Song of Susannah (37 page)

“What we’re playing for, Roland, is the ages.”

Roland made a fist and thumped it lightly on the dusty dashboard of John Cullum’s old Ford and nodded.

“Anything can go on that lot, you realize that?
Anything.
A building, a park, a monument, The National Gramophone Institute. As long as the rose stays. This guy Carver can make the Tet Corporation legal, maybe working with Aaron Deepneau—”

“Yes,” Roland said. “I liked Deepneau. He had a true face.”

Eddie thought so, too. “Anyway, they can draw up legal papers that take care of the rose—the rose always stays, no matter what. And I’ve got a feeling that it will. 2007, 2057, 2525, 3700 . . . hell, the year 19,000 . . . I think it’ll always be there. Because it may be fragile, but I think it’s also immortal. We have to do it right while we have the chance, though. Because this is the key world. In this one you never get a chance to whittle a little more if the key doesn’t turn. In this world I don’t think there are any do-overs.”

Roland considered this, then pointed to the dirt road leading into the trees. Into a forest of watching faces and singing voices. A harmonium of all that filled life with worth and meaning, that held to the truth, that acknowledged the White. “And what about the man who lives at the end of this road, Eddie? If he
is
a man.”

“I think he is, and not just because of what John Cullum said. It’s what I feel here.” Eddie patted his chest above the heart.

“So do I.”

“Do you say so, Roland?”

“Aye, I do. Is
he
immortal, do you think? Because I’ve seen much in my years, and heard rumors of much more, but never of a man or woman who lived forever.”

“I don’t think he needs to be immortal. I think all he needs to do is write the right story. Because some stories
do
live forever.”

Understanding lit up Roland’s eyes.
At last
, Eddie thought.
At last he sees it.

But how long had it taken him to see it himself, and then to swallow it? God knew he should have been able to, after all the other wonders he’d seen, and yet still this last step had eluded him. Even discovering that Pere Callahan had seemingly sprung alive and breathing from a fiction called ’
Salem’s Lot
hadn’t been enough to take him that last crucial step. What had finally done it was finding out that Co-Op City was in the Bronx, not Brooklyn. In this world, at least. Which was the only world that mattered.

“Maybe he’s not at home,” Roland said as around them the whole world waited. “Maybe this man who made us is not at home.”

“You know he is.”

Roland nodded. And the old light had dawned in his eyes, light from a fire that had never gone out, the one that had lit his way along the Beam all the way from Gilead.

“Then drive on!” he cried hoarsely. “Drive on,
for your father’s sake! If he’s God—our God—I’d look Him in the eye and ask Him the way to the Tower!”

“Would you not ask him the way to Susannah, first?”

As soon as the question was out of his mouth, Eddie regretted it and prayed the gunslinger would not answer it.

Roland didn’t. He only twirled the remaining fingers on his right hand:
Go, go.

Eddie put the gearshift of Cullum’s Ford into Drive and turned onto the dirt road. He drove them into a great singing force that seemed to go through them like a wind, turning them into something as insubstantial as a thought, or a dream in the head of some sleeping god.

A quarter of a mile in, the road forked. Eddie took the lefthand branch, although the sign pointing that way said
ROWDEN
, not
KING
. The dust raised by their passage hung in the rearview mirror. The singing was a sweet din, pouring through him like liquor. His hair was still standing up at the roots, and his muscles were trembling. Called upon to draw his gun, Eddie thought he would probably drop the damned thing. Even if he managed to hold onto it, aiming would be impossible. He didn’t know how the man they were looking for could live so close to the sound of that singing and eat or sleep, let alone write stories. But of course King wasn’t just
close
to the sound; if
Eddie had it right, King was the
source
of the sound.

But if he has a family, what about them? And even if he doesn’t, what about the neighbors?

Here was a driveway on the right, and—

“Eddie, stop.” It was Roland, but not sounding the least bit like himself. His Calla tan was thin paint over an immense pallor.

Eddie stopped. Roland fumbled at the door-handle on his side, couldn’t make it work, levered himself out the window all the way to his waist instead (Eddie heard the chink his belt buckle made on the chrome strip which faced the window-well), and then vomited onto the oggan. When he fell back into the seat, he looked both exhausted and exalted. The eyes which rolled to meet Eddie’s were blue, ancient, glittering. “Drive on.”

