The Dark Tower

The old man’s bad leg was clearly very bad—“Next door to nuthin,” Daddy Mose Carver would have said—but he got on well enough with his stick, moving in a sideways hopping gait that Susannah found both amusing and admirable. “Spry as a cricket” was another of Daddy Mose’s many sayings, and perhaps this one fit yonder old man better. Certainly she saw no harm or danger in a white-haired fellow (the hair was long and baby-fine, hanging to the shoulders of his anorak) who had to hop along on a stick. And, as he drew closer, she saw that one of his eyes was filmed white with a cataract. The pupil, which was faintly visible, seemed to look dully off to their left. The other, however, regarded the newcomers with lively interest as the inhabitant of the cottage hopped down Odd’s Lane toward them.

The horse whinnied again and the old man waved his stick wildly against the white, low-lying sky. “Shut up ya haybox, ya turd-factory, y’old clap-cunt gammer-gurt, ain’t you ever seen cump’ny before? Was ya born in a barn, hee-hee? (For if y’wasn’t, I’m a blue-eyed baboon, which there ain’t no such thing!)”

Roland snorted with genuine laughter, and the last of Susannah’s watchful apprehension departed. The horse whinnied again from the outbuilding behind the cottage—it was nowhere near grand enough to be called a barn—and the old man waved his stick at it once more, almost falling to the snowpack in the process. His awkward but nonetheless rapid gait had now brought him halfway to their location. He saved himself from what would have been a nasty tumble, took a large sidle-hop using the stick for a prop, then waved it cheerily in their direction.

“Hile, gunslingers!” the old man shouted. His lungs, at least, were admirable. “Gunslingers on pilgrimage to the Dark Tower, so y’are, so ya must be, for don’t I see the big irons with the yaller grips? And the Beam be back, fair and strong, for I feel it and Lippy do, too! Spry as a colt she’s been ever since Christmas, or what I call Christmas, not having a calendar nor seen Sainty Claus, which I wouldn’t expect, for have I been a good boy? Never! Never! Good boys go to heaven, and all my friends be in t’other place, toastin marshmallows and drinkin Nozzy spiked with whiskey in the devil’s den! Arrr, ne’mine, my tongue’s caught in the middle and runs on both ends! Hile to one, hile to t’other, and hile to the little furry gobbins in between! Billy-bumbler as I live and breathe! Yow, ain’t it good to see ya! Joe Collins is my name, Joe Collins of Odd’s Lane, plenty odd m’self, one-eyed and lame I am, but otherwise at your service!”

He had now reached the snowbank marking the spot where Tower Road ended . . . or where it began, depending on your point of view and the direction you were traveling, Susannah supposed. He looked up at them, one eye bright as a bird’s, the other looking off into the white wastes with dull fascination.

“Long days and pleasant nights, yar, so say I, and anyone who’d say different, they ain’t here anyway, so who gives a good goddam what they say?” From his pocket he took what could only be a gumdrop and tossed it up. Oy grabbed it out of the air easily: Snap! and gone.

At this both Roland and Susannah laughed. It felt strange to laugh, but it was a good feeling, like finding something of value long after you were sure it was lost forever. Even Oy appeared to be grinning, and if the horse bothered him (it trumpeted again as they looked down on sai Collins from their snowbank perch), it didn’t show.

“I got a million questions for yer,” Collins said, “but I’ll start with just one: how in the hell are yers gonna get down offa that snowbank?”

FOUR

As it turned out, Susannah slid down, using their travois as a sled. She chose the place where the northwestern end of Odd’s Lane disappeared beneath the snow, because the embankment was a little shallower there. Her trip was short but not smooth. She hit a large and crusted snow-boulder three quarters of the way down, fell off the travois, and made the rest of her descent in a pair of gaudy somersaults, laughing wildly as she fell. The travois turned over—turned turtle, may it do ya—and spilled their gunna every whichway and hell to breakfast.

Roland and Oy came leaping down behind. Roland bent over her at once, clearly concerned, and Oy sniffed anxiously at her face, but Susannah was still laughing. So was the codger. Daddy Mose would have called his laughter “gay as old Dad’s hatband.”

“I’m fine, Roland—took worse tumbles off my Flexible Flyer when I was a kid, tell ya true.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Joe Collins agreed. He gave her a look with his good eye to make sure she was indeed all right, then began to pick up some of the scattered goods, leaning laboriously over on his stick, his fine white hair blowing around his rosy face.

“Nah, nah,” Roland said, reaching out to grasp his arm. “I’ll do that, thee’ll fall on thy thiddles.”