Stephen King – The Dark Tower

with gusto. Eddie tried not to shudder.

“Thank you, ma’am. In any case, the horn signals the change of shifts. The music starts

then.”

“I hate that music,” Dinky said moodily.

“If there’s any time when control wavers,” Ted went on, “that would be it.”

“And what o’clock is that?” Roland asked.

Ted and Dinky exchanged a doubtful glance. Dinky showed eight fingers, his eyebrows

raised questioningly. He looked relieved when Ted nodded at once.

“Yes, eight o’clock,” Ted said, then laughed and gave his head a cynical little shake.

“Whatwould be eight, anyway, in a world where yon prison might always lie firmly east

and not east by southeast on some days and dead east on others.”

But Roland had been living with the dissolving world long before Ted Brautigan had even

dreamed of such a place as Algul Siento, and he wasn’t particularly upset by the way formerly hard-and-fast facts of life had begun to bend. “About twenty-five hours from right

now,” Roland said. “Or a little less.”

Dinky nodded. “But if you’re counting on raging confusion, forget it. They know their

places and go to them. They’re old hands.”

“Still,” Roland said, “it’s the best we’re apt to do.” Now he looked at his old acquaintance

from Mejis. And beckoned to him.

Five

Sheemie set his plate down at once, came to Roland, and made a fist. “Hile, Roland, Will

Dearborn that was.”

Roland returned this greeting, then turned to Jake. The boy gave him an uncertain look.

Roland nodded at him, and Jake came. Now Jake and Sheemie stood facing each other with

Roland hunkered between them, seeming to look at neither now that they were brought

together.

Jake raised a hand to his forehead.

Sheemie returned the gesture.

Jake looked down at Roland and said, “What do you want?”

Roland didn’t answer, only continued to look serenely toward the mouth of the cave, as if

there were something in the apparently endless murk out there which interested him. And

Jake knew what was wanted, as surely as if he had used the touch on Roland’s mind to find

out (which he most certainly had not). They had come to a fork in the road. It had been Jake

who’d suggested Sheemie should be the one to tell them which branch to take. At the time

it had seemed like a weirdly good idea—who knew why. Now, looking into that earnest,

not-very-bright face and those bloodshot eyes, Jake wondered two things: what had ever

possessed him to suggest such a course of action, and why someone—probably Eddie, who

retained a relatively hard head in spite of all they’d been through—hadn’t told him, kindly

but firmly, that putting their future in Sheemie Ruiz’s hands was a dumb idea. Totally

noodgy, as his old schoolmates back at Piper might have said. Now Roland, who believed

that even in the shadow of death there were still lessons to be learned, wanted Jake to ask

the question Jake himself had proposed, and the answer would no doubt expose him as the

superstitious scatterbrain he had become. Yet still, why not ask? Even if it were the

equivalent of flipping a coin, why not? Jake had come, possibly at the end of a short but

undeniably interesting life, to a place where there were magic doors, mechanical butlers,

telepathy (of which he was capable, at least to some small degree, himself), vampires, and

were-spiders. So why not let Sheemie choose? Theyhad to go one way or the other, after all,

and he’d been through too goddam much to worry about such a paltry thing as looking like

an idiot in front of his companions.Besides, he thought,if I’m not among friends here, I

never will be .

“Sheemie,” he said. Looking into those bloody eyes was sort of horrible, but he made

himself do it. “We’re on a quest. That means we have a job to do. We—”

“You have to save the Tower,” said Sheemie. “And my old friend is to go in, and mount to

the top, and see what’s to see. There may be renewal, there may be death, or there may be

both. He was Will Dearborn once, aye, so he was. Will Dearborn to me.”

Jake glanced at Roland, who was still hunkered down, looking out of the cave. But Jake

thought his face had gone pale and strange.

One of Roland’s fingers made his twirling go-ahead gesture.

“Yes, we’re supposed to save the Dark Tower,” Jake agreed. And thought he understood

some of Roland’s lust to see it and enter it, even if it killed him. What lay at the center of the universe? What man (or boy) could but wonder, once the question was thought of, and

want to see?

Even if looking drove him mad?

“But in order to do that, we have to do two jobs. One involves going back to our world and

saving a man. A writer who’s telling our story. The other job is the one we’ve been talking

about. Freeing the Breakers.” Honesty made him add: “Or stopping them, at least. Do you

understand?”

But this time Sheemie didn’t reply. He was looking where Roland was looking, out into

the murk. His face was that of someone who’s been hypnotized. Looking at it made Jake

uneasy, but he pushed on. He had come to his question, after all, and where else was there

to go but on?

“The question is, which job do we do first? It’d seem that saving the writer might be easier

because there’s no opposition…that we know of, anyway…but there’s a chance

that…well…” Jake didn’t want to sayBut there’s a chance that teleporting us might kill you,

and so came to a lame and unsatisfying halt.

For a moment he didn’t think Sheemie would make any reply, leaving him with the job of

deciding whether or not to try again, but then the former tavern-boy spoke. He looked at

none of them as he did so, but only out of the cave and into the dim of Thunderclap.

“I had a dream last night, so I did,” said Sheemie of Mejis, whose life had once been saved

by three young gunslingers from Gilead. “I dreamed I was back at the Travellers’ Rest,

only Coral wasn’t there, nor Stanley, nor Pettie, nor Sheb—him that used to play the pianer.

There was nobbut me, and I was moppin the floor and singin ‘Careless Love.’ Then the

batwings screeked, so they did, they had this funny sound they made…”

Jake saw that Roland was nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.

“I looked up,” Sheemie resumed, “and in come this boy.” His eyes shifted briefly to Jake,

then back to the mouth of the cave. “He looked like you, young sai, so he did, close enough

to be twim. But his face were covert wi’ blood and one of his eye’n were put out, spoiling

his pretty, and he walked all a-limp. Looked like death, he did, and frighten’t me terrible,

and made me sad to see him, too. I just kept moppin, thinkin that if I did that he might not

never mind me, or even see me at all, and go away.”

Jake realized he knew this tale. Had he seen it? Had he actually been that bloody boy?

“But he looked right at you…” Roland murmured, still a-hunker, still looking out into the

gloom.

“Aye, Will Dearborn that was, right at me, so he did, and said ‘Why must you hurt me,

when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me

and—’ ”

“ ‘And kept me in better days,’ ” Eddie murmured. A tear fell from one of his eyes and

made a dark spot on the floor of the cave.

“ ‘—and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me

with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days

before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of

quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten

of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter.

Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would

allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from thePrim . And once I was

strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone.’ ”

“You cried,” Susannah said, and Jake thought:Of course he did. He was crying himself. So

was Ted; so was Dinky Earnshaw. Only Roland was dry-eyed, and the gunslinger was pale,

so pale.

“He wept,” said Sheemie (tears were rolling down his cheeks as he told his dream), “and I

did, too, for I could see that he had been fair as daylight. He said, ‘If the torture were to stop now, I might still recover—if never my looks, then at least my strength—’ ”