by Stephen King
You could be wrong.
Then the man turned his head slightly, the moonlight sent twin glints back from his face, and Jake knew for sure. There might be lots of cowpokes in the Calla who wore round-crowned hats like the one yonder, but Jake had only seen a single guy so far who wore spectacles.
Okay, it's Benny's Da'. What of it? Not all parents are like mine, some of them get worried about their kids, especially if they've already lost one the way Mr. Slightman lost Benny's twin sister. To hot-lung, Benny said, which probably means pneumonia. Six years ago. So we come out here camping, and Mr. Slightman sends Andy to keep an eye on us, only then he wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to check on us for himself Maybe he had his own bad dream.
Maybe so, but that didn't explain why Andy and Mr. Slightman were having their palaver way down there by the river, did it?
Well, maybe he was afraid of waking us up. Maybe he'll come up to check on the tent now -in which case I better get back inside it -or maybe he'll take Andy's word that we're all right and head back to the Rocking B.
The moon went behind another cloud, and Jake thought it best to stay where he was until it came back out. When it did, what he saw filled him with the same sort of dismay he'd felt in his dream, following Mia through that deserted castle. For a moment he clutched at the possibility that this was a dream, that he'd simply gone from one to another, but the feel of the pebbles biting into his feet and the sound of Oy panting in his ear were completely undreamlike. This was happening, all right.
Mr. Slightman wasn't coming up toward where the boys had pitched their tent, and he wasn't heading back toward the Rocking B, either (although Andy was, in long strides along the bank). No, Benny's father was wading across the river. He was heading dead east.
He could have a reason for going over there. He could have a perfectly good reason.
Really? What might that perfectly good reason be? It wasn't the Calla anymore over there, Jake knew that much. Over there was nothing but waste ground and desert, a buffer between the borderlands and the kingdom of the dead that was Thunderclap.
First something wrong with Susannah-his friend Susannah. Now, it seemed, something wrong with the father of his new friend. Jake realized he had begun to gnaw at his nails, a habit he'd picked up in his final weeks at Piper School, and made himself stop.
"This isn't fair, you know," he said to Oy. "This isn't fair at all."
Oy licked his ear. Jake turned, put his arms around the bumbler, and pressed his face against his friend's lush coat. The bumbler stood patiently, allowing this. After a little while, Jake pulled himself back up to the more level ground where Oy stood. He felt a little better, a little comforted.
The moon went behind another cloud and the world darkened. Jake stood where he was. Oy whined softly. "Just a minute," Jake murmured.
The moon came out again. Jake looked hard at the place where Andy and Ben Slightman had palavered, marking it in his memory. There was a large round rock with a shiny surface. A dead log had washed up against it. Jake was pretty sure he could find this spot again, even if Benny's tent was gone.
Are you going to tell Roland?
"I don't know," he muttered.
"Know," Oy said from beside his ankle, making Jake jump a litde. Or was it no? Was that what the bumbler had actually said?
Are you crazy?
He wasn't. There was a time when he'd thought he was crazy-crazy or going there in one hell of a hurry-but he didn't think that anymore. And sometimes Oy did read his mind, he knew it.
Jake slipped back into the tent. Benny was still fast asleep. Jake looked at the other boy-older in years but younger in a lot of the ways that mattered-for several seconds, biting his lip. He didn't want to get Benny's father in trouble. Not unless he had to.
Jake lay down and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He had never in his life felt so undecided about so many things, and he wanted to cry. The day had begun to grow light before he was able to get back to sleep.
Chapter VIII:
Took's Store; The Unfound Door
ONE
For the first half hour after leaving the Rocking B, Roland and Jake rode east toward the smallholds in silence, their horses ambling side by side in perfect good fellowship. Roland knew Jake had something serious on his mind; that was clear from his troubled face. Yet the gunslinger was still astounded when Jake curled his fist, placed it against the left side of his chest, and said: "Roland, before Eddie and Susannah join up with us, may I speak to you dan-dinh?"
