Diesel sloshed quietly over the loading dock and rippled along the old warped boards of the mercantile's storeroom. John, aka Sai Yankee Flannel Shirt, gave Roland a questioning look. Roland responded by first shaking his head and then twirling his right hand again: more.
"Where's the bookstore guy, Slick?" Andolini's voice just as pleasant as before, but closer now. He'd crossed the road, then. Eddie put him just outside the store. Too bad diesel fuel wasn't more explosive. "Where's Tower? Give him to us and we'll leave you and the other guy alone until next time."
Sure,Eddie thought, and remembered something Susannah sometimes said (in her best growling Detta Walker voice) to indicate utter disbelief:Also I won't come in yo' mouth or get any in yo' hair.
This ambush had been set up especially for visiting gunslingers, Eddie was almost sure of it. The bad boys might or might not know where Tower was (he trusted what came out of Jack Andolini's mouth not at all), but someone had known to exactly which where and when the Unfound Door was going to deliver Eddie and Roland, and had passed that knowledge on to Balazar.You want the boy who embarrassed yourboy, Mr. Balazar? The kid who peeled Jack Andolini and George Biondi off Tower before Tower had time to give in and give you what you wanted? Fine. Here's where he's going to show up. Him and one other. And by the way, here's enough dough to buy an army of mercenaries in tu-tone shoes. Might not be enough, the kid's hard and his buddy's worse, but you might get lucky. Even if you don't, even if the one named Roland gets away and leaves a bunch of dead guys behind...well, getting the kid's a start. And there are always more gunnies, aren't there? Sure. The world's full of them. The worlds.
And what about Jake and Callahan? Had there been a reception party waiting for them, too, and had it been twenty-two years up the line from this when? The little poem on the fence surrounding the vacant lot suggested that, if they'd followed his wife, it had been - SUSANNAH-MIO, DIVIDED GIRL OF MINE, the poem had said. PARKED HER RIG IN THE DIXIE PIG IN THE YEAR OF '99. And if therehad been a reception party waiting, could they possibly still be alive?
Eddie clung to one idea: if any member of the ka-tet died - Susannah, Jake, Callahan, even Oy - he and Roland would know. If he was kidding himself about that, succumbing to some romantic fallacy, so be it.
Three
Roland caught the eye of the man in the flannel shirt and drew the side of his hand across his throat. John nodded and let go of the oil-pump's squeeze-handle at once. Chip, the store owner, was now standing beside the loading dock, and where his face wasn't lathered with blood, he was looking decidedly gray. Roland thought he would pass out soon. No loss there.
"Jack!" the gunslinger shouted. "Jack Andolini!" His pronunciation of the Italian name was a pretty thing to listen to, both precise and rippling.
"You Slick's big brother?" Andolini asked. He sounded amused. And he sounded closer. Roland put him in front of the store, perhaps on the very spot where he and Eddie had come through. He wouldn't wait long to make his next move; this was the countryside, but there were still people about. The rising black plume of smoke from the overturned wood-waggon would already have been noticed. Soon they would hear sirens.
"I suppose you'd call me his foreman," Roland said. He pointed at the gun in Eddie's hand, then pointed into the storeroom, then pointed at himself:Wait for my signal. Eddie nodded.
"Why don't you send him out,mi amigo? This doesn't have to be your concern. I'll take him and let you go. Slick's the one I want to talk to. Getting the answers I need from him will be a pleasure."
"You could never take us," Roland said pleasantly. "You've forgotten the face of your father. You're a bag of shit with legs. Your own ka-daddy is a man named Balazar, and you lick his dirty ass. The others know and they laugh at you. 'Look at Jack,' they say, 'all that ass-licking only makes him uglier.' "
There was a brief pause. Then: "You got a mean mouth on you, mister." Andolini's voice was level, but all the bogus good humor had gone out of it. All the laughter. "But you know what they say about sticks and stones."
In the distance, at last, a siren rose. Roland nodded first to John (who was watching him alertly) and then at Eddie.Soon, that nod said.
"Balazar will be building his towers of cards long after you're nothing but bones in an unmarked grave, Jack. Some dreams are destiny, but not yours. Yours are only dreams."
"Shut up!"
"Hear the sirens? Your time's almost u - "
"Vai!"Jack Andolini shouted. "Vai!Get em! I want that old f**ker's head, do you hear me? I want his head! "
A round black object arced lazily through the hole where the EMPLOYEES ONLY door had been. Another grenado. Roland had been expecting it. He fired once, from the hip, and the grenado exploded in midair, turning the flimsy wall between the storeroom and the lunchroom into a storm of destructive, splintery blowback. There were screams of surprise and agony.
"Now, Eddie!"Roland shouted, and began to fire into the diesel. Eddie joined in. At first Roland didn't think anything was going to happen, but then a sluggish ripple of blue flame appeared in the center aisle and went snaking toward where the rear wall had been. Not enough! Gods, how he wished it had been the kind they called gasoline!
Roland tipped out the cylinder of his gun, dropped the spent casings around his boots, and reloaded.
"On your right, mister," John said, almost conversationally, and Roland dropped flat. One bullet passed through the place where he'd been. The second flipped at the ends of his long hair. He'd only had time to reload three of his revolver's six chambers, but that was one more bullet than he needed. The two harriers flew backward with identical holes in the center of their brows, just below the hairline.