The Dark Tower - Stephen King [247]
“I thought we’d build a little fire behind the hotel,” he said. “I won’t need this smelly stuff to make one, certainly.” He said it with a touch of contempt.
“No, I suppose not. But it might come in handy.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but…” She shrugged.
Near the door to the street they passed what appeared to be a janitor’s closet filled with piles of rickrack. Susannah had had enough of the Dogan for one day and was anxious to be out, but Roland wanted to have a look. He ignored the mop buckets and brooms and cleaning supplies in favor of a jumble of cords and straps heaped in a corner. Susannah guessed from the boards on top of which they lay that this stuff had once been used to build temporary scaffoldings. She also had an idea what Roland wanted the strappage for, and her heart sank. It was like going all the way back to the beginning.
“Thought I was done with piggybackin,” she said crossly, and with more than a touch of Detta in her voice.
“It’s the only way, I think,” Roland said. “I’m just glad I’m whole enough again to carry your weight.”
“And that passage underneath’s the only way through? You’re sure of that?”
“I suppose there might be a way through the castle—” he began, but Susannah was already shaking her head.
“I’ve been up top with Mia, don’t forget. The drop into the Discordia on the far side’s at least five hundred feet. Probably more. There might have been stairs in the long-ago, but they’re gone now.”
“Then we’re for the passage,” he said, “and the passage is for us. Mayhap we’ll find something for you to ride in once we’re on the other side. In another town or village.”
Susannah was shaking her head again. “I think this is where civilization ends, Roland. And I think we better bundle up as much as we can, because it’s gonna get cold.”
Bundling-up materials seemed to be in short supply, however, unlike the foodstuffs. No one had thought to store a few extra sweaters and fleece-lined jackets in vacuum-packed cans. There were blankets, but even in storage they had grown thin and fragile, just short of useless.
“I don’t give a bedbug’s ass,” she said in a wan voice. “Just as long as we get out of this place.”
“We will,” he said.
Three
Susannah is in Central Park, and it’s cold enough to see her breath. The sky overhead is white from side to side, a snow-sky. She’s looking down at the polar bear (who’s rolling around on his rocky island, seeming to enjoy the cold just fine) when a hand snakes around her waist. Warm lips smack her cold cheek. She turns and there stand Eddie and Jake. They are wearing identical grins and nearly identical red stocking caps. Eddie’s says MERRY across the front and Jake’s says CHRISTMAS. She opens her mouth to tell them “You boys can’t be here, you boys are dead,” and then she realizes, with a great and singing relief, that all that business was just a dream she had. And really, how could you doubt it? There are no talking animals called billy-bumblers, not really, no taheen-creatures with the bodies of humans and the heads of animals, no places called Fedic or Castle Discordia.
Most of all, there are no gunslingers. John Kennedy was the last, her chauffeur Andrew was right about that.
“Brought you hot chocolate,” Eddie says and holds it out to her. It’s the perfect cup of hot chocolate, mit schlag on top and little sprinkles of nutmeg dotting the cream; she can smell it, and as she takes it she can feel his fingers inside his gloves and the first flakes of that winter’s snow drift down between them. She thinks how good it is to be alive in plain old New York, how great that reality is reality, that they are together in the Year of Our Lord—
What Year of Our Lord?
She frowns, because this is a serious question, isn’t it? After all, Eddie’s an eighties man and she never got any further than 1964 (or was it ’65?). As for Jake, Jake Chambers with the word CHRISTMAS printed on the front of his happy hat, isn’t he from the seventies? And if the three of them represent three decades from the second half of the twentieth century, what is