Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated (44 page)

Alain was a big boy with a mop of unruly blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a round face. Because of his looks, many people assumed he was a dullard (in
The Wind Through the Keyhole,
STEVEN DESCHAIN derisively called the boy Thudfood); however, he was actually both clever and sensitive. Like Roland’s later
ka-tet
mate JAKE CHAMBERS, Alain had “the touch.” Perhaps because of this mixture of empathy and psychic ability, Alain was much more stable than volatile Cuthbert.

While in Hambry, Alain’s alias was Richard Stockworth. His horse was named BUCKSKIN. In the original version of
The Gunslinger,
Alain was not mentioned, though Roland spoke of a friend named ALLEN. In the 2003 version of
The Gunslinger,
Allen’s name is replaced with Alain’s.

After the fall of GILEAD, Alain, Roland, Cuthbert, and JAMIE DeCURRY experienced one of MID-WORLD’s BEAMQUAKES. Sadly, just before the battle
of JERICHO HILL, Alain was shot by Roland and Cuthbert. The shooting was accidental, but nevertheless deadly.

II:355
(dies under Roland and Cuthbert’s guns),
II:394, III:15, III:33, III:41, III:60, III:262, III:276, III:279, III:280, IV:59, IV:119, IV:148
(as Richard Stockworth),
IV:151–53, IV:162, IV:163
(Buckskin only),
IV:164, IV:174, IV:179–80
(Mayor Thorin’s party; 179 Alain described),
IV:181–89
(Flashback to Sheriff Avery visit; 183–84 false papers. Richard Stockworth, Rancher’s son, 184 described),
IV:190–91
(discussing Avery),
IV:191–210
(Mayor Thorin’s party continued),
IV:218–21
(Travellers’ Rest standoff),
IV:224–30
(standoff continued; 224 “the touch”; 226–30 with Avery),
IV:241, IV:259–60
(“Little Coffin Hunters”),
IV:261–64
(261 pigeons and message. 263 Susan’s hair),
IV:266–71
(Depape finds out identities),
IV:271–77, IV:280
(gives message to Susan),
IV:282, IV:283, IV:284–88, IV:291, IV:344–47, IV:357–61, IV:371, IV:388–89
(the touch and premonitions),
IV:392–93
(the touch and senses trouble at Bar K),
IV:398–402, IV:408–15, IV:426–42
(428 described; 432 Roland’s plan of attack; 436 speaks to Susan in her trance state; 436–39 Steven Deschain and Maerlyn’s Grapefruit; 439 Christopher Johns
[
a.k.a. “Burning Chris”
]
),
IV:443
(“magic in his hands”),
IV:454–56, IV:463, IV:465, IV:474–80
(
ka-tet
arrested),
IV:482, IV:483, IV:487
(“boys”),
IV:503, IV:506, IV:508–13, IV:514–19, IV:523–24, IV:525
(mentioned),
IV:526, IV:529–32, IV:533–36, IV:538
(reference),
IV:540, IV:547–48, IV:549
(indirect),
IV:552–60
(attacking Jonas’s company),
IV:561
(indirect reference),
IV:573–75, IV:579–81, IV:583–84, IV:587–602
(driving Farson’s men into thinny),
IV:609–11
(Roland unconscious due to Maerlyn’s ball),
IV:620, IV:658, IV:663, E:186, V:41, V:59, V:78, V:79, V:85, V:98, V:164, V:170, V:182, V:184, V:389, V:400
(indirect),
VI:16
(lived through Beamquake),
VI:279, VII:219, VII:220, VII:271, VII:497, VII:503, VII:552, VII:762, VII:801, W:38, W:39, W:41, W:65

ALAIN’S MOTHER:
IV:391
(general),
IV:399

BUCKSKIN:
Buckskin was the horse Alain rode while in HAMBRY. IV:163

JOHNS, CHRISTOPHER (BURNING CHRIS):
Alain John’s father. In his youth he was known as “Burning Chris.” IV:286, IV:436–39, IV:620, V:85
(father),
V:195
(father)

JOHNSON

See
TULL CHARACTERS

JOLENE

See
RITZY CHARACTERS

JONAS, ELDRED

See
BIG COFFIN HUNTERS

JOSHUA

See
WIDOW SMACK

KA-JAFFORDS

See
JAFFORDS FAMILY

KA-TET OF NINETEEN

See
NINETEEN

KA-TET OF NINETY-NINE

See
NINETY-NINE

KA-TET OF THE ROSE

See
TET CORPORATION

KAS-KA GAN

See
KING, STEPHEN
;
see also
APPENDIX I

KATZ

Katz was the forty-six-year-old owner of KATZ’S PHARMACY AND SODA FOUNTAIN. With his frail body, balding head, and yellow skin, he looked more like sixty-six. Katz hated his shop and never forgave his father for burdening him with it.

