The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy (50 page)

One of Susannah Dean's personalities. She emerged after five-year-old Odetta Holmes was hit in the head by a brick dropped by Jack Mort and more often after Mort pushed her in front of the A train. She is self-destructive, wanting nothing more than to be killed by a white man. She shoplifts, but destroys what she takes. Aunt Sophie's blue plate is the focus of much of her rage because the wedding gift represents the trip to New Jersey that led to her head injury.

She lives in a loft in Greenwich Village and talks like a stereotype. She's mean, crude and vulgar, but also shrewd. She teased white boys by making out with them and then shutting them down, enjoying the game, even though she sometimes got slapped, punched, spat upon or kicked. She doesn't care anything about anyone else. She has many secrets that even Susannah isn't privy to.

Detta reemerges from time to time—in Susannah's voice and face—especially when she's under stress. Detta solves the puzzle of the prime numbers in the Cradle of Lud. Susannah sometimes calls on Detta to steady her hand when she is about to enter battle. She's Susannah's secret weapon, a private cache of strength and a powerful personality who catches adversaries off guard. Detta deals with the demon in the Speaking Ring and asserts herself when Mia takes control. The only person Detta is nice to is Patrick Danville, and being nice wears her out. Without Detta, Roland believes that Susannah would have been only a handsome black woman with no legs below the knees. With that personality, she was dangerous. A gunslinger.

Susannah calls on Detta on the day she prepares to leave Mid-World. Being Detta all but guarantees she won't cry when she says good-bye. Roland refuses to let her leave as Detta. This aspect of her personality will always be
with her, even in her new life in New York, where she will likely be required in Tet's war against North Central Positronics.

W
ALKER
, S
OPHIA
(2, 3, 5, 6)

Odetta Holmes's mother's younger sister. Known as Sister or Aunt Blue because blue was her favorite color. She was married in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when Odetta was five. The blue “forspecial” plate that Odetta's mother gave her as a wedding gift was a focus of Detta Walker's hatred.

W
ALK
-I
NS
(6, 7)

People and animals from Mid-World that are sucked into west central Maine through a magic doorway. Some are dressed in old-fashioned clothes. Some are naked. Some speak languages no one can understand. Among them are taheen, slow mutants and Children of Roderick. They usually disappear shortly after they arrive. They started appearing shortly after Stephen King moved into the area in the late 1970s, though King has never seen one. Eddie, Jake and Roland admit to being walk-ins. There's even a Church of the Walk-Ins in Lovell-Stoneham by 1999.

W
AVERLY
(7)

A Breaker at Algul Siento. He was a bookkeeper in his previous life.

W
EAVER
[W
HEATON
], N
ORRIS
(2)

One of two foot patrol officers who spot Jack Mort after the shoot-out at Clements and the robbery at Katz's Drug Store. Roland shot his gun out of his hand and warned him not to follow.

W
ILSON
, T
EDDY
(6)

County constable and game warden in East Stoneham.

W
ILSON
, W
ILLIAM
(2)

Eddie Dean's drug contact in Nassau.

W
ORTHINGTON
, F
RED
(7)

A Breaker from Algul Siento. A stout, bankerly looking man. He took the Spirit of Topeka to Fedic with Susannah, Ted, Dinky, Dani Rostov and Sheemie. He used chalk to indicate the passage Roland and Susannah needed to take beneath Castle Discordia.

V
AN
W
YCK
, M
ATHIESSEN
“M
ATS
” (6, 7)

Second assistant to the Swedish ambassador to the United Nations. Susannah mesmerizes him into reserving a room for her at the Plaza-Park Hyatt using the scrimshaw turtle, which van Wyck dubs the skölpadda. His wife is having an affair.

P
LACES

A
KRON
, O
HIO
(7)

Ted Brautigan accidentally used his special power to murder a man who stole his wallet here.

