter grass behind Ho Fat II. At
first she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep; she was still jazzed from the sense of an
unfriendly other in the vicinity. But shedid sleep.
And dreamed.
Ten
The dream of the second night is both like and unlike the dream of the first. The main
elements are exactly the same: Central Park, gray sky, spits of snow, choral voices (this
time harmonizing “Come Go With Me,” the old Del-Vikings hit), Jake (I DRIVE THE
TAKURO SPIRIT!) and Eddie (this time wearing a sweatshirt readingCLICK! IT’S
ASHINNARO CAMERA!). Eddie has hot chocolate but doesn’t offer it to her. She can see
the anxiety not only in their faces but in the tensed-up set of their bodies. That is the main difference in this dream: there is something to see, or something to do, or perhaps it’s both.
Whatever it is, they expected her to see it or do it by now and she is being backward.
A rather terrible question occurs to her: is she beingpurposelybackward? Is there
something here she doesn’t want to confront? Could it even be possible that the Dark
Tower is fucking up communications? Surely that’s a stupid idea—these people she sees
are but figments of her longing imagination, after all; they are dead!Eddie killed by a bullet, Jake as a result of being run over by a car—one slain in this world, one in the Keystone
World where fun is fun and done is done (must be done, for there time always runs in one direction) and Stephen King is their poet laureate.
Yet she cannot deny that look on their faces, that look of panic that seems to tell herYou
have it, Suze—you have what we want to show you, you have what you need to know. Are
you going to let it slip away? It’s the fourth quarter. It’s the fourth quarter and the clock is ticking and will continue to tick,must continue to tick because all your time-outs are gone.
You have to hurry…hurry…
Eleven
She snapped awake with a gasp. It was almost dawn. She wiped a hand across her brow,
and it came away wet with sweat.
What do you want me to know, Eddie? What is it you’d have me know?
To this question there was no answer. How could there be?Mistuh Dean, he daid, she
thought, and lay back down. She lay that way for another hour, but couldn’t get back to
sleep.
Twelve
Like Ho Fat I, Ho Fat II was equipped with handles. Unlike those on Ho Fat I, these
handles were adjustable. When Patrick felt like walking, the handles could be moved apart
so he could pull one and Roland the other. When Patrick felt like riding, Roland moved the
handles together so he could pull on his own.
They stopped at noon for a meal. When it was done, Patrick crawled into the back of Ho
Fat II for a snooze. Roland waited until he heard the boy (for so they continued to think of
him, no matter what his age) snoring, then turned to her.
“What fashes thee, Susannah? I’d have you tell me. I’d have you tell me dan-dinh, even
though there’s no longer a tet and I’m your dinh no more.” He smiled. The sadness in that
smile broke her heart and she could hold her tears back no more. Nor the truth.
“If I’m still with you when we see your Tower, Roland, things have gone all wrong.”
“Howwrong?” he asked her.
She shook her head, beginning to weep harder. “There’s supposed to be a door. It’s the
Unfound Door. But I don’t know how to find it! Eddie and Jake come to me in my dreams
and tell me I know—they tell me with their eyes—but I don’t!I swear I don’t! ”
He took her in his arms and held her and kissed the hollow of her temple. At the corner of
her mouth, the sore throbbed and burned. It wasn’t bleeding, but it had begun to grow
again.
“Let be what will be,” said the gunslinger, as his own mother had once told him. “Let be
what will be, and hush, and let ka work.”
“You said we’d outrun it.”
He rocked her in his arms, rocked her, and it was good. It was soothing. “I was wrong,” he
said. “As thee knows.”
Thirteen
It was her turn to watch early on the third night, and she was looking back behind them,
northwest along the Tower Road, when a hand grasped her shoulder. Terror sprang up in
her mind like a jack-in-the-box and she whirled
(he’s behind me oh dear God Mordred’s got around behind me and it’s the spider!)
with her hand going to the gun in her belt and yanking it free.
Patrick recoiled from her, his own face long with terror, raising his hands in front of him.
If he’d cried out he would surely have awakened Roland, and then everything might have
been different. But he was too frightened to cry out. He made a low sound in his throat and
that was all.
She put the gun back, showed him her empty hands, then pulled him to her and hugged
him. At first he was stiff against her—still afraid—but after a little he relaxed.
“What is it, darling?” she asked him,sotto voce . Then, using Roland’s phrase without even
realizing it: “What fashes thee?”
He pulled away from her and pointed dead north. For a moment she still didn’t understand,
and then she saw the orange lights dancing and darting. She judged they were at least five
miles away, and she could hardly believe she hadn’t seen them before.
Still speaking low, so as not to wake Roland, she said: “They’re nothing but foo-lights,
sugar—they can’t hurt you. Roland calls em hobs. They’re like St. Elmo’s fire, or
something.”
But he had no idea of what St. Elmo’s fire was; she could see that in his uncertain gaze.
She settled again for telling him they couldn’t hurt him, and indeed, this was the closest the hobs had ever come. Even as she looked back at them, they began to dance away, and soon
most of them were gone. Perhaps she hadthought them away. Once she would have scoffed
at such an idea, but no longer.
Patrick began to relax.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep, honey? You need to take your rest.” And she needed to take hers, but she dreaded it. Soon she would wake Roland, and sleep, and the dream would
come. The ghosts of Jake and Eddie would look at her, more frantic than ever. Wanting her
to know something she didn’t, couldn’t know.
Patrick shook his head.
“Not sleepy yet?”
He shook his head again.
“Well then, why don’t you draw awhile?” Drawing always relaxed him.
Patrick smiled and nodded and went at once to Ho Fat for his current pad, walking in big
exaggerated sneak-steps so as not to wake Roland. It made her smile. Patrick was always
willing to draw; she guessed that one of the things that kept him alive in the basement of
Dandelo’s hut had been knowing that every now and then the rotten old fuck would give
him a pad and one of the pencils. He was as much an addict as Eddie had been at his worst,