3
Her one fear was that the gunslinger would return before Eddie fell asleep, but he was still gone. The limp body at the base of the door did not stir. Maybe he was having some trouble getting the medicine he needed - some other kind of trouble, for all she knew. Men like him seemed to find trouble easy as a bitch in heat finds a randy hound.
Two hours passed while Eddie hunted for the woman he called "Odetta" (oh how she hated the sound of that name), ranging up and down the low hills and yelling until he had no voice left to yell with.
At last Eddie did what she had been waiting for: he went back down to the little angle of beach and sat by the wheel-chair, looking around disconsolately. He touched one of the chair's wheels, and the touch was almost a caress. Then his hand dropped away and he fetched him a deep sigh.
This sight brought a steely ache to Detta's throat; pain bolted across her head from one side to the other like summer lightning and she seemed to hear a voice calling... calling or demanding.
No you don't, she thought, having no idea who she was thinking about or speaking to. No you don't, not this time, not now. Not now, may be not ever again. That bolt of pain ripped through her head again and she curled her hands into fists. Her face made its own fist, twisting itself into a sneer of concentration - an expression remarkable and arresting in its mixture of ugliness and almost beatific determination.
That bolt of pain did not come again. Neither did the voice which sometimes seemed to speak through such pains.
She waited.
Eddie propped his chin on his fists, propping his head up. Soon it began to droop anyway, the fists sliding up his cheeks. Detta waited, black eyes gleaming.
Eddie's head jerked up. He struggled to his feet, walked down to the water, and splashed his face with it.
Dat's right, white boy. Crine shame there ain't any No-Doz in this worl or you be takin dat too, ain't dat right?
Eddie sat down in the wheelchair this time, but evidently found that just a little too comfortable. So, after a long look through the open door (what you seem in dere, white boy? Detta give a twenty-dollar bill to knowdat ), he plopped his ass down on the sand again.
Propped his head with his hands again.
Soon his head began to slip down again.
This time there was no stopping it. His chin lay on his chest, and even over the surf she could hear him snoring. Pretty soon he fell over on his side and curled up.
She was surprised, disgusted, and frightened to feel a sudden stab of pity for the white boy down there. He looked like nothing so much as a little squirt who had tried to stay up until midnight on New Years' Eve and lost the race. Then she remembered the way he and the Really Bad Man had tried to get her to eat poison food and teased her with their own, always snatching away at the last second ... at least until they got scared she might die.
Ifthey were scared you might die, why'd they try to get you to eat poison in the first place?
The question scared her the way that momentary feeling of pity had scared her. She wasn't used to questioning herself, and furthermore, the questioning voice in her mind didn't seem like her voice at all.
Wadn't meanin to kill me wid dat poison food. Jes wanted to make me sick. Set there and laugh while I puked an moaned, I speck.
She waited twenty minutes and then started down toward the beach, pulling herself with her hands and strong arms, weaving like a snake, eyes never leaving Eddie. She would have preferred to have waited another hour, even another half; it would be better to have the little mahfah ten miles asleep instead of one or two. But waiting was a luxury she simply could not afford. That Really Bad Man might come back anytime.
As she drew near the place where Eddie lay (he was still snoring, sounded like a buzzsaw in a sawmill about to go tits up), she picked up a chunk of rock that was satisfyingly smooth on one side and satisfyingly jagged on the other.
She closed her palm over the smooth side and continued her snake-crawl to where he lay, the flat sheen of murder in her eyes.
4
What Detta planned to do was brutally simple: smash Eddie with the jagged side of the rock until he was as dead as the rock itself. Then she'd take the gun and wait for Roland to come back.
When his body sat up, she would give him a choice: take her back to her world or refuse and be killed. You goan be quits wid me either way, toots, she would say, and wit yo boyfrien dead, ain't nothin more you can do like you said you wanted to.
If the gun the Really Bad Man had given Eddie didn't work - it was possible; she had never met a man she hated and feared as much as Roland, and she put no depth of slyness past him - she would do him just the same. She would do him with the rock or with her bare hands. He was sick and shy two fingers to boot. She could take him.
