Dark Tower V, The Read online

  “That is not for me to say.” Callahan sounded suddenly hesitant and unsure of himself. Afraid, maybe.

  “Do you know you come to the line of Eld?” Roland asked in that same curiously gentle voice. He stretched a hand toward Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. Even toward Oy. “For these are mine, sure. As I am theirs. We are round, and roll as we do. And you know what we are.”

  “Are you?” Callahan asked. “Are you all?”

  Susannah said, “Roland, what are you getting us into?”

  “Naught be zero, naught be free,” he said. “I owe not you, nor you owe me. At least for now. They have not decided to ask.”

  They will, Eddie thought. Dreams of the rose and the deli and little todash-jaunts aside, he didn’t think of himself as particularly psychic, but he didn’t need to be psychic to know that they—the people from whom this Callahan had come as representative—would ask. Somewhere chestnuts had fallen into a hot fire, and Roland was supposed to pull them out.

  But not just Roland.

  You’ve made a mistake here, Pops, Eddie thought. Perfectly understandable, but a mistake, all the same. We’re not the cavalry. We’re not the posse. We’re not gunslingers. We’re just three lost souls from the Big Apple who—

  But no. No. Eddie had known who they were since River Crossing, when the old people had knelt in the street to Roland. Hell, he’d known since the woods (what he still thought of as Shardik’s Woods), where Roland had taught them to aim with the eye, shoot with the mind, kill with the heart. Not three, not four. One. That Roland should finish them so, complete them so, was horrible. He was filled with poison and had kissed them with his poisoned lips. He had made them gunslingers, and had Eddie really thought there was no work left for the line of Arthur Eld in this mostly empty and husked-out world? That they would simply be allowed to toddle along the Path of the Beam until they got to Roland’s Dark Tower and fixed whatever was wrong there? Well, guess again.

  It was Jake who said what was in Eddie’s mind, and Eddie didn’t like the look of excitement in the boy’s eyes. He guessed plenty of kids had gone off to plenty of wars with that same excited gonna-kick-some-ass look on their faces. Poor kid didn’t know he’d been poisoned, and that made him pretty dumb, because no one should have known better.

  “They will, though,” he said. “Isn’t that true, Mr. Callahan? They will ask.”

  “I don’t know,” Callahan said. “You’d have to convince them…”

  He trailed off, looking at Roland. Roland was shaking his head.

  “That’s not how it works,” the gunslinger said. “Not being from Mid-World you may not know that, but that’s not how it works. Convincing isn’t what we do. We deal in lead.”

  Callahan sighed deeply, then nodded. “I have a book. Tales of Arthur, it’s called.”

  Roland’s eyes gleamed. “Do you? Do you, indeed? I would like to see such a book. I would like it very well.”

  “Perhaps you shall,” Callahan said. “The stories in it are certainly not much like the tales of the Round Table I read as a boy, but…” He shook his head. “I understand what you’re saying to me, let’s leave it at that. There are three questions, am I right? And you just asked me the first.”

  “Three, yes,” Roland said. “Three is a number of power.”

  Eddie thought, If you want to try a real number of power, Roland old buddy, try nineteen.

  “And all three must be answered yes.”

  Roland nodded. “And if they are, you may ask no more. We may be cast on, sai Callahan, but no man may cast us back. Make sure your people”—he nodded toward the woods south of them—“understand that.”

  “Gunslinger—”

  “Call me Roland. We’re at peace, you and I.”

  “All right, Roland. Hear me well, do ya, I beg. (For so we say in the Calla.) We who come to you are only half a dozen. We six cannot decide. Only the Calla can decide.”

  “Democracy,” Roland said. He pushed his hat back from his forehead, rubbed his forehead, and sighed.

  “But if we six agree—especially sai Overholser—” He broke off, looking rather warily at Jake. “What? Did I say something?”

  Jake shook his head and motioned Callahan to continue.

  “If we six agree, it’s pretty much a done deal.”

  Eddie closed his eyes, as if in bliss. “Say it again, pal.”

