3
"Remember your promise," Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher's hoofs. "Keep your temper."
"I will," Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.
Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I'm sick of them. Sick to death.
Last night's had been about the pigeons - again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him - mind, soul, spirit, ka - was with Susan Delgado.
"No," he had said simply. "It's too late for such."
"You can't know that," Cuthbert had argued. "And even if it's too late for help to come from Gilead, it's not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can't see that?"
"What advice can they send us?" Roland hadn't seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert's voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnected, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.
"If we knew that," he had replied, "we wouldn't have to ask, Roland, would we?"
"We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It's comfort you're looking for, Cuthbert, not advice."
You mean wait while you f**k her in as many ways and in as many places as you can imagine, Cuthbert thought. Inside, outside, rightside up and upside down.
"You're not thinking clearly about this," Cuthbert had said coldly. He'd heard Alain's gasp. Neither of them had ever said such a thing to Roland in their lives, and once it was out, he'd waited uneasily for whatever explosion might follow.
None did. "Yes," Roland replied, "I am." And he had gone into the bunkhouse without another word.
Now, watching Roland uncinch Rusher's girths and pull the saddle from his back, Cuthbert thought: You 're not, you know. But you better think clearly about this. By all the gods, you 'd better.
"Hile," he said as Roland carried the saddle over to the porch and set it on the step. "Busy afternoon?" He felt Alain kick his ankle and ignored it.
"I've been with Susan," Roland said. No defense, no demur, no excuse. And for a moment Cuthbert had a vision of shocking clarity: he saw the two of them in a hut somewhere, the late afternoon sun shining through holes in the roof and dappling their bodies. She was on top, riding him. Cuthbert saw her knees on the old, spongy boards, and the tension in her long thighs. He saw how tanned her arms were, how white her belly. He saw how Roland's hands cupped the globes of her br**sts, squeezing them as she rocked back and forth above him, and he saw how the sun lit her hair, turning it into a fine-spun net.
Why do you always have to be first? he cried at Roland in his mind. Why does it always have to be you? Gods damn you, Roland! Gods damn you!
"We were on the docks," Cuthbert said, his tone a thin imitation of his usual brightness. "Counting boots and marine tools and what are called clam-drags. What an amusing time of it we've had, eh, Al?"
"Did you need me to help you do that?" Roland asked. He went back to Rusher, and took off the saddle-blanket. "Is that why you sound angry?"
"If I sound angry, it's because most of the fishermen are laughing at us behind our backs. We keep coming back and coming back. Roland, they think we're fools."
Roland nodded. "All to the good," he said.
"Perhaps," Alain said quietly, "but Rimer doesn't think we're fools - it's in the way he looks at us when we pass. Nor does Jonas. And if they don't think we're fools, Roland, what do they think?"
Roland stood on the second step, the saddle-blanket hanging forgotten over his arm. For once they actually seemed to have his attention, Cuthbert thought. Glory be and will wonders never cease.
"They think we're avoiding the Drop because we already know what's there," Roland said. "And if they don't think it, they soon will."
"Cuthbert has a plan."
Roland's gaze - mild, interested, already starting to be not there again - shifted to Cuthbert. Cuthbert the joker. Cuthbert the 'prentice, who had in no way earned the gun he'd carried east to the Outer Crescent. Cuthbert the virgin and eternal second. Gods, I don't want to hate him. I don't, but now it's so easy.
"We two should go and see Sheriff Avery tomorrow," Cuthbert said. "We will present it as a courtesy visit. We have already established ourselves as three courteous, if slightly stupid, young fellows, have we not?"