The Dark Tower - Stephen King [262]
“They were passing on what one of their good-minds told them. An especially talented one, by their accounts, although I don’t remember his name. According to him, the watch may stop when we near the Dark Tower, or even begin to run backward.”
“Hard to imagine a Patek Philippe running backward,” she said. “According to this, it’s eight-sixteen AM or PM back in New York. Here it looks about six-thirty AM, but I don’t guess that means much, one way or the other. How’re we supposed to know if this baby is running fast or slow?”
Roland had stopped storing goods in his gunna and was considering her question. “Do you see the tiny hand at the bottom? The one that runs all by himself?”
“The second-hand, yes.”
“Tell me when he’s straight up.”
She looked at the second-hand racing around in its own circle, and when it was in the noon position, she said, “Right now.”
Roland was hunkered down, a position he could accomplish easily now that the pain in his hip was gone. He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his knees. Each breath he exhaled emerged in a thin mist. Susannah tried not to look at this; it was as if the hated cold had actually grown strong enough to appear before them, still ghostlike but visible.
“Roland, what’re you d—”
He raised a hand to her, palm out, not opening his eyes, and she hushed.
The second-hand hurried around its circle, first dipping down, then rising until it was straight up again. And when it had arrived there—
Roland opened his eyes and said, “That’s a minute. A true minute, as I live beneath the Beam.”
Her mouth dropped open. “How in the name of heaven did you do that?”
Roland shook his head. He didn’t know. He only knew that Cort had told them they must always be able to keep time in their heads, because you couldn’t depend on watches, and a sundial was no good on a cloudy day. Or at midnight, for that matter. One summer he had sent them out into the Baby Forest west of the castle night after uncomfortable night (and it was scary out there, too, at least when one was on one’s own, although of course none of them would ever have said so out loud, even to each other), until they could come back to the yard behind the Great Hall at the very minute Cort had specified. It was strange how that clock-in-the-head thing worked. The thing was, at first it didn’t. And didn’t. And didn’t. Down would come Cort’s callused hand, down it would come a-clout, and Cort would growl Arrr, maggot, back to the woods tomorrow night! You must like it out there! But once that headclock started ticking, it always seemed to run true. For awhile Roland had lost it, just as the world had lost its points of the compass, but now it was back and that cheered him greatly.
“Did you count the minute?” she asked. “Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two, like that?”
He shook his head. “I just know. When a minute’s up, or an hour.”
“Bol-she-vecky!” she scoffed. “You guessed!”
“If I’d guessed, would I have spoken after exactly one revolution of the hand?”
“You mought got lucky,” Detta said, and eyed him shrewdly with one eye mostly closed, an expression Roland detested. (But never said so; that would only cause Detta to goad him with it on those occasions when she peeked out.)
“Do you want to try it again?” he asked.
“No,” Susannah said, and sighed. “I take your word for it that your watch is keeping perfect time. And that means we’re not close to the Dark Tower. Not yet.”
“Perhaps not close enough to affect the watch, but closer than I’ve ever been,” Roland said quietly. “Comparatively speaking, we’re now almost in its