8
Eddie woke up shortly before daybreak, saw the gun-slinger sitting near the ashes of last
night’s fire with his blanket wrapped around him Indian-fashion, and j oined him.
“How do you feel?” Eddie asked in a low voice. The Lady still slept in her crisscrossing of ropes, although she occasion- ally jerked and muttered and moaned.
“All right.”
Eddie gave him an appraising glance. “You don’t look all right.”
“Thank you, Eddie,” the gunslinger said dryly.
“You’re shivering.”
“It will pass.”
The Lady jerked and moaned again—this time a word that was almost understandable. It
might have been Oxford.
“God, I hate to see her tied up like that,” Eddie mur- mured. “Like a goddam calf in a barn.”
“She’ll wake soon. Mayhap we can unloose her when she does.”
It was the closest either of them came to saying out loud that when the Lady in the chair
opened her eyes, the calm, if slightly puzzled gaze of Odetta Holmes might greet them.
Fifteen minutes later, as the first sunrays struck over the hills, those eyes did open—but
what the men saw was not the calm gaze of Odetta Holmes but the mad glare of Delta
Walker.
“How many times you done rape me while I was buzzed out?” she asked. “My cunt feel all slick an tallowy, like some- body done been at it with a couple them little bitty white
candles you graymeat mahfahs call cocks.”
Roland sighed.
“Let’s get going,” he said, and gained his feet with a grimace.
“I ain’t goan nowhere wit choo, mahfah,” Delta spat.
“Oh yes you are,” Eddie said. “Dreadfully sorry, my dear.”
“Where you think I’m goan?”
“Well,” Eddie said,’ ‘what was behind Door Number One wasn’t so hot, and what was
behind Door Number Two was even worse, so now, instead of quitting like sane people,
we’re going to go right on ahead and check out Door Number Three. The way things have
been going, I think it’s likely to be something like Godzilla or Ghidra the Three-Headed
Mon- ster, but I’m an optimist. I’m still hoping for the stainles steel cookware.”
“I ain’t goan.”
“You’re going, all right,” Eddie said, and walked behind her chair. She began struggling again, but the gunslinger had made these knots, and her struggles only drew them lighter.
Soon enough she saw this and ceased. She was full of poison but far from stupid. But she
looked back over her shoulder at Eddie with a grin which made him recoil a little. It seemed
to him the most evil expression he had ever seen on a human face.
“Well, maybe I be goan on a little way,” she said, “but maybe not s’far’s you think, white boy. And sure-God not s’fast’s you think.”
“What do you mean?”
Thai leering, over-the-shoulder grin again.
“You find out, while boy.” Her eyes, mad but cogent, shifted briefly lo the gunslinger.
“You bofe be findin dat out.”
Eddie wrapped his hands around the bicycle grips at the ends of the push-handles on the
back of her wheelchair and they began north again, now leaving not only footprints but the
twin tracks of the Lady’s chair as they moved up the seemingly endless beach.
9
The day was a nightmare.
It was hard to calculate distance travelled when you were moving along a landscape which
varied so little, but Eddie knew their progress had slowed to a crawl.
And he knew who was responsible.
Oh yeah.
Youbofe befindin dat out, Delta had said, and they hadn’t been on the move more than half an hour before the finding out began.
Pushing.
That was the first thing. Pushing the wheelchair up a beach of fine sand would have been
as impossible as driving a car through deep unplowed snow. This beach, with its gritty,
marly surface, made moving the chair possible but far from easy. It would roll along
smoothly enough for awhile, crunch- ing over shells and popping little pebbles to either
side of its hard rubber tires . . . and then it would hit a dip where finer sand had drifted, and Eddie would have to shove, grunting, to get it and its solid unhelpful passenger through it.
The sand sucked greedily at the wheels. You had to simultaneously push and throw your
weight against the handles of the chair in a downward direction, or it and its bound
occupant would tumble over face-first onto the beach.
