moment or two, then got up and went outside. Oy followed along, padding quietly over the tamped dirt as Jake walked up the trail.
TWO
Roland looked haggard and unwell, but he was squatting on his hunkers, and Jake decided that if he was limber enough to do that, he was probably okay. He squatted beside the gunslinger, hands dangling loosely between his thighs. Roland glanced at him, said nothing, then looked back toward the prison the staff called Algul Siento and the inmates called the Devar-Toi.
It was a brightening blur beyond and below them. The sun-electric, atomic, whatever-wasn't shining yet.
Oy plopped down next to Jake with a little whuffing sound, then appeared to go back to sleep. Jake wasn't fooled.
"Hile and merry-greet-the-day," Jake said when the silence began to feel oppressive.
Roland nodded. "Merry see, merry be." He looked as merry as a funeral march. The gunslinger who had danced a furious commala by torchlight in Calla Bryn Sturgis might have been a thousand years in his grave.
"How are you, Roland?"
"Good enough to hunker."
"Aye, but how are you?"
Roland glanced at him, then reached into his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. "Old and full of aches, as you must know. Would you smoke?"
Jake considered, then nodded.
"They'll be shorts," Roland warned. "There's plenty in my purse I was glad to have back, but not much blow-weed."
"Save it for yourself, if you want."
Roland smiled. "A man who can't bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them." He rolled a pair of cigarettes, using some sort of leaf which he tore in two, handed one to Jake, then lit them up with a match he popped alight on his thumbnail. In the still, chill air of Can Steek-Tete, the smoke hung in front of them, then rose slowly, stacking on the air. Jake thought the tobacco was hot, harsh, and stale, but he said no word of complaint. He liked it. He thought of all the times he'd promised himself he wouldn't smoke like his father did-never in life-and now here he was, starting the habit. And with his new father's agreement, if not approval.
Roland reached out a finger and touched Jake's forehead... his left cheek... his nose... his chin. The last touch hurt a little. "Pimples," Roland said. "It's the air of this place."
He suspected it was emotional upset, as well-grief over the Pere-but to let Jake know he thought that would likely just increase the boy's unhappiness over Callahan's passing.
"You don't have any," Jake said. "Skin's as clear as a bell.
"Huck-ee."
"No pimples," Roland agreed, and smoked. Below them in the seeping light was the village. The peaceful village, Jake thought, but it looked more than peaceful; it looked downright dead.
Then he saw two figures, little more than specks from here, strolling toward each other. Hume guards patrolling the outer run of the fence, he presumed. They joined together into a single speck long enough for Jake to imagine a bit of their palaver, and then the speck divided again. "No pimples, but my hip hurts like a son of a bitch. Feels like someone opened it in the night and poured it full of broken glass. Hot glass. But this is far worse." He touched the right side of his head. "It feels cracked."
"You really think it's Stephen King's injuries you're feeling?"
Instead of making a verbal reply, Roland laid the forefinger of his left hand across a circle made by the thumb and pinky of his right: that gesture which meant I tell you the truth.
"That's a bummer," Jake said. "For him as well as you."
"Maybe; maybe not. Because, think you, Jake; think you well. Only living things feel pain. What I'm feeling suggests that King won't be killed instandy. And that means he might be easier to save."
Jake thought it might only mean King was going to lie beside the road in semi-conscious agony for awhile before expiring, but didn't like to say so. Let Roland believe what he liked. But there was something else. Something that concerned Jake a lot more, and made him uneasy.
"Roland, may I speak to you dan-dinh?"
The gunslinger nodded. "If you would." A slight pause. A flick at the left corner of the mouth that wasn't quite a smile. "If thee would."
Jake gathered his courage. "Why are you so angry now? What are you angry at? Or whom?" Now it was his turn to pause. "Is it me?"
Roland's eyebrows rose, then he barked a laugh. "Not you, Jake. Not a bit.