Detta Walker. Yes, between the two of them he supposed it was possible that Detta might
simply be squeezed to death. He was a romantic in his own harsh way . . . yet he was also
realist enough to know that sometimes love actually did conquer all. As for himself? Even if he was able to get the drugs from Eddie’s world which had almost cured him before, would
they be able to cure him this time, or even make a start? He was now very sick, and he
found himself wondering if perhaps things hadn’t gone too far. His arms and legs ached, his
head thudded, his chest was heavy and full of snot. When he coughed there was a painful
grating in his left side, as if ribs were broken there. His left ear flamed. Perhaps, he thought, the time had come to end it; to just cry off.
At this, everything in him rose up in protest.
“Eddie!”he cried, and there was no cough now. His voice was deep and powerful.
Eddie turned, one foot on raw dirt, the other braced on a jutting spar of rock.
“Go on,” he said, and made a curious little sweeping gesture with his hand, a gesture that said he wanted to be rid of the gunslinger so he could be about his real business,
the important business, the business of finding Odetta and rescu- ing her if rescue were
necessary. “It’s all right. Go on through and get the stuff you need. We’ll both be here when you get back.”
“I doubt that.”
“I have to find her.” Eddie looked at Roland and his gaze was very young and completely naked. “I mean, I really have to.”
“I understand your love and your need,” the gunslinger said, “but I want you to come with me this time, Eddie.”
Eddie stared at him for a long time, as if trying to credit what he was hearing.
“Come with you,” he said at last, bemused. “Come with you! Holy God, now I think I really have heard everything. Deedle-deedle-dumpkin everything. Last time you were so
determined I was gonna stay behind you were willing to take a chance on me cutting your
throat. This time you want to take a chance on something ripping hers right out.”
“That may have already happened,” Roland said, al- though he knew it hadn’t. The Lady
might be hurt, but he knew she wasn’t dead.
Unfortunately, Eddie did, too. A week or ten days without his drug had sharpened his
mind remarkably. He pointed at the door. “You know she’s not. If she was, that goddam
thing would be gone. Unless you were lying when you said it wasn’t any good without all
three of us.”
Eddie tried to turn back to the slope, but Roland’s eyes held him nailed.
“All right,” the gunslinger said. His voice was almost as soft as it had been when he spoke past the hateful face and screaming voice of Detta to the woman trapped somewhere
behind it. “She’s alive. That being so, why does she not answer your calls?”
“Well. . . one of those cats-things may have carried her away.” But Eddie’s voice was
weak.
“A cat would have killed her, eaten what it wanted, and left the rest. At most, it might have dragged her body into the shade so it could come back tonight and eat meat the sun perhaps
hadn’t yet spoiled. But if that was the case, the door would be gone. Cats aren’t like some
insects, who paralyze their prey and carry them off to eat later, and you know it.”
“That isn’t necessarily true,” Eddie said. For a moment he heard Odetta saying You should have been on the debate team, Eddie and pushed the thought aside. “Could be a cat came for her and she tried to shoot it but the first couple of shells in your gun were misfires. Hell,
maybe even the first four or five. The cat gets to her, mauls her, and just before it can kill her . . .
BANG!”Eddie smacked a fist against his palm, seeing all this so vividly that he might
have witnessed it. “The bullet kills the cat, or maybe just wounds it, or maybe just scares it off. What about that?”
Mildly, Roland said: “We would have heard a gunshot.”
For a moment Eddie could only stand, mute, able to think of no counter-argument. Of
course they would have heard it. The first time they had heard one of the cats yowling, it
had to have been fifteen, maybe twenty miles away. A pistol-shot—
He looked at Roland with sudden cunning. “Maybe you did,” he said. “Maybe you heard a gunshot while I was asleep.”
“It would have woken you.”
“Not as tired as I am, man. I fall asleep, it’s like—”
“Like being dead,” the gunslinger said in that same mild voice. “I know the feeling.”
“Then you understand—”
“But it’s not being dead. Last night you were out just like that, but when one of those cats screeched, you were awake and on your feet in seconds. Because of your concern for her.
There was no gunshot, Eddie, and you know it. You would have heard it. Because of your
concern for her.”
“So maybe she brained it with a rock!” Eddie shouted. “How the hell do I know when I’m standing here arguing with you instead of checking out the possibilities? I mean, she could
be lying up there someplace hurt, man! Hurt or bleed- ing to death! How’d you like it if I did come through that door with you and she died while we were on the other side? How’d you
like to look around once and see that doorway there, then look around twice and see it gone,
just like it never was, because she was gone? Then you’d be trapped in my world instead of the other way around!” He stood panting and glaring at the gunslinger, his hands balled into fists.
Roland felt a tired exasperation. Someone—it might have been Cort but he rather thought
it had been his father—had had a saying: Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon
as argue with a lover. If any proof of the saying were needed, there it stood above him, in a posture that was all defiance and defense. Go on, the set of Eddie Dean’s body said. Go on,
I can answer any question you throw at me.
“Might not have been a cat that found her,” he said now. “This may be your world, but I don’t think you’ve ever been to this part of it any more than I’ve ever been to Borneo. You
don’t know what might be running around up in those hills, do you? Could be an ape grabbed her, or something like that.”
“Something grabbed her, all right,” the gunslinger said.
“Well thank God getting sick hasn’t driven all the sense out of your m—”
“And we both know what it was. Detta Walker. That’s what grabbed her. Detta Walker.”
Eddie opened his mouth, but for some little time—only seconds, but enough of them so
both acknowledged the truth—the gunslinger’s inexorable face bore all his arguments to
silence.
14
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Come a little closer. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk. Every time I have to shout at you over the waves, it rips another piece of my throat out. That’s how it feels, anyway.”
“What big eyes you have, grandma,” Eddie said, not moving.
“What in hell’s name are you talking about?”
“A fairy tale.” Eddie did descend a short way back down the slope—four yards, no more.
“And fairy tales are what you’re thinking about if you believe you can coax me close enough to that wheelchair.”
“Close enough for what? I don’t understand,” Roland said, although he understood perfectly.
Nearly a hundred and fifty yards above them and perhaps a full quarter of a mile to the east,
dark eyes—eyes as full of intelligence as they were lacking in human mercy—watched this
tableau intently. It was impossible to tell what they were saying; the wind, the waves, and
the hollow crash of the surf digging its underground channel saw to that, but Detta didn’t
need to hear what they were saying to know what they were talking about. She didn’t need a telescope to see that the Really Bad Man was now also the Really Sick Man, and maybe the
Really Bad Man was willing to spend a few days or even a few weeks torturing a legless
Negro woman—way things looked around here, entertainment was mighty hard to come
by—but she thought the Really Sick Man only wanted one thing, and that was to get his
whitebread ass out of here. Just use that magic doorway to haul the fucker out. But before,
he hadn’t been hauling no ass. Before, he hadn’t been hauling nothing. Before, the Really