The Dark Tower (38 page)

“Was it Emily Dickinson who called hope the thing with feathers? I can’t remember. There are a great many things I can’t remember any longer, but it seems I still remember how to fight. Maybe that’s a good thing. I
hope
it’s a good thing.

“Has it crossed your mind to wonder where I’m recording this, lady and gentlemen?”

It hadn’t. They simply sat, mesmerized by the slightly dusty sound of Brautigan’s voice, passing a bottle of Perrier and a tin filled with graham crackers back and forth.

“I’ll tell you,” Brautigan went on, “partly because the three of you from America will surely find it amusing, but mostly because you may find it useful in formulating a plan to destroy what’s going on in Algul Siento.

“As I speak, I’m sitting on a chair made of slab chocolate. The seat is a big blue marshmallow, and I doubt if the air mattresses we’re planning to leave you could be any more comfortable. You’d think such a seat would be sticky, but it’s not. The walls of this room—and the kitchen I can see if I look through the gumdrop arch to my left—are
made of green, yellow, and red candy. Lick the green one and you taste lime. Lick the red one and you taste raspberry. Although taste (in any sense of that slippery word) had very little to do with Sheemie’s choices, or so I believe; I think he simply has a child’s love of bright primary colors.”

Roland was nodding and smiling a little.

“Although I must tell you,” the voice from the tape recorder said dryly, “I’d be happy to have at least one room with a slightly more reserved décor. Something in blue, perhaps. Earth-tones would be even better.

“Speaking of earth tones, the stairs are also chocolate. The banister’s a candy-cane. One cannot, however, say ‘the stairs going up to the second floor,’ because there
is
no second floor. Through the window you can see cars that look suspiciously like bonbons going by, and the street itself looks like licorice. But if you open the door and take more than a single step toward Twizzler Avenue, you find yourself back where you started. In what we may as well call ‘the real world,’ for want of a better term.

“Gingerbread House—which is what we call it because that’s what you always smell in here, warm gingerbread, just out of the oven—is as much Dinky’s creation as it is Sheemie’s. Dink wound up in the Corbett House dorm with Sheemie, and heard Sheemie crying himself to sleep one night. A lot of people would have passed by on the other side in a case like that, and I realize that no one in the world looks less like the Good Samaritan than Dinky Earnshaw, but instead of passing by he knocked on the door of Sheemie’s suite and asked if he could come in.

“Ask him about it now and Dinky will tell you it was no big deal. ‘I was new in the place, I was lonely, I wanted to make some friends,’ he’ll say. ‘Hearing a guy bawling like that, it hit me that
he
might want a friend, too.’ As though it were the most natural thing in the world. In a lot of places that might be true, but not in Algul Siento. And you need to understand that above all else, I think, if you’re going to understand
us
. So forgive me if I seem to dwell on the point.

“Some of the hume guards call us morks, after a space alien in some television comedy. And morks are the most selfish people on Earth. Antisocial? Not exactly. Some are
extremely
social, but only insofar as it will get them what they currently want or need. Very few morks are sociopaths, but most sociopaths are morks, if you understand what I’m saying. The most famous, and thank God the low men never brought him over here, was a mass murderer named Ted Bundy.

“If you have an extra cigarette or two, no one can be more sympathetic—or admiring—than a mork in need of a smoke. Once he’s got it, though, he’s gone.

“Most morks—I’m talking ninety-eight or -nine out of a hundred—would have heard crying behind that closed door and never so much as slowed down on their way to wherever. Dinky knocked and asked if he could come in, even though he was new in the place and justifiably confused (he also thought he was going to be punished for murdering his previous boss, but that’s a story for another day).

“And we should look at Sheemie’s side of it. Once again, I’d say ninety-eight or even ninetynine
morks out of a hundred would have responded to a question like that by shouting ‘Get lost!’ or even ‘Fuck off!’ Why? Because we are exquisitely aware that we’re different from most people, and that it’s a difference most people don’t like. Any more than the Neanderthals liked the first Cro-Magnons in the neighborhood, I would imagine. Morks don’t like to be caught off-guard.”

A pause. The reels spun. All four of them could sense Brautigan thinking hard.

