"He talked to you," Roland said. He took Jake in his arms and began to rock him gently back and forth. The 'Rizas clanked in their pouch. Already he could feel Jake's body growing cool.
"Yes," she said.
"What did he say?"
"He told me to come back for you 'after the business here is done.' Those were his exact words. And he said, 'Tell my father I love him.'"
Roland made a sound, choked and miserable, deep in his throat. He was remembering how it had been in Fedic, after they had stepped through the door. Hile, Father, Jake had said.
Roland had taken him in his arms then, too. Only then he had felt the boy's beating heart. He would give anything to feel it beat again.
"There was more," she said, "but do we have time for it now, especially when I could tell you later?"
Roland took her point immediately. The story both Bryan Smith and Stephen King knew was a simple one. There was no place in it for a lank, travel-scoured man with a big gun, nor a woman with graying hair; certainly not for a dead boy with a bag of sharp-edged plates slung over his shoulder and a machine-pistol in the waistband of his pants.
The only question was whether or not the woman would come back at all. She was not the first person he had attracted into doing things they might not ordinarily have done, but he knew things might look different to her once she was away from him. Asking for her promise-Do you swear to come back for me, sat? Do you swear on this boy's stilled heart?-would do no good.
She could mean every word here and then think better of it once she was over the first hill.
Yet when he'd had a chance to take the shopkeeper who owned the truck, he didn't. Nor had he swapped her for the old man cutting the grass at the writer's house.
"Later will do," he said. "For now, hurry on your way. If for some reason you feel you can't come back here, I'll not hold it against you."
"Where would you go on your own?" she asked him.
"Where would you know to go? This isn't your world. Is it?"
Roland ignored the question. "If there are people still here the first time you come back-peace officers, guards O'The watch, bluebacks, I don't know-drive past without stopping.
Come back again in half an hour's time. If they're still here, drive on again. Keep doing that until they're gone."
"Will they notice me going back and forth?"
"I don't know," he said. "Will they?"
She considered, then almost smiled. "The cops in this part of the world? Probably not."
He nodded, accepting her judgment. "When you feel it's safe, stop. You won't see me, but I'll see you. I'll wait until dark. If you're not here by then, I go."
"I'll come for you, but I won't be driving that miserable excuse for a truck when I do," she said. "I'll be driving a Mercedes-Benz S600." She said this with some pride.
Roland had no idea what a Mercedes-Bends was, but he nodded as though he did. "Go. We'll talk later, after you come back."
If you come back, he thought.
"I think you may want this," she said, and slipped his revolver back into its holster.
"Thankee-sai."
"You're welcome."
He watched her go to the old truck (which he thought she'd rather come to like, despite her dismissive words) and haul herself up by the wheel. And as she did, he realized there was something he needed, something that might be in the truck. "Whoa!"
Mrs. Tassenbaum had put her hand on the key in the ignition.
Now she took it off and looked at him inquiringly. Roland settled Jake gently back to the earth beneath which he must soon lie (it was that thought which had caused him to call out)
and got to his feet. He winced and put his hand to his hip, but that was only habit. There was no pain.
"What?" she asked as he approached. "If I don't go soon-"
It wouldn't matter if she went at all. 'Yes. I know."
He looked in the bed of the truck. Along with the careless scatter of tools there was a square shape under a blue tarpaulin.
The edges of the tarp had been folded beneath the object to keep it from blowing away. When Roland pulled the tarp free, he saw eight or ten boxes made of the stiff paper Eddie called
"card-board." They'd been pushed together to make the square shape. The pictures printed on the card-board told him they were boxes of beer. He wouldn't have cared if they had been boxes of high explosive.
It was the tarpaulin he wanted.
He stepped back from the truck with it in his arms and said,
"Wow you can go."
She grasped the key that started the engine once more, but did not immediately turn it. "Sir," said she, "I am sorry for your loss. I just wanted to tell yovi that. I can see what that boy meant to you."
Roland Deschain bowed his head and said nothing.
Irene Tassenbaum looked at him for a moment longer, reminded herself that sometimes words were useless things, then started the engine and slammed the door. He watched her drive into the road (her use of the clutch had already grown smooth and sure), making a tight turn so she could drive north, back toward East Stoneham.