Dark Tower V, The Read online

  “But he’s still just a boy, Roland. Don’t you see that?”

  “He won’t be for much longer,” Roland said, and mounted up. He hoped Eddie didn’t see the momentary wince of pain that cramped his face when he swung his right leg over the saddle, but of course Eddie did.

  Chapter III:

  The Dogan, Part 2

  One

  Jake and Benny Slightman spent the morning of that same day moving hay bales from the upper lofts of the Rocking B’s three inner barns to the lower lofts, then breaking them open. The afternoon was for swimming and water-fighting in the Whye, which was still pleasant enough if one avoided the deep pools; those had grown cold with the season.

  In between these two activities they ate a huge lunch in the bunkhouse with half a dozen of the hands (not Slightman the Elder; he was off at Telford’s Buckhead Ranch, working a stock-trade). “I en’t seen that boy of Ben’s work s’hard in my life,” Cookie said as he put fried chops down on the table and the boys dug in eagerly. “You’ll wear him plumb out, Jake.”

  That was Jake’s intention, of course. After haying in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and a dozen or more barn-jumps for each of them by the red light of evening, he thought Benny would sleep like the dead. The problem was he might do the same himself. When he went out to wash at the pump—sunset come and gone by then, leaving ashes of roses deepening to true dark—he took Oy with him. He splashed his face clean and flicked drops of water for the animal to catch, which he did with great alacrity. Then Jake dropped to one knee and gently took hold of the sides of the billy-bumbler’s face. “Listen to me, Oy.”

  “Oy!”

  “I’m going to go to sleep, but when the moon rises, I want you to wake me up. Quietly, do’ee ken?”

  “Ken!” Which might mean something or nothing. If someone had been taking wagers on it, Jake would have bet on something. He had great faith in Oy. Or maybe it was love. Or maybe those things were the same.

  “When the moon rises. Say moon, Oy.”

  “Moon!”

  Sounded good, but Jake would set his own internal alarm clock to wake him up at moonrise. Because he wanted to go out to where he’d seen Benny’s Da’ and Andy that other time. That queer meeting worried at his mind more rather than less as time went by. He didn’t want to believe Benny’s Da’ was involved with the Wolves—Andy, either—but he had to make sure. Because it was what Roland would do. For that reason if no other.

  Two

  The two boys lay in Benny’s room. There was one bed, which Benny had of course offered to his guest, but Jake had refused it. What they’d come up with instead was a system by which Benny took the bed on what he called “even-hand” nights, and Jake took it on “odd-hand” nights. This was Jake’s night for the floor, and he was glad. Benny’s goosedown-filled mattress was far too soft. In light of his plan to rise with the moon, the floor was probably better. Safer.

  Benny lay with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. He had coaxed Oy up onto the bed with him and the bumbler lay sleeping in a curled comma, his nose beneath his cartoon squiggle of a tail.

  “Jake?” A whisper. “You asleep?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” A pause. “It’s been great, having you here.”

  “It’s been great for me,” Jake said, and meant it.

  “Sometimes being the only kid gets lonely.”

  “Don’t I know it…and I was always the only one.” Jake paused. “Bet you were sad after your sissa died.”

  “Sometimes I’m still sad.” At least he said it in a matter-of-fact tone, which made it easier to hear. “Reckon you’ll stay after you beat the Wolves?”

  “Probably not long.”

  “You’re on a quest, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “For what?”

  The quest was to save the Dark Tower in this where and the rose in the New York where he and Eddie and Susannah had come from, but Jake did not want to say this to Benny, much as he liked him. The Tower and the rose were kind of secret things. The ka-tet’s business. But neither did he want to lie.

  “Roland doesn’t talk about stuff much,” he said.

  A longer pause. The sound of Benny shifting, doing it quietly so as not to disturb Oy. “He scares me a little, your dinh.”

  Jake thought about that, then said: “He scares me a little, too.”

  “He scares my Pa.”

  Jake was suddenly very alert. “Really?”

  “Yes. He says it wouldn’t surprise him if, after you got rid of the Wolves, you turned on us. Then he said he was just joking, but that the old cowboy with the hard face scared him. I reckon that must have been your dinh, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said.

