“Yes. Yes.”

“I need to talk to Roland for a few minutes.”

“All right.”

But before he could go she grasped his hand again.

“Thank you, Eddie. Thank you for being so patient. And thank him.” She paused gravely. “Thank him, and don’t tell him that he scares me.”

“I won’t,” Eddie had said, and went back to the gunslinger.

3

Even when she wasn’t pushing, Odetta was a help. She navigated with the prescience of a woman who has spent a long time weaving a wheelchair through a world that would not acknowledge handicapped people such as she for years to come.

“Left,” she’d call, and Eddie would gee to the left, gliding past a rock snarling out of the pasty grit like a decayed fang. On his own, he might have seen it . . . or maybe not.

“Right,” she called, and Eddie hawed right, barely missing one of the increasingly rare sandtraps.

They finally stopped and Eddie lay down, breathing hard.

“Sleep,” Odetta said. “An hour. I’ll wake you.” Eddie looked at her.

“I’m not lying. I observed your friend’s condition, Eddie—”

“He’s not exactly my friend, you kn—”

“—and I know how important time is. I won’t let you sleep longer than an hour out of a misguided sense of mercy. I can tell the sun quite well. You won’t do that man any good by wearing yourself out, will you?”

“No,” he said, thinking: But you don’t understand. If I sleep and Detta Walker comes back—

“Sleep, Eddie,” she said, and since Eddie was too weary (and too much in love) to do other than trust her, he did. He slept and she woke him when she said she would and she was still Odetta, and they went on, and now she was pumping again, helping. They raced up the diminishing beach toward the door Eddie kept frantically looking for and kept not seeing.

4

When he left Odetta eating her first meal in days and went back to the gunslinger, Roland seemed a little better.

“Hunker down,” he said to Eddie.

Eddie hunkered.

“Leave me the skin that’s half full. All I need. Take her to the door.”

“What if I don’t—”

“Find it? You’ll find it. The first two were there; this one will be, too. If you get there before sundown tonight, wait for dark and then kill double. You’ll need to leave her food and make sure she’s sheltered as well as she can be. If you don’t reach it tonight, kill triple. Here.”

He handed over one of his guns.

Eddie took it with respect, surprised as before by how heavy it was.

“I thought the shells were all losers.”

“Probably are. But I’ve loaded with the ones I believe were wetted least—three from the buckle side of the left belt, three from the buckle side of the right. One may fire. Two, if you’re lucky. Don’t try them on the crawlies.” His eyes considered Eddie briefly. “There may be other things out there.”