Eddie was hugging the trunk as the tree rocked and rolled. As she watched, one of his
hands slipped and flailed wildly for purchase.
“What do we do?” she screamed down at Roland. “It’s goan shake him loose! What do we do?”
Roland tried to think about it, but that queer sensation had returned again—it was always
with him now, but stress seemed to make it worse. He felt like two men existing inside one
skull. Each man had his own set of memories, and when they began to argue, each insisting
that his memories were the true ones, the gunslinger felt as if he were being ripped in two.
He made a desperate effort to reconcile these two halves and succeeded … at least for the
moment.
“It’s one of the Twelve!” he shouted. “One of the Guardians! Must be! But I thought they were—”
The bear bellowed up at Eddie again. Now it began to slap at the tree like a punchy fighter.
Branches snapped and fell around its feet in a tangle.
“What?” Susannah screamed. “What’s the rest?”
Roland closed his eyes. Inside his head, a voice shouted, The boy’s name was Jake!
Another voice shouted back, There WAS no boy! There WAS no boy, and you know it!
Get away, both of you! he snarled, and then called out aloud: “Shoot it! Shoot it in the ass, Susannah! It’ll turn and charge! When it does, look for something on its head! It—”
The bear squalled again. It gave up slapping the tree and went back to shaking it. Ominous
popping, grinding sounds were now coming from the upper part of the trunk.
When he could be heard again, Roland shouted: “I think it looks like a hat! A little steel hat!
Shoot it, Susannah! And don’t miss!”
Terror suddenly filled her—terror and another emotion, one she would never have
expected: crushing loneliness.
“No! I’ll miss! You do it, Roland!” She began to fumble his revolver out of the belt she wore, meaning to give it to him.
“Can’t!” Roland shouted. “The angle’s bad! You have to do it, Susan- nah! This is the real test, and you’d better pass it!”
“Roland—”
“It means to snap the top of the tree off!” he roared at her. “Can’t you see that?”
She looked at the revolver in her hand. Looked across the clearing, at the gigantic bear
obscured in the clouds and sprays of green needles. Looked at Eddie, swaying back and
forth like a metronome. Eddie proba- bly had Roland’s other gun, but Susannah could see
no way he could use it without being shaken from his perch like an over-ripe plum. Also,
he might not shoot at the right thing.
She raised the revolver. Her stomach was thick with dread. “Hold me still, Roland,” she said. “If you don’t—”
“Don’t worry about me!”
She fired twice, squeezing the shots as Roland had taught her. The heavy reports cut across
the sound of the bear shaking the tree like the cracks of a bullwhip. She saw both bullets
strike home in the left cheek of the bear’s rump, less than two inches apart.
It shrieked in surprise, pain, and outrage. One of its huge front paws came out of the dense
screen of branches and needles and slapped at the hurt place. The hand came away dripping
scarlet and rose back out of sight. Susannah could imagine it up there, examining its bloody
palm. Then there was a rushing, rustling, snapping sound as the bear turned, bending down
at the same time, dropping to all fours in order to achieve maximum speed. For the first
time she saw its face, and her heart quailed. Its muzzle was lathered with foam; its huge
eyes glared like lamps. Its shaggy head swung to the left . . . back to the right . . . and
centered upon Roland, who stood with his legs apart and Susannah Dean balanced on his
shoulders.
With a shattering roar, the bear charged.
7
SAY YOUR LESSON, Susannah Dean, and be true.
The bear came at them in a rumbling lope; it was like watching a runaway factory machine
over which someone had thrown a huge, moth-eaten rug.
It looks like a hat! A little steel hat!
She saw it … but it didn’t look like a hat to her. It looked like a radar-dish—a much smaller
version of the kind she had seen in Movie Tone newsreel stories about how the DEW-line
was keeping everyone safe from a Russian sneak attack. It was bigger than the pebbles she
had shot off the boulder earlier, but the distance was greater. Sun and shadow ran across it
in deceiving dapples.
I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.
I can’t do it!
I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her
father.
I’ll miss! I know I’ll miss!
I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun—
“Shoot it!” Roland roared. “Susannah, shoot it!”
With the trigger as yet unpulled, she saw the bullet go home, guided from muzzle to target
by nothing more or less than her heart’s fierce desire that it should fly true. All fear fell
away. What was left was a feeling of deep coldness and she had time to think: This is what
he feels. My God—how does he stand it?
“I kill with my heart, motherfucker,” she said, and the gunslinger’s revolver roared in her hand.
8
THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear’s skull. Susannah’s bullet
struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering fragments. The pole
itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue fire which reached out in a net and
seemed to grasp the sides of the bear’s face for a moment.
It rose on its rear legs with a whistling howl of agony, its front paws boxing aimlessly at
the air. It turned in a wide, staggering circle and began to flap its arms, as if it had decided to fly away. It tried to roar again but what came out instead was a weird warbling sound
like an air-raid siren.
“It is very well.” Roland sounded exhausted. “A good shot, fair and true.”
“Should I shoot it again?” she asked uncertainly. The bear was still blundering around in its mad circle but now its body had begun to tilt sidewards and inwards. It struck a small
tree, rebounded, almost fell over, and then began to circle again.
“No need,” Roland said. She felt his hands grip her waist and lift her. A moment later she was sitting on the ground with her thighs folded beneath her. Eddie was slowly and shakily
descending the pine, but she didn’t see him. She could not take her eyes from the bear.
She had seen the whales at the Seaquarium near Mystic, Connecti- cut, and believed they
had been bigger than this—much bigger, proba- bly—but this was certainly the largest land
creature she had ever seen. And it was clearly dying. Its roars had become liquid bubbling
sounds, and although its eyes were open, it seemed blind. It flailed aimlessly about the
camp, knocking over a rack of curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with
Eddie, caroming off trees. She could see the steel post rising from its head. Tendrils of
smoke were rising around it, as if her shot had ignited its brains.
Eddie reached the lowest branch of the tree which had saved his life and sat shakily astride
it. “Holy Mary Mother of God, he said. “I’m looking right at it and I still don t beli—”
The bear wheeled back toward him. Eddie leaped nimbly from the tree and streaked
toward Susannah and Roland. The bear took no notice, it marched drunkenly to the pine
which had been Eddie’s refuge, tried to grasp it, failed, and sank to its knees. Now they
could hear other sounds coming from inside it, sounds that made Eddie think of some huge
truck engine stripping its gears.
A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at its own face.
Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making the ground tremble
with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir—the world beneath the world—was dead.
9
EDDIE PICKED SUSANNAH UP, held her with his sticky hands locked together at the
small of her back, and kissed her deeply. He reeked of sweat and pine-tar. She touched his
cheeks, his neck; she ran her hands through his wet hair. She felt an insane urge to touch
him everywhere until she was absolutely sure of his reality.
“It almost had me,” he said. “It was like being on some crazy carni- val ride. What a shot!