But as she approached Eddie, a disquieting thought came to her. It was another question, and again it seemed to be another voice that asked it.
What if he knows? What if he knows what you did the second you kill Eddie?
He ain't goan know nuthin. He be too busy gittin his medicine. Gittin hisself laid, too, for all I know.
The alien voice did not respond, but the seed of doubt had been planted. She had heard them talking when they thought she was asleep. The Really Bad Man needed to do something. She didn't know what it was. Had something to do with a tower was all Detta knew. Could be the Really Bad Man thought this tower was full of gold or jewels or something like that. He said he needed her and Eddie and some other one to get there, and Detta guessed maybe he did. Why else would these doors be here?
If it was magic and she killed Eddie, he might know. If she killed his way to the tower, she thought she might be killing the only thing graymeat mahfah was living for. And if he knew he had nothing to live for, mahfah might do anything, because the mahfah wouldn't give a bug-turd for nothin no more.
The idea of what might happen if the Really Bad Man came back like that made Detta shiver.
But if she couldn't kill Eddie, what was she going to do? She could take the gun while Eddie was asleep, but when the Really Bad Man came back, could she handle both of them?
She just didn't know.
Her eyes touched on the wheelchair, started to move away, then moved back again, fast. There was a deep pocket in the leather backrest. Poking out of this was a curl of the rope they had used to tie her into the chair.
Looking at it, she understood how she could do everything.
Detta changed course and began to crawl toward the gunslinger's inert body. She meant to take what she needed from the knapsack he called his "purse," then get the rope, fast as she could ... but for a moment she was held frozen by the door.
Like Eddie, she interpreted what she was seeing in terms of the movies ... only this looked more like some TV crime show. The setting was a drug-store. She was seeing a druggist who looked scared silly, and Detta didn't blame him. There was a gun pointing straight into the druggist's face. The druggist was saying something, but his voice was distant, distorted, as if heard through sound-baffles. She couldn't tell what it was. She couldn't see who was holding the gun, either, but then, she didn't really need to see the stick-up man, did she? She knew who it was, sho.
It was the Really Bad Man.
Might not look like him over there, might look like some tubby little sack of shit, might even look like a brother, but inside it be him, sho. Didn't take him long to find another gun, did it? I bet it never does. You get movin, Detta Walker.
She opened Roland's purse, and the faint, nostalgic aroma of tobacco long hoarded but now long gone drifted out. In one way it was very much like a lady's purse, filled with what looked like so much random rickrack at first glance ... but a closer look showed you the travelling gear of a man prepared for almost any contingency.
She had an idea the Really Bad Man had been on the road to his Tower a good long time. If that was so, just the amount of stuff still left in here, poor as some of it was, was cause for amazement.
You get movin, Detta Walker.
She got what she needed and worked her silent, snakelike way back to the wheelchair. When she got there she propped herself on one arm and pulled the rope out of the pocket like a fisherwoman reeling in line. She glanced over at Eddie every now and then just to make sure he was asleep.
He never stirred until Detta threw the noose around his neck and pulled it taut.
5
He was dragged backward, at first thinking he was still asleep and this was some horrible nightmare of being buried alive or perhaps smothered.
Then he felt the pain of the noose sinking into his throat, felt warm spit running down his chin as he gagged. This was no dream. He clawed at the rope and tried for his feet.
She yanked him hard with her strong arms. Eddie tell on his back with a thud. His face was turning purple.
"Quit on it!" Detta hissed from behind him. "I ain't goan kill you if you quit on it, but if you don't, I'm goan choke you dead."
Eddie lowered his hands and tried to be still. The running slipknot Odetta had tossed over his neck loosened enough for him to draw a thin, burning breath. All you could say for it was that it was better than not breathing at all.
When the panicked beating of his heart had slowed a little, he tried to look around. The noose immediately drew tight again.
" Nev ' mind. You jes go on an take in dat ocean view, graymeat. Dat's all you want to be lookin at right now."
