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.