  Callahan eyed him, puzzled and wary. “What?”

  “Done deal. Or anything from your where and when.” He paused. “Our side of the big ka.”

  Callahan considered this, then began to grin. “I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind,” he said. “I went on a bender, broke the bank, kicked the bucket, blew my top, walked on thin ice, rode the pink horse down nightmare alley. Like that?”

  Roland looked puzzled (perhaps even a little bored), but Eddie Dean’s face was a study in bliss. Susannah and Jake seemed caught somewhere between amusement and a kind of surprised, recollective sadness.

  “Keep em coming, pal,” Eddie said hoarsely, and made a come on, man gesture with both hands. He sounded as if he might have been speaking through a throatful of tears. “Just keep em coming.”

  “Perhaps another time,” Callahan said gently. “Another time we may sit and have our own palaver about the old places and ways of saying. Baseball, if it do ya. Now, though, time is short.”

  “In more ways than you know, maybe,” Roland said. “What would you have of us, sai Callahan? And now you must speak to the point, for I’ve told you in every way I can that we are not wanderers your friends may interview, then hire or not as they do their farmhands or saddle-tramps.”

  “For now I ask only that you stay where you are and let me bring them to you,” he said. “There’s Tian Jaffords, who’s really responsible for us being out here, and his wife, Zalia. There’s Overholser, the one who most needs to be convinced that we need you.”

  “We won’t convince him or anyone,” Roland said.

  “I understand,” Callahan said hastily. “Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear. And there’s Ben Slightman and his boy, Benny. Ben the Younger is an odd case. His sister died four years ago, when she and Benny were both ten. No one knows if that makes Ben the Younger a twin or a singleton.” He stopped abruptly. “I’ve wandered. I’m sorry.”

  Roland gestured with an open palm to show it was all right.

  “You make me nervous, hear me I beg.”

  “You don’t need to beg us nothing, sugar,” Susannah said.

  Callahan smiled. “It’s only the way we speak. In the Calla, when you meet someone, you may say, ‘How from head to feet, do ya, I beg?’ And the answer, ‘I do fine, no rust, tell the gods thankee-sai.’ You haven’t heard this?”

  They shook their heads. Although some of the words were familiar, the overall expressions only underlined the fact that they had come to somewhere else, a place where talk was strange and customs perhaps stranger.

  “What matters,” Callahan said, “is that the borderlands are terrified of creatures called the Wolves, who come out of Thunderclap once a generation and steal the children. There’s more to it, but that’s the crux. Tian Jaffords, who stands to lose not just one child this time but two, says no more, the time has come to stand and fight. Others—men like Overholser—say doing that would be disaster. I think Overholser and those like him would have carried the day, but your coming has changed things.” He leaned forward earnestly. “Wayne Overholser isn’t a bad man, just a frightened man. He’s the biggest farmer in the Calla, and so he has more to lose than some of the rest. But if he could be convinced that we might drive the Wolves off…that we could actually win against them…I believe he might also stand and fight.”

  “I told you—” Roland began.

  “You don’t convince,” Callahan broke in. “Yes, I understand. I do. But if they see you, hear you speak, and then convince themselves…?”

  Roland shrugged. “There’ll be water
if God wills it, we say.”

  Callahan nodded. “They say it in the Calla, too. May I move on to another, related matter?”

  Roland raised his hands slightly—as if, Eddie thought, to tell Callahan it was his nickel.

  For a moment the man with the scar on his brow said nothing. When he did speak, his voice had dropped. Eddie had to lean forward to hear him. “I have something. Something you want. That you may need. It has reached out to you already, I think.”

  “Why do you say so?” Roland asked.

  Callahan wet his lips and then spoke a single word: “Todash.”

  Nine

  “What about it?” Roland asked. “What about todash?”

  “Haven’t you gone?” Callahan looked momentarily unsure of himself. “Haven’t any of you gone?”

  “Say we have,” Roland said. “What’s that to you, and to your problem in this place you call the Calla?”

  Callahan sighed. Although it was still early in the day, he looked tired. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” he said, “and by quite a lot. You are considerably more—what’s the word?—trig, I suppose. More trig than I expected.”

