“Come on,” Roland said, and made that twirling gesture with his fingers. “If we’re going to see the writer, let’s go.”

Eddie slid behind the wheel of Cullum’s car, suddenly sure that he would never see either Tower or Aaron Deepneau again. With the exception of Pere Callahan, none of them would. The partings had begun.

“Do well,” he said to them. “May ya do well.”

“And you,” Deepneau said.

“Yes,” Tower said, and for once he didn’t sound a bit grudging. “Good luck to you both. Long days and happy nights, or whatever it is.”

There was just room to turn around without backing, and Eddie was glad—he wasn’t quite ready for reverse, at least not yet.

As Eddie drove back toward the Rocket Road, Roland looked over his shoulder and waved. This was highly unusual behavior for him, and the knowledge must have shown on Eddie’s face.

“It’s the end-game now,” Roland said. “All I’ve worked for and waited for all the long years. The end is coming. I feel it. Don’t you?”

Eddie nodded. It was like that point in a piece of music when all the instruments begin rushing toward some inevitable crashing climax.

“Susannah?” Roland asked.

“Still alive.”

“Mia?”

“Still in control.”

“The baby?”

“Still coming.”

“And Jake? Father Callahan?”

Eddie stopped at the road, looked both ways, then made his turn.

“No,” he said. “From them I haven’t heard. What about you?”

Roland shook his own head. From Jake, somewhere in the future with just an ex-Catholic priest and a billy-bumbler for protection, there was only silence. Roland hoped the boy was all right.

For the time being, he could do no more.

STAVE: Commala-me-mine
You have to walk the line.
When you finally get the thing you need
It makes you feel so fine.

RESPONSE: Commala-come-nine!
It makes ya feel fine!
But if you’d have the thing you need
You have to walk the line.

10TH STANZA
SUSANNAH-MIO, DIVIDED GIRL OF MINE

ONE

“John Fitzgerald Kennedy died this afternoon at Parkland Memorial Hospital.”

This voice, this grieving voice: Walter Cronkite’s voice, in a dream.

“America’s last gunslinger is dead. O Discordia!”

TWO

As Mia left room 1919 of the New York Plaza-Park (soon to be the Regal U.N. Plaza, a Sombra/North Central project, O Discordia), Susannah fell into a swoon. From a swoon she passed into a savage dream filled with savage news.

THREE

The next voice is that of Chet Huntley, co-anchor of The Huntley-Brinkley Report. It’s also—in some way she cannot understand—the voice of Andrew, her chauffeur.

“Diem and Nhu are dead,” says that voice. “Now do slip the dogs of war, the tale of woe begins; from here the way to Jericho Hill is paved with blood and sin. Ah, Discordia! Charyou tree! Come, reap!”

Where am I?

She looks around and sees a concrete wall packed with a jostling intaglio of names, slogans, and obscene drawings. In the middle, where anyone sitting on the bunk must see it, is this greeting: HELLO NIGGER WELCOME TO OXFORD DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE!