Stephen King – The Dark Tower

1898. We have all heard similar introductory lines, enough to know that they signal—for

better or worse—the onset of autobiography. Yet as they listen to that voice, the

gunslingers are visited by another familiarity; this is true even of Oy. At first they’re not able to put their finger on it, but in time it comes to them. The story of Ted Brautigan, a

Wandering Accountant instead of a Wandering Priest, is in many ways similar to that of

Pere Donald Callahan. They could almost be twins. And the sixth listener—the one beyond

the blanket-blocked cave entrance in the windy dark—hears with growing sympathy and understanding. Why not? Booze isn’t a major player in Brautigan’s story, as it was in the

Pere’s, but it’s still a story of addiction and isolation, the story of an outsider.

Four

At the age of eighteen, Theodore Brautigan is accepted into Harvard, where his Uncle Tim

went, and Uncle Tim—childless himself—is more than willing to pay for Ted’s higher

education. And so far as Timothy Atwood knows, what happens is perfectly

straightforward: offer made, offer accepted, nephew shines in all the right areas, nephew

graduates and prepares to enter uncle’s furniture business after six months spent touring

post–World War I Europe.

What Uncle Tim doesn’t know is that before going to Harvard, Ted tries to enlist in what

will soon be known as the American Expeditionary Force. “Son,” the doctor tells him,

“you’ve got one hell of a loud heart murmur, and your hearing is substandard. Now are you

going to tell me that you came here not knowing those things would get you a red stamp?

Because, pardon me if I’m out of line, here, you look too smart for that.”

And then Ted Brautigan does something he’s never done before, has sworn he neverwilldo.

He asks the Army doc to pick a number, not just between one and ten but between one and

a thousand.To humor him (it’s rainy in Hartford, and that means things are slow in the

enlistment office), the doctor thinks of the number 748. Ted gives it back to him. Plus

419…89…and 997. When Ted invites him to think of a famous person, living or dead, and

when Ted tells him Andrew Johnson, not Jacksonbut Johnson,the doc is finally amazed. He

calls over another doc, a friend, and Ted goes through the same rigmarole again…with one

exception. He asks the second doctor to pick a number between one and a million,then tells

the doctor he was thinking of eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and sixteen. The second

doctor looks momentarily surprised—stunned, in fact—then covers with a big shitlicking

smile. “Sorry, son,” he says, “you were only off by a hundred and thirty thousand or so.”

Ted looks at him, not smiling, not responding to the shitlicking smile in any way at all of

which he is aware, but he’s eighteen, and still young enough to be flabbergasted by such

utter and seemingly pointless mendacity. Meanwhile, Doc Number Two’s shitlicking

smile has begun to fade on its own. Doc Number Two turns to Doc Number One and says

“Look at his eyes,Sam—look at what’s happening to his eyes.”

The first doctor tries to shine an ophthalmoscope in Ted’s eyes and Ted brushes it

impatiently aside. He has access to mirrors and has seen the way his pupils sometimes

expand and contract, is aware when it’s happening even when there’s no mirror handy by a

kind of shuttering, stuttering effect in his vision, and it doesn’t interest him, especially not now. What interests him now is that Doc Number Two is fucking with him and he doesn’t

know why. “Write the number down this time,” he invites. “Write it down so you can’t

cheat.”

Doc Number Two blusters. Ted reiterates his challenge. Doc Sam produces a piece of

paper and a pen and the second doctor takes it. He is actually about to write a number when

he reconsiders and tosses the pen on Sam’s desk and says: “This is some kind of cheap streetcorner trick, Sam. If you can’t see that, you’re blind.” And stalks away.

Ted invites Dr. Sam to think of a relative, any relative, and a moment later tells the doctor he’s thinking of his brother Guy, who died of appendicitis when Guy was fourteen; ever

since, their mother has called Guy Sam’s guardian angel. This time Dr. Sam looks as

though he’s been slapped. At last he’s afraid. Whether it’s the odd in-and-out movement of

Ted’s pupils, or the matter-of-fact demonstration of telepathy with no dramatic

forehead-rubbing, no “I’m getting a picture…wait…,” Dr. Sam is finally afraid. He

stampsREJECTED on Ted’s enlistment application with the big red stamp and tries to get

rid of him—next case, who wants to go to France and sniff the mustard gas?—but Ted

takes his arm in a grip which is gentle but not in the least tentative.

