The Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower Book 7: The Dark Tower
By Stephen King
Copyright 2004

There is no seam in the action between The Song of Susannah and the concluding volume of King’s magnum opus, the Dark Tower. The book picks up with Jake and Father Callahan preparing to enter the Dixie Pig to rescue Susannah.

Susannah, meanwhile, is now physically and mentally detached from Mia. She watches as Mia gives birth to an abomination – a spiderlike creature that promptly devours its mother. This creature, Mordred Deschain, carries his father’s surname and his father’s piercing blue eyes.

Susannah seizes and opportunity and is able to wrest a gun from one of her captors and mows down the medical staff and her guards in the proudest tradition of shooting by Gunslingers. She manages to land a shot on baby Mordred, leaving the arachnid with just seven legs as he flees the hospital compound – this compound that housed hundreds of twins from Calla Bryn Sturgis whilst the essence of life was sucked from their brains.

Jake, Oy, and Father Callahan enter the Dixie Pig and are set upon by Low Men and Low Women as well as Type I (low level) vampires. They go in guns ablaze and Oriza plates flying. They manage to defeat the Crimson King’s agents, but Father Callahan falls on his sword rather than being taken by the vampires. It is here that the member of the Dark Tower ka tet met first, way back in 1977, exits our story forever.

With Oy tracking her scent, Jake follows Susannah’s trail through the underground passages beneath New York and the Dixie Pig. The eventually meet and prepare to enter Fedic, the doomed town that Mia inhabited before she became human and the town was swept away by the Red Death.

Roland and Eddie are still in Maine and pay a visit to their old friend John Cullum who rescued them from the shootout at the convenience store. They had asked him to make himself scarce and head for Vermont, lest the Crimson King seek revenge upon him for aiding Roland and Eddie. But they know he has not done as instructed.

They go back to Collum and lay out their entire story, and an important business deal they need him to help construct as part of the Tet Corporation. After securing Collum’s allegiance, they find the door on Turtleback Lane where the “Walk Throughs” come in and transport themselves to the door from the one constant world of 1999 (where everything is real and everything is for keeps) to the door to Fedic. There, they encounter what is left of Richard Sayre’s men and gun them down without mercy.

Susannah, equipped with the password, is able to let Eddie, Jake, and Roland pass from New York 1999 to Fedic where the ka-tet is joyously reunited. They palaver and Roland learns that, while in New York 1999, Susannah was listening to the news and heard that a writer by the name of Stephen King was killed when he was hit by a car near his home in Bridgeport, Maine. This is an ill omen for Roland and his ka tet because Roland is certain that King has not yet finished his tale.

Meanwhile, Mordred is growing and maturing quickly. He is now in human form and has the size and maturity of a young boy. He is nursing his wound near the door to Fedic under Castle Discordia, near the ka-tet when he is visited by none other than Walter O’Dim, AKA Randall Flagg. Flagg is interested in striking a deal with Mordred to overthrow the Crimson King (Mordred’s red father), kill Roland (Mordred’s white father) and occupy the Dark Tower to rule the universe. Mordred responds by killing and eating Randall Flagg. Thus exits permanently from our story the second oldest character in the tale, first introduced in The Stand in 1978.

Roland and the ka tet decide to travel to Thunderclap which was the lair of the wolves that bedeviled Calla Bryn Sturgis. When they arrive, they find a semi-abandoned maintenance complex full of partially disassembled wolves and gray horses. Roland is troubled by excruciating pain in his right hip that slows him when he walks and affects his ability to shoot. He limps through the station at Thunderclap when they encounter two men who hide them before they can be discovered by the Low Men who patrol the area.

One of those two men is our old friend from Hearts In Atlantis, Ted Brautigan. The other is a guy by the name of Dinky Earnshaw. Both are breakers who are currently AWOL from an area known as Devar Toi, the campus upon which the Breakers live, eat, sleep, and do their work to break the remaining beams that support the Dark Tower.

Ted and Dinky see them safely to a cave properly stocked with weapons they have procured from various places over time. There, Roland meets a figure from his distant past. Sheemie, the sweet and dimwitted bar back who carried messages between Roland and his beloved Susan in Mejis. Sheemie, although slow on the uptake, has the mental capacity to be a breaker. He also has the ability to open doors between worlds – a power that will come in handy because Roland knows that once he’s saved the beams, he’ll have to go to 1999 and save the writer, King.

Mordred has also passed into the world of Fedic and Thunderclap and listens outside the cave as Roland and his group make their plans. He cares not for breakers or even the Dark Tower. He is fixated on Roland whom he has come to hate for wanting to kill him and his red father. Mordred begins hatching a plan of his own.

Ted sneaks Roland and his group into Devar Toi which closely resembles a liberal arts college. It has the charm of a small New England village – not unlike ‘Salem’s Lot. It has dormitories, libraries, restaurants, and movie theaters. It is also where the Breakers – most of whom enjoy what they do – do their work. Most of them enjoy what they do because, like all of us, they enjoy doing what they do best. Most know not or care not what the ramifications are of what they do.

Roland gets the lay of the land and develops his plan.

