The Dark Tower VII

by Stephen King

  Mordred, her mind whispered back. Mordred out there, freezing. Mordred out there dying while we sit in here with our hot coffee.

  But she said nothing.

  There had been trouble in Hauck for a couple of weeks, Joe said, but he’d been drinking pretty heavily (“Hitting it hard” was how he put it) and hardly realized that the crowd at his second show was about a fifth the size of the one at the first. “Hell, I was on a roll,” he said. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I was knocking myself dead, rolling me in the aisles.”

  Then someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through the club’s front window (Molotov cocktail was a term Roland understood), and before you could say Take my mother-in-law…please, the place was on fire. Joe had boogied out the back, through the stage door. He’d almost made it to the street when three men (“all very black, all roughly the size of NBA centers”) grabbed him. Two held; the third punched. Then someone swung a bottle. Boom-boom, out go the lights. He had awakened on a grassy hillside near a deserted town called Stone’s Warp, according to the signs in the empty buildings along Main Street. To Joe Collins it had looked like the set of a Western movie after all the actors had gone home.

  It was around this time that Susannah decided she did not believe much of sai Collins’s story. It was undoubtedly entertaining, and given Jake’s first entry into Mid-World, after being run over in the street and killed while on his way to school, it was not totally implausible. But she still didn’t believe much of it. The question was, did it matter?

  “You couldn’t call it heaven, because there were no clouds and no choirs of angels,” Joe said, “but I decided it was some sort of an afterlife, just the same.” He had wandered about. He found food, he found a horse (Lippy), and moved on. He had met various roving bands of people, some friendly, some not, some true-threaded, some mutie. Enough so he’d picked up some of the lingo and a little Mid-World history; certainly he knew about the Beams and the Tower. At one point he’d tried to cross the Badlands, he said, but he’d gotten scared and turned back when his skin began to break out in all sorts of sores and weird blemishes.

  “I got a boil on my ass, and that was the final touch,” he said. “Six or eight years ago, this might have been. Me n Lippy said the hell with going any further. That was when I found this place, which is called Westring, and when Stuttering Bill found me. He’s got a little doctorin, and he lanced the boil on my bottom.”

  Roland wanted to know if Joe had witnessed the passage of the Crimson King as that mad creature made his final pilgrimage to the Dark Tower. Joe said he had not, but that six months ago there had been a terrible storm (“a real boilermaker”) that drove him down into his cellar. While he was there the electric lights had failed, genny or no genny, and as he cowered in the dark, a sense had come to him that some terrible creature was close by, and that it might at any moment touch Joe’s mind and follow his thoughts to where he was hiding.

  “You know what I felt like?” he asked them.

  Roland and Susannah shook their heads. Oy did the same, in perfect imitation.

  “Snack-food,” Joe said. “Potential snack-food.”

  This part of his story’s true, Susannah thought. He may have changed it around a little, but basically it’s true. And if she had any reason to think that, it was only because the idea of the Crimson King traveling in his own portable storm seemed horribly plausible.

  “What did you do?” Roland asked.

  “Went to sleep,” he said. “It’s a talent I’ve always had, like doing impressions—although I don’t do famous voices in my act, because they never go over out in the sticks. Not unless you’re Rich Little, at least. Strange but true. I can sleep pretty much on command, so that’s what I did down in the cellar. When I woke up again the lights were back on and the…the whatever-it-was was gone. I know about the Crimson King, of course, I see folks from time to time still—nomads like you three, for the most part—and they talk about him. Usually they fork the sign of the evil eye and spit between their fingers when they do. You think that was him, huh? You think the Crimson King actually passed by Odd’s Lane on his way to the Tower.” Then, before they had a chance to answer: “Well, why not? Tower Road’s the main throughfare, after all. It goes all the way there.”

  You know it was him, Susannah thought. What game are you playing, Joe?

  The thin cry that was most definitely not the wind came again. She no longer thought it was Mordred, though. She thought that maybe it was coming from the cellar where Joe had gone to hide from the Crimson King…or so he’d said. Who was down there now? And was he hiding, as Joe had done, or was he a prisoner?

