The Dark Tower

“What about Susannah?” Jake had asked.

“Susannah’s going to help us see her man to a place where he can be at his ease, and die as peacefully as possible,” said Ted Brautigan. “Aren’t you, dear heart?”

She’d looked at him with an expression that was not quite vacant; the understanding (and the pleading) in that gaze went into Jake’s heart like the tip of an icicle. “Must he die?” she had asked him.

Ted had lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Yes,” he said. “He must die and you must bear it.”

“Then you have to do something for me,” she said, and touched Ted’s cheek with her fingers. To Jake those fingers looked cold. Cold.

“What, love? Anything I can.” He took hold of her fingers and wrapped them

(peace ease quiet wait calm slow peace)

in his own.

“Stop what you’re doing, unless I tell you different,” said she.

He looked at her, surprised. Then he glanced at Dinky, who only shrugged. Then he looked back at Susannah.

“You mustn’t use your good-mind to steal my grief,” Susannah told him, “for I’d open my mouth and drink it to the dregs. Every drop.”

For a moment Ted only stood with his head lowered and a frown creasing his brow. Then he looked up and gave her the sweetest smile Jake had ever seen.

“Aye, lady,” Ted replied. “We’ll do as you ask. But if you need us…when you need us…”

“I’ll call,” Susannah said, and once more slipped to her knees beside the muttering man who lay in the street.

Two

As Roland and Jake approached the alley which would take them back to the center of the Devar-Toi, where they would put off mourning their fallen friend by taking care of any who might still stand against them, Sheemie reached out and plucked the sleeve of Roland’s shirt.

“Beam says thankya, Will Dearborn that was.” He had blown out his voice with shouting and spoke in a hoarse croak. “Beam says all may yet be well. Good as new. Better.”

“That’s fine,” Roland said, and Jake supposed it was. There had been no real joy then, however, as there was no real joy now. Jake kept thinking of the hole Ted Brautigan’s gentle fingers had exposed. That hole filled with red jelly.

Roland put an arm around Sheemie’s shoulders, squeezed him, gave him a kiss. Sheemie smiled, delighted. “I’ll come with you, Roland. Will’ee have me, dear?”

“Not this time,” Roland said.

“Why are you crying?” Sheemie asked. Jake had seen the happiness draining from Sheemie’s face, being replaced with worry. Meanwhile, more Breakers were returning to Main Street, milling around in little groups. Jake had seen consternation in the expressions they directed toward the gunslinger…and a certain dazed curiosity…and, in some cases, clear dislike. Hate, almost. He had seen no gratitude, not so much as a speck of gratitude, and for that he’d hated them.

“My friend is hurt,” Roland had said. “I cry for him, Sheemie. And for his wife, who is my friend. Will you go to Ted and sai Dinky, and try to soothe her, should she ask to be soothed?”

“If you want, aye! Anything for you!”

“Thankee-sai, son of Stanley. And help if they move my friend.”

“Your friend Eddie! Him who lays hurt!”

“Aye, his name is Eddie, you say true. Will you help Eddie?”

“Aye!”

“And there’s something else—”

“Aye?” Sheemie asked, then seemed to remember something. “Aye! Help you go away, travel far, you and your friends! Ted told me. ‘Make a hole,’ he said, ‘like you did for me.’ Only they brought him back. The bad ’uns. They’d not bring you back, for the bad ’uns are gone! Beam’s at peace!” And Sheemie laughed, a jarring sound to Jake’s grieving ear.

To Roland’s too, maybe, because his smile was strained. “In time, Sheemie…although I think Susannah may stay here, and wait for us to return.”

If we do return, Jake thought.

“But I have another chore you may be able to do. Not helping someone travel to that other world, but like that, a little. I’ve told Ted and Dinky, and they’d tell you, once Eddie’s been put at his ease. Will you listen?”

“Aye! And help, if I can!”

Roland clapped him on the shoulder. “Good!” Then Jake and the gunslinger had gone in a direction that might have been north, headed back to finish what they had begun.

Three

They flushed out another fourteen guards in the next three hours, most of them humes. Roland surprised Jake — a little — by only killing the two who shot at them from behind the fire engine that had crashed with one wheel stuck in the cellar bulkhead. The rest he disarmed and then gave parole, telling them that any Devar-Toi guards still in the compound when the late-afternoon change-of-shifts horn blew would be shot out of hand.

“But where will we go?” asked a taheen with a snowy-white rooster’s head below a great floppy-red coxcomb (he reminded Jake a little of Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon character).