“Or if the building falls down on top of it,” Jake said.

Callahan laughed, although Jake hadn’t quite sounded as if he were joking. “Never happen. And if it did … well, one glass ball under a hundred and ten stories of concrete and steel? Even a glass ball filled with deep magic? That’d be one way to take care of the nasty thing, I guess.”

SIXTEEN

Jake had asked the cabbie to drop them off at Lexington and Fifty-ninth, just to be on the safe side, and after looking to Callahan for approval, he gave the sai all but their last two dollars.

On the corner of Lex and Sixtieth, Jake pointed to a number of cigarette ends mashed into the sidewalk. “This is where he was,” he said. “The man playing the guitar.”

He bent down, picked up one of the butts, and held it in his palm for a moment or two. Then he nodded, smiled cheerlessly, and readjusted the strap on his shoulder. The Orizas clanked faintly inside the rush bag. Jake had counted them in the back of the cab and hadn’t been surprised to find there were exactly nineteen.

“No wonder she stopped,” Jake said, dropping the butt and wiping his hand on his shirt. And suddenly he sang, low but perfectly on pitch: “I am a man … of constant sorrow … I’ve seen trouble … all my days … I’m bound to ride … that Northern railroad … Perhaps I’ll take … the very next train.”

Callahan, keyed up already, felt his nerves crank yet tighter. Of course he recognized the song. Only when Susannah had sung it that night on the Pavilion—the same night Roland had won the hearts of the Calla by dancing the fiercest commala many had ever seen—she’d substituted “maid” for “man.”

“She gave him money,” Jake said dreamily. “And she said …” He stood with his head down, biting his lip, thinking hard. Oy looked up at him raptly. Nor did Callahan interrupt. Understanding had come to him: he and Jake were going to die in the Dixie Pig. They would go down fighting, but they were going to die there.

And he thought dying would be all right. It was going to break Roland’s heart to lose the boy … yet he would go on. As long as the Dark Tower stood, Roland would go on.

Jake looked up. “She said, ‘Remember the struggle.’”

“Susannah did.”

“Yes. She came forward. Mia let her. And the song moved Mia. She wept.”

“Say true?”

“True. Mia, daughter of none, mother of one. And while Mia was distracted … her eyes blind with tears …”

Jake looked around. Oy looked around with him, likely not searching for anything but only imitating his beloved Ake. Callahan was remembering that night on the Pavilion. The lights. The way Oy had stood on his hind legs and bowed to the folken. Susannah, singing. The lights. The dancing, Roland dancing the commala in the lights, the colored lights. Roland dancing in the white. Always Roland; and in the end, after the others had fallen, murdered away one by one in these bloody motions, Roland would remain.