4
JAKE WOKE IN THE first milky light of dawn, looking up at the ceiling of his room. He was thinking of the guy in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind - Aaron Deepneau, who'd been hanging around on Bleecker Street back when Bob Dylan only knew how to blow open G on his Hohner. Aaron Deepneau had given Jake a riddle. What can run but never walks, Has a mouth but never talks, Has a bed but never sleeps, Has a head but never weeps? Now he knew the answer. A river ran; a river had a mouth; a river had a bed; a river had a head. The boy had told him the answer. The boy in the dream. And suddenly he thought of something else Deepneau had said: That's only half the answer. Samson's riddle is a double, my friend. Jake glanced at his bedside clock and saw it was twenty past six . It was time to get moving if he wanted to be out of here before his parents woke up. There would be no school for him today; Jake thought that maybe, as far as he was concerned, school had been cancelled forever. He threw back the bedclothes, swung his feet out onto the floor, and saw that there were scrapes on both knees. Fresh scrapes. He had bruised his left side yesterday when he slipped on the bricks and fell, and he had banged his head when he fainted near the rose, but nothing had happened to his knees. "That happened in the dream," Jake whispered, and found he wasn't surprised at all. He began to dress swiftly. 5 IN THE BACK OF his closet, under a jumble of old laceless sneakers and a heap of Spiderman comic books, he found the packsack he had worn to grammar school. No one would be caught dead with a packsack at Piper - how too, too common, my death - and as Jake grabbed it, he felt a wave of powerful nostalgia for those old days when life had seemed so simple. He stuffed a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, some underwear and socks into it, then added Riddle-De-Dum! and Charlie the Choo-Choo. He had put the key on his desk before foraging in the closet for his old pack, and the voices came back at once, but they were distant and muted. Besides, he felt sure he could make them go away completely by holding the key again, and that eased his mind. Okay, he thought, looking into the pack. Even with the books added, there was plenty of room left. What else? For a moment he thought there was nothing else... and then he knew. 6 His FATHER'S STUDY SMELLED of cigarettes and ambition. It was dominated by a huge teakwood desk. Across the room, set into a wall otherwise lined with books, were three Mitsubishi television monitors. Each was tuned to one of the rival networks, and at night, when his father was in here, each played out its progression of prime-time images with the sound off. The curtains were drawn, and Jake had to turn on the desk lamp in order to see. He felt nervous just being in here, even wearing sneakers. If his father should wake up and come in (and it was possible; no matter how late he went to bed or how much he drank, Elmer Chambers was a light sleeper and an early riser), he would be angry. At the very least it would make a clean getaway much tougher. The sooner he was out of here, the better Jake would feel. The desk was locked, but his father had never made any secret of where he kept the key. Jake slid his fingers under the blotter and hooked it out. He opened the third drawer, reached past the hanging files, and touched cold metal. A board creaked in the hall and he froze. Several seconds passed. When the creak didn't come again, Jake pulled out the weapon his father kept for "home defense" - a .44 Ruger automatic. His father had shown this weapon to Jake with great pride on the day he had bought it - two years ago, that had been. He had been totally deaf to his wife's nervous demands that he put it away before someone got hurt. Jake found the button on the side that released the clip. It fell out into his hand with a metallic snak! sound that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. He glanced nervously toward the door again, then turned his attention to the clip. It was fully loaded. He started to slide it back into the gun, and then took it out again. Keeping a loaded gun in a locked desk drawer was one thing; carrying one around New York City was quite another. He stuffed the automatic down to the bottom of his pack, then felt behind the hanging files again. This time he brought out a box of shells, about half-full. He remembered his father had done some target shooting at the police range on First Avenue before losing interest. The board creaked again. Jake wanted to get out of here. He removed one of the shirts he'd packed, laid it on his father's desk, and rolled up the clip and the box of .44 slugs in it. Then he replaced it in the pack and used the buckles to snug down the flap. He was about to leave when his eye fixed on the little pile of stationery sitting beside his father's In/Out tray. The reflectorized Ray-Ban sunglasses his father liked to wear were folded on top of the stationery. He took a sheet of paper, and, after a moment's thought, the sunglasses as well. He slipped the shades into his breast pocket. Then he removed the slim gold pen from its stand, and wrote Dear Dad and Mom beneath the letterhead. He stopped, frowning at the salutation. What went below it? What, exactly, did he have to say? That he loved them? It was true, but it wasn't enough - there were all sorts of other