  “It hasn’t been a bad life,” Joe was saying. “Not the life I expected, not by any manner or means, but I got a theory—the folks who end up living the lives they expected are more often than not the ones who end up takin sleepin pills or stickin the barrel of a gun in their mouths and pullin the trigger.”

  Roland seemed still to be a few turns back, because he said, “You were a court jester and the customers in these inns were your court.”

  Joe smiled, showing a lot of white teeth. Susannah frowned. Had she seen his teeth before? They had been doing a lot of laughing and she should have seen them, but she couldn’t remember that she actually had. Certainly he didn’t have the mush-mouth sound of someone whose teeth are mostly gone (such people had consulted with her father on many occasions, most of them in search of artificial replacements). If she’d had to guess earlier on, she would have said he had teeth but they were down to nothing but pegs and nubbins, and—

  And what’s the matter with you, girl? He might be lying about a few things, but he surely didn’t grow a fresh set of teeth since you sat down to dinner! You’re letting your imagination run away with you.

  Was she? Well, it was possible. And maybe that thin cry was nothing but the sound of the wind in the eaves at the front of the house, after all.

  “I’d hear some of your jokes and stories,” Roland said. “As you told them on the road, if it does ya.”

  Susannah looked at him closely, wondering if the gunslinger had some ulterior motive for this request, but he seemed genuinely interested. Even before seeing the Polaroid of the Dark Tower tacked to the living room wall (his eyes returned to it constantly as Joe told his story), Roland had been invested by a kind of hectic good cheer that was really not much like him at all. It was almost as if he were ill, edging in and out of delirium.

  Joe Collins seemed surprised by the gunslinger’s request, but not at all displeased. “Good God,” he said. “I haven’t done any stand-up in what seems like a thousand years…and considering the way time stretched there for awhile, maybe it has been a thousand. I’m not sure I’d know how to begin.”

  Susannah surprised herself by saying, “Try.”

  Eight

  Joe thought about it and then stood up, brushing a few errant crumbs from his shirt. He limped to the center of the room, leaving his crutch leaning against his chair. Oy looked up at him with his ears cocked and his old grin on his chops, as if anticipating the entertainment to come. For a moment Joe looked uncertain. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and gave them a smile. “Promise you won’t throw no tomatoes if I stink up the joint,” he said. “Remember, it’s been a long time.”

  “Not after you took us in and fed us,” Susannah said. “Never in life.”

  Roland, always literal, said, “We have no tomatoes, in any case.”

  “Right, right. Although there are some canned ones in the pantry…forget I said that!”

  Susannah smiled. So did Roland.

  Encouraged, Joe said: “Okay, let’s go back to that magical place called Jango’s in that magical city some folks call the mistake on the lake. Cleveland, Ohio, in other words. Second show. The one I never got to finish, and I was on a roll, take my word for it. Give me just a second…”

  He closed his eyes. Seemed to gather himself. When he opened them again, he somehow looked ten years young
er. It was astounding. And he didn’t just sound American when he began to speak, he looked American. Susannah couldn’t have explained that in words, but she knew it was true: here was one Joe Collins, Made in U.S.A.

  “Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Jango’s, I’m Joe Collins and you’re not.”

  Roland chuckled and Susannah smiled, mostly to be polite—that was a pretty old one.

  “The management has asked me to remind you that this is two-beers-for-a-buck night. Got it? Good. With them the motive is profit, with me it’s self-interest. Because the more you drink, the funnier I get.”

  Susannah’s smile widened. There was a rhythm to comedy, even she knew that, although she couldn’t have done even five minutes of stand-up in front of a noisy nightclub crowd, not if her life had depended on it. There was a rhythm, and after an uncertain beginning, Joe was finding his. His eyes were half-lidded, and she guessed he was seeing the mixed colors of the gels over the stage—so like the colors of the Wizard’s Rainbow, now that she thought of it—and smelling the smoke of fifty smoldering cigarettes. One hand on the chrome pole of the mike; the other free to make any gesture it liked. Joe Collins playing Jango’s on a Friday night—

  No, not a Friday. He said all the clubs book rock-and-roll bands on the weekends.