“Listen to me,” says Ted Stevens Brautigan. “I am a genuine telepath. I’ve suspected it

since I was six or seven years old—old enough to know the word—and I’ve known it for

sure since I was sixteen. I could be of great help in Army Intelligence, and my substandard

hearing and heart murmur wouldn’t matter in such a post. As for the thing with my eyes?”

He reaches into his breast pocket, produces a pair of sunglasses, and slips them on.“Ta-da!”

He gives Dr. Sam a tentative smile. It does no good. There is a Sergeant-at-Arms standing

at the door of the temporary recruitment office in East Hartford High’s physical education

department, and the medic summons him. “This fellow is 4-F and I’m tired of arguing with

him. Perhaps you’d be good enough to escort him off the premises.”

Now it is Ted’s arm which is gripped, and none too gently.

“Wait a minute!” Ted says. “There’s something else! Something even more valuable! I

don’t know if there’s a word for it, but…”

Before he can continue, the Sergeant-at-Arms drags him out and hustles him rapidly down

the hall, past several gawking boys and girls almost exactly his own age. Thereisa word,

and he’ll learn it years later, in Blue Heaven. The word is facilitator,and as far as Paul

“Pimli” Prentiss is concerned, it makes Ted Stevens Brautigan just about the most valuable

hume in the universe.

Not on that day in 1916, though. On that day in 1916, he is dragged briskly down the

hallway and deposited on the granite step outside the main doors and told by a man with a

foot-thick accent that “Y’all just want t’stay outta heah, boa.” After some consideration,

Ted decides the Sergeant-at-Arms isn’t calling him a snake;boain this context is most

likely Dixie for boy.

For a little while Ted just stands where he has been left. He’s thinkingWhat does it take to

convince you?and How blind can you be?He can’t believe what just happened to him.

But hehasto believe it, because here he is, on the outside. And at the end of a six-mile walk around Hartford he thinks he understands something else as well. They will neverbelieve.

None of them. Not ever. They’ll refuse to see that a fellow who could read the collective mind of the German High Command might be mildly useful. A fellow who could tell the

AlliedHigh Command where the next big German push was going to come. A fellow who

could do a thing like that a few times—maybe even just once or twice!—might be able to

end the war by Christmas. But he won’t have the chance because they won’t give it to him.

And why? It has something to do with the second doctor changing his number when Ted

landed on it, and then refusing to write another one down. Because somewhere down deep

theywantto fight, and a guy like him would spoil everything.

It’s something like that.

Fuck it, then. He’ll go to Harvard on his uncle’s nickel.

And does. Harvard’s all Dinky told them, and more: Drama, Debate,

HarvardCrimson,Mathematical Odd Fellows and, of course, the capper, Phi Beta Crapper.

He even saves Unc a few bucks by graduating early.

He is in the south of France, the war long over, when a telegram reaches him:UNCLE

DEADSTOPRETURN HOME SOONESTSTOP.

The key word here seemed to beSTOP.

God knows it was one of those watershed moments. He went home, yes, and he gave

comfort where comfort was due, yes. But instead of stepping into the furniture business,

Ted decides toSTOPhis march toward financial success andSTARThis march toward

financial obscurity. In the course of the man’s long story, Roland’s ka-tet never once hears

Ted Brautigan blame his deliberate anonymity on his outré talent, or on his moment of

epiphany: this is one valuable talent that no one in the world wants.

And God, how he comes to understand that! For one thing, his “wild talent” (as the pulp

science-fiction magazines sometimes call it) is actually physically dangerous under the

right circumstances. Or the wrong ones.

In 1935, in Ohio, it makes Ted Brautigan a murderer.