May I open my heart to your command. But the subtext was more complicated than that, and ancient-pre-dating Arthur Eld by centuries, or so Vannay had claimed. It meant to turn some insoluble emotional problem, usually having to do with a love affair, over to one's dinh. When one did this, he or she agreed to do exactly as the dinh suggested, immediately and without question. But surely Jake Chambers didn't have love problems-not unless he'd fallen for the gorgeous Francine Tavery, that was-and how had he known such a phrase in the first place?
Meanwhile Jake was looking at him with a wide-eyed, pale-cheeked solemnity that Roland didn't much like.
"Dan-dinh-where did you hear that, Jake?"
"Never did. Picked it up from your mind, I think." Jake added hastily: "I don't go snooping in there, or anything like that, but sometimes stuff just comes. Most of it isn't very important, I don't think, but sometimes there are phrases."
"You pick them up like a crow or a rustie picks up the bright things that catch its eye from the wing."
"I guess so, yeah."
"What others? Tell me a few."
Jake looked embarrassed. "I can't remember many. Dan-dinh, that means I open my heart to you and agree to do what you say."
It was more complicated than that, but the boy had caught the essence. Roland nodded. The sun felt good on his face as they clopped along. Margaret Eisenhart's exhibition with the plate had soothed him, he'd had a good meeting with the lady-sai's father later on, and he had slept quite well for the first time in many nights. "Yes."
"Let's see. There's tell-a-me, which means-I think-to gossip about someone you shouldn't gossip about. It stuck in my head, because that's what gossip sounds like: tell-a-me." Jake cupped a hand to his ear.
Roland smiled. It was actually telamei, but Jake had of course picked it up phonetically. This was really quite amazing. He reminded himself to guard his deep thoughts carefully in the future. There were ways that could be done, thank the gods.
"There's dash-dinh, which means some sort of religious leader. You're thinking about that this morning, I think, because of… is it because of the old Manni guy? Is he a dash-dinh?"
Roland nodded. "Very much so. And his name, Jake?" The gunslinger concentrated on it. "Can you see his name in my mind?"
"Sure, Henchick," Jake said at once, and almost offhandedly. "You talked to him… when? Late last night?"
"Yes." That he hadn't been concentrating on, and he would have felt better had Jake not known of it. But the boy was strong in the touch, and Roland believed him when he said he hadn't been snooping. At least not on purpose.
"Mrs. Eisenhart thinks she hates him, but you think she's only afraid of him."
"Yes," Roland said. "You're strong in the touch. Much more so than Alain ever was, and much more than you were. It's because of the rose, isn't it?"
Jake nodded. The rose, yes. They rode in silence a little longer, their horses' hooves raising a thin dust. In spite of the sun the day was chilly, promising real fall.
"All right, Jake. Speak to me dan-dinh if you would, and I say thanks for your trust in such wisdom as I have."
But for the space of almost two minutes Jake said nothing. Roland pried at him, trying to get inside the boy's head as the boy had gotten inside his (and with such ease), but there was nothing. Nothing at a-
But there was. There was a rat… squirming, impaled on something…
"Where is the castle she goes to?" Jake asked. "Do you know?"
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Roland was unable to conceal his surprise. His astonishment, really. And he supposed there was an element of guilt there, as well. Suddenly he understood… well, not everything, but much.
"There is no castle and never was," he told Jake. "It's a place she goes to in her mind, probably made up of the stories she's read and the ones I've told by the campfire, as well. She goes there so she won't have to see what she's really eating. What her baby needs."
"I saw her eating a roasted pig," Jake said. "Only before she came, a rat was eating it. She stabbed it with a meat-fork."
"Where did you see this?"
"In the castle." He paused. "In her dream. I was in her dream."
