“Better you than me, Eldred.”
Jonas nodded. He guessed that half an hour from now, he would have forgotten all about his aching leg. “That’s right,” he said. “You she’d eat like fudge.”
He walked back to the bar, where Coral stood with her arms folded. Now she unfolded them and took his hands. The right she put on her left breast. The nipple was hard and erect under his fingers. The forefinger of his left hand she put in her mouth, and bit down lightly.
“Shall we bring the bottle?” Jonas asked.
“Why not?” said Coral Thorin.
8
If she’d gone to sleep as drunk as had been her habit over the last few months, the
creak of the bedsprings wouldn’t have awakened her—a bomb-blast wouldn’t have awakened her. But although they’d brought the bottle, it still stood on the night-table of the bedroom she maintained at the Rest (it was as big as any three of the whores’ cribs put together), the level of the whiskey unchanged. She felt sore all over her body, but her head was clear; sex was good for that much, anyway.
Jonas was at the window, looking out at the first gray traces of daylight and pulling his pants up. His bare back was covered with crisscrossed scars. She thought to ask him who had administered such a savage flogging and how he’d survived it, then decided she’d do better to keep quiet.
“Where are ye off to?” she asked.
“I believe I’m going to start by finding some paint—any shade will do—and a street-mutt still in possession of its tail. After that, sai, I don’t think you want to know.”
“Very well.” She lay down and pulled the covers up to her chin. She felt she could sleep for a week.
Jonas yanked on his boots and went to the door, buckling his gunbelt. He paused with his hand on the knob. She looked at him, grayish eyes already half-filled with sleep again.
“I’ve never had better,” Jonas said.
Coral smiled. “No, cully,” she said. “Nor I.”
CHAPTER IV
Roland AND Cuthbert
1
Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain came out onto the porch of the Bar K bunkhouse almost two hours after Jonas had left Coral’s room at the Travellers’ Rest. By then the sun was well up over the horizon. They weren’t late risers by nature, but as Cuthbert put it, “We have a certain In-World image to maintain. Not laziness but lounginess.”
Roland stretched, arms spread toward the sky in a wide Y, then bent and grasped the toes of his boots. This caused his back to crackle.
“I hate that noise,” Alain said. He sounded morose and sleepy. In fact, he had been troubled by odd dreams and premonitions all night—things which, of the three of them, only he was prey to. Because of the touch, perhaps—with him it had always been strong.
“That’s why he does it,” Cuthbert said, then clapped Alain on the shoulder. “Cheer up, old boy. You’re too handsome to be downhearted.”
Roland straightened, and they walked across the dusty yard toward the stables.
Halfway there, he came to a stop so sudden that Alain almost ran into his back.
Roland was looking east. “Oh,” he said in a funny, bemused voice. He even smiled a little.
“Oh?” Cuthbert echoed. “Oh what, great leader? Oh joy, I shall see the perfumed lady anon, or oh rats, I must work with my smelly male companions all the livelong day?”
Alain looked down at his boots, new and uncomfortable when they had left Gilead, now sprung, trailworn, a little down at the heels, and as comfortable as workboots ever got. Looking at them was better than looking at his friends, for the time being. There was always an edge to Cuthbert’s teasing these days; the old sense of fun had been replaced by something that was mean and unpleasant. Alain kept expecting Roland to flash up at one of Cuthbert’s jibes, like steel that has been struck by sharp flint, and knock Bert sprawling. In a way, Alain almost wished for it. It might clear the air.
But not the air of this morning.
“Just oh,” Roland said mildly, and walked on.
“Cry your pardon, for I know you’ll not want to hear it, but I’d speak a further word about the pigeons,” Cuthbert said as they saddled their mounts. “I still believe that a message—”
“I’ll make you a promise,” Roland said, smiling.
Cuthbert looked at him with some mistrust. “Aye?”
“If you still want to send by flight tomorrow morning, we’ll do so. The one you choose shall be sent west to Gilead with a message of your devising banded to its leg. What do you say, Arthur Heath? Is it fair?”
