4

   They almost lost control of her twice during the tying and binding. But Eddie was at last able to slip-knot one of Roland's gunbelts around her wrists when Roland―using all his force―finally brought them together behind her (all the time drawing back from her lunging bites like a mongoose from a snake; the bites he avoided but before Eddie had finished, the gunslinger was drenched with spittle) and then Eddie dragged her off, holding the short leash of the makeshift slip-knot to do it. He did not want to hurt this thrashing screaming cursing thing. It was uglier than the lobstrosities by far because of the greater intelligence which informed it, but he knew it could also be beautiful. He did not want to harm the other person the vessel held somewhere inside it (like a live dove deep inside one of the secret compartments in a magician's magic box).
   Odetta Holmes was somewhere inside that screaming screeching thing.

5

   Although his last mount―a mule―had died too long ago to remember, the gunslinger still had a piece of its tether-rope (which, in turn, had once been a fine gunslinger's lariat). They used this to bind her in her wheelchair, as she had imagined (or falsely remembered, and in the end they both came to the same thing, didn't they?) they had done already. Then they drew away from her.
   If not for the crawling lobster-things, Eddie would have gone down to the water and washed his hands.
   "I feel like I'm going to vomit," he said in a voice that jig-jagged up and down the scale like the voice of an adolescent boy.
   "Why don't you go on and eat each other's COCKS?" the struggling thing in the chair screeched. "Why don't you jus go on and do dat if you fraid of a black woman's cunny? You just go on! Sho! Suck on yo each one's candles! Do it while you got a chance, causeDetta Walker goan get outen dis chair and cut dem skinny ole white candles off and feed em to those walkm buzzsaws down there!"
   "She's the woman I was in. Do you believe me now?"
   "I believed you before," Eddie said. "I told you that."
   "You believed you believed. You believed on the top of your mind. Do you believe it all the way down now? All the way to the bottom?"
   Eddie looked at the shrieking, convulsing thing in the chair and then looked away, white except for the slash on his jaw, which was still dripping a little. That side of his face was beginning to look a little like a balloon.
   "Yes, "he said. "God, yes."
   "This woman is a monster."
   Eddie began to cry.
   The gunslinger wanted to comfort him, could not commit such a sacrilege (he remembered Jake too well), and walked off into the dark with his new fever burning and aching inside him.

