Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated (59 page)

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Authors: Robin Furth

BOOK: Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated

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Upon returning to the cottage with his father’s ax and certain knowledge of his father’s horrible manner of death, Tim informed the men of Tree about his stepfather’s crime. Then, egged on by false scrying visions seen in the Covenanter’s MAGICAL SILVER PAIL, Tim set off for the Endless Forest, where he hoped to find the sorcerer MAERLYN who would be able to restore Nell’s sight. Nell remained blind and bedridden, cared for by the WIDOW SMACK, until her son Tim returned from the forest with one of MAERLYN’S MAGICAL OBJECTS: a BROWN BOTTLE of liquid, drops of which cured Nell’s blindness. Nell’s first sighted act (after embracing her son) was to save Tim’s life.

Unbeknownst to either Nell or Tim, by the time Tim returned with the magic drops for Nell’s eyes, Kells was already hiding in the cottage’s mudroom. When Tim exited Nell’s bedroom and tried to wake the Widow Smack (who had already had her throat cut by Kells), Kells attacked. Choking his stepson, Kells
tossed away Tim’s gun and told him that he was going to throw him onto the fire to burn him alive. Kells never managed to fulfill his threat, since Nell buried her first husband’s ax in his head. Years later, when Tim Ross became the gunslinger Tim Stoutheart, Nell became a great lady in GILEAD.

W:106, W:109, W:113–22, W:123–24
(124 wedding day),
W:125, W:126, W:127, W:128, W:129, W:130, W:131–41
(141 remembers Covenant Man),
W:145, W:146, W:148, W:150, W:153–54
(in basin vision),
W:155, W:156, W:157, W:158, W:161–62, W:163, W:164, W:167
(she has been blinded; asleep part of this time),
W:168, W:171, W:172, W:173, W:174, W:175–76, W:178, W:179, W:180, W:184
(water Nell),
W:185, W:188, W:195
(mother’s sheets),
W:201, W:202, W:206, W:214
(Tim’s dream),
W:221, W:223, W:236, W:238, W:239, W:250, W:251
(drops in eyes, Tim gives her the ax),
W:254
(mama),
W:255, W:258, W:259–64, W:267, W:268

FATHER:
W:140, W:143, W:144, W:145

ROSS, TIM (TIM STOUTHEART, LEFTY ROSS)

Tim Ross, also known as Tim Stoutheart and Lefty Ross, was an important figure in Mid-World folklore. According to Roland, Tim was one of the very, very few men to become a gunslinger even though he was not descended from the proven line of ELD. When Tim was twenty-one years old, three gunslingers, bound for TAVARES, came through his home village of TREE. The gunslingers were hoping to raise a posse, but Tim was the only local man willing to go with them. At first the men called him “the lefthanded gun,” for that was the way he drew. But he was both fearless and a dead shot, and so earned the name
tet-fa,
or friend of the
tet.
After a great battle on the shores of LAKE CAWN at which he proved his bravery, Tim gained his name Tim Stoutheart. Later, he became
ka-tet,
or a fully-fledged member of Gilead’s
tet
of the gun.

In the novel
The Wind Through the Keyhole,
Roland tells YOUNG BILL STREETER the story of Tim Stoutheart’s first adventure, when he (like Young Bill) was eleven years old. Like Young Bill Streeter, who was about to identify the shapeshifting SKIN-MAN who had murdered his father, Young Tim Stoutheart had to brave many perils in order to bring to justice the man who had murdered his father and blinded his mother.

At the opening of the tale, Tim lived happily with his mother, NELL ROSS, and his father, BIG JACK ROSS, in their cottage called GOODVIEW, in the village of Tree, located on the edge of the beautiful but dangerous ENDLESS FOREST. Big Ross was a woodcutter, partnered with his old friend BIG BERN KELLS. Together they worked the ROSS-KELLS STAKE, located far down the IRONWOOD TRAIL where the ironwood trees grew tall. However, one day in the year that Tim turned eleven, Big Kells came back from the forest alone. There was a hole in the left leg of his homespun pants, his skin was sooty and blistered, and his jerkin was charred. According to Kells, he and his partner had been set upon by a DRAGON and Big Ross had been incinerated.

