The Waste Lands

  Eddie took the clip, examined it, rammed it home, checked the safety, then stuck the Ruger in his own belt.

  "Listen closely and heed me well," Roland said. "If there are people, they'll likely be old and much more frightened of us than we are of them. The younger folk will be long gone. It's unlikely that those left will have firearms--in fact, ours may be the first guns many of them have ever seen, except maybe for a picture or two in the old books. Make no threatening gestures. And the childhood rule is a good one: speak only when spoken to."

  "What about bows and arrows?" Susannah asked.

  "Yes, they may have those. Spears and clubs, as well."

  "Don't forget rocks," Eddie said bleakly, looking down at the cluster of wooden buildings. The place looked like a ghost-town, but who knew for sure? "And if they're hard up for rocks, there's always the cobbles from the road."

  "Yes, there's always something," Roland agreed. "But we'll start no trouble ourselves--is that clear?"

  They nodded.

  "Maybe it would be easier to detour around," Susannah said.

  Roland nodded, eyes never leaving the simple geography ahead. Another road crossed the Great Road at the center of the town, making the dilapidated buildings look like a target centered in the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle. "It would, but we won't. Detouring's a bad habit that's easy to get into. It's always better to go straight on, unless there's a good visible reason not to. I see no reason not to here. And if there are people, well, that might be a good thing. We could do with a little palaver."

  Susannah reflected that Roland seemed different now, and she didn't think it was simply because the voices in his mind had ceased. This is the way he was when he still had wars to fight and men to lead and his old friends around him, she thought. How he was before the world moved on and he moved on with it, chasing that man Walter. This is how he was before the Big Empty turned him inward on himself and made him strange.

  "They might know what those drum sounds are," Jake suggested.

  Roland nodded again. "Anything they know--particularly about the city--would come in handy, but there's no need to think ahead too much about people who may not even be there."

  "Tell you what," Susannah said, "I wouldn't come out if I saw us. Four people, three of them armed? We probably look like a gang of those old-time outlaws in your stories, Roland--what do you call them?"

  "Harriers." His left hand dropped to the sandalwood grip of his remaining revolver and he pulled it a little way out of the holster. "But no harrier ever born carried one of these, and if there are old-timers in yon village, they'll know it. Let's go."

  Jake glanced behind them and saw the bumbler lying in the road with his muzzle between his short front paws, watching them closely. "Oy!" Jake called.

  "Oy!" the bumbler echoed, and scrambled to its feet at once.

  They started down the shallow knoll toward the town with Oy trotting along behind them.

  4

  Two BUILDINGS ON THE outskirts had been burned; the rest of the town appeared dusty but intact. They passed an abandoned livery stable on the left, a building that might have been a market on the right, and then they were in the town proper--such as it was. There were perhaps a dozen rickety buildings standing on either side of the road. Alleys ran between some of them. The other road, this one a dirt track mostly overgrown with plains grass, ran northeast to southwest.

  Susannah looked at its northeast arm and thought: Once there were barges on the river, and somewhere down that road there was a landing, and probably another shacky little town, mostly saloons and cribs, built up around it. That was the last point of trade before the barges went on down to the city. The wagons came through this place going to that place and then back again. How long ago was that?

  She didn't know--but a long time, from the look of this place.

  Somewhere a rusty hinge squalled monotonously. Somewhere else one shutter clapped lonesomely to and fro in the plains wind.

  There were hitching rails, most of them broken, in front of the buildings. Once there had been board sidewalks, but now most of the boards were gone and grass grew up through the holes where they had been. The signs on the buildings were faded, but some were still readable, written in a bastardized form of English which was, she supposed, what Roland called the low speech. FOOD AND GRAIN, one said, and she guessed that might mean feed and grain. On the false front next to it, below a crude drawing of a plains-buffalo lying in the grass, were the words REST EAT DRINK. Under the sign, batwing doors hung crookedly, moving a little in the wind.

  "Is that a saloon?" She didn't know exactly why she was whispering, only that she couldn't have spoken in a normal tone of voice. It would have been like playing "Clinch Mountain Breakdown" on the banjo at a funeral.

