Roland considered, then shook his head. "The box might close if I did. Probably would close. Then the door would close. And we'd be trapped on that side."
"Can't you prop the damn thing open with a stone or a bone or something?"
"No," Roland said. "It wouldn't work. The ball is powerful."
And it's working on you , Eddie thought. Roland's face looked haggard, the way it had when the lobstrosities' poison had been inside him.
"All right," he said.
"Be as quick as you can."
"I will."
TWELVE
When he turned around, Tower was looking at him quizzically. "Who were you talking to?"
Eddie stood aside and pointed at the doorway. "Do you see anything there, sai?"
Calvin Tower looked, started to shake his head, then looked longer. "A shimmer," he said at last. "Like hot air over an incinerator. Who's there? What's there?"
"For the time being, let's say nobody. What have you got in your hand?"
Tower held it up. It was an envelope, very old. Written on it in copperplate were the words Stephen Toren and Dead Letter . Below, carefully drawn in ancient ink, were the same symbols that were on the door and the box:
New we might be getting somewhere , Eddie thought.
"Once this envelope held the will of my great-great-great grandfather," Calvin Tower said. "It was dated March 19th, 1846. Now there's nothing but a single piece of paper with a name written upon it. If you can tell me what that name is, young man, I'll do as you ask."
And so , Eddie mused, it comes down to another riddle . Only this time it wasn't four lives that hung upon the answer, but all of existence.
Thank God it's an easy one , he thought.
"It's Deschain," Eddie said. "The first name will be either Roland, the name of my dinh, or Steven, the name of his father."
All the blood seemed to fall out of Calvin Tower's face. Eddie had no idea how the man was able to keep his feet. "My dear God in heaven," he said.
With trembling fingers, he removed an ancient and brittle piece of paper from the envelope, a time traveler that had voyaged over a hundred and thirty-one years to this where and when. It was folded. Tower opened it and put it on the counter, where they could both read the words Stefan Toren had written in the same firm copperplate hand:
Roland Deschain, of Giliad.
The line of ELD
GUNSLINGER
THIRTEEN
There was more talk, about fifteen minutes' worth, and Eddie supposed at least some of it was important, but the real deal had gone down when he'd told Tower the name his three-times-great-grandfather had written on a slip of paper fourteen years before the Civil War got rolling.
What Eddie had discovered about Tower during their palaver was dismaying. He harbored some respect for the man (for any man who could hold out for more than twenty seconds against Balazar's goons), but didn't like him much. There was a kind of willful stupidity about him. Eddie thought it was self-created and maybe propped up by his analyst, who would tell him about how he had to take care of himself, how he had to be the captain of his own ship, the author of his own destiny, respect his own desires, all that blah-blah. All the little code words and terms that meant it was all right to be a selfish f**k. That it was noble, even. When Tower told Eddie that Aaron Deepneau was his only friend, Eddie wasn't surprised. What surprised him was that Tower had any friends at all. Such a man could never be ka-tet, and it made Eddie uneasy to know that their destinies were so tightly bound together.
You'll just have to trust to ka. It's what ka's for, isn't it?
Sure it was, but Eddie didn't have to like it.
FOURTEEN
Eddie asked if Tower had a ring with Ex Liveris on it. Tower looked puzzled, then laughed and told Eddie he must mean Ex Libris . He rummaged on one of his shelves, found a book, showed Eddie the plate in front. Eddie nodded.
"No," Tower said. "But it'd be just the thing for a guy like me, wouldn't it?" He looked at Eddie keenly. "Why do you ask?"
But Tower's future responsibility to save a man now exploring the hidden highways of multiple Americas was a subject Eddie didn't feel like getting into right now. He'd come as close to blowing the guy's mind as he wanted to, and he had to get back through the unfound door before Black Thirteen wore Roland away to a frazzle.
"Never mind. But if you see one, you ought to pick it up. One more thing and then I'm gone."
"What's that?"
"I want your promise that as soon as I leave, you'll leave."
Tower once more grew shifty. It was the side of him Eddie knew he could come to outright loathe, given time. "Why... to tell you the truth, I don't know if I can do that. Early evenings are often a very busy time for me... people are much more prone to browse once the workday's over... and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air , Irwin Shaw's novel about radio and the McCarthy era... I'll have to at least skim through my appointment calendar, and..."
He droned on, actually gathering steam as he descended toward trivialities.