Dark Tower VII, The (v. 7)

by Stephen King

  “Indeed we do not,” Nancy said. “But that doesn’t mean the Crimson King is necessarily imprisoned at the top of the Tower. Although I suppose it might.”

  Roland thought of his own belief that the Red King was locked out of the Tower, on a kind of balcony. Was it a genuine intuition, or just something he wanted to believe?

  “In any case, we think you should watch for this Patrick Danville,” Marian said. “The consensus is that he’s a real person, but we haven’t been able to find any trace of him here. Perhaps you may find him in Thunderclap.”

  “Or beyond it,” Moses put in.

  Marian was nodding. “According to the story King tells in Insomnia—you’ll see for yourself—Patrick Danville dies as a young man. But that may not be true. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “When you find Patrick Danville—or when he finds you— he may still be the child described in this book,” Nancy said, “or he could be as old as Uncle Mose.”

  “Bad luck f’him if that be true!” said the old man, and chortled.

  Roland lifted the book, stared at the red and white cover, traced the slightly raised letters that made a word he could not read. “Surely it’s just a story?”

  “From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed,” Marian Carver said, “very few of the things Stephen King wrote were ‘just stories.’ He may not believe that; we do.”

  But years of dealing with the Crimson King may have left you with a way of jumping at shadows, do it please ya, Roland thought. Aloud he said, “If not stories, what?”

  It was Moses Carver who answered. “We think maybe messages in bottles.” In the way he spoke this word — boh’uls, almost — Roland heard a heartbreaking echo of Susannah, and suddenly wanted to see her and know she was all right. This desire was so strong it left a bitter taste on his tongue.

  “—that great sea.”

  “Beg your pardon,” the gunslinger said. “I was wool-gathering.”

  “I said we believe that Stephen King’s cast his bottles upon that great sea. The one we call the Prim. In hopes that they’ll reach you, and the messages inside will make it possible for you and my Odetta to gain your goal.”

  “Which brings us to our final gifts,” Marian said. “Our true gifts. First …” She handed him the box.

  It opened on a hinge. Roland placed his left hand splayed over the top, meaning to swing it back, then paused and studied his interlocutors. They were looking at him with hope and suspenseful interest, an expression that made him uneasy. A mad (but surprisingly persuasive) idea came to him: that these were in truth agents of the Crimson King, and when he opened the box, the last thing he’d see would be a primed sneetch, counting down the last few clicks to red zero. And the last sound he’d hear before the world blew up around him would be their mad laughter and a cry of Hile the Red King! It wasn’t impossible, either, but a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.

  If ka will say so, let it be so, he thought, and opened the box.

  TWELVE

  Within, resting on dark blue velvet (which they might or might not have known was the color of the Royal Court of Gilead), was a watch within a coiled chain. Engraved upon its gold cover were three objects: a key, a rose, and—between and slightly above them—a tower with tiny windows marching around its circumference in an ascending spiral.

  Roland was amazed to find his eyes once more filling with tears. When he looked at the others again—two young women and one old man, the brains and guts of the Tet Corporation—he at first saw six instead of three. He blinked the phantom doubles away.

  “Open the cover and look inside,” Moses Carver said. “And there’s no need to hide your tears in this company, you son of Steven, for we’re not the machines the others would replace us with, if they had their way.”

  Roland saw that the old man spoke true, for tears were slipping down the weathered darkness of his cheeks. Nancy Deepneau was also weeping freely. And although Marian Carver no doubt prided herself on being made of sterner stuff, her eyes held a suspicious gleam.

  He depressed the stem protruding from the top of the case, and the lid sprang up. Inside, finely scrolled hands told the hour and the minute, and with perfect accuracy, he had no doubt. Below, in its own small circle, a smaller hand raced away the seconds. Carved on the inside of the lid was this:

  To the Hand of ROLAND DESCHAIN

  From Those of

  MOSES ISAAC CARVER

  MARIAN ODETTA CARVER

  NANCY REBECCA DEEPNEAU

  With Our Gratitude

  White Over Red, Thus GOD Wills Ever

  “Thankee-sai,” Roland said in a hoarse and trembling voice. “I thank you, and so would my friends, were they here to speak.”

