The Wind Through the Keyhole By Stephen King

The Wind Through the Keyhole
By Stephen King
Copyright 2012


Stephen King revisits the Ka-Tet of Roland of Gilead for a story within a story, within a story. Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy have left Lud in ruins. Blaine the Mono has met his doom. They are once again following the path of the Beam en route to the Dark Tower.

Along the way, they meet an old ferryman who invites them to sup with him. As they dine, Roland notes the peculiar weather and tells the old man he suspects a storm – a rare killer storm called a starkblast. Starkblasts are like the opposite of the Santa Ana winds. In Roland’s world, unseasonably hot weather is sometimes followed by killer cold winds. The cold and the wind come on so suddenly they trap people outside and they freeze in their tracks. Trees freeze instantly and explode. One does not stay outside in a Starkblast.

The ferryman agrees to take Roland and his ka-tet across the river where they can seek shelter in an abandoned village before they storm. They safely cross the river and find an old stone building that appears sturdy enough to survive the storm. They gather firewood and settle in. The storm hits and they gather around the fire to try to stay warm. To pass the time, Roland agrees to tell the group another story of his youth.

Shortly after the death of Roland’s mother (at Roland’s hand), his father, a Gunslinger from the direct line of Arthur Eld, summons him to his study. He tells Roland he has a mission for him in a barony town of Debaria. There, several residents have been killed by a “Skin Man” which is a human who changes shape into various vicious animals to kill them. Roland’s father wants Roland and his friend Jamie to identify and bring this evil being to justice.

The pair of newly minted gunslingers, still in their teens, arrive in Dabaria and meet the local sheriff, an old friend of Roland’s father. He tells all that he knows about the Skin Man attacks. More than two dozen have died. All were slaughtered viciously. Whole families have been torn to pieces and the city, whose chief commerce is a salt mine, is frightened.

During their second night in town, the Skin Man hits again. A ranch just outside of town is the scene of the slaughter and the entire family and all of their hands and animals have been killed. The tracks of a giant bear are found at the scene. Jamie notices that the tracks slowly turn back into human form as they leave the ranch, and the killer left on a horse that was waiting for him, indicating the Skin Man is not the innocent victim of a curse. He knows who and what he is and plans his attacks.

When the Gunslingers and the sheriff’s men return to the ranch, Roland hears movement in the tack shed. He investigates and finds a small boy hiding under saddle blankets. He is the lone survivor of the Skin Man’s latest foray. This boy named Bill saw the creature transform from animal to human. He didn’t see the face, but he saw the tattooed ring around the man’s ankle. The tattoo had a white defect or scar in it.

Roland takes Bill back to town. The boy is distraught because his father and everyone he knows was slaughtered at the ranch. He’s also scared because Roland tells him he is going to identify the Skin Man for him.

Roland locks the boy in jail (to keep him safe) and then sees to the fashioning a silver bullet – the only device that can kill a Skin Man.

Upon Roland’s return, he tells Bill a story told to him by his mother when he was a child. This is the story within the story and takes up approximately half the book.

Tim Ross lives with his mother and father in a logging town. His father, Big Ross and his business partner, Bern Kells make a comfortable living harvesting ironwood trees from the forest nearby.

But Big Ross meets with misfortune. He is attacked by a dragon and incinerated into oblivion. His wife and small child are left to fend for themselves.

Bern Kells, a widower and former drunken brawler, comes to call on Tim’s mother, asking for her hand in marriage. Seeing no other way to makes ends meet and fearing the Barony’s tax collector who will seize their home when they can’t pay, she says yes. Bern Kell and Tim’s mother are wed.

Shortly after they are married, Bern Kells returns to his cups. He comes home drunk and beats Tim’s mother. He can’t find a business partner to help him harvest ironwood because nobody wants to be associated with him. Tim is miserable and fearful for his mother.

On the appointed day, the tax collector bearing the title, the Covenant Man, comes to call. He’s a wicked, evil man. He takes Kells’ coin and summons Tim to his horse for a private conversation. The Covenant Man tells him to meet him in the forest that night to hear an interesting tale. He slips into Tim’s hand a magic key that will open any lock, but will work just once. Tim uses it to open his stepfather’s footlocker. There, Tim finds his father’s lucky coin – a coin that should have been destroyed had his father really been attacked by a dragon.

Wanting more information on how Bern acquired his father's lucky coin, Tim sneaks out and travels into the forest. He finds the Covenant Man camped out alongside the road. The Covenant Man prepares a bowl of stew for Tim, then tells him to go to the stream and get water. When Tim does, he finds the body of his father, submerged in the stream. The Covenant Man tells Tim to retrieve his father’s hatchet from the body and carry it home with him.

Tim returns home to find that Kells has beaten his mother badly. She is blind and bedridden. Tim’s school teacher is there to tend his mother and the men of the town have been dispatched to find Kells and bring him to justice and to retrieve Big Ross’ body. As he sleeps that night, The Covenant Man enters Tim’s dreams and tells him to find him in the forest. He will supply Tim with the magic he needs to help his mother.

Tim takes off for the forest, packing a gun provided to him by his teacher. Once deep into the forest, he encounters a fairy who seems to guide him. But the fairy is evil and duplicitous and guides him into a swamp. There, he finds a real dragon who rises from the water and spews fire. Tim begs for his life and with a reproachful look, the dragon settles back into her nest. He then finds some “muties” in the swamp who help him by providing him with a device to help him find his way. The device is a product of the ever helpful North Central Positronics Corp.

The device guides Tim to a Dogan (which King fans will recognize as one of North Central Positronics’ computer centers) deep in the forest. Before self destructing, the device warns Tim that a storm is coming; a starkblast just like the one Roland and his ka-tet are enduring. Resting near the Dogan is a tiger in a cage.

