The Waste Lands dt-3 Read online

  “Wow!” Eddie said. “Great! I’d fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don’t want to spoil the crease in my pants.”

  “I’m not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah.”

  She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.

  “Eddie!” she cried. “Look at this!”

  He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland’s makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. “Holy shit-a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything.”

  “Hold the cup, Susannah.”

  She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.

  “If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper,” the gunslinger said, “we could scatter the filings on the paper’s surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course.”

  “Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?” Eddie asked.

  Roland nodded. “Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam.”

  Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed… and then settled firmly back in its original direction.

  “Not that way,” Roland said. “Look down, both of you-Eddie at your feet, Susannah into your lap.”

  They did as he asked.

  “When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don’t look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now-look up!”

  They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax… and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path-which ran southeast, if Eddie had his directions right-but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.

  “I might see something” Susannah said doubtfully, “but-”

  “Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!”

  Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. “My God! It’s there! Right there! It’s like when someone has a natural part in their hair!”

  Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. “Say, Roland, this won’t make me sterile, will it?”

  Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.

  “It’s like a riverbed,” Susannah marvelled. “A riverbed so overgrown you can barely see it… but it’s still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?”

  “No,” Roland said. “They’ll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we’ll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands-perhaps tens of thousands-of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!”

  They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam… and those clouds within the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower.

  “You see? Even the clouds must obey.”

  A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam’s influence, they resumed their former course.

  “Well,” Eddie said, “I suppose we ought to get going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and all that shit.”

  “Wait a minute.” Susannah was looking at Roland. “It isn’t just a thousand miles, is it? Not anymore. How far are we talking about, Roland? Five thousand miles? Ten?”

  “I can’t say. It will be very far.”

  “Well, how in the hell we ever goan get there, with you two pushing me in this goddam wheelchair? We’ll be lucky to make three miles a day through yonder Drawers, and you know it.”

  “The way has been opened,” Roland said patiently, “and that’s enough for now. The time may come, Susannah Dean, when we travel faster than you would like.”

  “Oh yeah?” She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again. “You got a race-car lined up? If you do, it might be nice if we had a damn road to run it on!”

  “The land and the way we travel on it will change. It always does.”

  Susannah flapped a hand at the gunslinger; go on with you, it said. “You sound like my old mamma, sayin God will provide.”

  “Hasn’t He?” Roland asked gravely.

  She looked at him for a moment in silent surprise, then threw her head back and laughed at the sky. “Wt-11, I guess that depends on how you look at it. All I can say is that if this is providin, Roland, I’d hate to see what’d happen if He decided to let us go hungry.”

  “Come on, let’s do it,” Eddie said. “I want to get out of this place. I don’t like it.” And that was true, but that wasn’t all. He also felt a deep eagerness to set his feet upon that concealed path, that highway in hiding. Every step was a step closer to the field of roses and the Tower which dominated it. He realized-not without some wonder-that he meant to see that Tower… or die trying.

  Congratulations, Roland, he thought. You’ve done it. I’m one of the converted. Someone say hallelujah.

  “There’s one other thing before we go.” Roland bent and untied the rawhide lace around his left thigh. Then he slowly began to unbuckle his gunbelt.

  “What’s this jive?” Eddie asked.

  Roland pulled the gunbelt free and held it out to him. “You know why I’m doing this,” he said calmly.

  “Put it back on, man!” Eddie felt a terrible stew of conflicting emotions roiling inside him; could feel his fingers trembling even inside his clenched fists. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Losing my mind an inch at a time. Until the wound inside me closes-if it ever does-I am not fit to wear this. And you know it.”

  “Take it, Eddie,” Susannah said quietly.

  “If you hadn’t been wearing this goddamn thing last night, when that bat came at me, I’d be gone from the nose up this morning!”

  The gunslinger replied by continuing to hold his remaining gun out to Eddie. The posture of his body said he was prepared to stand that way all day, if that was what it took.

  “All right!” Eddie cried. “Goddammit, all right!”

