Stephen King – The Waste Lands

anyway, and I don’t want to. It was gross. I guess I better start with my Final Essay, because

that’s when I finally stopped thinking that the whole thing might just go away.” He looked

around at them somberly. “That was when I gave up.”

22

JAKE TALKED THE SUN down.

He told them everything he could remember, beginning with My Understanding of Truth

and ending with the monstrous doorkeeper which had literally come out of the woodwork

to attack him. The other three listened without a single interruption.

When he was finished, Roland turned to Eddie, his eyes bright with a mixture of emotions

Eddie initially took for wonder. Then he realized he was looking at powerful excitement . . .

and deep fear. His mouth went dry. Because if Roland was afraid—

“Do you still doubt that our worlds overlap each other, Eddie?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. I walked down the same street, and I did it in his

clothes! But . . . Jake, can I see that book? Charlie the Choo-Choo?”

Jake reached for his pack, but Roland stayed his hand. “Not yet,” he said. “Go back to the vacant lot, Jake. Tell that part once more. Try to remember everything.”

“Maybe you should hypnotize me,” Jake said hesitantly. “Like you did before, at the way station.”

Roland shook his head. “There’s no need. What happened to you in that lot was the most

important thing ever to happen in your life, Jake. In all our lives. You can remember

everything.”

So Jake went through it again. It was clear to all of them that his experience in the vacant

lot where Tom and Gerry’s once had stood was the secret heart of the ka-tet they shared. In Eddie’s dream, the Artistic Deli had still been standing; in Jake’s reality it had been torn

down, but in both cases it was a place of enormous, talismanic power. Nor did Roland

doubt that the vacant lot with its broken bricks and shattered glass was another version of

what Susannah knew as the Drawers and the place he had seen at the end of his vision in the

place of bones.

As he told this part of his story for the second time, speaking very slowly now, Jake found

that what the gunslinger had said was true: he could remember everything. His recall

improved until he almost seemed to be reliving the experience. He told them of the sign

which said that a building called Turtle Bay Condominiums was slated to stand on the spot

where Tom and Gerry’s had once stood. He even remembered the little poem which had

been spray-painted on the fence, and recited it for them:

“See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth.

If you want to run and play,

Come along the BEAM today.”

Susannah murmured, “His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his

mind . . . isn’t that how it went, Roland?”

“What?” Jake asked. “How what went?”

“A poem I learned as a child,” Roland said. “It’s another connection, one that really tells us something, although I’m not sure it’s anything we need to know . . . still, one never knows

when a little understanding may come in handy.”

“Twelve portals connected by six Beams,” Eddie said. “We started at the Bear. We’re only going as far as the middle—to the Tower—but if we went all the way to the other end, we’d

come to the Portal of the Turtle, wouldn’t we?”

Roland nodded. “I’m sure we would.”

“Portal of the Turtle,” Jake said thoughtfully, rolling the words in his mouth, seeming to taste them. Then he finished by telling them again about the gorgeous voice of the choir,

his realization that there were faces and stories and histories everywhere, and his growing

belief that he had stumbled on something very like the core of all existence. Last of all, he

told them again about finding the key and seeing the rose. In the totality of his recall, Jake

began to weep, although he seemed unaware of it.

“When it opened,” he said, “I saw the middle was the brightest yellow you ever saw in your life. At first I thought it was pollen and it only looked bright because everything in

that lot looked bright. Even looking at the old candy-wrappers and beer-bottles was like

looking at the greatest paintings you ever saw. Only then I realized it was a sun. I know it

sounds crazy, but that’s what it was. Only it was more than one. It was—”

“It was all suns,” Roland murmured. “It was everything real.” “Yes! And it was right—but it was wrong, too. I can’t explain how it was wrong, but it was. It was like two heartbeats,

one inside of the other, and the one inside had a disease. Or an infection. And then I

fainted.”

23

“You SAW THE SAME thing at the end of your dream, Roland, didn’t you?” Susannah

asked. Her voice was soft with awe. “The blade of grass you saw near the end of it … you

thought that blade was purple because it was splattered with paint.”

“You don’t understand,” Jake said. “It really was purple. When I was seeing it the way it really was, it was purple. Like no grass I ever saw before. The paint was just camouflage.

The way the doorkeeper camouflaged itself to look like an old deserted house.”

The sun had reached the horizon. Roland asked Jake if he would now show them Charlie

the Choo-Choo and then read it to them. Jake handed the book around. Both Eddie and

Susannah looked at the cover for a long time.

“I had this book when I was a little lad,” Eddie said at last. He spoke in the flat tones of utter surety. “Then we moved from Queens to Brooklyn—I wasn’t even four years

old—and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I felt the same way you do,

Jake. I didn’t like it. I didn’t trust it.”

Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. “I had it, too—how could I ever forget the little girl with my name . . . although of course it was my middle name back in those days. And I

felt the same way about the train. I didn’t like it and I didn’t trust it.” She tapped the front of the book with her finger before passing it on to Roland. “I thought that smile was a great

big fake.”

Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. “Did you lose

yours, too?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll bet I know when,” Eddie said.

Susannah nodded. “I’ll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my head. I

had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue’s wedding. I had it on the train. I remember,

because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was pulling us. I didn’t want it to be

Charlie, because we were supposed to go to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie

might take us anywhere. Didn’t he end up pulling folks around a toy village or something

like that, Jake?”

“An amusement park.”

“Yes, of course it was. There’s a picture of him hauling kids around that place at the end, isn’t there? They’re all smiling and laughing, except I always thought they looked like they

were screaming to be let off.”

“Yes!” Jake cried. “Yes, that’s right! That’s just right!”

“I thought Charlie might take us to his place—wherever he lived— instead of to my Aunt’s

wedding, and never let us go home again.”

“You can’t go home again,” Eddie muttered, and ran his hands ner- vously through his hair.

“All the time we were on that train I wouldn’t let go of the book. I even remember thinking,

‘If he tries to steal us, I’ll rip out his pages until he quits.’ But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see

the engine. It was a diesel, not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then,

after the wedding, that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long

time. I never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now.” She hesitated, then

added: “This could be my copy, for all I know—or Eddie’s.”

“Yeah, and probably is,” Eddie said. His face was pale and solemn . . . and then he grinned like a lad. ” ‘See the TURTLE, ain’t he keen? All things serve the fuckin Beam.’ ”

Roland glanced west. “The sun’s going down. Read the story before we lose the light,

Jake.”

Jake turned to the first page, showed them the picture of Engineer Bob in Charlie’s cab,