  “You expected to find nothing but saddle-tramps with fast hands and empty heads, isn’t that about the size of it?” Susannah asked. She sounded angry. “Well, joke’s on you, honeybunch. Anyway, we may be tramps, but we got no saddles. No need for saddles with no horses.”

  “We’ve brought you horses,” Callahan said, and that was enough. Roland didn’t understand everything, but he thought he now had enough to clarify the situation quite a bit. Callahan had known they were coming, known how many they were, known they were walking instead of riding. Some of those things could have been passed on by spies, but not all. And todash…knowing that some or all of them had gone todash…

  “As for empty heads, we may not be the brightest four on the planet, but—” She broke off suddenly, wincing. Her hands went to her stomach.

  “Suze?” Eddie asked, instantly concerned. “Suze, what is it? You okay?”

  “Just gas,” she said, and gave him a smile. To Roland that smile didn’t look quite real. And he thought he saw tiny lines of strain around the corners of her eyes. “Too many muffin-balls last night.” And before Eddie could ask her any more questions, Susannah turned her attention back to Callahan. “You got something else to say, then say it, sugar.”

  “All right,” Callahan said. “I have an object of great power. Although you are still many wheels from my church in the Calla, where this object is hidden, I think it’s already reached out to you. Inducing the todash state is only one of the things it does.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “If you will render us—for the Calla is my town now, too, ye ken, where I hope to finish my days and then be buried—the service I beg, I will give you this…this thing.”

  “For the last time, I’d ask you to speak no more so,” Roland said. His tone was so harsh that Jake looked around at him with dismay. “It dishonors me and my an-tet. We’re bound to do as you ask, if we judge your Calla in the White and those you call Wolves as agents of the outer dark: Beam-breakers, if you ken. We may take no reward for our services, and you must not offer. If one of your own mates were to speak so—the one you call Tian or the one you call Overholster—”

  (Eddie thought to correct the gunslinger’s pronunciation and then decided to keep his mouth shut—when Roland was angry, it was usually best to stay silent.)

  “—that would be different. They know nothing but legends, mayhap. But you, sai, have at least one book which should have taught you better. I told you we deal in lead, and so we do. But that doesn’t make us hired guns.”

  “All right, all right—”

  “As for what you have,” Roland said, his voice rising and overriding Callahan’s, “you’d be rid of it, would you not? It terrifies you, does it not? Even if we decide to ride on past your town, you’d beg us to take it with us, would you not? Would you not?”

  “Yes,” Callahan said miserably. “You speak true and I say thankee. But…it’s just that I heard a bit of your palaver…enough to know you want to go back…to pass over, as the Manni say…and not just to one place but two…or maybe more…and time…I heard you speak of aiming time like a gun…”

  Jake’s face filled with understanding and horrified wonder. “Which one is it?” he asked. “It can’t be the pink one from Mejis, because Roland went inside it, it never sent him todash. So which one?”

  A tear spilled down Callahan’s right cheek, then another. He wiped them away absently. “I’ve never dared handle it, but I’ve seen it. Felt its power. Christ the Man Jesus help me, I have Black Thirteen under the floorboards of my church. And it’s come alive. Do you understand me?” He looked at them with his wet eyes. “It’s come alive.”

  Callahan put his face in his hands, hiding it from them.

  Ten

  When the holy man with the scar on his forehead left to get his trailmates, the gunslinger stood watching him go without moving. Roland’s thumbs were hooked into the waistband of his old patched jeans, and he looked as if he could stand that way well into the next age. The moment Callahan was out of sight, however, he turned to his own mates and made an urgent, almost bearish, clutching gesture at the air: Come to me. As they did, Roland squatted on his hunkers. Eddie and Jake did the same (and to Susannah, hunkers were almost a way of life). The gunslinger spoke almost curtly.

  “Time is short, so tell me, each of you, and don’t shilly-shally: honest or not?”

  “Honest,” Susannah said at once, then gave another little wince and rubbed beneath her left breast.

