a louder blast of rock and roll music. They also hear the driver-a man-yelling at someone (Elvira and Justine just pity the person stuck driving with that guy on such a beautiful June afternoon). "You leave 'at alone!" he shouts. "That ain't yoahs, y 'hear? "And then the driver reaches back into the van, brings out a cane, and uses it to help him over the rock wall and into the bushes. The van sits rumbling on the soft shoulder, driver's door open, emitting blue exhaust from one end and rock from the other.
"What's he doing?" Justine asks, a little nervously.
"Taking a leak would be my guess, "her friend replies. "But if Mr.
King back there is lucky, maybe doing Number Two, instead. That might give him time to get off Route 7 and back onto Turtleback Lane."
Suddenly Justine doesn't feel like picking berries anymore. She wants to go back home and have a strong cup of tea.
The man comes limping briskly out of the bushes and uses his cane to help him back over the rock wall.
"Iguess he didn't need to Number Two, "Elvira says, and as the bad driver climbs back into his blue van, the two going-on-old women look at each other and burst into giggles.
TWELVE
Roland watched the old man give the woman instructions-something about using Warrington's Road as a shortcut-and then Jake opened his eyes. To Roland the boy looked unutterably weary.
"I was able to make him stop and take a leak," he said.
"Now he's fixing something behind his seat. I don't know what it is, but it won't keep him busy for long. Roland, this is bad.
We're awfully late. We have to go."
Roland looked at the woman, hoping that his decision not to replace her behind the wheel with die old man had been die right one. "Do you know where to go? Do you understand?"
"Yes," she said. "Up Warrington's to Route 7. We sometimes go to dinner at Warrington's. I know that road."
"Can't guarantee you'll cut his path goin that way," said the caretaker, "but it seems likely." He bent down to pick up his hat and began to brush bits of freshly cut grass from it. He did this with long, slow strokes, like a man caught in a dream. "Ayuh, seems likely t'me." And then, still like a man who dreams awake, he tucked his hat beneath his arm, raised a fist to his forehead, and bent a leg to the stranger with the big revolver on his hip. Why would he not?
The stranger was surrounded by white light.
THIRTEEN
When Roland pulled himself back into the cab of the storekeeper's truck-a chore made more difficult by the rapidly escalating pain in his right hip-his hand came down on Jake's leg, and just like that he knew what Jake had been keeping back, and why. He had been afraid that knowing might cause the gunslinger's focus to drift. It was not ka-shume the boy had felt, or Roland would have felt it, too. How could there be ka-shume among them, with the tet already broken? Their special power, something greater than all of them, perhaps drawn from the Beam itself, was gone. Now they were just three friends (four, counting the bumbler) united by a single purpose. And they could save King. Jake knew it. They could save the writer and come a step closer to saving the Tower by doing so. But one of them was going to die doing it.
Jake knew that, too.
FOURTEEN
An old saying-one taught to him by his father-came to Roland then: Ifka will say so, let it be so. Yes; all right; let it be so.
During the long years he had spent on the trail of the man in black, the gunslinger would have sworn nothing in the universe could have caused him to renounce the Tower; had he not literally killed his own mother in pursuit of it, back at the start of his terrible career? But in those years he had been friendless, childless, and (he didn't like to admit it, but it was true) heartless. He had been bewitched by that cold romance the loveless mistake for love. Now he had a son and he had been given a second chance and he had changed. Knowing that one of them must die in order to save the writer-that their fellowship must be reduced again, and so soon-would not make him cry off. But he would make sure that Roland of Gilead, not Jake of New York, provided