On the corner of Lex and Sixtieth, Jake pointed to a number of cigarette ends mashed into the sidewalk. "This is where he was," he said. "The man playing the guitar."
He bent down, picked up one of the butts, and held it in his palm for a moment or two. Then he nodded, smiled cheerlessly, and readjusted the strap on his shoulder. The Orizas clanked faintly inside the rush bag. Jake had counted them in the back of the cab and hadn't been surprised to find there were exactly nineteen.
"No wonder she stopped," Jake said, dropping the butt and wiping his hand on his shirt. And suddenly he sang, low but perfectly on pitch: "I am a man...of constant sorrow...I've seen trouble...all my days...I'm bound to ride...that Northern railroad...Perhaps I'll take...the very next train."
Callahan, keyed up already, felt his nerves crank yet tighter. Of course he recognized the song. Only when Susannah had sung it that night on the Pavilion - the same night Roland had won the hearts of the Calla by dancing the fiercest commala many had ever seen - she'd substituted "maid" for "man."
"She gave him money," Jake said dreamily. "And she said..." He stood with his head down, biting his lip, thinking hard. Oy looked up at him raptly. Nor did Callahan interrupt. Understanding had come to him: he and Jake were going to die in the Dixie Pig. They would go down fighting, but they were going to die there.
And he thought dying would be all right. It was going to break Roland's heart to lose the boy...yet he would go on. As long as the Dark Tower stood, Roland would go on.
Jake looked up. "She said, 'Remember the struggle.' "
"Susannah did."
"Yes. Shecame forward. Mia let her. And the song moved Mia. She wept."
"Say true?"
"True. Mia, daughter of none, mother of one. And while Mia was distracted...her eyes blind with tears..."
Jake looked around. Oy looked around with him, likely not searching for anything but only imitating his beloved Ake. Callahan was remembering that night on the Pavilion. The lights. The way Oy had stood on his hind legs and bowed to thefolken. Susannah, singing. The lights. The dancing, Roland dancing the commala in the lights, the colored lights. Roland dancing in the white. Always Roland; and in the end, after the others had fallen, murdered away one by one in these bloody motions, Roland would remain.
I can live with that,Callahan thought.And die with it.
"She left something but it'sgone! " Jake said in a distressed, almost-crying voice. "Someone must have found it...or maybe the guitar-player saw her drop it and took it...this f**king city! Everyone steals everything! Ah,shit! "
"Let it go."
Jake turned his pale, tired, frightened face up to Callahan's. "She left us something and weneed it! Don't you understand how thin our chances are?"
"Yes. If you want to back off, Jake, now would be the time."
The boy shook his head with no doubt nor the slightest hesitation, and Callahan was fiercely proud of him. "Let's go, Pere," he said.
Seventeen
On the corner of Lex and Sixty-first they stopped again. Jake pointed across the street. Callahan saw the green awning and nodded. It was imprinted with a cartoon porker that was grinning blissfully in spite of having been roasted a bright and smoking red. T HE DIXIE PIG was written on the awning's overhang. Parked in a row in front of it were five long black limousines with their accent lights glowing a slightly blurred yellow in the dark. Callahan realized for the first time that a mist was creeping down the Avenue.
"Here," Jake said, and handed him the Ruger. The boy rummaged in his pockets and came up with two big handfuls of cartridges. They gleamed dully in the pervasive orange glow of the streetlamps. "Put em all in your breast pocket, Pere. Easier to get at that way, all right?"
Callahan nodded.
"Ever shot a gun before?"
"No," Callahan said. "Have you ever fired one of those plates?"
Jake's lips parted in a grin. "Benny Slightman and I snuck a bunch of the practice dishes out to the riverbank and had a match one night. He wasn't much good, but..."
"Let me guess. You were."
Jake shrugged, then nodded. He had no words to express how fine the plates had felt in his hands, how savagely right. But perhaps that was natural. Susannah had also taken quickly and naturally to throwing the Oriza. That Pere Callahan had seen for himself.
"All right, what's our plan?" Callahan asked. Now that he had decided to go through it all the way to the end, he was more than willing to give leadership over to the boy. Jake was, after all, the gunslinger.
The boy shook his head. "Thereis none," he said, "not really. I go in first. You right behind me. Once we're through the door, we spread apart. Ten feet between us any time we have ten feet to give, Pere - do you understand? So that no matter how many there are or howclose they are, no one of them can get both of us at the same time."
This was Roland's teaching, and Callahan recognized it as such. He nodded.
"I'll be able to follow her by touch, and Oy will be able to by scent," Jake said. "Move with us. Shoot whatever asks to be shot, and without hesitation, do you understand?"