The plan is set and Ted and his friends put things into motion by creating the diversion (just like in the old westerns) that diverts the attention of the guards and allows Roland and the Gunslingers to get the drop on them. They systematically gun down all of those who are running the Breakers’ station and destroy the facility. As they stand among the bodies of the slain, one last shot is fired by the head of security, who lays in the street dying, but determined to take one final shot. The bullet takes Eddie in the head.

The wound is mortal. They carry him back to a dormitory and try to make him comfortable as he slowly succumbs to his wound. Susannah is emotionally stricken. Roland is burdened by guilt for he is certain, had his body not been wracked with pain, his shot would have been true and the man who shot Eddie Dean would have died when Roland’s bullet hit him.

Roland explains to Susannah that, with the beams now safe, he and Jake must move on to 1999 to save Stephen King. As Roland bids Eddie farewell, Eddie, who has donated a large portion of his brain to the cause, warns Roland to beware Dandelo. Nobody has any idea who or what Dandelo is. Eddie Dean, introduced in book two of the story, leaves our tale.

Roland tells Susannah to bury her dead, then head back to Fedic. When Jake and Roland have finished their business with the writer, they will meet her there and then head west to complete their quest.

Sheemie opens the door for them and Jake and Roland return to Maine circa 1999. They have less than an hour to find King and save his life. They arrive at the same convenience store where he and Eddie shot it out back in 1977. There, they secure the aid of Irene Tassenbaum, An exceptionally wealthy woman whose husband helped pioneer the Internet. She volunteers to drive Jake and Roland to the King residence on Turtleback Lane. Meanwhile the minivan – the instrument of King’s death – is getting underway from the campground where its driver is staying. They get to the King residence and find out Stephen King has already set out on his walk.

Here the novel reverts to some of the reality of what happened to King that June day in 1999 as he walked along County Road 5 near his home. A man by the name of Bryan Smith was driving with a cooler full of meet in his minivan, accompanied by two hungry dogs that kept trying to get into the cooler. Bryan Smith, who did not have an exceptionally good driving record, continually took his eyes from the road to keep the dogs from the meat. Two women, walking approximately half a mile from King, noticed his reckless driving. This is reality.

Roland and Jake, riding in Irene’s Mercedes, spy King and they stop. They are just about to warn him when the minivan crests the hill. In desperation to save the writer, Jake kneels in the road and prepares to open fire on the van. The van hits Jake, then careens into King, crushing his pelvis and peeling back his scalp.

Roland is instantly devastated and torn. To save his life and his quest, he must save the writer that has a minivan parked on his pelvis. Yet, Jake lies dying in the middle of the road. This is the boy who calls him father and to whom he has sworn an oath never to let die again.

It is immediately apparent by the concavity in Jake’s chest that his wounds are going to be his end. He asks Irene to stay with Jake and he goes to see to King. He entrances Bryan Smith and tells him to travel to the nearest place and summon help. He tries to tend to King’s wounds and notices that the pain that has so hampered him is now gone. He has passed it along to Stephen King.

He hypnotizes Stephen King who recognizes him. He tells King that he must live and that he must finish the tale. When he recovers, he is to finish the tale. King promises that he will.

Roland goes back to Jake to find the boy has died. He asks Irene if she will leave, then come back in a few hours after the emergency crews have seen to the writer, and pick him up. Irene leaves and King takes Jake into the woods to bury him. Irene returns and Roland asks for ride to New York where Roland must see to the doings of the Tet Corporation. Jake Chambers, introduced in the first book of the series and brought back in the third, has left our tale.

King arrives at the Tet Corporation offices to find Odetta’s Daddy Moses, now ancient and infirm, but with his mental faculties intact, firmly in charge, aided by Moses’s daugther. They know Roland as soon as he walks in and congratulate him on making it back to New York.

Roland learns that besides all of the investing in Microsoft and other directions provided by the preternaturally prescient Eddie, the Tet Corporation has dedicated a staff of researchers, writers, and readers dedicated to studying the works of Stephen King, searching for links between his works and clues. These researchers believe that the key to Roland’s tale lies in one of King’s works known as Insomnia. The chief antagonist in the novel, Ed Deepneau, is a distant cousin of Aaron Deepneau, Calvin Tower’s lawyer friend and the architect of the foundation of the Tet Corporation. In that book, Ed Deepneau is trying to kill, among others, a precociously talented artistic young boy named Patrick Danville.

They hand Roland a copy of Insomnia with its half red, half white dust jacket and urge him to read it to learn more of this Patrick Danville and how he might fit into Roland’s story. Finally, before Roland can take his leave of them, they present him with a gold pocket watch, engraved with a rose and a gun.

Roland returns to the lobby of the black tower that sits upon the once vacant lot that held the rose that entranced young Jake of 1977. He finds Irene Tassenbaum entranced by the rose that grows in the planter in the lobby. He asks two final favors of her. He asks her to take him to the Dixie Pig where he will travel the underground tunnels back to Castle Discordia and on to Fedic where he’ll meet Susannah, their ka tet reduced to just her, Roland, and Oy who once so talkative, has lapsed into silence upon Jake’s death. He also asks her to return to Jake’s grave and to plant a red rose there.

