Eddie thought, When the tide’s in, she’s probably right . . . but what about when it starts to go out again ?

“Give me something to eat and some stones,” she said, and her unknowing echo of the gunslinger made Eddie flush again. His cheeks and forehead felt like the sides of a brick oven.

She looked at him, smiled faintly, and shook her head as if he had spoken out loud. “We’re not going to argue about this. I saw how it is with him. His time is very, very short. There is no time for discussion. Take me up a little way, give me food and some stones, then take the chair and go.”

10

He got her fixed as quickly as he could, then pulled the gunslinger’s revolver and held it out to her butt-first. But she shook her head.

“He’ll be angry with both of us. Angry with you for giving, angrier at me for taking.”

“Crap!” Eddie yelled. “What gave you that idea?”

“I know,” she said, and her voice was impervious.

“Well, suppose that’s true. Just suppose. I’ll be angry with you if you don’t take it.”

“Put it back. I don’t like guns. I don’t know how to use them. If something came at me in the dark the first thing I’d do is wet my pants. The second thing I’d do is point it the wrong way and shoot myself.” She paused, looking at Eddie solemnly. “There’s something else, and you might as well know it. I don’t want to touch anything that belongs to him. Not anything. For me, I think his things might have what my Ma used to call a hoodoo. I like to think of myself as a modern woman . . . but I don’t want any hoodoo on me when you’re gone and the dark lands on top of me.”

He looked from the gun to Odetta, and his eyes still questioned.

“Put it back,” she said, stern as a schoolteacher. Eddie burst out laughing and obeyed.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because when you said that you sounded like Miss Hathaway. She was my third-grade teacher.”

She smiled a little, her luminous eyes never leaving his. She sang softly, sweetly: “Heavenly shades of night are falling . . . it’s twilight time . . .” She trailed off and they both looked west, but the star they had wished on the previous evening had not yet appeared, although their shadows had drawn long.

“Is there anything else, Odetta?” He felt an urge to delay and delay. He thought it would pass once he was actually headed back, but now the urge to seize any excuse to remain, seemed very strong.

“A kiss. I could do with that, if you don’t mind.”

He kissed her long and when their lips no longer touched, she caught his wrist and stared at him intently. “I never made love with a white man before last night,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s important to you or not. I don’t even know if it’s important to me. But I thought you should know.”