6

   Much earlier on that night, while Odetta still slept, Eddie said he thought he might understand what was wrong with her. Might. The gunslinger asked what he meant.
   "She could be a schizophrenic."
   Roland only shook his head. Eddie explained what he understood of schizophrenia, gleanings from such films as The Three Faces of Eve and various TV programs (mostly the soap operas he and Henry had often watched while stoned). Roland had nodded. Yes. The disease Eddie described sounded about right. A woman with two faces, one light and one dark. A face like the one the man in black had shown him on the fifth Tarot card.
   "And they don't know―these schizophrenes―that they have another?"
   "No," Eddie said. "But …" He trailed off, moodily watching the lobstrosities crawl and question, question and crawl.
   "But what?"
   "I'm no shrink," Eddie said, "so I don't really know―"
   "Shrink? What is a shrink?"
   Eddie tapped his temple. "A head-doctor. A doctor for your mind. They're really called psychiatrists."
   Roland nodded. He liked shrink better. Because this Lady's mind was too large. Twice as large as it needed to be.
   "But I think schizos almost always know something is wrong with them," Eddie said. "Because there are blanks. Maybe I'm wrong, but I always got the idea that they were usually two people who thought they had partial amnesia, because of the blank spaces in their memories when the other personality was in control. She … she says she remembers everything. She really thinks she remembers everything."
   "I thought you said she didn't believe any of this was happening."
   "Yeah," Eddie said, "but forget that for now. I'm trying to say that, no matter what she believes, what she remembers goes right from her living room where she was sitting in her bathrobe watching the midnight news to here, with no break at all. She doesn't have any sense that some other person took over between then and when you grabbed her in Macy's. Hell, that might have been the next day or even weeks later. I know it was still winter, because most of the shoppers in that store were wearing coats―"
   The gunslinger nodded. Eddie's perceptions were sharpening. That was good. He had missed the boots and scarves, the gloves sticking out of coat pockets, but it was still a start.
   "―but otherwise it's impossible to tell how long Odetta was that other woman because she doesn't know. I think she's in a situation she's never been in before, and her way of protecting both sides is this story about getting cracked over the head."
   Roland nodded.
   "And the rings. Seeing those really shook her up. She tried not to show it, but it showed, all right."
   Roland asked: "If these two women don't know they exist in the same body, and if they don't even suspect that something may be wrong, if each has her own separate chain of memories, partly real but partly made up to fit the times the other is there, what are we to do with her? How are we even to live with her?"
   Eddie had shrugged. "Don't ask me. It's your problem. You're the one who says you need her. Hell, you risked your neck to bring her here.'' Eddie thought about this for a minute, remembered squatting over Roland's body with Roland's knife held just above the gunslinger's throat, and laughed abruptly and without humor. LITERALLY risked your neck, man, he thought.
   A silence fell between them. Odetta had by then been breathing quietly. As the gunslinger was about to reiterate his warning for Eddie to be on guard and announce (loud enough for the Lady to hear, if she was only shamming) that he was going to turn in, Eddie said the thing which lighted Roland's mind in a single sudden glare, the thing which made him understand at least part of what he needed so badly to know.
   At the end, when they came through.
   She had changed at the end.
   And he had seen something, some thing―
   "Tell you what," Eddie said, moodily stirring the remains of the fire with a split claw from this night's kill, "when you brought her through, I felt like I was a schizo."
   "Why?"
   Eddie thought, then shrugged. It was too hard to explain, or maybe he was just too tired. "It's not important."
   "Why?"
   Eddie looked at Roland, saw he was asking a serious question for a serious reason―or thought he was―and took a minute to think back. "It's really hard to describe, man. It was looking in that door. That's what freaked me out. When you see someone move in that door, it's like you're moving with them. You know what I'm talking about."
   Roland nodded.
   "Well, I watched it like it was a movie―never mind, it's not important―until the very end. Then you turned her toward this side of the doorway and for the first time I was looking at myself. It was like …" He groped and could find nothing. "I dunno. It should have been like looking in a mirror, I guess, but it wasn't, because … because it was like looking at another person. It was like being turned inside out. Like being in two places at the same time. Shit, I don't know."
   But the gunslinger was thunderstruck. That was what he had sensed as they came through; that was what had happened to her, no, not just her, them: for a moment Detta and Odetta had looked at each other, not the way one would look at her reflection in a mirror but as separate people; the mirror became a windowpane and for a moment Odetta had seen Detta and Detta had seen Odetta and had been equally horror-struck.
   They each know, the gunslinger thought grimly. They may not have known before, but they do now. They can try to hide it from themselves, but for a moment they saw, they knew, and that knowing must still be there.
   "Roland?"
   "What?"
   "Just wanted to make sure you hadn't gone to sleep with your eyes open. Because for a minute you looked like you were, you know, long ago and far away."
   "If so, I'm back now," the gunslinger said. "I'm going to turn in. Remember what I said, Eddie: be on your guard."
   "I'll watch," Eddie said, but Roland knew that, sick or not, he would have to be the one to do the watching tonight.
   Everything else had followed from that.

7

   Following the ruckus Eddie and Detta Walker eventually went to sleep again (she did not so much fall asleep as drop into an exhausted state of unconsciousness in her chair, lolling to one side against the restraining ropes).
   The gunslinger, however, lay wakeful.
   Iwill have to bring the two of them to battle, he thought, but he didn't need one of Eddie's "shrinks" to tell him that such a battle might be to the death. Ifthe bright one, Odetta, were to win that battle, all might yet be well. If the dark one were to win it, all would surely be lost with her.
   Yet he sensed that what really needed doing was not killing but joining. He had already recognized much that would be of value to him―them― in Detta Walker's gutter toughness, and he wanted her―but he wanted her under control. There was a long way to go. Detta thought he and Eddie were monsters of some species she called Honk Mafahs. That was only dangerous delusion, but there would be real monsters along the way―the lobstrosities were not the first, nor would they be the last. The fight-until-you-drop woman he had entered and who had come out of hiding again tonight might come in very handy in a fight against such monsters, if she could be tempered by Odetta Holmes's calm humanity―especially now, with him short two fingers, almost out of bullets, and growing more fever.
   But that is a step ahead. I think if I can make them acknowledge each other, that would bring them into confrontation. How may it be done?
   He lay awake all that long night, thinking, and although he felt the fever in him grow, he found no answer to his question.

