The Dark Tower

Oh well, now that he’s stopped he might as well try to fix the Styrofoam cooler behind the seat—the dogs are still staring at it with their tongues hanging out. He tries to wedge it underneath the seat, but it won’t go—there’s not quite enough clearance. What he does instead is to point a dirty finger at his rotties and tell them again to ne’mine the cooler and the meat inside, that’s his, that’s gonna be his suppah. This time he even thinks to add a promise that later on he’ll mix a little of the hamburger in with their Purina, if they’re good. This is fairly deep thinking for Bryan Smith, but the simple expedient of swinging the cooler up front and putting it in the unoccupied passenger seat never occurs to him.

“You leave it alone!” he tells them again, and hops back behind the wheel. He slams the door, takes a brief glance in the rearview mirror, sees two old ladies back there (he didn’t notice them before because he wasn’t exactly looking at the road when he passed them), gives them a wave they never see through the Caravan’s filthy rear window, and then pulls back onto Route 7. Now the radio is playing “Gangsta Dream 19,” by Owt-Ray-Juss, and Bryan turns it up (once more swerving across the white line and into the northbound lane as he does so—this is the sort of person who simply cannot fix the radio without looking at it). Rap rules! And metal rules, too! All he needs now to make his day complete is a tune by Ozzy—“Crazy Train” would be good.

And some of those Marses bars.

SIXTEEN

Mrs. Tassenbaum came bolting out of the Cara Laughs driveway and onto Turtleback Lane in second gear, the old pickup truck’s engine over-cranking (if there’d been an RPM gauge on the dashboard, the needle would undoubtedly have been red-lining), the few tools in the back tap-dancing crazily in the rusty bed.

Roland had only a bit of the touch—hardly any at all, compared to Jake—but he had met Stephen King, and taken him down into the false sleep of hypnosis. That was a powerful bond to share, and so he wasn’t entirely surprised when he touched the mind Jake hadn’t been able to reach. It probably didn’t hurt that King was thinking about them.

He often does on his walks, Roland thought. When he’s alone, he hears the Song of the Turtle and knows that he has a job to do. One he’s shirking. Well, my friend, that ends today.

If, that was, they could save him.

He leaned past Jake and looked at the woman. “Can’t you make this gods-cursed thing go faster?”

“Yes,” she said. “I believe I can.” And then, to Jake: “Can you really read minds, son, or is that only a game you and your friend play?”

“I can’t read them, exactly, but I can touch them,” Jake said.

“I hope to hell that’s the truth,” she said, “because Turtleback’s hilly and only one lane wide in places. If you sense someone coming the other way, you have to let me know.”

“I will.”