The Waste Lands

  "Is it going to happen today?" Roland asked. "Tonight?"

  Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. "I don't know that, either. Not for sure. Tonight? I don't think so. Time . . . it isn't the same over here as it is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow." He had been battling panic, but now it broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland's shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. "But I'm supposed to finish the key, and I haven't, and I'm supposed to do something else, and I don't have a clue about what it is. And if the kid dies, it'll be my fault!"

  The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie's and pulled them away from his shirt. "Get control of yourself."

  "Roland, don't you understand--"

  "I understand that whining and puling won't solve your problem. I understand that you have forgotten the face of your father."

  "Quit that bullshit! I don't care dick about my father!" Eddie shouted hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a breaking branch.

  Eddie's head rocked back; his eyes widened with shock. He stared at the gunslinger, then slowly raised his hand to touch the reddening handprint on his cheek. "You bastard!" he whispered. His hand dropped to the butt of the revolver he still wore on his left hip. Susannah tried to put her own hands over it; Eddie pushed them away.

  And now I must teach again, Roland thought, only this time I teach for my own life, I think, as well as for his.

  Somewhere in the distance a crow hailed its harsh cry into the stillness, and Roland thought for a moment of his hawk, David. Now Eddie was his hawk . . . and like David, he would not scruple to tear out his eye if he gave so much as a single inch.

  Or his throat.

  "Will you shoot me? Is that how you'd have it end, Eddie?"

  "Man, I'm so fucking tired of your jive," Eddie said. His eyes were blurred with tears and fury.

  "You haven't finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You're afraid of finding you can't finish. You're afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not because you're afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You're afraid of what may not come. You're not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself. You haven't forgotten the face of your father. So do it. Shoot me if you dare. I'm tired of watching you blubber."

  "Stop it!" Susannah screamed at him. "Can't you see he'll do it? Can't you see you're forcing him to do it?"

  Roland cut his eyes toward her. "I'm forcing him to decide." He looked back at Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stern. "You have come from the shadow of the heroin and the shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of yourself, if you dare. Come now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it."

  For a moment he thought Eddie was going to do just that, and it would all end right here, on this high ridge, beneath a cloudless summer sky with the spires of the city glimmering on the horizon like blue ghosts. Then Eddie's cheek began to twitch. The firm line of his lips softened and began to tremble. His hand fell from the sandalwood butt of Roland's gun. His chest hitched once . . . twice . . . three times. His mouth opened and all his despair and terror came out in one groaning cry as he blundered toward the gunslinger.

  "I'm afraid, you numb fuck! Don't you understand that? Roland, I'm afraid!"

  His feet tangled together. He fell forward. Roland caught him and held him close, smelling the sweat and dirt on his skin, smelling his tears and terror.

  The gunslinger embraced him for a moment, then turned him toward Susannah. Eddie dropped to his knees beside her chair, his head hanging wearily. She put a hand on the back of his neck, pressing his head against her thigh, and said bitterly to Roland, "Sometimes I hate you, big white man."

  Roland placed the heels of his hands against his forehead and pressed hard. "Sometimes I hate myself."

  "Don't ever stop you, though, do it?"

  Roland didn't reply. He looked at Eddie, who lay with his cheek pressed against Susannah's thigh and his eyes tightly shut. His face was a study in misery. Roland fought away the dragging weariness that made him want to leave the rest of this charming discussion for another day. If Eddie was right, there was no other day. Jake was almost ready to make his move. Eddie had been chosen to midwife the boy into this world. If he wasn't prepared to do that, Jake would die at the point of entry, as surely as an infant must strangle if the mother-root is tangled about its neck when the contractions begin.

  "Stand up, Eddie."

  For a moment he thought Eddie would simply go on crouching there and hiding his face against the woman's leg. If so, everything was lost . . . and that was ka, too. Then, slowly, Eddie got to his feet. He stood there with everything--hands, shoulders, head, hair--hanging, not good, but he was up, and that was a start.

  "Look at me."

  Susannah stirred uneasily, but this time she said nothing.

  Slowly, Eddie raised his head and brushed the hair out of his eyes with a trembling hand.

  "This is for you. I was wrong to take it at all, no matter how deep my pain." Roland curled his hand around the rawhide strip and yanked, snapping it. He held the key out to Eddie. Eddie reached for it like a man in a dream, but Roland did not immediately open his hand. "Will you try to do what needs to be done?"

  "Yes." His voice was almost inaudible.

  "Do you have something to tell me?"

  "I'm sorry I'm afraid." There was something terrible in Eddie's voice, something which hurt Roland's heart and, he supposed, he knew what it was: here was the last of Eddie's childhood, expiring painfully among the three of them. It could not be seen, but Roland could hear its weakening cries. He tried to make himself deaf to them.

  Something else I've done in the name of the Tower. My score grows ever longer, and the day when it will all have to be totted up, like a long-time drunkard's bill in an alehouse, draws ever nearer. How will I ever pay?

  "I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid," he said. "Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks."

