The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower #3)(68)
“He was brave under the mountains,” Roland said. “He was afraid, but never gave an inch.”
“I wish I could be that way.”
Roland shrugged. “At Balazar’s you fought well even though they had taken your clothes. It’s very hard for a man to fight naked, but you did it.” Eddie tried to remember the shootout in the nightclub, but it was just a blur in his mind—smoke, noise, and light shining through one wall in confused, intersecting rays. He thought that wall had been torn apart by automatic-weapons fire, but couldn’t remember for sure.
He held the key up so its notches were sharply outlined against the flames. He held it that way for a long time, looking mostly at the s-shape. It looked exactly as he remembered it from his dream and from the momentary vision he had seen in the fire . . . but it didn’t feel exactly right. Almost, but not quite. That’s just Henry again. That’s just all those years of never being quite good enough. You did it, buddy—it’s just that the Henry inside doesn’t want to admit it.
He dropped the key onto the square of hide and folded the edges carefully around it. “I’m done. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I guess it’s as right as I can make it.” He felt oddly empty now that he no longer had the key to work on—purposeless and directionless.
“Do you want something to eat, Eddie?” Susannah asked quietly. There’s your purpose, he thought. There’s your direction. Sitting right over there, with her hands folded in her lap. All the purpose and direction you’ll ever—
But now something else rose in his mind—it came all at once. Not a dream . . . not a vision …
No, not either of those. It’s a memory. It’s happening again—you’re remembering forward in time.
“I have to do something else first,” he said, and got up. On the far side of the fire, Roland had stacked some odd lots of scavenged wood. Eddie hunted through them and found a dry stick about two feet long and four inches or so through the middle. He took it, returning to his place by the fire, and picked up Roland’s knife again. This time he worked faster because he was simply sharpening the stick, turning it into something that looked like a small tent-peg.
“Can we get moving before daybreak?” he asked the gunslinger. “I think we should get to that circle as soon as we can.”
“Yes. Sooner, if we must. I don’t want to move in the dark—a speaking ring is an unsafe place to be at night—but if we have to, we have to.” “From the look on your face, big boy, I doubt if those stone circles are very safe any time,” Susannah said.
Eddie put the knife aside again. The dirt Roland had taken out of the shallow hole he’d made for the campfire was piled up by Eddie’s right foot. Now he used the sharp end of the stick to carve a question-mark shape in the dirt. The shape was crisp and clear.
“Okay,” he said, brushing it away. “All done.” “Have something to eat, then,” Susannah said. Eddie tried, but he wasn’t very hungry. When he finally went to sleep, nestled against Susannah’s warmth, his rest was dreamless but very thin. Until the gunslinger shook him awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing endlessly over the plain below them, and it seemed to him that he went with it, flying high into the night, away from these cares, while Old Star and Old Mother rode serenely above him, painting his cheeks with frost.
“IT’S TIME,” ROLAND SAID.
Eddie sat up. Susannah sat up beside him, rubbing her palms over her face. As Eddie’s head cleared, his mind was filled with urgency. “Yes. Let’s go, and fast.”
“He’s getting close, isn’t he?”
“Very close.” Eddie got to his feet, grasped Susannah around the waist, and boosted her into her chair.
She was looking at him anxiously. “Do we still have enough time to get there?” Eddie nodded. “Barely.”
Three minutes later they were headed down the Great Road again. It glimmered ahead of them like a ghost. And an hour after that, as the first light of dawn began to touch the sky in the east, a rhythmic sound began far ahead of them. The sound of drums, Roland thought.
Machinery, Eddie thought. Some huge piece of machinery. It’s a heart, Susannah thought. Some huge, diseased, beating heart .. . and it’s in that city, where we have to go.
Two hours later, the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. White, featureless clouds had begun to fill the sky above them, first veiling the early sun, then blotting it out. The circle of standing stones lay less than five miles ahead now, gleaming in the shadowless light like the teeth of a fallen monster.
SPAGHETTI WEEK AT THE MAJESTIC!
the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenues proclaimed.
2 SERGIO LEONE CLASSIX!
A FISTFUL OF $$ PLUS GOOD BAD & UGLY!
99 Cents ALL SHOWS
A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office listening to Led Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To her left, in the theater’s remaining display case, there was a poster showing Glint Eastwood. Jake knew he should get moving—three o’clock was almost here— but he paused a moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood was wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown one side of the serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a pale, faded blue. Bombar-dier’s eyes.