The Darker Tower

The man in taupe fled across the desert, but the gunslinger did not follow.

You see, it was not at all fair that the man in taupe took off like that. The gunslinger really had to use the bathroom, and the man in taupe said he'd wait. The gunslinger was only in there for three or four minutes, honest. But, noooo, the man in taupe took off anyway, fleeing across the desert while the gunslinger was finishing up in the loo. By the time the gunslinger looked around for the man in taupe, and that it sank in that he indeed fled across the desert in a most cheating fashion, he was already quite a bit behind. It was not a great start to an adventure at all.

Roger of Lower East Gilead had a remarkably hard time figuring out why the man in taupe would trick him so. A deal is a deal, one would think, and even a lowly, mother-seducing, Armageddon-bringing, father-betraying, horrible murderous lech should be counted upon to keep his word. But, as his brother Roland had told him time after bloody time, the world was moving on. What that meant exactly, Roger didn't quite know. The world was moving? Where? To Roger, it seemed perfectly still, like the perceptible lack of cooling wind in the blighted desert ahead. Was it metaphorical, like in a the times, they are a-changin' sort of way, or was it literal, with the world actually moving on somewhere? Where would it move to? Maybe the civilization past would know of these worldly things, being able to point to this and that in a most scientific way, saying things like "boy, we know a lot about this world of ours" in that snobby, know-it-all manner that scientists could use. Roger didn't know any such science, or even a scientist in which to ask, since the world was indeed moving on and all and scientists were currently out of vogue, like the "Rachel" haircut, or eating carbs.

Anyway, it was very unlike Roland to use such obteuse language, since his younger brother was way more the literal sort. Roger was always the emotional one, always had been, while Roland was the analytical "let's get this done this way right now" sort of guy, who always seemed to get the glory when Roger was left holding the proverbial stick. Roland wouldn't even know what the "proverbial stick" even meant, he was so concrete, and Roger would explain it to him, and while he did so Roland would pretend he was listening, then sneak around and take credit for whatever Roger did, saying things like "Yar, a fine job it was" or other such tripe that made him sound like a sailor waaay more than a gunslinger.

Roger considered this for several long hours, staring unblinkingly at the horizon of the baked desert. Had he acted a little earlier, he would have been just a little behind the man in taupe. As it was, he was a full half-day behind once he got his act together, stopped pouting, accepted his misfortune, and trudged across the horrible, boring desert in search of Martin, with whom he now had a Pretty Serious Grudge.

Trudging across the desert is pretty serious business. First of all, you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times. Yes, I know it is a desert, and mostly you're surrounded by sand and the occasional cactus and not much else, but it's still something you must stay in complete awareness of. Cacti, which is the plural of cactus, taught to Roger by Phlebius, his mentor. Well, his book learnin' mentor, anyway. The more physical stuff was taught by Mister Curt, who spent a great deal of time beating up his charges, or at least berating them in the name of "a lesson." Had Roger been from the old civilization, at the time of motorized wagon-carts and electrical tooth-brushers, Mister Curt would be the guy who taught gym class.

As I was saying, cacti could give you a good poke, and it would sting for a while afterwards. And the sand – don't get me started on that. The sand was terrible, and had to be watched constantly, or it would end up in your eyes at a moment's notice, or worse, down your trousers.

Roger began crossing the desert in search for the man in taupe. At one time in his pursuit, Martin, the aforementioned man in taupe, wore black. But, logic tells you right away that black is a horrible color for desert-crossings or desert-trudgings, so a more neutral color had to be chosen. He could have gone with white, but that seemed extreme, and even the littlest spot of dirt would be glaringly obvious. Other colors, like yellow, seemed too presumptuous and out of place. Red, Martin's favorite color, was right out because, for one, you would stand out like a sore thumb on a gigantic hand that was poking out of a dune in the middle of the desert. For another, it was the color of blood, and he didn't want to attract the attention of the inevitable pair of buzzards, hunched over on a low-lying branch waiting for something bleeding to trudge on by, so they could fly over, make an anticipatory comment or two about the quality of their upcoming lunch, and then settle down for said lunch. After much consternation, Martin chose taupe because it generally went with everything, from his sandals to his sling bag and even to the everpresent sand and cactuses (Martin had never had such fancy schooling as Roger had), and also that every house seemed to be painted just that, which was a carry-over from the time before the world was even beginning to move on, before it had even considered it, when children frolicked openly in the streets and MTV played a few new songs but mostly had irritating shows that didn't seem to involve music at all.

