made the idea seem at least possible. Even if the city was totally deserted, the population
wiped out by some long-ago plague or outbreak of chemical warfare, it might still serve
them as a kind of giant toolbox—a huge Army-Navy Surplus Store where they could outfit
themselves for the hard passages Eddie was sure must lie ahead. Besides, he was a city boy,
born and bred, and the sight of all those tall towers just naturally got him up.
“All right!” he said, almost laughing out loud in his excitement. “Hey-ho, let’s go! Bring on those wise fuckin elves!”
Susannah looked at him, puzzled but smiling. “What you ravin about, white boy?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I just want to get moving. What do you say, Roland? Want to—”
But something on Roland’s face or just beneath it—some lost, dreaming thing—caused
him to fall silent and put one arm around Susan- nah’s shoulders, as if to protect her.
15
AFTER ONE BRIEF, DISMISSIVE glance at the city skyline, Roland’s gaze had been
caught by something a good deal closer to their current posi- tion, something that filled him
with disquiet and foreboding. He had seen such things before, and the last time he’d come
across one, Jake had been with him. He remembered how they had finally come out of the
desert, the trail of the man in black leading them through the foothills and toward the
mountains. Hard going, it had been, but at least there had been water again. And grass.
One night he had awakened to find Jake gone. He had heard stran- gled, desperate cries
coming from a willow-grove hard by a narrow trickle of stream. By the time he had fought
his way through to the clearing at the center of the grove, the boy’s cries had ceased. Roland
had found him standing in a place exactly like the one which lay below and ahead. A place
of stones; a place of sacrifice; a place where an Oracle lived . . . and spoke when it was forced to … and killed whenever it could.
“Roland?” Eddie asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Do you see that?” Roland pointed. “It’s a speaking ring. The shapes you see are tall standing stones.” He found himself staring at Eddie, whom he had first met in the
frightening but wonderful air-carriage of that strange other world where the gunslingers
wore blue uniforms and there was an endless supply of sugar, paper, and wonderful drugs
like astin. Some strange expression—some foreknowledge—was dawning on Eddie’s face.
The bright hope which had lit his eyes as he surveyed the city whiffed out, leaving him with
a look both gray and bleak. It was the expression of a man studying the gallows on which
he will soon be hanged.
First Jake, and now Eddie, the gunslinger thought. The wheel which turns our lives is
remorseless; always it comes around to the same place again.
“Oh shit,” Eddie said. His voice was dry and scared. “I think that’s the place where the kid is going to try and come through.”
The gunslinger nodded. “Very likely. They’re thin places, and they’re also attractive places.
I followed him to such a place once before. The Oracle that kept there came very close to
killing him.”
“How do you know this?” Susannah asked Eddie. “Was it a dream?”
He only shook his head. “I don’t know. But the minute Roland pointed that goddamn place
out . . .” He broke off and looked at the gunslinger. “We have to get there, just as fast as we can.” Eddie sounded both frantic and fearful.
“Is it going to happen today?” Roland asked. “Tonight?”
Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. “I don’t know that, either. Not for sure.
Tonight? I don’t think so. Time … it isn’t the same over here as it is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow.” He had been battling panic, but now it
broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland’s shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. “But I’m
supposed to finish the key, and I haven’t, and I’m supposed to do something else, and I don’t
have a clue about what it is. And if the kid dies, it’ll be my fault!”
The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie’s and pulled them away from his shirt.
“Get control of yourself.”
“Roland, don’t you understand—”
“I understand that whining and puling won’t solve your problem. I understand that you
have forgotten the face of your father.”
“Quit that bullshit! I don’t care dick about my father!” Eddie shouted hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a breaking branch.
Eddie’s head rocked back; his eyes widened with shock. He stared at the gunslinger, then
slowly raised his hand to touch the reddening handprint on his cheek. “You bastard!” he whispered. His hand dropped to the butt of the revolver he still wore on his left hip.
Susannah tried to put her own hands over it; Eddie pushed them away.
And now I must teach again, Roland thought, only this time I teach for my own life, I think,
as well as for his.
Somewhere in the distance a crow hailed its harsh cry into the stillness, and Roland
thought for a moment of his hawk, David. Now Eddie was his hawk . . . and like David, he
would not scruple to tear out his eye if he gave so much as a single inch.
Or his throat.
“Will you shoot me? Is that how you’d have it end, Eddie?”
“Man, I’m so fucking tired of your jive,” Eddie said. His eyes were blurred with tears and fury.
“You haven’t finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You’re afraid of
finding you can’t finish. You’re afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not
because you’re afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You’re afraid of what
may not come. You’re not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside
yourself. You haven’t forgotten the face of your father. So do it. Shoot me if you dare. I’m
tired of watching you blubber.”
“Stop it!” Susannah screamed at him. “Can’t you see he’ll do it? Can’t you see you’re forcing him to do it?”
Roland cut his eyes toward her. “I’m forcing him to decide.” He looked back at Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stem. “You have come from the shadow of the heroin and the
shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of yourself, if you dare. Come
now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it.”
For a moment he thought Eddie was going to do just that, and it would all end right here,
on this high ridge, beneath a cloudless summer sky with the spires of the city glimmering
on the horizon like blue ghosts. Then Eddie’s cheek began to twitch. The firm line of his
lips softened and began to tremble. His hand fell from the sandalwood butt of Roland’s gun.
His chest hitched once … twice . . . three times. His mouth opened and all his despair and
terror came out in one groaning cry as he blun- dered toward the gunslinger.
“I’m afraid, you numb fuck! Don’t you understand that? Roland, I’m afraid!”
His feet tangled together, He fell forward. Roland caught him and held him close, smelling the sweat and dirt on his skin, smelling his tears and terror.
The gunslinger embraced him for a moment, then turned him toward Susannah. Eddie
dropped to his knees beside her chair, his head hanging wearily. She put a hand on the back
of his neck, pressing his head against her thigh, and said bitterly to Roland, “Sometimes I hate you, big white man.”
Roland placed the heels of his hands against his forehead and pressed hard. “Sometimes I
hate myself.”
“Don’t ever stop you, though, do it?”
Roland didn’t reply. He looked at Eddie, who lay with his cheek pressed against
Susannah’s thigh and his eyes tightly shut. His face was a study in misery. Roland fought
away the dragging weariness that made him want to leave the rest of this charming
discussion for another day. If Eddie was right, there was no other day. Jake was almost
ready to make his move. Eddie had been chosen to midwife the boy into this world. If he
wasn’t prepared to do that, Jake would die at the point of entry, as surely as an infant must
strangle if the mother-root is tangled about its neck when the contractions begin,
“Stand up, Eddie.”
For a moment he thought Eddie would simply go on crouching there and hiding his face
against the woman’s leg. If so, everything was lost . . . and that was ka, too. Then, slowly,
Eddie got to his feet. He stood there with everything—hands, shoulders, head,