The Dark Tower (14 page)

As he was shaking off, it came to Jake Chambers that the Pere would never do this again, or grin at him and point his finger, or cross himself before eating. They had killed him. Taken his life. Stopped his breath and pulse. Save perhaps for dreams, the Pere was now gone from the story. Jake began to cry. Like his smile, the tears made him once again look like a child. Oy had turned around, eager to be off on the scent, but now looked back over one shoulder with an expression of unmistakable concern.

“’S’all right,” Jake said, buttoning his fly and then wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. Only it wasn’t all right. He was more than sad, more than angry, more than scared about the low men running relentlessly up his backtrail. Now that the adrenaline in his system had receded, he realized he was hungry as well as sad. Tired, too.
Tired?
Verging on exhaustion. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. Being sucked through the door into New York, he could remember that, and Oy almost being hit by a taxi, and the God-bomb minister with the name that reminded him of Jimmy Cagney playing George M. Cohan in that old black-and-white movie he’d watched on the TV in his room when he was small. Because, he realized now, there had been a song in that movie about a guy named Harrigan:
H–A–double R–I; Harrigan, that’s me
. He could remember those things, but not when he’d last eaten a square—

“Ake!
” Oy barked, relentless as fate. If bumblers had a breaking point, Jake thought wearily, Oy was still a long way from his.
“Ake-Ake!
”

“Yeah-yeah,” he agreed, pushing away from the wall. “Ake-Ake will now run-run. Go on. Find Susannah.”

He wanted to plod, but plodding would quite likely not be good enough. Mere walking, either. He flogged his legs into a jog and once more began to sing under his breath, this time the words to the song:
“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight . . . In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight . . . ohhh . . .”
And then he was off again,
wimeweh, wimeweh, wimeweh,
nonsense words from the kitchen radio that was always tuned to the oldies on WCBS . . . only weren’t memories of some movie wound around and into his memory of this particular song? Not a song from
Yankee Doodle Dandy
but from some other movie? One with scary monsters? Something he’d seen when he was just a little kid, maybe not even out of his

(
clouts
)

diapers?

“Near the village, the quiet village, the lion sleeps tonight . . . Near the village, the peaceful village, the lion sleeps tonight . . . HUH-oh, a-wimeweh, a-wimeweh . . .”

He stopped, breathing hard, rubbing his side. He had a stitch there but it wasn’t bad, at least not yet, hadn’t sunk deep enough to stop him. But that goo . . . that greenish goo dribbling between the tiles . . . it was oozing through the ancient grout and busted ceramic because this was

(
the jungle
)

deep below the city, deep like catacombs

(
wimeweh
)

or like—

“Oy,” he said, speaking through chapped lips. Christ, he was so thirsty! “Oy, this isn’t goo, this is
grass
. Or weeds . . . or . . .”

Oy barked his friend’s name, but Jake hardly noticed.
The echoing sound of the pursuers continued (had drawn a bit closer, in fact), but for the time being he ignored them, as well.

Grass, growing out of the tiled wall.

Overwhelming
the wall.

He looked down and saw more grass, a brilliant green that was almost purple beneath the fluorescent lights, growing up out of the floor. And bits of broken tile crumbling into shards and fragments like remains of the old people, the ancestors who had lived and built before the Beams began to break and the world began to move on.

He bent down. Reached into the grass. Brought up sharp shards of tile, yes, but also
earth,
the earth of

(
the jungle
)

some deep catacomb or tomb or perhaps—

There was a beetle crawling through the dirt he’d scooped up, a beetle with a red mark on its back like a bloody smile, and Jake cast it away with a cry of disgust. Mark of the King! Say true! He came back to himself and realized that he was down on one knee, practicing at archaeology like the hero in some old movie while the hounds drew closer on his trail. And Oy was looking at him, eyes shining with anxiety.

“Ake! Ake-Ake!
”

“Yeah,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. “I’m coming. But Oy . . . what
is
this place?”

Oy had no idea why he heard anxiety in his kadinh’s voice; what
he
saw was the same as before and what he smelled was the same as before:
her
smell, the scent the boy had asked him to find and follow. And it was fresher now. He ran on along its bright brand.

Jake stopped again five minutes later, shouting, “Oy! Wait up a minute!”

The stitch in his side was back, and it was deeper, but it still wasn’t the stitch that had stopped him.
Everything
had changed. Or was changing. And God help him, he thought he knew what it was changing into.

Above him the fluorescent lights still shone down, but the tile walls were shaggy with greenery. The air had become damp and humid, soaking his shirt and sticking it against his body. A beautiful orange butterfly of startling size flew past his wide eyes. Jake snatched at it but the butterfly eluded him easily. Almost merrily, he thought.

The tiled corridor had become a jungle path. Ahead of them, it sloped up to a ragged hole in the overgrowth, probably some sort of forest clearing. Beyond it Jake could see great old trees growing in a mist, their trunks thick with moss, their branches looped with vines. He could see giant spreading ferns, and through the green lace of the leaves, a burning jungle sky. He knew he was under New York, must be under New York, but—

What sounded like a monkey chittered, so close by that Jake flinched and looked up, sure he would see it directly overhead, grinning down from behind a bank of lights. And then, freezing his blood, came the heavy roar of a lion. One that was most definitely
not
asleep.

He was on the verge of retreating, and at full speed, when he realized he could
not
; the low men (probably led by the one who’d told him the
faddah
was
dinnah
) were back that way. And Oy was
looking at him with bright-eyed impatience, clearly wanting to go on. Oy was no dummy, but he showed no signs of alarm, at least not concerning what was ahead.

