Stephen King – The Dark Tower

receded, then yes, they might be able to cut in where they wanted. But such doors could be

tricky, too; this they had found out for themselves in the Cave of Voices, when the door

there had sent Jake and Callahan to New York instead of Roland and Eddie, thereby

scattering all their plans into the Land of Nineteen.

“What else must we do?” Roland said. There was no anger in his voice, but to Eddie he

sounded both tired and unsure.

“Whatever it is, it’s gonna be hard. That much I guarantee you.”

Eddie took the bill of sale and gazed at it as grimly as any Hamlet in the history of drama

had ever stared upon the skull of poor Yorick. Then he looked back at Roland. “This gives

us title to the vacant lot with the rose in it. We need to get it to Moses Carver of Holmes

Dental Industries. And where is he? We don’t know.”

“For that matter, Eddie, we don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

Eddie voiced a wild laugh. “You say true, I say thankya! Why don’t I turn us around,

Roland? I’ll drive us back to Stephen King’s house. We can cadge twenty or thirty bucks

off him—because, brother, I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t have a crying dime

between the two of us—but more important, we can get him to write us a really good

hardboiled private eye, someone who looks like Bogart and kicks ass like Clint Eastwood.

Lethim track down this guy Carver for us!”

He shook his head as if to clear it. The hum of the voices sounded sweetly in his ears, the

perfect antidote to the ugly todash chimes.

“I mean, my wife is in bad trouble somewhere up the line, for all I know she’s being eaten

alive by vampires or vampire bugs, and here I sit beside a country road with a guy whose

most basic skill is shooting people, trying to work out how I’m going to start a

fuckingcorporation! ”

“Slow down,” Roland said. Now that he was resigned to staying in this world a little

longer, he seemed calm enough. “Tell me what it is you feel we need to do before we can

shake the dirt of this where and when from our heels for good.”

So Eddie did.

Three

Roland had heard a good deal of it before, but hadn’t fully understood what a difficult

position they were in. They owned the vacant lot on Second Avenue, yes, but their basis for

ownership was a holographic document that would look mighty shaky in a court o’ legal,

especially if the powers-that-be from the Sombra Corporation started throwing lawyers at

them.

Eddie wanted to get the writ of trade to Moses Carver, if he could, along with the

information that his goddaughter, Odetta Holmes—missing for thirteen years by the

summer of 1977—was alive and well and wanted above all things for Carver to assume

guardianship, not just of the vacant lot itself, but of a certain rose growing wild within its borders.

Moses Carver—if still alive—had to be convinced enough by what he heard to fold the

so-called Tet Corporation into Holmes Industries (or vice-versa). More! He had to dedicate

what was left of his life (and Eddie had an idea Carver might be Aaron Deepneau’s age by

now) to building a corporate giant whose only real purpose was to thwart two other

corporate giants, Sombra and North Central Positronics, at every turn. To strangle them if

possible, and keep them from becoming a monster that would leave its destroyer’s track

across all the dying expanse of Mid-World and mortally wound the Dark Tower itself.

“Maybe we should have left the writ o’ trade with sai Deepneau,” Roland mused when he

had heard Eddie through to the end. “At least he could have located this Carver and sought him out and told our tale for us.”

“No, we did right to keep it.” This was one of the few things of which Eddie was

completely sure. “If we’d left this piece of paper with Aaron Deepneau, it’d be ashes in the

wind by now.”

“You believe Tower would have repented his bargain and talked his friend into destroying

it?”

“I know it,” Eddie said. “But even if Deepneau could stand up to his old friend going

yatta-yatta-yatta in his ear for hours on end—‘Burn it, Aaron, they coerced me and now

they mean to screw me, you know it as well as I do, burn it and we’ll call the cops on

thosemomsers ’—do you think Moses Carver would believe such a crazy story?”

Roland smiled bleakly. “I don’t think his belief would be an issue, Eddie. Because, think

thee a moment, how much of our crazy story has Aaron Deepneau actuallyheard ?”

“Not enough,” Eddie agreed. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands against

them. Hard. “I can only think of one person who could actually convince Moses Carver to

do the things we’d have to ask, and she’s otherwise occupied. In the year of ’99. And by

then, Carver’s gonna be as dead as Deepneau and maybe Tower himself.”

“Well, what can we do without her? What will satisfy you?”

Eddie was thinking that perhaps Susannah could come back to 1977 without them,

sinceshe, at least, hadn’t visited it yet. Well…she’d come here todash, but he didn’t think

that exactly counted. He supposed she might be barred from 1977 solely on the grounds

that she was ka-tet with him and Roland. Or some other grounds. Eddie didn’t know.

Reading the fine print had never been his strong point. He turned to ask Roland what he

thought, but Roland spoke before he got a chance.

“What about our dan-tete?” he asked.

Although Eddie understood the term—it meant baby god or little savior—he did not at

first understand what Roland meant by it. Then he did. Had not their Waterford dan-tete

loaned them the very car they were sitting in, say thankya?“Cullum? Is that who you’re

talking about, Roland? The guy with the case of autographed baseballs?”

“You say true,” Roland replied. He spoke in that dry tone which indicated not amusement

but mild exasperation. “Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm for the idea.”

“But…you told him to go away! And he agreed to go!”

“And how enthusiastic would you say he was about visiting his friend in Vermong?”

“Mont,” Eddie said, unable to suppress a smile. Yet, smiling or not, what he felt most strongly was dismay. He thought that ugly scraping sound he heard in his imagination was

Roland’s two-fingered right hand, prospecting around at the very bottom of the barrel.

Roland shrugged as if to say he didn’t care if Cullum had spoken of going to Vermont or

Barony o’ Garlan. “Answer my question.”

“Well…”

Cullum actually hadn’t expressed much enthusiasm for the idea at all. He had from the

very first reacted more like one ofthem than one of the grass-eaters among whom he lived

(Eddie recognized grass-eaters very easily, having been one himself until Roland first

kidnapped him and then began his homicidal lessons). Cullum had been clearly intrigued

by the gunslingers, and curious about their business in his little town. But Roland had been

very emphatic about what he wanted, and folks had a way of following his orders.

Now he made a twirling motion with his right hand, his old impatient gesture.Hurry, for

your father’s sake. Shit or get off the commode.

“I guess he really didn’twant to go,” Eddie said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s still at his

house in East Stoneham.”

“He is, though. Hedidn’t go.”

Eddie managed to keep his mouth from dropping open only with some effort. “How can

you know that? Can you touch him, is that it?”

Roland shook his head.

“Then how—”

“Ka.”

“Ka?Ka? Just what the fuck doesthat mean?”

Roland’s face was haggard and tired, the skin pale beneath his tan. “Who else do we know

in this part of the world?”

“No one, but—”

“Then it’s him.” Roland spoke flatly, as if stating some obvious fact of life for a child: up is over your head, down is where your feet stick to the earth.

Eddie got ready to tell him that was stupid, nothing more than rank superstition, then

didn’t. Putting aside Deepneau, Tower, Stephen King, and the hideous Jack Andolini, John

Cullumwas the only person they knew in this part of the world (or on this level of the

Tower, if you preferred to think of it that way). And, after the things Eddie had seen in the last few months—hell, in the lastweek —who was he to sneer at superstition?

“All right,” Eddie said. “I guess we better try it.”

“How do we get in touch?”

“We can phone him from Bridgton. But in a story, Roland, a minor character like John

Cullum wouldnever come in off the bench to save the day. It wouldn’t be considered