Tim desperately tries to get into the Quonset hut that is the Dogan, but can’t. The door is locked. Attached to the lock is a note from the Covenant Man telling him that his salvation lies inside the tiger’s cage. To get it, he will have to open the tiger cage, and the tiger is hungry, having been penned for a long time.

Knowing that he will die in the starkblast, Tim risks opening the cage. The tiger steps out and settles peacefully on the ground, watching Tim. Inside Tim finds a small napkin. Terrified of the approaching storm, Tim unfolds the napkin which is magical. It continues to unfold until it forms a large tarp. Tim goes to the leeward side of the Dogan to shelter himself from the wind and covers himself with the tarp, hoping it is enough shelter. He invites the tiger to join him. Together, Tim and the Tiger ride out the starkblast under the protection of the magical tarp.

After the storm is over, Tim and the tiger climb from beneath their magical shelter. The Tiger then transforms himself into a man and proclaims that he is Maerlyn, the white wizard. He says he was imprisoned in the cage by the Covenant Man when he caught Maerlyn drunk one evening. For rescuing him, the tiger instructs him on how to use some magical eye drops to save his mother’s sight. Tim uses the tarp as a magic carpet and returns home.

His mother is still blind, but overjoyed to see him. Tim puts the drops in her eyes and restores his sight. As instructed by the tiger, he gives his father’s hatchet to his mother. He then goes downstairs to awaken his teacher who is sleeping in a chair.

When he gets downstairs, he tries to wake his teacher and she won’t wake up. He then notices that that her dress is soaked in blood and that her throat has been cut. Just has he makes these observations, he is grabbed from behind by the throat. His stepfather is strangling him. Just as he’s about to pass out, the hands release him. He looks up to find that his mother has planted the hatchet in the back of Kells’ head.

With Bern Kells dead, Tim and his mother live happily ever after.

Roland concludes telling his tale to young Bill and tells him to rest. Tomorrow will be a big day when the suspects are marched before him so he can identify the Skin Man.

The next day, the salt miners are rounded up, relieved of their boots, and made to parade through the jail. The tattoo, Roland has learned is somewhat common among the miners for it is an identifying mark of a local prison. Several of the miners bear the tattoo, but only one has the telltale scar deforming it.

The miners parade through, one by one as the terrified Bill watches from the safety of his cell. Finally, he sees the miner with the scar and points him out. Once identified, the miner transforms into a giant snake and strikes, killing two of the sheriff’s deputies. Roland, equipped with his enchanted bullet, shoots and kills the Skin Man.

Roland and Jamie receive the thanks of the sheriff and leave town. On the way out, they stop at a small village called Serenity. It is there that his mother sojourned to try to regain her sanity after being seduced by her husband’s wizard, Marten. He drops Bill off with the proprietor of a brothel who has a gift for Roland. She places in his hand an envelope that contains a letter written by his mother. In it, she apologizes to him for allowing herself to be seduced by Martin and seems to predict that she will die by Roland’s hand. She forgives him for what she knows he will do.

There, Roland concludes his tale. The ka-tet pack up their belongings and resume their journey, headed toward Calla Bryn Sturgis where they will meet Andy the Robot, Father Callahan, and the Wolves of the Calla.

Those looking for depth to be added to Roland’s character through another chapter of his early life won’t find it in this story. It adds nothing to Roland’s backstory. I think we were supposed to feel some heartwarming catharsis on Roland’s behalf when he received the letter from his mother, but that part of the story was really under written. It could have been told with greater depth.

Both stories contained in Roland’s narrative were straightforward tales with no subplots. There were no red herrings or anything to throw us off the trail of the Skin Man. Roland and Jamie identified the suspect early on as one of the salt miners and a salt miner it was. There were no conflicts or subplots in that part of the story.

The second story was told with the same narrative voice as The Eyes of the Dragon. In that story, I thought that King was trying to imitate Tolkien’s style of childish story telling he employed in The Hobbit. As with the other story, it was a linear tale with nary a subplot or red herring. The reader is again allowed the pleasure of experiencing King’s Dark Man as the Covenant Man identifies himself as Randall Flagg by initialing his note to Tim with “R.F.”

Fans of Roland and the Dark Tower will no doubt enjoy a new edition to King’s expansive tale of a world encompassing all worlds. King classifies the book as “Dark Tower, book 4.5” to be shelved between Wizard and Glass (which contains extensive Roland backstory) and Wolves of the Calla which is the book that starts the story toward its climax.

Were this story read in order with the other books, I think it would have been an annoying distraction. Read on its own, it’s a fun, stand alone story of Roland telling story within a story.

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.

The Dark Tower, Book VI The Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower, Book VI
The Song of Susannah
By Stephen King

The Song of Susannah picks up right where The Wolves of the Calla ends. The battle against the wolves is fought and won. The mourning for the dead and the celebration of victory has commenced.

But for Roland and his ka-tet, no larger by one with the addition of Father Donald Callahan, there is no time for celebration. Susannah, now fully possessed by the mysterious Mia, Daughter of None, has gone Todash through the doorway and has taken its key, the orb known as Black 13 with her, effectively locking the door behind her.

A religious sect in Calla Bryn Sturgis known as The Manni, assure Roland they can employ their powers to open the door and send Roland and his crew to where they need to go. They have two different immediate goals in two different worlds that need to be accomplished in short order. First, they must rescue Susannah. Second, they must secure ownership of the vacant lot in New York City to save it from the Sombra Corporation who wants to acquire it and destroy the rose that grows there – a flower upon which all of the worlds exist.

Roland and his crew pass through the door and enter two different worlds. Roland and Eddie end up in Maine 1977 where Calvin Tower, the hoarder of rare books and his friend Aaron Deepneau are hiding from Enrico Balazar, New York gangster and agent of the Sombra Corporation. Their goal is to secure ownership of that lot.

