Song of Susannah - Stephen King [124]
“Nay, sai, never think it. I’m not helpless. Sometimes I step aside.”
Roland laughed at that—the dry sound of a stick broken over a knee. “Do you know what you are?”
King shook his head. His lower lip had pooched out like that of a sulky child.
“Do you know what you are?”
“The father first. The husband second. The writer third. Then the brother. After brotherhood I am silent. Okay?”
“No. Not oh-kay. Do you know what you are?”
A long pause. “No. I told you all I can. Stop asking me.”
“I’ll stop when you speak true. Do you know—”
“Yes, all right, I know what you’re getting at. Satisfied?”
“Not yet. Tell me what—”
“I’m Gan, or possessed by Gan, I don’t know which, maybe there’s no difference.” King began to cry. His tears were silent and horrible. “But it’s not Dis, I turned aside from Dis, I repudiate Dis, and that should be enough but it’s not, ka is never satisfied, greedy old ka, that’s what she said, isn’t it? What Susan Delgado said before you killed her, or I killed her, or Gan killed her. ‘Greedy old ka, how I hate it.’ Regardless of who killed her, I made her say that, I, for I hate it, so I do. I buck against ka’s goad, and will until the day I go into the clearing at the end of the path.”
Roland sat at the table, white at the sound of Susan’s name.
“And still ka comes to me, comes from me, I translate it, am made to translate it, ka flows out of my navel like a ribbon. I am not ka, I am not the ribbon, it’s just what comes through me and I hate it I hate it! The chickens were full of spiders, do you understand that, full of spiders! ”
“Stop your snivelment,” Roland said (with a remarkable lack of sympathy, to Eddie’s way of thinking), and King stilled.
The gunslinger sat thinking, then raised his head.
“Why did you stop writing the story when I came to the Western Sea?”
“Are you dumb? Because I don’t want to be Gan! I turned aside from Dis, I should be able to turn aside from Gan, as well. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love to write stories, but I don’t want to write your story. I’m always afraid. He looks for me. The Eye of the King.”
“But not since you stopped,” Roland said.
“No, since then he looks for me not, he sees me not.”
“Nevertheless, you must go on.”
King’s face twisted, as if in pain, then smoothed out into the previous look of sleep.
Roland raised his mutilated right hand. “When you do, you’ll start with how I lost my fingers. Do you remember?”
“Lobstrosities,” King said. “Bit them off.”
“And how do you know that?”
King smiled a little and made a gentle wissshhh ing sound. “The wind blows,” said he.
“Gan bore the world and moved on,” Roland replied. “Is that what you mean to say?”
“Aye, and the world would have fallen into the abyss if not for the great turtle. Instead of falling, it landed on his back.”
“So we’re told, and we all say thank ya. Start with the lobstrosities biting off my fingers.”
“Dad-a-jum, dad-a-jingers, goddam lobsters bit off your fingers,” King said, and actually laughed.
“Yes.”
“Would have saved me a lot of trouble if you’d died, Roland son of Steven.”
“I know. Eddie and my other friends, as well.” A ghost of a smile touched the corners of the gunslinger’s mouth. “Then, after the lobstrosities—”
“Eddie comes, Eddie comes,” King interrupted, and made a dreamy little flapping gesture with his right hand, as if to say he knew all that and Roland shouldn’t waste his time. “The Prisoner the Pusher the Lady of Shadows. The butcher the baker the candle-mistaker.” He smiled. “That’s how my son Joe says it. When?”
Roland blinked, caught by surprise.
“When, when, when? ” King raised his hand and Eddie watched with surprise as the toaster, the waffle maker, and the drainer full of clean dishes rose and floated in the sunshine.
“Are you asking me when you should start again?”
“Yes, yes, yes! ” A knife rose out of the floating dish drainer and flew the length of the room. There it stuck, quivering, in the wall. Then everything settled back into place again.
Roland said, “Listen for the song of the Turtle, the