fetched him a deep sigh.
This sight brought a steely ache to Delta’s throat; pain bolted across her head from one side
to the other like summer lightning and she seemed to hear a voice calling. . . calling or
demanding.
No you don’t, she thought, having no idea who she was thinking about or speaking to. No you don’t, not this time, not now. Not now, may be not ever again. That bolt of pain ripped through her head again and she curled her hands into fists. Her face made its own fist,
twisting itself into a sneer of concentration—an expression remarkable and arresting in its
mixture of ugliness and almost beatific determination.
That bolt of pain did not come again. Neither did the voice which sometimes seemed to
speak through such pains.
She waited.
Eddie propped his chin on his fists, propping his head up. Soon it began to droop anyway, the fists sliding up his cheeks. Detta waited, black eyes gleaming.
Eddie’s head jerked up. He struggled to his feet, walked down to the water, and splashed
his face with it.
Dot’s right, white boy. Crine shame there ain’t any No-Doz in this worl or you be
takindat too, ain’t dat right?
Eddie sat down in the wheelchair this time, but evidently found that just a little too
comfortable. So, after a long look through the open door (what you seem in dere, white boy?
Detta give a twenty-dollar bill to knowdat ), he plopped his ass down on the sand again.
Propped his head with his hands again.
Soon his head began to slip down again.
This time there was no stopping it. His chin lay on his chest, and even over the surf she
could hear him snoring. Pretty soon he fell over on his side and curled up.
She was surprised, disgusted, and frightened to feel a sudden stab of pity for the white boy
down there. He looked like nothing so much as a little squirt who had tried to stay up until
midnight on New Years’ Eve and lost the race. Then she remembered the way he and the
Really Bad Man had tried to get her to eat poison food and teased her with their own,
always snatching away at the last second… at least until they got scared she might die.
If they were scared you might die, why’d they try to get you to eat poison in the first place?
The question scared her the way that momentary feeling of pity had scared her. She wasn’t
used to questioning herself, and furthermore, the questioning voice in her mind didn’t seem
like her voice at all.
Wadn’t meanin to kill me wid dat poison food. Jes wanted to make me sick. Set there and
laugh while I puked an moaned, I speck.
She waited twenty minutes and then started down toward the beach, pulling herself with
her hands and strong arms, weaving like a snake, eyes never leaving Eddie. She would
have preferred to have waited another hour, even another half; it would be better to have
the little mahfah ten miles asleep instead of one or two. But waiting was a luxury she
simply could not afford. That Really Bad Man might come back anytime.
As she drew near the place where Eddie lay (he was still snoring, sounded like a buzzsaw
in a sawmill about to go tits up), she picked up a chunk of rock that was satisfyingly smooth
on one side and satisfyingly jagged on the other.
She closed her palm over the smooth side and continued her snake-crawl to where he lay,
the flat sheen of murder in her eyes.
4
What Detta planned to do was brutally simple: smash Eddie with the jagged side of the
rock until he was as dead as the rock itself. Then she’d take the gun and wait for Roland to
come back.
When his body sat up, she would give him a choice: take her back to her world or refuse
and be killed. You goan be quits wid me either way, toots, she would say, and wit yo boyfrien dead, ain’t nothin more you can do like you said you wanted to.
If the gun the Really Bad Man had given Eddie didn’t work—it was possible; she had
never met a man she hated and feared as much as Roland, and she put no depth of slyness
past him—she would do him just the same. She would do him with the rock or with her
bare hands. He was sick and shy two fingers to boot. She could take him.
But as she approached Eddie, a disquieting thought came to her. It was another question,
and again it seemed to be another voice that asked it.
What if he knows? What if he knows what you did the second you kill Eddie?
He ain’t goan knownuthin. He be too busy gittin his medicine. Gittin hisself laid, too, for all I know.
The alien voice did not respond, but the seed of doubt had been planted. She had heard
them talking when they thought she was asleep. The Really Bad Man needed to do
something. She didn’t know what it was. Had something to do with a tower was all Detta
knew. Could be the Really Bad Man thought this tower was full of gold or jewels or
something like that. He said he needed her and Eddie and some other one to get there, and
Detta guessed maybe he did. Why else would these doors be here?
If it was magic and she killed Eddie, he might know. If she killed his way to the tower, she thought she might be killing the only thing graymeat mahfah was living for. And if he
knew he had nothing to live for, mahfah might do anything, because the mahfah wouldn’t
give a bug-turd for nothin no more.
The idea of what might happen if the Really Bad Man came back like that made Detta
shiver.
But if she couldn’t kill Eddie, what was she going to do? She could take the gun while
Eddie was asleep, but when the Really Bad Man came back, could she handle both of
them?
She just didn’t know.
Her eyes touched on the wheelchair, started to move away, then moved back again, fast.
There was a deep pocket in the leather backrest. Poking out of this was a curl of the rope
they had used to tie her into the chair.
Looking at it, she understood how she could do every- thing.
Detta changed course and began to crawl toward the gunslinger’s inert body. She meant to
take what she needed from the knapsack he called his “purse,” then get the rope, fast as she could . . . but for a moment she was held frozen by the door.
Like Eddie, she interpreted what she was seeing in terms of the movies . . . only this looked
more like some TV crime show. The setting was a drug-store. She was seeing a druggist
who looked scared silly, and Detta didn’t blame him. There was a gun pointing straight into
the druggist’s face. The druggist was saying something, but his voice was distant, distorted,
as if heard through sound-baffles. She couldn’t tell what it was. She couldn’t see who was
holding the gun, either, but then, she didn’t really need to see the stick-up man, did she? She
knew who it was, sho.
It was the Really Bad Man.
Might notlook like him over there, might look like some tubby little sack of shit, might even
look like a brother, but inside it be him, sho. Didn’t take him long to find another gun, did it?
I bet it never does. You get movin, Detta Walker.
She opened Roland’s purse, and the faint, nostalgic aroma of tobacco long hoarded but
now long gone drifted out. In one way it was very much like a lady’s purse, filled with what
looked like so much random rickrack at first glance. . . but a closer look showed you the
travelling gear of a man prepared for almost any contingency.
She had an idea the Really Bad Man had been on the road to his Tower a good long time. If
that was so, just the amount of stuff still left in here, poor as some of it was, was cause for
amazement.
You get movin, Detta Walker.
She got what she needed and worked her silent, snakelike way back to the wheelchair.
When she got there she propped herself on one arm and pulled the rope out of the pocket
like a fisherwoman reeling in line. She glanced over at Eddie every now and then just to
make sure he was asleep.
He never stirred until Detta threw the noose around his neck and pulled it taut.
5
He was dragged backward, at first thinking he was still asleep and this was some horrible
nightmare of being buried alive or perhaps smothered.