Then he felt the pain of the noose sinking into his throat, felt warm spit running down his
chin as he gagged. This was no dream. He clawed at the rope and tried for his feet.
She yanked him hard with her strong arms. Eddie tell on his back with a thud. His face was
turning purple.
“Quit on it!” Detta hissed from behind him. “I ain’t goan kill you if you quit on it, but if you don’t, I’m goan choke you dead.”
Eddie lowered his hands and tried to be still. The running slipknot Odetta had tossed over
his neck loosened enough for him to draw a thin, burning breath. All you could say for it
was that it was better than not breathing at all.
When the panicked beating of his heart had slowed a little, he tried to look around. The
noose immediately drew tight again.
“Nev’ mind. You jes go on an take in dat ocean view, graymeat. Dat’s all you want to be
lookin at right now.”
He looked back at the ocean and the knot loosened enough to allow him those miserly
burning breaths again. His left hand crept surreptitiously down to the waistband of his
pants (but she saw the movement, and although he didn’t know it, she was grinning). There
was nothing there. She had taken the gun.
She crept up on you while you were asleep, Eddie.It was the gunslinger’s voice, of
course. It doesn’t do any good to say I told you so now, but. . . I told you so. This is what romance gets you—a noose around your neck and a crazy woman with two guns
somewhere behind you.
But if she was going to kill me, she already would have done it. She would have done it
while I was asleep.
And what is it youthink she’s going to do, Eddie? Hand you an all-expenses-paid trip for
two to Disney World?
“Listen,” he said. “Odetta—”
The word was barely out of his mouth before the noose pulled savagely tight again.
“You doan want to be callin me dat. Nex time you be callin me dat be de las time you be
callin anyone anythin. My name’s Detta Walker, and if you want to keep drawin breaf into yo lungs, you little piece of whitewashed shit, you better member it!”
Eddie made choking, gagging noises and clawed at the noose. Big black spots of nothing
began to explode in front of his eyes like evil flowers.
At last the choking band around his throat eased again.
“Got dat, honky?”
“Yes,” he said, but it was only a hoarse choke of sound.
“Den say it. Say my name.”
“Detta.”
“Say my whole name!” Dangerous hysteria wavered in her voice, and at that moment Eddie was glad he couldn’t see her.
“Detta Walker.”
“Good.” The noose eased a little more. “Now you lissen to me, whitebread, and you do it good, if you want to live til sundown. You don’t want to be trine to be cute, like I seen you
jus trine t’snake down an git dat gun I took off’n you while you was asleep. You don’t want
to cause Detta, she got the sight. See what you goan try befo you try it. Sho.
“You don’t want to try nuthin cute cause I ain’t got no legs, either. I have learned to do a lot of things since I lost em, and now I got both o dat honky mahfah’s guns, and dat ought to go for somethin. You think so?”
“Yeah,” Eddie croaked. “I’m not feeling cute.”
“Well, good. Dat’s real good.” She cackled. “I been one busy bitch while you been sleepin.
Got dis bidness all figured out. Here’s what I want you to do, whitebread: put yo hands
behin you and feel aroun until you find a loop j us like d’one I got roun yo neck. There be
three of em. I been braidin while you been sleepin, lazybones!” She cackled again. “When you feel dat loop, you goan put yo wrists right one against t’other an slip em through it.
“Denyou goan feel my hand pullin that runnin knot tight, and when you feel dat, you goan say ‘Dis my chance to toin it aroun on disyere nigger bitch. Right here, while she ain’t got
her good hold on dat jerk-rope.’ But—” Here Delta’s voice became muffled as well as a
Southern darkie caricature. “—you better take a look aroun befo you go doin anythin rash.”
Eddie did. Detta looked more witchlike than ever, a dirty, matted thing that would have struck tear into hearts much stouter than his own. The dress she had been wearing in
Macy’s when the gunslinger snatched her was now filthy and torn. She’d used the knife she
had taken from the gunslinger’s purse—the one he and Roland had used to cut the masking
tape away—to slash her dress in two other places, creating makeshift holsters just above
the swell of her hips. The worn butts of the gunslinger’s revolvers protruded from them.
Her voice was muffled because the end of the rope was clenched in her teeth. A freshly cut
end protruded from one side of her grin; the rest of the line, the part which led to the noose
around his neck, protruded from the other side. There was something so predatory and
barbaric about this image— the rope caught in the grin—that he was frozen, staring at her
with a horror that only made her grin widen.
“You try to be cute while I be takin care of yo hans,” she said in her muffled voice, “I goanjoik yo win’pipe shut wif my teef, graymeat. And dat time I not be lettin up agin. You understan?”
He didn’t trust himself to speak. He only nodded.
“Good. Maybe you be livin a little bit longer after all.”
“If I don’t,” Eddie croaked, “you’re never going to have the pleasure of shoplifting in Macy’s again, Detta. Because he’ll know, and then it’ll be everybody out of the pool.”
“Hush up,” Detta said. . . almost crooned. “You jes hush up. Leave the thinkin to the folks dat kin do it. All you got to do is be feelin aroun fo dat next loop.”
6
I been braidin while you been sleepin, she had said, and with disgust and mounting alarm, Eddie discovered she meant exactly what she said. The rope had become a series of three
running slip-knots. The first she had noosed around his neck as he slept. The second
secured his hands behind his back.
Then she pushed him roughly over on his side and told him to bring his feet up until his
heels touched his butt. He saw where this was leading and balked. She pulled one of
Roland’s revolvers from the slit in her dress, cocked it, and pressed the muzzle against
Eddie’s temple.
“You do it or Ido it, graymeat,” she said in that crooning voice. “Only if I do it, you goan be dead when I do. I jes kick some san’ over de brains dat squoit out d’other side yo haid,
cover de hole wit yo hair. He think you be sleepin!” She cackled again.
Eddie brought his feet up, and she quickly secured the third running slip-knot around his ankles.
“There. Trussed up just as neat as a calf at a ro-day-o.”
That described it as well as anything, Eddie thought. If he tried to bring his feet down from
a position which was already growing uncomfortable, he would tighten the slipknot
hold- ing his ankles even more. That would tighten the length of rope between his ankles
and his wrists, which would in turn tighten that slipknot, and the rope between his wrists and the noose she’d put around his neck, and . . .
She was dragging him, somehow dragging him down the beach.
“Hey! What—”
He tried to pull back and felt everything tighten— including his ability to draw breath. He
let himself go as limp as possible (and keep those feet up, don’t forget that, asshole, because
if you lower your feet enough you’re going to strangle) and let her drag him along the rough
ground. A jag of rock peeled skin away from his cheek, and he felt warm blood begin to
flow. She was panting harshly. The sound of the waves and the boom of surf ramming into
the rock tunnel were louder.
Drown me? Sweet Christ, is that what she means to do?
No, of course not. He thought he knew what she meant to do even before his face plowed
through the twisted kelp which marked the high tide line, dead salt-stinking stuff as cold as
the fingers of drowned sailors.
He remembered Henry saying once, Sometimes they’d shoot one of our guys. An American,
I mean—they knew an ARVN was no good, because wasn’t any of us that’d go after a gook
in the bush. Not unless he was some fresh fish just over from the States. They’d guthole him, leave him screaming, then pick off the guys that tried to save him. They’d keep doing that