The Road to The Dark Tower (30 page)

⁹
He calls the talisman skölpadda, the Swedish word for turtle.

¹⁰
Susannah uses the turtle to convince the receptionist that an Oriza is actually her driver’s license, reminiscent of Andy McGee “pushing” a cabbie to believe a one-dollar bill is $500 in
Firestarter
. Jack Sawyer makes similar use of a posy of white blossoms Speedy gave him in
Black House
. The can toi, a term also applied to the low men, are Tak’s children of the desert in
Desperation
.

¹¹
This demon-spawned child is reminiscent of “Little Brother” from
Kingdom II
by Lars von Trier, the Danish miniseries that King adapted as
Kingdom Hospital
in 2004. His father was a demon, and he grew abnormally fast both in utero and after. “Little Brother” refused to accept his demonic nature, unlike Mordred, who will embrace it. King, however, said that he had only seen the first part of von Trier’s series, which ends with the demonic baby’s birth. Nevertheless, the name Mordred Wilder is seen on the cover of a book, Mia Dean is paged to the maternity ward and numbers 19 and 99 appear regularly on the show. In a private communication, King referred to Antubis, the program’s anteater guardian, as Roland’s old trailmate. Antubis’s name is a pun on the Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis.

¹²
Echoing a line by Steve McQueen’s character, Vin, in
The Magnificent Seven
. Roland does want to save the Tower, but having done so, he carries on beyond what is required of him by ka. Not everything Mia says can be believed. When the Breakers are freed, the Beams start to heal themselves and regenerate those that were broken.

¹³
Eddie laments losing a lock of Susannah’s hair. Roland says their guns are all they need.

¹⁴
In the afterword to
Wizard and Glass,
he wrote, “All may not live to reach the Tower.”

¹⁵
When Eddie meets King, he asks his future creator where Co-Op City is. King erroneously says Brooklyn. Eddie says, “I refuse to believe that I was raised in Brooklyn simply because of some writer’s mistake, something that will eventually be fixed in the second draft.”

¹⁶
King’s
Danse Macabre
closes with this passage:

We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other . . . except through faith. That we retain our sanity in the face of these simple yet blinding mysteries is nearly divine. That we may turn the powerful intuition of our maginations upon them and regard them in this glass of dreams—that we may, however timidly, place our hands within the hole which opens at the center of the column of truth—that is . . . well, it’s magic, isn’t it?

¹⁷
A similar scene appears in “Low Men in Yellow Coats” when Ted Brautigan helps replace Carol’s dislocated shoulder. “Pain rises from its source to the brain . . . but you’ll catch most of it in your mouth as it rises.” [HA]

¹⁸
Eddie calls the scene “Pulling the Bullet,” a play on “Riding the Bullet,” perhaps.

¹⁹
Tower was optimistic. First editions of
’Salem’s Lot
typically sell for $750 to $1,500, depending on condition.

²⁰
After Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” This plague was probably caused by the Crimson King, hence its name. “Some folks said something had been opened in the castle, some jar of demonstuff that should have been left shut forever,” Mia says.

²¹
King isn’t sure he’s thought of the “Gilead” part yet, but acknowledges that it is good. “There is no balm in Gilead” (a misquote).

²²
Though he hasn’t written
The Dark Half
yet, this echoes Thad Beaumont’s fear of one of his own creations, a pseudonym.

²³
King says in the introduction to
The Gunslinger
that he did indeed lose an early outline, but it “probably wasn’t worth a tin shit anyway.”

²⁴
King takes some liberties with history. The final sections of
The Gunslinger
weren’t written until 1979 or 1980.

²⁵
They also turn up in
Dreamcatcher,
when the aliens recite streams of prime numbers.

²⁶
King claims Gan is the creative force in Hindu mythology. Gan made the world and tipped it with his finger, setting it rolling, thereby creating time. Note the syllable’s presence in Dogan and Harrigan.

²⁷
Roland thinks tobacco prolongs life. It keeps away ill-sick vapors and dangerous insects. Since they are going ahead to 1999, they can’t come back to check on him after today. In
The Dark Tower,
Roland and Eddie find a solution to this dilemma.

²⁸
That is, the World Trade Center. Jake and Callahan will do this without benefit of King’s advice.

²⁹
This is King’s normal writing hand, as seen in the reproduction ledgers Scribner used to promote
Dreamcatcher
.

³⁰
In the afterword, King writes, “[T]o the best of my knowledge, there were never coin-op storage lockers in the World Trade Center.”

³¹
In Mejis, Big Coffin Hunter Roy Depape made Sheemie Ruiz do the same thing.

³²
The castle allure is Mia’s safe place, a retreat reminiscent of the Mohonk hotel used by Audrey in
The Regulators
.

³³
He mentions Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
and Dickens’s
Mystery of Edwin Drood
as examples of unfinished works.

³⁴
The article’s byline is that of Ray Routhier, a real-life journalist for the
Portland Press Herald,
who gave King permission to use his name in the book.

³⁵
Personal communication, August 2003.