II:333, II:362–70, II:374, II:375

KATZ SENIOR:
Katz’s deceased father. Katz curses him every day.

II:363, II:365, II:366–67, II:375

KATZ’S EMPLOYEES, CUSTOMERS, AND COMPETITORS:

BRUMHALL, DR.:
MRS. RATHBUN’s doctor. He’s a little too free handing out the Valium prescriptions. II:364–65

DOLLENTZ:
Katz’s competitor in the pharmacy business. II:365

GUY IN LEATHER JACKET:
This guy tries to sneak up on MORT/Roland with a knife. Roland shoots it out of his hand. II:368–69

KATZ’S PIMPLE-FACED ASSISTANT:
II:365–70

LENNOX, RALPH:
Security guard at Katz’s. II:365–70

RATHBUN, MRS.:
She’s a Valium addict who harasses Katz with outdated prescriptions until he refills them. II:363–65, II:366

KELLS, BIG BERN

Big Bern Kells was a character in the folktale “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” which Roland recounted to YOUNG BILL STREETER while the two of them spent time in the DEBARIA JAIL. (Neither of them had done anything wrong. Young Bill was the only witness to the SKIN-MAN massacre at the JEFFERSON RANCH, so Roland was trying to keep the boy safe in the most secure environment possible.)

At the beginning of our story, the woodsman Big Bern Kells was a forty-year-old widower with thinning hair and a black beard. Kells was the pard of BIG JACK ROSS, the father of eleven-year-old TIM ROSS, hero of the tale. Big Kells
and Big Ross worked the ROSS-KELLS STAKE, cutting valuable IRONWOOD which they then sold to the TREE SAWMILL.

Many years previously, Big Kells, Big Ross, and Ross’s wife NELL had been childhood friends, and both Ross and Kells had vied for Nell’s kisses. Ross had won Nell’s hand, and though Kells had stood by Ross at the wedding and had slipped the silk around the new couple, in his secret heart he was eaten alive by jealousy. Although he was good-humored and laughing when he was sober, after Nell and Big Ross’s wedding, Kells’s habit of drunken violence grew worse. After a particularly nasty binge in which Kells destroyed most of the furniture in the local saloon before passing out, Big Ross told Kells that he had to stop. When he was sober he was good and dependable, but when he was drunk he was no more reliable than quickmud. Unless Kells quit the drink, Ross would look for a new cutting pard. Despite the fact that his living was in danger, Kells kept drinking, brawling, and bawding for a few months more. However, when he met MILLICENT REDHOUSE, he sobered up and married. Big Kells and Milly were married for six seasons, until Milly died giving birth. (The baby died soon after.) Milly’s dying wish was that Kells stayed off the drink. He did, at least until his loneliness and desire for Nell Ross drove him to the vile act of murder.

In Tim Ross’s eleventh year, Big Kells came out of the ENDLESS FOREST on his own. His skin was sooty and his jerkin was charred. There was a hole in the left leg of his homespun pants. Red and blistered flesh peeped through it. He claimed that he’d been singed by a DRAGON—a dragon that had incinerated his partner. Later on we discover that Kells’s tale of a dragon was nothing more than a concocted alibi, and that all of his burns were self-inflicted. In truth, Kells had crept up on his partner and had struck him on the back of the head. Then he’d hidden Big Ross’s dead body in a stream located on a fallow stub of the COSINGTON-MARCHLY STAKE.

Not long after Big Ross’s death, Kells began courting Nell. Reluctantly—and for the most part out of fear of the Barony’s tax-collecting COVENANT MAN—Nell agreed to slip the rope with her deceased husband’s partner. Kells sold his own house to BALDY ANDERSON and moved into the Ross cottage. Although he managed to remain teetotal for a brief period, soon Kells’s temper and his simmering resentment of Nell got the better of him. Blaming his new wife for all his ills (after all, if she hadn’t tempted him with her good looks he wouldn’t have killed his friend), he turned to drink. Kells—whose beard was now streaked with gray—began beating his wife and new stepson, and even made Tim give up his lessons at the WIDOW SMACK’S COTTAGE so that he could earn money at the Tree Sawmill. Kells’s reputation in the village became so bad that he couldn’t even get a new partner to replace Ross. Instead, he was forced to go cutting in the Ironwood Forest alone, which was a dangerous business indeed.

