FOUR
It took Eddie almost an hour and a half-and in the cause of brevity he did skip some of the things that had happened to them. By the time he'd finished, a premature night had settled on the lake below them. And still the threatening storm neither broke nor moved on. Above Dick Beckhardt's cottage thunder sometimes rumbled and sometimes cracked so sharply they all jumped. A stroke of lightning jabbed directly into the center of the narrow lake below them, briefly illuminating the entire surface a delicate nacreous purple. Once the wind arose, making voices move through the trees, and Eddie thought It'll come now, surely it will come now, but it did not. Nor did the impending storm leave, and this queer suspension, like a sword hanging by the thinnest of threads, made him think of Susannah's long, strange pregnancy, now terminated. At around seven o'clock the power went out and John looked through the kitchen cabinets for a supply of candles while Eddie talked on-the old people of River Crossing, the mad people in the city of Lud, the terrified people of Calla Bryn Sturgis, where they'd met a former priest who seemed to have stepped directly out of a book. John put the candles on the table, along with crackers and cheese and a bottle of Red Zinger iced tea. Eddie finished with their visit to Stephen King, telling how the gunslinger had hypnotized the writer to forget their visit, how they had briefly seen their friend Susannah, and how they had called John Cullum because, as Roland said, there was no one else in this part of the world they could call. When Eddie fell silent, Roland told of meeting Chevin of Chayven on their way to Turtleback Lane.
The gunslinger laid the silver cross he'd shown Chevin on the table by the plate of cheese, and John poked the fine links of the chain with one thick thumbnail.
Then, for a long time, there was silence.
When he could bear it no longer, Eddie asked the old caretaker how much of the tale he believed.
"All of it," John said without hesitation. "You gut to take care of that rose in New York, don't you?"
"Yes," Roland said.
"Because that's what's kep' one of those Beams safe while most of the others has been broken down by these what-do-youcall-em telepathies, the Breakers."
Eddie was amazed at how quickly and easily Cullum had grasped that, but perhaps there was no reason to be. Fresh eyes see clear, Susannah liked to say. And Cullum was very much what the grays of Lud would have called "a trig cove."
"Yes," Roland said. 'You say true."
"The rose is takin care of one Beam. Stephen King's in charge of the other 'un. Least, that's what you think."
Eddie said, "He'd bear watching, John-all else aside, he's got some lousy habits-but once we leave this world's 1977, we can never come back and check on him."
"King doesn't exist in any of these other worlds?" John asked.
"Almost surely not," Roland said.
"Even if he does," Eddie put in, "what he does in them doesn't matter. This is the key world. This, and the one Roland came from. This world and that one are twins."
He looked at Roland for confirmation. Roland nodded and lit the last of the cigarettes John had given him earlier.
"I might be able to keep an eye on Stephen King," John said.
"He don't need to know I'm doin it, either. That is, if I get back from doin your cussed business in New York. I gut me a pretty good idear what it is, but maybe you'd better spell it out."
From his back pocket he took a battered notepad with the words Mead Memo written on the green cover. He paged most of the way through it, found a blank sheet, produced a pencil from his breast pocket, licked the tip (Eddie restrained a shudder), and then looked at them as expectandy as any freshman on the first day of high school.
"Now, dearies," he said, "why don't you tell your Uncle John the rest."
FIVE
This time Roland did most of the talking, and although he had less to say than Eddie, it still took him half an hour, for he spoke with great caution, every now and then turning to Eddie for help with a word or phrase. Eddie had already seen the killer and the diplomat who lived inside Roland of Gilead, but this was his first clear look at the envoy, a messenger who meant to get every word right. Outside, the storm still refused to break or to go away.
At last the gunslinger sat back. In the yellow glow of the candles, his face appeared both ancient and strangely lovely. Looking at him, Eddie for the first time suspected there might be more wrong with him than what Rosalita Munoz had called "the dry twist." Roland had lost weight, and the dark circles beneath his eyes whispered of illness. He drank off a whole glass of the red tea at a single draught, and asked: "Do you understand the things I've told you?"
"Ayuh." No more than that.
"Ken it very well, do ya?" Roland pressed. "No questions?"
"Don't think so."
"Tell it back to us, then."