The Road to The Dark Tower (24 page)

Later, they dance and sing. Roland mounts the stage and, in the full emotion of the moment, asks the crowd two of the three questions necessary for the ka-tet to become involved in their affairs. The crowd answers as one: yes.
²⁰
Roland reserves the final question for another time—he will only ask it once he knows what the answer will be. Then he surprises and charms everyone by performing the Rice Song, a chant combined with a jiglike tap dance familiar both to the people of the Calla and those of Gilead. At the height of the song’s passion, Roland tumbles off the stage into the crowd and is swept away like a body surfer in a mosh pit.
²¹
Nothing could possibly top this performance—the party ends.

Roland is keeping two secrets from his ka-tet: Susannah’s pregnancy and his suspicion that he’s suffering from the dry twist, a fast-spreading arthritis that will eventually claim his most valuable tools—his hands.
²²
Father Callahan’s housekeeper, Rosalita Muñoz, treats his pain and welcomes Roland to her bed, his first lover since Alice in Tull.

He finally tells Eddie about Susannah’s pregnancy and new personality, saying that the baby she carries isn’t human. He knows this because Susannah is still having her periods. “The thing she’s carrying scorns her woman’s blood.” Roland worries she may “foal” on the day the Wolves arrive. After all, coincidence has been canceled. They decide to keep the secret from Susannah. Eddie knows Roland is only interested in making sure she isn’t distracted during their upcoming business, but he goes along to protect the rose. “That’s the only thing worth risking her for.” With this decision, Eddie becomes more like Roland than he’d ever admit—willing to keep secrets from his wife and entertain the possibility of sacrificing her for the quest.

Concerning Vampires

Father Callahan, the resident expert on vampires, created a taxonomy of the creatures. He identified three types:

Type Ones, the grandfathers like Barlow, are few in number, live a long time, and may spend centuries hibernating. They’re capable of making a large number of Type Two vampires in a short period of time. The scuttling black bugs known as grandfather fleas may herald their presence.

Type Twos, the undead, like those created in Salem’s Lot, can make new vampires, but they’re barely smarter than zombies. They can’t go out in daylight without being blinded, badly burned or killed. Their ravenous hunger undoes them, so they normally don’t survive very long. Type Two vampires generally create other Type Twos in a relatively small area, usually after the Type One vampire has moved on. Sometimes they create Type Threes.

Type Threes, which Callahan also calls pilot sharks, are like mosquitoes. They can’t create other vampires, but they feed constantly and are AIDS carriers. Their victims are marked, drawing other vampires to feed on them. Type Threes are somewhat smarter than Type Twos. They can go out in daylight and take their principal sustenance from food. When killed, they leave behind only clothing, hair and teeth in a manner reminiscent of the creatures in “The Ten O’Clock People” from
Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

The
Dark Tower
series features other kinds of vampires, too. The witch Rhea draws energy by drinking blood, as she does from Cordelia Delgado. The Little Sisters of Eluria are vampire nurses who once served the White but were later corrupted by the Great Poisoning, and Joe Collins, aka Dandelo, is an emotional vampire. Young Steve King feared that the red spiders in the barn would bite him and turn him into a vampire.

Father Callahan tells his life story, starting with his part in the battle against ’Salem’s Lot’s vampires. He is sharing khef, which means he is part of their ka-tet. Roland believes Callahan will leave the Calla with them when their job is done.

When Callahan mentions author Ben Mears, Eddie recognizes the name. However, Eddie doesn’t seem aware of Stephen King although he knows about Kubrick’s movie version of
The Shining
. Perhaps in Eddie’s world
The Shining
had a different author, as did

Charlie the Choo-Choo
. Eddie later believes that King either exists only in Keystone Earth or what he does in other worlds doesn’t matter.

Callahan tells about meeting and falling in love with Lupe Delgado in New York. Roland, of course, recognizes this surname. “Another coincidence that cannot possibly be a coincidence. Another click in a great turning cog.” He leaves the city after the low men become aware that he’s killing vampires. In Sacramento, Callahan works with a group of illegal aliens whose last names he will later encounter in the Calla.

