Stephen King - Song of Susannah

The diesel smoke was black and oily. John coughed and waved it away. “Follow me. Let’s step lively.”

John hurried across the ugly acre of waste ground behind the store, stepping over a broken crate and weaving his way between a rusty incinerator and a pile of even rustier machine parts. There was a name on the biggest of these that Roland had seen before in his wanderings: JOHN deere.

Roland and Eddie walked backward, protecting John’s back, taking little glances over their own shoulders to keep from tripping. Roland hadn’t entirely given up hope that Andolini would make a final charge and he could kill him, as he had done once before. On the beach of the Western Sea, that had been, and here he was again, not only back but ten years younger.

While I, Roland thought, feel at least a thousand years older.

Yet that was not really true. Yes, he was now suffering-finally-the ills an old man could reasonably expect. But he had a ka-tet to protect again, and not just any ka-tet but one of gunslingers, and they had refreshed his life in a way he never would have expected. It all meant something to him again, not just the Dark Tower but all of it. So he wanted Andolini to come. And if he killed Andolini in this world, he had an idea Andolini would stay dead. Because this world was different. It had a resonance all the others, even his own, lacked. He felt it in every bone and every nerve. Roland looked up and saw exactly what he expected: clouds in a line. At the rear of the barren acre, a path slipped into the woods, its head marked by a pair of good-sized granite rocks. And here the gunslinger saw herringbone patterns of shadows, overlapping but all pointing the same way. You had to look to see it, but once seen it was unmistakable. As in the version of New York where they had found the empty bag in the vacant lot and Susannah had seen the vagrant dead, this was the true world, the one where time always ran in a single direction. They might be able to hop into the future if they could find a door, as he was sure Jake and Callahan had done (for Roland also remembered the poem on the fence, and now understood at least part of it), but they could never return to the past. This was the true world, the one where no roll of the dice could ever be taken back, the one closest to the Dark Tower. And they were still on the Path of the Beam.

John led them onto the way into the woods and quickly down it, away from the rising pillars of thick dark smoke and the approaching whine of the sirens.

They hadn’t gone even a quarter of a mile before Eddie began seeing blue glints through the trees. The path was slippery with pine needles, and when they came to the final slope-the one leading down to a long and narrow lake of surpassing loveliness-Eddie saw that someone had built a birch railing. Beyond it was a stub of dock jutting out into the water. Tied to the dock was a motorboat.

“That’s mine,” John said. “I come over for m’groceries and a bite of lunch. Didn’t expect no excitement.”

“Well, you got it,” Eddie said.

“Ayuh, that’s a true thing. Mind this last bit, if you don’t want to go on your keister.” John went nimbly down the final slope, holding the rail for balance and sliding rather than walking. On his feet was a pair of old scuffed workboots that would have looked perfectly at home in Mid-World, Eddie thought.

He went next himself, favoring his bad leg. Roland brought up the rear. From behind them came a sudden explosion, as sharp and limber as that first high-powered rifleshot but far louder.

“That’d be Chip’s propane,” John said.

“Cry pardon?” Roland asked.

“Gas,” Eddie said quietly. “He means gas.”

“Ayuh, stove-gas,” John agreed. He stepped into his boat, grabbed the Evinrude’s starter-cord, gave it a yank. The engine, a sturdy little twenty-horse sewing machine of a thing, started on the first pull. “Get in here, boys, and let’s us vacate t’ area,” he grunted.

Eddie got in. Roland paused for a moment to tap his throat three times. Eddie had seen him perform this ritual before when about to cross open water, and reminded himself to ask about it. He never got the chance; before the question occurred to him again, death had slipped between them.

The skiff moved as quietly and as gracefully over the water as any motor-powered thing can, skating on its own reflection beneath a sky of summer’s most pellucid blue. Behind them the plume of dark smoke sullied that blue, rising higher and higher, spreading as it went. Dozens of folk, most of them in shorts or bathing costumes, stood upon the banks of this little lake, turned in the smoke’s direction, hands raised to shade against the sun. Few if any marked the steady (and completely unshowy) passage of the motorboat.

“This is Keywadin Pond, just in case you were wonderin,” John said. He pointed ahead of them, where another gray tongue of dock stuck out. Beside this one was a neat little boathouse, white with green trim, its overhead door open. As they neared it, Roland and Eddie could see both a canoe and a kayak bobbing inside, at tether.

“Boathouse is mine,” the man in the flannel shirt added. The boat in boathouse came out in a way impossible to reproduce with mere letters- bwut would probably come closest-but which both men recognized. It was the way the word was spoken in the Calla.

“Looks well-kept,” Eddie said. Mostly to be saying something.

“Oh, ayuh,” John said. “I do caretakin, camp-checkin, some rough carpenterin. Wouldn’t look good f’business if I had a fallin-down boathouse, would it?”

Eddie smiled. “Suppose not.”

“My place is about half a mile back from the water. Name’s John Cullum.” He held out his right hand to Roland, continuing to steer a straight course away from the rising pillar of smoke and toward the boathouse with the other.

Roland took the hand, which was pleasantly rough. “I’m Roland Deschain, of Gilead. Long days and pleasant nights, John.”

Eddie put out his own hand in turn. “Eddie Dean, from Brooklyn. Nice to meet you.”

John shook with him easily enough but his eyes studied Eddie closely. When their hands parted, he said: ’Young fella, did somethin just happen? It did, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. Not with complete honesty.

“You ain’t been to Brooklyn for a long time, son, have you?”

“Ain’t been to Morehouse or to no house,” Eddie Dean said, and then quickly, before he could lose it: “Mia’s locked Susannah away. Locked her away in the year of ’99. Suze can get to the Dogan, but going there’s no good. Mia’s locked off the controls. There’s nothing Suze can do. She’s kidnapped. She… she…”

He stopped. For a moment everything had been so clear, like a dream upon the instant of waking. Then, as so often happens with dreams, it faded. He didn’t even know if it had been a real message from Susannah, or pure imagination.

Young fella, did somethin just happen?

So Cullum had felt it, too. Not imagination, then. Some form of the touch seemed more likely.

John waited, and when there was no more from Eddie, turned to Roland. “Does your pal come over funny that way often?”

“Not often, no. Sai… Mister, I mean. Mister Cullum, I thank you for helping us when we needed help. I thank ya big-big. It would be monstrous impudent of us to ask for more, but-”

“But you’re gonna. Ayuh, figgered.” John made a minute course correction toward the little boathouse with its square open mouth. Roland estimated they’d be there in five minutes. That was fine by him. He had no objection to riding in this tight little motor-powered boat (even though it rode rather low in the water with the weight of three grown men inside), but Keywadin Pond was far too exposed for his taste. If Jack Andolini (or his successor, should Jack be replaced) asked enough of those shore-gawkers, he would eventually find a few who remembered the little skiff with the three men in it. And the boathouse with the neat green trim. John Outturn’s bwut-huss, may it do ya fine, these witnesses would say. Best they should be farther along the Beam before that happened, with John Cullum packed off to somewhere safe. Roland judged “safe” in this case to be perhaps three looks to the horizon-line, or about a hundred wheels. He had no doubt that Cullum, a total stranger, had saved their lives by stepping in decisively at the right moment. The last thing he wanted was for the man to lose his own as a result.