thinned and the wheels of Susannah’s chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which
grew in the alleys between the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless
steel spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on for
another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, and the
ground underfoot became mushy.
“Time for a pig-back, lady,” Roland said.
“Let’s try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier—”
Roland shook his head. “If you try that hill, you’ll . . . what did you call it, Eddie? … do a dugout?”
Eddie shook his head, grinning. “It’s called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term from my
misspent sidewalk-surfing days.”
“Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you come.”
“I hate being a cripple,” Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness Roland wore on his back.
Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland’s pistol. “Y’all want this baby?” she asked Eddie.
He shook his head. “You’re faster. And you know it, too.”
She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily accessible to her
right hand. “I’m slowing you boys down and I know that . . . but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I’ll leave the both of you kneelin in the blocks.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Roland said . . . and then cocked his head. The woods had fallen silent.
“Br’er Bear has finally given up,” Susannah said. “Praise God.”
“I thought it still had seven minutes to go,” Eddie said.
Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. “Its clock must have started running a little slow during the last five or six hundred years.”
“You really think it was that old, Roland?”
Roland nodded. “At least. And now it’s passed . . . the last of the Twelve Guardians, for all
we know.”
“Yeah, ask me if I give a shit,” Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.
“Are you comfortable?” Roland asked her.
“No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me.”
Roland nodded and started down the slope. Eddie followed, pushing the empty chair and
trying not to bang it too badly on the rocks which had begun to jut out of the ground like big
white knuckles. Now that the bear had finally shut up, he thought the forest seemed much
too quiet—it almost made him feel like a character in one of those hokey old jungle movies
about cannibals and giant apes.
23
THE BEAR’S BACKTRAIL WAS easy to find but tougher to follow. Five miles or so out
of the clearing, it led them through a low, boggy area that was not quite a swamp. By the
time the ground began to rise and firm up a little again, Roland’s faded jeans were soaked to
the knees and he was breathing in long, steady rasps. Still, he was in slightly better shape
than Eddie, who had found wrestling Susannah’s wheelchair through the muck and
standing water hard going.
“Time to rest and eat something,” Roland said.
“Oh boy, gimme eats,” Eddie puffed. He helped Susannah out of the harness and set her
down on the bole of a fallen tree with claw-marks slashed into its trunk in long diagonal
grooves. Then he half-sat, half-collapsed next to her.
“You got my wheelchair pretty muddy, white boy,” Susannah said. “It’s all goan be in my repote.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Next carwash we come to, I’ll push you through myself. I’ll
even Turtle-wax the goddamn thing. Okay?”
She smiled. “You got a date, handsome.”
Eddie had one of Roland’s waterskins cinched around his waist. He tapped it. “Okay?”
“Yes,” Roland said. “Not too much now; a little more for all of us before we set out again.
That way no one takes a cramp.”
“Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz,” Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the waterskin.
“What is this Oz?”
“A make-believe place in a movie,” Susannah said.
“Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once in a while.
I’ll tell you one some night, Roland.”
“That would be fine,” the gunslinger replied seriously. “I am hungry to know more of your world.”
“Oz isn’t our world, though. Like Susannah said, it’s a make-believe place—”
Roland handed them chunks of meat which had been wrapped in broad leaves of some sort.
“The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. I would hear of
this Oz.”
“Okay, that’s a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and the Tin
Woodman, and I’ll tell you all the rest.” He bit into his piece of meat and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which it had been rolled, and was
delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling busily all the while. Now that he was
getting his breath back, he felt good—great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of
muscle, and every part of it felt at peace with every other part.
Don’t worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think he’s gonna
push on until I’m ready to drop in my tracks.
Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little sip of water,
turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. “Finish what you started last
night,” she invited Roland. “You said you thought you understood these conflicting
memories of yours.”
Roland nodded. “Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than the other,
but that does not negate the truth of that other.”
“Makes no sense to me,” Eddie said. “Either this boy Jake was at the way station or he wasn’t, Roland.”
“It is a paradox—something that is and isn’t at the same time. Until it’s resolved, I will
continue divided. That’s bad enough, but the basic split is widening. I can feel that
happening. It is … unspeakable.”
“What do you think caused it?” Susannah asked.
“I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know who liked
to push people in front of things?”
Understanding dawned in her face. “Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who pushed
this boy into the street?”
“Yes.”
“But you said the man in black did it,” Eddie objected. “Your buddy Walter. You said that the boy saw him—a man who looked like a priest. Didn’t the kid even hear him say he was?
‘Let me through, I’m a priest,’ something like that?”
“Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake.”
“Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket,” Eddie called. “Roland just went over the high side.”
Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie’s jokes and
clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different … as
Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. “What exasperates me about all of
this,” he said, “is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I
was in Mort. I saw him through Mort’s eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not
only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew
that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he
actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck.”
Eddie began to understand. “If Jake wasn’t pushed into the street, he never died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came into this world, you never
met him at the way station. Right?”
“Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the boy, I would
have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very paradox that is tearing me
apart. But I couldn’t do that. I … I …”
“You couldn’t kill this kid twice, could you?” Eddie asked softly. “Every time I just about make up my mind that you’re as mechanical as that bear, you surprise me with something
that actually seems human. Goddam.”
“Quit it, Eddie,” Susannah said.
Eddie took a look at the gunslinger’s slightly lowered face and gri- maced. “Sorry, Roland.
My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running away with my mind.”