"Did she see you there?" The gunslinger's blue eyes were sharp, almost blazing. His horse clearly felt some change, for it stopped. So did Jake's. Here they were on East Road, less than a mile from where Red Molly Doolin had once killed a Wolf out of Thunderclap. Here they were, facing each other.
"No," Jake said. "She didn't see me."
Roland was thinking of the night he had followed her into the swamp. He had known she was someplace else in her mind, had sensed that much, but not quite where. Whatever visions he'd taken from her mind had been murky. Now he knew. He knew something else as well: Jake was troubled by his dinh's decision to let Susannah go on this way. And perhaps he was right to be troubled. But-
"It's not Susannah you saw, Jake."
"I know. It's the one who still has her legs. She calls herself Mia. She's pregnant and she's scared to death."
Roland said, "If you would speak to me dan-dinh, tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking. Then I'll give you the wisdom of my heart, such wisdom as I have."
"You won't… Roland, you won't scold me?"
This time Roland was unable to conceal his astonishment. "No, Jake. Far from it. Perhaps I should ask you not to scold me."
The boy smiled wanly. The horses began to amble again, this time a little faster, as if they knew there had almost been trouble and wanted to leave the place of it behind.
TWO
Jake wasn't entirely sure how much of what was on his mind was going to come out until he actually began to talk. He had awakened undecided all over again concerning what to tell Roland about Andy and Slightman the Elder. In the end he took his cue from what Roland had just said-Tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking -and left out the meeting by the river entirely. In truth, that part seemed far less important to him this morning.
He told Roland about the way Mia had run down the stairs, and about her fear when she'd seen there was no food left in the dining room or banqueting hall or whatever it was. Then the kitchen. Finding the roast with the rat battened on it. Killing the competition. Gorging on the prize. Then him, waking with the shivers and trying not to scream.
He hesitated and glanced at Roland. Roland made his impatient twirling gesture-go on, hurry up, finish.
Well, he thought, he promised not to scold and he keeps his word.
That was true, but Jake was still unable to tell Roland he'd actually considered spilling the beans to Susannah himself.
He did articulate his principal fear, however: that with three of them knowing and one of them not, their ka-tet was broken just when it needed to be the most solid. He even told Roland the old joke, guy with a blowout saying It's only flat on the bottom. He didn't expect Roland to laugh, and his expectations were met admirably in this regard. But he sensed Roland was to some degree ashamed, and Jake found this frightening. He had an idea shame was pretty much reserved for people who didn't know what they were doing.
"And until last night it was even worse than three in and one out," Jake said. "Because you were trying to keep me out, as well. Weren't you?"
"No," Roland said.
"No?"
"I simply let things be as they were. I told Eddie because I was afraid that, once they were sharing a room together, he'd discover her wanderings and try to wake her up. I was afraid of what might happen to both of them if he did."
"Why not just tell her?"
Roland sighed. "Listen to me, Jake. Cort saw to our physical training when we were boys. Vannay saw to our mental training. Both of them tried to teach us what they knew of ethics. But in Gilead, our fathers were responsible for teaching us about ka. And because each child's father was different, each of us emerged from our childhood with a slightly different idea of what ka is and what it does. Do you understand?"
I understand that you're avoiding a very simple question, Jake thought, but nodded.
"My father told me a good deal on the subject, and most of it has left my mind, but one thing remains very clear. He said that when you are unsure, you must let ka alone to work itself out."
"So it's ka." Jake sounded disappointed. "Roland, that isn't very helpful."
Roland heard worry in the boy's voice, but it was the disappointment that stung him. He turned in the saddle, opened his mouth, realized that some hollow justification was about to come spilling out, and closed it again. Instead of justifying, he told the truth.
"I don't know what to do. Would you like to tell me?"
The boy's face flushed an alarming shade of red, and Roland realized Jake thought he was being sarcastic, for the gods' sake. That he was angry. Such lack of understanding was frightening. He's right, the gunslinger thought. We axe broken. Gods help us.