Cuthbert looked at him for a moment with a suspicion that hurt Alain’s heart. Then he also smiled. “Fair,” he said. “Thank you.”
And then Roland said something which struck Alain as odd and made that prescient part of him quiver with disquiet. “Don’t thank me yet.”
2
“I don’t want to go up there, sai Thorin,” Sheemie said. An unusual expression had creased his normally smooth face—a troubled and fearful frown. “She’s a scary lady. Scary as a beary, she is. Got a wart on her nose, right here.” He thumbed the tip of his own nose, which was small and smooth and well molded.
Coral, who might have bitten his head off for such hesitation only yesterday, was unusually patient today. “So true,” she said. “But Sheemie, she asked for ye special, and she tips. Ye know she does, and well.”
“Won’t help if she turns me into a beetle,” Sheemie said morosely. “Beetles can’t spend coppers.”
Nevertheless, he let himself be led to where Caprichoso, the inn’s pack-mule, was tied. Barkie had loaded two small tuns over the mule’s back. One, filled with sand, was just there for balance. The other held a fresh pressing of the graf Rhea had a taste for.
“Fair-Day’s coming,” Coral said brightly. “Why, it’s not three weeks now.”
“Aye.” Sheemie looked happier at this. He loved Fair-Days passionately—the lights, the firecrackers, the dancing, the games, the laughter. When Fair-Day came, everyone was happy and no one spoke mean.
“A young man with coppers in his pocket is sure to have a good time at the Fair,”
Coral said.
“That’s true, sai Thorin.” Sheemie looked like someone who has just discovered one of life’s great principles. “Aye, truey-true, so it is.”
Coral put Caprichoso’s rope halter into Sheemie’s palm and closed the fingers over it. “Have a nice trip, lad. Be polite to the old crow, bow yer best bow .. . and make sure ye’re back down the hill before dark.”
“Long before, aye,” Sheemie said, shivering at the very thought of still being up in the Coos after nightfall. “Long before, sure as loaves ‘n fishes.”
“Good lad.” Coral watched him off, his pink sombrero now clapped on his head, leading the grumpy old pack-mule by its rope. And, as he disappeared over the brow of the first mild hill, she said it again: “Good lad.”
3
Jonas waited on the flank of a ridge, belly-down in the tall grass, until the brats were an hour gone from the Bar K. He then rode to the ridgetop and picked them out, three dots four miles away on the brown slope. Off to do their daily duty. No sign they suspected anything. They were smarter than he had at first given them credit for … but nowhere near as smart as they thought they were.
He rode to within a quarter mile of the Bar K—except for the bunk-house and stable, a burned-out hulk in the bright sunlight of this early autumn day—and tethered his horse in a copse of cottonwoods that grew around the ranch house spring. Here the boys had left some washing to dry. Jonas stripped the pants and shirts off the low branches upon which they had been hung, made a pile of them, pissed on them, and then went back to his horse.
The animal stamped the ground emphatically when Jonas pulled the dog’s tail from one of his saddlebags, as if saying he was glad to be rid of it. Jonas would be glad to be rid of it, too. It had begun giving off an unmistakable aroma. From the other saddlebag he took a small glass jar of red paint, and a brush. These he had obtained from Brian Hockey’s eldest son, who was minding the livery stable today. Sai Hookey himself would be out to Citgo by now, no doubt.
Jonas walked to the bunkhouse with no effort at concealment . . . not that there was much in the way of concealment to be had out here. And no one to hide from,
anyway, now that the boys were gone.
One of them had left an actual book— Mercer’s Homilies and Meditations- on the seat of a rocking chair on the porch. Books were things of exquisite rarity in Mid-World, especially as one travelled out from the center. This was the first one, except for the few kept in Seafront, that Jonas had seen since coming to Mejis. He opened it. In a firm woman’s hand he read: To my dearest son, from his loving MOTHER. Jonas tore j (Ins page out, opened his jar of paint, and dipped the tips of his last two lingers inside. He blotted out the word MOTHER with the pad of his third linger, then, using the nail of his pinky as a makeshift pen, printed CUNT