“Who’s Stuttering Bill?” Susannah asked,just as Roland was asking “How long have you been here?”
Joe Collins laughed. “One at a time, mefoine new friends, one at a time!” He had set his stick aside to struggle outof his coat, put his weight on his bad leg, made a low snarling sound, andnearly fell over. Would have fallen over, had Roland not steadied him.
“Thankee, thankee, thankee,” Joe said.“Although I tell you what, it wouldn’t have been the first time I wound up withmy nose on that lernoleum! But, as you saved me a tumble, it’s your questionI’ll answer first. I’ve been here, Odd Joe of Odd’s Lane, just about seb’nteenyears. The only reason I can’t tell you bang-on is that for awhile there, timegot pretty goddam funny, if you know what I mean.”
“We do,” Susannah said. “Believe me, wedo.”
Collins was now divesting himself of asweater, and beneath it was another. Susannah’s first impression had been of astout old man who stopped just short of fat. Now she saw that a lot of whatshe’d taken for fat was nothing but padding. He wasn’t as desperately scrawnyas his old horse, but he was a long shout from stout.
“Now Stuttering Bill,” the old mancontinued, removing the second sweater, “he be a robot. Cleans the house aswell as keepin my generator runnin… and a-course he’s the one that does theplowin. When I first come here, he only stuttered once in awhile; now it’severy second or third word. What I’ll do when he finally runs down I dunno.” ToSusannah’s ear, he sounded singularly unworried about it.
“Maybe he’ll get better, now that theBeam’s working right again,” she said.
“He might last a little longer, butI doubt like hell that he’ll get any better,” Joe said. “Machines don’theal the way living things do.” He’d finally reached his thermal undershirt,and here the stripdown stopped. Susannah was grateful. Looking at the somehowghastly barrel of the horse’s ribs, so close beneath the short gray fur, hadbeen enough. She had no wish to see the master’s, as well.
“Off with yer coats and your leggings,” Joesaid. “I’ll get yez eggnog or whatever else ye’d like in a minute or two, butfirst I’d show yer my livin room, for it’s my pride, so it is.”
Six
There was a rag rug on the living roomfloor that would have looked at home in Gramma Holmes’s house, and a La-Z-Boyrecliner with a table beside it. The table was heaped with magazines, paperbackbooks, a pair of spectacles, and a brown bottle containing God knew what sortof medicine. There was a television, although Susannah couldn’t imagine whatold Joe might possibly watch on it (Eddie and Jake would have recognized theVCR sitting on the shelf beneath). But what took all of Susannah’sattention—and Roland’s, as well—was the photograph on one of thewalls. It had been thumbtacked there slightly askew, in a casual fashion thatseemed (to Susannah, at least) almost sacrilegious.
It was a photograph of the Dark Tower.
Her breath deserted her. She worked her wayover to it, barely feeling the knots and nubbles of the rag rug beneath herpalms, then raised her arms. “Roland, pick me up!”
He did, and she saw that his face had gonedead pale except for two hard balls of color burning in his thin cheeks. Hiseyes were blazing. The Tower stood against the darkening sky with sunsetpainting the hills behind it orange, the slitted windows rising in their eternalspiral. From some of those windows there spilled a dim and eldritch glow. Shecould see balconies jutting out from the dark stone sides at every two or threestories, and the squat doors that opened onto them, all shut. Locked as well,she had no doubt. Before the Tower was the field of roses, Can’-Ka No Rey, dimbut still lovely in the shadows. Most of the roses were closed against thecoming dark but a few still peeped out like sleepy eyes.
“Joe!” she said. Her voice was little morethan a whisper. She felt faint, and it seemed she could hear singing voices,far and wee. “Oh, Joe! This picture…!”
“Aye, mum,” he said, clearly pleased by herreaction. “It’s a good ‘un, ain’t it? Which is why I pinned it up. I’ve gotothers, but this is the best. Right at sunset, so the shadow seems to lieforever back along the Path of the Beam. Which in a way it does, as I’m sure yeboth must know.”