Father Callahan and Jake Chambers, along with their billy bumbler, Oy, are transported to New York, 1999 to find and save Susannah.

The tale picks up the story of Susannah, kidnapped in her own body by Mia. She appears from no where in the middle of 2nd Ave. in New York where a dark, towering building has been erected on that vacant lot. Still, the magic exists. Susannah can feel it and hear its song.

While in New York, the black Susannah sprouts a pair of white legs. This does not go unobserved by a New York businesswoman who Mia immediately robs of her shoes. They travel to a nearby park to rest and Mia and Susannah (with Detta Walker listening intently) get acquainted.

Mia explains her nature and how she came to be with child. She is the demon with whom Roland engaged in coitus to save young Jake at the Way Station in The Gunslinger. Roland delivered his seed to her. She then became the male demon Susannah (with help from her Detta personality) screwed whilst Roland and Eddie acted as midwife in Jake's rebirth into Roland’s world. While her physical being does not show it, Susannah is the carrier of Roland’s child – a child whose birth may mean the end of existence for all of the worlds of the Dark Tower.

Susannah finds in the bag that contains Black 13, a small charm in the shape of a turtle. As we learned earlier, the Turtle is one of the guardians of the Beams that support the Dark Tower. Using this talisman, Susannah is able to charm a foreign diplomat out of cash and convince him to book them a room in a hotel. There, Mia must wait for a phone call from her benefactor, Richard Sayre, with whom she struck a deal.

Susannah agreed to become mortal in exchange for being allowed to have a child. Sayre, who may be Walter, aka Randall Flagg, is to call her and tell her where to go when the time comes for delivery. Sayre has promised her that she will be allowed to raise her “chap.” More than anything, Mia wants to have her baby.

To converse properly, Mia transports them to an ancient, abandoned castle known as Castle Discordia in a dead city once known as Fedic. It was here that Susannah first lived as a mortal and was on hand to watch as the populations succumbed to the Red Death. It is also the abode of the wolves who stole the children of Calla Bryn Sturgis. As Mia tells her tale, Susannah tries to convince her that she is being duped by Sayre and the Crimson King who only want the child and plan to dispose of Mia when the child is born. Mia, now stuck with the deal, refuses to listen.

As they talk, a phone rings, bringing them back to the hotel room. Susannah is imprisoned in Mia’s mind and listens as Sayre tells her she must report to a banquet hall known as the Dixie Pig on Lexington Ave. where she is to have her baby.

Roland and Eddie arrive in a small, Maine town and are immediately ambushed by Balazar’s goons. While inhabiting Susannah’s body, Mia was privy to all of their conversations and plans which she revealed to the agents of the Crimson King. Despite overwhelming odds, Eddie and Roland are able to shoot their way out of the situation and escape across a lake in boat, guided by a sympathetic local curious about the two men.

When they arrive at the man’s cabin, he immediately inquires if they are “walk-ins.” Walk-Ins are a new phenomena in Maine, dismissed by serious people but, like UFOs, witnessed by many. Strange people and beings arrive unannounced, seemingly out of nowhere in this part of Maine. Their benefactor tells them that many of the more superstitious ascribe this phenomena to the arrival of a young, up and coming writer of horror stories who has taken up residence in nearby Lovelle, Maine. This writer is none other than the author of ‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King.

Eddie and Roland determine that they must visit sai King, for they have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Father Callahan isn’t the only person who might be a contrivance of writer King’s fictional prose. But first, they must locate Mr. Tower and secure ownership of the Manhattan vacant lot.

Finding Tower proves to be easy since, despite Eddie’s strong admonition to him to remain secluded, he has not done so. He has spent his days going from antique store to flea market to acquire rare books. After much haranguing and arguing with Tower, they are finally able to convince him to hand over ownership of the lot. Deepneau, a retired lawyer, draws up the agreement and it is inked. The deal is done. Eddie and Roland set off for Lovell to find Stephen King and get some answers and to warn him that he himself might be in danger because his storytelling represents a threat to the Crimson King.

They arrive at the King residence and startle the young writer who, despite an imagination that has conjured many supernatural occurrences, can not wrap his brain around one actually happening to him. He does not know Eddie, but he knows Roland. King tells Roland that he is a character in a book he wrote in college, but gave up on because he thought the story was too big and grand for him to tell successfully.

Roland hypnotizes King, and tells him he will not remember their visit and to resume writing his tale of the Dark Tower. He also plants a few plot suggestions in the author’s head he hopes will help him in his quest. He tells King that, from now on, every tale he writes will somehow be linked to the Dark Tower.

Callahan, Jake, and Oy arrive in New York, 1977 at the same destination as Susannah. They are able to find her hotel room and secure the Black 13 so that its evil might not be used against the rose that now dwells in an indoor garden of newly erected obsidian edifice that was a vacant lot in 1977. They set out for the Dixie Pig to rescue Susannah.

Mia arrives at the Dixie Pig and finds many low level vampires and Low Men (and women) feasting there, celebrating the imminent birth of their deity’s agent and possible heir. Mia now knows that she is never to possess her child. Sayre is there to greet her and takes her back to a birthing room to prepare her for delivery. She releases Susannah’s mind and body and they separate. Mia is put into birthing stirrups and Susannah is secured to a bed nearby. The labor starts. Outside, Father Callahan and young Jake prepare to enter. This is where the sixth leg of King’s long saga ends.

However, King is not quite done with his book. He includes pages from his own (fictional) journal that describes events from his life (based on reality) as he prepared to write each new chapter of the Dark Tower series. We learn of his struggles with alcohol and drugs and we learn how Roland’s unfinished tale bedeviled him. At times, he fears and loathes it, unsure of his ability to finish it. When he finally starts to write, he finds that picking up the tale is like finding old friends. As King is pondering how to get the tale going again, years after the publication of Wizard and Glass, he meets with an unfortunate accident. The famous and most prolific horror writer of all time is hit and killed as he walked along a rural Maine highway.