  Jake had begun thinking Benny had gone to sleep when the other boy asked, “What was your room like back where you came from?”

  Jake thought of his room and at first found it surprisingly hard to picture. It had been a long time since he’d thought of it. And now that he did, he was embarrassed to describe it too closely to Benny. His friend lived well indeed by Calla standards—Jake guessed there were very few smallhold kids Benny’s age with their own rooms—but he would think a room such as Jake could describe that of an enchanted prince. The television? The stereo, with all his records, and the headphones for privacy? His posters of Stevie Wonder and The Jackson Five? His microscope, which showed him things too small to see with the naked eye? Was he supposed to tell this boy about such wonders and miracles?

  “It was like this, only I had a desk,” Jake said at last.

  “A writing desk?” Benny got up on one elbow.

  “Well yeah,” Jake said, the tone implying Sheesh, what else?

  “Paper? Pens? Quill pens?”

  “Paper,” Jake agreed. Here, at least, was a wonder Benny could understand. “And pens. But not quill. Ball.”

  “Ball pens? I don’t understand.”

  So Jake began to explain, but halfway through he heard a snore. He looked across the room and saw Benny still facing him, but now with his eyes closed.

  Oy opened his eyes—they were bright in the darkness—then winked at Jake. After that, he appeared to go back to sleep.

  Jake looked at Benny for a long time, deeply troubled in ways he did not precisely understand…or want to.

  At last, he went to sleep himself.

  Three

  Some dark, dreamless time later, he came back to a semblance of wakefulness because of pressure on his wrist. Something pulling there. Almost painful. Teeth. Oy’s.

  “Oy, no, quittit,” he mumbled, but Oy would not stop. He had Jake’s wrist in his jaws and continued to shake it gently from side to side, stopping occasionally to administer a brisk tug. He only quit when Jake finally sat up and stared dopily out into the silver-flooded night.

  “Moon,” Oy said. He was sitting on the floor beside Jake, jaws open in an unmistakable grin, eyes bright. They should have been bright; a tiny white stone burned deep down in each one. “Moon!”

  “Yeah,” Jake whispered, and then closed his fingers around Oy’s muzzle. “Hush!” He let go and looked over at Benny, who was now facing the wall and snoring deeply. Jake doubted if a howitzer shell would wake him.

  “Moon,” Oy said, much more quietly. Now he was looking out the window. “Moon, moon. Moon.”

  Four

  Jake would have ridden bareback, but he needed Oy with him, and that made bareback difficult, maybe impossible. Luckily, the little border-pony sai Overholser had loaned him was as tame as a tabby-cat, and there was a scuffy old practice saddle in the barn’s tackroom that even a kid could handle with ease.

  Jake saddled the horse, then tied his bedroll behind, to the part Calla cowboys called the boat. He could feel the weight of the Ruger inside the roll—and, if he squeezed, the shape of it, as well. The duster with the commodious pocket in the front was hanging on a nail in the
tackroom. Jake took it, whipped it into something like a fat belt, and cinched it around his middle. Kids in his school had sometimes worn their outer shirts that way on warm days. Like those of his room, this memory seemed far away, part of a circus parade that had marched through town…and then left.

  That life was richer, a voice deep in his mind whispered.

  This one is truer, whispered another, even deeper.

  He believed that second voice, but his heart was still heavy with sadness and worry as he led the border-pony out through the back of the barn and away from the house. Oy padded along at his heel, occasionally looking up at the sky and muttering “Moon, moon,” but mostly sniffing the crisscrossing scents on the ground. This trip was dangerous. Just crossing Devar-Tete Whye—going from the Calla side of things to the Thunderclap side—was dangerous, and Jake knew it. Yet what really troubled him was the sense of looming heartache. He thought of Benny, saying it had been great to have Jake at the Rocking B to chum around with. He wondered if Benny would feel the same way a week from now.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he sighed. “It’s ka.”

  “Ka,” Oy said, then looked up. “Moon. Ka, moon. Moon, ka.”

