The Dark Tower

“If I don’t come back,” she said, “you justremember one thing: it was my husband who invented the Internet—him andhis friends, partly at CalTech and partly in their own garages. NotAlbert Gore.”

Roland’s stomach rumbled again. He reachedover the counter (the shopkeeper cringed away from him as if he suspectedRoland of carrying the red plague), grabbed the woman’s pile of turkey, andfolded three slices into his mouth. The rest he handed to Jake, who ate twoslices and then looked down at Oy, who was looking up at the meat with greatinterest.

“I’ll give you your share when we get inthe truck,” Jake promised.

“Ruck,” Oy said; then, with much greateremphasis: “Share!”

“Holy jumping Jesus Christ,” the shopkeepersaid.

Four

The Yankee shopkeeper’s accent might havebeen cute, but his truck wasn’t. It was a standard shift, for one thing. IreneTassenbaum of Manhattan hadn’t driven a standard since she had been IreneCantora of Staten Island. It was also a stick shift, and she had never drivenone of those.

Jake was sitting beside her with his feetplaced around said stick and Oy (still chewing turkey) on his lap. Roland swunginto the passenger seat, trying not to snarl at the pain in his leg. Ireneforgot to depress the clutch when she keyed the ignition. The I-H lurchedforward, then stalled. Luckily it had been rolling the roads of western Mainesince the mid-sixties and it was the sedate jump of an elderly mare rather thanthe spirited buck of a colt; otherwise Chip McAvoy would once more have lost atleast one of his plate-glass windows. Oy scrabbled for balance on Jake’s lapand sprayed out a mouthful of turkey along with a word he had learned fromEddie.

Irene stared at the bumbler with wide,startled eyes. “Did that creature just say fuck, young man?”

“Never mind what he said,” Jake replied.His voice was shaking. The hands of the Boar’s Head clock in the window nowstood at five to four. Like Roland, the boy had never had a sense of time as athing so little in their control. “Use the clutch and get us out ofhere.”

Luckily, the shifting pattern had beenembossed on the head of the stick shift and was still faintly visible. Mrs.Tassenbaum pushed in the clutch with a sneakered foot, ground the gearshellishly, and finally found Reverse. The truck backed out onto Route 7 in a seriesof jerks, then stalled halfway across the white line. She turned the ignitionkey, realizing she’d once more forgotten the clutch just a little too late toprevent another series of those spastic leaps. Roland and Jake were now bracingtheir hands against the dusty metal dashboard, where a faded sticker proclaimedAMERICA! LOVE IT OR LEAVE! in red white and blue. This series of jerks wasactually a good thing, for at that moment a truck loaded with logs—it wasimpossible for Roland not to think of the one that had crashed the last timethey’d been here—crested the rise to the north of the store. Had thepickup not jerked its way back into the General Store’s parking lot (bashingthe fender of a parked car as it came to a stop), they would have been centerpunched.And very likely killed. The logging truck swerved, horn blaring, rear wheelsspuming up dust.

The creature in the boy’s lap—itlooked to Mrs. Tassenbaum like some weird mixture of dog andraccoon—barked again.

Fuck. She was almost sure of it.

The storekeeper and the other patrons werelined up on the other side of the glass, and she suddenly knew what a fish inan aquarium must feel like.

“Lady, can you drive this thing or not?”the boy yelled. He had some sort of bag over his shoulder. It reminded her of anewsboy’s bag, only it was leather instead of canvas and there appeared to beplates inside.

“I can drive it, young man, don’t youworry.” She was terrified, and yet at the same time… was she enjoyingthis? She almost thought she was. For the last eighteen years she’d been littlemore than the great David Tassenbaum’s ornament, a supporting character in hisincreasingly famous life, the lady who said “Try one of these” as shepassed around hors d’oeuvres at parties. Now, suddenly, she was at the centerof something, and she had an idea it was something very important indeed.

“Take a deep breath,” said the man with thehard sunburned face. His brilliant blue eyes fastened upon hers, and when theydid it was hard to think of anything else. Also, the sensation was pleasant. Ifthis is hypnosis, she thought, they ought to teach it in the publicschools. “Hold it, then let it out. And then drive us, for yourfather’s sake.”

She pulled in a deep breath as instructed,and suddenly the day seemed brighter—nearly brilliant. And she could hearfaint singing voices. Lovely voices. Was the truck’s radio on, tuned to someopera program? No time to check. But it was nice, whatever it was. As calmingas the deep breath.

Mrs. Tassenbaum pushed in the clutch andre-started the engine. This time she found Reverse on the first try and backedinto the road almost smoothly. Her first effort at a forward gear netted herSecond instead of First and the truck almost stalled when she eased the clutchout, but then the engine seemed to take pity on her. With a wheeze of loosepistons and a manic rapping from beneath the hood, they began rolling northtoward the Stoneham-Lovell line.

“Do you know where Turtleback Lane is?”Roland asked her. Ahead of them, near a sign marked MILLION DOLLAR CAMPGROUND,a battered blue minivan swung out onto the road.

“Yes,” she said.

“You’re sure?” The last thing thegunslinger wanted was to waste precious time casting about for the back roadwhere King lived.

“Yes. We have friends who live there. TheBeckhardts.”

For a moment Roland could only grope,knowing he’d heard the name but not where. Then he got it. Beckhardt was thename of the man who owned the cabin where he and Eddie had had their finalpalaver with John Cullum. He felt a fresh stab of grief in his heart at thethought of Eddie as he’d been on that thundery afternoon, still so strong andvital.

“All right,” he said. “I believe you.”

She glanced at him across the boy sittingbetween. “You’re in one hell of a hurry, mister—like the white rabbit in Alicein Wonderland. What very important date are you almost too late for?”

Roland shook his head. “Never mind, justdrive.” He looked at the clock on the dashboard, but it didn’t work, hadstopped in the long-ago with the hands pointed at (of course) 9:19. “It may notbe too late yet,” he said, while ahead of them, unheeded, the blue van began topull away. It strayed across the white line of Route 7 into the southbound laneand Mrs. Tassenbaum almost committed a bon mot—something aboutpeople who started drinking before five—but then the blue van pulled backinto the northbound lane, breasted the next hill, and was gone toward the townof Lovell.

Mrs. Tassenbaum forgot about it. She hadmore interesting things to think about. For instance—

“You don’t have to answer what I’m going toask now if you don’t want to,” she said, “but I admit that I’m curious: are youboys walk-ins?”

Five

Bryan Smith has spent the last couple ofnights—along with his rottweilers, litter-twins he has named Bullet andPistol—in the Million Dollar Campground, just over the Lovell-Stonehamline. It’s nice there by the river (the locals call the rickety woodenstructure spa