  “Honest,” said Jake.

  “Onnes,” said Oy, although he had not been asked.

  “Honest,” Eddie agreed, “but look.” He took an unburned twig from the edge of the campfire, brushed away a patch of pine-duff, and wrote in the black earth underneath:

  Calla Callahan

  “Live or Memorex?” Eddie said. Then, seeing Susannah’s confusion: “Is it a coincidence, or does it mean something?”

  “Who knows?” Jake asked. They were all speaking in low tones, heads together over the writing in the dirt. “It’s like nineteen.”

  “I think it’s only a coincidence,” Susannah said. “Surely not everything we encounter on our path is ka, is it? I mean, these don’t even sound the same.” And she pronounced them, Calla with the tongue up, making the broad-a sound, Callahan with the tongue down, making a much sharper a-sound. “Calla’s Spanish in our world…like many of the words you remember from Mejis, Roland. It means street or square, I think…don’t hold me to it, because high school Spanish is far behind me now. But if I’m right, using the word as a prefix for the name of a town—or a whole series of them, as seems to be the case in these parts—makes pretty good sense. Not perfect, but pretty good. Callahan, on the other hand…” She shrugged. “What is it? Irish? English?”

  “It’s sure not Spanish,” Jake said. “But the nineteen thing—”

  “Piss on nineteen,” Roland said rudely. “This isn’t the time for number games. He’ll be back here with his friends in short order, and I would speak to you an-tet of another matter before he does.”

  “Do you think he could possibly be right about Black Thirteen?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” Roland said. “Based just on what happened to you and Eddie last night, I think the answer is yes. Dangerous for us to have such a thing if he is right, but have it we must. I fear these Wolves out of Thunderclap will if we don’t. Never mind, that need not trouble us now.”

  Yet Roland looked very troubled indeed. He turned his regard toward Jake.

  “You started when you heard the big farmer’s name. So did you, Eddie, although you concealed it better.”

  “Sorry,” Jake said. “I have forgotten the face of—”

  “Not even a bit have you,” Roland said. “Unless I have, as well. Because I’ve heard the name myself, and r
ecently. I just can’t remember where.” Then, reluctantly: “I’m getting old.”

  “It was in the bookstore,” Jake said. He took his pack, fiddled nervously with the straps, undid them. He flipped the pack open as he spoke. It was as if he had to make sure Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum were still there, still real. “The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. It’s so weird. Once it happened to me and once I watched it happen to me. That’d make a pretty good riddle all by itself.”

  Roland made a rapid rotating gesture with his diminished right hand, telling him to go on and be quick.

  “Mr. Tower introduced himself,” Jake said, “and then I did the same. Jake Chambers, I said. And he said—”

  “ ‘Good handle, partner,’ ” Eddie broke in. “That’s what he said. Then he said Jake Chambers sounded like the name of the hero in a Western novel.”

  “ ‘The guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, then moves on,’ ” Jake quoted. “And then he said, ‘Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe.’ ” He looked at Susannah and repeated it. “Wayne D. Overholser. And if you tell me that’s a coincidence, Susannah…” He broke into a sunny, sudden grin. “I’ll tell you to kiss my white-boy ass.”

  Susannah laughed. “No need of that, sass-box. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence. And when we meet Callahan’s farmer friend, I intend to ask him what his middle name is. I set my warrant that it’ll not only begin with D, it’ll be something like Dean or Dane, just four letters—” Her hand went back to the place below her breast. “This gas! My! What I wouldn’t give for a roll of Tums or even a bottle of—” She broke off again. “Jake, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Jake was holding Charlie the Choo-Choo in his hands, and his face had gone dead white. His eyes were huge, shocked. Beside him, Oy whined uneasily. Roland leaned over to look, and his eyes also widened.

  “Good gods,” he said.

  Eddie and Susannah looked. The title was the same. The picture was the same: an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing up a hill, its cowcatcher wearing a grin, its headlight a cheerful eye. But the yellow letters across the bottom, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans, were gone. There was no credit line there at all.