"Be not so," Roland said. "Hear me, I beg-listen well. In Calla Bryn Sturgis, the Wolves are coming. In New York, Balazar and his 'gentlemen' are coming. Both are bound to arrive soon. Will Susannah's baby wait until these matters have been resolved, one way or the other? I don't know."
"She doesn't even look pregnant," Jake said faintly. Some of the red had gone out of his cheeks, but he still kept his head down.
"No," Roland said, "she doesn't. Her breasts are a trifle fuller-perhaps her hips, as well-but those are the only signs. And so I have some reason to hope. I must hope, and so must you. For, on top of the Wolves and the business of the rose in your world, there's the question of Black Thirteen and how to deal with it. I think I know-I hope I know-but I must speak to Henchick again. And we must hear the rest of Pere Callahan's story. Have you thought of saying something to Susannah on your own?"
"I…"Jake bit his lip and fell silent.
"I see you have. Put the thought out of your mind. If anything other than death could break our fellowship for good, to tell without my sanction would do it, Jake. I am your dinh."
"I know it!" Jake nearly shouted. "Don't you think I know it?"
"And do you think I like it?" Roland asked, almost as heatedly. "Do you not see how much easier all this was before…" He trailed off, appalled by what he had nearly said.
"Before we came," Jake said. His voice was flat. "Well guess what? We didn't ask to come, none of us." And I didn't ask you to drop me into the dark, either. To kill me.
"Jake…" The gunslinger sighed, raised his hands, dropped them back to his thighs. Up ahead was the turning which would take them to the Jaffords smallhold, where Eddie and Susannah would be waiting for them. "All I can do is say again what I've said already: when one isn't sure about ka, it's best to let ka work itself out. If one meddles, one almost always does the wrong thing."
"That sounds like what folks in the Kingdom of New York call a copout, Roland. An answer that isn't an answer, just a way to get people to go along with what you want."
Roland considered. His lips firmed. "You asked me to command your heart."
Jake nodded warily.
"Then here are the two things I say to you dan-dinh. First, I say that the three of us-you, me, Eddie-will speak an-tet to Susannah before the Wolves come, and tell her everything we know. That she's pregnant, that her baby is almost surely a demon's child, and that she's created a woman named Mia to mother that child. Second, I say that we discuss this no more until the time to tell her has come."
Jake
considered these things. As he did, his face gradually brightened with relief. "Do you mean it?"
"Yes." Roland tried not to show how much this question hurt and angered him. He understood, after all, why the boy would ask. "I promise and swear to my promise. Does it do ya?"
"Yes! It does me fine!"
Roland nodded. "I'm not doing this because I'm convinced it's the right thing but because you are, Jake. I-"
"Wait a second, whoa, wait," Jake said. His smile was fading. "Don't try to put all this on me. I never-"
"Spare me such nonsense." Roland used a dry and distant tone Jake had seldom heard. "You ask part of a man's decision. I allow it-must allow it-because ka has decreed you take a man's part in great matters. You opened this door when you questioned my judgment. Do you deny that?"
Jake had gone from pale to flushed to pale once more. He looked badly frightened, and shook his head without speaking a single word. Ah, gods, Roland thought, I hate every part of this. It stinks like a dying man's shit.
In a quieter tone he said, "No, you didn't ask to be brought here. Nor did I wish to rob you of your childhood. Yet here we are, and ka stands to one side and laughs. We must do as it wills or pay the price."
Jake lowered his head and spoke two words in a trembling whisper: "I know."
"You believe Susannah should be told. I, on the other hand, don't know what to do-in this matter I've lost my compass. When one knows and one does not, the one who does not must bow his head and the one who does must take responsibility. Do you understand me, Jake?"
"Yes," Jake whispered, and touched his curled hand to his brow.
"Good. We'll leave that part and say thankya. You're strong in the touch."