8

   Eddie woke up shortly before daybreak, saw the gunslinger sitting near the ashes of last night's fire with his blanket wrapped around him Indian-fashion, and joined him.
   "How do you feel?" Eddie asked in a low voice. The Lady still slept in her crisscrossing of ropes, although she occasionally 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 murmured. "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 Detta Walker.
   "How many times you done rape me while I was buzzed out?" she asked. "My cunt feel all slick an tallowy, like somebody 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," Detta 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 Monster, but I'm an optimist. I'm still hoping for the stainless 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 tighter. 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?"
   That leering, over-the-shoulder grin again.
   "You find out, white boy." Her eyes, mad but cogent, shifted briefly to 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.
   You bofe befindin dat out, Detta 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, crunching 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.
   Detta 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 motioned 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 inthis 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?" Detta 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 lettin 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 panted. "You never seem to run out of wind."
   "I goan break wind, graymeat! Goan break it ovah yo dead face!"
   "Promises, promises." Eddie shoved the chair out of the sand and onto relatively easier going―for awhile, at 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.
   Stopping.
   That was the next thing.
   They had struck 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 to drive right through the next sandtrap he happened to strike on pure impetus.
   All at once the chair stopped. Stopped dead. The crossbar on the back hit Eddie's chest with a thump. He grunted. Roland looked around, but not even the gunslinger's cat-quick reflexes could stop the Lady's chair from going over exactly as it had threatened to do in each of the sandtraps. It went and Detta 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 tight they must be cutting 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 Detta 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 forward 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."
   Eddie held it while the gunslinger carefully wiped the wound clean. It wasn't wide and didn't look deep, but the gunslinger took no chances; he walked slowly down to the water, soaked the piece of shirting in the salt water, and then came back.
   She began to scream as he approached.
   "Doan you be touchin me wid dat thing! Doan you be touchin me wid no water from where them poison things come from! Git it away! Git it away!"
   " Hold her head,'' Roland said in the same even voice. She was whipping it from side to side. "I don't want to take any chances."
   Eddie held it … and squeezed it when she tried to shake free. She saw he meant business and immediately became still, showing no more fear of the damp rag. It had been only sham, after all.
   She smiled at Roland as he bathed the cut, carefully washing out the last clinging particles of grit.
   "In fact, you look mo than jest tuckered out," Detta observed. "You look sick, graymeat. I don't think you ready fo no long trip. I don't think you ready fo nuthin like dat."
   Eddie examined the chair's rudimentary controls. It had an emergency hand-brake which locked both wheels. Detta had worked her right hand over there, had waited patiently until she thought Eddie was going fast enough, and then she had yanked the brake, purposely spilling herself over. Why? To slow them down, that was all. There was no reason to do such a thing, but a woman like Detta, Eddie thought, needed no reasons. A woman like Detta was perfectly willing to do such things out of sheer meanness.
   Roland loosened her bonds a bit so the blood could flow more freely, then tied her hand firmly away from the brake.
   "That be all right, Mister Man," Detta said, offering him a bright smile filled with too many teeth. "That be all right jest the same. There be other ways to slow you boys down. All sorts of ways."
   "Let's go," the gunslinger said tonelessly.
   "You all right, man?" Eddie asked. The gunslinger looked very pale.
   "Yes. Let's go."
   They started up the beach again.

10

   The gunslinger insisted on pushing for an hour, and Eddie gave way to him reluctantly. Roland got her through the first sandtrap, but Eddie had to pitch in and help get the wheelchair out of the second. The gunslinger was gasping for air, sweat standing out on his forehead in large beads.
   Eddie let him go on a little further, and Roland was quite adept at weaving his way around the places where the sand was loose enough to bog the wheels, but the chair finally became mired again and Eddie could bear only a few moments of watching Roland struggle to push it free, gasping, chest heaving, while the witch (for so Eddie had come to think of her) howled with laughter and actually threw her body backwards in the chair to make the task that much more difficult—and then he shouldered the gunslinger aside and heaved the chair out of the sand with one angry lurching lunge. The chair tottered and now he saw/sensed her shifting forward as much as the ropes would allow, doing this with a weird prescience at the exactly proper moment, trying to topple herself again.
   Roland threw his weight on the back of the chair next to Eddie's and it settled back.
   Detta looked around and gave them a wink of such obscene conspiracy that Eddie felt his arms crawl up in gooseflesh.
   "You almost opsot me agin, boys," she said. "You want to look out for me, now. I ain't nuthin but a old crippled lady, so you want to have a care for me now."
   She laughed … laughed fit to split.
   Although Eddie cared for the woman that was the other part of her—was near to loving her just on the basis of the brief time he had seen her and spoken with her—he felt his hands itch to close around her windpipe and choke that laugh, choke it until she could never laugh again.
   She peered around again, saw what he was thinking as if it had been printed on him in red ink, and laughed all the harder. Her eyes dared him. Go on, graymeat. Go on. You want to do it? Go on and do it.
   In other words, don't just tip the chair; tip the woman, Eddie thought. Tip her over for good. That's what she wants. For Detta, being killed by a white man may be the only real goal she has in life.
   "Come on," he said, and began pushing again. "We are gonna tour the seacoast, sweet thang, like it or not."
   "Fuck you," she spat.
   "Cram it, babe," Eddie responded pleasantly.
   The gunslinger walked beside him, head down.

