it as a lever. When the deer’s brain was exposed, he took it out, set it carefully aside, and looked at Susannah. “We’ll want the brains of every deer we killed, and that’s what we
need a hammer for.”
“Oh,” she said in a choked voice. “Brains.”
“To make a tanning slurry. But there’s more use for chert than that. Look.” He showed her
how to bang two chunks together until one or both shattered, leaving large, nearly even
pieces instead of jagged lumps. She knew that metamorphic rocks broke that way, but
schists and such were generally too weak to make good tools. This stuff wasstrong .
“When you get chunks that break thick enough to hold on one side but thin to an edge on
the other,” Roland said, “lay them by. Those will be our scrapers. If we had more time we
could make handles, but we don’t. Our hands will be plenty sore by bedtime.”
“How long do you think it will take to get enough scrapers?”
“Not so long,” Roland said. “Chert breaks lucky, or so I used to hear.”
While Roland dragged deadwood for a fire into a copse of mixed willows and alders by the
edge of the frozen stream, Susannah inspected her way along the embankments, looking
for chert. By the time she’d found a dozen large chunks, she had also located a granite
boulder rising from the ground in a smooth, weather-worn curve. She thought it would
make a fine anvil.
The chert did indeed break lucky, and she had thirty potential scrapers by the time Roland
was bringing back his third large load of firewood. He made a little pile of kindling which
Susannah shielded with her hands. By then it was sleeting, and although they were working
beneath a fairly dense clump of trees, she thought it wouldn’t be long before both of them
were soaked.
When the fire was lit, Roland went a few steps away, once more fell on his knees, and
folded his hands.
“Praying again?” she asked, amused.
“What we learn in our childhood has a way of sticking,” he said. He closed his eyes for a few moments, then brought his clasped hands to his mouth and kissed them. The only word
she heard him say wasGan . Then he opened his eyes and lifted his hands, spreading them
and making a pretty gesture that looked to her like birds flying away. When he spoke again,
his voice was dry and matter-of-fact: Mr. Taking-Care-of-Business. “That’s very well,
then,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”
Seven
They made twine from grass, just as Mordred had done, and hung the first deer—the one
already headless—by its back legs from the low branch of a willow. Roland used his knife
to cut its belly open, then reached into the guts, rummaged, and removed two dripping red
organs that she thought were kidneys.
“These for fever and cough,” he said, and bit into the first one as if it were an apple.
Susannah made a gurking noise and turned away to consider the stream until he was
finished. When he was, she turned back and watched him cut circles around the hanging
legs close to where they joined the body.
“Are you any better?” she asked him uneasily.
“I will be,” he said. “Now help me take the hide off this fellow. We’ll want the first one
with the hair still on it—we need to make a bowl for our slurry. Now watch.”
He worked his fingers into the place where the deer’s hide still clung to the body by the
thin layer of fat and muscle beneath, then pulled. The hide tore easily to a point halfway
down the deer’s midsection. “Now do your side, Susannah.”
Getting her fingers underneath was the only hard part. This time they pulled together, and
when they had the hide all the way down to the dangling forelegs, it vaguely resembled a
shirt. Roland used his knife to cut it off, then began to dig in the ground a little way from the roaring fire but still beneath the shelter of the trees. She helped him, relishing the way the sweat rolled down her face and body. When they had a shallow bowl-shaped depression
two feet across and eighteen inches deep, Roland lined it with the hide.
All that afternoon they took turns skinning the eight other deer they had killed. It was
important to do it as quickly as possible, for when the underlying layer of fat and muscle
dried up, the work would become slower and harder. The gunslinger kept the fire burning
high and hot, every now and then leaving her to rake ashes out onto the ground. When they
had cooled enough so they would not burn holes in their bowl-liner, he pushed them into
the hole they’d made. Susannah’s back and arms were aching fiercely by five o’clock, but
she kept at it. Roland’s face, neck, and hands were comically smeared with ash.
“You look like a fella in a minstrel show,” she said at one point. “Rastus Coon.”
“Who’s that?”
“Nobody but the white folks’ fool,” she said. “Do you suppose Mordred’s out there, watching us work?” All day she’d kept an eye peeled for him.
“No,” he said, pausing to rest. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, leaving a fresh
smear and now making her think of penitents on Ash Wednesday. “I think he’s gone off to
make his own kill.”
“Mordred’s a-hungry,” she said. And then: “You can touch him a little, can’t you? At least
enough to know if he’s here or if he’s gone.”
Roland considered this, then said simply: “I’m his father.”
Eight
By dark, they had a large heap of deerskins and a pile of skinned, headless carcasses that
surely would have been black with flies in warmer weather. They ate another huge meal of
sizzling venison steaks, utterly delicious, and Susannah spared another thought for
Mordred, somewhere out in the dark, probably eating his own supper raw. He might have
matches, but he wasn’t stupid; if they saw another fire in all this darkness, they would rush down upon it. And him. Then, bang-bang-bang, goodbye Spider-Boy. She felt a surprising
amount of sympathy for him and told herself to beware of it. Certainly he would have felt
none for either her or Roland, had the shoe been on the other foot.
When they were done eating, Roland wiped his greasy fingers on his shirt and said, “That
tasted fine.”
“You gotthat right.”
“Now let’s get the brains out. Then we’ll sleep.”
“One at a time?” Susannah asked.
“Yes—so far as I know, brains only come one to a customer.”
For a moment she was too surprised at hearing Eddie’s phrase
(one to a customer)
coming from Roland’s mouth to realize he’d made a joke. Lame, yes, but abona fide joke.
Then she managed a token laugh. “Very funny, Roland. You know what I meant.”
Roland nodded. “We’ll sleep one at a time and stand a watch, yes. I think that would be
best.”
Time and repetition had done its work; she’d now seen too many tumbling guts to feel
squeamish about a few brains. They cracked heads, used Roland’s knife (its edge now dull) to pry open skulls, and removed the brains of their kill. These they put carefully aside, like a clutch of large gray eggs. By the time the last deer was debrained, Susannah’s fingers
were so sore and swollen she could hardly bend them.
“Lie over,” Roland said. “Sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”
She didn’t argue. Given her full belly and the heat of the fire, she knew sleep would come
quickly. She also knew that when she woke up tomorrow, she was going to be so stiff that
even sitting up would be difficult and painful. Now, though, she didn’t care. A feeling of
vast contentment filled her. Some of it was having eaten hot food, but by no means all. The
greater part of her well-being stemmed from a day of hard work, no more or less than that.
The sense that they were not just floating along butdoing for themselves .
Jesus,she thought,I think I’m becoming a Republican in my old age .
Something else occurred to her then: how quiet it was. No sounds but the sough of the
wind, the whispering sleet (now starting to abate), and the crackle of the blessed fire.
“Roland?”
He looked at her from his place by the fire, eyebrows raised.
“You’ve stopped coughing.”
He smiled and nodded. She took his smile down into sleep, but it was Eddie she dreamed
of.
Nine
They stayed three days in the camp by the stream, and during that time Susannah learned
more about making hide garments than she would ever have believed (and much more than
she really wanted to know).
By casting a mile or so in either direction along the stream they found a couple of logs, one for each of them. While they looked, they used their makeshift pot to soak their hides in a