In the summer of 1972, Joe had been playinga nightclub called Jango’s in Cleveland, not far from the ghetto. Rolandinterrupted again, this time wanting to know what a ghetto was.
“In the case of Hauck,” Susannah said, “itmeans a part of the city where most of the people are black and poor, and thecops have a habit of swinging their billyclubs first and asking questionslater.”
“Bing!” Joe exclaimed, and rapped hisknuckles on the top of his head. “Couldn’t have said it better myself!”
Again there came that odd, babyish cryingsound from the front of the house, but this time the wind was in a relativelull. Susannah glanced at Roland, but if the gunslinger heard, he gave no sign.
It was the wind, Susannahtold herself. What else could it be?
Mordred, her mind whispered back. Mordredout there, freezing. Mordred out there dying while we sit in here with our hotcoffee.
But she said nothing.
There had been trouble in Hauck for acouple of weeks, Joe said, but he’d been drinking pretty heavily (“Hitting ithard” was how he put it) and hardly realized that the crowd at his second showwas about a fifth the size of the one at the first. “Hell, I was on a roll,” hesaid. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I was knocking myself dead,rolling me in the aisles.”
Then someone had thrown a Molotov cocktailthrough the club’s front window (Molotov cocktail was a term Rolandunderstood), and before you could say Take my mother-in-law… please, theplace was on fire. Joe had boogied out the back, through the stage door. He’dalmost made it to the street when three men (“all very black, all roughly thesize of NBA centers”) grabbed him. Two held; the third punched. Then someoneswung a bottle. Boom-boom, out go the lights. He had awakened on a grassyhillside near a deserted town called Stone’s Warp, according to the signs inthe empty buildings along Main Street. To Joe Collins it had looked like theset of a Western movie after all the actors had gone home.
It was around this time that Susannahdecided she did not believe much of sai Collins’s story. It was undoubtedlyentertaining, and given Jake’s first entry into Mid-World, after being run overin the street and killed while on his way to school, it was not totallyimplausible. But she still didn’t believe much of it. The question was, did itmatter?
“You couldn’t call it heaven, because therewere no clouds and no choirs of angels,” Joe said, “but I decided it was somesort of an afterlife, just the same.” He had wandered about. He found food, hefound a horse (Lippy), and moved on. He had met various roving bands of people,some friendly, some not, some true-threaded, some mutie. Enough so he’d pickedup some of the lingo and a little Mid-World history; certainly he knew aboutthe Beams and the Tower. At one point he’d tried to cross the Badlands, hesaid, but he’d gotten scared and turned back when his skin began to break outin all sorts of sores and weird blemishes.
“I got a boil on my ass, and that was thefinal touch,” he said. “Six or eight years ago, this might have been. Me nLippy said the hell with going any further. That was when I found this place,which is called Westring, and when Stuttering Bill found me. He’s got a littledoctorin, and he lanced the boil on my bottom.”
Roland wanted to know if Joe had witnessedthe passage of the Crimson King as that mad creature made his final pilgrimageto the Dark Tower. Joe said he had not, but that six months ago there had beena terrible storm (“a real boilermaker”) that drove him down into his cellar.While he was there the electric lights had failed, genny or no genny, and as hecowered in the dark, a sense had come to him that some terrible creature wasclose by, and that it might at any moment touch Joe’s mind and follow histhoughts to where he was hiding.
“You know what I felt like?” he asked them.
Roland and Susannah shook their heads. Oydid the same, in perfect imitation.
“Snack-food,” Joe said. “Potentialsnack-food.”
This part of his story’s true,Susannah thought. He may have changed it around a little, but basically it’strue. And if she had any reason to think that, it was only because the ideaof the Crimson King traveling in his own portable storm seemed horriblyplausible.
“What did you do?” Roland asked.
“Went to sleep,” he said. “It’s a talentI’ve always had, like doing impressions—although I don’t do famous voicesin my act, because they never go over out in the sticks. Not unless you’re RichLittle, at least. Strange but true. I can sleep pretty much on command, sothat’s what I did down in the cellar. When I woke up again the lights were backon and the… the whatever-it-was was gone. I know about the Crimson King, ofcourse, I see folks from time to time still—nomads like you three, forthe most part—and they talk about him. Usually they fork the sign of theevil eye and spit between their fingers when they do. You think that was him,huh? You think the Crimson King actually passed by Odd’s Lane on his way to theTower.” Then, before they had a chance to answer: “Well, why not? Tower Road’sthe main throughfare, after all. It goes all the way there.”
You know it was him, Susannahthought. What game are you playing, Joe?
The thin cry that was most definitely notthe wind came again. She no longer thought it was Mordred, though. She thoughtthat maybe it was coming from the cellar where Joe had gone to hide from theCrimson King… or so he’d said. Who was down there now? And was he hiding, asJoe had done, or was he a prisoner?
“It hasn’t been a bad life,” Joe wassaying. “Not the life I expected, not by any manner or means, but I got atheory—the folks who end up living the lives they expected are more oftenthan not the ones who end up takin sleepin pills or stickin the barrel of a gunin their mouths and pullin the trigger.”
Roland seemed still to be a few turns back,because he said, “You were a court jester and the customers in these inns wereyour court.”
Joe smiled, showing a lot of white teeth.Susannah frowned. Had she seen his teeth before? They had been doing a lot oflaughing and she should have seen them, but she couldn’t remember thatshe actually had. Certainly he didn’t have the mush-mouth sound of someonewhose teeth are mostly gone (such people had consulted with her father on manyoccasions, most of them in search of artificial replacements). If she’d had toguess earlier on, she would have said he had teeth but they were down tonothing but pegs and nubbins, and—
And what’s the matter with you, girl? Hemight be lying about a few things, but he surely didn’t grow a fresh set ofteeth since you sat down to dinner! You’re letting your imagination run awaywith you.
Was she? Well, it was possible. And maybethat thin cry was nothing but the sound of the wind in the eaves at the frontof the house, after all.
“I’d hear some of your jokes and stories,”Roland said. “As you told them on the road, if it does ya.”
Susannah looked at him closely, wondering ifthe gunslinger had some ulterior motive for this request, but he seemedgenuinely interested. Even before seeing the Polaroid of the Dark Tower tackedto the living room wall (his eyes returned to it constantly as Joe told hisstory), Roland had been invested by a kind of hectic good cheer that was reallynot much like him at all. It was almost as if he were ill, edging in and out ofdelirium.
Joe Collins seemed surprised by thegunslinger’s request, but not at all displeased. “Good God,” he said. “I haven’tdone any stand-up in what seems like a thousand years… and considering the waytime stretched there for awhile, maybe it has been a thousand. I’m notsure I’d know how to begin.”
Susannah surprised herself by saying,“Try.”
Eight