Delta would cackle as he tried to move her without upending her. “You havin a good time
back dere, honey-chile?” she asked each time the chair ran into one of these drybogs.
When the gunslinger moved over to help, Eddie mo- tioned him away. “You’ll get your
chance,” he said. “We’ll switch off.” But I think my turns are going to be a hell of a lot longer than his, a voice in his head spoke up. The way he looks, he’s going to have his hands full just keeping himself moving before much longer, let alone moving the woman in this
chair. No sir, Eddie, I’m afraid this Bud’s for you. It’s God’s revenge, you know it? All those
years you spent as a junkie, and guess what? You’re finally the pusher!
He uttered a short out-of-breath laugh.
“What’s so funny, white boy?” Delta asked, and although Eddie thought she meant to
sound sarcastic, it came out sounding just a tiny bit angry.
Ain’t supposed to be any laughs in this for me,he thought. None at all. Not as far as she’s
concerned.
“You wouldn’t understand, babe. Just let it lie.”
“I be lettin you lie before this be all over,” she said. “Be tellin you and yo bad-ass buddy there lie in pieces all ovah dis beach. Sho. Meantime you better save yo breaf to do yo
pushin with. You already sound like you gettin a little sho’t winded.”
“Well, you talk for both of us, then,” Eddie pan led. “You never seem lo run out of wind.”
“I goan break wind, graymeal! Goan break it ovah yo dead face!”
“Promises, promises.” Eddie shoved the chair out of the sand and onto relatively easier going—for awhile, al least The sun was not yet fully up, but he had already worked up a
sweat.
This is going to be an amusing and informative day,he thought. I can see that already.
Slopping.
That was the next thing.
They had stuck a firm stretch of beach. Eddie pushed the chair along faster, thinking
vaguely that if he could keep this bit of extra speed, he might be able lo drive right through
the next sandtrap he happened to strike on pure impetus.
All at once the chair slopped. Slopped dead. The crossbar on the back hit Eddie’s chest
with a thump. He grunted. Roland looked around, but not even the gunslinger’s cal-quick
reflexes could slop the Lady’s chair from going over exactly as it had threatened to do in
each of the sandtrap. It went and Delia went with it, tied and helpless but cackling wildly.
She still was when Roland and Eddie finally managed to right the chair again. Some of the
ropes had drawn so light they must be culling cruelly into her flesh, cutting off the
circulation to her extremities; her forehead was slashed and blood trickled into her
eyebrows. She went on cackling just the same.
The men were both gasping, out of breath, by the time the chair was on its wheels again.
The combined weight of it and the woman in it must have totaled two hundred and fifty
pounds, most of it chair. It occurred to Eddie that if the gunslinger had snatched Delta from
his own when, 1987, the chair might have weighed as much as sixty pounds less.
Detta giggled, snorted, blinked blood out of her eyes.
“Looky here, you boys done opsot me,” she said.
“Call your lawyer,” Eddie muttered. “Sue us.”
“An got yoselfs all tuckered out gittin me back on top agin. Must have taken you ten
minutes, too.”
The gunslinger took a piece of his shirt—enough of it was gone now so the rest didn’t
much matter—and reached for- ward with his left hand to mop the blood away from the cut
on her forehead. She snapped at him, and from the savage click those teeth made when they
came together, Eddie thought that, if Roland had been only one instant slower in drawing
back, Detta Walker would have evened up the number of fingers on his hands for him
again.
She cackled and stared at him with meanly merry eyes, but the gunslinger saw fear hidden far back in those eyes. She was afraid of him. Afraid because he was The Really Bad Man.
Why was he The Really Bad Man? Maybe because, on some deeper level, she sensed what
he knew about her.
“Almos’ got you, graymeat,” she said. “Almos’ got you that time.” And cackled, witchlike.
“Hold her head,” the gunslinger said evenly. “She bites like a weasel.”