King kicks his story into overdrive in The Song of Susannah. The two previous books, Wizard and Glass and The Wolves of the Calla, were independent tales that advanced the plot some, but also stood as stand alone stories. This book starts the headlong rush to the end. There are no subplots. Every action taken by the characters drives them closer to their final goal of entering the Dark Tower and Roland’s goal of reaching its top. Of all the books to date, this one is the fastest paced.

As I noted earlier, it might seem hackneyed and stilted to make the later part of his magnum opus autobiographical. It would certainly be easy to do it badly and exceptionally difficult to do well. King pulls it off grandly! When I read this book for the first time upon its publication in 2004, I was riveted by this part of the story. It became abundantly clear that the Dark Tower meant more to King than just another (albeit his longest) tale. The Dark Tower was his life’s work and as it was such a large part of his life, he felt he must become part of its life.

That King was dramatically affected by his near fatal accident there can be no doubt. It brought about a marked change in his writing. The taste of his own mortality made characters in forthcoming novels such as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key much frailer than his earlier heroes. The accident and its painful recovery were most evident in his screenplay for the television miniseries Kingdom Hospital.

One can not help but believe, after reading King’s writings on himself in the end of this book, that it was this brush with death that compelled him to finish the tale. As he notes, he was constantly bothered throughout his career of cranking out a bestselling novel once a year, by the unfinished business and unresolved plot of his overarching Dark Tower story. Starting with The Wolves of the Calla, King picked up Roland’s tale and did not stop writing until it was done.

It really isn’t possible to evaluate or rate this book standing alone because, more than any other segment of the story, this one is but a chapter in a longer tale. The Gunslinger was a mere introduction to Roland and his quest. The Drawing of the Three was a vehicle to introduce new characters and tell their stories. The Waste Lands set the stage for the quest. Wizard and Glass and The Wolves of the Calla advanced the quest little, but told their own stories. The Song of Susannah is but the first half of the final push. The final chapter of the tale is yet to be told in the final book in the series entitled, The Dark Tower. There, King will wrap up almost 40 years of storytelling.

The Dark Tower Book 5: The Wolves of the Calla

The Dark Tower Book 5: The Wolves of the Calla
By Stephen King
Copyright 2003

It had been six years since the publication of the last Dark Tower novel, Wizard and Glass. Instead of picking up where we left off with our ka-tet headed west, we instead start the next chapter of our tale in Calla Bryn Sturgis, a farming community far from the center of anything.

In Calla Bryn Sturgis, children are almost always born as twins. Once every 23 years or so, the wolves come from neighboring Thunderclap to take one of every pair. Resistance is met with swift and harsh retribution. The children are taken and disappear for weeks. They are then returned, via train, “roont” (ruined) – completely lacking in intellect and willpower. They are little more than mildly sentient animals.

The people of Calla Bryn Sturgis receive a warning from their resident robot, Andy, that the time of the wolves is near. The ranchers and farmers of the town brace themselves for parents’ worst nightmare. However, their spiritual leader, none other than Father Callahan – late of Jerusalem’s Lot – tells them that Gunslingers approach from the east and may be of service.

The ka-tet is indeed on the road west, but they have no idea for how long they have been traveling. As the world and universe break down. Time moves in fits and jumps. Compass points become meaningless. The simply follow the path of the beam.

One night, while camped, Roland serves the ka –tet mushrooms that are supposed to give one strange dreams – or dreams that are really more than dreams. Eddie and Jake travel together back to New York of 1977 – back to the Manhattan Restaurant of the mind – the bookstore where Jake acquired his riddle book. Among the books advertised on the sign are those of none other than Stephen King.

Jake and Eddie watch, unobserved by the shop’s proprietor, Calvin Tower, as Jake of another time purchases his riddle book. Jake notices something strikingly different about the book. The author’s name has changed. In the first go-around, the book was written by a lady named Beryl Evans. The book Jake observes himself lay on the counter for purchase is the same book written by Claudia Y Inez Bachman.. The name has 19 letters in it. The number 19 has taken on a talismanic property for the ka-tet as every event in their life seems to add up to 19.

Jake and Eddie watch Jake of 1977 depart from the book store. They stand near Tower of Power Records and watch as a gray town car pulls up. Eddie recognizes its occupants right away. It’s his old nemesis from 1986 – none other than Enrico Balazar – the drug dealer with whom Eddie and Roland shot it out as Roland pulled Eddie into his world in The Drawing of the Three. Enrico and his goons go into the bookstore. Eddie has a hunch that Balazar is not the reading type.

Able to watch events unobserved, Eddie and Jake return to the bookstore as Enrico reminds Mr. Tower that they have a business deal. It seems that Mr. Tower owns the corner lot – the corner lot where Jake discovered the magical rose growing amidst the garbage and debris. Balazar reminds Tower that he has promised Balazar’s partners – the Sombra Corporation – first rights of purchase of the lot and that agreement is due to expire. Balazar wants that transaction transacted. Tower doesn’t want to sell, but assures Balazar he has no plans to sell it to anyone else. Balazar assures him that he will indeed sell and that he will return to complete the transaction.

Meanwhile, Susannah is off on her own trip – except it isn’t Susannah inhabiting Susannah’s body anymore. Once divided into split personalities, the wily Detta Walker and the passive Odetta Holmes, she was fused into one. Now, a new personality has emerged. Mia, Daughter of None, takes off into the wilderness. Mia is with child, but it’s not husband Eddie’s brood. It is the child of the demon who Susannah captured with her feminine wiles to assure Jake’s safe passage into Roland’s world.