  “Shut up,” Jake said, not unkindly.

  “Shut up ka,” Oy said amiably. “Shut up moon. Shut up Ake. Shut up Oy.” It was the most he’d said in months, and once it was out he fell silent. Jake walked his horse another ten minutes, past the bunkhouse and its mixed music of snores, grunts, and farts, then over the next hill. At that point, with the East Road in sight, he judged it safe to ride. He unrolled the duster, put it on, then deposited Oy in the pouch and mounted up.

  Five

  He was pretty sure he could go right to the place where Andy and Slightman had crossed the river, but reckoned he’d only have one good shot at this, and Roland would’ve said pretty sure wasn’t good enough in such a case. So he went back to the place where he and Benny had tented instead, and from there to the jut of granite which had reminded him of a partially buried ship. Once again Oy stood panting into his ear. Jake had no problem sighting on the round rock with the shiny surface. The dead log that had washed up against it was still there, too, because the river hadn’t done anything but fall over the last weeks. There had been no rain whatever, and this was something Jake was counting on to help him.

  He scrambled back up to the flat place where he and Benny had tented out. Here he’d left his pony tethered to a bush. He led it down to the river, then scooped up Oy and rode across. The pony wasn’t big, but the water still didn’t come up much higher than his fetlocks. In less than a minute, they were on the far bank.

  It looked the same on this side, but wasn’t. Jake knew it right away. Moonlight or no moonlight, it was darker somehow. Not exactly the way todash–New York had been dark, and there were no chimes, but there was a similarity, just the same. A sense of something waiting, and eyes that could turn in his direction if he was foolish enough to alert their owners to his presence. He had come to the edge of End-World. Jake’s flesh broke out in goosebumps and he shivered. Oy looked up at him.

  “S’all right,” Jake whispered. “Just had to get it out of my system.”

  He dismounted, put Oy down, and stowed the duster in the shadow of the round rock. He didn’t think he’d need a coat for this part of his excursion; he was sweating, nervous. The babble of the river was loud, and he kept shooting glances across to the other side, wanting to make sure no one was coming. He didn’t want to be surprised. That sense of presence, of others, was both strong and unpleasant. There was nothing good about what lived on this side of the Devar-Tete Whye; of that much Jake was sure. He felt better when he’d taken the docker’s clutch out of the bedroll, cinched it in place, and then added the Ruger. The Ruger made him into a different person, one he didn’t always like. But here, on the far side of the Whye, he was delighted to feel gunweight against his ribs, and delighted to be that person; that gunslinger.

  Something farther off to the east screamed like a woman in life-ending agony. Jake knew it was only a rock-cat—he’d heard them before, when he’d been at the river with Benny, either fishing or swimming—but he still put his hand on the butt of the Ruger until it stopped. Oy had assumed the bowing position, front paws apart, head lowered, rump pointed skyward. Usually this meant he wanted to play, but there was nothing playful about his bared teeth.

  “S’okay,” Jake said. He rummaged in his bedroll again (he hadn’t bothered to bring a saddlebag) until he found a red-checked cloth. This was Slightman the Elder’s neckerchief, stolen four days previous from beneath the bunkhouse table, where the foreman had dropped it during a game of Watch Me and then forgotten it.

  Quite the little thief I am, Jake thought. My Dad’s gun, now Benny’s Dad’s snotrag. I can’t tell if I’m working my way up or down.

  It was Roland’s voice that replied. You’re doing what you were called here to do. Why don’t you stop beating your breast and get started?

  Jake held the neckerchief between his hands and looked down at Oy. “This always works in the movies,” he said to the bumbler. “I have no idea if it works in real life…especially after weeks have gone by.” He lowered the neckerchief to Oy, who stretched out his long neck and sniffed it delicately. “Find this smell, Oy. Find it and follow it.”

  “Oy!” But he just sat there, looking up at Jake.

  “This, Dumbo,” Jake said, letting him smell it again. “Find it! Go on!”

