"The Founding Fathers," Nancy said. She sounded both amused and sad. "That photo was taken on an executive retreat in 1986. Taos, New Mexico. Three city boys in cow country, how about that. And don't they look like they're having the time of their lives?"
"You say true," Roland said.
"Do you know all three?"
Roland nodded. He knew them, all right, although he had never met Moses Carver, the man in the middle. Dan Holmes's partner, Odetta Holmes's godfather. In the picture he looked to be a robust and healthy seventy, but surely by 1986 he had to be closer to eighty. Perhaps eighty-five. Of course, Roland reminded himself, there was a wild card here: the marvelous thing he'd just seen in the lobby of this building. The rose was no more a fountain of youth than the turtle in the little pocket park across the street was the real Maturin, but did he think it had certain beneficent qualities? Yes he did. Certain healing qualities? Yes he did. Did he believe that the nine years of life Aaron Deepneau had gotten between 1977 and the taking of this picture in 1986 had just been a matter of the /-torn-replacing pills and medical treatments of the old people? No he did not.
These three men-Carver, Cullum, and Deepneau-had come togetiier, almost magically, to fight for the rose in their old age.
Their tale, the gunslinger believed, would make a book in itself, very likely a fine and exciting one. What Roland believed was simplicity itself: the rose had shown its gratitude.
"When did they die?" he asked Nancy Deepneau.
"John Cullum went first, in 1989," she said. "Victim of a gunshot wound. He lasted twelve hours in the hospital, long enough for everyone to say goodbye. He was in New York for the annual board meeting. According to the NYPD, it was a streetside mugging gone bad. We believe he was killed by an agent of either Sombra or North Central Positronics. Probably one of the can-toi. There were other attempts that missed."
"Both Sombra and Positronics come to the same thing,"
said Roland. "They're the agencies of the Crimson King in this world."
"We know," she said, then pointed to the man on the left side of the picture, the one she so strongly resembled. "Uncle Aaron lived until 1992. When you met him... in 1977?"
"Yes," Roland said.
"In 1977, no one would have believed he could live so long."
"Did the fayen-folken kill him, too?"
"No, the cancer came back, that's all. He died in his bed. I was there. The last thing he said was, 'Tell Roland we did our best.' And so I do tell you."
"Thankee-sai." He heard the roughness in his voice and hoped she would mistake it for curtness. Many had done their best for him, was it not true? A great many, beginning with Susan Delgado, all those years ago.
"Are you all right?" she asked in a low, sympathetic voice.
"Yes," he said. "Fine. And Moses Carver? When did he pass?"
She raised her eyebrows, then laughed.
"What-?"
"Look for yourself!"
She pointed toward the glass doors. Now approaching them from the inside, passing the desk-minding woman who had apparently been talking to herself, was a wizened man with fluffy fly-away hair and white eyebrows to match. His skin was dark, but the woman upon whose arm he leaned was even darker. He was tall-perhaps six-and-three, if the bend had been taken out of his spine-but the woman was even taller, at least six-and-six.
Her face was not beautiful but almost savagely handsome. The face of a warrior.
The face of a gunslinger.
NINE
Had Moses Carver's spine been straight, he and Roland would have been eye-to-eye. As it was, Carver needed to look up slightly, which he did by cocking his head, birdlike. He seemed incapable of actually bending his neck; arthritis had locked it in place. His eyes were brown, the whites so muddy it was difficult to tell where the irises ended, and they were full of merry laughter behind their gold-rimmed spectacles. He still had the tiny white moustache.
"Roland of Gilead!" said he. "How I've longed to meet you, sir! I b'lieve it's what's kept me alive so long after John and Aaron passed. Let loose of me a minute, Marian, let loose!
There's something I have to do!"
Marian Carver let go of him and looked at Roland. He didn't hear her voice in his head and didn't need to; what she wanted to tell him was clear in her eyes: Catch him if he falls, sai.
But the man Susannah had called Daddy Mose didn't fall.
He put his loosely clenched, arthritic fist to his forehead, then bent his right knee, taking all of his weight on his trembling right leg. "Hile you last gunslinger, Roland Deschain out of Gilead, son of Steven and true descendent of Arthur Eld. I, the last of what was called among ourselves the Ka-Tet of the Rose, salute you."
