‘ee mustn’t let un take the babbies. No, not a single one. Never mind what the big bugs like Eisenhart and Telford might say.”
“We’ll do the best we can,” he said.
“Good. Thankya.” She stepped back, looked down. “One part of ‘ee has no arthritis, nor rheumatiz, either.
Looks quite lively. Perhaps a lady might look at the moon tonight, gunslinger, and pine for company.”
“Perhaps she’ll find it,” Roland said. “Will you give me a bottle of that stuff to take on my travels around the Calla, or is it too dear?”
“Nay, not too dear,” she said. In her flirting, she had smiled. Now she looked grave again. “But will only help’ee a little while, I think.”
“I know,” Roland said. “And no matter. We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back.”
“Aye,” she said. “So it does.”
FOUR
When he came out of the pantry, buckling his belt, he finally heard stirring in the other room. The murmur of Eddie’s voice followed by a sleepy peal of female laughter. Callahan was at the stove, pouring himself fresh coffee. Roland went to him and spoke rapidly.
“I saw pokeberries on the left of your drive between here and your church.”
“Yes, and they’re ripe. Your eyes are sharp.”
“Never mind my eyes, do ya. I would go out to pick my hat full. I’d have Eddie join me while his wife perhaps cracks an egg or three. Can you manage that?”
“I believe so, but—”
“Good,” Roland said, and went out.
FIVE
By the time Eddie came, Roland had already half-filled his hat with the orange berries, and also eaten several good handfuls. The pain in his legs and hips had faded with amazing rapidity. As he picked, he wondered how much Cort would have paid for a single bottle of Rosalita Munoz’s cat-oil.
“Man, those look like the wax fruit our mother used to put out on a doily every Thanksgiving,” Eddie said.
“Can you really eat them?”
Roland picked a pokeberry almost as big as the tip of his own finger and popped it into Eddie’s mouth. “Does that taste like wax, Eddie?”
Eddie’s eyes, cautious to begin with, suddenly widened. He swallowed, grinned, and reached for more. “Like cranberries, only sweeter. I wonder if Suze knows how to make muffins? Even if she doesn’t, I bet Callahan’s housekeeper—”
“Listen to me, Eddie. Listen closely and keep a rein on your emotions. For your father’s sake.”
Eddie had been reaching for a bush that was particularly heavy with pokeberries. Now he stopped and simply looked at Roland, his face expressionless. In this early light, Roland could see how much older Eddie looked.
How much he had grown up was really extraordinary.
“What is it?”
Roland, who had held this secret in his own counsel until it seemed more complex than it really was, was surprised at how quickly and simply it was told. And Eddie, he saw, wasn’t completely surprised.
“How long have you known?”
Roland listened for accusation in this question and heard none. “For certain? Since I first saw her slip into the woods. Saw her eating…” Roland paused. “… what she was eating. Heard her speaking with people who weren’t there. I’ve suspected much longer. Since Lud.”
“And didn’t tell me.”
“No.” Now the recriminations would come, and a generous helping of Eddie’s sarcasm. Except they didn’t.
“You want to know if I’m pissed, don’t you? If I’m going to make this a problem.”
“Are you?”
“No. I’m not angry, Roland. Exasperated, maybe, and I’m scared to fuckin death for Suze, but why would I be angry with you? Aren’t you the dinh?” It was Eddie’s turn to pause. When he spoke again, he was more specific. It wasn’t easy for him, but he got it out. “Aren’t you my dinh?”
“Yes,” Roland said. He reached out and touched Eddie’s arm. He was astounded by his desire—almost his
need—to explain. He resisted it. If Eddie could call him not just dinh but his dinh, he ought to behave as dinh. What he said was, “You don’t seem exactly stunned by my news.”
