“And what’s—”
Eddie got no further. John raised a gnarledhand to stop him. Eddie tried to imagine a Texas Instruments calculator in thathand and discovered he could, and quite easily. Weird.
“Gimme a chance, youngster, and I’ll tellyou.”
Eddie sat back, making a zipping motionacross his lips.
“Keep the rose safe, that’s first. Keep thewritah safe, that’s second. But beyond that, me and this guy Deepneauand this other guy Carver are s’posed to build up one of the world’s mostpowerful corporations. We trade in real estate, we work with… uh…” He pulledout the battered green pad, consulted it quickly, and put it away. “We workwith ‘software developers,’ whatever they are, because they’re gonna be thenext wave of technology. We’re supposed to remember three words.” He tickedthem off. “Microsoft. Microchips. Intel. And n’matter how big we grow—orhow fast—our three real jobs are the same: protect the rose,protect Stephen King, and try to screw over two other companies every chance weget. One’s called Sombra. Other’s…” There was the slightest of hesitations.“The other’s North Central Positronics. Sombra’s mostly interested in proppity,accordin to you fellas. Positronics… well, science and gadgets, that’s obviouseven to me. If Sombra wants a piece of land, Tet tries t’get it first. If NorthCentral wants a patent, we try to get it first, or at least to frig it up forthem. Throw it to a third party if it comes to that.”
Eddie was nodding approval. He hadn’t toldJohn that last, the old guy had come up with it on his own.
“We’re the Three Toothless Musketeers, theOld Farts of the Apocalypse, and we’re supposed to keep those two outfits fromgettin what they want, by fair means or foul. Dirty tricks most definitelyallowed.” John grinned. “I never been to Harvard Business School”—Haa-vidBi’ness School—“but I guess I can kick a fella in the crotch as well’sanyone.”
“Good,” Roland said. He started to get up.“I think it’s time we—”
Eddie raised a hand to stop him. Yes, hewanted to get to Susannah and Jake; couldn’t wait to sweep his darling into hisarms and cover her face with kisses. It seemed years since he had last seen heron the East Road in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Yet he couldn’t leave it at this aseasily as Roland, who had spent his life being obeyed and had come to take thedeath-allegiance of complete strangers as a matter of course. What Eddie saw onthe other side of Dick Beckhardt’s table wasn’t another tool but an independentYankee who was tough-minded and smart as a whip… but really too old for whatthey were asking. And speaking of too old, what about Aaron Deepneau, theChemotherapy Kid?
“My friend wants to get moving and so doI,” Eddie said. “We’ve got miles to go yet.”
“I know that. It’s on your face, son. Likea scar.”
Eddie was fascinated by the idea of dutyand ka as something that left a mark, something that might look like decorationto one eye and disfigurement to another. Outside, thunder cracked and lightningflashed.
“But why would you do this?” Eddie asked.“I have to know that. Why would you take all this on for two men you just met?”
John thought it over. He touched the crosshe wore now and would wear until his death in the year of 1989—the crossgiven to Roland by an old woman in a forgotten town. He would touch it justthat way in the years ahead when contemplating some big decision (the biggestmight have been the one to sever Tet’s connection with IBM, a company that hadshown an ever-increasing willingness to do business with North CentralPositronics) or preparing for some covert action (the fire-bombing of SombraEnterprises in New Delhi, for instance, in the year before he died). The crossspoke to Moses Carver and never spoke again in Cullum’s presence no matter howmuch he blew on it, but sometimes, drifting to sleep with his hand claspedaround it, he would think: ‘Tis a sigul. ‘Tis a sigul, dear—somethingthat came from another world.
If he had regrets toward the end (otherthan about some of the tricks, which were filthy indeed and cost more than oneman his life), it was that he never got a chance to visit the world on theother side, which he glimpsed one stormy evening on Turtleback Lane in the townof Lovell. From time to time Roland’s sigul sent him dreams of a field filledwith roses, and a sooty-black tower. Sometimes he was visited by terriblevisions of two crimson eyes, floating unattached to any body and relentlesslyscanning the horizon. Sometimes there were dreams in which he heard the soundof a man relentlessly winding his horn. From these latter dreams he would awakewith tears on his cheeks, those of longing and loss and love. He would awakewith his hand closed around the cross, thinking I denied Discordia andregret nothing; I have spat into the bodiless eyes of the Crimson King andrejoice; I threw my lot with the gunslinger’s ka-tet and the White and neveronce questioned the choice.
Yet for all that he wished he could havewalked out, just once, into that other land: the one beyond the door.
Now he said: “You boys want all the rightthings. I can’t put it any clearer than that. I believe you.” He hesitated. “Ibelieve in you. What I see in your eyes is true.”
Eddie thought he was done, and then Cullumgrinned like a boy.
“Also it ‘pears to me you’re offerin thekeys to one humongous great engine.” Engyne. “Who wouldn’t want to turnit on, and see what it does?”
“Are you scared?” Roland asked.
John Cullum considered the question, thennodded. “Ayuh,” he said.
Roland nodded. “Good,” he said.
Seven
They drove back up to Turtleback Lane inCullum’s car beneath a black, boiling sky. Although this was the height of thesummer season and most of the cottages on Kezar were probably occupied, theysaw not a single car moving in either direction. All the boats on the lake hadlong since run for cover.
“Said I had somethin else for ya,” Johnsaid, and went to the back of his truck, where there was a steel lockboxsnugged up against the cab. Now the wind had begun to blow. It swirled hisscanty fluff of white hair around his head. He ran a combination, popped apadlock, and swung back the lockbox’s lid. From inside he brought out two dustybags the wanderers knew well. One looked almost new compared to the other,which was the scuffed no-color of desert dust and laced its long length withrawhide.
“Our gunna!” Eddie cried, sodelighted—and so amazed—that the words almost came out in ascream. “How in the name of hell—?”
John offered them a smile that augured wellfor his future as a dirty trickster: bemused on the surface, sly beneath. “Nicesurprise, ain’t it? Thought so m’self. I went back to get a look at Chip’sstore—what ‘us left of it—while there was still a lot of confusion.People runnin hither, thither, and yon is what I mean to say; coverin bodies,stringin that yella tape, takin pitchers. Somebody’d put those bags off to oneside and they looked just a dight lonely, so I…” He shrugged one bony shoulder.“I scooped em up.”
“This would have been while we werevisiting with Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau in their rented cabin,” Eddiesaid. “After you went back home, supposedly to pack for Vermont. Is thatright?” He was stroking the side of his bag. He knew that smooth surface verywell; hadn’t he shot the deer it had come from and scraped off the hair withRoland’s knife and stitched the hide himself, with Susannah to help him? Notlong after the great robot bear Shardik had almost unzipped Eddie’s guts, thathad been. Sometime in the last century, it seemed.
“Yuh,” Cullum said, and when the oldfellow’s smile sweetened, Eddie’s last doubts about him departed. They hadfound the right man for this world. Say true and thank Gan big-big.
“Strap on your gun, Eddie,” Roland said,holding out the revolver with the worn sandalwood grips.