Roland’s breathing in her right ear wasrapid and ragged, as if he’d just run a race, but Susannah barely noticed. Forit was not just the subject of the picture that had filled her with awe.
“This is a Polaroid!”
“Well… yar,” he said, sounding puzzled atthe level of her excitement. “I suppose Stuttering Bill could have brung me aKodak if I’d ast for one, but how would I ever have gotten the fillumdeveloped? And by the time I thought of a video camera—for the gadgetunder the TV’d play such things—I was too old to go back, and yonder nag‘uz too old to carry me. Yet I would if I could, for it’s lovely there, a placeof warm-hearted ghosts. I heard the singing voices of friends long gone; my Maand Pa, too. I allus—”
A paralysis had seized Roland. She felt itin the stillness of his muscles. Then it broke and he turned from the pictureso fast that it made Susannah dizzy. “You’ve been there?” he asked. “You’vebeen to the Dark Tower?”
“Indeed I have,” said the old man. “For whoelse do ye think took that pitcher? Ansel Fuckin Adams?”
“When did you take it?”
“That’s from my last trip,” he said. “Twoyear ago, in the summer—although that’s lower land, ye must know, and ifthe snow ever comes to it, I’ve never seen it.”
“How long from here?”
Joe closed his bad eye and calculated. Itdidn’t take him long, but to Roland and Susannah it seemed long, verylong indeed. Outside, the wind gusted. The old horse whinnied as if in protestat the sound. Beyond the frost-rimmed window, the falling snow was beginning totwist and dance.
“Well,” he said, “ye’re on the downslopenow, and Stuttering Bill keeps Tower Road plowed for as far as ye’d go; whatelse does the old whatchamacallit have to do with his time? O’ course ye’llwant to wait here until this new nor’east jeezer blows itself out—”
“How long once we’re on the move?” Rolandasked.
“Rarin t’go, ain’tcha? Aye, hot n rarin,and why not, for if you’ve come from In-World ye must have been many long yearsgettin this far. Hate to think how many, so I do. I’m gonna say it’d take yousix days to get out of the White Lands, maybe seven—”
“Do you call these lands Empathica?”Susannah asked.
He blinked, then gave her a puzzled look.“Why no, ma’am—I’ve never heard this part of creation called anything butthe White Lands.”
The puzzled look was bogus. She was almostsure of it. Old Joe Collins, cheery as Father Christmas in a children’s play,had just lied to her. She wasn’t sure why, and before she could pursue it,Roland asked sharply: “Would you let that go for now? Would you, for yourfather’s sake?”
“Yes, Roland,” she said meekly. “Ofcourse.”
Roland turned back to Joe, still holdingSusannah on his hip.
“Might take you as long as nine days, Iguess,” Joe said, scratching his chin, “for that road can be plenty slippery,especially after Bill packs down the snow, but you can’t get him to stop. He’sgot his orders to follow. His programmin, he calls it.” The old man sawRoland getting ready to speak and raised his hand. “Nay, nay, I’m not drawrinit out to irritate cher, sir or sai or whichever you prefer—it’s justthat I’m not much used to cump’ny.
“Once you get down b’low the snowline itmust be another ten or twelve days a-walkin, but ain’t no need in the world towalk unless you fancy it. There’s another one of those Positronics huts downthere with any number a’ wheelie vehicles parked inside. Like golf-carts, theyare. The bat’tries are all dead, natcherly—flat as yer hat—butthere’s a gennie there, too, Honda just like mine, and it was a-workin the lasttime I was down there, for Bill keeps things in trim as much as he can. If youcould charge up one of those wheelies, why that’d cut your time down to fourdays at most. So here’s what I think: if you had to hoof it the whole way, itmight take you as long as nineteen days. If you can go the last leg in one o’them hummers—that’s what I call em, hummers, for that’s the sound theymake when they’re runnin—I should say ten days. Maybe eleven.”