He journeys across different versions of America on what Eddie dubs todash turnpikes. Callahan says they are as addictive as booze. Roland says, “Wandering’s the most addictive drug there is, I think, and every hidden road leads on to a dozen more.”

He dies on December 19, 1983, at 4:20
P
.
M
. (the digits in 12/19 and 4:20 add up to nineteen) in a Detroit office tower when he falls for a trap set by Richard P. Sayre, the man whose name Eddie saw on the document in Tower’s office. Under the threat of being infected with AIDS by vampires, Callahan commits suicide by throwing himself through a plate glass window.

After he dies, he finds himself in the presence of Walter o’Dim, who circled back to the way station to meet him shortly after Roland and Jake left. Callahan sees the gunslinger and the boy on the horizon. This is the only time Walter appears bearing the open red wound on his forehead identifying him as an agent of the Crimson King, which is usually an indicator of lesser minions like Sayre or the low men.

When Callahan demands to know where he is, Walter provides a literary answer: “So much backstory, so little time.” He takes Callahan into the stable and shoves him through the freestanding doorway labeled
UNFOUND
, sending Black Thirteen—the Eye of the Crimson King looking down from the Dark Tower—with him. Callahan is Walter’s backup plan, another trap for the gunslinger. If Roland dies before reaching Calla Bryn Sturgis, Callahan will live a quiet, pastoral second life. If he somehow survives, Black Thirteen will surely kill Roland.

In the Calla, Callahan begins to preach again. The residents who already know about Jesus build him a church, and he hides Black Thirteen beneath its floor. The ball is another of the great EVILS Callahan once sought as a young priest. It seduces people to do terrible things by making them think they are doing something good. It encourages a kind of
optimistic grandiosity. Black Thirteen sent him todash twice, once to Los Zapatos,
²³
Mexico, in the mid-1990s for Ben Mears’s funeral and once to the Castle of the Crimson King.

Callahan takes Roland into the church to see Black Thirteen. The ball is in a box made of black ironwood—called ghostwood in the
Tales of Arthur
—with three objects carved on top. Callahan says they are symbols from
Look Homeward, Angel
.
²⁴
“A leaf, a stone, an unfound door.” Perhaps the leaf of a rose plant. Roland feels the object’s evil power and thinks that only the faith of the people in the church has kept it in check.

In the coming days, Roland surveys the community for people and weapons. Vaughn Eisenhart,
²⁵
who opposes fighting the Wolves, owns a couple of dubious firearms.
²⁶
His wife, Margaret, has a surprise for Roland. She relates the legend of Lady Oriza, who killed Gray Dick by decapitating him using a weighted dinner plate with a sharp rim after he murdered her father.

Margaret is Henchick of the Manni’s granddaughter, but she abandoned the tribe because they are a peaceful people and below the surface she is not. The Manni call her one of “the forgetful.” They believe she is damned for leaving them, which may be true given her fate during the battle with the Wolves.

She and her friends, the Sisters of Oriza—a women’s social club with a deadly pastime that includes Zalia Jaffords and Rosalita Muñoz, Roland’s new lover—have kept Lady Oriza’s legacy alive, using modern plates made of titanium instead of glass. Though flustered with excitement, Margaret impresses Roland with her skill. He asks her to gather the four best throwers for a contest, and has Zalia instruct Susannah in the way of the Oriza. Susannah masters the skill quickly but she deliberately loses the contest so that a local woman can win. The victor is Roland’s new companion, Rosalita. The gunslingers have their local help.

Things were easier for Roland when he traveled alone. He didn’t have to decide with whom he could share information. He can’t trust Susannah because of Mia, nor Eddie because he loves Susannah. Jake might let something slip to Benny Slightman, and Roland is suspicious of Benny’s father, the only person in the Calla who wears glasses. Slightman says he got them by trading a colt to one of the merchants on the riverboat shops that occasionally passed the Calla. Jake’s “touch” tells him Slightman is
lying, but doesn’t reveal that the glasses were actually part of his payment for betraying his neighbors and friends to the agents of Thunderclap.

