The Dark Tower

The fact of his own almost unearthly speedof hand never occurred to Jake Chambers. All he knew was that when he staggeredout of the Devar-Toi and back into America, his shirt—belled out into apregnant curve by Oy’s weight—was pulling out of his jeans. The bumbler,who never had much luck when it came to passing between the worlds (he’d nearlybeen squashed by a taxicab the last time), tumbled free. Almost anyone else inthe world would have been unable to prevent that fall (and in fact it verylikely wouldn’t have hurt Oy at all), but Jake wasn’t almost anyone. Ka hadwanted him so badly that it had even found its way around death to put him atRoland’s side. Now his hands shot out with a speed so great that theymomentarily blurred away to nothing. When they reappeared, one was curled intothe thick shag at the nape of Oy’s neck and the other into the shorter fur atthe rump end of his long back. Jake set his friend down on the pavement. Oylooked up at him and gave a single short bark. It seemed to express not oneidea but two: thanks, and don’t do that again.

“Come on,” Roland said. “We have to hurry.”

Jake followed him toward the store, Oyfalling in at his accustomed place by the boy’s left heel. There was a signhanging in the door from a little rubber suction cup. It read WE’RE OPEN, SOCOME IN N VISIT, just as it had in 1977. Taped in the window to the left of thedoor was this:

COME ONE COME ALL

TO THE

1st CONGREGATIONALCHURCH

BEANHOLE BEAN SUPPER

Saturday June 19th, 1999

Intersection Route 7& Klatt Road

PARISH HOUSE (In Back)

5 PM–7:30 PM

AT 1st CONGO

“WE’RE ALWAYS GLAD TOSEEYA, NAYBAH!”

Jake thought, The bean supper will bestarting in an hour or so. They’ll already be putting down the tablecloths andsetting the places.

Taped to the right of the door was a morestartling message to the public:

1st Lovell-StonehamChurch of the Walk-Ins

Will YOU join us forWorship?

Sunday services: 10 AM

Thursday services: 7 PM

EVERY WEDNESDAY IS YOUTHNIGHT!!! 7–9 PM!

Games! Music! Scripture!

* * * AND* * *

NEWS OF WALK-INS!

Hey, Teens!

“Be There or BeSquare!!!”

“We Seek the Doorway toHeaven—Will You Seek With Us?”

Jake found himself thinking of Harrigan,the street-preacher on the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, andwondering to which of these two churches he might have been attracted. His headmight have told him First Congo, but his heart—

“Hurry, Jake,” Roland repeated, and therewas a jingle as the gunslinger opened the door. Good smells wafted out,reminding Jake (as they had reminded Eddie) of Took’s on the Calla high street:coffee and peppermint candy, tobacco and salami, olive oil, the salty tang ofbrine, sugar and spice and most things nice.

He followed Roland into the store, awarethat he had brought at least two things with him, after all. The Coyotemachine-pistol was stuffed into the waistband of his jeans, and the bag ofOrizas was still slung over his shoulder, hanging on his left side so that thehalf a dozen plates remaining inside would be within easy reach of his righthand.

Two

Wendell “Chip” McAvoy was at the delicounter, weighing up a pretty sizable order of sliced honey-cured turkey forMrs. Tassenbaum, and until the bell over the door rang, once more turningChip’s life upside down (You’ve turned turtle, the oldtimers used to saywhen your car rolled in the ditch), they had been discussing the growing presenceof Jet Skis on Keywadin Pond… or rather Mrs. Tassenbaum had beendiscussing it.

Chip thought Mrs. T. was a more or lesstypical summer visitor: rich as Croesus (or at least her husband, who had oneof those new dot-com businesses, was), gabby as a parrot loaded on whiskey, andas crazy as Howard Hughes on a morphine toot. She could afford a cabin cruiser(and two dozen Jet Skis to pull it, if she fancied), but she came down to themarket on this end of the lake in a battered old rowboat, tying up right aboutwhere John Cullum used to tie his up, until That Day (as the years had refinedhis story to ever greater purity, burnishing it like an oft-polished piece ofteak furniture, Chip had come more and more to convey its capital-letter statuswith his voice, speaking of That Day in the same reverential tones the ReverendConveigh used when speaking of Our Lord). La Tassenbaum was talky, meddlesome,good-looking (kinda… he supposed… if you didn’t mind the makeup and thehairspray), loaded with green, and a Republican. Under the circumstances, ChipMcAvoy felt perfectly justified in sneaking his thumb onto the corner of thescale… a trick he had learned from his father, who had told him you practicallyhad a duty to rook folks from away if they could afford it, but you must neverrook folks from the home place, not even if they were as rich as that writer,King, from over in Lovell. Why? Because word got around, and the next thing youknew, out-of-town custom was all a man had to get by on, and try doing thatin the month of February when the snowbanks on the sides of Route 7 were ninefeet high. This wasn’t February, however, and Mrs. Tassenbaum—a Daughterof Abraham if he had ever seen one—was not from these parts. No, Mrs.Tassenbaum and her rich-as-Croesus dot-com husband would be gone back to JewYork as soon as they saw the first colored leaf fall. Which was why he feltperfectly comfortable in turning her six-dollar order of turkey into sevendollars and eighty cents with the ball of his thumb on the scale. Nor did ithurt to agree with her when she switched topics and started talking about whata terrible man that Bill Clinton was, although in fact Chip had voted twice forBubba and would have voted for him a third time, had the Constitution allowedhim to run for another term. Bubba was smart, he was good at persuading theragheads to do what he wanted, he hadn’t entirely forgotten the workingman, and by the Lord Harry he got more pussy than a toilet seat.

“And now Gore expects to just… ridein on his coattails!” Mrs. Tassenbaum said, digging for her checkbook (theturkey on the scale magically gained another two ounces, and there Chip felt itprudent to lock it in). “Claims he invented the Internet! Huh! I know better!In fact, I know the man who really did invent the Internet!” She lookedup (Chip’s thumb now nowhere near the scales, he had an instinct about suchthings, damned if he didn’t) and gave Chip a roguish little smile. She loweredher voice into its confidential just-we-two register. “I ought to, I’ve beensleeping in the same bed with him for almost twenty years!”

Chip gave a hearty laugh, took the slicedturkey off the scale, and put it on a piece of white paper. He was glad toleave the subject of Jet Skis behind, as he had one on order from Viking Motors(“The Boys with the Toys”) in Oxford himself.

“I know what you mean! That fella Gore, tooslick!” Mrs. Tassenbaum was nodding enthusiastically, and so Chip decided tolay on a little more. Never hurt, by Christ. “His hair, for instance—howcan you trust a man who puts that much goo in his—”

That was when the bell over the doorjingled. Chip looked up. Saw. And froze. A goddamned lot of water had goneunder the bridge since That Day, but Wendell “Chip” McAvoy knew the man who’dcaused all the trouble the moment he stepped through the door. Some faces yousimply never forgot. And hadn’t he always known, deep in his heart’s mostsecret place, that the man with the terrible blue eyes hadn’t finished hisbusiness and would be back?