The following is dedicated to Roland Deschain. May
your quest bring you peace, gunslinger.
A number of strange things have been happening to me over
the last several weeks, all of them connected in some way to the Dark Tower
At least this is the reason I am giving myself for the
strange recent occurrences. I have been
tarrying too long in sai King’s world, I explain to myself; that’s all it
is. All I need to do is finish the last
book, and then allow time and distance to break the magic spell of gravity, and
free me from its hold.
But, for the time being anyway, the character of Roland
Deschain, the gunslinger, has besieged my mind and infiltrated my
imagination. These things I’m about to
relate have more to do with him than anything, I suspect. The character whose quest for the Dark Tower
Before I can do that, though, there is some painting and some
tiling that must get done; yes there is...but now I’m putting the cart in front of the horse.
The first notably odd incident was last month. It was a sleep-in day for me, so it was seven
by the time I rolled out of bed. I was
the last one to wake up, and I could hear the television in the back room as I slumped
down the hallway. For once, our black
lab Chubby was not creating a one-dog obstacle course in front of me as I walked,
which could only mean they must have fed her already, and let her out. Thankee-sai
for small miracles, I muttered, not noticing my unusual choice of
words, or recognizing that it was unusual, until later.
“Mornin’,” I said, rusty-voiced.
“Good morning,” she said, turning and smiling. “Would you like some eggs?”
“No, thanks.” I leaned drowsily against the
counter.
“The coffee’s fresh,” she said over her shoulder, having returned her attention to the eggs.
“Thankee-sai,” I said reflexively, pushing leadenly off the
counter and crossing the kitchen to where we kept the cups, and the coffee. “What time did the girls get up?” I asked,
pouring myself a cup, and carefully lifting it to the table.
“Maria wandered out here about a half-hour ago; and you’d
have to ask Jess, because she was up watching TV when I got back from the gym.”
“At six o’clock?” I asked, sinking slowly into one of the
kitchen chairs.
“Uh-huh.” There was
disapproval in her tone.
“Well, I guess at least she won’t have trouble adjusting to
her schedule when school starts up again.”
It was less than two weeks away from the start of the school year; I was
tracking it very closely.
“I guess.” She
sounded doubtful. “Would you like
creamer?”
“Sure.” When Elizabeth said ‘creamer,’
she was talking about the condensed, exotically-flavored liquid stuff in the
fridge. Normally, I would just mix two
teaspoons of sugar and some plain powdered cream in my cup, but that would
require getting up again since I had forgotten to do it while I was standing by
the coffee maker. “How’s Maria? Still sneezing?” Maria had caught a head cold, with congestion
and a runny nose, except that instead of coughing, she would go into these
extended sneezing fits. Then each of us
began to have them, although whether it was catching or just the power of
suggestion was impossible to say.
“Haven’t heard a thing this morning,” she said, handing me
the cold plastic bottle of cinnamon-caramel-vanilla macchiato.
“Thankee-sai,” I said, reaching for it, but she pulled it
back quickly.
“Alright, what is
that?”
