It was a photocopy of a poem by Robert Browning. King had written the poet's name in his half-script, half-printing above the title. Susannah had read some of Browning's dramatic monologues in college, but she wasn't familiar with this poem. She was, however, extremely familiar with its subject; the title of the poem was "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." It was narrative in structure, the rhyme-scheme balladic (a-b-b-a-a-b), and thirty-four stanzas long. Each stanza was headed with a Roman numeral. Someone-King, presumably-had circled stanzas I, II, XIII, XIV, and XVI.
"Read the marked ones," he said hoarsely, "because I can only make out a word here and there, and I would know what they say, would know it very well."
"Stanza the First," she said, then had to clear her throat. It was dry. Outside the wind howled and the naked overhead bulb flickered in its flyspecked fixture.
"My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby."
"Collins," Roland said. "Whoever wrote that spoke of Collins as sure as King ever spoke of our ka-tet in his stories!
"He lied in every word!' Aye, so he did!"
"Not Collins," she said. "Dandelo."
Roland nodded. "Dandelo, say true. Go on."
"Okay; Stanza the Second.
"What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare all travellers who might find him posted there, and ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare."
"Does thee remember his stick, and how he waved it?"
Roland asked her.
Of course she did. And the thoroughfare had been snowy instead of dusty, but otherwise it was the same. Otherwise it was a description of what had just happened to them. The idea made her shiver.
"Was this poet of your time?" Roland asked. 'Your when?"
She shook her head. "Not even of my country. He died at least sixty years before my when."
"Yet he must have seen what just passed. A version of it, anyway."
"Yes. And Stephen King knew the poem." She had a sudden intuition, one that blazed too bright to be anything but the truth. She looked at Roland with wild, startled eyes. "It was this poem that got King going! It was his inspiration!"
"Do you say so, Susannah?" v,
"Yes!"
"Yet this Browning must have seen us."
She didn't know. It was too confusing. Like trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or being lost in a hall of mirrors. Her head was swimming.
"Read the next one marked, Susannah! Read ex-eye-eyeeye."
"That's Stanza Thirteen," she said.
"As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there;
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!
"Now Stanza the Fourteenth I read thee.
"Alive? He might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain."
"Lippy," the gunslinger said, and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. "Yonder's pluggit, colloped neck and all, only female instead of male."
She made no reply-needed to make none. Of course it was Lippy: blind and bony, her neck rubbed right down to the raw pink in places. Her an ugly old thing, I know, the old man had said... the thing that had looked like an old man. Ye old ki'-box and gammer-gurt, ye lost four-legged leper! And here it was in black and white, a poem written long before sai King was even born, perhaps eighty or even a hundred years before:... as scant as hair/In leprosy.
"Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!" Roland said, smiling grimly. "And while she'll never stud nor ever did, we'll see she's back with the devil before we leave!"
"No," she said. "We won't." Her voice sounded drier than ever. She wanted a drink, but was now afraid to take anything flowing from the taps in this vile place. In a little bit she would get some snow and melt it. Then she would have her drink, and not before.
"Why do you say so?"
"Because she's gone. She went out into the storm when we got the best of her master."
"How does thee know it?"
Susannah shook her head. "I just do." She shuffled to the next page in the poem, which ran to over two hundred lines.
"Stanza the Sixteenth.
"Not it! I fancied.
She ceased.
"Susannah? Why do you-" Then his eyes fixed on the next word, which he could read even in English letters. "Go on," he said. His voice was low, the words little more than a whisper.
"Are you positive?"
"Read, for I would hear."
She cleared her throat.
"Stanza the Sixteenth.
"Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold."