The Dark Tower

Joe thought about it and then stood up, brushing a few errant crumbs from his shirt. He limped to the center of the room, leaving his crutch leaning against his chair. Oy looked up at him with his ears cocked and his old grin on his chops, as if anticipating the entertainment to come. For a moment Joe looked uncertain. Then he took a deep breath, let it out, and gave them a smile. “Promise you won’t throw no tomatoes if I stink up the joint,” he said. “Remember, it’s been a long time.”

“Not after you took us in and fed us,” Susannah said. “Never in life.”

Roland, always literal, said, “We have no tomatoes, in any case.”

“Right, right. Although there are some canned ones in the pantry . . . forget I said that!”

Susannah smiled. So did Roland.

Encouraged, Joe said: “Okay, let’s go back to that magical place called Jango’s in that magical city some folks call the mistake on the lake. Cleveland, Ohio, in other words. Second show. The one I never got to finish, and I was on a roll, take my word for it. Give me just a second . . .”

He closed his eyes. Seemed to gather himself. When he opened them again, he somehow looked ten years younger. It was astounding. And he didn’t just sound American when he began to speak, he looked American. Susannah couldn’t have explained that in words, but she knew it was true: here was one Joe Collins, Made in U.S.A.

“Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Jango’s, I’m Joe Collins and you’re not.”

Roland chuckled and Susannah smiled, mostly to be polite—that was a pretty old one.

“The management has asked me to remind you that this is two-beers-for-a-buck night. Got it? Good. With them the motive is profit, with me it’s self-interest. Because the more you drink, the funnier I get.”

Susannah’s smile widened. There was a rhythm to comedy, even she knew that, although she couldn’t have done even five minutes of stand-up in front of a noisy nightclub crowd, not if her life had depended on it. There was a rhythm, and after an uncertain beginning, Joe was finding his. His eyes were half-lidded, and she guessed he was seeing the mixed colors of the gels over the stage—so like the colors of the Wizard’s Rainbow, now that she thought of it—and smelling the smoke of fifty smoldering cigarettes. One hand on the chrome pole of the mike; the other free to make any gesture it liked. Joe Collins playing Jango’s on a Friday night—

No, not a Friday. He said all the clubs book rock-and-roll bands on the weekends.

“Ne’mine all that mistake-on-the-lake stuff, Cleveland’s a beautiful city,” Joe said. He was picking up the pace a little now. Starting to rap, Eddie might have said. “My folks are from Cleveland, but when they were seventy they moved to Florida. They didn’t want to, but shitfire, it’s the law. Bing!” Joe rapped his knuckles against his head and crossed his eyes. Roland chuckled again even though he couldn’t have the slightest idea where (or even what) Florida was. Susannah’s smile was wider than ever.

“Florida’s a helluva place,” Joe said. “Helluva place. Home of the newly wed and the nearly dead. My grandfather retired to Florida, God rest his soul. When I die, I want to go peacefully, in my sleep, like Grampa Fred. Not screaming, like the passengers in his car.”

Roland roared with laughter at that one, and Susannah did, too. Oy’s grin was wider than ever.

“My grandma, she was great, too. She said she learned how to swim when someone took her out on the Cuyahoga River and threw her off the boat. I said, ‘Hey, Nana, they weren’t trying to teach you how to swim.’”

Roland snorted, wiped his nose, then snorted again. His cheeks had bloomed with color. Laughter elevated the entire metabolism, put it almost on a fight-or-flight basis; Susannah had read that somewhere. Which meant her own must be rising, because she was laughing, too. It was as if all the horror and sorrow were gushing out of an open wound, gushing out like—

Well, like blood.

She heard a faint alarm-bell start to ring, far back in her mind, and ignored it. What was there to be alarmed about? They were laughing, for goodness’ sake! Having a good time!

“Can I be serious a minute? No? Well, fuck you and the nag you rode in on—tomorrow when I wake up, I’ll be sober, but you’ll still be ugly.

“And bald.”

(Roland roared.)