  “In our hearts they do speak, Roland,” Marian said. “And in your face we see them very well.”

  Moses Carver was smiling. “In our world, Roland, giving a man a gold watch has a special significance.”

  “What would that be?” Roland asked. He held the watch— easily the finest timepiece he’d ever had in his life—up to his ear and listened to the precise and delicate ticking of its machinery.

  “That his work is done and it’s time for him to go fishing or play with his grandchildren,” Nancy Deepneau said. “But we gave it to you for a different reason. May it count the hours to your goal and tell you when you near it.”

  “How can it do that?”

  “We have one exceptional good-mind fellow in New Mexico,” Marian said. “His name is Fred Towne. He sees a great deal and is rarely if ever mistaken. This watch is a Patek Philippe, Roland. It cost nineteen thousand dollars, and the makers guarantee a full refund of the price if it’s ever fast or slow. It needs no winding, for it runs on a battery—not made by North Central Positronics or any subsidiary thereof, I can assure you—that will last a hundred years. According to Fred, when you near the Dark Tower, the watch may nevertheless stop.”

  “Or begin to run backward,” Nancy said. “Watch for it.”

  Moses Carver said, “I believe you will, won’t you?”

  “Aye,” Roland agreed. He put the watch carefully in one pocket (after another long look at the carvings on the golden cover) and the box in another. “I will watch this watch very well.”

  “You must watch for something else, too,” Marian said. “Mordred.”

  Roland waited.

  “We have reason to believe that he’s murdered the one you called Walter.” She paused. “And I see that does not surprise you. May I ask why?”

  “Walter’s finally left my dreams, just as the ache has left my hip and my head,” Roland said. “The last time he visited them was in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the night of the Beamquake.” He would not tell them how terrible those dreams had been, dreams in which he wandered, lost and alone, down a dank castle corridor with cobwebs brushing his face; the scuttering sound of something approaching from the darkness behind him (or perhaps above him), and, just before waking up, the gleam of red eyes and a whispered, inhuman voice: “Father.”

  They were looking at him grimly. At last Marian said: “Beware him, Roland. Fred Towne, the fellow I mentioned, says ‘Mordred be a-hungry.’ He says that’s a literal hunger. Fred’s a brave man, but he’s afraid of your … your enemy.”

  My son, why don’t you say it? Roland thought, but believed he knew. She withheld out of care for his feelings.

  Moses Carver stood and set his cane beside his daughter’s desk. “I have one more thing for you,” he said, “on’y it was yours all along—yours to carry and lay down when you get to where you’re bound.”

  Roland was honestly perplexed, and more perplexed still when the old man began to slowly unbutton his shirt down the front. Marian made as if to help him and he motioned her away brusquely. Beneath his dress-shirt was an old man’s strap-style undershirt, what the gunslinger thought of as a slinkum. Bene
ath it was a shape that Roland recognized at once, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest. For a moment he was cast back to the cabin on the lake—Beckhardt’s cabin, Eddie by his side—and heard his own words: Put Auntie’s cross around your neck, and when you meet with sai Carver, show it to him. It may go a long way toward convincing him you’re on the straight. But first …

  The cross was now on a chain of fine gold links. Moses Carver pulled it free of his slinkum by this, looked at it for a moment, looked up at Roland with a little smile on his lips, then down at the cross again. He blew upon it. Faint and faint, raising the hair on the gunslinger’s arms, came Susannah’s voice:

  “We buried Pimsey under the apple tree …”

  Then it was gone. For a moment there was nothing, and Carver, frowning now, drew in breath to blow again. There was no need. Before he could, John Cullum’s Yankee drawl arose, not from the cross itself, but seemingly from the air just above it.