Roland put his own fisted hand to his forehead and did more than make a leg; he went to his knee. "Hile Daddy Mose, godfather of Susannah, dinh of the Ka-Tet of the Rose, I salute you with my heart."
"Thankee," said the old man, and then laughed like a boy.
"We're well met in the House of the Rose! What was once meant to be the Grave of the Rose! Ha! Tell me we're not! Can you?"
"Nay, for it would be a lie."
"Speak it!" the old man cried, then uttered that cheery goto-
hell laugh once again. "But I'm f gettin my manners in my awe, gunslinger. This handsome stretch of woman standing beside me, it'd be natural for you to call her my granddaughter,
"cause I was sem'ty in the year she was born, which was nineteenand-
sixty-nine. But the truth is"-But'na troof is was what reached Roland's ear-"that sometimes the best things in life are started late, and having children"-Chirrun-"is one of m, in my opinion. Which is a long-winded way of saying this is my daughter, Marian Odetta Carver, President of the Tet Corporation since I stepped down in '97, at the age of ninety-eight.
And do you think it would frost some country-club balls, Roland, to know that this business, now worth just about ten billion dollars, is run by a Negro?" His accent, growing deeper as his excitement and joy grew, turned the last into Dis bid'ness, now wuthjus 'bout tin binnion dolla, is run bah NEE-grow?
"Stop, Dad," the tall woman beside him said. Her voice was kind but brooked no denial. 'You'll have that heart monitor you wear sounding the alarm if you don't, and this man's time is short."
"She run me like a ray'road!" the old man cried indignantly.
At the same time he turned his head slightly and dropped Roland a wink of inexpressible slyness and good humor with the eye his daughter could not see.
As if she wasn't onto your tricks, old man, Roland thought, amused even in his sorrow. As if she hasn't been on to them for many and many a year-say delah.
Marian Carver said, "We'd palaver with you for just a litde while, Roland, but first there's something I need to see."
"Ain't a bit o' need for that!" the old man said, his voice cracking with indignation. "Not a bit o' need, and you know it!
Did I raise ajackass?"
"He's very likely right," Marian said, "but always safe-"
"-never sorry," the gunslinger said. "It's a good rule, aye.
What is it you'd see? What will tell you that I am who I say I am, and you believe I am?"
"Your gun," she said.
Roland took the Old Home Days shirt out of the leather bag, then pulled out the holster. He unwrapped the shell-belt and pulled out his revolver with the sandalwood grips. He heard Marian Carver draw in a sharp, awed breath and chose to ignore it. He noticed that the two guards in their well-cut suits had drawn close, their eyes wide.
"You see it!" Moses Carver shouted. "Aye, every one of you here! Say God\ Might as well tell your gran-babbies you saw Excalibur, the Sword of Arthur, for't comes to the same!"
Roland held his father's revolver out to Marian. He knew she would need to take it in order to confirm who he was, that she must do this before leading him into the Tet Corporation's soft belly (where the wrong someone could do terrible damage), but for a moment she was unable to fulfill her responsibility.
Then she steeled herself and took the gun, her eyes widening at the weight of it. Careful to keep all of her fingers away from the trigger, she brought the barrel up to her eyes and then traced a bit of the scrollwork near the muzzle:
"Will you tell me what this means, Mr. Deschain?" she asked him.
"Yes," he said, "if you will call me Roland."
"If you ask, I'll try."
"This is Arthur's mark," he said, tracing it himself. "The only mark on the door of his tomb, do ya. 'Tis his dinh mark, and means WHITE."
The old man held out his trembling hands, silent but imperative.
"Is it loaded?" she asked Roland, and then, before he could answer: "Of course it is."
"Give it to him," Roland said.
Marian looked doubtful, the two guards even more so, but Daddy Mose still held his hands out for the widowmaker, and Roland nodded. The woman reluctandy held the gun out to her father. The old man took it, held it in both hands, and then did something that both warmed and chilled the gunslinger's heart: he kissed the barrel with his old, folded lips.
"What does thee taste?" Roland asked, honestly curious.
"The years, gunslinger," Moses Carver said. "So I do." And with that he held the gun out to the woman again, butt first.