A
MERICANO
B
AR
(5)

Located near the intersection of Second Avenue and 19th Street. Father Callahan got drunk here after seeing the vagrant dead for the first time.

A
QUINAS
H
OTEL
(2)

Hotel where Eddie stays in Nassau, Bahamas, while on a drug-buying trip for Balazar.

A
VENUE OF THE
A
MERICAS
(2)

Jack Mort's office is located here. Another name for Sixth Avenue.

B
ANGOR
, M
AINE
(7)

The town Stephen King writes about when he writes about Derry. The “real” Ed Deepneau lives here, as does Stephen King.

B
ARCELONA
L
UGGAGE
(5)

A store on Second Avenue near 54th Street.

B
LACKSTRAP
M
OLASSES
C
AF
é (6)

Located at Lexington and 60th, one block from the Dixie Pig. Susannah paid a busker on this corner to play “Man of Constant Sorrow.”

B
LEECKER
S
TREET
(3, 5, 7)

A nightclub district in Greenwich Village. Aaron Deepneau used to hang out here and it was also a favorite haunt of Odetta Holmes. An empty warehouse on this street has a North Central Positronics doorway.

B
LIMPIE'S
(5)

A fast-food restaurant at 844 Second Avenue (at the 45th Street intersection).

B
RIDGTON
, M
AINE
(6, 7)

The Maine town where Stephen King lives in 1977. Twenty miles from East Stoneham.

B
ROOKLYN
(2, 3, 5, 6, 7)

One of the five Boroughs of New York City, home to Co-Op City in Eddie Dean's world, and the analog to the Portal of the Bear.

B
ROOKLYN
V
OCATIONAL
I
NSTITUTE
(3)

The school Henry Dean attended before enlisting in the army.

C
ARA
L
AUGHS
(7)

The lakefront house at #19 Turtleback Lane in Lovell, Maine, where Stephen King lives. The McCray family from Washington, D.C., owned it until the husband had a stroke.

Crossover to Other Works:
Sara Laughs is the name of a similar house in
Bag of Bones
.

C
ASTLE
A
VENUE
(3, 7)

A street in Co-Op City lined with pizza shops, bars and bodegas. The Majestic Theater is located at the intersection with Markey Avenue.

C
ENTRAL
P
ARK
(2, 4, 5, 7)

Jake and Susannah both heard a man playing a saw in this Manhattan park. It's where Susannah meets Eddie and Jake Toren in the winter of 1987.

C
ENTRAL
P
ARK
S
OUTH
(2)

Odetta Holmes's penthouse is in the Greymarl Apartments at the intersection of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue.

T
HE
C
HAMBERSES'
A
PARTMENT
(2, 3)

A duplex apartment located on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th.

C
HEW
C
HEW
M
AMA'S
(3, 5, 6)

A small restaurant located on Second Avenue at 52nd Street. Its name reminds Jake of
Charlie the Choo-Choo
. It closed in 1994 and became Dennis's Waffles and Pancakes.

C
HRISTOPHER
S
TREET
S
TATION
(2, 6)

Subway station on the west side of Greenwich Village where Jack Mort pushed Odetta Holmes in front of the A train. In Keystone Earth, the A train doesn't go there.

C
ITY
L
IGHTS
(5)

A bar on Lexington Avenue that Father Callahan frequented.

C
LEMENTS
G
UNS AND
S
PORTING
G
OODS
(2, 4)

The gun shop in Manhattan where Roland gets ammo for his guns. Located at Seventh Avenue and 49th. The police suspect the owner is selling guns to people like Enrico Balazar.

C
OLUMBIA
U
NIVERSITY
(6)

Odetta Holmes's alma mater.

C
O
-O
P
C
ITY
(2, 3, 5, 6, 7)

The housing project where Eddie and Henry Dean lived. In Eddie's world, it is located in Brooklyn, but in Keystone Earth it is in the Bronx. Stephen King's geographic mistake is the reason for the differences between worlds.