Mia dreams that she is feasting at tables filled with great meat and delicacies. Roland follows and observes Susannah as she eats frogs and other wilderness dwellers. Roland knows that this situation is going to complicate matters, but keeps the secret from the rest of the ka-tet – including Susannah who is unaware that Mia exists much the way that Detta and Odetta did not know of each other.

As Father Callahan prophesized, the Gunslingers arrive in Calla Bryn Sturgis. The folk of the village are divided on what to do about their problem. Many want to employ the services of Gunslingers to kill the wolves and stop the generational kidnapping. Others – mostly those without kids – don’t want any interference for fear that the wolves will destroy the town and take the kids anyway as has happened with past resistance.

Roland agrees to survey the situation and determine whether or not he and his fellow Gunslingers can be of assistance. They meet with Father Callahan who serves as the spiritual guide and representative of the “Man Jesus” for the people of the hamlet. Eddie and Jake are shocked to learn that Father Callahan is of their “when” and of there “where” as well, having gone from ‘Salem’s Lot after fleeing the vampire Kurt Barlow to New York.

Callahan tells them his tale. Having been forced to suckle at Barlow’s neck in the Glick kitchen during his fateful encounter in ‘Salem’s Lot, Callahan fled to New York and started work in a shelter and soup kitchen for alcoholics. An alcoholic himself, he fit in. Now marked by Barlow, he is no longer a priest, but tries to carry on with good works in helping at the shelter. He soon finds out that vampires are not confined to small Maine towns. There are vampires in New York as well – although not as powerful as Kurt Barlow who is what Callahan calls a “Type 1” vampire – a powerful being capable of creating vampires with his bite.

Observing his closest friend in New York fall victim to one of the lower “Type 3” vampires, Callahan kills it and sets out to kill all the vampires he can find. His activities soon register with the agents of the Crimson King – the notorious Low Men – who make it their mission to hunt him down and kill him for Type 3 vampires do the bidding of the Low Men who are the Crimson King’s agents in our world. Callahan travels the country, in and out of sobriety and finally ends up in Detroit where he is lured into a trap and seemingly killed in 1983. Instead of dying forever, he arrives in Roland’s world. He arrives in a cave near Calla Bryn Sturgis and with him arrives a black sphere – part of Maerlyn’s Rainbow known as Black 13 – the most evil of all of the talismans that compose the Rainbow.

Roland has his ka-tet spread out among the people to get the lay of the land and to ascertain who is for them and who is against them. After several days of reconnoitering, Roland gathers the people and tells them as Gunslingers, the last of the Line of Eld, they will honor their duty and help the people.

Roland and his ka-tet have several problems to solve. First, they must devise a plan to defeat the wolves about which little is known. Only one living person has actually killed a wolf and observed its dead body up close. Also, there is the matter of Enrico Balazar and the Sombra Corporation back in New York 1977 acquiring the land upon which the rose grows. For if that rose is destroyed, the Tower will certainly fall. Thirdly, Susannah, now aware that someone else is living inside her head and another life form is gestating in her belly, must determine how to deal with the eminent birth of the unholy infant she carries.

Using Black 13, Eddie is able to pass through a door (nearly an exact replica of the doors Roland encountered on the beach in the Drawing of the Three) to return to New York of 1977. There, he is able to rescue Calvin Tower from Balazar’s thugs who are torturing him. Eddie tells Tower that he wants to purchase that lot himself and has the vast financial resources of the Holmes Dental Co. (the company owned by Odetta’s father) to back up the purchase.

Tower is a packrat and hoarder and is reluctant to give up the property – the last piece of a larger plot owned by his family for generations. Faced with having to deal with Balazar, who will certainly be back seeking retribution for Eddie’s handiwork on his henchmen, Tower agrees. However, he forces Eddie to take back to Roland’s world for safekeeping, his shelf of his most treasured books. Eddie agrees and transports the shelf full of books back to the doorway cave. He instructs Tower to make himself scarce somewhere in rural New England where Balazar will not find him. Tower is to have a friend write the ZIP code as graffito on the fence surrounding the vacant lot. Eddie plans to return later and get that ZIP code so he can find Tower when the time comes to consummate the land transaction.

Jake and his billy bumbler, Oy stay on one of the larger ranches with the ranch’s foreman and his son. Jake and the foreman’s son Benny Slightman become fast friends and spend many days playing as ten year old boys are wont to do. But Jake has not forgotten the face of his father and is still a Gunslinger. While playing the days away, Jake is also carefully observing the terrain and the people around him. He is confident that Benny Slightman’s father is a spy for whomever controls the wolves after seeing the elder Slightman and Andy the robot journey off toward Thunderclap together.

One night, Jake sneaks out to do a little recon and finds a military installation built by the old people. He enters it to find a vast array of computers – some built by IBM and Microsoft. There are also many monitors that show various parts of Calla Bryn Sturgis – including Father Callahan’s living room. While searching the building, he hears the approach of Andy and Slightman. He hides and listens as Slightman and Andy communicate with another person through the computers, telling them of the plan that Roland has devised to hide the children and annihilate the wolves. Slightman has turned traitor to protect his son who was born a twin, but whose sister died in an accident.

On the eve of the battle, Eddie goes back to New York 1977 one more time to get that ZIP code. He finds that Balazar’s thugs have taken care of the Restaurant of the Mind by burning it to the ground. But he also finds that someone has scrawled a Maine ZIP code on the fence, just as planned. He then travels to that rural Maine town and leaves a message for Tower’s buddy Aaron Deepneau to tell him to sit tight, that he is coming soon.

The ka-tet, which now includes Father Callahan, meets one final time on the eve of battle. Roland lays out the real plan to secure the children far away from battle and to draw the wolves he knows to be robots into a trap. Eddie lures Andy the robot into a trap and kills him. Susannah convinces herself, if not the others, that she is no longer carrying a gestating being in her womb, pointing out the reduced size of her hips and breasts. She convinces them she is ready to fight.

