The others responded, but by then Jake Chambers had already been torn loose from Roland's hand on his right. By then he was flying, but not alone.
Pere Callahan flew with him.
Eight
There was just time for Eddie to hear New York,smell New York, and to realize what was happening. In a way, that was what made it so awful - he was able to register everything going diabolically counter to what he had expected, but not able to do anything about it.
He saw Jake yanked out of the circle and felt Callahan's hand ripped out of his own; he saw them fly through the air toward the door, actually looping the loop in tandem, like a couple of f**ked-up acrobats. Something furry and barking like a motherfucker shot past the side of his head. Oy, doing barrel-rolls, his ears laid back and his terrified eyes seeming to start from his head.
And more. Eddie was aware of dropping Cantab's hand and lunging forward toward the door - hisdoor,his city, and somewhere in ithis lost and pregnant wife. He was aware (exquisitely so) of the invisible hand thatpushed him back, and a voice that spoke, but not in words. What Eddie heard was far more terrible than any words could have been. With words you could argue. This was only an inarticulate negation, and for all he knew, it came from the Dark Tower itself.
Jake and Callahan were shot like bullets from a gun: shot into a darkness filled with the exotic sounds of honking horns and rushing traffic. In the distance but clear, like the voices you heard in dreams, Eddie heard a rapid, rapping, ecstatic voice streetbopping its message: "SayGawd, brotha, that's right, sayGawd on Second Avenue, sayGawd on Avenue B, sayGawd in the Bronx, I sayGawd, I sayGawd -bomb, I sayGawd! " The voice of an authentic New York crazy if Eddie had ever heard one and it laid his heart open. He saw Oy zip through the door like a piece of newspaper yanked up the street in the wake of a speeding car, and then the door slammed shut, swinging so fast and hard that he had to slit his eyes against the wind it blew into his face, a wind that was gritty with the bone-dust of this rotten cave.
Before he could scream his fury, the door slapped open again. This time he was dazzled by hazy sunshine loaded with birdsong. He smelled pine trees and heard the distant backfiring of what sounded like a big truck. Then he was sucked into that brightness, unable to yell that this was f**ked up, ass-backw -
Something collided with the side of Eddie's head. For one brief moment he was brilliantly aware of his passage between the worlds. Then the gunfire. Then the killing.
STAVE: Commala-come-coo
The wind'll blow ya through.
Ya gotta go where ka's wind blows ya
Cause there's nothin else to do.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-two!
Nothin else to do!
Gotta go where ka's wind blows ya
Cause there's nothin else to do.
3rd Stanza: Trudy and Mia
One
Until June first of 1999, Trudy Damascus was the sort of hard-headed woman who'd tell you that most UFOs were weather balloons (and those that weren't were probably the fabrications of people who wanted to get on TV), the Shroud of Turin was some fourteenth-century con man's trick, and that ghosts - Jacob Marley's included - were either the perceptions of the mentally ill or caused by indigestion. She was hard-headed, sheprided herself on being hard-headed, and had nothing even slightly spiritual on her mind as she walked down Second Avenue toward her business (an accounting firm called Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel) with her canvas carry-bag and her purse slung over her shoulder. One of GF&P's clients was a chain of toy stores called KidzPlay, and KidzPlay owed GF&P a goodly sum of money. The fact that they were also tottering on the edge of Chapter Eleven meant el zippo to Trudy. She wanted that $69,211.19, and had spent most of her lunch-hour (in a back booth of Dennis's Waffles and Pancakes, which had been Chew Chew Mama's until 1994) mulling over ways to get it. During the last two years she had taken several steps toward changing Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel to Guttenberg, Furth, Patel and Damascus; forcing KidzPlay to cough up would be yet another step - a long one - in that direction.
And so, as she crossed Forty-sixth Street toward the large dark glass skyscraper which now stood on the uptown corner of Second and Forty-sixth (where there had once been a certain Artistic Deli and then a certain vacant lot), Trudy wasn't thinking about gods or ghosts or visitations from the spirit world. She was thinking about Richard Goldman, the ass**le CEO of a certain toy company, and how -
But that was when Trudy's life changed. At 1:19 P.M., EDT, to be exact. She had just reached the curb on the downtown side of the street. Was, in fact, stepping up. And all at once a woman appeared on the sidewalk in front of her. A wide-eyed African-American woman. There was no shortage of black women in New York City, and God knew there had to be a fair percentage of them with wide eyes, but Trudy had never seen one emerge directly from thin air before, which was what this one did. And there was something else, something even more unbelievable. Ten seconds before, Trudy Damascus would have laughed and saidnothing could be more unbelievable than a woman flicking into existence in front of her on a Midtown sidewalk, but there was. There definitely was.
And now she knew how all those people who reported seeing flying saucers (not to mention ghosts wrapped in clanking chains) must feel, how they must grow frustrated by the entrenched disbelief of people like...well, people like the one Trudy Damascus had been at 1:18 P.M. on that day in June, the one who said goodbye for good on the downtown side of Forty-sixth Street. You could tell peopleYou don't understand, this REALLY HAPPENED! and it cut zero ice. They said stuff likeWell, she probably came out from behind the bus shelter and you just didn't notice orShe probably came out of one of the little stores and you just didn't notice. You could tell them that therewas no bus shelter on the downtown side of Second and Forty-sixth (or on the uptown side, for that matter), and it did no good. You could tell them therewere no little stores in that area, not since 2 Hammarskj?ld Plaza went up, and that didn't work, either. Trudy would soon find these things out for herself, and they would drive her close to insanity. She was not used to having her perceptions dismissed as no more than a blob of mustard or a bit of underdone potato.