  “We done our best, partner”—paaa’t-nuh—“and I hope ’twas good enough. Now, I always knew this was on loan to me, and here it is, back where it belongs. You know where it finishes up, I …” Here the words, which had been fading ever since here it is, became inaudible even to Roland’s keen ears. Yet he had heard enough. He took Aunt Talitha’s cross, which he had promised to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower, and donned it once more. It had come back to him, and why would it not have done? Was ka not a wheel?

  “I thank you, sai Carver,” he said. “For myself, for my ka-tet that was, and on behalf of the woman who gave it to me.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Moses Carver said. “Thank Johnny Cullum. He give it to me on his deathbed. That man had some hard bark on him.”

  “I—” Roland began, and for a moment could say no more. His heart was too full. “I thank you all,” he said at last. He bowed his head to them with the palm of his right fist against his brow and his eyes closed.

  When he opened them again, Moses Carver was holding out his thin old arms. “Now it’s time for us to go our way and you to go yours,” he said. “Put your arms around me, Roland, and kiss my cheek in farewell if you would, and think of my girl as you do, for I’d say goodbye to her if I may.”

  Roland did as he was bid, and in another world, as she dozed aboard a train bound for Fedic, Susannah put a hand to her cheek, for it seemed to her that Daddy Mose had come to her, and put an arm around her, and bid her goodbye, good luck, good journey.

  THIRTEEN

  When Roland stepped out of the ele-vaydor in the lobby, he wasn’t surprised to see a woman in a gray-green pullover and slacks the color of moss standing in front of the garden with a few other quietly respectful folken. An animal which was not quite a dog sat by her left shoe. Roland crossed to her and touched her elbow. Irene Tassenbaum turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Do you hear it?” she asked. “It’s like the singing we heard in Lovell, only a hundred times sweeter.”

  “I hear it,” he said. Then he bent and picked up Oy. He looked into the bumbler’s bright gold-ringed eyes as the voices sang. “Friend of Jake,” he said, “what message did he give?”

  Oy tried, but the best he could manage was something that sounded like Dandy-o, a word Roland vaguely remembered from an old drinking song, where it rimed with Adelina says she’s randy-o.

  Roland put his forehead down against Oy’s forehead and closed his eyes. He smelled the bumbler’s warm breath. And more: a scent deep in his fur that was the hay into which Jake and Benny Slightman had taken turns jumping not so long before. In his mind, mingled with the sweet singing of those voices, he heard the voice of Jake Chambers for the last time:

  Tell him Eddie says, “Watch for Dandelo.” Don’t forget!

  And Oy had not.

  FOURTEEN

  Outside, as they descended the steps of 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza, a deferential voice said, “Sir? Madam?”

  It was a man in a black suit and a soft black cap. He stood by the longest, blackest car Roland had ever seen. Looking at it made the gunslinger uneasy.

  “Who’s sent us a funeral bucka?” he asked.

  Irene Tassenbaum smiled. The rose had refreshed her— excited and exhilarated her, as well—but she was still tired. And concerned to get in touch with David, who would likely be out of his mind with worry by this time.

  “It’s not a hearse,” she said. “It’s a limousine. A car for special people … or people who think they’re special.” Then, to the driver: “While we’re riding, can you have someone in your office check some airline info for me?”

  “Of course, madam. May I ask your carrier of choice and your destination?”

  “My destination’s Portland, Maine. My carrier of choice is Rubberband Airlines, if they’re going there this afternoon.”

  The limousine’s windows were smoked glass, the interior dim and ringed with colored lights. Oy jumped up on one of the seats and watched with interest as the city rolled past. Roland was mildly amazed to see that there was a completely stocked liquor-bar on one side of the long passenger compartment. He thought of having a beer and decided that even such a mild drink would be enough to dim his own lights. Irene had no such worries. She poured herself what looked like whiskey from a small bottle and then held the glass toward him.

  “May your road wind ever upward and the wind be ever at your back, me foine bucko,” she said.