11

   They came to a considerable outcropping of rocks when the sun said it was about eleven and here they stopped for nearly an hour, taking the shade as the sun climbed toward the roofpeak of the day. Eddie and the gunslinger ate leftovers from the previous night's kill. Eddie offered a portion to Detta, who again refused, telling him she knew what they wanted to do, and if they wanted to do it, they best to do it with their bare hands and stop trying to poison her. That, she said, was the coward's way.
   Eddie's right, the gunslinger mused. This woman has made her own chain of memories. She knows everything that happened to her last night, even though she was really fast asleep.
   She believed they had brought her pieces of meat which smelled of death and putrescence, had taunted her with it while they themselves ate salted beef and drank some sort of beer from flasks. She believed they had, every now and then, held pieces of their own untainted supper out to her, drawing it away at the last moment when she snatched at it with her teeth—and laughing while they did it, of course. In the world (or at least in the mind) of Detta Walker, Honk Mahfahs only did two things to brown women: raped them or laughed at them. Or both at the same time.
   It was almost funny. Eddie Dean had last seen beef during his ride in the sky-carriage, and Roland had seen none since the last of his jerky was eaten, Gods alone knew how long ago. As far as beer … he cast his mind back.
   Tull.
   There had been beer in Tull. Beer and beef.
   God, it would be good to have a beer. His throat ached and it would be so good to have a beer to cool that ache. Better even than the astin from Eddie's world.
   They drew off a distance from her.
   "Ain't I good nough cump'ny for white boys like you?" she cawed after them. "Or did you jes maybe want to have a pull on each other one's little bitty white candle?"
   She threw her head back and screamed laughter that frightened the gulls up, crying, from the rocks where they had been met in convention a quarter of a mile away.
   The gunslinger sat with his hands dangling between his knees, thinking. Finally he raised his head and told Eddie, "I can only understand about one word in every ten she says."
   "I'm way ahead of you," Eddie replied. "I'm getting at least two in every three. Doesn't matter. Most of it comes back to honky mahfah."
   Roland nodded. "Do many of the dark-skinned people talk that way where you come from? Her other didn't."
   Eddie shook his head and laughed. "No. And I'll tell you something sort of funny—at least I think it's sort of funny, but maybe that's just because there isn't all that much to laugh at out here. It's not real. It's not real and she doesn't even know it."
   Roland looked at him and said nothing.
   "Remember when you washed off her forehead, how she pretended she was scared of the water?"
   "Yes."
   "You knew she was pretending?"
   "Not at first, but quite soon."
   Eddie nodded. "That was an act, and she knew it was an act. But she's a pretty good actress and she fooled both of us for a few seconds. The way she's talking is an act, too. But it's not as good. It's so stupid, so goddam hokey!"
   "You believe she pretends well only when she knows she's doing it?"
   "Yes. She sounds like a cross between the darkies in this book called Mandingo I read once and Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. I know you don't know those names, but what I mean is she talks like a cliche. Do you know that word?"
   "It means what is always said or believed by people who think only a little or not at all."
   "Yeah. I couldn't have said it half so good."
   ''Ain't you boys done jerkin on dem candles a yours yet? " Detta's voice was growing hoarse and cracked. "Or maybe it's just you can't fine em. Dat it?"
   "Come on." The gunslinger got slowly to his feet. He swayed for a moment, saw Eddie looking at him, and smiled. "I'll be all right."
   "For how long?"
   "As long as I have to be," the gunslinger answered, and the serenity in his voice chilled Eddie's heart.

