“So maybe she brained it with a rock!” Eddie shouted. “How the hell do I know when I’m standing here arguing with you instead of checking out the possibilities? I mean, she could be lying up there someplace hurt, man! Hurt or bleeding to death! How’d you like it if I did come through that door with you and she died while we were on the other side? How’d you like to look around once and see that doorway there, then look around twice and see it gone, just like it never was, because she was gone? Then you’d be trapped in my world instead of the other way around!” He stood panting and glaring at the gunslinger, his hands balled into fists.

Roland felt a tired exasperation. Someone—it might have been Cort but he rather thought it had been his father—had had a saying: Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover. If any proof of the saying were needed, there it stood above him, in a posture that was all defiance and defense. Go on, the set of Eddie Dean’s body said. Go on, I can answer any question you throw at me.

“Might not have been a cat that found her,” he said now. “This may be your world, but I don’t think you’ve ever been to this part of it any more than I’ve ever been to Borneo. You don’t know what might be running around up in those hills, do you? Could be an ape grabbed her, or something like that.”

“Something grabbed her, all right,” the gunslinger said.

“Well thank God getting sick hasn’t driven all the sense out of your m—”

“And we both know what it was. Detta Walker. That’s what grabbed her. Detta Walker.”

Eddie opened his mouth, but for some little time—only seconds, but enough of them so both acknowledged the truth—the gunslinger’s inexorable face bore all his arguments to silence.

14

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Come a little closer. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk. Every time I have to shout at you over the waves, it rips another piece of my throat out. That’s how it feels, anyway.”

“What big eyes you have, grandma,” Eddie said, not moving.

“What in hell’s name are you talking about?”

“A fairy tale.” Eddie did descend a short way back down the slope—four yards, no more. “And fairy tales are what you’re thinking about if you believe you can coax me close enough to that wheelchair.”

“Close enough for what? I don’t understand,” Roland said, although he understood perfectly.