  Roland nodded. “A good toast. Thankee-sai.”

  “These have been the most amazing three days of my life. I want to thankee-sai you. For choosing me.” Also for laying me, she thought but did not add. She and Dave still enjoyed the occasional snuggle, but not like that of the previous night. It had never been like that. And if Roland hadn’t been distracted? Very likely she would have blown her silly self up, like a Black Cat firecracker.

  Roland nodded and watched the streets of the city—a version of Lud, but still young and vital—go by. “What about your car?” he asked.

  “If we want it before we come back to New York, we’ll have someone drive it up to Maine. Probably David’s Beemer will do us. It’s one of the advantages of being wealthy—why are you looking at me that way?”

  “You have a cartomobile called a Beamer?”

  “It’s slang,” she said. “It’s actually BMW. Stands for Bavarian Motor Works.”

  “Ah.” Roland tried to look as if he understood.

  “Roland, may I ask you a question?”

  He twirled his hand for her to go ahead.

  “When we saved the writer, did we also save the world? We did, somehow, didn’t we?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How does it happen that a writer who’s not even very good—and I can say that, I’ve read four or five of his books— gets to be in charge of the world’s destiny? Or of the entire universe’s?”

  “If he’s not very good, why didn’t you stop at one?”

  Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. “Touché. He is readable, I’ll give him that—tells a good story, but has a tin ear for language. I answered your question, now answer mine. God knows there are writers who feel that the whole world hangs on what they say. Norman Mailer comes to mind, also Shirley Hazzard and John Updike. But apparently in this case the world really does. How did it happen?”

  Roland shrugged. “He hears the right voices and sings the right songs. Which is to say, ka.”

  It was Irene Tassenbaum’s turn to look as though she understood.

  FIFTEEN

  The limousine drew up in front of a building with a green awning out front. Another man in another well-cut suit was standing by the door. The steps leading up from the sidewalk were blocked with yellow tape. There were words printed on it which Roland couldn’t read.

  “It says CRIME SCENE, DO NOT ENTER,” Mrs. Tassenbaum told him. “But it looks like it’s been there awhile. I think they usually take the tape down once they’re finished with their cameras and little brushes and things. You must have powerful friends.”

  Roland was sure t
he tape had indeed been there awhile; three weeks, give or take. That was when Jake and Pere Callahan had entered the Dixie Pig, positive they were going to their deaths but pushing ahead anyway. He saw there was a little puddle of liquor left in Irene’s glass and swallowed it, grimacing at the hot taste of the alcohol but relishing the burn on the way down.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Aye, thanks.” He reset the bag with the Orizas in it more firmly on his shoulder and got out with Oy at his heel. Irene paused to talk to the driver, who seemed to have been successful in making her travel arrangements. Roland ducked beneath the tape and then just stood where he was for a moment, listening to the honk and pound of the city on this bright June day, relishing its adolescent vitality. He would never see another city, of that much he was almost positive. And perhaps that was just as well. He had an idea that after New York, all others would be a step down.

  The guard—obviously someone who worked for the Tet Corporation and not this city’s constabulary—joined him on the walk. “If you want to go in there, sir, there’s something you should show me.”

  Roland once more took his gunbelt from the pouch, once more unwrapped it from the holster, once more drew his father’s gun. This time he did not offer to hand it over, nor did that gentleman ask to take it. He only examined the scrollwork, particularly that at the end of the barrel. Then he nodded respectfully and stepped back. “I’ll unlock the door. Once you go inside, you’re on your own. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Roland, who had been on his own for most of his life, nodded.

  Irene took his elbow before he could move forward, turned him, and put her arms around his neck. She had also bought herself a pair of low-heeled shoes, and only needed to tilt her head back slightly in order to look into his eyes.

  “You take care of yourself, cowboy.” She kissed him briefly on the mouth—the kiss of a friend—and then knelt to stroke Oy. “And take care of the little cowboy, too.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Roland said. “Will you remember your promise about Jake’s grave?”