  "What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else--everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?"

  Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chambers's salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon.

  After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes.

  Roland nodded.

  "I have forgotten the face . . ." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now--Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger . . . and I cry your pardon."

  Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well . . . loves you very well . . . and so do I."

  Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. "Let's go," he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which stretched beyond.

  16

  JAKE WALKED SLOWLY ALONG Castle Avenue, past pizza shops and bars and bodegas where old women with suspicious faces poked the potatoes and squeezed the tomatoes. The straps of his pack had chafed the skin beneath his arms, and his feet hurt. He passed beneath a digital thermometer which announced it was eighty-five. It felt more like a hundred and five to Jake.

  Up ahead, a police car turned onto the Avenue. Jake at once became extremely interested in a display of gardening supplies in the window of a hardware store. He watched the re
flection of the blue-and-white pass in the window and didn't move until it was gone.

  Hey, Jake, old buddy--where, exactly, are you going?

  He hadn't the slightest idea. He felt positive that the boy he was looking for--the boy in the green bandanna and the yellow T-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MID-WORLD--was somewhere close by, but so what? To Jake he was still nothing but a needle hiding in the haystack which was Brooklyn.

  He passed an alley which had been decorated with a tangle of spray-painted graffiti. Mostly they were names--EL TIANTE 91, SPEEDY GONZALES, MOTORVAN MIKE--but a few mottos and words to the wise had been dropped in here and there, and Jake's eyes fixed on two of these.

  A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE

  had been written across the bricks in spray-paint which had weathered to the same dusky-pink shade of the rose which grew in the vacant lot where Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli had once stood. Below it, in a blue so dark it was almost black, someone had spray-painted this oddity: I CRY YOUR PARDON

  What does that mean? Jake wondered. He didn't know--something from the Bible, maybe--but it held like the eye of a snake is reputed to hold a bird. At last he walked on, slowly and thoughtfully. It was almost two-thirty, and his shadow was beginning to grow longer.

  Just ahead, he saw an old man walking down the street, keeping to the shade as much as possible and leaning on a gnarled cane. Behind the thick glasses he wore, his brown eyes swam like oversized eggs.

  "I cry your pardon, sir," Jake said without thinking or even really hearing himself.

  The old man turned to look at him, blinking in surprise and fear. "Liff me alone, boy," he said. He raised his walking-stick and brandished it clumsily in Jake's direction.

  "Would you know if there's a place called Markey Academy anyplace around here, sir?" This was utter desperation, but it was the only thing he could think to ask.

  The old man slowly lowered his stick--it was the sir that had done it. He looked at Jake with the slightly lunatic interest of the old and almost senile. "How come you not in school, boy?"

  Jake smiled wearily. This one was getting very old. "Finals Week. I came down here to look up an old friend of mine who goes to Markey Academy, that's all. Sorry to have bothered you."

  He stepped around the old man (hoping he wouldn't decide to whop him one across the ass with his cane just for good luck) and was almost down to the corner when the old man yelled: "Boy! Boyyyyy!"

  Jake turned around.

  "There is no Markey Akidimy down here," the old man said. "Twenty-two years I'm living here, so I should know. Markey Avenue, yes, but no Markey Akidimy."

  Jake's stomach cramped with sudden excitement. He took a step back toward the old man, who at once raised his cane into a defensive position again. Jake stopped at once, leaving a twenty-foot safety zone between them. "Where's Markey Avenue, sir? Can you tell me that?"

  "Of gorse," the old man said. "Didn't I just say I'm livink here twenty-two years? Two blogs down. Turn left at the Majestic Theatre. But I'm tellink you now, there iss no Markey Akidimy."

  "Thank you, sir! Thank you!"

  Jake turned around and looked up Castle Avenue. Yes--he could see the unmistakable shape of a movie marquee jutting out over the sidewalk a couple of blocks up. He started to run toward it, then decided that might attract attention and slowed down to a fast walk.

  The old man watched him go. "Sir!" he said to himself in a tone of mild amazement. "Sir, yet!"

  He chuckled rustily and moved on.

  17

  ROLAND'S BAND STOPPED AT dusk. The gunslinger dug a shallow pit and lit a fire. They didn't need it for cooking purposes, but they needed it, nonetheless. Eddie needed it. If he was going to finish his carving, he would need light to work by.

  The gunslinger looked around and saw Susannah, a dark silhouette against the fading aquamarine sky, but he didn't see Eddie.

  "Where is he?" he asked.

  "Down the road apiece. You leave him alone now, Roland--you've done enough."

  Roland nodded, bent over the firepit, and struck at a piece of flint with a worn steel bar. Soon the kindling he had gathered was blazing. He added small sticks, one by one, and waited for Eddie to return.

  18

  HALF A MILE BACK the way they had come, Eddie sat cross-legged in the middle of the Great Road with his unfinished key in one hand, watching the sky. He glanced down the road, saw the spark of the fire, and knew exactly what Roland was doing . . . and why. Then he turned his gaze to the sky again. He had never felt so lonely or so afraid.