12

   That night the gunslinger used his last sure live cartridge to make their kill. He would start systematically testing the ones he believed to be duds tomorrow night, but he believed it was pretty much as Eddie had said: They were down to beating the damned things to death.
   It was like the other nights: the fire, the cooking, the shelling, the eating—eating which was now slow and unenthusiastic. We're just gassing up, Eddie thought. They offered food to Detta, who screamed and laughed and cursed and asked how long they was goan take her for a fool, and then she began throwing her body wildly from one side to the other, never minding how her bonds grew steadily tighter, only trying to upset the chair to one side or the other so they would have to pick her up again before they could eat.
   Just before she could manage the trick, Eddie grabbed her and Roland braced the wheels on either sides with rocks.
   "I'll loosen the ropes a bit if you'll be still," Roland told her.
   "Suck shit out my ass, mahfah!"
   "I don't understand if that means yes or no."
   She looked at him, eyes narrowed, suspecting some buried barb of satire in that calm voice (Eddie also wondered, but couldn't tell if there was or not), and after a moment she said sulkily, "I be still. Too damn hungry to kick up much dickens. You boys goan give me some real food or you jes goan starve me to death? Dat yo plan? You too chickenshit to choke me and I ain't nev' goan eat no poison, so dat must be you plan. Starve me out. Well, we see, sho. We goan see. Sho we are."
   She offered them her bone-chilling sickle of a grin again.
   Not long after she fell asleep.
   Eddie touched the side of Roland's face. Roland glanced at him but did not pull away from the touch.
   "I'm all right."
   "Yeah, you're Jim-dandy. Well, I tell you what, Jim, we didn't get along very far today."
   "I know." There was also the matter of having used the last live shell, but that was knowledge Eddie could do without, at least tonight. Eddie wasn't sick, but he was exhausted. Too exhausted for more bad news.
   No, he's not sick, not yet, but if he goes too long without rest, gets tired enough, he'll get sick.
   In a way, Eddie already was; both of them were. Cold-sores had developed at the corners of Eddie's mouth, and there was scaly patches on his skin. The gunslinger could feel his teeth loosening up in their sockets, and the flesh between his toes had begun to crack open and bleed, as had that between his remaining fingers. They were eating, but they were eating the same thing, day in and day out. They could go on that way for a time, but in the end they would die as surely as if they had starved.
   What we have is Shipmate's Disease on dry land, Roland thought. Simple as that. How funny. We need fruit. We need greens.
   Eddie nodded toward the Lady. "She's going to go right on making it tough."
   "Unless the other one inside her comes back."
   "That would be nice, but we can't count on it," Eddie said. He took a piece of blackened claw and began to scrawl aimless patterns in the dirt. "Any idea how far the next door might be?"
   Roland shook his head.
   "I only ask because if the distance between Number Two and Number Three is the same as the distance between Number One and Number Two, we could be in deep shit."
   "We're in deep shit right now."
   "Neck deep," Eddie agreed moodily. "I just keep wondering how long I can tread water."
   Roland clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture of affection so rare it made Eddie blink.
   "There's one thing that Lady doesn't know," he said.
   "Oh? What's that?"
   "We Honk Mahfahs can tread water a long time."
   Eddie laughed at that, laughed hard, smothering his laughter against his arm so he wouldn't wake Detta up. He'd had enough of her for one day, please and thank you.
   The gunslinger looked at him, smiling. "I'm going to turn in," he said. "Be—"
   "—on my guard. Yeah. I will."