unpleasant truths stuck through that central one, like steel needles jabbed into a ball of yarn. That he would miss them? He didn't know if that was true or not, which was sort of horrible. That he hoped they would miss him? He suddenly realized what the problem was. If he were planning to be gone just today, he would be able to write something. But he felt a near-certainty that it wasn't just today, or this week, or this month, or this summer. He had an idea that when he walked out of the apartment this time, it would be for good. He almost crumpled the sheet of paper, then changed his mind. He wrote: Please take care of yourselves. Love, J. That was pretty limp, but at least it was something. Fine. Now will you stop pressing your luck and get out of here? He did. The apartment was almost dead still. He tiptoed across the living room, hearing only the sounds of his parents' breathing: his mother's soft little snores, his father's more nasal respiration, where every indrawn breath ended in a slim high whistle. The refrigerator kicked on as he reached the entryway and he froze for a moment, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Then he was at the door. He unlocked it as quietly as he could, then stepped out and pulled it gently shut behind him. A stone seemed to roll off his heart as the latch snicked, and a strong sense of anticipation seized him. He didn't know what lay ahead, and he had reason to believe it would be dangerous, but he was eleven years old - too young to deny the exotic delight which suddenly filled him. There was a highway ahead - a hidden highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might disclose themselves to him if he was clever... and if he was lucky. He had left his home in the long light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great adventure. If I stand, if I can be true, I'll see the rose, he thought as he pushed the button for the elevator. I know it... and I'll see him, too. This thought filled him with an eagerness so great it was almost ecstasy. Three minutes later he stepped out from beneath the awning which shaded the entrance to the building where he had lived all his life. He paused for a moment, then turned left. This decision did not feel random, and it wasn't. He was moving southeast, along the path of the Beam, resuming his own interrupted quest for the Dark Tower . 7 TWO DAYS AFTER EDDIE had given Roland his unfinished key, the three travellers - hot, sweaty, tired, and out of sorts - pushed through a particu-larly tenacious tangle of bushes and second-growth trees and discovered what first appeared to be two faint paths, running in tandem beneath the interlacing branches of the old trees crowding close on either side. After a few moments of study, Eddie decided they weren't just paths but the remains of a long-abandoned road. Bushes and stunted trees grew like untidy quills along what had been its crown. The grassy indentations were wheelruts, and either of them was wide enough to accommodate Susannah's wheelchair. "Hallelujah!" he cried. "Let's drink to it!" Roland nodded and unslung the waterskin he wore around his waist. He first handed it up to Susannah, who was riding in her sling on his back. Eddie's key, now looped around Roland's neck on a piece of raw-hide, shifted beneath his shirt with each movement. She took a swallow and passed the skin to Eddie. He drank and then began to unfold her chair. Eddie had come to hate this bulky, balky contraption; it was like an iron anchor, always holding them back. Except for a broken spoke or two, it was still in fine condition. Eddie had days when he thought the goddam thing would outlast all of them. Now, however, it might be useful ... for a while, at least. Eddie helped Susannah out of the harness and placed her in the chair. She put her hands against the small of her back, stretched, and grimaced with pleasure. Both Eddie and Roland heard the small crackle her spine made as it stretched. Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, twitched its sharp, whiskery snout as if to say Huh! Big deal!, then strolled the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie noted its tail - long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring. "What was that, Roland?" "A billy-bumbler." "No good to eat?" Roland shook his head. "Tough. Sour. I'd rather eat dog." "Have you?" Susannah asked. "Eaten dog, I mean?" Roland nodded, but did not elaborate. Eddie found himself thinking of a line from an old Paul Newman movie: That's right, lady - eaten em and lived like one. Birds sang cheerily in the trees. A light breeze blew along the road. Eddie and Susannah turned their faces up to it gratefully, then looked at each other and smiled. Eddie was struck again by his grati-tude for her - it was scary to have someone to love, but it was also very fine. "Who made this road?" Eddie asked. "People who have been gone a long time," Roland said. "The same ones who made the cups and dishes we found?" Susan-nah asked. "No - not them. This used to be a coach-road, I imagine, and if it's still here, after all these years of neglect, it must have been a great one indeed... perhaps the Great Road . If we dug down, I imagine we'd find the gravel undersurface, and maybe the drainage system, as well. As long as we're here, let's have a bite to eat." "Food!" Eddie cried. "Bring it on! Chicken Florentine! Polynesian shrimp! Veal lightly saut