“No, that’s not quite right,” he said at last. “What morks don’t like is to be caught in an emotionally vulnerable state. Angry, happy, in tears or fits of hysterical laughter, anything like that. It would be like you fellows going into a dangerous situation without your guns.

“For a long time, I was alone here. I was a mork who cared, whether I liked it or not. Then there was Sheemie, brave enough to accept comfort if comfort was offered. And Dink, who was willing to reach out. Most morks are selfish introverts masquerading as rugged individualists—they want the world to see them as Dan’l Boone types—and the Algul staff loves it, believe me. No community is easier to govern than one that rejects the very concept of community. Do you see why I was attracted to Sheemie and Dinky, and how lucky I was to find them?”

Susannah’s hand crept into Eddie’s. He took it and squeezed it gently.

“Sheemie was afraid of the dark,” Ted continued. “The low men—I call em all low men, although there are humes and taheen at work here as well as can-toi—have a dozen sophisticated tests for psychic potential, but they couldn’t seem to realize
that they had caught a halfwit who was simply afraid of the dark. Their bad luck.

“Dinky understood the problem right away, and solved it by telling Sheemie stories. The first ones were fairy-tales, and one of them was ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ Sheemie was fascinated by the idea of a candy house, and kept asking Dinky for more details. So, you see, it was Dinky who actually thought of the chocolate chairs with the marshmallow seats, the gumdrop arch, and the candy-cane banister. For a little while there
was
a second floor; it had the beds of the Three Bears in it. But Sheemie never cared much for that story, and when it slipped his mind, the upstairs of Casa Gingerbread . . .” Ted Brautigan chuckled. “Well, I suppose you could say it biodegraded.

“In any case, I believe that this place I’m in is actually a fistula in time, or . . .” Another pause. A sigh. Then: “Look, there are a billion universes comprising a billion realities. That’s something I’ve come to realize since being hauled back from what the ki’-dam insists on calling ‘my little vacation in Connecticut.’ Smarmy son of a bitch!”

Real hate in Brautigan’s voice, Roland thought, and that was good. Hate was good. It was useful.

“Those realities are like a hall of mirrors, only no two reflections are exactly the same. I may come back to that image eventually, but not yet. What I want you to understand for now—or simply accept—is that reality is
organic,
reality is
alive
. It’s something like a muscle. What Sheemie does is poke a hole in that muscle with a mental hypo. He only has a needle like this because he’s special—”

“Because he’s a mork,” Eddie murmured.

“Hush!” Susannah said.

“—using it,” Brautigan went on.

(Roland considered rewinding in order to pick up the missing words and decided they didn’t matter.)

“It’s a place outside of time, outside of reality. I know you understand a little bit about the function of the Dark Tower; you understand its unifying purpose. Well, think of Gingerbread House as a balcony on the Tower: when we come here, we’re outside the Tower but still attached
to
the Tower. It’s a real place—real enough so I’ve come back from it with candy-stains on my hands and clothes—but it’s a place only Sheemie Ruiz can access. And once we’re there, it’s whatever he wants it to be. One wonders, Roland, if you or your friends had any inkling of what Sheemie truly was and what he could do when you met him in Mejis.”

At this, Roland reached out and pushed the
STOP
button on the tape recorder. “We knew he was . . . odd,” he told the others. “We knew he was special. Sometimes Cuthbert would say, ‘What
is
it about that boy? He makes my skin itch!’ And then he showed up in Gilead, he and his mule, Cappi. Claimed to have followed us. And we
knew
that was impossible, but so much was happening by then that a saloon-boy from Mejis—not bright but cheerful and helpful—was the least of our worries.”

“He teleported, didn’t he?” Jake asked.

Roland, who had never even heard the word before today, nodded immediately. “At least part of the distance; he had to have. For one thing, how else could he have crossed the Xay River? There was only the one bridge, a thing made out of ropes, and once we were across, Alain cut it. We watched it fall into the water a thousand feet below.”

“Maybe he went around,” Jake said.

Roland nodded. “Maybe he did . . . but it would have taken him at least six hundred wheels out of his way.”

Susannah whistled.

Eddie waited to see if Roland had more to say. When it was clear he didn’t, Eddie leaned forward and pushed the
PLAY
button again. Ted’s voice filled the cave once more.

