Roland threw his weight on the back of the chair next to Eddie's and it settled back.
Detta looked around and gave them a wink of such obscene conspiracy that Eddie felt his arms crawl up in gooseflesh.
"You almost opsot me agin, boys," she said. "You want to look out for me, now. I ain't nuthin but a old crippled lady, so you want to have a care for me now."
She laughed … laughed fit to split.
Although Eddie cared for the woman that was the other part of her—was near to loving her just on the basis of the brief time he had seen her and spoken with her—he felt his hands itch to close around her windpipe and choke that laugh, choke it until she could never laugh again.
She peered around again, saw what he was thinking as if it had been printed on him in red ink, and laughed all the harder. Her eyes dared him. Go on, graymeat. Go on. You want to do it? Go on and do it.
In other words, don't just tip the chair; tip the woman, Eddie thought. Tip her over for good. That's what she wants. For Detta, being killed by a white man may be the only real goal she has in life.
"Come on," he said, and began pushing again. "We are gonna tour the seacoast, sweet thang, like it or not."
"Fuck you," she spat.
"Cram it, babe," Eddie responded pleasantly.
The gunslinger walked beside him, head down.
11
They came to a considerable outcropping of rocks when the sun said it was about eleven and here they stopped for nearly an hour, taking the shade as the sun climbed toward the roofpeak of the day. Eddie and the gunslinger ate leftovers from the previous night's kill. Eddie offered a portion to Detta, who again refused, telling him she knew what they wanted to do, and if they wanted to do it, they best to do it with their bare hands and stop trying to poison her. That, she said, was the coward's way.
Eddie's right, the gunslinger mused. This woman has made her own chain of memories. She knows everything that happened to her last night, even though she was really fast asleep.
She believed they had brought her pieces of meat which smelled of death and putrescence, had taunted her with it while they themselves ate salted beef and drank some sort of beer from flasks. She believed they had, every now and then, held pieces of their own untainted supper out to her, drawing it away at the last moment when she snatched at it with her teeth—and laughing while they did it, of course. In the world (or at least in the mind) of Detta Walker, Honk Mahfahs only did two things to brown women: raped them or laughed at them. Or both at the same time.
It was almost funny. Eddie Dean had last seen beef during his ride in the sky-carriage, and Roland had seen none since the last of his jerky was eaten, Gods alone knew how long ago. As far as beer … he cast his mind back.
Tull.
There had been beer in Tull. Beer and beef.
God, it would be good to have a beer. His throat ached and it would be so good to have a beer to cool that ache. Better even than the astin from Eddie's world.
They drew off a distance from her.
"Ain't I good nough cump'ny for white boys like you?" she cawed after them. "Or did you jes maybe want to have a pull on each other one's little bitty white candle?"
She threw her head back and screamed laughter that frightened the gulls up, crying, from the rocks where they had been met in convention a quarter of a mile away.
The gunslinger sat with his hands dangling between his knees, thinking. Finally he raised his head and told Eddie, "I can only understand about one word in every ten she says."
"I'm way ahead of you," Eddie replied. "I'm getting at least two in every three. Doesn't matter. Most of it comes back to honky mahfah."
Roland nodded. "Do many of the dark-skinned people talk that way where you come from? Her other didn't."
Eddie shook his head and laughed. "No. And I'll tell you something sort of funny—at least I think it's sort of funny, but maybe that's just because there isn't all that much to laugh at out here. It's not real. It's not real and she doesn't even know it."
Roland looked at him and said nothing.
"Remember when you washed off her forehead, how she pretended she was scared of the water?"
"Yes."
"You knew she was pretending?"
"Not at first, but quite soon."
Eddie nodded. "That was an act, and she knew it was an act. But she's a pretty good actress and she fooled both of us for a few seconds. The way she's talking is an act, too. But it's not as good. It's so stupid, so goddam hokey!"
"You believe she pretends well only when she knows she's doing it?"
"Yes. She sounds like a cross between the darkies in this book called Mandingo I read once and Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. I know you don't know those names, but what I mean is she talks like a cliche. Do you know that word?"
"It means what is always said or believed by people who think only a little or not at all."
"Yeah. I couldn't have said it half so good."
''Ain't you boys done jerkin on dem candles a yours yet? " Detta's voice was growing hoarse and cracked. "Or maybe it's just you can't fine em. Dat it?"
"Come on." The gunslinger got slowly to his feet. He swayed for a moment, saw Eddie looking at him, and smiled. "I'll be all right."
"For how long?"
"As long as I have to be," the gunslinger answered, and the serenity in his voice chilled Eddie's heart.
12
That night the gunslinger used his last sure live cartridge to make their kill. He would start systematically testing the ones he believed to be duds tomorrow night, but he believed it was pretty much as Eddie had said: They were down to beating the damned things to death.
It was like the other nights: the fire, the cooking, the shelling, the eating—eating which was now slow and unenthusiastic. We're just gassing up, Eddie thought. They offered food to Detta, who screamed and laughed and cursed and asked how long they was goan take her for a fool, and then she began throwing her body wildly from one side to the other, never minding how her bonds grew steadily tighter, only trying to upset the chair to one side or the other so they would have to pick her up again before they could eat.
Just before she could manage the trick, Eddie grabbed her and Roland braced the wheels on either sides with rocks.
"I'll loosen the ropes a bit if you'll be still," Roland told her.
"Suck shit out my ass, mahfah!"
"I don't understand if that means yes or no."
She looked at him, eyes narrowed, suspecting some buried barb of satire in that calm voice (Eddie also wondered, but couldn't tell if there was or not), and after a moment she said sulkily, "I be still. Too damn hungry to kick up much dickens. You boys goan give me some real food or you jes goan starve me to death? Dat yo plan? You too chickenshit to choke me and I ain't nev' goan eat no poison, so dat must be you plan. Starve me out. Well, we see, sho. We goan see. Sho we are."
She offered them her bone-chilling sickle of a grin again.
Not long after she fell asleep.
Eddie touched the side of Roland's face. Roland glanced at him but did not pull away from the touch.
"I'm all right."
"Yeah, you're Jim-dandy. Well, I tell you what, Jim, we didn't get along very far today."
"I know." There was also the matter of having used the last live shell, but that was knowledge Eddie could do without, at least tonight. Eddie wasn't sick, but he was exhausted. Too exhausted for more bad news.
No, he's not sick, not yet, but if he goes too long without rest, gets tired enough, he'll get sick.