C
ULLUM
C
ARETAKING AND
C
AMP
C
HECKING
(7)

John Cullum's business before he joins Tet Corporation.

2 D
AG
H
AMMARSKJÖLD
P
LAZA
(6, 7)

The address of the skyscraper erected on the vacant lot at the corner of Second Avenue and 46th Street. A shrine: The House of the Rose. The lobby is full of light, admitted through two-story-tall windows. The Garden of the Beam is cordoned off with velvet ropes in the middle of the lobby. At the center is the rose representing the Dark Tower—the building was erected around it. Tet Corporation has its headquarters on the ninety-ninth floor. The people who work here call it the Black Tower. They wish they lived here and find excuses to work late. People often pass by the building to hear the singing voices that emanate from it.

D
ENBY'S
D
ISCOUNT
D
RUG
(3)

A drugstore in Times Square. Jake borrows its name when providing an alias to a cop who stops him for suspected truancy.

D
ENNIS'S
W
AFFLES AND
P
ANCAKES
(6)

On Second Avenue at 52nd Street. Opened after Chew Chew Mama's closed in 1994. Trudy Damascus eats lunch here the day she meets Susannah and Mia.

D
ETROIT
, M
ICHIGAN
(5, 6)

Father Callahan worked at the Lighthouse Shelter in this city in 1983. He committed suicide during a fake meeting at the Sombra Corporation's offices in that city to avoid being infected by Type Three vampires.

D
IMITY
R
OAD
(6)

Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau rent a house on this road in East Stoneham, Maine.

D
IXIE
P
IG
, T
HE
(5, 6, 7)

Restaurant located at Lexington and 61st in Manhattan. It has a green awning imprinted with a grinning cartoon roasted pig. According to
Gourmet
magazine it has the best ribs in New York but its real specialty is “long pork,” or human flesh. The
ka-tet
first sees it mentioned in graffiti on the construction barricade surrounding the vacant lot. A version of it has probably been at this location since the time of the Dutch. Mia leads Susannah here to meet Richard Sayre, who takes them via an underground passage to a scientific door that goes to the Fedic Dogan. When Jake, Father Callahan and Oy arrive, a sign announces that it is closed for a private function. By the time Roland gets there, Tet Corporation is guarding the restaurant.

The dining room is lit by electric flambeaux on the walls and candles on the tables. A hanging tapestry shows knights and ladies dining at a long banquet table. Upon closer inspection, the “roast” is a human body. Behind the tapestry, Type One vampires feast on babies. The kitchen is identical to the one Jake saw when he followed Mia's dream. A door in the corner of the pantry leads to a tiled stairway that descends to a tunnel protected by a mind-trap that ends at the Fedic door.

D
RAWERS
, T
HE
(1, 2, 3, 4, 7, M)

The place where Detta Walker destroyed the blue “forspecial” plate. A smoking trash-littered gravel pit. She also uses the word to describe the place she
hides while waiting for Roland to return from the Pusher doorway so she can kill him. Can also be applied to other places of self-destruction, such as whorehouses, drug dens and gambling houses. The Speaking Demon in the basement of the Way Station warned Roland to “go slow past the Drawers.” Roland thinks the word refers to lost places that are spoiled or useless, places of desolation, waste lands. Detta thinks of it as a place where she goes to fulfill herself.

D
UTCH
H
ILL
(3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

Part of Brooklyn, a mile from where Eddie Dean grew up. Home of The Mansion, where Jake Chambers reentered Mid-World.

E
AST
S
TONEHAM
G
ENERAL
S
TORE
(5, 6, 7)

A smaller version of Took's General Store, owned by Chip McAvoy. Site of a shoot-out between Roland, Eddie and Balazar's men. The store burned in that battle but was rebuilt larger and fancier. Roland finds two useful people here: John Cullum in 1977 and Irene Tassenbaum in 1999.