Stephen King – The Waste Lands

The boy was close now. He thought he knew where Jake was and what he was about to do,

and it filled him with silent wonder. Susannah had come from 1963. Eddie had come from

1987. Between them . . . Jake. Trying to come over. Trying to be born.

I met him, Eddie thought. I must have met him, and I think I remember. . . sort of. It was

just before Henry went into the Army, right? He was taking courses at Brooklyn

Vocational Institute, and he was heav- ily into black—black jeans, black motorcycle boots

with steel caps, black T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Henry’s James Dean look.

Smoking Area Chic. I used to think that, but I never said it out loud, because I didn’t want

him pissed at me.

He realized that what he had been waiting for had happened while he was thinking: Old Star had come out. In fifteen minutes, maybe less, it would be joined by a whole galaxy of

alien jewelry, but for now it gleamed alone in the ungathered darkness.

Eddie slowly held up the key until Old Star gleamed within its wide central notch. And

then he recited the old formula of his world, the one his mother had taught him as she knelt

beside him at the bedroom window, both of them looking out at the evening star which

rode the oncoming darkness above the rooftops and fire-escapes of Brooklyn: “Star light,

star bright, first star I see tonight; wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

Old Star glowed in the notch of the key, a diamond caught in ash.

“Help me find some guts,” Eddie said. “That’s my wish. Help me find the guts to try and finish this damned thing.”

He sat there a moment longer, then got to his feet and walked slowly back to camp. He sat

down as close to the fire as he could get, took the gunslinger’s knife without a word to

either him or Susannah, and began to work. Tiny, curling slivers of wood rolled up from

the s-shape at the end of the key. Eddie worked fast, turning the key this way and that,

occasionally closing his eyes and letting his thumb slip along the mild curves. He tried not

to think about what might happen if the shape were to go wrong—that would freeze him for

sure.

Roland and Susannah sat behind him, watching silently. At last Eddie put the knife aside.

His face was running with sweat. “This kid of yours,” he said. “This Jake. He must be a gutty brat.”

“He was brave under the mountains,” Roland said. “He was afraid, but never gave an inch.”

“I wish I could be that way.”

Roland shrugged. “At Balazar’s you fought well even though they had taken your clothes.

It’s very hard for a man to fight naked, but you did it.”

Eddie tried to remember the shootout in the nightclub, but it was just a blur in his

mind—smoke, noise, and light shining through one wall in confused, intersecting rays. He

thought that wall had been torn apart by automatic-weapons fire, but couldn’t remember for

sure.

He held the key up so its notches were sharply outlined against the flames. He held it that

way for a long time, looking mostly at the s-shape. It looked exactly as he remembered it

from his dream and from the momentary vision he had seen in the fire . . . but it didn’t feel

exactly right. Almost, but not quite.

That’s just Henry again. That’s just all those years of never being quite good enough. You did it, buddy—it’s just that the Henry inside doesn’t want to admit it.

He dropped the key onto the square of hide and folded the edges carefully around it. “I’m

done. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I guess it’s as right as I can make it.” He felt oddly empty now that he no longer had the key to work on—purposeless and directionless.

“Do you want something to eat, Eddie?” Susannah asked quietly.

There’s your purpose, he thought. There’s your direction. Sitting right over there, with her

hands folded in her lap. All the purpose and direction you’ll ever—

But now something else rose in his mind—it came all at once. Not a dream . . . not a

vision …

No, not either of those. It’s a memory. It’s happening again—you’re remembering forward

in time.

“I have to do something else first,” he said, and got up.

On the far side of the fire, Roland had stacked some odd lots of scavenged wood. Eddie

hunted through them and found a dry stick about two feet long and four inches or so

through the middle. He took it, returning to his place by the fire, and picked up Roland’s

knife again. This time he worked faster because he was simply sharpening the stick,

turning it into something that looked like a small tent-peg.

“Can we get moving before daybreak?” he asked the gunslinger. “I think we should get to that circle as soon as we can.”

“Yes. Sooner, if we must. I don’t want to move in the dark—a speaking ring is an unsafe

place to be at night—but if we have to, we have to.”

“From the look on your face, big boy, I doubt if those stone circles are very safe any time,”

Susannah said.

Eddie put the knife aside again. The dirt Roland had taken out of the shallow hole he’d

made for the campfire was piled up by Eddie’s right foot. Now he used the sharp end of the

stick to carve a question-mark shape in the dirt. The shape was crisp and clear.

“Okay,” he said, brushing it away. “All done.”

“Have something to eat, then,” Susannah said.

Eddie tried, but he wasn’t very hungry. When he finally went to sleep, nestled against

Susannah’s warmth, his rest was dreamless but very thin. Until the gunslinger shook him

awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing endlessly over the plain below them,

and it seemed to him that he went with it, flying high into the night, away from these cares, while Old Star and Old Mother rode serenely above him, painting his cheeks with frost.

19

“IT’S TIME,” ROLAND SAID.

Eddie sat up. Susannah sat up beside him, rubbing her palms over her face. As Eddie’s

head cleared, his mind was filled with urgency. “Yes. Let’s go, and fast.”

“He’s getting close, isn’t he?”

“Very close.” Eddie got to his feet, grasped Susannah around the waist, and boosted her into her chair.

She was looking at him anxiously. “Do we still have enough time to get there?”

Eddie nodded. “Barely.”

Three minutes later they were headed down the Great Road again. It glimmered ahead of

them like a ghost. And an hour after that, as the first light of dawn began to touch the sky in

the east, a rhythmic sound began far ahead of them.

The sound of drums, Roland thought.

Machinery, Eddie thought. Some huge piece of machinery.

It’s a heart, Susannah thought. Some huge, diseased, beating heart .. . and it’s in that city,

where we have to go.

Two hours later, the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. White, featureless clouds

had begun to fill the sky above them, first veiling the early sun, then blotting it out. The

circle of standing stones lay less than five miles ahead now, gleaming in the shadowless

light like the teeth of a fallen monster.

20

SPAGHETTI WEEK AT THE MAJESTIC!

the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenues proclaimed.

2 SERGIO LEONE CLASSIX!

A FISTFUL OF $$ PLUS GOOD BAD & UGLY!

99 Cents ALL SHOWS

A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office listening to Led

Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To

her left, in the theater’s remaining display case, there was a poster showing Glint Eastwood.

Jake knew he should get moving—three o’clock was almost here— but he paused a

moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood was

wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown one side of the

serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a pale, faded blue.

Bombar- dier’s eyes.

It’s not him, Jake thought, but it’s almost him. It’s the eyes, mostly .. . the eyes are almost

the same.

“You let me drop,” he said to the man in the old poster, the man who was not Roland. “You let me die. What happens this time?”

“Hey, kid,” the blonde ticket-seller called, making Jake start. “You gonna come in or just stand there and talk to yourself?”

“Not me,” Jake said. “I’ve already seen those two.”