“Oh, I’m surprised,” Eddie said. “Maybe not stunned, but… well…” He picked berries and dropped them into Roland’s hat. “I saw some things, okay? Sometimes she’s too pale. Sometimes she winces and grabs at herself, but if you ask her, she says it’s just gas. And her boobs are bigger. I’m sure of it. But Roland, she’s still having her period! A month or so ago I saw her burying the rags, and they were bloody. Soaked. How can that be? If she caught pregnant when we pulled Jake through—while she was keeping the demon of the circle occupied—that’s got to be four months at least, and probably five. Even allowing for the way time slips around now, it’s gotta be.”
Roland nodded. “I know she’s been having her monthlies. And that’s proof conclusive it isn’t your baby. The thing she’s carrying scorns her woman’s blood.” Roland thought of her squeezing the frog in her fist, popping it. Drinking its black bile. Licking it from her fingers like syrup.
“Would it…” Eddie made as if to eat one of the pokeberries, decided against it, and tossed it into Roland’s hat instead. Roland thought it would be a while before Eddie felt the stirrings of true appetite again. “Roland, would it even look like a human baby?”
“Almost surely not.”
“What, then?”
And before he could stay them, the words were out. “Better not to name the devil.”
Eddie winced. What little color remained in his face now left it.
“Eddie? Are you all right?”
“No,” Eddie said. “I am most certainly not all right. But I’m not gonna faint like a girl at an Andy Gibb concert, either. What are we going to do?”
“For the time being, nothing. We have too many other things to do.”
“Don’t we just,” Eddie said. “Over here, the Wolves come in twenty-four days, if I’ve got it figured right.
Over there in New York, who knows what day it is? The sixth of June? The tenth? Closer to July fifteenth than it was yesterday, that’s for sure. But Roland—if what she’s got inside her isn’t human, we can’t be sure her pregnancy will go nine months. She might pop it in six. Hell, she might pop it tomorrow.”
Roland nodded and waited. Eddie had gotten this far; surely he would make it the rest of the way.
And he did. “We’re stuck, aren’t we?”
“Yes. We can watch her, but there’s not much else we can do. We can’t even keep her still in hopes of slowing things down, because she’d very likely guess why we were doing it. And we need her. To shoot when the time comes, but before that, we’ll have to train some of these people with whatever weapons they feel comfortable with. It’ll probably turn out to be bows.” Roland grimaced. In the end he had hit the target in the North Field with enough arrows to satisfy Cort, but he had never cared for bow and arrow or bah and bolt. Those had been Jamie DeCurry’s choice of weapons, not his own.
“We’re really gonna go for it, aren’t we?”
“Oh yes.”
And Eddie smiled. Smiled in spite of himself. He was what he was. Roland saw it and was glad.
SIX
As they walked back to Callahan’s rectory-house, Eddie asked: “You came clean with me, Roland, why not come clean widi her?”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Oh, I think you do,” Eddie said.
“All right, but you won’t like the answer.”
“I’ve heard all sorts of answers from you, and I couldn’t say I’ve cared for much more than one in five.” Eddie considered. “Nah, that’s too generous. Make it one in fifty.”
“The one who calls herself Mia—which means mother in the High Speech—kens she’s carrying a child, although I doubt she kens what kind of a child.”
Eddie considered this in silence.
“Whatever it is, Mia thinks of it as her baby, and she’ll protect it to the limit of her strength and life. If that means taking over Susannah’s body—the way Detta Walker sometimes took over Odetta Holmes—she’ll do it if she can.”
“And probably she could,” Eddie said gloomily. Then he turned directly to Roland. “So what I think you’re saying— correct me if I’ve got it wrong—is that you don’t want to tell Suze she might be growing a monster in her belly because it might impair her efficiency.”
Roland could have quibbled about the harshness of this judgment, but chose not to. Essentially, Eddie was right.
As always when he was angry, Eddie’s street accent became more pronounced. It was almost as though he were speaking through his nose instead of his mouth. “And if anything changes over the next month or so—if she goes into labor and pops out the Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance—she’s gonna be completely unprepared. Won’t have a clue.”