Stephen King – The Dark Tower

would only make things worse than they were already.

“It might be,” Ted said, “that a few Breakers would be interested in taking the train-trip

south with Susannah.”

Dani nodded. “We’re not exactly loved around here for helping you out,” she said. “Ted

and Dinky are getting it the worst, but somebody spit at me half an hour ago, while I was in

my room, getting this.” She held up a battered-looking and clearly much-loved Pooh Bear.

“I don’t think they’ll do anything while you guys are around, but after you go…” She

shrugged.

“Man, I don’t get that,” Jake said. “They’refree .”

“Free to do what?” Dinky asked. “Think about it. Most of them were misfits on

America-side. Fifth wheels. Over here we were VIPs, and we got the best of everything.

Now all that’s gone. When you think about it that way, is it so hard to understand?”

“Yes,” Jake said bluntly. He supposed he didn’twant to understand.

“They lost something else, too,” Ted told them quietly. “There’s a novel by Ray Bradbury calledFahrenheit 451 . ‘It was a pleasure to burn’ is that novel’s first line. Well, it was a pleasure to Break, as well.”

Dinky was nodding. So were Worthington and Dani Rostov.

Even Sheemie was nodding his head.

Fourteen

Eddie lay in that same circle of light, but now his face was clean and the top sheet of the

proctor’s bed had been folded neatly down to his midsection. Susannah had dressed him in

a clean white shirt she’d found somewhere (in the proctor’s closet was Jake’s guess), and

she must have found a razor, too, because his cheeks were smooth. Jake tried to imagine

her sitting here and shaving the face of her dead husband—singing “Commala-come-come,

the rice has just begun” as she did it—and at first he couldn’t. Then, all at once, the image came to him, and it was so powerful that he had to struggle once again to keep from

bursting into sobs.

She listened quietly as Roland spoke to her, sitting on the side of the bed, hands folded in

her lap, eyes downcast. To the gunslinger she looked like a shy virgin receiving a marriage

proposal.

When he had finished, she said nothing.

“Do you understand what I’ve told you, Susannah?”

“Yes,” she said, still without looking up. “I’m to bury my man. Ted and Dinky will help

me, if only to keep their friends—” she gave this word a bitterly sarcastic little twist that actually encouraged Roland a bit; she was in there after all, it seemed “—from taking him

away from me and lynching his body from a sour apple tree.”

“And then?”

“Either you’ll find a way to come back here and we’ll return to Fedic together, or Ted and

Dinky will put me on the train and I’ll go there alone.”

Jake didn’t just hate the cold disconnection in her voice; it terrified him, as well. “You

know why we have to go back to the other side, don’t you?” he asked anxiously. “I mean,

youknow, don’t you?”

“To save the writer while there’s still time.” She had picked up one of Eddie’s hands, and

Jake noted with fascination that his nails were perfectly clean. What had she used to get the dirt out from beneath them, he wondered—had the proctor had one of those little nail-care

gadgets, like the one his father always kept on a keychain in his pocket? “Sheemie says

we’ve saved the Beam of Bear and Turtle. Wethink we’ve saved the rose. But there’s at least one more job to do. The writer. The lazyboneswriter .” Now she did look up, and her

eyes flashed. Jake suddenly thought it might be good that Susannah wouldn’t be with them

when—if—they met sai Stephen King.

“Youbettah save him,” she said. Both Roland and Jake could hear old sneak-thief Detta

creeping into her voice. “After what’s happened today, you justbettah . And this time,

Roland, you tell him not to stop with his writin. Not come hell, high water, cancer, or

gangrene of the dick. Never mind worryin about the Pulitzer Prize, neither. You tell him to

go on and bedone with his motherfuckinstory .”

“I will pass the message on,” Roland said.

She nodded.

