"Roll me one of those, would you?"
Roland turned in Susannah's direction, eyebrows raised. She shrugged, then nodded. Roland rolled Jake a
cigarette, gave it to him, then scratched a match on the seat of his pants and lit it. Jake sat on the waggon
wheel, taking the smoke in occasional puffs, holding it in his mouth, then letting it out. His mouth filled up
with spit. He didn't mind. Unlike some things, spit could be got rid of. He made no attempt to inhale.
Roland looked down the hill, where the first of the two running men was just entering the corn. "That's
Slightman," he said. "Good."
"Why good, Roland?" Eddie asked.
"Because sai Slightman will have accusations to make," Roland said. "In his grief, he isn't going to care who
hears them, or what his extraordinary knowledge might say about his part in this morning's work."
"Dance," Jake said.
They turned to look at him. He sat pale and thoughtful on the waggon-wheel, holding his cigarette. "This
morning's dance," he said.
Roland appeared to consider this, then nodded. "His part in this morning's dance. If he gets here soon
enough, we may be able to quiet him. If not, his son's death is only going to be the start of Ben Slightman's
commala."
NINETEEN
Slightman was almost fifteen years younger than the rancher, and arrived at the site of the battle well before
the other. For a moment he only stood on the far edge of the hide, considering the shattered body lying in the
road. There was not so much blood, now—the oggan had drunk it greedily—but the severed arm still lay
where it had been, and the severed arm told all. Roland would no more have moved it before Slightman got
here than he would have opened his flies and pissed on the boy's corpse. Slightman the Younger had reached
the clearing at the end of his path. His father, as next of kin, had a right to see where and how it had
happened.
The man stood quiet for perhaps five seconds, then pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a shriek. It chilled
Eddie's blood. He looked around for Susannah and saw she was no longer there. He didn't blame her for
ducking out. This was a bad scene. The worst.
Slightman looked left, looked right, then looked straight ahead and saw Roland, standing beside the
overturned waggon with his arms crossed. Beside him, Jake still sat on the wheel, smoking his first cigarette.
"YOU!" Slightman screamed. He was carrying his bah; now he unslung it. "YOU DID THIS! YOU!"
Eddie plucked the weapon deftly from Slightman's hands. "No, you don't, partner," he murmured. "You don't
need this right now, why don't you let me keep it for you."
Slightman seemed not to notice. Incredibly, his right hand still made circular motions in the air, as if winding
the bah for a shot.
"YOU KILLED MY SON! TO PAY ME BACK! YOU BASTARD! MURDERING BAS— "
Moving with the eerie, spooky speed that Eddie could still not completely believe, Roland seized Slightman
around the neck in the crook of one arm, then yanked him forward. The move simultaneously cut off the flow
of the man's accusations and drew him close.
"Listen to me," Roland said, "and listen well. I care nothing for your life or honor, one's been misspent and
the other's long gone, but your son is dead and about his honor I care very much. If you don't shut up this
second, you worm of creation, I'll shut you up myself. So what would you? It's nothing to me, either way. I'll
tell em you ran mad at the sight of him, stole my gun out of its holster, and put a bullet in your own head to
join him. What would you have? Decide."
Eisenhart was badly blown but still lurching and weaving his way up through the corn, hoarsely calling his
wife's name: "Margaret!Margaret! Answer me, dear! Gi'me a word, I beg ya, do!"
Roland let go of Slightman and looked at him sternly. Slightman turned his awful eyes to Jake. "Did your
dinh kill my boy in order to be revenged on me? Tell me the truth, soh."
Jake took a final puff on his cigarette and cast it away. The butt lay smoldering in the dirt next to the dead
horse. "Did you even look at him?" he asked Benny's Da'. "No bullet ever made could do that. Sai Eisenhart's
head fell almost on top of him and Benny crawled out of the ditch from the… the horror of it." It was a word,
he realized, that he had never used out loud. Had never needed to use out loud. "They threw two of their
sneetches at him. I got one, but…" He swallowed. There was a click in his throat. "The other… I would have,
you ken… I tried, but…" His face was working. His voice was breaking apart. Yet his eyes were dry. And
somehow as terrible as Slightman's. "I never had a chance at the other'n," he finished, then lowered his head
and began to sob.
