Song of Susannah - Stephen King [120]
“Not yet, anyway,” Roland remarked.
“You started as a version of Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name.”
“In the Spaghetti Westerns,” Eddie said. “Jesus, of course! I watched a hundred of em at the Majestic with my brother Henry, when Henry was still at home. I went by myself or with this friend of mine, Chuggy Coter, when Henry was in the Nam. Those were guy flicks.”
King was grinning. “Yeah,” he said, “but my wife went ape for em, so go figure.”
“Cool on her!” Eddie exclaimed.
“Yeah, Tab’s a cool kitty.” King looked back at Roland. “As The Man With No Name—a fantasy version of Clint Eastwood—you were okay. A lot of fun to partner up with.”
“Is that how you think of it?”
“Yes. But then you changed. Right under my hand. It got so I couldn’t tell if you were the hero, the antihero, or no hero at all. When you let the kid drop, that was the capper.”
“You said you made me do that.”
Looking Roland straight in the eyes—blue meeting blue amid the endless choir of voices—King said: “I lied, brother.”
* * *
Ten
There was a little pause while they all thought that over. Then King said, “You started to scare me, so I stopped writing about you. Boxed you up and put you in a drawer and went on to a series of short stories I sold to various men’s magazines.” He considered, then nodded. “Things changed for me after I put you away, my friend, and for the better. I started to sell my stuff. Asked Tabby to marry me. Not long after that I started a book called Carrie. It wasn’t my first novel, but it was the first one I sold, and it put me over the top. All that after saying goodbye Roland, so long, happy trails to you. Then what happens? I come around the corner of my house one day six or seven years later and see you standing in my fucking driveway, big as Billy-be-damned, as my mother used to say. And all I can say now is that thinking you’re a hallucination brought on by overwork is the most optimistic conclusion I can draw. And I don’t believe it. How can I?” King’s voice was rising, becoming reedy. Eddie didn’t mistake it for fear; this was outrage. “How can I believe it when I see the shadows you cast, the blood on your leg—” He pointed to Eddie. “And the dust on your face?” This time to Roland. “You’ve taken away my goddam options, and I can feel my mind…I don’t know…tipping? Is that the word? I think it is. Tipping.”
“You didn’t just stop,” Roland said, ignoring this last completely for the self-indulgent nonsense it probably was.
“No?”
“I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe. And one day while you were doing that, you felt something pushing back.”
King considered this for what seemed to Eddie like a very long time. Then he nodded. “You could be right. It was more than the usual going-dry feeling, for sure. I’m used to that, although it doesn’t happen as often as it used to. It’s…I don’t know, one day you just start having less fun while you’re sitting there, tapping the keys. Seeing less clearly. Getting less of a buzz from telling yourself the story. And then, to make things worse, you get a new idea, one that’s all bright and shiny, fresh off the showroom floor, not a scratch on her. Completely unfucked-up by you, at least as of yet. And…well…”
“And you felt something pushing back.” Roland spoke in the same utterly flat tone.
“Yeah.” King’s voice had dropped so low Eddie could barely hear him. “NO TRESPASSING. DO NOT ENTER. HIGH VOLTAGE.” He paused. “Maybe even DANGER OF DEATH. ”
You wouldn’t like that faint shadow I see swirling around you, Eddie thought. That black nimbus. No, sai, I don’t think you’d like that at all, and what am I seeing? The cigarettes? The beer? Something else addictive you maybe have a taste for? A car accident one drunk night? And how far ahead? How many years?
He looked at the clock over the Kings’ kitchen table and was dismayed to see that it was quarter to four in the afternoon. “Roland, it’s getting late. This man’s got to get his kid.