This unhappy situation was a perfect one for the wicked Covenant Man to exploit. While collecting taxes at the Ross house (now the Kells house), the Covenant Man gave Young Tim a key which would open any lock, hinting that Tim should look inside his stepfather’s well-loved trunk. While Big Kells was drinking himself into unconsciousness at GITTY’s, Tim used the key as the Covenant Man directed. Inside, among ragged clothing, rusty tools, and a picture of the deceased Millicent Kells, Tim found his father’s lucky coin. Knowing that
a real dragon would have melted the coin which his father always wore on a silver chain around his neck, Tim began to suspect his stepfather of murder. This suspicion was confirmed by the Covenant Man himself, who showed Tim his father’s corpse floating six or eight inches below the surface of a stream. Using his magic SILVER BASIN, the Barony tax-collector also showed Tim an image of Kells smashing Nell on the forehead with a heavy ceramic jug and beating her into unconsciousness for the sin of opening his trunk.

Terrified for his mother’s safety and enraged at his father’s murder, Tim returned home where the Widow Smack was nursing blinded Nell. Tim informed PETER COSINGTON, ERNIE MARCHLY, and Baldy Anderson about his steppa’s crimes, and the men gathered a posse to find the murderer. Now a wanted man, Kells stayed on the run, shivering out the STARKBLAST under a pile of hay in DEAF RINCON’S BARN. But when Tim returned from the Endless Forest with a magic potion to cure his mother’s blindness, Kells was waiting. Having already slit the Widow Smack’s throat, Kells waited near his trunk in the mudroom while Tim spoke with his ma in the bedroom. When Tim emerged, Kells grabbed the boy by the neck and began choking him. Once Tim’s struggles weakened, Kells tossed aside Tim’s four-shot gun so that he could throw Tim onto the fire. But before he could make good on his threat to burn Tim alive, Nell Ross buried the blade of her first husband’s ax in Bern Kells’s head, killing him.

W:110, W:116–20, W:121, W:122, W:123–24
(124 wedding day),
W:125–27, W:128, W:129, W:130, W:131–38
(138 hits Nell),
W:139, W:140, W:141, W:142 (miser), W:143, W:144, W:145, W:146, W:153–54
(in basin vision),
W:155, W:158, W:160, W:161
(murderer),
W:162, W:165, W:166
(beast),
W:167–68, W:170, W:171
(his evil told by Tim),
W:172, W:173, W:175, W:176, W:178, W:190, W:196, W:206, W:221, W:238, W:241, W:246
(indirect),
W:262–64
(263 ax in head),
W:267

FATHER (MATHIAS):
Big Kells’s father, Mathias Kells, was killed in the ENDLESS FOREST by a vert, also known as a bullet-bird. The vert had bored a hole right through him with its stony beak. Bern Kells learned his habit of wife-beating from Mathias. (Nastiness ran in the family.) Kells’s much-loved trunk once belonged to his father. W:125, W:126, W:129
(died from Vert),
W:133, W:135

WIFE (BERN’S MOTHER):
We don’t learn anything about Bern Kells’s mother except that her husband beat her. W:135

KELLS, MILLICENT (MILLICENT REDHOUSE):
When TIM ROSS searched through his stepfather’s trunk, he found a picture of Kells’s first wife, Millicent Redhouse. Millicent was only five feet tall and had masses of dark hair that tumbled over her shoulders. She died giving birth to Bern Kells’s child. W:117, W:119
(Redhouse),
W:122, W:139, W:143

BABY:
Bern Kells’s only child died shortly after birth. W:119

LIMPING PETER (GRANDFATHER):
W:133

MULES:
Bern Kells’s mules were as ill-tempered as their master. W:145

POSSE:
After hearing about JACK ROSS’S murder from TIM ROSS, PETER COSINGTON, ERNIE MARCHLY and BALDY ANDERSON gathered this posse to find the murdering trull, Bern Kells. In the end, NELL ROSS (also known as Nell Kells) saved them the trouble. She buried an ax in Bern Kells’s head. W:175

KELLS, MILLICENT

See
KELLS, BIG BERN

KELLS, NELL

See
ROSS, NELL

KELLY, TAMMY

See
WARRIORS OF THE SCARLET EYE
: DEVAR-TOI CHARACTERS: HUMANS

KENNEDY, JOHN F.

John F. Kennedy, who was much admired by SUSANNAH DEAN, was the thirty-fifth President of the United States. During his three years in office he introduced the legislative program called the “New Frontier,” which was supposed to extend Civil Rights. He was allegedly assassinated by
LEE HARVEY OSWALD
in November 1963, only about four months before Susannah entered MID-WORLD. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was shot at point-blank range by
JACK RUBY.
Kennedy’s successor was Lyndon B. Johnson.