  "It was," Roland said. He didn't whisper, but his voice was low-pitched and thoughtful. Jake was walking close by his side, looking around nervously. Behind them, Oy had closed up his distance to ten yards. He trotted quickly, head swinging from side to side like a pendulum as he examined the buildings.

  Now Susannah began to feel it: that sensation of being watched. It was exactly as Roland had said it would be, a feeling sunshine had been replaced by shade.

  "There are people, aren't there?" she whispered.

  Roland nodded.

  Standing on the northeast corner of the crossroads was a building with another sign she recognized: HOSTEL, it said, and COTTS. Except for a church with a tilted steeple up ahead, it was the tallest building in town--three stories. She glanced up in time to see a white blur, surely a face, draw away from one of the glassless windows. Suddenly she wanted to get out of here. Roland was setting a slow, deliberate pace, however, and she supposed she knew why. Hurrying might give the watchers the impression that they were scared . . . and that they could be taken. All the same--

  At the crossroads the intersecting streets widened out, creating a town square which had been overrun by grass and weeds. In the center was an eroded stone marker. Above it, a metal box hung on a sagging length of rusty cable.

  Roland, with Jake by his side, walked toward the marker. Eddie pushed Susannah's chair after. Grass whispered in its spokes and the wind tickled a lock of hair against her cheek. Further along the street, the shutter banged and the hinge squealed. She shivered and brushed the hair away.

  "I wish he'd hurry up," Eddie said in a low voice. "This place gives me the creeps."

  Susannah nodded. She looked around the square and again she could almost see how it must have been on market-day-the sidewalks thronged with people, a few of them town ladies with their baskets over their arms, most of them waggoners and roughly-dressed bargemen (she did not know why she was so sure of the barges and bargemen, but she was); the wagons passing through the town square, the ones on the unpaved road raising choking clouds of yellow dust as the drivers flogged their carthorses (oxen they were oxen) along. She could see those carts, dusty swatches of canvas tied down over bales of cloth on some and pyramids of tarred barrels on others; could see the oxen, double-yoked and straining patiently, flicking their ears at the flies buzzing around their huge heads; could hear voices, and laughter, and the piano in the saloon pounding out a lively tune like "Buffalo Gals" or "Darlin' Katy."

  It's as if I lived here in another life, she thought.

  The gunslinger bent over the inscription on the marker. "Great Road," he read. "Lud, one hundred and sixty wheels."

  "Wheels?" Jake asked.

  "An old form of measurement."

  "Have you heard of Lud?" Eddie asked.

  "Perhaps," the gunslinger said. "When I was very small."

  "It rhymes with crud," Eddie said. "Maybe not such a good sign."

  Jake was examining the east side of the stone. "River Road. It's written funny, but that's what it says."

  Eddie looked at the west side of the marker. "It says Jimtown, forty wheels. Isn't that the birthplace of Wayne Newton, Roland?"

  Roland looked at him blankly
.

  "Shet ma mouf," Eddie said, and rolled his eyes.

  On the southwest corner of the square was the town's only stone building--a squat, dusty cube with rusty bars on the windows. Combination county jail and courthouse, Susannah thought. She had seen similar ones down south; add a few slant parking spaces in front and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Something had been daubed across the facade of the building in fading yellow paint. She could read it, and although she couldn't understand it, it made her more anxious than ever to get out of this town. PUBES DIE, it said.

  "Roland!" When she had his attention, she pointed at the graffito. "What does that mean?"

  He read it, then shook his head. "Don't know."

  She looked around again. The square now seemed smaller, and the buildings seemed to be leaning over them. "Can we get out of here?"

  "Soon." He bent down and pried a small chunk of cobble out of the roadbed. He bounced it thoughtfully in his left hand as he looked up at the metal box which hung over the marker. He cocked his arm and Susannah realized, an instant too late, what he meant to do.

  "No, Roland!" she cried, then cringed back at the sound of her own horrified voice.