Without Big Ross to support them, Tim and his mother fell on hard times. As Reaptide drew closer and the annual visit of the Barony COVENANT MAN, or tax collector, drew near, Nell began to fear that the two of them would be turned off the land. But just as Nell was certain that come the following Full Earth she and Tim would be following the crops with burlap rucksacks on their backs, Big
Kells came courting. He promised to sell his own place and pay the Covenant Man what Nell owed, if Nell would become his wife. Although Nell was terrified of losing her husband’s plot and place to the Covenant Man, she hesitated before accepting Kells’s offer. She had known Big Kells all of her life, but she also knew that he was a drinker and at times, violent. In the end her fear of the Covenant Man outweighed her misgivings, but her decision was one she came to regret.

As Nell had feared, soon after their marriage, Big Kells returned to drink and took up his father’s pastime of wife-beating. He forced Young Tim to give up his lessons at the WIDOW SMACK’S COTTAGE—a pursuit that Tim dearly loved—so that he could earn scrip at the TREE SAWMILL. (Tim would have been happy to pursue his father’s profession of woodcutting, but Big Kells said that he was, and always would be, too small to cut ironwood.) When the gales of Wide Earth came howling in from the west, and Tim began to think that life with Big Bern Kells had become too unbearable, the evil Barony Covenanter blew into Tree. While collecting the taxes at Goodview Cottage, the Covenant Man gave Tim a key which would open any lock. Secretly, Tim used the key to open his stepfather’s trunk, which was exactly what the Barony Covenanter wanted him to do. Inside, below ragged old clothes, rusty tools, and a picture of Kells’s first wife, MILLICENT, Tim found his father’s lucky coin, a rhodite double. Tim knew that a dragon couldn’t have incinerated his father, since Big Ross’s coin had survived. There was only one answer—he had been murdered by his partner, Big Kells.

Mounting BITSY, his father’s mule, Tim rode deep into the Endless Forest to find the Covenant Man’s camp. There, in the waters of a MAGICAL SILVER BASIN, and using the gearshift of an old Dodge Dart as a magic wand, the Barony Covenanter showed Tim a terrible image—of Bern Kells smashing a ceramic jug into Nell Kells’s face and then beating her into unconsciousness. After showing Tim the image of the Widow Smack tending to Nell’s wounds (otherwise the boy would have galloped home immediately on Bitsy’s back), the nasty Covenant Man showed Tim his father’s dead body, floating in a stream which ran through a fallow stub on the COSINGTON-MARCHLY STAKE.

Returning home with his father’s ax tucked into his belt (the Covenanter had found Big Ross’s belongings in the forest), Tim told PETER COSINGTON, ERNIE MARCHLY, and BALDY ANDERSON about his stepfather’s crimes. After bidding Big Ross goodbye in the Tree BURYING PARLOR, Tim set off for yet another journey into the depths of the forest. This time—egged on by a vision provided by yet another one of the treacherous Covenanter’s scrying vessels—Tim was determined to find the magician MAERLYN, who he was certain could restore his mother’s sight.

Wearing his father’s lucky coin around his neck, scuffed shor’boots upon his feet, and his father’s ax tucked into his belt by his right hip, Tim set off for the Widow Smack’s cottage. He wanted the Widow to inform his ma about his travels, and also to send him on with a blessing. Unlike Tim, the Widow Smack did not trust the visions sent by the blackhearted Barony Covenanter. However, since she knew she could not stop Tim from taking his journey, she sent him on with a lamp, a loaf of bread, and a four-shot revolver which had belonged to her brother, JOSHUA. Tim lost the lamp while following the pretty but treacherous SIGHE named ARMANEETA through the FAGONARD (she led Tim right on top of a sleeping DRAGON, probably hoping that the boy would be eaten), but
Tim kept the gun. In fact, he used it to shoot one of the Fagonard’s hungry CANNIBAL REPTILES that wanted to swallow him whole.

