Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(63)

Co-Op City. Henry mostly got to pick what they watched because he was bigger and older. Eddie didn't protest too often or too much; he idolized his big brother. (When hedid protest too much he was apt to get the old Indian Rope Burn or maybe a Dutch Rub up the back of his neck.) What Henry liked was Westerns. The sort of movies where, sooner or later, some character had to bite the stick or belt or bullet.

"Roland," he said. His voice was just a faint wheeze to start with. "Roland, listen."

"I hear you very well."

"There was a movie. I told you about movies, right?"

"Stories told in moving pictures."

"Sometimes Henry and I used to stay in and watch them on TV. Television's basically a home movie-machine."

"A shit-machine, some would say," Tower put in.

Eddie ignored him. "One of the movies we watched was about these Mexican peasants - folken,if it does ya - who hired some gunslingers to protect them from thebandidos who came every year to raid their village and steal their crops. Does any of this ring a bell?"

Roland looked at him with gravity and what might have been sadness. "Yes. Indeed it does."

"And the name of Tian's village. I always knew it sounded familiar, but I didn't know why. Now I do. The movie was calledThe Magnificent Seven, and just by the way, Roland, how many of us were in the ditch that day, waiting for the Wolves?"

"Would you boys mind telling us what you're talking about?" Deepneau asked. But although he asked politely, both Roland and Eddie ignored him, too.

Roland took a moment to cull his memory, then said: "You, me, Susannah, Jake, Margaret, Zalia, and Rosa. There were more - the Tavery twins and Ben Slightman's boy - but seven fighters."

"Yes. And the link I couldn't quite make was to the movie's director. When you're making a movie, you need a director to run things. He's the dinh."

Roland nodded.

"The dinh ofThe Magnificent Seven was a man named John Sturges."

Roland sat a moment longer, thinking. Then he said: "Ka."

Eddie burst out laughing. He simply couldn't help it. Roland always had the answer.

Eleven

"In order to catch the pain," Roland said, "you have to clamp down on the belt at the instant you feel it. Do you understand?The very instant. Pin it with your teeth."

"Gotcha. Just make it quick."

"I'll do the best I can."

Roland dipped first the pliers and then the knife into the disinfectant. Eddie waited with the belt in his mouth, lying across his teeth. Yes, once you saw the basic pattern, you couldn't unsee it, could you? Roland was the hero of the piece, the grizzled old warrior who'd be played by some grizzled but vital star like Paul Newman or maybe Eastwood in the Hollywood version. He himself was the young buck, played by the hot young boy star of the moment. Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, someone like that. And here's a set we all know, a cabin in the woods, and a situation we've seen many times before but still relish, Pulling the Bullet. All that was missing was the ominous sound of drums in the distance. And, Eddie realized, probably the drums were missing because they'd already been through the Ominous Drums part of the story: the god-drums. They had turned out to be an amplified version of a Z.Z. Top song being broadcast through streetcorner speakers in the City of Lud. Their situation was becoming ever harder to deny:they were characters in someone's story. This whole world -

I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that I was raised in Brooklyn simply because of some writer's mistake, something that will eventually be fixed in the second draft. Hey, Pere, I'm with you - I refuse to believe I'm acharacter.This is my f**king life!

"Go on, Roland," he said. "Get that thing outta me."

The gunslinger poured some of the disinfectant from the bowl over Eddie's shin, then used the tip of the knife to flick the clot out of the wound. With that done, he lowered the pliers. "Be ready to bite the pain, Eddie," he murmured, and a moment later Eddie did.

Twelve

Roland knew what he was doing, had done it before, and the bullet hadn't gone deep. The whole thing was over in ninety seconds, but it was the longest minute and a half in Eddie's life. At last Roland tapped the pliers on one of Eddie's closed hands. When Eddie managed to unroll his fingers, the gunslinger dropped a flattened slug into it. "Souvenir," he said. "Stopped right on the bone. That was the scraping that you heard."

Eddie looked at the mashed piece of lead, then flicked it across the linoleum floor like a marble. "Don't want it," he said, and wiped his brow.

Tower, ever the collector, picked up the cast-off slug. Deepneau, meanwhile, was examining the toothmarks in his belt with silent fascination.

"Cal," Eddie said, getting up on his elbows. "You had a book in your case - "

"I want those books back," Tower said immediately. "You better be taking care of them, young man."

"I'm sure they're in great condition," Eddie said, telling himself once more to bite his tongue if he had to.Or grab Aaron's belt and bite that again, if your tongue won't do.

"They better be, young man; now they're all I have left."

"Yes, along with the forty or so in your various safe deposit boxes," Aaron Deepneau said, completely ignoring the vile look his friend shot him. "The signedUlysses is probably the best, but there are several gorgeous Shakespeare folios, a complete set of signed Faulkners - "