  “Ne’mine all that mistake-on-the-lake stuff, Cleveland’s a beautiful city,” Joe said. He was picking up the pace a little now. Starting to rap, Eddie might have said. “My folks are from Cleveland, but when they were seventy they moved to Florida. They didn’t want to, but shitfire, it’s the law. Bing!” Joe rapped his knuckles against his head and crossed his eyes. Roland chuckled again even though he couldn’t have the slightest idea where (or even what) Florida was. Susannah’s smile was wider than ever.

  “Florida’s a helluva place,” Joe said. “Helluva place. Home of the newly wed and the nearly dead. My grandfather retired to Florida, God rest his soul. When I die, I want to go peacefully, in my sleep, like Grampa Fred. Not screaming, like the passengers in his car.”

  Roland roared with laughter at that one, and Susannah did, too. Oy’s grin was wider than ever.

  “My grandma, she was great, too. She said she learned how to swim when someone took her out on the Cuyahoga River and threw her off the boat. I said, ‘Hey, Nana, they weren’t trying to teach you how to swim.’ ”

  Roland snorted, wiped his nose, then snorted again. His cheeks had bloomed with color. Laughter elevated the entire metabolism, put it almost on a fight-or-flight basis; Susannah had read that somewhere. Which meant her own must be rising, because she was laughing, too. It was as if all the horror and sorrow were gushing out of an open wound, gushing out like—

  Well, like blood.

  She heard a faint alarm-bell start to ring, far back in her mind, and ignored it. What was there to be alarmed about? They were laughing, for goodness’ sake! Having a good time!

  “Can I be serious a minute? No? Well, fuck you and the nag you rode in on—tomorrow when I wake up, I’ll be sober, but you’ll still be ugly.

  “And bald.”

  (Roland roared.)

  “I’m gonna be serious, okay? If you don’t like it, stick it where you keep your change-purse. My Nana was a great lady. Women in general are great, you know it? But they have their flaws, just like men. If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving a baby’s life, for instance, she’ll save the baby without even considering how many men are on base. Bing!” He rapped his head with his knuckles and popped his eyes in a way that made them both laugh. Roland tried to put his coffee cup down and spilled it. He was holding his stomach. Hearing him laugh so hard—to surrender to laughter so completely—was funny in itself, and Susannah burst out in a fresh gale.

  “Men are one thing, women are another. Put em together and you’ve got a whole new taste treat. Like Oreos. Like Peanut Butter Cups. Like raisin cake with snot sauce. Show me a man and a woman and I’ll show you the Peculiar Institution—not slavery, marriage. But I repeat myself. Bing!” He rapped his head. Popped his eyes. This time they seemed to come kasproing halfway out of their sockets

  (how does he do that)

  and Susannah had to clutch her stomach, which was beginning to ache with the force of her laughter. And her temples were beginning to pound. It hurt, but it was a good hurt.

  “Marriage is having a wife or a husband. Yeah! Check Webster’s! Bigamy is having a wife or husband too many. Of course, that’s also monogamy. Bing!”

  If Roland laughed any harder, Susannah thought, he would go sliding right out of his chair and into the puddle of spilled coffee.

  “Then there’s divorce, a Latin term meaning ‘to rip a man’s genitals out through the wallet.’

  “But I was talking about Cleveland, remember? You know how Cleveland got started? A bunch of people in New York said, ‘Gee I’m starting to enjoy the crime and the poverty, but it’s not quite cold enough. Let’s go west.’ ”

  Laughter, Susannah would reflect later, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny. Joe Collins took them to this point with his next sally.

  “Hey, remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly with the smallest people in front and the tallest people at the end of the line? What’s the logic in that? Do tall people burn slower?”

  Susannah shrieked with laughter and slapped the side of her face. This produced a sudden and unexpected burst of pain that drove all the laughter out of her in a moment. The sore beside her mouth had been growing again, but hadn’t bled in two or three days. When she inadvertently struck it with her flailing hand, she knocked away the blackish-red crust covering it. The sore did not just bleed; it gushed.