It took a while for Roger to discover the clothing switch. From time to time, as he passed through the ramshackle towns that peppered the desert borderlands, towns with quaint little town names like Morrissey, Van Halen and Three Dog Night, he would inquire about the man in black, and whoever was asked would say they never heard of him, and that black was not a good color in which to trudge through the desert, but that there was a man fitting that description that wore a much more reasonable tannish-gray. Playing a hunch, Roger followed this man, whom he dubbed the Man Formerly Known To Have Worn Black. That was a mouthful, for sure, and he began to narrow down the color. First he was the man in tannish-gray, and then the man in grayish-tan, and then he abandoned those colors altogether. He fiddled with the man in sand, but that was confusing with the backdrop and all, then the man in desert rose, but he finally settled on the man in taupe, when one old woman from the town of Dull cleverly pointed out that, no, it wasn't desert rose at all, but instead was closer to taupe. Definitely taupe. He didn't have time to argue with her, really, because he was tired of the whole thing, and also that he wiped out the whole town of Dull singlehandedly, but that's a story for later.

Roger himself wore beige, that being the official color of Gilead, and its suburb, Lower East Gilead, where Roger had rented a quaint little one-room efficiency for the past several years, since the rent was lower. There were drawbacks to living in Lower East Gilead, however, the biggest being that the occasional Slow Mutant wandered in, and every so often rented an apartment in his building. A year ago the efficiency next to Roger's was rented out to Phineas the Unclean, whose name should have been a dead giveaway right there. Well, Phineas soon started getting his rent check in way past its due date, and would often be seen loping through the courtyard, moaning, groping at passersby, causing all the rest of the tenants to go inside their apartments to get away from him. Not only that, but Phineas had open sores that dripped pus and ichor, a dead-giveaway as to being someone tainted by the nuclear fall-out of the civilization past, and was completely unpleasant to say the least. Also, Phineas would drop by, uninvited, to neighborhood get-togethers and ruin the whole thing by his loping and groping. The tenants got together and complained wholeheartedly to the landlord, Mister Larry, who unfortunately resembled Phineas the Unclean in most aspects, with the exception being Mister Larry walked around all day wearing one of those unflattering wife-beaters. Needless to say, Mister Larry, although impressed by the disruptive tenant's good looks, took his renters' advice and booted Phineas the Unclean. He did, however, cut a check for the Slow Mutant's security deposit, so as to not have a gunslinger from the Department of Housing all over his case, slapping him with some sort of discrimination lawsuit.

As I said, Roger wore beige, a perfect color for desert trudging. He had a slingbag over his shoulder, holding some of his most prized possessions, like his eversharp knife, which he could use to slice through a tin-can and still cleanly cut a tomato, and his tinder-box, for his campfire making, and a couple of pounds of beef jerky, probably made from some sort of two-headed animal, hence the need to disguise it as twisted jerky, plus a girlie mag or two, for those lonely times out on the desert when a man needed a companion who would satisfy, yet not expect a phone call the next day.

Roger's trudgery through the desert was hard and exceedingly dull. He tried to wile away the time playing I spy, but he only was able to stump himself a few times before he ran out of original things to spy. After spying sand for the nineteenth time (why nineteenth? he wondered) and getting it each time after the fourth, he switched to ninety-nine bottles of Nozzela on the wall, and the song echoed through the desert valley for hours, and only ended as the sun dropped from sight and the gunslinger's lips cracked open from singing so damn much.

He came across the remnants of the Man In Taupe's campfire from the night before. There Roger found the remains of the man's dinner, plus the wrapper from a chocolate bar and a sticky white residue on a thin, gnarled stick.

"Damn him!" Roger yelled. "S'mores! How in Midworld did he keep the chocolate from melting?" He screamed this toward the sky, toward the grayish desert-moon, but expected no reply. He got none. Who else would be out in this desert anyway, especially with the knowledge of how indeed one would keep chocolate in its solid form? This Martin was a wizard, for sure. He was almost sure of it when the man had enchanted Roger's own mother, which caused her to do his laundry and cook his dinners, plus the occasional back rub when Roger's father was away doing gunslingery things. He had seen his mother and Martin many times, but they adamantly said they were just friends, and only after seeing his own mother tongue-wrestle with his father's advisor for the nineteenth time (there's that number again!) did he realize what was going on, and he told his father immediately upon his return.
Stephen of Gilead, Roger's father, was indeed surprised when Roger told him. He had thought all along that Martin, with his artsy-fartsy appearance and dapper grooming habits, was gay, and the elder gunslinger had cursed loudly, calling the advisor a vulgar name which, until that moment, Roger of Gilead wouldn't have thought to be true.

