mostly-he had become a young man who looked to be perhaps twenty years old, tall and straight and as fair as a summer sunrise, his human form marked only by the scar on his side where Susannah's bullet had winged him, and the blood-mark on his heel. That heel, he had promised himself, would rest on Roland's throat, and soon.
Part Five:THE SCARLET FIELD OF CAN’-KA NO REY Chapter I:THE SORE AND THE DOOR (GOODBYE, MY DEAR)
ONE
In the final days of their long journey, after Bill-just Bill now, no longer Stuttering Bill-dropped them off at the Federal, on the edge of the White Lands, Susannah Dean began to suffer frequent bouts of weeping. She would feel these impending cloudbursts and would excuse herself from the others, saying she had to go into the bushes and do her necessary. And there she would sit on a fallen tree or perhaps just the cold ground, put her hands over her face, and let her tears flow. If Roland knew this was happening-and surely he must have noted her red eyes when she returned to the road-he made no comment.
She supposed he knew what she did.
Her time in Mid-World-and End-World-was almost at an end.
TWO
Bill took them in his fine orange plow to a lonely Quonset hut with a faded sign out front reading
FEDERAL OUTPOST amp;
TOWER WATCH
TRAVEL BEYOND THIS POINT IS FORBIDDEN!
She supposed Federal Outpost 19 was still technically in the White Lands of Empathica, but the air had warmed considerably as Tower Road descended, and the snow on the ground was little more than a scrim. Groves of trees dotted the ground ahead, but Susannah thought the land would soon be almost entirely open, like the prairies of the American Midwest. There were bushes that probably supported berries in warm weather-perhaps even pokeberries-but now they were bare and clattering in the nearly constant wind. Mostly what they saw on either side of Tower Road-which had once been paved but had now been reduced to little more than a pair of broken ruts-were tall grasses poking out of the thin snow-cover. They whispered in the wind and Susannah knew their song: Commalacome-come, journey's almost done.
"I may go no furdier," Bill said, shutting down the plow and cutting off Little Richard in mid-rave. "Tell ya sorry, as they say in the Arc O'The Borderlands."
Their trip had taken one full day and half of another, and during that time he had entertained them with a constant stream of what he called "golden oldies." Some of these were not old at all to Susannah; songs like "Sugar Shack" and "Heat Wave" had been current hits on the radio when she'd returned from her little vacation in Mississippi. Others she had never heard at all. The music was stored not on records or tapes but on beautiful silver discs Bill called "ceedees." He pushed them into a slot in the plow's instrument-cluttered dashboard and the music played from at least eight different speakers. Any music would have sounded fine to her, she supposed, but she was especially taken by two songs she had never heard before. One was a deliriously happy little rocker called "She Loves You." The other, sad and reflective, was called "Heyjude." Roland actually seemed to know the latter one; he sang along with it, although the words he knew were different from the ones coming out of the plow's multiple speakers. When she asked, Bill told her the group was called The Beetles.
"Funny name for a rock-and-roll band," Susannah said.
Patrick, sitting with Oy in the plow's tiny rear seat, tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and he held up the pad through which he was currendy working his way. Beneath a picture of Roland in profile, he had printed: BEATLES, not Beetles.
"It's a funny name for a rock-and-roll band no matter which way you spell it," Susannah said, and that gave her an idea.
"Patrick, do you have the touch?" When he frowned and raised his hands-I don't understand, die gesture said-she rephrased the question. "Can you read my mind?"
He shrugged and smiled. This gesture said I don't know, but she thought Patrick did know. She thought he knew very well.
THREE
They reached "the Federal" near noon, and there Bill served them a fine meal. Patrick wolfed his and then sat off to one side with Oy curled at his feet, sketching the others as they sat around the table in what had once been the common room.
The walls of this room were covered with TV