“Okay, that’s a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and the Tin Woodman, and I’ll tell you all the rest.” He bit into his piece of meat and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which it had been rolled, and was delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling busily all the while. Now that he was getting his breath back, he felt good—great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of muscle, and every part of it felt at peace with every other part.

Don’t worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think he’s gonna push on until I’m ready to drop in my tracks.

Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little sip of water, turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. “Finish what you started last night,” she invited Roland. “You said you thought you understood these conflicting memories of yours.”

Roland nodded. “Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than the other, but that does not negate the truth of that other.”

“Makes no sense to me,” Eddie said. “Either this boy Jake was at the way station or he wasn’t, Roland.”

“It is a paradox—something that is and isn’t at the same time. Until it’s resolved, I will continue divided. That’s bad enough, but the basic split is widening. I can feel that happening. It is... unspeakable.”

“What do you think caused it?” Susannah asked.

“I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know who liked to push people in front of things?”

Understanding dawned in her face. “Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who pushed this boy into the street?”

“Yes.”

“But you said the man in black did it,” Eddie objected. “Your buddy Walter. You said that the boy saw him—a man who looked like a priest. Didn’t the kid even hear him say he was? ‘Let me through, I’m a priest,’ something like that?”

“Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake.”

“Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket,” Eddie called. “Roland just went over the high side.”

Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie’s jokes and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different... as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. “What exasperates me about all of this,” he said, “is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I was in Mort. I saw him through Mort’s eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck.”