The Road to The Dark Tower (26 page)

For the first time, though, readers knew exactly how long they had to wait for the next installment—seven months—because the follow-up was already written and its publication date set well before
Wolves of the Calla
was released.

¹
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in this chapter come from
Wolves of the Calla
.

²
“Calla” isn’t pronounced like the first part of “Callahan,” but more like the beginning of “cauliflower”—Kaw-la.

³
Pennywise from
It
also returned once per generation to prey on the children of Derry.

⁴
Which is in turn based on the Japanese movie
The Seven Samurai,
directed by Akira Kurosawa.

⁵
They also lived on the perimeter of Gilead in Roland’s time. Brown the farmer’s wife was of the Manni. They are also known as sailors on ka’s wind.

⁶
George Telford says, “They can strip a man from top to toe in five seconds, leaving nothing around him but a circle of blood and hair.”

⁷
While King once considered doing a sequel to
’Salem’s Lot,
he later declared that the time for such a story had passed, but he was still interested to see what happened to the failed priest who snuck out of town on a Greyhound bus. He hinted in the afterword to
Wizard and Glass
that Callahan would have a part to play in the story.

⁸
This famous phrase was uttered by Steve McQueen’s character in
The Magnificent Seven
. King—as Richard Bachman—also used it as an epigraph in
The Regulators
.

⁹
This is Eddie’s rough estimate, corroborated by the fact that Susannah has had two menstrual periods since they left the Emerald Palace.

¹⁰
Once readers start combing King’s other works, they will undoubtedly turn up 19 everywhere. When Roland robs Katz’s Drugs, the police dispatcher calls Code 19. Many characters have things happen to them at that age, but it’s also the page of the manuscript in
Bag of Bones
where Mike Noonan finds his subconscious message, and the last number Johnny Smith played at the Wheel of Fortune just before his accident in
The Dead Zone
. The digits in Donald M. Grant’s zip code add up to 19.

¹¹
Eddie is reluctant to try them at first because they remind him of the poisoned mushrooms served in the Shirley Jackson novel
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
. This is Jackson’s first direct mention in the series, though her spirit was invoked by the deadly lottery Eddie and Susannah witnessed in Lud.

¹²
In
Black House,
Jack Sawyer goes todash during his first dream of Speedy. “[I]t is the mad sound of that laughter which follows Jack Sawyer down into the darkness between worlds” [BH], which seems to describe todash spaces. Later, when Jack remembers how to flip, he dissolves into a shimmering gray glow like those Roland saw, but he goes farther and the glowing placeholder vanishes as he goes fully to the other side.

¹³
The wall calendar behind Tower’s desk features a picture of Robert Browning, author of the poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” The shop cat’s name is Sergio, a nod to Sergio Leone, director of spaghetti westerns often featuring Clint Eastwood.

¹⁴
“Sombra” means “shadow” in Spanish.

¹⁵
He asks Eddie, who is the only one from a
when
later than his own, whether the Red Sox, King’s favorite baseball team, had won the World Series yet. As of 2003, this team still has not found favor with ka. In fact, mere days before
Wolves of the Calla
went on sale, the Red Sox once again played the role of ka-mai, losing to their longtime rivals, the Yankees, a mere five outs away from making it to the World Series.

¹⁶
Overholser is named for a real Western writer who started publishing in the 1930s. Calvin Tower told Jake his name “sounds like the footloose hero in a Western novel—the guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe.” Fictional King made this connection after Roland and Eddie leave him, also mentioning the auspiciously named real-life Western author Ray
Hogan
.

¹⁷
“On his shell he holds the earth / If you want to run and play, / Come along the BEAM today.”

¹⁸
The origin of the quotation is a fifteenth-century English mystic named Julian or Juliana of Norwich. In her book
Revelations of Divine Love,
she wrote, “All shall be well, all
shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Peter Straub encountered this quote in a novel by Muriel Spark and used it first in
The Talisman
. [Personal communication.]

¹⁹
In
From a Buick 8,
Sandy Dearborn (Will’s distant relative?) picks up something from the shed, but King hides what it is until it comes into play during a climactic scene.

²⁰
Will you open to us if we open to you? Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do? Roland later asks these questions of individual people. Even those against confronting the Wolves can agree to these two questions.

²¹
“Roland stage-dives like Joey Ramone,” Eddie says. The Ramones are one of King’s favorite rock bands. He wrote the liner notes for the 2003 tribute album
We’re a Happy Family.

²²
Roland realizes later that his ailments reflect the injuries Stephen King will suffer on June 19, 1999.

²³
“All God’s Chillun Got Shoes.”

²⁴
By Thomas Wolfe. In his vision of a rose, a key and a door in
The Waste Lands,
Eddie saw a copy of Wolfe’s
You Can’t Go Home Again
.

