by Stephen King
“Never mind yer nettlesome mouth,” she said, “but only listen, ifye’d be my friend. This is important.”
His smile dropped away, and she saw again-as she had for a moment or two before-the man he’d be before too many more years had passed. The hard face, the concentrated eyes, the merciless mouth. It was a frightening face, in a way-a frightening prospect-and yet, still, the place the old hag had touched felt warm and she found it difficult to take her eyes off him. What, she wondered, was his hair like under that stupid hat he wore?
“Tell me, Susan.”
“If you and yer friends come to table at Thorin’s, ye may see me. If ye see me, Will, see me for the first time. See Miss Delgado, as I shall see Mr. Dearborn. Do’ee take my meaning?”
“To the letter.” He was looking at her thoughtfully. “Do you serve? Surely, if your father was the Barony’s chief drover, you do not-”
“Never mind what I do or don’t do. Just promise that if we meet at Seafront, we meet for the first time.”
“I promise. But-”
“No more questions. We’ve nearly come to the place where we must part ways, and I want to give ye a warning-fair payment for the ride on this nice mount of yours, mayhap. If ye dine with Thorin and Rimer, ye’ll not be the only new folk at his table. There’ll likely be three others, men Thorin has hired to serve as private guards o’ the house.”
“Not as Sheriff' s deputies?”
“Nay, they answer to none but Thorin… or, mayhap, to Rimer. Their names are Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds. They look like hard boys to me… although Jonas’s boyhood is so long behind him that I imagine he’s forgot he ever had one.”
“Jonas is the leader?”
“Aye. He limps, has hair that falls to his shoulders pretty as any girl’s, and the quavery voice of an old gaffer who spends his days polishing the chimney-comer… but I think he’s the most dangerous of the three all the same. I’d guess these three have forgot more about helling than you and yer friends will ever learn.”
Now why had she told him all that? She didn’t know, exactly. Gratitude, perhaps. He had promised to keep the secret of this late-night meeting, and he had the look of a promise-keeper, in hack with his father or not.
“I’ll watch them. And I thank you for the advice.” They were now climbing a long, gentle slope. Overhead, Old Mother blazed relentlessly. “Bodyguards,” he mused. “Bodyguards in sleepy little Hambry. It’s strange times, Susan. Strange indeed.”
“Aye.” She had wondered about Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds herself, and could think of no good reason for them to be in town. Had they been Rimer’s doing. Rimer’s decision? It seemed likely-Thorin wasn’t the sort of man to even think about bodyguards, she would have said; the High Sheriff had always done well enough for him-but still… why?
They breasted the hill. Below them lay a nestle of buildings-the village of Hambry. Only a few lights still shone. The brightest cluster marked the Travellers’ Rest. From here, on the warm breeze, she could hear the piano beating out “Hey Jude” and a score of drunken voices gleefully murdering the chorus. Not the three men of whom she had warned Will Dearborn, though; they would be standing at the bar, watching the room with their flat eyes. Not the singing type were those three. Each had a small blue coffin-shape tattooed on his right hand, burned into the webbing between thumb and forefinger. She thought to tell Will this, then realized he’d see for himself soon enough. Instead, she pointed a little way down the slope, at a dark shape which overhung the road on a chain. “Do ye see that?”
''Yes.” He heaved a large and rather comical sigh. “Is it the object I fear beyond all others? Is it the dread shape of Mrs. Beech’s mailbox?”
“Aye. And it’s there we must part.”
“If you say we must, we must. Yet I wish-” Just then the wind shifted, as it sometimes did in the summer, and blew a strong gust out of the west. The smell of sea-salt was gone in an instant, and so was the sound of the drunken, singing voices. What replaced them was a sound infinitely more sinister, one that never failed to produce a scutter of gooseflesh up her back: a low, atonal noise, like the warble of a siren being turned by a man without much longer to live.
Will took a step backward, eyes widening, and again she noticed his hands take a dip toward his belt, as if reaching for something not there.
“What in gods’ name is that?”
“It’s a thinny,” she said quietly. “In Eyebolt Canyon. Have ye never heard of such?”
“Heard of, yes, but never heard until now. Gods, how do you stand it? It sounds alive!”