Roland arrives back at the Dixie Pig and Oy is able to lead him through the passages beneath New York to the door that passes into Castle Discordia. He enters Fedic to find that Ted and all of the Breakers have moved on to what other lives they can find.

Susannah and Roland head south to the Dark Tower. To get there, they must pass through frozen lands. They are followed by Mordred, who now has the strength and mental capacity of a teenager and the hate of an ancient devil.

They travel across that flat plains and eventually enter a strange and deserted town. A banner welcomes Roland and Susannah to the realm of the Crimson King. They encounter three guards there. They claim to be the ego, super ego, and id of the Crimson King. After questioning, taunting, and banter, between Roland and Susannah and the three, they go for weapons. Roland and Susannah are two quick for them and they gun down two. The illusion is shattered and all that remains is one old, feeble man. He once served as the Crimson King’s minister of state. He tells them that the Crimson King poisoned his people and fled for the Dark Tower where he now resides.

Susannah and Roland move on. Not long after their departure, Mordred shows up to eat the old man before continuing his pursuit of Roland, Susannah, and Oy.

The continue on and soon find a small, ruined town that sits at the intersection of Odd’s Lane and Tower Road. An old man name Joe Collins lives in a small house in the abandoned town whose roads are neatly plowed by an ancient robot tasked with the job eons before. Roland and Susannah stop to visit with Collins who, as it turns out, is also from New York. Once upon a time, he was a teacher, but turned to stand up comedy as a way of life.

Tired and depressed from the death all around them, they ask Collins to cheer them up with a bit of his humor. Collins starts his act which both find uproariously funny. Susannah, who has seldom heard Roland laugh, is struck by how deeply funny he finds the comedian. She herself has trouble catching her breath for laughing so hard. She finally decides she must go to the bathroom lest she pee her pants. When she gets in there, away from Collins and his comedy, she gets the feeling that Collins and his act are more than just A-material from a B-comedian gone todash.

When she gets to the bathroom, she finds a hand written note repeating the name of the street, Odd’s Lane and instructs her to think about it. Finally, she finds the note from Stephen King that tells her that Joe Collins is Dandelo. King also informs her that he has saved their lives and he considers his debt to Roland repaid.

Dandelo, who has maintained the illusion of a human living in a tidy little cottage is instead a vampire that feeds on emotions. Fear is tasty, but so is humor. Roland is laughing so hard, he can’t breath. Susannah sees Joe Collins – Dandelo – for what he really is: an evil clown, quite similar to the one that inhabits the sewers beneath Derry, Maine. Susannah, quick on the draw, puts a bullet in Dandelo’s head and saves Roland. He recovers and they explore the cottage, now not so quaint, undergoing the change from homey little abode to rickety old shack with the death of its master.

In the basement, they find a teenage boy locked in a cell. Roland instantly knows that this is Patrick Danville, also late of Derry, Maine. A boy who barely escaped a catastrophic plane crash into that city’s civic center – a plane aimed at him.

Patrick has no tongue for Dandelo took it out long ago. Through his pantomime, Roland and Susannah are able to discern that Joe Collins tortured the boy by making him laugh and inflicting pain, and sucking on the emotions that came forth.

After a respite in the Collins cottage to wait out a blizzard, they set out again on Tower Road, just miles now from the end of Roland’s life quest. They encounter the robot who cleans the roads. His name is Bill. A malfunction in his circuitry has led him to stutter, and before they moved on, the locals took to calling him Stuttering Bill – just like the leader of another ka tet who descended into the sewers of Derry and defeated It. Stuttering Bill clears Tower Road for them and they head off to meet their destiny with the forever silent Patrick Danville accompanying them.

As they travel, with Mordred in pursuit, Danville reveals his gift for quickly sketching items that predict the future and come true. One thing that Susannah figures out from Patrick is that she is not meant to see the Dark Tower and that Roland must enter alone.

Patrick draws for her a door, much like the one through which Roland brought her into his world and his tale. The door appears on the frozen plain, and after she bids adieu to the Gunslinger, she passes through and out of the tale. Susannah Dean, introduced in the second book of the series, has moved on from our narrative.

Of the original ka-tet, only Roland and Oy come within sight of the Dark Tower, spiraling into the sky on the horizon, surrounded by fields of roses. Patrick has drawn Roland a picture that shows the Dark Tower, with a white face with red eyes looking out one of the windows in the middle of the tower. The Crimson King has not yet reached the top. Roland, Patrick, and Oy push on.

Roland, finally exhausted, decides he must sleep and leaves Patrick to stand watch. Meanwhile, Mordred, now a young man, but afflicted with fever and his own exhaustion, decides to make his move. He advances on Roland, knowing that the meek and weak Patrick Danville is no threat. In his spider form, he’s just about to pounce when Oy, silent and morose since Jake’s death, makes his final stand. Oy screeches to awake the Gunslinger and attacks Mordred, deflecting him from Roland. With a few quick bullets, Roland disposes of his only biological son – a demon born of the seed of man and woman.

The fight with Mordred has left Oy impaled on a sharp tree branch. Roland goes to Oy and strokes his fur and stays with him until he dies. Oy of Mid World, who came to us in the third book, has passed from our tale.