Chapter 8
THE DARK TOWER (RESUMPTION)

My quest—the quest of my ka-tet—is the Dark Tower. It’s not saving this world we’re about, or even this universe, but all universes. All of existence.

[DT5]
¹

What we’re playing for, Roland, is the ages.

[DT6]

 
The Dark Tower
begins immediately after the end of
Song of Susannah
. Father Callahan, Jake and Oy are on the street outside the Dixie Pig, ready to begin what could be their final battle. For weapons they have Jake’s father’s gun, Susannah’s Orizas, and the scrimshaw turtle Susannah left for them in the gutter. Callahan knows that Jake must survive, but his own part in the story is almost done.

Inside the restaurant, they both sense that something exciting has just happened. They are vastly outnumbered, but the turtle sigul levels the playing field, entrancing most of the entities in the room except for the black bugs scuttling under the table, the little doctors—also known as Grandfather fleas—that Roland encountered in Eluria. Their presence in such numbers indicates that the Grandfathers—Type One vampires—aren’t far behind. Oy kills a few, and the others retreat quickly. Callahan muses that Oy seems to have been bred to destroy these parasites.

Eddie and Roland, swept from Maine on a Beam hurricane, witness the onset of the confrontation from a vantage point high up in the room. They both know how this battle is going to turn out. Roland confirms Callahan’s belief that he is to sacrifice himself so Jake can continue. The gunslinger inhabits Callahan’s body to speak to Jake, telling him to leave the priest behind and go after Susannah. Noticing his reluctance, Roland thinks, “I should have schooled him better in betrayal.” Eddie’s
suggestion that the vampires will kill and eat Oy spurs Jake into action better than Roland’s orders do.

The sigul has no effect on the Type One vampires who emerge from the kitchen, but Callahan’s faith works through his cross. He doesn’t waver in the face of EVIL when the vampires—echoing Barlow—dare him to throw his cross aside. “I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you. . . . I’d never throw away such an old friend in any case.” He lets the cross fall inside his shirt, but the power of God and the White radiate through his very being. He gets a second chance to correct an error he made in a previous life, in much the same way that Roland has been given multiple attempts to get his quest right.

Fear of Sayre, who answers to Walter, who in turn answers only to the Crimson King, spurs three taheen to take action. They knock the turtle from Callahan’s hand to the floor. It bounces under one of the tables and “there passes out of this tale forever,”
²
releasing the taheen from its glammer. Callahan invokes God’s name, but the Crimson King’s minions exist outside His power. They fall on him and bite into his neck. The smell of blood outweighs the power of the cross, drawing the vampires to him.

God—or ka—answers Callahan’s call for strength. He shoots the taheen who attacked him and wonders if that makes him a gunslinger. Before the vampires sink their teeth into his neck, Callahan turns the Ruger on himself. He salutes Roland, who returns the salute, saying, “Hile, gunslinger!” Callahan pulls the trigger and dies, satisfied that he has fulfilled his duty, committing suicide without apparent moral conflict for the second time in his existence.

THE BEAM HURRICANE, called aven kal, strikes Eddie and Roland in Cullum’s car on the way to Turtleback Lane in Lovell, a looping road along the shore of Kezar Lake
³
and the center of walk-in activity. The Beam means to speak to them. Roland’s tutor used to say, “You would do well to listen if it does.”

Their bodies float inside the car briefly, then the hurricane carries their essences to Fedic, where they hover over Susannah and Mia. Susannah sees them—naked and surrounded by a cloud of detritus from inside Cullum’s car—and says, “Chassit,” a word Roland knows from a song his mother used to sing. It means “nineteen,” the mystical word they have
been encountering since leaving the Emerald Palace. The hurricane then takes them to the Dixie Pig before returning them to Cullum’s car. In its wake, they sense Callahan’s death.

Roland expects to find a magic doorway at Turtleback Lane. Before they leave in pursuit of Susannah, Eddie wants to arrange to have the title to the vacant lot—a document that may not withstand close scrutiny—delivered to Odetta’s godfather, Moses Carver. Time is running out for Susannah, but the Tower takes precedence. He gets perverse pleasure from knowing that the agreement, perhaps the most important piece of paper in the world, has a silly pun (“Dam important things to do”) at the top.

They need someone besides Aaron Deepneau as a go-between because Deepneau doesn’t know enough of the ka-tet’s story to resist Tower’s nagging. The only other person they know is John Cullum, whom they earlier ordered to leave town until the heat died down. Roland believes that since they need him, ka dictates that Cullum will still be at home. Eddie argues that, in a story, a minor character like John Cullum would never come in off the bench to save the day. It wouldn’t be considered realistic. Roland says, “In life, I’m sure it happens all the time.”

Roland’s faith is validated. Cullum answers his phone when he hears Eddie’s voice on the answering machine, and agrees to meet them on Turtleback Lane. On the way, they pass a being Roland calls a Child of Roderick.
⁴
They are wandering folk, Bedouins from beyond any land Roland ever knew, although before the world moved on they honored Arthur Eld. Now they act as trustees at Devar-Toi, where the Breakers are held. Their mutation is caused, according to Pimli Prentiss, from working near the red glow of the King’s Forge, aka the Big Combination.