“You don’t understand,” Maud said. Her eyes were dark and somber. “But you will. Ay—you will.”
“Go on, now,” Susannah said quietly. “Talk between us is no good; the words only drop dead. Just go your way and try to remember the faces of your fathers, for I think you lost sight of those faces long ago.” The two of them walked back in the direction from which they had come without another word. They did look back over their shoulders from time to time, however, and they were still holding hands: Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep dark forest.
“Lemme outta here,” Eddie said heavily. He made the Ruger safe, stuck it back in the waistband of his pants, and then rubbed his red eyes with the heels of his hands. “Just lemme out, that’s all I ask.” “I know what you mean, handsome.” She was clearly scared, but her head had that defiant tilt he had come to recognize and love. He put his hands on her shoulders, bent down, and kissed her. He did not let either their surroundings or the oncoming storm keep him from doing a thorough job. When he pulled back at last, she was studying him with wide, dancing eyes. “Wow! What was that about?” “About how I’m in love with you,” he said, “and I guess that’s about all. Is it enough?”
Her eyes softened. For a moment she thought about telling him the secret she might or might not be keeping, but of course the time and place were wrong—she could no more tell him she might be pregnant now than she could pause to read the words written on the sculpted Portal Totems. “It’s enough, Eddie,” she said.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” His hazel eyes were totally focused on her. “It’s hard for me to say stuff like that— living with Henry made it hard, I guess—but it’s true. I think I started loving you because you were everything Roland took me away from—in New York, I mean—hut it’s a lot more than that now, because I don’t want to go hack anymore. Do you?” She looked at the Cradle. She was terrified of what they might find in there, but all the same . . . she looked back at him. “No, I don’t want to go back. I want to spend the rest of my life going forward. As long as you’re with me, that is. It’s funny, you know, you saying you started loving me because of all the things he took you away from.”
“Funny how?”
“I started loving you because you set me free of Detta Walker.” She paused, thought, then shook her head slightly. “No—it goes further than that. I started loving you because you set me free of both those bitches. One was a foul-mouthed, cock-teasing thief, and the other was a self-righteous, pompous prig. Comes down to six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I’m concerned. I like Susannah Dean better than either one . . . and you were the one who set me free.”
This time it was she who did the reaching, pressing her palm to his stubbly cheeks, drawing him down, kissing him gently. When he put a light hand on her breast, she sighed and covered it with her own. “I think we better get going,” she said, “or we’re apt to be laying right here in the street . . . and getting wet, from the look.” Eddie stared around at the silent towers, the broken windows, the vine-encrusted walls a final time. Then he nodded. “Yeah. I don’t think there’s any future in this town, anyway.”
He pushed her forward, and they both stiffened as the wheels of the chair passed over what Maud had called the dead-line, fearful that they would trip some ancient protective device and die together. But nothing happened. Eddie pushed her into the plaza, and as they approached the steps leading up to the Cradle, a cold, wind-driven rain began to fall.
Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of Mid-World had arrived.
ONCE THEY WERE IN the smelly darkness of the sewers, Gasher slowed the killing pace he’d maintained aboveground. Jake didn’t think it was because of the darkness; Gasher seemed to know every twist and turn of the route he was following, just as advertised. Jake believed it was because his captor was satisfied that Roland had been squashed to jelly by the deadfall trap. Jake himself had begun to wonder.