She had never thought of it quite like that, but now, in a way listening with his ears instead of her own, she thought he was right. It was as if some sick part of the night had gained a voice and was actually trying to sing.
She shivered. Rusher felt the momentary increased pressure of her knees and whickered softly, craning his head around to look at her.
“We don’t often hear it so clearly at this time of year,” she said. “In the fall, the men bum it to quiet.”
“I don’t understand.”
Who did? Who understood anything anymore? Gods, they couldn’t even turn off the few oil-pumps in Citgo that still worked, although half of them squealed like pigs in a slaughtering chute. These days you were usually just grateful to find things that still worked at all.
“In the summer, when there’s time, drovers and cowboys drag loads of brush to the mouth of Eyebolt,” she said. “Dead brush is all right, but live is better, for it’s smoke that’s wanted, and the heavier the better. Eye-bolt’s a box canyon, very short and steep-walled. Almost like a chimney lying on its side, you see?”
“Yes.”
“The traditional time for burning is Reap Mom-the day after the fair and the feast and the fire.”
“The first day of winter.”
“Aye although in these parts it doesn’t feel like winter so soon. In any case it’s no tradition; the brush is sometimes lit sooner, if the winds have been prankish or if the sound’s particularly strong. It upsets the livestock, you know-cows give poorly when the noise of the thinny’s strong-and it makes sleep difficult.”
“I should think it would.” Will was still looking north, and a stronger gust of wind blew his hat off. It fell to his back, the rawhide tugstring pulling against the line of his throat. The hair so revealed was a little long, and as black as a crow’s wing. She felt a sudden, greedy desire to run her hands through it, to let her fingers tell its texture-rough or smooth or silky? And how would it smell? At this she felt another shiver of heat down low in her belly. He turned to her as though he had read her mind, and she flushed, grateful that he wouldn’t be able to see the darkening of her cheek.
“How long has it been there?”
“Since before I was born,” she said, “but not before my da was born. He said that the ground shook in an earthquake just before it came. Some say the earthquake brought it, some say that’s superstitious nonsense. All I know is that it’s always been there. The smoke quiets it awhile, the way it will quiet a hive of bees or wasps, but the sound always comes back. The brush piled at the mouth helps to keep any wandering livestock out, too-sometimes they’re drawn to it, gods know why. But if a cow or sheep does happen to yet in-after the burning and before the next year’s pile has started to grow, mayhap-it doesn’t come back out. Whatever it is, it’s hungry.”
She put his poncho aside, lifted her right leg over the saddle without so much as touching the horn, and slipped off Rusher-all this in a single liquid movement. It was a stunt made for pants rather than a dress, and she knew from the further widening of his eyes that he’d seen a good lot of her… but nothing she had to wash with the bathroom door closed, so what of that? And that quick dismount had ever been a favorite trick of hers when she was in a showoffy mood.
“Pretty!” he exclaimed.
“I learned it from my da,” she said, responding to the more innocent interpretation of his compliment. Her smile a
s she handed him the reins, however, suggested that she was willing to accept the compliment any way it was meant.
“Susan? Have you ever seen the thinny?”
“Aye, once or twice. From above.”
“What does it look like?”
“Ugly,” she responded at once. Until tonight, when she had observed Rhea’s smile up close and endured her twiddling, meddling fingers, she would have said it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. “It looks a little like a slow-burning peat fire, and a little like a swamp full of scummy green water. There’s a mist that rises off it. Sometimes it looks like long, skinny arms. With hands at the end of em.”
“Is it growing?”
“Aye, they say it is, that every thinny grows, but it grows slowly. 'Twon’t escape Eyebolt Canyon in your time or mine.”
She looked up at the sky, and saw that the constellations had continued to tilt along their tracks as they spoke. She felt she could talk to him all night-about the thinny, or Citgo, or her irritating aunt, or just about anything-and the idea dismayed her. Why should this happen to her now, for the gods’ sake? After three years of dismissing the Hambry boys, why should she now meet a boy who interested her so strangely? Why was life so unfair?
Her earlier thought, the one she’d heard in her father’s voice, recurred to her: If it’s ka, it’ll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone.