Roland looked at Slightman, his eyebrows raised.
"All right," Slightman said. "I see how 'twas. Yar. Tell me, were he brave until then? Tell me, I beg."
"He and Jake brought back one of that pair," Eddie said, gesturing to the Tavery twins. "The boy half. He got
his foot caught in a hole. Jake and Benny pulled him out, then carried him. Nothing but guts, your boy. Side
to side and all the way through the middle."
Slightman nodded. He took the spectacles off his face and looked at them as if he had never seen them
before. He held them so, before his eyes, for a second or two, then dropped them onto the road and crushed
them beneath one bootheel. He looked at Roland and Jake almost apologetically. "I believe I've seen all I
need to," he said, and then went to his son.
Vaughn Eisenhart emerged from the corn. He saw his wife and gave a bellow. Then he tore open his shirt and
began pounding his right fist above his flabby left breast, crying her name each time he did it.
"Oh, man," Eddie said. "Roland, you ought to stop that."
"Not I," said the gunslinger.
Slightman took his son's severed arm and planted a kiss in the palm with a tenderness Eddie found nearly
unbearable. He put the arm on the boy's chest, then walked back toward them. Without the glasses, his face
looked naked and somehow unformed. "Jake, would you help me find a blanket?"
Jake got off the waggon wheel to help him find what he needed. In the uncovered trench that had been the
hide, Eisenhart was cradling his wife's burnt head to his chest, rocking it. From the corn, approaching, came
the children and their minders, singing "The Rice Song." At first Eddie thought that what he was hearing
from town must be an echo of that singing, and then he realized it was the rest of the Calla. They knew. They
had heard the singing, and they knew. They were coming.
Pere Callahan stepped out of the field with Lia Jaffords cradled in his arms. In spite of the noise, the little girl
was asleep. Callahan looked at the heaps of dead Wolves, took one hand from beneath the little girl's bottom,
and drew a slow, trembling cross in the air.
"God be thanked," he said.
Roland went to him and took the hand that had made the cross. "Put one on me," he said.
Callahan looked at him, uncomprehending.
Roland nodded to Vaughn Eisenhart. "That one promised I'd leave town with his curse on me if harm came to
his wife."
He could have said more, but there was no need. Callahan understood, and signed the cross on Roland's
brow. The fingernail trailed a warmth behind it that Roland felt a long time. And although Eisenhart never
kept his promise, the gunslinger was never sorry that he'd asked the Pere for that extra bit of protection.
TWENTY
What followed was a confused jubilee there on the East Road, mingled with grief for the two who had fallen.
Yet even the grief had a joyful light shining through it. No one seemed to feel that the losses were in any way
equal to the gains. And Eddie supposed that was true. If it wasn't your wife or your son who had fallen, that
was.
The singing from town drew closer. Now they could see rising dust. In the road, men and women embraced.
Someone tried to take Margaret Eisenhart's head away from her husband, who for the time being refused to
let it go.
Eddie drifted over to Jake.
"Never saw Star Wars, did you?" he asked.
"No, told you. I was going to, but—"
"You left too soon. I know. Those things they were swinging—Jake, they were from that movie."
"You sure?"
"Yes. And the Wolves…Jake, the Wolves themselves…"
Jake was nodding, very slowly. Now they could see the people from town. The newcomers saw the children
—all the children, still here and still safe—and raised a cheer. Those in the forefront began to run. "I know."
"Do you?" Eddie asked. His eyes were almost pleading. "Do you really? Because… man, it's so crazy—"
Jake looked at the heaped Wolves. The green hoods. The gray leggings. The black boots. The snarling,
decomposing faces. Eddie had already pulled one of those rotting metal faces away and looked at what was
beneath it. Nothing but smooth metal, plus lenses that served as eyes, a round mesh grille that doubtless
served as a nose, two sprouted microphones at the temples for ears. No, all the personality these things had
was in the masks and clothing they wore.
