The Dark Tower

Eddie took the bill of sale and gazed at itas grimly as any Hamlet in the history of drama had ever stared upon the skullof poor Yorick. Then he looked back at Roland. “This gives us title to thevacant lot with the rose in it. We need to get it to Moses Carver of HolmesDental Industries. And where is he? We don’t know.”

“For that matter, Eddie, we don’t even knowif he’s still alive.”

Eddie voiced a wild laugh. “You say true, Isay thankya! Why don’t I turn us around, Roland? I’ll drive us back to StephenKing’s house. We can cadge twenty or thirty bucks off him—because,brother, I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t have a crying dime betweenthe two of us—but more important, we can get him to write us a reallygood hardboiled private eye, someone who looks like Bogart and kicks ass likeClint Eastwood. Let him track down this guy Carver for us!”

He shook his head as if to clear it. Thehum of the voices sounded sweetly in his ears, the perfect antidote to the uglytodash chimes.

“I mean, my wife is in bad troublesomewhere up the line, for all I know she’s being eaten alive by vampires orvampire bugs, and here I sit beside a country road with a guy whose most basicskill is shooting people, trying to work out how I’m going to start a fucking corporation!”

“Slow down,” Roland said. Now that he wasresigned to staying in this world a little longer, he seemed calm enough. “Tellme what it is you feel we need to do before we can shake the dirt of this whereand when from our heels for good.”

So Eddie did.

Three

Roland had heard a good deal of it before,but hadn’t fully understood what a difficult position they were in. They ownedthe vacant lot on Second Avenue, yes, but their basis for ownership was aholographic document that would look mighty shaky in a court o’ legal,especially if the powers-that-be from the Sombra Corporation started throwinglawyers at them.

Eddie wanted to get the writ of trade toMoses Carver, if he could, along with the information that his goddaughter,Odetta Holmes—missing for thirteen years by the summer of 1977—wasalive and well and wanted above all things for Carver to assume guardianship,not just of the vacant lot itself, but of a certain rose growing wild withinits borders.

Moses Carver—if still alive—hadto be convinced enough by what he heard to fold the so-called Tet Corporationinto Holmes Industries (or vice-versa). More! He had to dedicate what was leftof his life (and Eddie had an idea Carver might be Aaron Deepneau’s age by now)to building a corporate giant whose only real purpose was to thwart two othercorporate giants, Sombra and North Central Positronics, at every turn. Tostrangle them if possible, and keep them from becoming a monster that wouldleave its destroyer’s track across all the dying expanse of Mid-World andmortally wound the Dark Tower itself.

“Maybe we should have left the writ o’trade with sai Deepneau,” Roland mused when he had heard Eddie through to theend. “At least he could have located this Carver and sought him out and toldour tale for us.”

“No, we did right to keep it.” This was oneof the few things of which Eddie was completely sure. “If we’d left this pieceof paper with Aaron Deepneau, it’d be ashes in the wind by now.”

“You believe Tower would have repented hisbargain and talked his friend into destroying it?”

“I know it,” Eddie said. “But even ifDeepneau could stand up to his old friend going yatta-yatta-yatta in his earfor hours on end—’Burn it, Aaron, they coerced me and now they mean toscrew me, you know it as well as I do, burn it and we’ll call the cops on thosemomsers’—do you think Moses Carver would believe such a crazystory?”

Roland smiled bleakly. “I don’t think hisbelief would be an issue, Eddie. Because, think thee a moment, how much of ourcrazy story has Aaron Deepneau actually heard?”

“Not enough,” Eddie agreed. He closed hiseyes and pressed the heels of his hands against them. Hard. “I can only thinkof one person who could actually convince Moses Carver to do the things we’dhave to ask, and she’s otherwise occupied. In the year of ‘99. And by then,Carver’s go

“Well, what can we do without her? Whatwill satisfy you?”

Eddie was thinking that perhaps Susa

“What about our dan-tete?” he asked.

Although Eddie understood the term—itmeant baby god or little savior—he did not at first understand whatRoland meant by it. Then he did. Had not their Waterford dan-tete loaned themthe very car they were sitting in, say thankya? “Cullum? Is that whoyou’re talking about, Roland? The guy with the case of autographed baseballs?”

“You say true,” Roland replied. He spoke inthat dry tone which indicated not amusement but mild exasperation. “Don’toverwhelm me with your enthusiasm for the idea.”

“But… you told him to go away! And heagreed to go!”

“And how enthusiastic would you say he wasabout visiting his friend in Vermong?”

“Mont,” Eddie said, unable tosuppress a smile. Yet, smiling or not, what he felt most strongly was dismay.He thought that ugly scraping sound he heard in his imagination was Roland’stwo-fingered right hand, prospecting around at the very bottom of the barrel.

Roland shrugged as if to say he didn’t careif Cullum had spoken of going to Vermont or Barony o’ Garlan. “Answer myquestion.”

“Well…”

Cullum actually hadn’t expressed muchenthusiasm for the idea at all. He had from the very first reacted more likeone of them than one of the grass-eaters among whom he lived (Eddierecognized grass-eaters very easily, having been one himself until Roland firstkidnapped him and then began his homicidal lessons). Cullum had been clearlyintrigued by the gunslingers, and curious about their business in his littletown. But Roland had been very emphatic about what he wanted, and folks had away of following his orders.

Now he made a twirling motion with hisright hand, his old impatient gesture. Hurry, for your father’s sake. Shitor get off the commode.

“I guess he really didn’t want togo,” Eddie said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s still at his house in EastStoneham.”

“He is, though. He didn’t go.”

Eddie managed to keep his mouth fromdropping open only with some effort. “How can you know that? Can you touch him,is that it?”

Roland shook his head.

“Then how—”

“Ka.”

“Ka? Ka? Just what the fuck does thatmean?”

Roland’s face was haggard and tired, theskin pale beneath his tan. “Who else do we know in this part of the world?”

“No one, but—”

“Then it’s him.” Roland spoke flatly, as ifstating some obvious fact of life for a child: up is over your head, down iswhere your feet stick to the earth.

Eddie got ready to tell him that wasstupid, nothing more than rank superstition, then didn’t. Putting asideDeepneau, Tower, Stephen King, and the hideous Jack Andolini, John Cullum wasthe only person they knew in this part of the world (or on this level of theTower, if you preferred to think of it that way). And, after the things Eddiehad seen in the last few months—hell, in the last week—whowas he to sneer at superstition?

“All right,” Eddie said. “I guess we bettertry it.”

“How do we get in touch?”

“We can phone him from Bridgton. But in astory, Roland, a minor character like John Cullum would never come inoff the bench to save the day. It wouldn’t be considered realistic.”