  He took no notice of her but fired the stone upward. His aim was as true as ever, and it struck the box dead center with a hollow, metallic bang. There was a whir of clockwork from within, and a rusty green flag unfolded from a slot in the side. When it locked in place, a bell rang briskly. Written in large black letters on the side of the flag was the word GO.

  "I'll be damned," Eddie said. "It's a Keystone Kops traffic-light. If you hit it again, does it say STOP?"

  "We have company," Roland said quietly, and pointed toward the building Susannah thought of as the county courthouse. A man and a woman had emerged from it and were descending the stone steps. You win the kewpie doll, Roland, Susannah thought. They're older'n God, the both of em.

  The man was wearing bib overalls and a huge straw sombrero. The woman walked with one hand clamped on his naked sunburned shoulder. She wore homespun and a poke bonnet, and as they drew closer to the marker, Susannah saw she was blind, and that the accident which had taken her sight must have been exceedingly horrible. Where her eyes had been there were now only two shallow sockets filled with scar-tissue. She looked both terrified and confused.

  "Be they harriers, Si?" she cried in a cracked, quavering voice. "You'll have us killed yet, I'll warrant!"

  "Shut up, Mercy," he replied. Like the woman, he spoke with a thick accent Susannah could barely understand. "They ain't harriers, not these. There's a Pube with em, I told you that--ain't no harrier ever been travellin with a Pube."

  Blind or not, she tried to pull away from him. He cursed and caught her arm. "Quit it, Mercy! Quit it, I say! You'll fall down and do y'self evil, dammit!"

  "We mean you no harm," the gunslinger called. He used the High Speech, and at the sound of it the man's eyes lit up with incredulity. The woman turned back, swinging her blind face in their direction.

  "A gunslinger!" the man cried. His voice cracked and wavered with excitement. " 'Fore God! I knew it were! I knew!"

  He began to run across the square toward them, pulling the woman after. She stumbled along helplessly, and Susannah waited for the inevitable moment when she must fall. But the man fell first, going heavily to his knees, and she sprawled painfully beside him on the cobbles of the Great Road.

  5

  JAKE FELT SOMETHING FURRY against his ankle and looked down. Oy was crouched beside him, looking more anxious than ever. Jake reached down and cautiously stroked his head, as much to receive comfort as to give it. Its fur was silky, incredibly soft. For a moment he thought the bumbler was going to run, but it only looked up at him, licked his hand, and then looked back at the two new people. The man was trying to help the woman to her feet and not succeeding very well. Her head craned this way and that in avid confusion.

  The man named Si had cut his palms on the cobblestones, but he took no notice. He gave up trying to help the woman, swept off his sombrero, and held it over his chest. To. Jake the hat looked as big as a bushel basket. "We bid ye welcome, gunslinger!" he cried. "Welcome indeed! I thought all your kind had perished from the earth, so I did!"

  "I thank you for your welcome," Roland said in the High Speech. He put his hands gently on the blind woman's upper arms. She cringed for a moment, then relaxed and allowed him to help her up. "Put on your hat, old-timer. The sun is hot."

  He did, then just stood there, looking at Roland with shining eyes. After a moment or two, Jake realized what that shine was. Si was crying.

  "A gunslinger! I told you, Mercy! I seen the shooting-iron and told you!"

  "No harriers?" she asked, as if unable to believe it. "Are you sure they ain't harriers, Si?"

  Roland turned to Eddie. "Make sure of the safety and then give her Jake's gun."

  Eddie pulled the Ruger from his waistband, checked the safety, and then put it gingerly in the blind woman's hands. She gasped, almost dropped it, then ran her hands over it wonderingly. She turned the empty sockets where her eyes had been up to the man. "A gun!" she whispered. "My sainted hat!"

  "Ay, some kind," the old man replied dismissively, taking it from her and giving it back to Eddie, "but the gunslinger's got a real one, and there's a woman got another. She's got a brown skin, too, like my da' said the people of Garlan had."

  Oy gave his shrill, whistling bark. Jake turned and saw more people coming up the street--five or six in all. Like Si and Mercy, they were all old, and one of them, a woman hobbling over a cane like a witch in a fairy-tale, looked positively ancient. As they neared, Jake realized that two of the men were identical twins. Long white hair spilled over the shoulders of their patched homespun shirts. Their skin was as white as fine linen, and their eyes were pink. Albinos, he thought.