  He snatched the gunbelt from Roland’s hand and buckled it about his own waist in a series of rough gestures. He should have been relieved, he suppo
sed-hadn’t he looked at this gun, lying so close to Roland’s hand in the middle of the night, and thought about what might happen if Roland really did go over the high side? Hadn’t he and Susannah both thought about it? But there was no relief. Only fear and guilt and a strange, aching sadness far too deep for tears.

  He looked so strange without his guns.

  So wrong.

  “Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master’s unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it.”

  “Oh, that,” he murmured. “I almost forgot.” He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.

  “This is ridiculous!” Eddie shouted.

  “Life is ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader’s Digest.” Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. “Now can we go?”

  “There is one more thing,” Roland said.

  “Weeping, creeping Jesus!”

  The smile touched Roland’s mouth again. “Just joking,” he said.

  Eddie’s mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.

  31

  IT TOOK THEM MOST of the morning to clear the zone of destruction with which the great bear had protected itself, but the going was a little easier along the path of the Beam, and once they had put the deadfalls and tangles of underbrush behind them, deep forest took over again and they were able to move at better speed. The brook which had emerged from the rock wall in the clearing ran busily along to their right. It had been joined by several smaller streamlets, and its sound was deeper now. There were more animals here-they heard them moving through the woods, going about their daily round-and twice they saw small groups of deer. One of them, a buck with a noble rack of antlers on its upraised and questioning head, looked to be at least three hundred pounds. The brook bent away from their path as they began to climb again. And, as the afternoon began to slant down toward evening, Eddie saw something.

  “Could we stop here? Rest a minute?”

  “What is it?” Susannah asked.

  “Yes,” Roland said. “We can stop.”

  Suddenly Eddie felt Henry’s presence again, like a weight settling on his shoulders. Oh lookit the sissy. Does the sissy see something in the twee? Does the sissy want to carve something? Does he? Ohhhh, ain’t that CUTE?

  “We don’t have to stop. I mean, no big deal. I just-”

  “-saw something,” Roland finished for him. “Whatever it is, stop running your everlasting mouth and get it.”

  “It’s really nothing.” Eddie felt warm blood mount into his face. He tried to look away from the ash tree which had caught his eye.

  “But it is. It’s something you need, and that’s a long way from nothing. If you need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don’t need is a man who can’t let go of the useless baggage of his memories.”

  The warm blood turned hot. Eddie stood with his flaming face pointed at his moccasins for a moment longer, feeling as if Roland had looked directly into his confused heart with his faded blue bombardier’s eyes.

  “Eddie?” Susannah asked curiously. “What is it, dear?”

  Her voice gave him the courage he needed. He walked to the slim, straight ash, pulling Roland’s knife from his belt.

  “Maybe nothing,” he muttered, and then forced himself to add: “Maybe a lot. If I don’t fuck it up, maybe quite a lot.”

  “The ash is a noble tree, and full of power,” Roland remarked from behind him, but Eddie barely heard. Henry’s sneering, hectoring voice was gone; his shame was gone with it. He thought only of the one branch that had caught his eye. It thickened and bulged slightly as it ran into the trunk. It was this oddly shaped thickness that Eddie wanted.

  He thought the shape of the key was buried within it-the key he had seen briefly in the fire before the burning remains of the jawbone had changed again and the rose had appeared. Three inverted V’s, the center V both deeper and wider than the other two. And the little s-shape at the end. That was the secret.

  A breath of his dream recurred: Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

  Maybe, he thought. But this time I’ll have to get all of it. I think that this time ninety per cent just won’t do.

  Working with great care, he cut the branch from the tree and then trimmed the narrow end. He was left with a fat chunk of ash about nine inches long. It felt heavy and vital in his hand, very much alive and willing enough to give up its secret shape… to a man skillful enough to tease it out, that was.

  Was he that man? And did it matter?

  Eddie Dean thought the answer to both questions was yes.

  The gunslinger’s good left hand closed over Eddie’s right hand. “I think you know a secret.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Can you tell?”

