THREE
The light was fading out of the day. They sat around the fire and let it go. What little appetite they'd been able to muster had been easily satisfied by the muffin-balls Susannah and Jake had brought back to camp. Roland had been meditating on something Slightman had said, and more deeply than was probably healthy. Now he pushed it aside still half-chewed and said, "Some of us or all of us may meet later tonight in the city of New York."
"I only hope I get to go this time," Susannah said.
"That's as ka will," Roland said evenly. "The important thing is that you stay together. If there's only one who makes the journey, I think it's apt to be you who goes, Eddie. If only one makes the journey, that one should stay exactly where he... or mayhap she ... is until the bells start again."
"The kammen ," Eddie said. "That's what Andy called em."
"Do you all understand that?"
They nodded, and looking into their faces, Roland realized that each one of them was reserving the right to decide what to do when the time came, based upon the circumstances. Which was exactly right. They were either gunslingers or they weren't, after all.
He surprised himself by uttering a brief snort of a laugh.
"What's so funny?" Jake asked.
"I was just thinking that long life brings strange companions," Roland said.
"If you mean us," Eddie said, "lemme tell you something, Roland - you're not exacdy Norman Normal yourself."
"I suppose not," Roland said. "If it's a group that crosses - two, a trio, perhaps all of us - we should join hands when the chimes start."
"Andy said we had to concentrate on each other," Eddie said. "To keep from getting lost."
Susannah surprised them all by starting to sing. Only to Roland, it sounded more like a galley-chorus - a thing made to be shouted out verse by verse - than an actual song. Yet even without a real tune to carry, her voice was melodious enough: "Children, when ye hear the music of the clarinet. . . Children, when ye hear the music of the flute! Children, when ye hear the music of the tam-bou-rine... Ye must bow down and worship the iyyy-DOL !"
"What is it?"
"A field-chant," she said. "The sort of thing my grandparents and great-grandparents might have sung while they were picking ole massa's cotton. But times change." She smiled. "I first heard it in a Greenwich Village coffee-house, back in 1962. And the man who sang it was a white blues-shouter named Dave Van Ronk."
"I bet Aaron Deepneau was there, too," Jake breathed. "Hell, I bet he was sitting at the next damn table ."
Susannah turned to him, surprised and considering. "Why do you say so, sugar?"
Eddie said, "Because he overheard Calvin Tower saying this guy Deepneau had been hanging around the Village since... what'd he say, Jake?"
"Not the Village, Bleecker Street," Jake said, laughing a little. "Mr. Tower said Mr. Deepneau was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. That must be a harmonica."
"It is," Eddie said, "and while I might not bet the farm on what Jake's saying, I'd go a lot more than pocket-change. Sure, Deepneau was there. It wouldn't even surprise me to find out that Jack Andolini was tending the bar. Because that's just how things work in the Land of Nineteen."
"In any case," Roland said, "those of us who cross should stay together. And I mean within a hand's reach, all the time."
"I don't think I'll be there," Jake said.
"Why do you say so, Jake?" the gunslinger asked, surprised.
"Because I'll never fall asleep," Jake said. "I'm too excited."
But eventually they all slept.
FOUR