Roland deploys his forces. He has the women of Calla Bryn Sturgis, who specialize in throwing sharp edged plates and his ka-tet lined up as the wolves approach on the day predicted. As they await the approach, Roland confronts the elder Slightman with his treachery. Roland promises not to out him or kill him if he fights with honor. Slightman tells him that the twins have an organic compound in them that those who command the wolves extract from them to use for "mind food" for people called, "Breakers." They are those who have strong mental powers put to work in the service of the Crimson King to break the remaining beams that support the Dark Tower. We have already encountered two of these breakers in Ted Brautigan in Hearts in Atlantis and the young boy from Black House.

The wolves approach on horseback, bearing lightsabers and devices called sneetches with are little gold, explosive balls they hurl to track their prey. The battle ensues, is fought, and won, but at a price. Young Benny Slightman is among the dead, having been hit by a sneetch.

As they celebrate their victory, Eddie and Roland notice that Susannah has disappeared. Just as the battle is to start, Mia/Susannah goes into labor. For the first time, they speak with each other and strike a deal. Susannah agrees to birth the being in exchange for being allowed to fight with her ka-tet. Mia agrees to the terms and even agrees to help in the battle if it will preserve their lives.

After the battle, she flees to the doorway cave. Having no legs, she uses her wheel chair to take her as far as it can. Then, she finds an ATV left there for her by Andy the Robot. She gets to the cave, grabs Black 13, safely stored in its protective box, and passes through the door, effectively sealing it for Roland and the others.

Roland and the ka-tet arrive at the cave too late. As Eddie bemoans the loss of his beloved, Roland turns to study Tower’s bookshelf. He notices that the fastidious Tower has deposited one volume in the shelf upside down. He removes it and immediately notes the resemblance between the church drawn on the black cover and the church in Calla Bryn Sturgis. He asks Eddie to read the title and the author. Eddie says the book is called ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. Neither Jake nor Eddie can ever recall having heard of Stephen King, but note the title is the same as the New England town that Father Callahan fled. He flips through the book and stops at page 119 where he reads aloud how Father Callahan presided over the funeral of Danny Glick – Barlow’s first victim in ‘Salem’s Lot.

Callahan seizes the book and begins reading an account of his life in ‘Salem’s Lot as if it were a work of fiction. He declares that he is not a fictional character, but a real man who has lived a real life. The book ends with the broken ka-tet pondering how they will get to New York and save Susannah as well as finding their way to Maine to save Calvin Tower and acquire the most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan and the entire universe.

I recall reeling from the revelations in this book as they unfolded. First, there was the appearance of the lightsabers which are lightsabers exactly as those contrived by George Lucas in Star Wars. The sneetches are embossed with the manufacturing stamp of the Sombra Corporation and are denoted as being the “Harry Potter” model. Then there was the insertion of a Stephen King novel into a Stephen King novel and having a character from that novel read parts of that novel. Never before have I read anything resembling this.

Those who are uninitiated into the world of the Dark Tower are wont to dismiss this as either foolish tripe or unfettered hubris on the part of the author. It is neither. King is a masterful writer and his introduction of these items and events are melded perfectly into the story, even if they are as of yet unexplained.

Nor is this the first time King has mentioned himself or his works in one of his own works of fiction. He pokes a little fun at himself early in The Tommyknockers when one of the residents of Haven, Maine is reflecting on the quality of the work of western writer, Bobbi Anderson who is the primary character in that novel. He thinks that she writes real books, not like that guy up in Bangor who writes that trashy horror stuff. Note that he even gets his alter ego, Richard Bachman, into the mix by giving the authorship of Charley the Choo Choo to Claudia Inez Bachman which is the fictional wife of King's pen name.

As noted earlier, King has sprinkled elements of some of the greatest western, fantasy, and science fiction into the body of the Dark Tower. The Arthur legend, the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, and Harry Potter all appear, unabashedly utilized by King without alteration. This is part homage and part . . .well the other reason for its appearance is fleshed out just a little more in the next book, The Song of Susannah.

Much like Wizard and Glass, The Wolves of the Calla almost stands alone as a story unto itself. While the stage is set for the final pursuit of the Dark Tower, most of the action in the novel reads like a western with good guys riding into town to save the day for the hapless residents; bad guys on the move to take the town, shootouts, etc. The story is about defeating the wolves that come from Thunderclap. The end sets up the story that King, in the afterword, assures us has already been written and is in rough draft form. Dark Tower fans were grateful for this reassurance because King remarked on several occasions that the story had become too big for him and he didn’t know where he was going to take it. The next novel was but one year away. We would know Roland’s ultimate fate before the end of the decade.

This book was better than Wizard and Glass because it took place in real time as opposed to flasback, but is still weaker than Drawing of the Three, The Wastelands, or the two that followed. Nonetheless, King startled his audience with brilliant and original storytelling at the end and authored one of the finest, if not the finest, cliffhanger ending of a novel ever.

From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

From a Buick 8
By Stephen King
Copyright 2002

This is Stephen King’s second haunted car novel. The first, Christine, was a darn good story full of teenage angst and mechanized horror. From a Buick 8 is like Christine gone to pasture. It’s slow, plodding, and the car seems like an old grouch compared to the sleek, shiny Christine who toyed with her prey as she pursued them.

Like Christine, From a Buick 8 is set in western Pennsylvania. The setting is a Pennsylvania State Police barracks. Out behind the barracks is shed B, that contains a Buick 8 recovered by Troop D of the Pennsylvania State Police back in 1978.