Jake learns about Mia on his own through a dream about one of her foraging excursions where Mia thinks she’s eating a roasted pig that resembles a baby but is really devouring one of Tian’s pigs raw. In his dream, Jake hears her muttering about the Dixie Pig in New York, which will help him track her down when Mia takes her through the doorway later.

Roland’s disease of secrecy infects other members of the ka-tet. Jake, alerted by Oy, sees Andy and Benny’s father meeting clandestinely one night. Afterward, Slightman wades across the river in the direction of Thunderclap. Jake keeps this suspicious activity to himself, but he knows that if he takes matters too much into his own hands he’ll have to face Roland in a test of manhood that he would surely lose. He would be sent east into Thunderclap in exile and shame.

He does confront Roland with his concerns about Susannah as they ride along the East Road, where the final battle against the Wolves will take place, a symbolic location for this tense confrontation between leader and follower, father and surrogate son. When Jake mistakes Roland’s shame for anger, Roland realizes how badly their ka-tet is broken. They agree to tell Susannah before the Wolves come, but as late as possible. Jake reluctantly agrees to monitor Susannah with his touch to see if Mia is exerting more control.

Henchick, the Manni leader, takes Roland to the cave where they found Callahan. Someone local knew he was coming and left a message on a tape recorder
²⁷
revealing where to find him. Both the door and the box containing Black Thirteen were open slightly. Henchick had been terrified by the glow coming from the door, which made him feel
dim,
perhaps Walter’s lingering influence. In the box’s blackness, Henchick saw the red eye of the Crimson King, someone Roland has heard of before but doesn’t know much about. He knows only that he’s either in Thunderclap or farther east. “I believe he may be a guardian of the Dark Tower. He may even think he owns it.”

When Henchick shut the box, the door slammed closed, too, and hasn’t opened since.

People who enter what was once known as the Cave of Voices hear
condemning voices drawn from their memories, in a manner similar to the visions seen by the Sawyer Gang when they entered the Black House in Wisconsin.
²⁸
Roland hears his mother and father, Walter, Cuthbert and Rhea.

The door is exactly like those Roland encountered on the beach. Etched upon it are a rose and the word
UNFOUND
in hieroglyphics. Roland knows Black Thirteen will open the door, and could take them to any place or any time.

While Roland and Henchick explore the cave, the members of his ka-tet go shopping using gold and silver coins and gems from a magic grow-bag, the last thing of magic Roland owns. Took,
²⁹
the shopkeeper, opposes the gunslingers’ mission because the Wolves once burned down the store when the townspeople tried to hide children there. However, he cannot turn down hard currency, though he drives hard bargains. Susannah enjoys bartering with him and putting him in his place when he gets too flippant.

Afterward, they sit on the porch in front of the store and greet the townspeople for five hours, answering a thousand difficult questions.

Callahan’s Catholicism comes into play in three different ways during the buildup to the battle with the Wolves. First, he hears Roland’s confession, which consists of his story from the time he draws Odetta from New York through his awareness of her pregnancy. Roland isn’t looking for absolution, and gets none. Callahan tells Roland he has been a fool, “ka-mai.”

Roland is afraid that Mia will take control of Susannah and go off somewhere to have the child. “I have every reason to believe it would begin its work by slaughtering the mother,” he says, calling the child “poison with a heartbeat.” Callahan chastises Roland for being more concerned about the breaking of the tet than the death of a friend. “I wonder if your friends know what sort of man you are,” Callahan says. “They know,” he responds.

Callahan’s religious training also permits him to see another possibility for Susannah’s predicament beyond Roland’s assumption that Mia is a new personality, a notion that depresses Susannah once they as a group finally talk about her pregnancy. Callahan suggests that Mia might be possessing Susannah, though he doesn’t go so far as to propose an exorcism.

Finally, when Roland proposes aborting the demon child, Callahan stands firm. Not only won’t he let Roland suggest it, but Roland also must
dissuade Susannah if she comes up with the idea herself. Callahan promises to raise the townspeople against the gunslingers if Roland won’t agree.
³⁰