The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower 4.5)

Two days later, Jamie and I led our horses onto the stable-car of a special two-car train that had been laid on for us. Once the Western Line ran a thousand wheels or more, all the way to the Mohaine Desert, but in the years before Gilead fell, it went to Debaria and no farther. Beyond there, many tracklines had been destroyed by washouts and ground-shakers. Others had been taken up by harriers and roving bands of outlaws who called themselves land-pirates, for that part of the world had fallen into bloody confusion. We called those far western lands Out-World, and they served John Farson's purposes well. He was, after all, just a land-pirate himself. One with pretensions.

The train was little more than a steam-driven toy; Gilead folk called it Sma' Toot and laughed to see it puffing over the bridge to the west of the palace. We could have ridden faster a-horseback, but the train saved the mounts. And the dusty velveteen seats of our car folded out into beds, which we felt was a fine thing. Until we tried to sleep in them, that was. At one particularly hard jounce, Jamie was thrown right off his makeshift bed and onto the floor. Cuthbert would have laughed and Alain would have cursed, but Jamie Red-Hand only picked himself up, stretched out again, and went back to sleep.

We spoke little that first day, only looked out the wavery isinglass windows, watching as Gilead's green and forested land gave way to dirty scrub, a few struggling ranches, and herders' huts. There were a few towns where folk--many of them muties--gaped at us as Sma' Toot wheezed slowly past. A few pointed at the centers of their foreheads, as if at an invisible eye. It meant they stood for Farson, the Good Man. In Gilead, such folk would have been imprisoned for their disloyalty, but Gilead was now behind us

. I was dismayed by how quickly the allegiance of these people, once taken for granted, had thinned.

On the first day of our journey, outside Beesford-on-Arten, where a few of my mother's people still lived, a fat man threw a rock at the train. It bounced off the closed stable-car door, and I heard our horses whinny in surprise. The fat man saw us looking at him. He grinned, grabbed his crotch with both hands, and waddled away.

"Someone has eaten well in a poor land," Jamie remarked as we watched his butters jounce in the seat of his old patched pants.

The following morning, after the servant had put a cold breakfast of porridge and milk before us, Jamie said, "I suppose you'd better tell me what it's about."

"Will you tell me something, first? If you know, that is?"

"Of course."

"My father said that the women at the retreat in Debaria prefer the longstick to a man. Do you know what he meant?"

Jamie regarded me in silence for a bit--as if to make sure I wasn't shaking his knee--and then his lips twitched at the corners. For Jamie this was the equivalent of holding his belly, rolling around the floor, and howling with glee. Which Cuthbert Allgood certainly would have done. "It must be what the whores in the low town call a diddlestick. Does that help?"

"Truly? And they . . . what? Use it on each other?"

"So 'tis said, but much talk is just la-la-la. You know more of women than I do, Roland; I've never lain with one. But never mind. Given time, I suppose I will. Tell me what we're about in Debaria."

"A skin-man is supposedly terrorizing the good folk. Probably the bad folk, as well."

"A man who becomes some sort of animal?"

It was actually a little more complicated in this case, but he had the nub of it. The wind was blowing hard, flinging handfuls of alkali at the side of the car. After one particularly vicious gust, the little train lurched. Our empty porridge bowls slid. We caught them before they could fall. If we hadn't been able to do such things, and without even thinking of them, we would not have been fit to carry the guns we wore. Not that Jamie preferred the gun. Given a choice (and the time to make it), he would reach for either his bow or his bah.

"My father doesn't believe it," I said. "But Vannay does. He--"

At that moment, we were thrown forward into the seats ahead of us. The old servant, who was coming down the center aisle to retrieve our bowls and cups, was flung all the way back to the door between the car and his little kitchen. His front teeth flew out of his mouth and into his lap, which gave me a start.

Jamie ran up the aisle, which was now severely tilted, and knelt by him. As I joined him, Jamie plucked up the teeth and I saw they were made of painted wood and held together by a cunning clip almost too small to see.

"Are you all right, sai?" Jamie asked.

The old fellow got slowly to his feet, took his teeth, and filled the hole behind his upper lip with them. "I'm fine, but this dirty bitch has derailed again. No more Debaria runs for me, I have a wife. She's an old nag, and I'm determined to outlive her. You young men had better check your horses. With luck, neither of them will have broken a leg."

*

Neither had, but they were nervous and stamping, anxious to get out of confinement. We lowered the ramp and tethered them to the connecting bar between the two cars, where they stood with their heads lowered and their ears flattened against the hot and gritty wind blowing out of the west. Then we clambered back inside the passenger car and collected our gunna. The engineer, a broad-shouldered, bowlegged plug of a man, came down the side of his listing train with the old servant in tow. When he reached us, he pointed to what we could see very well.

"Yonder on that ridge be Debaria high road--see the marking-posts? You can be at the place o' the females in less than an hour, but don't bother asking nothing o' those bitches, because you won't get it." He lowered his voice. "They eat men, is what I've heard. Not just a way o' speakin, boys: they . . . eat . . . the mens."

I found it easier to believe in the reality of the skin-man than in this, but I said nothing. It was clear that the enjie was shaken up, and one of his hands was as red as Jamie's. But the enjie's was only a little burn, and would go away. Jamie's would still be red when he was sent down in his grave. It looked as if it had been dipped in blood.

"They may call to you, or make promises. They may even show you their titties, as they know a young man can't take his eyes off such. But never mind. Turn yer ears from their promises and yer eyes from their titties. You just go on into the town. It'll be less than another hour by horse. We'll need a work crew to put this poxy whore upright. The rails are fine; I checked. Just covered with that damned alkali dust, is all. I suppose ye can't pay men to come out, but if ye can write--as I suppose such gentle fellows as yerselves surely can--you can give em a premissary note or whatever it's called--"

"We have specie," I said. "Enough to hire a small crew."

The enjie's eyes widened at this. I supposed they would widen even more if I told him my father had given me twenty gold knuckles to carry in a special pocket sewn inside my vest.

"And oxes? Because we'll need oxes if they've got em. Hosses if they don't."

"We'll go to the livery and see what they have," I said, mounting up. Jamie tied his bow on one side of his saddle and then moved to the other, where he slid his bah into the leather boot his father had made special for it.

"Don't leave us stuck out here, young sai," the enjie said. "We've no horses, and no weapons."

"We won't forget you," I said. "Just stay inside. If we can't get a crew out today, we'll send a bucka to take you into town."

"Thankee. And stay away from those women! They . . . eat . . . the mens!"

*

The day was hot. We ran the horses for a bit because they wanted to stretch after being pent up, then pulled them down to a walk.

"Vannay," Jamie said.

"Pardon?"

"Before the train derailed, you said your father didn't believe there was a skin-man, but Vannay does."