In 2002, A state trooper is killed in the line of duty when a career drunk takes to the wheel one too many times and hits him as he’s making a stop on a tanker truck. The dead trooper’s teenage son starts hanging out at the barracks, volunteering to do chores just to spend time with the people who knew his father best. He inquires about the Buick 8 stored in shed B. This starts a flashback tale of how Troop D acquired that Buick 8 and all the trouble it gave them over the years.

The post commander, dispatcher, and several veteran troopers all gather outside the post at the smoker’s bench that affords them a view of shed B and the Buick 8 inside. Sgt. Sandy Dearborn (a last name familiar to Dark Tower fans) starts telling the tale to young Ned Wilcox, son of the late Tpr. Curtis Wilcox, of how his dad and another trooper found the old Buick at an country gas station in the age of disco.

A gas station attendant calls the state police to report that the driver of a car has vanished from his gas station and left his car unattended. Tpr. Wilcox and his partner arrive to find the old Buick sitting at the pumps unattended. The gas station attendant (who would go on to be the chronic drunk that kills Tpr. Wilcox nearly two decades later) tells them that the owner – a man in a strange trench coat (despite the fact that it is summer) and large hat, disappeared around the back of the gas station, never to be seen again.

Tpr. Wilcox and his partner immediately determine this is no ordinary car. The first clue is its appearance. Despite the fact that it’s been a rainy day in western PA that day, the car parked there is as clean as a showroom model. Closer inspection reveals that it is indeed, not really a car at all. The engine vaguely resembles an engine, but has no spark plugs or wires. The dash controls are all there, but they don’t work. The side ports (for which the Buick 8 was famous) are out of whack with four on one side of the car and three on the other. There is no key to start it and make it run. Despite being a humid, summer day in the hills of western PA, the car’s interior is cool and damp.

The car is towed back to the barracks for inspection. Soon after the car is pushed into the shed, strange things begin to happen. Mini-lightning storms take place in the shed and the temperature drops. Bewildered, the post commander decides to make a closer examination of the car.

A forensics team is called in the post commander for an “off the record” inspection. Their results are inconclusive. The paint isn’t really paint as we know it. The parts of the car from where the paint samples were taken repair themselves. Rocks will not stay inside the tread grooves of the tire, even rolling off of the top of the tires. None of the car’s accessories work and the glove box is a fake panel with no real opening.

What does open, however, is the trunk. And when the trunk open, bad things happen.

The car progresses from being a mere curiosity to a real problem for Troop D when one of their own disappears while alone with the car. The troopers allow the missing trooper’s mother and friends to believe that the trooper simply rode off into the sunset while they continue to research the odd automobile. Young Tpr. Wilcox takes the lead in the research.

Guinea pigs are placed in the trunk to see what happens to them. Eventually, one disappears. A few months after the disappearance of trooper, another lighting storm commences in the shed. The troopers (who now where ropes around their wastes and only visit the car in pairs) investigate the interior of the shed and find a creature that closely resembles a large eye supported by two wings. By the time they get to it, it is nearly dead, apparently unable to live in our world.

The creature is an abomination. It’s odor causes the troopers to vomit. To look at the creature that came from the car hurts the eyes and offends all of the senses. The creature is bagged up and stored in a cooler in the post’s basement. Later, Tpr. Wilcox conducts a necropsy on the creature that accomplishes nothing but making everyone in the vicinity get sick.

Life around Troop D slowly returns to normal through the 1980s as they go about investigating crimes and enforcing traffic laws. However, a close eye is kept on the old G.M. product that certainly came from someplace other than Detroit.

On another occasion, some leaves fly out of the trunk. The immediately decay into a gray, viscous substance that makes everybody ill. Later, a plant that closely resembles a lily shows up. Again, it decays into the gooey, gray material.

The book’s (unintended) climax is when what appears to be a sentient being arrives from the trunk of the Buick. It’s a creature that resembles nothing living in this world. The troopers are horrified by this mass of what appears to be flesh and plant melded into a single being with eyes at the ends of tentacles. The troopers kill the creature and, as all things that come from the Buick, it decays.

The intended climax comes when the post commander tells the boy that after that, the Buick settled down. It still put on some light shows and occasionally the temperature still drops in the shed from time to time, but the unearthly arrivals ceased during the Reagan administration. Ned Wilcox is wholly unsatisfied, wanting some sort of conclusion or resolution. Sgt. Dearborn explains that sometimes in life, there are no answers and no conclusions.

The troopers and Sgt. Dearborn all head for home. However, Dearborn gets a funny feeling that perhaps Ned is not done with the Buick. He turns his car around and heads back to the post. There, he finds 18 year old Ned Wilcox behind the oversized wheel of the Buick, holding a can of gasoline, ready to torch the car, the shed, and himself to destroy the supernatural luxury sedan.

Other troopers soon arrive, the same foreboding feeling coming over them and driving them to return to the post. Sgt. Dearborn tries to wrest Ned from the inside of the car. The Buick, perhaps sensing it can claim one more earthly prize before its spirit departs for whatever world mechanical spirits go to in the universe of the Dark Tower, grabs hold of Ned. The interior of the car starts to collapse in on itself, pulling Ned into another world. A tug of war ensues and Sandy Dearborn is holding on to Ned who is dangling over a dimensional hole that shows a completely alien world. As he struggles, Dearborn sees the revolvers of a Pennsylvania state trooper lying on a desolate beach in that other world.

The book concludes with young Ned Wilcox joining the Pennsylvania State Police and being assigned to Troop D. Like his father, he keeps a watchful eye on the Buick, convinced that it killed his father by forcing the man who discovered her to run down his father. In the end, Ned points out that the paint is fading, the glass is cracking, and the old Buick’s days are winding down in that shed in western Pennsylvania.

This was not Stephen King’s worst book. I reserve that title for the horrendously bad Lisey’s Story. However, From A Buick 8 is a poor book and ranks near bottom of King’s body of work.

