by Стивен Кинг
"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.
I will 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 th
ink 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 awa
y 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.