"Crazy or not, I know what they are, Eddie. Or where they come from, at least. Marvel Comics."
A look of sublime relief filled Eddie's face. He bent and kissed Jake on the cheek. A ghost of a smile touched
the boy's mouth. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
"The Spider-Man books," Eddie said. "When I was a kid I couldn't get enough of those things."
"I didn't buy em myself," Jake said, "but Timmy Mucci down at Mid-Town Lanes used to have a terrible
jones for the Marvel mags. Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, all of
em. These guys…"
"They look like Dr. Doom," Eddie said.
"Yeah," Jake said. "It's not exact, I'm sure the masks were modified to make them look a little more like
wolves, but otherwise… same green hoods, same green cloaks. Yeah, Dr. Doom."
"And the sneetches," Eddie said. "Have you ever heard of Harry Potter?"
"I don't think so. Have you?"
"No, and I'll tell you why. Because the sneetches are from the future. Maybe from some Marvel comic book
that'll come out in 1990 or 1995. Do you see what I'm saying?"
Jake nodded.
"It's all nineteen, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "Nineteen, ninety-nine, and nineteen-ninety-nine."
Eddie glanced around. "Where's Suze?"
"Probably went after her chair," Jake said. But before either of them could explore the question of Susannah
Dean's whereabouts any further (and by then it was probably too late, anyway) , the first of the folken from
town arrived. Eddie and Jake were swept into a wild, impromptu celebration—hugged, kissed, shaken by the
hand, laughed over, wept over, thanked and thanked and thanked.
TWENTY-ONE
Ten minutes after the main body of the townsfolk arrived, Rosalita reluctantly approached Roland. The
gunslinger was extremely glad to see her. Eben Took had taken him by the arms and was telling him—over
and over again, endlessly, it seemed— how wrong he and Telford had been, how utterly and completely
wrong, and how when Roland and his ka-tet were ready to move on, Eben Took would outfit them from stem
to stern and not a penny would they pay.
"Roland!" Rosa said.
Roland excused himself and took her by the arm, leading her a little way up the road. The Wolves had been
scattered everywhere and were now being mercilessly looted of their possessions by the laughing, deliriously
happy folken. Stragglers were arriving every minute.
"Rosa, what is it?"
"It's your lady," Rosa said. "Susannah."
"What of her?" Roland asked. Frowning, he looked around. He didn't see Susannah, couldn't remember when
he had last seen her. When he'd given Jake the cigarette? That long ago? He thought so. "Where is she?"
"That's just it," Rosa said. "I don't know. So I peeked into the waggon she came in, thinking that perhaps
she'd gone in there to rest. That perhaps she felt faint or gut-sick, do ya. But she's not there. And Roland…
her chair is gone."
"Gods!" Roland snarled, and slammed his fist against his leg. "Oh, gods!"
Rosalita took a step back from him, alarmed.
"Where's Eddie?" Roland asked.
She pointed. Eddie was so deep in a cluster of admiring men and women that Roland didn't think he would
have seen him, but for the child riding on his shoulders; it was Heddon Jaffords, an enormous grin on his
face.
"Are you sure you want to disturb him?" Rosa asked timidly. "May be she's just gone off a bit, to pull herself
back together."
Gone off a bit, Roland thought. He could feel a blackness filling his heart. His sinking heart. She'd gone off a
bit, all right. And he knew who had stepped in to take her place. Their attention had wandered in the
aftermath of the fight…Jake's grief… the congratulations of the folken… the confusion and the joy and the
singing… but that was no excuse.
"Gunslingers!" he roared, and the jubilant crowd quieted at once. Had he cared to look, he could have seen
the fear that lay just beneath their relief and adulation. It would not have been new to him; they were always
afraid of those who came wearing the hard calibers. What they wanted of such when the shooting was done
was to give them a final meal, perhaps a final gratitude-fuck, then send them on their way and pick up their