“Roland, are you sure—”

Roland only twirled his fingers, looking straight out through the Ford’s dusty windshield.
Go, go. For your father’s sake!

Eddie drove on.

It was the sort of house real-estate agents call a ranch. Eddie wasn’t surprised. What
did
surprise him a little was how modest the place was. Then he reminded himself that not every writer was a
rich
writer, and that probably went double for
young
writers. Some sort of typo had apparently made his second novel quite the catch among bibliomaniacs, but Eddie doubted if King ever saw a commission
on that sort of thing. Or royalties, if that was what they called it.

Still, the car parked in the turnaround driveway was a new-looking Jeep Cherokee with a nifty Indian stripe running up the side, and that suggested Stephen King wasn’t exactly starving for his art, either. There was a wooden jungle gym in the front yard with a lot of plastic toys scattered around it. Eddie’s heart sank at the sight of them. One lesson which the Calla had taught exquisitely was that kids complicated things. The ones living here were
little
kids, from the look of the toys. And to them comes a pair of men wearing hard calibers. Men who were not, at this point in time, strictly in their right minds.

Eddie cut the Ford’s engine. A crow cawed. A powerboat—bigger than the one they’d heard earlier, from the sound—buzzed. Beyond the house, bright sun glinted on blue water. And the voices sang
Come, come, come-come-commala.

There was a clunk as Roland opened his door and got out, slewing a little as he did so: bad hip, dry twist. Eddie got out on legs that felt as numb as sticks.

“Tabby? That you?”

This from around the right side of the house. And now, running ahead of the voice and the man who owned the voice, came a shadow. Never had Eddie seen one that so filled him with terror and fascination. He thought, and with absolute certainty:
Yonder comes my maker. Yonder is he, aye, say true.
And the voices sang,
Commala-come-three, he who made me.

“Did you forget something, darling?” Only the last word came out in a downeast drawl,
daaa-lin
, the way John Cullum would have said it. And then came the man of the house, then came he. He saw them and stopped. He saw
Roland
and stopped. The singing voices stopped with him, and the powerboat’s drone seemed to stop as well. For a moment the whole world hung on a hinge. Then the man turned and ran. Not, however, before Eddie saw the terrible thunderstruck look of recognition on his face.

Roland was after him in a flash, like a cat after a bird.

But sai King was a man, not a bird. He couldn’t fly, and there was really nowhere to run. The side lawn sloped down a mild hill broken only by a concrete pad that might have been the well or some kind of sewage-pumping device. Beyond the lawn was a postage stamp–sized bit of beach, littered with more toys. After that came the lake. The man reached the edge of it, splashed into it, then turned so awkwardly he almost fell down.

Roland skidded to a stop on the sand. He and Stephen King regarded each other. Eddie stood perhaps ten yards behind Roland, watching both of them. The singing had begun again, and so had the buzzing drone of the powerboat. Perhaps they had never stopped, but Eddie believed he knew better.

The man in the water put his hands over his eyes like a child. “You’re not there,” he said.

“I am, sai.” Roland’s voice was both gentle and filled with awe. “Take your hands from your eyes, Stephen of Bridgton. Take them down and see me very well.”

“Maybe I’m having a breakdown,” said the man in the water, but he slowly dropped his hands. He was wearing thick glasses with severe black frames. One bow had been mended with a bit of tape. His hair was either black or a very dark brown. The beard was definitely black, the first threads of white in it startling in their brilliance. He was wearing bluejeans below a tee-shirt that said
THE RAMONES
and
ROCKET TO RUSSIA
and
GABBA-GABBA-HEY
. He looked like starting to run to middle-aged fat, but he wasn’t fat yet. He was tall, and as ashy-pale as Roland. Eddie saw with no real surprise that Stephen King
looked
like Roland. Given the age difference they could never be mistaken for twins, but father and son? Yes. Easily.

Roland tapped the base of his throat three times, then shook his head. It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t do. Eddie watched with fascination and horror as the gunslinger sank to his knees amid the litter of bright plastic toys and put his curled hand against his brow.