Roland is now in the home stretch. He advances on the tower. He hears a familiar humming in the air and knows that a Sneetch – Harry Potter model – has been launched at him. He and Patrick take shelter behind a rock. From the mid-point of the Dark Tower, the Crimson King attacks. More sneetches are launched and Roland aptly shoots them from the air. But the draw of the Tower goes to work on Roland’s psyche. Soon, he will not be able to resist its call, or the siren song the Crimson King sings, and will move into the open where he will be easy prey.

Roland, who as we’ve noted, is not the most imaginative of creatures, comes up with an idea that he is sure will eliminate his adversary. He asks Patrick to draw the Crimson King in the Dark Tower, then erase the King, eliminating him from the picture and reality.

Patrick completes the drawing quickly but both he and Roland realize that it is incomplete. Some crucial element is missing. It is the crimson. Patrick and Roland concoct a crimson ink out of Patrick’s blood and rose petals. Just as Roland feels his resolve about to crumble, Patrick puts the red into the Crimson King’s eyes and begins to erase. Little by little, the Crimson King begins to disappear, screaming and howling into the end. Eventually, all that remains is the eyes which can not be erased from the paper.

Roland approaches the door to the Dark Tower and proclaims himself Roland Deschain, last of the line of Arthur Eld. He demands entry in the name of Eddie Dean, of Susannah Dean, of Jake Chambers, and of Oy. The door opens and Roland steps in.

The story then takes us to Central Park where Susannah finds herself with no idea of how she got there. It is 1986 and it is Christmas time. A children’s choir sings Christmas carols to a crowd. A man approaches her with a cup of hot chocolate and offers it to her. He says his name is Eddie and he knows somehow that he was to meet her here – he and his brother. Susannah, who has just the sketchiest notion of who Eddie is, immediately fears that Eddie’s brother’s name is Henry and is a junkie. No, Eddie tells her. His brother’s name is Jake. Jake is there with his dog, Oy. With what little memory Susannah has left fading, she asks Eddie if Ronald Reagan is President. He looks at her funny, then says no. Gary Hart is president and all is right with the world. They proclaim their love for each other even though they are not quite sure how they know each other and turn to watch the carolers.

King stops here to tell us this is where his tale ends. Where it should end. But he knows that some readers will demand to know what Roland finds in the Tower. Readers will want to know what was there that drove Roland through many worlds and drove him to shed so much blood to achieve. King warns us we won’t like it and cautions us to stop now. However, he feels duty bound to tell the final stanza of his version of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. . .

Roland begins to ascend the Dark Tower. At each floor there is an artifact of his life. His umbilical cord is the first. Chapters of his life unfold in each of the chambers as he ascends levels. He relives his battle with his teacher, Cort, and his dalliance with the whore afterward. He relives his time in Mejis and the death of the only woman he loved. He relives the Battle of Jericho Hill (an account of which we, the readers, were never made privy) where his first ka tet met its end. He relives the various encounters of life told in Stephen King’s tale.

Finally, he reaches the top floor and he enters. The door closes behind him. With horror, Roland realizes his folly. He realizes what he has forgotten. When he gets there he finds. . .

The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed. . .

First my thoughts on the book as it stands alone.

For the climax of such an incredible tale, the book was not one of King’s finest, standing alone. King fell into the trap that captures so many writers of fantasy: the long foot journey across some barren land. The trek across Empathitica was entirely too long and seemed to be there only to pad the narrative. The interlude at the Castle of the Crimson King seemed rather foolish and unnecessary. I would have liked it better had they found their clues through some exploration of the castle than what amounted to something resembling a Lewis Carroll encounter.

I was unhappy with which the ease Randall Flagg was dispatched. This supernatural being laid wastes to worlds, but was undone by an angry infant. I thought Flagg deserved a more important demise. Randall Flagg is a King fan favorite. His demise was entirely to anticlimactic.

King attached some importance to the character Dandelo. But it was just another encounter on the journey. The book really took on the feel of the literary version of the Wizard of Oz as the characters kept meeting people along the Yellow Brick Road.

Eddie, Jake, and Oy were given fitting ends and rebirths. They were heroes and died heroes deaths. As per the mythos of Roland’s world, each promised to await the other at the clearing at the end of the path when their lives ended. They did and were there to meet Susannah. With the Dark Tower still in existence and the beams that supported it intact, the infinite number of worlds that existed within it went on. The clearing for the ka tet was 1986 New York and each found the other at the clearing. It was touching, for I came to love these characters more than I’ve ever loved any character in anything I’ve ever read – including Tolkien’s Hobbits.

Many did not like the end. I loved it. The pressure on Stephen King to come up with the endings to end all endings must have been immense. Instead, he made it simple and took it back to the beginning. Back to the beginning of Roland’s tale, and if you believe in metaphors, back to the beginning of his writing career. King went full circle. The tale began at the beginning of his writing career, brought in elements from every stage of his writing career, and ended the story ended his career as a full time writer.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings still stands for me as the best told tale in the history of tales. But King’s Dark Tower ranks a close second. More knowledgeable people will correct me if I’m wrong, but never before has any writer undertaken such an expansive tale, weaving in bits and pieces of many stand alone tales into such an epic fantasy.