They had chalked the treachery up to some sort of wizardly trick, but they had kept it to themselves for quite some time. Roger couldn't remember exactly when it was that he let his mother know that he was on to both her and Martin – let's see, when was it? – Oh, yes, Roger remembered. It was the night when Roger shot his mother to death. Yes, that was definitely it.

He also remembered his father being surprisingly okay with the whole thing. He thought for sure he was going to get whupped, or grounded, or at least hollered at, but Stephen Deschain of Gilead just said one word, "wimmin," and walked away whistling, heading for the part of town the adult men referred to with a wink as "the hooker part of town."

It was Roland who found the death of his mother so painful. Roland, who was obsessed with this thing called the Dark Tower. At first it was cute. He would mention the Dark Tower, announcing to the family at dinner that he would want to see it. Yes, dear, their mother would say, and pass him the creamed corn, and he would drop it. But after a while it became obsessive. In fifth grade at Gilead Elementary, Roland wrote a theme titled What I did on my summer vacation, and it spoke of thinking of searching for the Dark Tower, and playing Dark Tower at home with his brother Roger, and drawing about a million pictures of the Dark Tower even though paper was both rare and valuable. Once he got to Gilead Middle School, he was so over the edge about it. He formed an intramural basketball team called the Dark Towerers, even though Roger spent a whole night trying to explain that tower wasn't a verb, so being a Towerer didn't actually mean anything. Roland had replied by saying yar, which wasn't so irritating to Roger at the time but over the years became so much more so that Roger wanted to slug his brother in the face every time he heard him say it. At school Roland would endure taunts of kids asking "found the Dark Tower yet, Roland?" and things like that, and Roger fielded the same questions for his brother. He tried sticking up for Roland for a long time, but after a while it became so tiresome and embarrassing that Roger ended up avoiding many of his classmates. And the whole Dark Tower thing became overbearing when Roland named his new pony Dark Tower and the family dog Dark Tower and created a sign for his bedroom door that read danger: ye may not enter the Dark Tower, and there was that time once when he was joking around with his friends in the locker room at Gilead High School and had even referred to his dangle as The Dark Tower, which elicited confused sideways glances from the other boys, but sadly didn't alter their opinion of Roland of Gilead, the boy who thought about nothing but the Dark Tower.

As I was saying, Roland was distraught over the death of his mother, and rightfully blamed Roger for the whole mess. Roger, knowing full well that Roland should have seen what was going on between his mother and Walter but he didn't because he was blinded by thoughts of finding the Dark Tower, tried to explain right then about it all but Roland wouldn't listen, and he cursed his brother, saying "When I get to the Dark Tower I will say all the names of everybody important except for yours, because you're a total ass for killing our mother. You'll be sorry, Roger, because you will feel so stupid when I do that, and your name isn't said, but others' will be. I'll even say 'Clem Briartree', that guy you hate who started in place of you on the basketball team. You'll want to apologize, I'm sure of it, but of course it will be too late, yar, and you'll regret this whole business."

Roger tried one more time, carefully and slowly explaining the relationship between their mother and Martin, but Roland wouldn't hear of it, and instead threw the whole Dark Tower thing back in his brother's face. Roger had had enough, and countered with "Oh yeah, well, I'm going to find the Darker Tower, which is, you probably know, so much more cooler than the stupid Dark Tower, and when I'm there at the door I'm going to say 'Roland of Gilead is an assface, no takebacks', and you'll have to live with that, even if you find your stupid Dark Tower which is probably a really gay thing to find in the first place."

At this, Roland had burst into tears, saying it was unfair that Roger made that whole thing up about the Darker Tower (and secretly praying it wasn't true), and he ran to tattle to his father, who, by that time, had been shacked up with a hooker named Marge, getting some pretty good consolation pootie.

That, Roger remembered, was the reason why he sought out the Darker Tower. He never gave it much thought if it existed at all, but he wasn't going to look like a leeker to his brother, and so he dedicated his life to finding it. It took a while to get going, as he had to finish high school and pass his test of gunslingerhood with Mister Curt. He thought about the test for a moment, and decided that he was a little too tired for such a long flashback, so he moved forward to the time when he decided to leave his little efficiency apartment in Lower East Gilead and begin his quest…