"Aaron, shut up!"
" - many times," Deepneau finished calmly.
There was a pop. Eddie jumped, sending a fresh throb of pain up his leg from the hole in his shin. It was a match. Roland was lighting another cigarette. The filter lay on the oilcloth covering the table with two others. They looked like little pills.
"Here is what you said to me," Eddie said, and all at once he was calm. The rage was out of him, like poison drawn from a snakebite. Roland had let him do that much, and despite his bleeding tongue and bleeding palms, he was grateful.
"Anything I said...I was under stress...I was afraid you might kill me yourself!"
"You said you had an envelope from March of 1846. You said there was a sheet of paper in the envelope, and a name written on the paper. You said - "
"I deny - "
"You said that if I could tell you the name written on that piece of paper, you'd sell me the lot. For one dollar. And with the understanding that you'd be getting a great deal more - millions - between now and...1985, let's say."
Tower barked a laugh. "Why not offer me the Brooklyn Bridge while you're at it?"
"You made a promise. And now your father watches you attempt to break it."
Calvin Tower shrieked:"I DENY EVERY WORD YOU SAY!"
"Deny and be damned," Eddie said. "And now I'm going to tell you something, Cal, something I know from my own beat-up but still beating heart. You're eating a bitter meal. You don't know that because someone told you it was sweet and your own tastebuds are numb."
"I have no idea what you're talking about! You're crazy!"
"No," Aaron said. "He's not. You're the one who's crazy if you don't listen to him. I think...I think he's giving you a chance to redeem the purpose of your life."
"Give it up," Eddie said. "Just once listen to the better angel instead of to the other one. That other one hates you, Cal. It only wants to kill you. Believe me, I know."
Silence in the cabin. From the pond came the cry of a loon. From across it came the less lovely sound of sirens.
Calvin Tower licked his lips and said, "Are you telling the truth about Andolini? Is he really in this town?"
"Yes," Eddie said. Now he could hear thewhuppa-whuppa-whup of an approaching helicopter. A TV news chopper? Wasn't this still about five years too early for such things, especially up here in the boondocks?
The bookstore owner's eyes shifted to Roland. Tower had been surprised, and he'd been guilt-tripped with a vengeance, but the man was already regaining some of his composure. Eddie could see it, and he reflected (not for the first time) on how much simpler life would be if people would stay in the pigeonholes where you originally put them. He did not want to waste time thinking of Calvin Tower as a brave man, or as even second cousin to the good guys, but maybe he was both those things. Damn him.
"You're truly Roland of Gilead?"
Roland regarded him through rising membranes of cigarette smoke. "You say true, I say thank ya."
"Roland of the Eld?"
"Yes."
"Son of Steven?"
"Yes."
"Grandson of Alaric?"
Roland's eyes flickered with what was probably surprise. Eddie himself was surprised, but what he mostly felt was a kind of tired relief. The questions Tower was asking could mean only two things. First, more had been passed down to him than just Roland's name and trade of hand. Second, he was coming around.
"Of Alaric, aye," Roland said, "him of the red hair."
"I don't know anything about his hair, but I know why he went to Garlan. Do you?"
"To slay a dragon."
"And did he?"
"No, he was too late. The last in that part of the world had been slain by another king, one who was later murdered."
Now, to Eddie's even greater surprise, Tower haltingly addressed Roland in a language that was a second cousin to English at best. What Eddie heard was something likeHad heet Rol-uh, fa heet gun, fa heet hak, fa-had gun?
Roland nodded and replied in the same tongue, speaking slowly and carefully. When he was finished, Tower sagged against the wall and dropped his bag of books unheeded to the floor. "I've been a fool," he said.
No one contradicted him.
"Roland, would you step outside with me? I need...I...need..." Tower began to cry. He said something else in that not-English language, once more ending on a rising inflection, as if asking a question.
Roland got up without replying. Eddie also got up, wincing at the pain in his leg. There was a slug in there, all right, he could feel it. He grabbed Roland's arm, pulled him down, and whispered in the gunslinger's ear: "Don't forget that Tower and Deepneau have an appointment at the Turtle Bay Washateria, four years from now. Tell him Forty-seventh Street, between Second and First. He probably knows the place. Tower and Deepneau were...are...will bethe ones who save Don Callahan's life. I'm almost sure of it."