Reading King’s magnum opus in the manner in which I have just read it has been a special journey for me and undoubtedly the most profound reading experience of my life. Revisiting works such as ‘Salem’s Lot, The Stand, Eyes of the Dragon, etc. and reading them in a much, much larger context transformed those novels that I had read several times before and created a new reading experience in these tales I’ve enjoyed several times since I first read them more than 20 years ago. No other writer has ever done this for their entire body of work. When you consider how large King’s body of work is, the accomplishment becomes even more immense.

Reading just the seven novels of the Dark Tower is a daunting task by itself. Consider that the first book is by far the weakest and it is remarkable that the series ever got completed. King, who weaves simple tales and complex tales, was intimidated by what he started – nearly so intimidated that he did not finish. He put it off for many years. One must conclude that his near death experience gave him the nudge he needed to see Roland to his Tower and his friends to the clearing at the end of the path.

The most casual fans of reading know of the breadth of King’s work and how extensive body of work is. Unfortunately, few too many have delved into the Dark Tower and taken ALL of it in to appreciate what a genius this man really is. Yes, he has written some clunkers and has written at least one book that is so bad as to be nearly unreadable. If he published nothing else BUT the Dark Tower, he’d still be my favorite author.

Like Roland, I have journeyed through this odyssey to find the Tower. I’d put forth my journey was longer because I lived the lives of Father Callahan, of Randall Flagg, of Ted Brautigan, and Patrick Danville. I consumed more than 10,000 pages of text in getting there. Every single word on each of those pages is a treasure.

I am sure sometime in the coming years, I’ll revisit the Dark Tower series. But never again in the manner that includes the WHOLE story. That was a once in a lifetime experience and rather than try to repeat it, I’ll let it stand alone and let the writings in this blog be my journal of that wonderful experience.

Hearts in Atlantis By Stephen King

Hearts in Atlantis
By Stephen King
Copyright 1999

This book contains two short novels, a novella and two short stories.

Low Men in Yellow Coats
Ten year old Bobby Garfield has a new neighbor in the tenant that rents a room upstairs from an apartment he shares with his mother. Bobby takes an immediate liking to Ted Brautigan who introduces him to adult science fiction and literature and discusses the subjects with him as an adult.

Set in 1960, Bobby lives in a lower middle class section of a Bridgeport, Connecticut suburb. He pals around with two friends, John Sullivan (known to all as Sully John or S.J.) and Carol Gerber. Sully John is his pal, but Bobby develops a strong affection for Carol, with whom he shares a first kiss while at rest on the top of the Ferris wheel.

Ted surreptitiously hires Bobby to be his lookout. He wants Bobby to watch for lost animal posters and oddly drawn hopscotch patterns. These, he tells Bobby, are signs that the men who are looking for him are near. He says that Bobby will recognize these men because neither they, their strange yellow coats, or gaudy cars belong in the neighborhood – or any neighborhood. Bobby and Ted have to be secretive because Bobby’s mom is a suspicious, greedy woman, bitter about being widowed by a gambler who could not resist betting on an inside straight.

Bobby’s mother decides to attend a real estate seminar with her boss and some of his colleagues. Without any other option, she leaves Bobby in the care of Ted Brautigan. After passing a couple pleasant days in Ted’s room talking about books and drinking root beer, Ted tells Bobby that they must go to a seedy part of Bridgeport so Ted can place some bets. He needs to raise getaway funds because the Low Men know he is in the area.

Bobby and Ted make their trip to Bridgeport. While Ted is in the bar office placing bets, a server recognizes Bobby because of his resemblance to his father. Bobby learns that, far from being a lout, his father was a man who would “give you the shirt off his back and never bought a drink for a drunk.”

Ted and Bobby return to their home and await the results of the fight upon which Ted has placed his bet. Bobby goes to the park and finds Carol beaten badly by some private school kids that have picked on them all summer. Her shoulder is dislocated. Bobby scoops her up and takes her back to Ted who says he can put her shoulder right.

Just as Ted has finished putting Carol’s shoulder back, Bobby’s mom returns from her trip. She arrives with her face and body bruised and beaten. Bobby, gifted with a little extra insight for having been in contact with the magical Ted, surmises right away that his mother has been beaten (and probably raped) by her boss and other men.

Bobby’s mom is enraged when she walks in the door and finds a bruised and beaten Carol Gerber sitting on the lap of the elderly gentleman to whom she has entrusted her son. Full of rage at men from her own unpleasant encounter, she immediately jumps to the prurient conclusion that Ted has abused or raped Carol. Bobby and Carol protest that Ted had healed Carol, not hurt her. Not to be dissuaded from her rage, Bobby’s mother tells Ted that if he can get gone from the house in the time it takes her to walk Carol home, she won’t call the police. Ted promises to get gone.

On his way home from the park the next day, Bobby spots a lost pet poster that names Brautigan and provides a strange number to call. Bobby calls the number where an alien voice tells him to stay out of the affair. Knowing that he Low Men are on to Ted, he gets a cab and heads for the bar in Bridgeport to intercept Ted who will be going there to collect on his bet.