  He shook his head. “Better not to, I think. Not yet.”

  Roland thought this over, then nodded. “All right. I want to ask you one question, and then we’ll drop the subject. Have you perhaps seen some way into the heart of my… my problem?”

  Eddie thought: And that’s as dose as he’ll ever come to showing the desperation that’s eating him alive.

  “I don’t know. Right now I can’t tell for sure. But I hope so, man. I really, really do.”

  Roland nodded again and released Eddie’s hand. “I thank you. We still have two hours of good daylight-why don’t we make use of them?”

  “Fine by me.”

  They moved on. Roland pushed Susannah and Eddie walked ahead of them, holding the chunk of wood with the key buried in it. It seemed to throb with its own warmth, secret and powerful.

  32

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER SUPPER was eaten, Eddie took the gunslinger’s knife from his belt and began to carve. The knife was amazingly sharp, and seemed never to lose its edge. Eddie worked slowly and carefully in the firelight, turning the chunk of ash this way and that in his hands, watching the curls of fine-grained wood rise ahead of his long, sure strokes.

  Susannah lay down, laced her hands behind her head, and looked Up at the stars wheeling slowly across the black sky.

  At the edge of the campsite, Roland stood beyond the glow of the fire and listened as the voices of madness rose once more in his aching, confused mind.

  There was a boy.

  There was no boy.

  Was.

  Wasn’t.

  Was-

  He closed his eyes, cupped his aching forehead in one cold hand, and wondered how long it would be until he simply snapped like an overwound bowstring.

  Oh Jake, he thought. Where are you? Where are you?

  And above the three of them, Old Star and Old Mother rose into their appointed places and stared at each other across the starry ruins of their ancient broken marriage.

  II. KEY AND ROSE

  1

  FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN “Jake” Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising inside him. During that time he felt like the last man aboard a foundering ocean liner, working the bilge-pumps for dear life, trying to keep the ship afloat until the storm ended, the skies cleared, and help could arrive… help from somewhere. Help from anywhere. On May 31st, 1977, four days before school ended for the summer, he finally faced up to the fact that no help was going to come. It was time to give up; time to let the storm carry him away.

  The straw that broke the camel’s back was his Final Essay in English Comp.

  John Chambers, who was Jake to the three or four boys who were almost his friends (if his father had known this little factoid, he undoubtedly would have hit the roof), was finishing his first year at The Piper School. Although he was eleven and in the sixth grade, he was small for his age, and people meeting him for the first time often thought he was much younger. In fact, he had sometimes been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ag
o, when he had made such a fuss about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented and allowed it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants to look like a Marine, Laurie. Good for him.

  To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually just “the kid.”

  The Piper School, his father had explained to him the summer before (the Bicentennial Summer, that had been-all bunting and flags and New York Harbor filled with Tall Ships), was, quite simply, The Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy Your Age. The fact that Jake had been accepted there had nothing to do with money, Elmer Chambers explained… almost insisted. He had been savagely proud of this fact, although, even at ten, Jake had suspected it might not be a true fact, that it might really be a bunch of bullshit his father had turned into a fact so he could casually drop it into the conversation at lunch or over cocktails: My kid? Oh, he’s going to Piper. Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy His Age. Money won’t buy you into that school, you know; for Piper, it’s brains or nothing.

  Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Chambers’s mind, the gross carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds which he called facts… or, in more informal circumstances, “factoids.” His favorite phrase, spoken often and with reverence, was the fact is, and he used it every chance he got.

  The fact is, money doesn’t get anyone into The Piper School, his father had told him during that Bicentennial Summer, the summer of blue skies and bunting and Tall Ships, a summer which seemed golden in Jake’s memory because he had not yet begun to lose his mind and all he had to worry about was whether or not he could cut the mustard at The Piper School, which sounded like a nest for newly hatched geniuses. The only thing that gets you into a place like Piper is what you’ve got up here. Elmer Chambers had reached over his desk and tapped the center of his son’s forehead with a hard, nicotine-stained finger. Get me, kid?