The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower #3)(67)

Just ahead, he saw an old man walking down the street, keeping to the shade as much as possible and leaning on a gnarled cane. Behind the thick glasses he wore, his brown eyes swam like oversized eggs. “I cry your pardon, sir,” Jake said without thinking or even really hearing himself.

The old man turned to look at him, blinking in surprise and fear. “Liff me alone, boy,” he said. He raised his walking-stick and brandished it clumsily in Jake’s direction.

“Would you know if there’s a place called Markey Academy anyplace around here, sir?” This was utter desperation, but it was the only thing he could think to ask.

The old man slowly lowered his stick—it was the sir that had done it. He looked at Jake with the slightly lunatic interest of the old and almost senile. “How come you not in school, boy?”

Jake smiled wearily. This one was getting very old. “Finals Week. I came down here to look up an old friend of mine who goes to Markey Academy, that’s all.

Sorry to have bothered you.”

He stepped around the old man (hoping he wouldn’t decide to whop him one across the ass with his cane just for good luck) and was almost down to the corner when the old man yelled: “Boy! Boyyyyy!”

Jake turned around.

“There is no Markey Akidimy down here,” the old man said. “Twen-ty-two years I’m living here, so I should know. Markey Avenue, yes, but no Markey Akidimy.” Jake’s stomach cramped with sudden excitement. He took a step back toward the old, man, who at once raised his cane into a defensive position again. Jake stopped at once, leaving a twenty-foot safety zone between them. “Where’s Markey Avenue, sir? Can you tell me that?”

“Of gorse,” the old man said. “Didn’t I just say I’m livink here twenty-two years? Two blogs down. Turn left at the Majestic Theatre. But I’m tellink you now, there iss no Markey Akidimy.”

“Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

Jake turned around and looked up Castle Avenue. Yes—he could see the unmistakable shape of a movie marquee jutting out over the sidewalk a couple of blocks up. He started to run toward it, then decided that might attract attention and slowed down to a fast walk. The old man watched him go. “Sir!” he said to himself in a tone of mild amazement. “Sir, yet!”

He chuckled rustily and moved on.

ROLAND’S BAND STOPPED AT dusk. The gunslinger dug a shallow pit and lit a fire. They didn’t need it for cooking purposes, but they needed it, nonetheless. Eddie needed it. If he was going to finish his carving, he would need light to work by.

The gunslinger looked around and saw Susannah, a dark silhouette against the fading aquamarine sky, but he didn’t see Eddie. “Where is he?” he asked.

“Down the road apiece. You leave him alone now, Roland—you’ve done enough.” Roland nodded, bent over the firepit, and struck at a piece of flint with a worn steel bar. Soon the kindling he had gathered was blazing. He added small sticks, one by one, and waited for Eddie to return.

HALF A MILE BACK the way they had come, Eddie sat cross-legged in the middle of the Great Road with his unfinished key in one hand, watching the sky. He glanced down the road, saw the spark of the fire, and knew exactly what Roland was doing . . . and why. Then he turned his gaze to the sky again. He had never felt so lonely or so afraid.

The sky was huge—he could not remember ever seeing so much uninterrupted space, so much pure emptiness. It made him feel very small, and he supposed there was nothing at all wrong with that. In the scheme of things, he was very small. The boy was close now. He thought he knew where Jake was and what he was about to do, and it filled him with silent wonder. Susannah had come from 1963. Eddie had come from 1987. Between them . . . Jake. Trying to come over. Trying to be born.

I met him, Eddie thought. I must have met him, and I think I remember. . . sort of. It was just before Henry went into the Army, right? He was taking courses at Brooklyn Vocational Institute, and he was heav-ily into black—black jeans, black motorcycle boots with steel caps, black T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Henry’s James Dean look. Smoking Area Chic. I used to think that, but I never said it out loud, because I didn’t want him pissed at me. He realized that what he had been waiting for had happened while he was thinking: Old Star had come out. In fifteen minutes, maybe less, it would be joined by a whole galaxy of alien jewelry, but for now it gleamed alone in the ungathered darkness.

Eddie slowly held up the key until Old Star gleamed within its wide central notch. And then he recited the old formula of his world, the one his mother had taught him as she knelt beside him at the bedroom window, both of them looking out at the evening star which rode the oncoming darkness above the rooftops and fire-escapes of Brooklyn: “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.” Old Star glowed in the notch of the key, a diamond caught in ash. “Help me find some guts,” Eddie said. “That’s my wish. Help me find the guts to try and finish this damned thing.”

He sat there a moment longer, then got to his feet and walked slowly back to camp. He sat down as close to the fire as he could get, took the gunslinger’s knife without a word to either him or Susannah, and began to work. Tiny, curling slivers of wood rolled up from the s-shape at the end of the key. Eddie worked fast, turning the key this way and that, occasionally closing his eyes and letting his thumb slip along the mild curves. He tried not to think about what might happen if the shape were to go wrong—that would freeze him for sure. Roland and Susannah sat behind him, watching silently. At last Eddie put the knife aside. His face was running with sweat. “This kid of yours,” he said. “This Jake. He must be a gutty brat.”