Nice try, honky, Detta thought in her shadowy den, this tight but somehow comforting dark place whose floor was carpeted with the softened and decaying bones of small animals. Nice try, but I ain’t goin fo dat shit.

She didn’t need to shoot Eddie, after all; she only needed to wait.

3

Her one fear was that the gunslinger would return before Eddie fell asleep, but he was still gone. The limp body at the base of the door did not stir. Maybe he was having some trouble getting the medicine he needed—some other kind of trouble, for all she knew. Men like him seemed to find trouble easy as a bitch in heat finds a randy hound.

Two hours passed while Eddie hunted for the woman he called “Odetta” (oh how she hated the sound of that name), ranging up and down the low hills and yelling until he had no voice left to yell with.

At last Eddie did what she had been waiting for: he went back down to the little angle of beach and sat by the wheelchair, looking around disconsolately. He touched one of the chair’s wheels, and the touch was almost a caress. Then his hand dropped away and he fetched him a deep sigh.

This sight brought a steely ache to Detta’s throat; pain bolted across her head from one side to the other like summer lightning and she seemed to hear a voice calling . . . calling or demanding.

No you don’t, she thought, having no idea who she was thinking about or speaking to. No you don’t, not this time, not now. Not now, maybe not ever again. That bolt of pain ripped through her head again and she curled her hands into fists. Her face made its own fist, twisting itself into a sneer of concentration—an expression remarkable and arresting in its mixture of ugliness and almost beatific determination.

That bolt of pain did not come again. Neither did the voice which sometimes seemed to speak through such pains.

She waited.

Eddie propped his chin on his fists, propping his head up. Soon it began to droop anyway, the fists sliding up his cheeks. Detta waited, black eyes gleaming.

Eddie’s head jerked up. He struggled to his feet, walked down to the water, and splashed his face with it.

Dat’s right, white boy. Crine shame there ain’t any No-Doz in this worl or you be takin dat too, ain’t dat right?

Eddie sat down in the wheelchair this time, but evidently found that just a little too comfortable. So, after a long look through the open door (what you seein in dere, white boy? Detta give a twenty-dollar bill to know dat), he plopped his ass down on the sand again.

Propped his head with his hands again.

Soon his head began to slip down again.

This time there was no stopping it. His chin lay on his chest, and even over the surf she could hear him snoring. Pretty soon he fell over on his side and curled up.