  The sky was huge--he could not remember ever seeing so much uninterrupted space, so much pure emptiness. It made him feel very small, and he supposed there was nothing at all wrong with that. In the scheme of things, he was very small.

  The boy was close now. He thought he knew where Jake was and what he was about to do, and it filled him with silent wonder. Susannah had come from 1963. Eddie had come from 1987. Between them . . . Jake. Trying to come over. Trying to be born.

  I met him, Eddie thought. I must have met him, and I think I remember . . . sort of. It was just before Henry went into the Army, right? He was taking courses at Brooklyn Vocational Institute, and he was heavily into black--black jeans, black motorcycle boots with steel caps, black T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Henry's James Dean look. Smoking Area Chic. I used to think that, but I never said it out loud, because I didn't want him pissed at me.

  He realized that what he had been waiting for had happened while he was thinking: Old Star had come out. In fifteen minutes, maybe less, it would be joined by a whole galaxy of alien jewelry, but for now it gleamed alone in the ungathered darkness.

  Eddie slowly held up the key until Old Star gleamed within its wide central notch. And then he recited the old formula of his world, the one his mother had taught him as she knelt beside him at the bedroom window, both of them looking out at the evening star which rode the oncoming darkness above the rooftops and fire-escapes of Brooklyn: "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."

  Old Star glowed in the notch of the key, a diamond caught in ash.

  "Help me find some guts," Eddie said. "That's my wish. Help me find the guts to try and finish this damned thing."

  He sat there a moment longer, then got to his feet and walked slowly back to camp. He sat down as close to the fire as he could get, took the gunslinger's knife without a word to either him or Susannah, and began to work. Tiny, curling slivers of wood rolled up from the s-shape at the end of the key. Eddie worked fast, turning the key this way and that, occasionally closing his eyes and letting his thumb slip along the mild curves. He tried not to think about what might happen if the shape were to go wrong--that would freeze him for sure.

  Roland and Susannah sat behind him, watching silently. At last Eddie put the knife aside. His face was running with sweat. "This kid of yours," he said. "This Jake. He must be a gutty brat."

  "He was brave under the mountains," Roland said. "He was afraid, but never gave an inch."

  "I wish I could be that way."

  Roland shrugged. "At Balazar's you fought well even though they had taken your clothes. It's very hard for a man to fight naked, but you did it."

  Eddie tried to remember the shootout in the nightclub, but it was just a blur in his mind--smoke, noise, and light shining through one wall in confused, intersecting rays. He thought that wall had been torn apart by automatic-weapons fire, but couldn't remember for sure.

  He held the key up so its notches were sharply outlined against the flames. He held it that way for a long time, looking mostly at the s-shape. It looked exactly as he remembered it from his dream and from the momentary vision he had seen in the fire . . . but it didn't feel exactly right. Almost, but not quite.

  That's just Henry again. That's just all those years of never being quite good enough. You did it, buddy--it's just that the Henry inside doesn't want to admit it.

  He dropp
ed the key onto the square of hide and folded the edges carefully around it. "I'm done. I don't know if it's right or not, but I guess it's as right as I can make it." He felt oddly empty now that he no longer had the key to work on--purposeless and directionless.

  "Do you want something to eat, Eddie?" Susannah asked quietly.

  There's your purpose, he thought. There's your direction. Sitting right over there, with her hands folded in her lap. All the purpose and direction you'll ever--

  . But now something else rose in his mind--it came all at once. Not a dream . . . not a vision . . .

  No, not either of those. It's a memory. It's happening again--you're remembering forward in time.

  "I have to do something else first," he said, and got up.

  On the far side of the fire, Roland had stacked some odd lots of scavenged wood. Eddie hunted through them and found a dry stick about two feet long and four inches or so through the middle. He took it, returning to his place by the fire, and picked up Roland's knife again. This time he worked faster because he was simply sharpening the stick, turning it into something that looked like a small tent-peg.

  "Can we get moving before daybreak?" he asked the gunslinger. "I think we should get to that circle as soon as we can."

  "Yes. Sooner, if we must. I don't want to move in the dark--a speaking ring is an unsafe place to be at night--but if we have to, we have to."

  "From the look on your face, big boy, I doubt if those stone circles are very safe any time," Susannah said.

  Eddie put the knife aside again. The dirt Roland had taken out of the shallow hole he'd made for the campfire was piled up by Eddie's right foot. Now he used the sharp end of the stick to carve a question-mark shape in the dirt. The shape was crisp and clear.

  "Okay," he said, brushing it away. "All done."

  "Have something to eat, then," Susannah said.

  Eddie tried, but he wasn't very hungry. When he finally went to sleep, nestled against Susannah's warmth, his rest was dreamless but very thin. Until the gunslinger shook him awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing endlessly over the plain below them, and it seemed to him that he went with it, flying high into the night, away from these cares, while Old Star and Old Mother rode serenely above him, painting his cheeks with frost.