It’s as if King wrote this book on autopilot. There is enough character development, but not the type of deep, rich writing that King usually provides in writing backstories. The story, such as it is, is just a bunch of stuff that happened around a supernatural car. There is no element of causation in any of the arrivals of the creatures or objects. There is no solution or resolution to the problem.

The book’s climax brings no resolution to the central character in the story, which is the car. Instead, it revolves around Ned Wilcox who is but passive listener in the story. King spends more than 300 pages dropping hints at the nature of the car, then gives us no resolution. As Sgt. Dearborn tells Ned, sometimes, life is just a series of events; not stories with beginnings and conclusions with everything neatly wrapped up. However, books are not life. A well written book must include a climax that resolves at least the core elements of the plot. King’s climax resolves none of the core elements of the plot.

King also falls into a trap that too often ensnares Dean Koontz and other horror writers: he over-describes his monstrosities. King usually employs H.P. Lovecraft’s technique of giving us a rough sketch of the creature, but telling us that it is too horrible for our minds (and the characters’ minds) to grasp. This type of writing is not easily done, but King was a master of it. In this book, he goes into deep descriptions of the monsters. What King allows our minds to behold isn’t nearly as horrific as what he didn’t tell us in better written books.

Besides, isn’t one haunted car novel enough for any one author? The mysterious Buick is a pussycat compared to Christine and the book isn’t worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with Christine.

The connections to the Dark Tower are passive. The car closely resembles the cars driven by the Low Men in Yellow Coats from Hearts In Atlantis. So perhaps the driver was one of the Low Men. The car is a portal to another world. And as we know, there are millions of worlds contained within the Dark Tower.

The book does nothing to advance the Dark Tower story. At the time of its publication, King fans were in near revolt because it had been five years since King had written a Dark Tower book.

Upon completing From A Buick 8, King promised Dark Tower fans that our resolution was coming. He would go on to write three more Dark Tower books in succession to bring his magnum opus to a close. So, from here, we go back to the story of Roland and his Ka-Tet as they draw nearer to their iconic Dark Tower. We’re back on the beam and headed for the end now!

According to Wikipedia, Tobe Hooper is developing a movie based on this book. Tobe Hooper has made some really good movies, but I don’t see how this one can be made into a good movie. I suspect this movie will more closely resemble Hooper’s bad King adaptation The Mangler than it will his superb television mini-series, 'Salem's Lot. Stay tuned King fans. . .

Book to Movie: Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

Book to Movie: Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
Screenplay by William Goldman
Based on the book by Stephen King
Directed by Scott Hicks

In 2001, Hearts in Atlantis was made into a movie. It enjoyed a massive marketing campaign and was highly anticipated, having cast the legendary Anthony Hopkins as Ted Brautigan. Sadly, the movie did not live up to its billing and did not do the book justice.

The movie takes in only the short novel, Low Men in Yellow Coats. The movie opens with Bobby Garfield leaving the funeral of his friend Sully John. He finds his old home abandoned and in disrepair. The neighborhood he remembered had deteriorated into a slum. Bobby is now a middle-aged writer, not a carpenter and reformed juvenile delinquent.

He wanders to the park where he and his friends played as children. He is carrying a package he plans to open. Before he does, he starts to reminisce about his childhood.

The movie loosely follows the book with a few, inconsequential variations that adapt the story to the big screen. However, the climax and the end are much different.

Ted leaves after having been confronted by Bobby’s mother. Bobby discovers his mother’s treachery and hustles down to Bridgeport to try to warn Ted. In the book, he arrives in time to warn Ted. In the movie, he arrives in time to see Ted being driven away by the Low Men.

He goes on to collect Ted’s winnings and then home to confront his mom. He throws the money at her in anger, but quickly falls into sadness as he perceives the hurt and degradation his mother has endured at the hands of her boss.

Shortly thereafter, Bobby learns that he is moving and goes to Carol’s house. Carol leaves him with the same line she used in the book, “I have to make the salad.”

The flashback fades and middle-aged Bobby sits examining the package that arrived for him the day of Sully John’s funeral. Carol approaches him and he recognizes her from across the years. Just as in the book, she has changed her name and explains how she fell in with a bad man many years before and did some bad things. The movie comes to a close as Bobby opens the package and finds Sully John’s ball glove.

This movie falls short because it never quite develops any element of the story. Certainly Low Men in Yellow Coats could have been successfully adapted into a motion picture. All of the elements for a good, stand-alone story are there. The main fault of this movie is that it stuck too closely to the book.

The movie could have been a period piece, but 1950s culture is scarcely brought to the fore. Incorporating elements of the other stories in Hearts in Atlantis, it could have been a great coming of age story a la The Body from Different Seasons. With some clever rewriting, it could have been an interesting story about the mysteries of space and time with the visitors from other planes chasing Ted Brautigan. All of these ingredients were introduced, but none of them developed at all.

Had one not read the novel, and had some familiarity with the Dark Tower story, the Low Men in Yellow Coats are pointless and never explained. Carol’s journey through life, which makes their meeting in the park in the final scene of the book so poignant, is not here at all, rendering her character meaningless. The turmoil of the 1960s that took these three childhood chums in much different directions is completely absent.

What is there are elements of the book which worked well in the broader context of the Dark Tower saga and within the confines of the collection of stories that is Hearts in Atlantis. Including these elements without explanation makes for a confusing and unsatisfying movie, despite the usual stellar acting of Anthony Hopkins.

Some Stephen King fans will be repelled at this suggestion, but I think this book is ripe for a three part television mini-series. King writes a fantastic coming of age story that chronicles the era that defined his generation, stripped of the romance that pop culture attaches to it. There is enough emotion, story, and subplots in Hearts in Atlantis to fill many hours on the small screen and tell a wonderful story. This movie never gets there.

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.