  Oy got up, turned around twice, then began to saunter north along the bank of the river. He lowered his nose occasionally to the rocky ground, but seemed a lot more interested in the occasional dying-woman howl of the rock-cat. Jake watched his friend with steadily diminishing hope. Well, he’d seen which way Slightman had gone. He could go in that direction himself, course around a little, see what there was to see.

  Oy turned around, came back toward Jake, then stopped. He sniffed a patch of ground more closely. The place where Slightman had come out of the water? It could have been. Oy made a thoughtful hoof ing sound far back in his throat and then turned to his right—east. He slipped sinuously between two rocks. Jake, now feeling at least a tickle of hope, mounted up and followed.

  Six

  They hadn’t gone far before Jake realized Oy was following an actual path that wound through the hilly, rocky, arid land on this side of the river. He began to see signs of technology: a cast-off, rusty electrical coil, something that looked like an ancient circuit-board poking out of the sand, tiny shards and shatters of glass. In the black moonlight-created shadow of a large boulder, he spied what looked like a whole bottle. He dismounted, picked it up, poured out God knew how many decades (or centuries) of accumulated sand, and looked at it. Written on the side in raised letters was a word he recognized: Nozz-A-La.

  “The drink of finer bumhugs everywhere,” Jake murmured, and put the bottle down again. Beside it was a crumpled-up cigarette pack. He smoothed it out, revealing a picture of a red-lipped woman wearing a jaunty red hat. She was holding a cigarette between two glamorously long fingers. PARTI appeared to be the brand name.

  Oy, meanwhile, was standing ten or twelve yards farther along and looking back at him over one low shoulder.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “I’m coming.”

  Other paths joined the one they were on, and Jake realized this was a continuation of the East Road. He could see only a few scattered bootprints and smaller, deeper footprints. These were in places guarded by high rocks—wayside coves the prevailing winds didn’t often reach. He guessed the bootprints were Slightman’s, the deep footprints Andy’s. There were no others. But there would be, and not many days from now, either. The prints of the Wolves’ gray horses, coming out of the east. They would also be deep prints, Jake reckoned. Deep like Andy’s.

  Up ahead, the path breasted the top of a hill. On either side were fantastically misshapen organ-pipe cactuses with great thick barrel arms that seemed to point every which way. Oy was
standing there, looking down at something, and once more seeming to grin. As Jake approached him, he could smell the cactus-plants. The odor was bitter and tangy. It reminded him of his father’s martinis.

  He sat astride his pony beside Oy, looking down. At the bottom of the hill on the right was a shattered concrete driveway. A sliding gate had been frozen half-open ages ago, probably long before the Wolves started raiding the borderland Callas for children. Beyond it was a building with a curved metal roof. Small windows lined the side Jake could see, and his heart lifted at the sight of the steady white glow that came through them. Not ’seners, and not lightbulbs, either (what Roland called “spark-lights”). Only fluorescents threw that kind of white light. In his New York life, fluorescent lights made him think mostly of unhappy, boring things: giant stores where everything was always on sale and you could never find what you wanted, sleepy afternoons at school when the teacher droned on and on about the trade routes of ancient China or the mineral deposits of Peru and rain poured endlessly down outside and it seemed the Closing Bell would never ring, doctors’ offices where you always wound up sitting on a tissue-covered exam table in your underpants, cold and embarrassed and somehow positive that you would be getting a shot.

  Tonight, though, those lights cheered him up.

  “Good boy!” he told the bumbler.

  Instead of responding as he usually did, by repeating his name, Oy looked past Jake and commenced a low growl. At the same moment the pony shifted and gave a nervous whinny. Jake reined him, realizing that bitter (but not entirely unpleasant) smell of gin and juniper had gotten stronger. He looked around and saw two spiny barrels of the cactus-tangle on his right swiveling slowly and blindly toward him. There was a faint grinding sound, and dribbles of white sap were running down the cactus’s central barrel. The needles on the arms swinging toward Jake looked long and wicked in the moonlight. The thing had smelled him, and it was hungry.

  “Come on,” he told Oy, and booted the pony’s sides lightly. The pony needed no further urging. It hurried downhill, not quite trotting, toward the building with the fluorescent lights. Oy gave the moving cactus a final mistrustful look, then followed them.