Song of Susannah

Eddie sat on the back porch of the rectory as midnight came and what these folk would ever after call The Day of the East Road Battle passed into history (after which it would pass into myth…always assuming the world held together long enough for it to happen). In town the sounds of celebration had grown increasingly loud and feverish, until Eddie seriously began to wonder if they might not set the entire high street afire. And would he mind? Not a whit, say thanks and you’re welcome, too. While Roland, Susa

It wasn’t fair and part of him knew it wasn’t fair, but never in his life had he felt so helpless, so lost, and so consequently mean. He would tell himself not to think of Susa

Is she even alive?

He would have shuddered away from this thought if he could have, but the mind could be so cruel. He kept seeing her in the gutter somewhere down in Alphabet City, with a swastika carved on her forehead, and a placard reading GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN OXFORD TOWN hung around her neck.

Behind him the door from the rectory’s kitchen opened. There was the soft padding sound of bare feet (his ears were sharp now, trained like the rest of his killer’s equipment), and the click of toenails. Jake and Oy.

The kid sat down next to him in Callahan’s rocking chair. He was dressed and wearing his docker’s clutch. In it was the Ruger Jake had stolen from his father on the day he had run away from home. Today it had drawn…well, not blood. Not yet. Oil? Eddie smiled a little. There was no humor in it.

“Can’t sleep, Jake?”

“Ake,” Oy agreed, and collapsed at Jake’s feet, muzzle resting on the boards between his paws.

“No,” Jake said. “I keep thinking about Susa

Eddie knew that was natural, the boy had seen his friend blown apart before his very eyes, ofcourse he’d be thinking about him, but Eddie still felt a bitter spurt of jealousy, as if all of Jake’s regard should have been saved for Eddie Dean’s wife.

“That Tavery kid,” Jake said. “It’s his fault. Panicked. Got ru

Eddie reached out a hand that did not want to comfort and made it touch the kid’s head. His hair was long. Needed a wash. Hell, needed a cut. Needed a mother to make sure the boy under it took care of it. No mother now, though, not for Jake. And a little miracle: giving comfort made Eddie feel better. Not a lot, but a little.

“Let it go,” he said. “Done is done.”

“Ka,” Jake said bitterly.

“Ki-yet, ka,” Oy said without raising his muzzle.

“Amen,” Jake said, and laughed. It was disturbing in its coldness. Jake took the Ruger from its makeshift holster and looked at it. “This one will go through, because it came from the other side. That’s what Roland says. The others may, too, because we won’t be going todash. If they don’t, Henchick will cache them in the cave and maybe we can come back for them.”

“If we wind up in New York,” Eddie said, “there’ll be plenty of guns. And we’ll find them.”

“Not like Roland’s. I hope like hell they go through. There aren’t any guns left in any of the worlds like his. That’s what I think.”

It was what Eddie thought, too, but he didn’t bother saying so. From town there came a rattle of firecrackers, then silence. It was winding down there. Winding down at last. Tomorrow there would undoubtedly be an all-day party on the common, a continuation of today’s celebration but a little less drunk and a little more coherent. Roland and his ka-tet would be expected as guests of honor, but if the gods of creation were good and the door opened, they would be gone. Hunting Susa

As if reading his thoughts (and he could do that, he was strong in the touch), Jake said: “She’s still alive.”

“How can you know that?”

“We would have felt it if she was gone.”

“Jake, can you touch her?”

“No, but—”

Before he could finish, a deep rumbling came from the earth. The porch suddenly began to rise and fall like a boat on a heavy sea. They could hear the boards groaning. From the kitchen came the sound of rattling china like chattering teeth. Oy raised his head and whined. His foxy little face was comically startled, his ears laid back along his skull. In Callahan’s parlor, something fell over and shattered.

Eddie’s first thought, illogical but strong, was that Jake had killed Suze simply by declaring her still alive.

For a moment the shaking intensified. A window shattered as its frame was twisted out of shape. There was a crump from the darkness. Eddie assumed—correctly—that it was the ruined privy, now falling down completely. He was on his feet without realizing it. Jake was standing beside him, gripping his wrist. Eddie had drawn Roland’s gun and now they both stood as if ready to begin shooting.

There was a final grumbling from deep in the earth, and then the porch settled under their feet. At certain key points along the Beam, people were waking up and looking around, dazed. In the streets of one New York when, a few car alarms were going off. The following day’s papers would report a minor earthquake: broken windows, no reported casualties. Just a little shake of the fundamentally sound bedrock.

Jake was looking at Eddie, eyes wide. And knowing.

The door opened behind them and Callahan came out onto the porch, dressed in flimsy white underpants that fell to his knees. The only other thing on him was the gold crucifix around his neck.

“It was an earthquake, wasn’t it?” he said. “I felt one in northern California once, but never since coming to the Calla.”

“It was a hell of a lot more than an earthquake,” Eddie said, and pointed. The screened-in porch looked east, and over there the horizon was lit by silent artillery bursts of green lightning. Downhill from the rectory, the door of Rosalita’s snug creaked open and then banged shut. She and Roland came up the hill together, she in her chemise and the gunslinger in a pair of jeans, both barefoot in the dew.

Eddie, Jake, and Callahan went down to them. Roland was looking fixedly at the already diminishing flickers of lightning in the east, where the land of Thunderclap waited for them, and the Court of the Crimson King, and, at the end of End-World, the Dark Tower itself.

If,Eddie thought.If it still stands.

“Jake was just saying that if Susa

“Not directly, no.”

“And it wasn’t ours,” Jake put in, “or the damage would have been a lot worse. Don’t you think?”