“Hile, tale-spinner,” he said. “Comes to you Roland Deschain of Gilead that was, and Eddie Dean of New York. Will you open to us, if we open to you?”

King laughed. Given the power of Roland’s words, Eddie found the sound shocking. “I . . . man, this can’t be happening.” And then, to himself: “Can it?”

Roland, still on his knees, went on as if the
man standing in the water had neither laughed nor spoken. “Do you see us for what we are, and what we do?”

“You’d be gunslingers, if you were real.” King peered at Roland through his thick spectacles. “Gunslingers seeking the Dark Tower.”

That’s it
, Eddie thought as the voices rose and the sun shimmered on the blue water.
That nails it.

“You say true, sai. We seek aid and succor, Stephen of Bridgton. Will’ee give it?”

“Mister, I don’t know who your friend is, but as for you . . . man, I
made
you. You can’t be standing
there
because the only place you really exist is
here.
” He thumped a fist to the center of his forehead, as if in parody of Roland. Then he pointed to his house. His ranch-style house. “And in there. You’re in there, too, I guess. In a desk drawer, or maybe a box in the garage. You’re unfinished business. I haven’t thought of you in . . . in . . .”

His voice had grown thin. Now he began to sway like someone who hears faint but delicious music, and his knees buckled. He fell.

“Roland!” Eddie shouted, at last plunging forward. “Man’s had a fucking heart attack!” Already knowing (or perhaps only hoping) better. Because the singing was as strong as ever. The faces in the trees and shadows as clear.

The gunslinger was bending down and grasping King—who had already begun to thrash weakly—under the arms. “He’s but fainted. And who could blame him? Help me get him into the house.”

The master bedroom had a gorgeous view of the lake and a hideous purple rug on the floor. Eddie sat on the bed and watched through the bathroom door as King took off his wet sneakers and outer clothes, stepping between the door and the tiled bathroom wall for a moment to swap his wet undershorts for a dry pair. He hadn’t objected to Eddie following him into the bedroom. Since coming to—and he’d been out for no more than thirty seconds—he had displayed an almost eerie calm.

Now he came out of the bathroom and crossed to the bureau. “Is this a practical joke?” he asked, rummaging for dry jeans and a fresh tee-shirt. To Eddie, King’s house said money—some, at least. God knew what the clothes said. “Is it something Mac McCutcheon and Floyd Calderwood dreamed up?”

“I don’t know those men, and it’s no joke.”

“Maybe not, but that man can’t be real.” King stepped into the jeans. He spoke to Eddie in a reasonable tone of voice. “I mean, I
wrote
about him!”

Eddie nodded. “I kind of figured that. But he’s real, just the same. I’ve been running with him for—” How long? Eddie didn’t know. “—for awhile,” he finished. “You wrote about him but not me?”

“Do you feel left out?”

Eddie laughed, but in truth he
did
feel left out. A little, anyway. Maybe King hadn’t gotten to him yet. If that was the case, he wasn’t exactly safe, was he?

“This doesn’t
feel
like a breakdown,” King said, “but I suppose they never do.”

“You’re not having a breakdown, but I have some sympathy for how you feel, sai. That man—”

“Roland. Roland of . . . Gilead?”

“You say true.”

“I don’t know if I had the Gilead part or not,” King said. “I’d have to check the pages, if I could find them. But it’s good. As in ‘There is no balm in Gilead.’”

“I’m not following you.”

“That’s okay, neither am I.” King found cigarettes, Pall Malls, on the bureau and lit one. “Finish what you were going to say.”

“He dragged me through a door between this world and his world. I also felt like I was having a breakdown.” It hadn’t been this world from which Eddie had been dragged, close but no cigar, and he’d been jonesing for heroin at the time—jonesing bigtime—but the situation was complicated enough without adding that stuff. Still, there was one question he had to ask before they rejoined Roland and the real palaver began.

“Tell me something, sai King—do you know where Co-Op City is?”

King had been transferring his coins and keys from his wet jeans to the dry ones, right eye squinted shut against the smoke of the cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. Now he stopped and looked at Eddie with his eyebrows raised. “Is this a trick question?”