“Sometimes you really don’t understand me, do you?”

“No,” the gunslinger whispers. “Sometimes I don’t.”

“Then I’ll elucidate. There are people who need people to need them. The reason you don’t understand is because you’re not one of those people. You’d use me and then toss me away like a paper bag if that’s what it came down to. God fucked you, my friend. You’re just smart enough so it would hurt you to do that, and just hard enough so you’d go ahead and do it anyway. You wouldn’t be able to help yourself. If I was lying on the beach there and screaming for help, you’d walk over me if I was between you and your goddam Tower. Isn’t that pretty close to the truth?”

Roland says nothing, only watches Eddie.

“But not everyone is like that. There are people who need people to need them. Like the Barbra Streisand song. Corny, but true. It’s just another way of being hooked through the bag.”

Eddie gazes at him.

“But when it comes to that, you’re clean, aren’t you?”

Roland watches him.

“Except for your Tower.” Eddie utters a short laugh. “You’re a Tower junkie, Roland.”

“Which war was it?” Roland whispers.

“What?”

“The one where you got your sense of nobility and purpose shot off?”

Eddie recoils as if Roland has reached out and slapped him.

“I’m gonna go get some water,” he says shortly. “Keep an eye on the creepy crawlers. We came a long way today, but I still don’t know if they talk to each other or not.”

He turns away then, but not before Roland has seen the last red rays of sunset reflected on his wet cheeks.

Roland turns back to the beach and watches. The lobstrosities crawl and question, question and crawl, but both activities seem aimless; they have some intelligence, but not enough to pass on information to others of their kind.

God doesn’t always dish it in your face, Roland thinks. Most times, but not always.

Eddie returns with wood.

“Well?” he asks. “What do you think?”

“We’re all right,” the gunslinger croaks, and Eddie starts to say something but the gunslinger is tired now and lies back and looks at the first stars peeking through the canopy of violet sky and

shuffle

in the three days that followed, the gunslinger progressed steadily back to health. The red lines creeping up his arms first reversed their direction, then faded, then disappeared. On the next day he sometimes walked and sometimes let Eddie drag him. On the day following he didn’t need to be dragged at all; every hour or two they simply sat for a period of time until the watery feeling went out of his legs. It was during these rests and in those times after dinner had been eaten but before the fire had burned all the way down and they went to sleep that the gunslinger heard about Henry and Eddie. He remembered wondering what had happened to make their brothering so difficult, but after Eddie had begun, haltingly and with that sort of resentful anger that proceeds from deep pain, the gunslinger could have stopped him, could have told him: Don’t bother, Eddie. I understand everything.