Just as Bobby finds Ted, the Low Men find them. Cornered in an alley, Ted promises to go peacefully if Bobby is let go. The Low Men have no interest in Bobby, who lacks Ted’s special talents, so they readily agree. Ted tells Bobby to collect the winnings and then go on with this life. He promises Bobby a post card from time to time if he is ever able to send one.

Bobby returns home to have his suspicions confirmed: his own mother called the number on the poster to turn in Ted Brautigan and collect the reward.

The denouement of the story is the profound change that comes over the once innocent, likable kid that was Bobby. He turns over the money he collected on Ted’s bet to his mother to do with as she pleased since it was money that seemed to make her happy. He starts to feel full of angst and rage. He beats one of the kids who beat up Carol, using a baseball bat. He starts smoking, drinking, and shoplifting. The kid who was so likable and well read has been hardened into a mean and dishonest adolescent.

His relationships with his two closest pals also falls apart. Sully John spent a large part of the summer away at camp. He came back with a new set of friends that did not include Bobby. He and Carol also drifted apart as they developed separate interests. Both of his former chums know that Bobby has changed dramatically – for the worse.

Bobby encounters Carol one day in the park, each of them headed for separate destinations – and destinies. Bobby tells her that he and his mother are moving to Massachusetts and hands her his new address. She scurries away, telling him that she must get home to make salad for dinner. As they part, Bobby screams, "I love you!"

Bobby moves on to Massachusetts and a new school where he soon gets into trouble. He is sent to reform school twice. Meanwhile, his mother has prospered in her real estate venture and is happy except for her only son. As the story winds down, his mom comments that between the two of them, they have really messed up their lives.

The story ends with Bobby’s mom telling him he has mail. Figuring it to be one of Carol’s increasingly infrequent letters, he rushes to open it. It is indeed a letter from Carol, but it is curt and to the point. Ted had mailed Bobby a message and wanted her to pass it along. Bobby opens the separate envelope hoping to find a post card. Instead, out fall rose petals. Bobby knows that Ted has once again escaped his prison and is roaming some other world.

This is the only story in the book that touches upon the Dark Tower story. Ted Brautigan is a breaker, just like the kid from Black House. He has escaped his prison beneath the Dark Tower and made his way into our world.

The Low Men are called this because, as we learned in Insomnia, there are many levels to the tower. These inhabitants of the lower levels are the drones for the power that is the Crimson King.

The rose petals we know came from the field of deeply rich red roses that grows all around the Dark Tower.

Low Men in Yellow Coats did not move the Dark Tower saga forward in any way. It drew a character from that story, brought him into our world, and made him the subject of the story. This book was published in 1999 – two years after the last Dark Tower book. It provided just a little taste to whet the appetites of fans of the story. It would be our introduction to the concept of breakers – a concept fully fleshed out in Black House which was published five years later.

Hearts in Atlantis
The title story of the collection tells of a young college freshman at the University of Maine and his formative first year at the university. The story is set against the backdrop of the radicalization of the peace movement as war and anti-war events unfolded in 1966.

Peter Riley compares his college to the lost continent of Atlantis because he sees all of the people important to him slowly sinking into an ocean where they will drown. Their anchor: the game of Hearts. Most of the residents of his dormitory are hooked on playing the game and neglect their studies in pursuit of “the bitch” which in Hearts is the Queen of Spades. While they neglect their studies, the fear of losing financial aide, dropping out, and upgrading to A-1 draft status is in the back of their minds, but they can’t quit playing.

Peripheral to this story is Carol Gerber, who is a student at the University of Maine and holds a work-study job in the school cafeteria as a dishwasher – a job she shares with Riley.

They fall in love. Carol has broken it off with her boyfriend, Sully John, while Peter has put off telling his high school flame back home that he has fallen in love with a college student.

Carol shows Peter a photograph of herself, Bobby Garfield, and Sully John when they were kids. She tells him the story about how, on the hottest day of the year, Bobby Garfield had snatched her up off the ground and run uphill to his home to get her assistance. She tells him it was the greatest act of kindness she’d ever had done on her behalf. She hints that something bad happened to Bobby in Vietnam.

While Peter’s obsession with Hearts continues to wreak havoc on Peter’s academic standing, Carol becomes increasingly radicalized by the anti-war movement. She is photographed at a protest for a newspaper and is fearful of what her parents will find out about her activities. When Carol decides to drop out of school, Peter is devastated. They make love one time, then she leaves the school with a note that says their lovemaking should serve as a goodbye and implores him to please not try to get in touch with her.

As the Hearts games march on, the war in Vietnam starts to become a stark reality rather than a movie playing out on television. They also become aware of the growing anti-war movement. A hardcore anti-war activist, Stokely Jones, who walks on crutches and mutters the phrase “rip-rip” obsessively as he crutches his way across campus introduces them to the peace symbol that he displays, painted on the back of his army fatigue jacket. They have little idea what the symbol really stands for, but they like it, so Peter and his buddy Skip start wearing it on their shirts.

One snowy night, an alarm is raised on campus for someone has vandalized one of the buildings. Spray painted on the building is an obscenity directed at President Johnson and a demand for an end to the Vietnam War. Peter and his friends are among the first to arrive and observe the crutch marks in the snow and know who defaced the building.