  The crone appeared to be their leader. She hobbled toward Roland's party on her cane, staring at them with gimlet eyes as green as emeralds. Her toothless mouth was tucked deeply into itself. The hem of the old shawl she wore fluttered in the prairie breeze. Her eyes settled upon Roland.

  "Hail, gunslinger! Well met!" She spoke the High Speech herself, and, like Eddie and Susannah, Jake understood the words perfectly, although he guessed they would have been gibberish to him in his own world. "Welcome to River Crossing!"

  The gunslinger had removed his own hat, and now he bowed to her, tapping his throat three times, rapidly, with his diminished right hand. "Thankee-sai, Old Mother."

  She cackled freely at this and Eddie suddenly realized Roland had at the same time made a joke and paid a compliment. The thought which had already occurred to Susannah now came to him: This is how he was. . . and this is what he did. Part of it, anyway.

  "Gunslinger ye may be, but below your clothes you're but another foolish man," she said, lapsing into low speech.

  Roland bowed again. "Beauty has always made me foolish, Mother."

  This time she positively cawed laughter. Oy shrank against Jake's leg. One of the albino twins rushed forward to catch the ancient as she rocked backward within her dusty cracked shoes. She caught her balance on her own, however, and made an imperious shooing gesture with one hand. The albino retreated. "Be ye on a quest, gunslinger?" Her green eyes gleamed shrewdly at him; the puckered pocket of her mouth worked in and out.

  "Ay," Roland said. "We go in search of the Dark Tower."

  The others only looked puzzled, but the old woman recoiled and forked the sign of the evil eye--not at them, Jake realized, but to the southeast, along the path of the Beam.

  "I'm sorry to hear it!" she cried. "For no one who ever went in search of that black dog ever came back! So said my grandfather, and his grandfather before him! Not ary one!"

  "Ka," the gunslinger said patiently, as if this explained everything . . . and, Jake was coming to realize, to Roland it did.

  "Ay," she agreed, "black dog ka! Well-a-well; ye'll do as ye're called, and live along your path, and die when it come
s to the clearing in the trees. Will ye break bread with us before you push on, gunslinger? You and your band of knights?"

  Roland bowed again. "It has been long and long since we have broken bread in company other than our own, Old Mother. We cannot stay long, but yes--we'll eat your food with thanks and pleasure."

  The old woman turned to the others. She spoke in a cracked and ringing voice--yet it was the words she spoke and not the tone in which they were spoken that sent chills racing down Jake's back: "Behold ye, the return of the White! After evil ways and evil days, the White comes again! Be of good heart and hold up your heads, for ye have lived to see the wheel of ka begin to turn once more!"

  6

  THE OLD WOMAN, WHOSE name was Aunt Talitha, led them through the town square and to the church with the leaning spire--it was The Church of the Blood Everlasting, according to the faded board on the run-to-riot lawn. Written over the words, in green paint that had faded to a ghost, was another message: DEATH TO GRAYS.

  She led them through the ruined church, hobbling rapidly along the center aisle past the splintered and overturned pews, down a short flight of stairs, and into a kitchen so different from the ruin above that Susannah blinked in surprise. Here everything was neat as a pin. The wooden floor was very old, but it had been faithfully oiled and glowed with its own serene inner light. The black cookstove took up one whole corner. It was immaculate, and the wood stacked in the brick alcove next to it looked both well-chosen and well-seasoned.

  Their party had been joined by three more senior citizens, two women and a man who limped along on a crutch and a wooden leg. Two of the women went to the cupboards and began to make themselves busy; a third opened the belly of the stove and struck a long sulphur match to the wood already laid neatly within; a fourth opened another door and went down a short set of narrow steps into what looked like a cold-pantry. Aunt Talitha, meanwhile, led the rest of them into a spacious entry at the rear of the church building. She waved her cane at two trestle tables which had been stored there under a clean but ragged dropcoth, and the two elderly albinos immediately went over and began to wrestle with one of them.