“Sheemie’s a teleport. Dinky himself is a precog . . . among other things. Unfortunately, a good many avenues into the future are blocked to him. If you’re wondering if young sai Earnshaw knows how all this is going to turn out, the answer is no.

“In any case, there’s this hypodermic hole in the living flesh of reality . . . this balcony on the flank of the Dark Tower . . . this Gingerbread House. A real place, as hard as that might be to believe. It’s here that we’ll store the weapons and camping gear we eventually mean to leave for you in one of the caves on the far side of Steek-Tete, and it’s here that I’m making this tape. When I left my room with this old-fashioned but fearsomely efficient machine under my arm, it was 10:14 AM, BHST—Blue Heaven Standard Time. When I return, it will still be 10:14 AM. No matter how long I stay. That is only one of the terribly convenient things about Gingerbread House.

“You need to understand—perhaps Sheemie’s old friend Roland already does—that we are three rebels in a society dedicated to the idea of going along to get along, even if it means the end of existence . . . and sooner rather than later. We have a number of extremely useful talents, and by pooling them we’ve managed to stay one step ahead.
But if Prentiss or Finli o’ Tego—he’s Prentiss’s Security Chief—finds out what we’re trying to do, Dinky would be worm-food by nightfall. Sheemie as well, quite likely. I’d probably be safe awhile longer, for reasons I’ll get to, but if Pimli Prentiss found out we were trying to bring a true gunslinger into his affairs—one who may already have orchestrated the deaths of over five dozen Greencloaks not far from here—even my life might not be safe.” A pause. “Worthless thing that it is.”

There was a longer pause. The reel that had been empty was now half-full. “Listen, then,” Brautigan said, “and I’ll tell you the story of an unfortunate and unlucky man. It may be a longer story than you have time to listen to; if that be the case, I’m sure at least three of you will understand the use of the button labeled
FF
. As for me, I’m in a place where clocks are obsolete and broccoli is no doubt prohibited by law. I have all the time in the world.”

Eddie was again struck by how weary the man sounded.

“I’d just suggest that you not fast-forward unless you really have to. As I’ve said, there may be something here that can help you, although I don’t know what. I’m simply too close to it. And I’m tired of keeping my guard up, not just when I’m awake but when I’m sleeping, too. If I wasn’t able to slip away to Gingerbread House every now and again and sleep with no defenses, Finli’s can-toi boys would surely have bagged the three of us a long time ago. There’s a sofa in the corner, also made out of those wonderful non-stick marshmallows. I can go there and lie down and have the nightmares I need to have in order to keep my sanity.
Then I can go back to the Devar-Toi, where my job isn’t just protecting myself but protecting Sheemie and Dink, too. Making sure that when we go about our covert business, it appears to the guards and their fucking telemetry that we were right where we belonged the whole time: in our suites, in The Study, maybe taking in a movie at the Gem or grabbing ice cream sodas at Henry Graham’s Drug Store and Fountain afterward. It also means continuing to Break, and every day I can feel the Beam we’re currently working on—Bear and Turtle—bending more and more.

“Get here quick, boys. That’s my wish for you. Get here just as quick as ever you can. Because it isn’t just a question of me slipping up, you know. Dinky’s got a terrible temper and a habit of going off on foul-mouthed tirades if someone pushes his hot-buttons. He could say the wrong thing in a state like that. And Sheemie does his best, but if someone were to ask him the wrong question or catch him doing the wrong thing when I’m not around to fix it . . .”

Brautigan didn’t finish that particular thought. As far as his listeners were concerned, he didn’t need to.

When he begins again, it’s to tell them he was born in Milford, Connecticut, in the year 1898. We have all heard similar introductory lines, enough to know that they signal
—
for better or worse
—
the onset of autobiography. Yet as they listen to that voice, the gunslingers are visited by another familiarity; this is true even of Oy. At first they’re not able to put their finger on it, but in time it
comes to them. The story of Ted Brautigan, a Wandering Accountant instead of a Wandering Priest, is in many ways similar to that of Pere Donald Callahan. They could almost be twins. And the sixth listener
—
the one beyond the blanket-blocked cave entrance in the windy dark
—
hears with growing sympathy and understanding. Why not? Booze isn’t a major player in Brautigan’s story, as it was in the Pere’s, but it’s still a story of addiction and isolation, the story of an outsider.