The story climaxes as Peter is dealt the best Hearts hand he’s ever been dealt. He prepares to “shoot the moon” when someone notices Stokely Jones crutching his way across campus at a feverish pace. The Hearts game is ignored as everybody turns to watch for the inevitable moment when Jones will slip on the ice and fall down. When it happens, everybody falls into fits of unstoppable laughter.

It occurs to a few of them, even as they are laughing, the Jones has fallen into a stream and could drown and would certainly freeze to death. The men on the floor abandon their card game to rescue Stokely Jones from certain death. They carry him to the infirmary where he is admitted with pneumonia. Surprisingly, even in his delirium, Jones is bitter about having been rescued.

Days later, their floor proctor and the dean interrupt their card game to inform them that Stokely Jones is the culprit who vandalized school property. Their evidence: Jones displays that symbol “invented by the Russians,” their floor proctor informs them, on his jacket.

In a sobering moment for all of these young men, the rivalries and petty disputes are put aside and they come together to defend Jones, whom none of them liked. Each claimed to display the peace symbol on some garment long before the vandalism. The evidence becomes to soft for the accusation to stand and Jones is off the hook.

That ordeal sobers Peter and his friend Skip who resolve to try to salvage their academic careers. They avoid the Hearts table, hire tutors, study at all hours, and plead for mercy with their professors. In the end, they get the grades and stay in school. Most of their floormates were not so fortunate. Many went to Vietnam.

Just before Christmas break, Peter receives a package from Carol. It contains a card, a letter, and a news clipping. The clip is a picture of Carol at an anti-war rally, with blood running down her forehead. The letter tells him that she misses him, but they are two trains that passed each other going different directions. Peter weeps silently for his lost love.

This story, written a first person narrative told 30 years after the events, hints that bad things are in store for Carol and Carol has a few bad deeds of her own in store for others.

This story was an incredibly moving tale. I normally feel my gorge rise when I hear a graying ponytail wax nostalgic about the 60s. However, this story made me nostalgic for an era I can’t even remember.

King does not wax nostalgic about the 60s or the anti-war movement. The story is driven by Peter’s academic desperation and his obsession with Hearts. The peace symbol and anti-war protests are events that influence the characters and the story. But the story blissfully, does not revolve around the anti-war movement.

King questions different elements of the anti-war movement in his tale. Jones is not grateful, but angry, for his dorm mates defending him by saying they also displayed the peace symbol. Jones says they STOLE it from him. This is an allegory for what weakened the peace movement. It was not organized and no one was in charge. Certain leaders claimed “peace” and the symbol that went with it, but none established primacy or leadership. Many peace groups were rivals and there was much infighting over who would lead the movement and speak for the movement. We see something similar happening in today’s quasi-populist uprising known as “The Tea Party.”

He also questions the actions carried out in the name of peace. We know that Carol will become so radicalized that she participates in a bombing that kills chemistry students. Similar events were perpetrated by the Weathermen Underground, an anti-war movement whose goal was to stop the war by toppling the current political power structure.

King saves himself by not injecting his politics into the story. Stephen King is an on the record, honest to gosh, unrepentant liberal. On occasion, his politics have found their way into his fictional writing, always to the detriment of the story. Here, telling a story against a backdrop of political and social divisiveness, King dismisses politics entirely from his narrative. For that, we should be grateful. Politics would have only ruined this story.

There is no supernatural element to this story. It is purely mainstream fiction. Like most of King’s mainstream works, it ranks among his best.

Blind Willie
Bill Shearman, Vietnam veteran and the man who was once a boy who held a little girl in a little park in a little Bridgeport suburb so a big boy could beat her, lives a triple life. Every day, he departs his home as Bill Shearman, operator of a one man land speculation business. He arrives at that office, which is a dummy company. He drops off his business accoutrements, then goes to another office – that of a heating and cooling company. There, he changes into an HVAC tech named Willie Sherman. He takes with him a case that contains a third set of clothing and some other items to a Manhattan Hotel where, in a public bathroom, he changes into Blind Willie, homeless Vietnam veteran. He then goes about his day begging.

His take is lucrative and he does it to support himself. He also does it as an act of penance for what he did to that little girl in Bridgeport and for stealing Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove with the Alvin Dark autograph.

Shearman served as an officer in Vietnam and he served with none other than his childhood nemesis, Sully John. When John is hit by enemy fire, it is Bill Shearman who rescues him.

Shearman has also followed through newsclips, the life of Vietnam radical and federal fugitive, Carol Gerber.

Blind Willie’s day ends when his sight starts to return. He runs his wardrobe marathon in reverse and takes the train home each day to his loving wife.

Willie Shearman lives a triple life, a mental legacy of a playground fight and a tour of duty in Vietnam. He is not a happy man, but he feels good about the penance he is paying by living out the life of a beggar.

Why We’re in Vietnam
John Sullivan, Vietnam veteran and successful Chevrolet dealer, goes to the funeral of a man with whom he served in Vietnam. There, he finds his old, “new lieutenant” who took over when the unit's first lieutenant was killed in a fire fight. They talk about the events that unfolded around them there and the effect they have on them today.