Holding a smoking gun but stranded on a grassy tussock deep in the watery Fagonard, Tim was eventually rescued by the MUTANT MUDMEN who mistook him for a young gunslinger. From these friendly if physically disgusting mutants Tim received the talking NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS guidance mechanism called DARIA. Daria led Tim along the PATH of the EAGLE-LION BEAM, past dancing BUMBLERS, GIANT YELLOW MUSHROOMS, MUTANT BLUE DEER, and a DEMON TENTACLED MONSTER, all the way to the NORTH FOREST KINNOCK DOGAN. Upon reaching the Dogan, and the deep magic which Daria detected there, Tim’s North Central Positronics friend was forced to shut down for providing Tim with too much restricted information and hence violating Directive NINETEEN.

At the Dogan, Tim found not the magician Maerlyn, whom he had hoped to find, but a huge caged TYGER with two objects attached to its collar. One was a flat keycard; the other was a key shaped like a letter from High Speech. Beneath a silver pail located just outside the cage, Tim found a note from the Covenant Man along with the key to the tyger’s cage. The note, which was signed RF/MB, dared Tim to open the cage, since around the tyger’s neck hung the key to the nearby Dogan.

With the deadly winds of the STARKBLAST already blowing down the ironwoods of the forest, Tim felt he had little choice and so set the tyger free. Much to his surprise, the tyger did not try to eat him, but instead waited patiently for the boy to remove his collar. As the winds buffeted him, Tim tried to use the keycard, but unfortunately the Dogan was offline. However, just outside the Dogan’s permanently locked door was the METAL BOX for which the tyger’s second key was made. Inside that box were three MAGICAL OBJECTS: a large white FEATHER, a small BROWN BOTTLE, and a white dinner napkin that was actually a magical DIBBEN. As gale force winds blew Tim against the side of the Dogan, the tyger held the white dibben between his teeth and began shaking it out. The napkin, Tim soon realized, was enchanted and could expand exponentially. It was also windproof. Huddling beneath the expansive dibben with his furry companion, Tim found that he did not feel the wind at all, though the starkblast wreaked havoc all around them.

The next afternoon, after the starkblast had blown out most of its rage, Tim opened the brown bottle and placed a dropperful of its liquid into the tyger’s mouth. To Tim’s astonishment, the tyger transformed into none other than the magician Maerlyn! Finally freed from the enchantment cast upon him by one of the CRIMSON KING’s servants, Maerlyn folded the dibben into a flying blanket. Telling Tim to hold the feather and think of home, Maerlyn sent Tim off to the village of Tree, but not before telling him to place the remaining contents of the brown bottle into his mother’s blind eyes. He also warned Tim that he must hand his father’s ax to Nell as soon as she could see again.

Tim did as the magician bid, and mighty thankful he must have been afterwards. Unbeknownst to Tim, his steppa had crept into the cottage before Tim’s arrival and had murdered the Widow Smack, who had been caring for Nell during the starkblast. As soon as Tim emerged from his mother’s bedroom, Big Kells grabbed him by the throat, intending to throw him into the fire, but before he could, Nell Kells buried her first husband’s ax in Kells’s thick skull.

W:46
(Tim Stoutheart story),
W:67
(Tim Stoutheart),
W:106–16
parallel, when da killed),
W:117, W:118, W:119
(kiddie),
W:120–24, W:124–30, W:131–45, W:145–W:170, W:170–190 (182–83
Water Tim; 186 gun described),
W:190–202
(197—son of Gilead and the Eld; 201 as gunslinger),
W:202–32
(212 calls self “stupid gunslinger”),
W:232–64
(almost shoots Maerlyn/Tyger),
W:250–64, W:267, W:268
(Lefty Ross, the left-handed gun, Tim Stoutheart),
W:269
(story about reaching the Tower),
W:297
(Tim Stoutheart)