For his own part, Oy still couldn’t understand the boy’s problem. He knew the boy was tired—he could smell that—but he also knew Ake was afraid. Why? There were unpleasant smells in this place, the smell of many men chief among them, but they did not strike Oy as immediately dangerous. And besides,
her
smell was here.
Very
fresh now. Almost new.

“Ake!
” he yapped again.

Jake had his breath now. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Okay. But slow.”

“Lo,
” Oy said, but even Jake could detect the stunning lack of approval in the bumbler’s response.

Jake moved only because he had no other options. He walked up the slope of the overgrown trail (in Oy’s perception the way was perfectly straight, and had been ever since leaving the stairs) toward the vine- and fern-fringed opening, toward the lunatic chitter of the monkey and the testicle-freezing roar of the hunting lion. The song circled through his mind again and again

(
in the village . . . in the jungle . . . hush my darling, don’t stir my darling . . .
)

and now he knew the name of it, even the name of the group

(
that’s the Tokens with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” gone from the charts but not from our hearts
)

that had sung it, but what was the
movie
? What was the name of the goddam
mo
—

Jake reached the top of the slope and the edge
of the clearing. He looked through an interlacing of broad green leaves and brilliant purple flowers (a tiny green worm was journeying into the heart of one), and as he looked, the name of the movie came to him and his skin broke out in gooseflesh from the nape of his neck all the way down to his feet. A moment later the first dinosaur came out of the jungle (the mighty jungle), and walked into the clearing.

Once upon a time long ago

(far and wee)

when he was just a little lad;

(there’s some for you and some for me)

once upon a time when mother went to Montreal with her art club and father went to Vegas for the annual unveiling of the fall shows;

(blackberry jam and blackberry tea)

once upon a time when ’Bama was four
—

’Bama’s what the only good one

(Mrs. Shaw Mrs. Greta Shaw)

calls him. She cuts the crusts off his sandwiches, she puts his nursie-school drawings on the fridge with magnets that look like little plastic fruits, she calls him ’Bama and that’s a special name to him

(
to them
)

because his father taught him one drunk Saturday afternoon to chant
“Go wide, go wide, roll you Tide, we don’t run and we don’t hide, we’re the ’Bama Crimson Tide!”
and so she calls him ’Bama, it’s a secret
name and how they know what it means and no one else does is like having a house you can go into, a safe house in the scary woods where outside the shadows all look like monsters and ogres and tigers.

(“Tyger, tyger, burning bright,”
his mother sings to him, for this is her idea of a lullabye, along with
“I heard a fly buzz . . . when I died,”
which gives ’Bama Chambers a terrible case of the creeps, although he never tells her; he lies in bed sometimes at night and sometimes during afternoon naptime thinking
I will hear a fly and it will be my deathfly, my heart will stop and my tongue will fall down my throat like a stone down a well
and these are the memories he denies
)

It is good to have a secret name and when he finds out mother is going to Montreal for the sake of art and father is going to Vegas to help present the Network’s new shows at the Up-fronts he begs his mother to ask Mrs. Greta Shaw to stay with him and finally his mother gives in. Little Jakie knows Mrs. Shaw is not mother and on more than one occasion Mrs. Greta Shaw herself has
told
him she is not mother

(“I hope you know I’m not your mother, ’Bama,” she says, giving him a plate and on the plate is a peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off as only Greta Shaw knows how to cut them off, “because that is not in my job description”

(And Jakie
—
only he’s ’Bama here, he’s ’Bama between them
—
doesn’t know exactly how to tell her he knows that, knows that, knows that, but he’ll make do with her until the real thing comes along or until he grows old enough to get over his fear of the Deathfly)

And Jakie says
Don’t worry, I’m okay,
but he is still glad Mrs. Shaw agrees to stay instead of the latest au pair who wears short skirts and is always playing with her hair and her lipstick and doesn’t care jackshit about
him and doesn’t know that in his secret heart he is ’Bama, and boy that little Daisy Mae

(
which is what his father calls
all
the au pairs
)

is stupid stupid
stupid.
Mrs. Shaw isn’t stupid. Mrs. Shaw gives him a snack she sometimes calls Afternoon Tea or even High Tea, and no matter what it is
—
cottage cheese and fruit, a sandwich with the crusts cut off, custard and cake, leftover canapés from a cocktail party the night before
—
she sings the same little song when she lays it out: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.”

There is a TV is his room, and every day while his folks are gone he takes his after-school snack in there and watches watches watches and he hears her radio in the kitchen, always the oldies, always WCBS, and sometimes he hears
her,
hears Mrs. Greta Shaw singing along with the Four Seasons Wanda Jackson Lee “Yah-Yah” Dorsey, and sometimes he pretends his folks die in a plane crash and she somehow
does
become his mother and she calls him
poor little lad
and
poor little lost tyke
and then by virtue of some magical transformation she loves him instead of just taking care of him, loves him loves him loves him the way he loves her, she’s his mother (or maybe his wife, he is unclear about the difference between the two), but she calls him ’Bama instead of sugarlove

(
his real mother
)

or hotshot

(
his father
)

and although he knows the idea is stupid, thinking about it in bed is fun, thinking about it beats the penis-piss out of thinking about the Deathfly that would come and buzz over his corpse when he died with his tongue down his throat like a stone down a well. In the afternoon when he gets home from nursie-school (by the time
he’s old enough to know it’s actually
nursery school
he will be out of it) he watches
Million Dollar Movie
in his room. On
Million Dollar Movie
they show exactly the same movie at exactly the same time
—
four o’clock
—
every day for a week. The week before his parents went away and Mrs. Greta Shaw stayed the night instead of going home

(O what bliss, for Mrs. Greta Shaw negates Discordia, can you say amen)