“You’ll come to us when this job is finished,” Roland said, and his voice rose just slightly

on the last word, almost turning it into a question. “You’ll come with us and finish the final job, won’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Not because I want to—all the spit and git is out of me—but becausehe

wanted me to.” Gently, very gently, she put Eddie’s hand back on his chest with the other

one. Then she pointed a finger at Roland. The tip trembled minutely. “Just don’t start up

with any of that ‘we are ka-tet, we are one from many’ crap. Because those days are gone.

Ain’t they?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “But the Tower still stands. And waits.”

“Lost my taste for that, too, big boy.” Not quitelos’ mah tase fo’ dat, too, but almost. “Tell you the truth.”

But Jake realized that she wasnot telling the truth. Shehadn’t lost her desire to see the Dark Tower any more than Roland had. Any more than Jake had himself. Their tet might be

broken, but ka remained. And she felt it just as they did.

Fifteen

They kissed her (and Oy licked her face) before leaving.

“You be careful, Jake,” Susannah said. “Come back safe, hear? Eddie would have told you

the same.”

“I know,” Jake said, and then kissed her again. He was smiling because he could hear

Eddie telling him to watch his ass, it was cracked already, and starting to cry once more for the same reason. Susannah held him tight a moment longer, then let him go and turned back

to her husband, lying so still and cold in the proctor’s bed. Jake understood that she had

little time for Jake Chambers or Jake Chambers’s grief just now. Her own was too big.

Sixteen

Outside the suite, Dinky waited by the door. Roland was walking on with Ted, the two of

them already at the end of the corridor and deep in conversation. Jake supposed they were

headed back to the Mall, where Sheemie (with a little help from the others) would attempt

to send them once more to America-side. That reminded him of something.

“The D-line trains go south,” Jake said. “Or what’s supposed to be south—is that right?”

“More or less, partner,” Dinky said. “Some of the engines have got names, likeDelicious

Rain orSpirit of the Snow Country, but they’veall got letters and numbers.”

“Does the D stand for Dandelo?” Jake asked.

Dinky looked at him with a puzzled frown. “Dandelo? What in the hell is that?”

Jake shook his head. He didn’t even want to tell Dinky where he’d heard the word.

“Well, I don’t know, not for sure,” Dinky said as they resumed walking, “but I always

assumed the D stood for Discordia. Because that’s where all the trains supposedly end up,

you know—somewhere deep in the universe’s baddest Badlands.”

Jake nodded. D for Discordia. That made sense. Sort of, anyway.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Dinky said. “What’s a Dandelo?”

“Just a word I saw written on the wall in Thunderclap Station. It probably doesn’t mean

anything.”

Seventeen

Outside Corbett Hall, a delegation of Breakers waited. They looked grim and frightened.D

for Dandelo, Jake thought.D for Discordia. Also D for desperate.

Roland faced them with his arms folded over his chest. “Who speaks for you?” he asked.

“If one speaks, let him come forward now, for our time here is up.”

A gray-haired gentleman—another bankerly-looking fellow, in truth—stepped forward.

He was wearing gray suit-pants, a white shirt open at the collar, and a gray vest, also open.

The vest sagged. So did the man wearing it.

“You’ve taken our lives from us,” he said. He spoke these words with a kind of morose

satisfaction—as if he’d always known it would come to this (or something like this). “The

lives we knew. What will you give back in return, Mr. Gilead?”

There was a rumble of approval at this. Jake Chambers heard it and was suddenly more angry than ever before in his life. His hand, seemingly of its own accord, stole to the handle of the Coyote machine-pistol, caressed it, and found a cold comfort in its shape. Even a

brief respite from grief. And Roland knew, for he reached behind him without looking and

put his hand on top of Jake’s. He squeezed until Jake let loose of the gun.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll give, since you ask,” Roland said. “I meant to have this place, where you have fed on the brains of helpless children in order to destroy the universe, burned to

the ground; aye, every stick of it. I intended to set certain flying balls that have come into our possession to explode, and blow apart anything that would not burn. I intended to point