Slowly, Roland crossed his arms over his chest, narrow and tight, so he could lay the palm of his right hand on his left cheek and the palm of his left hand on his right cheek. This meant zilch to Eddie, but the reaction from the seven hundred or so Calla-folk was immediate: a jubilant, approving roar that went far beyond mere applause. Eddie remembered a Rolling Stones concert he’d been to. The crowd had made that same sound when the Stones’ drummer, Charlie Watts, began to tap his cowbell in a syncopated rhythm that could only mean “Honky Tonk Woman.”
Roland stood as he was, arms crossed, palms on cheeks, until they quieted. “We are well-met in the Calla,” he said. “Hear me, I beg.”
” We say thankee! ” they roared. And ” Hear you very well!”
Roland nodded and smiled. “But I and my friends have been far and we have much yet to do and see. Now while we bide, will you open to us if we open to you?”
Eddie felt a chill. He felt Jake’s hand tighten on his own. It’s the first of the questions, he thought.
Before the thought was completed, they had roared their answer: ” Aye, and thankee!”
“Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?”
There goes the second one, Eddie thought, and now it was him squeezing Jake’s hand. He saw Telford and the one named Diego Adams exchange a dismayed, knowing look. The look of men suddenly realizing that the deal is going down right in front of them and they are helpless to do anything about it. Too late, boys, Eddie thought.
“Gunslingers!” someone shouted. “Gunslingers fair and true, say thankee! Say thankee in God’s name!”
Roars of approval. A thunder of shouts and applause. Cries of thankee and aye and even yer-bugger.
As they quieted, Eddie waited for him to ask the last question, the most important one: Do you seek aid and succor?
Roland didn’t ask it. He said merely, “We’d go our way for tonight, and put down our heads, for we’re tired.
But I’d give’ee one final song and a little step-toe before we leave, so I would, for I believe you know both.”
A jubilant roar of agreement met this. They knew it, all right.
“I know it myself, and love it,” said Roland of Gilead. “I know it of old, and never expected to hear ‘The Rice Song’ again from any lips, least of all from my own. I am older now, so I am, and not so limber as I once was.
Cry your pardon for the steps I get wrong—”
“Gunslinger, we say thankee!” a woman called. “Such joy we feel, aye!”
“And do I not feel the same?” the gunslinger asked gently. “Do I not give you joy from my joy, and water I carried with the strength of my arm and my heart?”
” Give you to eat of the green-crop,” they chanted as one, and Eddie felt his back prickle and his eyes tear up.
“Oh my God,” Jake sighed. “He knows so much…”
“Give you joy of the rice,” Roland said.
He stood for a moment longer in the orange glow, as if gathering his strength, and then he began to dance something that was caught between a jig and a tap routine. It was slow at first, very slow, heel and toe, heel and toe. Again and again his bootheels made that fist-on-coffintop sound, but now it had rhythm. Just rhythm at first, and then, as the gunslinger’s feet began to pick up speed, it was more than rhythm: it became a kind of jive. That was the only word Eddie could think of, the only one that seemed to fit.
Susannah rolled up to them. Her eyes were huge, her smile amazed. She clasped her hands tightly between her breasts. “Oh, Eddie!” she breathed. “Did you know he could do this? Did you have any slightest idea?”
“No,” Eddie said. “No idea.”
TEN
Faster moved the gunslinger’s feet in their battered and broken old boots. Then faster still. The rhythm becoming clearer and clearer, and Jake suddenly realized he knew that beat. Knew it from the first time he’d gone todash in New York. Before meeting Eddie, a young black man with Walkman earphones on his head had strolled past him, bopping his sandaled feet and going “Cha-da-ba, cha-da-fow!” under his breath. And that was the rhythm Roland was beating out on the bandstand, each Bow! accomplished by a forward kick of the leg and a hard skip of the heel on wood.
Around them, people began to clap. Not on the beat, but on the off-beat. They were starting to sway. Those women wearing skirts held them out and swirled them. The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.