  For a moment she was unaware of what had just happened. She only knew that slapping the side of her face hurt much more than it should have done. Joe also seemed unaware (his eyes were mostly closed again), must have been unaware, because he rapped faster than ever: “Hey, and what about that seafood restaurant they have at Sea World? I got halfway through my fishburger and wondered if I was eating a slow learner! Bing! And speaking of fish—”

  Oy barked in alarm. Susannah felt sudden wet warmth run down the side of her neck and onto her shoulder.

  “Stop, Joe,” Roland said. He sounded out of breath. Weak. With laughter, Susannah supposed. Oh, but the side of her face hurt, and—

  Joe opened his eyes, looking annoyed. “What? Jesus Christ, you wanted it and I was giving it to ya!”

  “Susannah’s hurt herself.” The gunslinger was up and looking at her, laughter lost in concern.

  “I’m not hurt, Roland, I just slapped myself upside the head a little harder than I m—” Then she looked at her hand and was dismayed to see it was wearing a red glove.

  Nine

  Oy barked again. Roland snatched the napkin from beside his overturned cup. One end was brown and soaking with coffee, but the other was dry. He pressed it against the gushing sore and Susannah winced away from his touch at first, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Nay, let me stop the bleeding at least,” Roland murmured, and grasped her head, working his fingers gently into the tight cap of her curls. “Hold steady.” And for him she managed to do it.

  Through her watering eyes Susannah thought Joe still looked pissed that she had interrupted his comedy routine in such drastic (not to mention messy) fashion, and in a way she didn’t blame him. He’d been doing a really good job; she’d gone and spoiled it. Aside from the pain, which was abating a little now, she was horribly embarrassed, remembering the time she had started her period in gym class and a little trickle of blood had run down her thigh for the whole world to see—that part of it with whom she had third-period PE, at any rate. Some of the girls had begun chanting Plug it UP!, as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

  Mixed with this memory was fear concerning
the sore itself. What if it was cancer? Before, she’d always been able to thrust this idea away before it was fully articulated in her mind. This time she couldn’t. What if she’d caught her stupid self a cancer on her trek through the Badlands?

  Her stomach knotted, then heaved. She kept her fine dinner in its place, but perhaps only for the time being.

  Suddenly she wanted to be alone, needed to be alone. If she was going to vomit, she didn’t want to do it in front of Roland and this stranger. Even if she wasn’t, she wanted some time to get herself back under control. A gust of wind strong enough to shake the entire cottage roared past like a hot-enj in full flight; the lights flickered and her stomach knotted again at the sea-sick motion of the shadows on the wall.

  “I’ve got to go…the bathroom…” she managed to say. For a moment the world wavered, but then it steadied down again. In the fireplace a knot of wood exploded, shooting a flurry of crimson sparks up the chimney.

  “You sure?” Joe asked. He was no longer angry (if he had been), but he was looking at her doubtfully.

  “Let her go,” Roland said. “She needs to settle herself down, I think.”

  Susannah began to give him a grateful smile, but it hurt the sore place and started it bleeding again, too. She didn’t know what else might change in the immediate future thanks to the dumb, unhealing sore, but she did know she was done listening to jokes for awhile. She’d need a transfusion if she did much more laughing.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “Don’t you boys go and eat all the rest of that pudding on me.” The very thought of food made her feel ill, but it was something to say.

  “On the subject of pudding, I make no promise,” Roland said. Then, as she began to turn away: “If thee feels light-headed in there, call me.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you, Roland.”

  Ten

  Although Joe Collins lived alone, his bathroom had a pleasantly feminine feel to it. Susannah had noticed that the first time she’d used it. The wallpaper was pink, with green leaves and—what else?—wild roses. The john looked perfectly modern except for the ring, which was wood instead of plastic. Had he carved it himself? She didn’t think it was out of the question, although probably the robot had brought it from some forgotten store of stuff. Stuttering Carl? Was that what Joe called the robot? No, Bill. Stuttering Bill.