²⁵
Perhaps named for actor Robert Vaughn of
The Magnificent Seven
.

²⁶
In a rare display of droll humor, Roland tells Eisenhart he might as well stick one of his rifles in the ground. “Maybe it’ll grow something better.”

²⁷
The cassette player also played a song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” that made Callahan weep.

²⁸
Thinnies produce a similar effect. In the vacant lot, the phenomenon is extended to the visualization of the phantoms of people’s lives.

²⁹
Another nod to
The Lord of the Rings
. The Tooks were a well-respected hobbit family. In the Calla, the greedy store owner’s name is almost literal.

³⁰
Roland has already had at least one town rise up against him. However, he’s here to save the people of the Calla. He wasn’t similarly invested in the folks of Tull.

³¹
Slightman’s full name consists of nineteen characters. While Wayne D. Overholser is named after a real writer, Slightman isn’t, probably because Slightman the Elder is traitorous. The fictional Slightman also wrote science fiction novels about multiple universes under the name Daniel Holmes, which is Odetta’s father’s name.

³²
An error on the dust jacket and its small first printing is why
’Salem’s Lot
appears among Tower’s collection of rare books, though King isn’t particularly famous in 1977.

³³
First mentioned in the revised edition of
The Gunslinger
. Roland met a taheen looking for a place by that name.

³⁴
“[It] was Susannah who eventually found it, and when she did, she was no longer herself.”

³⁵
Breakers were introduced in “Low Men in Yellow Coats”
(Hearts in Atlantis)
, and play an important part in
Black House
. Ted Brautigan, who will return in
The Dark Tower,
is a Breaker.

³⁶
They don’t just seem to be light sabers—they really are
Star Wars
light sabers. The Wolves’ masks are all Dr. Doom from Marvel Comics. Eddie remembers him as being from
Spider-Man
but Dr. Doom was primarily a
Fantastic Four
villain.

³⁷
They are the Harry Potter model. None of the ka-tet recognizes the reference, since the first Harry Potter novel was published after Eddie’s time.

³⁸
Interview with Ben Reese, published on
Amazon.com
, May 2003.

Chapter 7
SONG OF SUSANNAH (REPRODUCTION)

Terrible surgeons waited to deliver her of her equally terrible chap.
¹

 Except for a short preamble in Calla Bryn Sturgis,
Song of Susannah
takes place during a twenty-four-hour period, though the action occurs in two different decades: July 9, 1977, and June 1, 1999. Instead of chapters, the book is divided into stanzas, each ending with a “stave” and a “response,” like the Rice Song Roland performed for the people of the Calla.

Only a few hours have elapsed since the ka-tet learned that Susannah and Mia passed through the
UNFOUND
door, taking the key—Black Thirteen—with them. The group descends from the Doorway Cave to Callahan’s rectory to plan their next steps.

Their main problem is figuring out how to open the door again. Roland has two destinations in mind: Maine in 1977 to complete their property deal with Calvin Tower, and wherever and whenever Susannah went. The Manni—who know the secrets of traveling to other worlds—might be able to use their magic to reopen it on the last two places it accessed.

Concerned that Susannah may deliver her cannibalistic baby at any time, Eddie is eager to get started, but the Manni won’t go to the cave at night. The ka-tet has several clocks running against them—Susannah’s pregnancy, the deadline to close the deal with Calvin Tower and the omnipresent decline of the Beams supporting the Tower.
²
The latter concern is always with them, but its immediacy is brought home when a
Beamquake rocks the Calla. The Breakers’ work is progressing, and they have successfully disrupted another Beam.
³
It’s not the Beam they are following, or else the damage would have been much worse. “The very birds would have fallen flaming from the sky,” Roland says. This brings to mind the earthquake that occurred when Jack Sawyer finally took possession of the Talisman.

Two Beams remain, but time is running out. They have to handle each crisis in its turn. “We can’t win through to the Tower without [Susannah]. For all I know, we can’t win through without Mia’s chap.” Mia will need Susannah’s cooperation to survive in Keystone Earth. “If they can’t find a way to work together now that they’re there, they may die together.”

On the way to the Doorway Cave in the morning, the ka-tet and the Manni pass the battle site, where the Calla-folken have built a funeral pyre of dead Wolves and their mechanical horses. Susannah’s beaten-up chair is nearby, positioned as a tribute to her. The Manni form a ring around the site and pray for success to their god, the Over,
⁴
which Henchick sometimes calls The Force.

In the cave, the Manni use plumb bobs and magnets to gather their force. Their equipment is in boxes covered with stars, moons and odd geometric shapes, reminiscent of the japps, mirks, bews, smims and fouders Dinky Earnshaw used in “Everything’s Eventual.” Jake’s powerful touch focuses their power. He grabs an imaginary hook—like Bill Denborough performing the Ritual of Chüd—and the Manni pull the door open through him.