Sweat began to gleam on Roland’s face. He lowered his crossed arms and started clapping. When he did, the Calla-folken began to chant one word over and over on the beat: ” Come!… Come!… Come!… Come! It occurred to Jake that this was the word some kids used for jizz, and he suddenly doubted if that was mere coincidence.
Of course it’s not. Like the black guy bopping to that same beat. It’s all the Beam, and it’s all nineteen.
“Come!… Come!… Come!”
Eddie and Susannah had joined in. Benny had joined in. Jake abandoned thought and did the same.
ELEVEN
In the end, Eddie had no real idea what the words to “The Rice Song” might have been. Not because of the dialect, not in Roland’s case, but because they spilled out too fast to follow. Once, on TV, he’d heard a tobacco auctioneer in South Carolina. This was like that. There were hard rhymes, soft rhymes, off-rhymes, even rape-rhymes—words that didn’t rhyme at all but were forced to for a moment within the borders of the song. It wasn’t a song, not really; it was like a chant, or some delirious streetcorner hip-hop. That was the closest Eddie could come. And all the while, Roland’s feet pounded out their entrancing rhythm on the boards; all the while the crowd clapped and chanted Come, come, come, come.
What Eddie could pick out went like this:
Come-come-commala
Rice come a-falla
I-sissa ‘ay a-bralla
Dey come a-folla
Down come a-rivva
Or-i-za we kivva
Rice be a green-o
See all we seen-o
Seen-o the green-o
Come-come-commala!
Come-come-commala
Rice come a-falla
Deep inna walla
Grass come-commala
Under the sky-o
Grass green n high-o
Girl n her fella
Lie down togetha
They slippy ‘ay slide-o
Under ‘ay sky-o
Come-come-commala
Rice come a-falla!
At least three more verses followed these two. By then Eddie had lost track of the words, but he was pretty sure he got the idea: a young man and woman, planting both rice and children in the spring of the year. The song’s tempo, suicidally speedy to begin with, sped up and up until the words were nothing but a jargon-spew and the crowd was clapping so rapidly their hands were a blur. And the heels of Roland’s boots had disappeared entirely. Eddie would have said it was impossible for anyone to dance at that speed, especially after having consumed a heavy meal.
Slow down, Roland, he thought. It’s not like we can call 911 if you vapor-lock.
Then, on some signal neither Eddie, Susannah, nor Jake understood, Roland and the Calla-folken stopped in mid-career, threw their hands to the sky, and thrust their hips forward, as if in coitus. ” COMMALA!” they shouted, and that was the end.
Roland swayed, sweat pouring down his cheeks and brow… and tumbled off the stage into the crowd.
Eddie’s heart took a sharp upward lurch in his chest. Susannah cried out and began to roll her wheelchair forward. Jake stopped her before she could get far, grabbing one of the push-handles.
“I think it’s part of the show!” he said.
“Yar, I’m pretty sure it is, too,” Benny Slightman said.
The crowd cheered and applauded. Roland was conveyed through them and above them by willing upraised arms. His own arms were raised to the stars. His chest heaved like a bellows. Eddie watched in a kind of hilarious disbelief as the gunslinger rolled toward them as if on the crest of a wave.
“Roland sings, Roland dances, and to top it all off,” he said, “Roland stage-dives like Joey Ramone.”
“What are you talking about, sugar?” Susannah asked.
Eddie shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. But nothing can top that. It’s got to be the end of the party.”
It was.
TWELVE
Half an hour later, four riders moved slowly down the high street of Calla Bryn Sturgis. One was wrapped in a heavy salide. Frosty plumes came from their mouths and those of their mounts on each exhale. The sky was filled with a cold strew of diamond-chips, Old Star and Old Mother brightest among them. Jake had already gone his way with the Slightmans to Eisenhart’s Rocking B. Callahan led the other three travelers, riding a bit ahead of them. But before leading them anywhere, he insisted on wrapping Roland in the heavy blanket.