He looked back at the ocean and the knot loosened enough to allow him those miserly burning breaths again. His left hand crept surreptitiously down to the waistband of his pants (but she saw the movement, and although he didn't know it, she was grinning). There was nothing there. She had taken the gun.
She crept up on you while you were asleep, Eddie. It was the gunslinger's voice, of course. It doesn't do any good to say I told you so now, but ...I told you so. This is what romance gets you - a noose around your neck and a crazy woman with two guns somewhere behind you.
But if she was going to kill me, she already would have done it. She would have done it while I was asleep.
And what is it you think she's going to do, Eddie? Hand you an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Disney World?
"Listen," he said. "Odetta - "
The word was barely out of his mouth before the noose pulled savagely tight again.
"You doan want to be callin me dat. Nex time you be callin me dat be de las time you be callin anyone anythin. My name's Detta Walker, and if you want to keep drawin breaf into yo lungs, you little piece of whitewashed shit, you better member it!"
Eddie made choking, gagging noises and clawed at the noose. Big black spots of nothing began to explode in front of his eyes like evil flowers.
At last the choking band around his throat eased again.
"Got dat, honky?"
"Yes," he said, but it was only a hoarse choke of sound.
"Den say it. Say my name."
"Detta."
"Say my whole name!" Dangerous hysteria wavered in her voice, and at that moment Eddie was glad he couldn't see her.
"Detta Walker."
"Good." The noose eased a little more. "Now you lissen to me, whitebread, and you do it good, if you want to live til sundown. You don't want to be trine to be cute, like I seen you jus trine t'snake down an git dat gun I took off'n you while you was asleep. You don't want to cause Detta, she got the sight. See what you goan try befo you try it. Sho.
"You don't want to try nuthin cute cause I ain't got no legs, either. I have learned to do a lot of things since I lost em, and now I got both o dat honky mahfah's guns, and dat ought to go for somethin. You think so?"
"Yeah," Eddie croaked. "I'm not feeling cute."
"Well, good. Dat's real good." She cackled. "I been one busy bitch while you been sleepin. Got dis bidness all figured out. Here's what I want you to do, whitebread: put yo hands behin you and feel aroun until you find a loop jus like d'one I got roun yo neck. There be three of em. I been braidin while you been sleepin, lazybones!" She cackled again. "When you feel dat loop, you goan put yo wrists right one against t'other an slip em through it.
"Den you goan feel my hand pullin that runnin knot tight, and when you feel dat, you goan say 'Dis my chance to toin it aroun on disyere nigger bitch. Right here, while she ain't got her good hold on dat jerk-rope.' But - " Here Detta's voice became muffled as well as a Southern darkie caricature. " - you better take a look aroun befo you go doin anythin rash."
Eddie did. Detta looked more witchlike than ever, a dirty, matted thing that would have struck tear into hearts much stouter than his own. The dress she had been wearing in Macy's when the gunslinger snatched her was now filthy and torn. She'd used the knife she had taken from the gunslinger's purse - the one he and Roland had used to cut the masking tape away - to slash her dress in two other places, creating makeshift holsters just above the swell of her hips. The worn butts of the gunslinger's revolvers protruded from them.
Her voice was muffled because the end of the rope was clenched in her teeth. A freshly cut end protruded from one side of her grin; the rest of the line, the part which led to the noose around his neck, protruded from the other side. There was something so predatory and barbaric about this image - the rope caught in the grin - that he was frozen, staring at her with a horror that only made her grin widen.
"You try to be cute while I be takin care of yo hans," she said in her muffled voice, "I goan joik yo win'pipe shut wif my teef, graymeat. And dat time I not be lettin up agin. You understan?"
He didn't trust himself to speak. He only nodded.
"Good. Maybe you be livin a little bit longer after all."
"If I don't," Eddie croaked, "you're never going to have the pleasure of shoplifting in Macy's again, Detta. Because he'll know, and then it'll be everybody out of the pool."
"Hush up," Detta said ... almost crooned. "You jes hush up. Leave the thinkin to the folks dat kin do it. All you got to do is be feelin aroun fo dat next loop."