13

   Screaming was next.
   Eddie fell asleep the moment his head touched the bunched bundle of his shirt, and it seemed only five minutes later when Detta began screaming.
   He was awake at once, ready for anything, some King Lobster arisen from the deep to take revenge for its slain children or a horror down from the hills. It seemed he was awake at once, anyway, but the gunslinger was already on his feet, a gun in his left hand.
   When she saw they were both awake, Detta promptly quit screaming.
   "Jes thought I'd see if you boys on yo toes," she said. "Might be woofs. Looks likely enough country for 'em. Wanted to make sho if I saw me a woof creepin up, I could get you on yo feet in time." But there was no fear in her eyes; they glinted with mean amusement.
   "Christ," Eddie said groggily. The moon was up but barely risen; they had been asleep less than two hours.
   The gunslinger holstered his gun.
   "Don't do it again," he said to the Lady in the wheelchair.
   "What you goan do if I do? Rape me?"
   "If we were going to rape you, you would be one well-raped woman by now," the gunslinger said evenly. "Don't do it again."
   He lay down again, pulling his blanket over him.
   Christ, dear Christ, Eddie thought, what a mess this is, what a fucking … and that was as far as the thought went before trailing off into exhausted sleep again and then she was splintering the air with fresh shrieks, shrieking like a firebell, and Eddie was up again, his body flaming with adrenaline, hands clenched, and then she was laughing, her voice hoarse and raspy.
   Eddie glanced up and saw the moon had advanced less than ten degrees since she had awakened them the first time.
   She means to keep on doing it, he thought wearily. She means to stay awake and watch us, and when she's sure we're getting down into deep sleep, that place where you recharge, she's going to open her mouth and start bellowing again. She'll do it and do it and do it until she doesn't have any voice left to bellow with.
   Her laughter stopped abruptly. Roland was advancing on her, a dark shape in the moonlight.
   "You jes stay away from me, graymeat," Detta said, but there was a quiver of nerves in her voice. "You ain't goan do nothing to me."
   Roland stood before her and for a moment Eddie was sure, completely sure, that the gunslinger had reached the end of his patience and would simply swat her like a fly. Instead, astoundingly, he dropped to one knee before her like a suitor about to propose marriage.
   "Listen," he said, and Eddie could scarcely credit the silky quality of Roland's voice. He could see much the same deep surprise on Detta's face, only there fear was joined to it. "Listen to me, Odetta."
   "Who you callin O-Detta? Dat ain my name."
   "Shut up, bitch," the gunslinger said in a growl, and then, reverting to that same silken voice: "If you hear me, and if you can control her at all—"
   "Why you talkin at me dat way? Why you talkin like you was talkin to somebody else? You quit dat honky jive! You jes quit it now, you hear me?"
   "—keep her shut up. I can gag her, but I don't want to do that. A hard gag is a dangerous business. People choke."
   "YOU QUIT IT YOU HONKY BULLSHIT VOODOO MAHFAH!"
   "Odetta." His voice was a whisper, like the onset of rain.
   She fell silent, staring at him with huge eyes. Eddie had never in his life seen such hate and fear combined in human eyes.
   "I don't think this bitch would care if she did die on a hard gag. She wants to die, but maybe even more, she wants you to die. But you haven't died, not so far, and I don't think Detta is brand-new in your life. She feels too at home in you, so maybe you can hear what I'm saying, and maybe you can keep some control over her even if you can't come out yet.
   "Don't let her wake us up a third time, Odetta.
   "I don't want to gag her.
   "But if I have to, I will."
   He got up, left without looking back, rolled himself into his blanket again, and promptly fell asleep.
   She was still staring at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.
   "Honky voodoo bullshit," she whispered.
   Eddie lay down, but this time it was a long time before sleep came to claim him, in spite of his deep tiredness. He would come to the brink, anticipate her screams, and snap back.
   Three hours or so later, with the moon now going the other way, he finally dropped off.
   Detta did no more screaming that night, either because Roland had frightened her, or because she wanted to conserve her voice for future alarums and excursions, or—possibly, just possibly—because Odetta had heard and had exercised the control the gunslinger had asked of her.
   Eddie slept at last but awoke sodden and unrefreshed. He looked toward the chair, hoping against hope that it would be Odetta, please God let it be Odetta this morning—
   "Mawnin, whitebread," Detta said, and grinned her sharklike grin at him. "Thought you was goan sleep till noon . You cain't be doin nuthin like dat, kin you? We got to bus us some miles here, ain't dat d'fac of d'matter? Sho! An I think you the one goan have to do most of de bustin, cause dat other fella, one with de voodoo eyes, he lookin mo peaky all de time, I declare he do! Yes! I doan think he goan be eatin anythin much longer, not even dat fancy smoked meat you whitebread boys keep fo when you done joikin on each other one's little bitty white candles. So let's go, whitebread! Detta doan want to be d'one keepin you."
   Her lids and her voice both dropped a little; her eyes peeked at him slyly from their corners.
   "Not f'um startin out, leastways."
   Dis goan be a day you 'member, whitebread, those sly eyes promised. Dis goan be a day you 'member for a long, long time.
   Sho.