Sully John is haunted by the ghost of a young Vietnamese mother who was slaughtered by a member of his unit. Her visage appears to him from time to time, never speaking never acting. Sully John lives with a horrific memory of his unit invading a village and members of his unit bent upon killing whatever was there. A private named Malefant, who had flunked out of the University of Maine because of his obsession with Hearts, gets the killing underway when he stabs this unarmed woman repeatedly with a bayonet. The lieutenant approves the execution of one of the men bent on killing. The death under friendly fire sobers everybody up. Another My Lai is avoided.

Sully John and the lieutenant discuss the war’s effect on their generation and how things might have been different. Sully John leaves the discussion that his generation was among the most selfish in history and missed an opportunity lying before them to make deep, meaningful changes in American society.

On his way home from the funeral, Sully John gets stuck in traffic. As he waits at a standstill, the mama san appears in his car. Suddenly, furniture and home appliances begin to fall from the air. Sully John and other people flee from the scene and are crushed by refrigerators, couches, and curio cabinets. Mama san utters her only words she has ever spoken as she beckons John to her. He goes. As he approaches her, a leather baseball glove falls to the ground. He sees the Alvin Dark autograph and the name inscribed on the thumb.

The story ends as the lieutenant sits at his kitchen table, reading a newspaper article about how his war buddy died of a heart attack while stuck in traffic.

The story draws its title from a novel of the Vietnam era by Norman Mailer.

Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling
Bobby Sullivan returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of his childhood buddy. After the funeral, he makes the rounds of the old neighborhood, including his old house and the park where he, Carol, and Sully John had played as kids. He has brought with him a radio and a package. He tunes in the radio to an oldies station and opens the package. It contains an Alvin Dark autograph ball glove.

As Bobby sits and listens to the radio, a woman approaches him. He immediately recognizes Carol, his first love. She says she’s not Carol. Her name is Denise Schoonover. She, too, was there to see their old friend into the ground.

He, bald, she gray, sit and discuss their lives 30 years before and the course their lives took. Carol says her former life is dead to her. She was seduced by a man who seduced young people and made them do horrible things. She has put that past behind her. She has moved on.

Bobby has moved on from a life of crime to something more respectable, working as a carpenter. He has a wife and kids and a home. The book ends with them looking at the package that had arrived for Bobby through Sully John’s estate. It contained the glove, which Carol knew Willie Shearman had stolen because she’d seen him using it later. Stuffed in the glove was the title page of Lord of the Flies which is one of the books Bobby was turned on to by Ted Brautigan. Inscribed on that page was a heart with an arrow through it, a plus sign, a peace symbol, and equal sign followed by the word information – an inside reminder to Carol of the love she lost at the University of Maine. Bobby is convinced Ted mailed the package to bring him home and together one last time, their broken ka-tet brought full circle.

Hearts In Atlantis is one of Stephen King’s more critically acclaimed novels. Perhaps critics missed the genre references in the opening story. But they are correct to herald it. I was moved by the story and its characters.

As I stated earlier, I can’t stand to listen to hippies wax nostalgic about the 60s. I’ve read enough and studied enough and examined the decade without romantic attachment. I’m much happier to have grown up in the 1980s and Reagan’s America.

However, King does not romanticize. Each of his characters emerges from the decade broken somehow. King is perhaps too hard on his generation when, as the novel winds down, he criticizes them for trading peace and love for junk bonds and cocaine. As much as I used to enjoy occasionally baiting my late mother into an argument about how her generation was the most spoiled in history, the Baby Boomers deserve credit for bringing about positive cultural, political, and social change.

After they were done throwing a fit over Vietnam, it was those same Boomers who threw a fit over Watergate and Richard Nixon. While I am a Nixon admirer for his intellect and political instincts, I have to concede that Watergate and Nixon being forced from office cleaned up politics. It may not seem so to the casual viewer, but politics and government is cleaner today because of Watergate.

They also made it ok to be opposed to war. I have supported every military venture this nation has entered into since the end of the Vietnam War, but I shudder to think what our nation would be like were it not for pacifists and the anti war movement that comes to the fore with every military engagement. While we should, as a nation, not always heed their advice, we should listen to them, for often, they are the conscience of a nation prone to working itself into nationalistic frenzy when attacked or antagonized by another nation.

King is right to not spare his generation’s most radical members in his story. The Weathermen Underground is one of the most despicable groups ever to form in the United States – and it is clearly the Weathermen Underground that King has in mind when he recounts Carol’s life journey. Perhaps their was a touch of the Symbionese Liberation Army in there, too. But as much as the sixties were about peace and love on the home front, there was as much disorder and harm created by the movement.

Certainly, we can interpret the demise of John Sullivan as the death of the Age of Aquarius as he is bombarded with household furnishings and other possessions that the Baby Boomers sought to acquire as they grew up and abandoned their ideals.

As much as Ray Bradbury chronicled pre-depression America with his tales of Greentown, IL, Stephen King is a chronicler of his generation with books such as this and It which masks a tale of growing up American in the 1950s with a horror story. Bradbury broke the barrier that has held back three generations of genre fiction writers from being recognized as “serious” writers with something important to contribute to literature. Perhaps King will one day get his due. With this novel, he certainly earned it.