But no. And no. And no. So set she, with all her considerable determination, her mind against the idea. This was no bam; this was her life.
Susan reached out and touched the rusty tin of Mrs. Beech’s mailbox, as if to steady herself in the world. Her little hopes and daydreams didn’t mean so much, perhaps, but her father had taught her to measure herself by her ability to do the things she’d said she would do, and she would not overthrow his teachings simply because she happened to encounter a good-looking boy at a time when her body and her emotions were in a stew.
“I’ll leave ye here to either rejoin yer friends or resume yer ride,” she said. The gravity she heard in her voice made her feel a bit sad, for it was an adult gravity. “But remember yer promise, Will-if ye see me at Seafront-Mayor’s House-and ifye’d be my friend, see me there for the first time. As I’d see you.”
He nodded, and she saw her seriousness now mirrored in his own face. And the sadness, mayhap. “I’ve never asked a girl to ride out with me, or if she’d accept a visit of me. I’d ask of you, Susan, daughter of Patrick-I’d even bring you flowers to sweeten my chances-but it would do no good, I think.”
She shook her head. “Nay. Twouldn’t.”
“Are you promised in marriage? It’s forward of me to ask, I know, but I mean no harm.”
“I’m sure ye don’t, but I’d as soon not answer. My position is a delicate one just now, as I told ye. Besides, it’s late. Here’s where we part, Will. But stay… one more moment…”
She rummaged in the pocket of her apron and brought out half a cake wrapped in a piece of green leaf. The other half she had eaten on her way up to the Coos… in what now felt like the other half of her life. She held what was left of her little evening meal out to Rusher, who sniffed it, then ate it and nuzzled her hand. She smiled, liking the velvet tickle in the cup of her palm. “Aye, thee’s a good horse, so ye are.”
She looked at Will Dearborn, who stood in the road, shuffling his dusty boots and gazing at her unhappily. The hard look was gone from his face, now; he looked her age again, or younger. “We were well met, weren’t we?” he asked.
She stepped forward, and before she could let herself think about what she was doing, she put her hands on his shoulders, stood on her toes, and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss was brief but not sisterly.
“Aye, very well met. Will.” But when he moved toward her (as thoughtlessly as a flower turning its face to follow the sun), wishing to repeat the experience, she pushed him back a step, gently but firmly.
“Nay, that was only a thank-you, and one thank-you should be enough for a gentleman. Go yer course in peace, Will.”
He took up the reins like a man in a dream, looked at them for a moment as if he didn’t know what in the world they were, and then looked hack at her. She could see him working to clear his mind and emotions of the impact her kiss had made. She liked him for it. And she was very glad she had done it.
“And you yours,” he said, swinging into the saddle. “I look forward to meeting you for the first time.”
He smiled at her, and she saw both longing and wishes in that smile. Then he gigged the horse, turned him, and started back the way they’d come-to have another look at the oil patch, mayhap. She stood where she was, by Mrs. Beech’s mailbox, willing him to turn around and wave so she could see his face once more. She felt sure he would… but he didn’t. Then, just as she was about to turn away and start down the hill to town, he did turn, and his hand lifted, fluttering for a moment in the dark like a moth.
Susan lifted her own in return and then went her way, feeling happy and unhappy at the same time. Yet-and this was perhaps the most important thing-she no longer felt soiled. When she had touched the boy’s lips, Rhea’s touch seemed to have left her skin. A small magic, perhaps, but she welcomed it.
She walked on, smiling a little and looking up at the stars more frequently than was her habit when out after dark.
Chapter IV
LONG AFTER MOONSET
1
He rode restlessly for nearly two hours back and forth along what she called the Drop, never pushing Rusher above a trot, although what he wanted to do was gallop the big gelding under the stars until his own blood began to cool a little.
It’ll cool plenty if you draw attention to yourself, he thought, and likely you won’t even have to cool it yourself. Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve. That old saying made him think of the scarred and bowlegged man who had been his life’s greatest teacher, and he smiled.
At last he turned his horse down the slope to the trickle of brook which ran there, and followed it a mile and a half upstream (past several gathers of horse; they looked at Rusher with a kind of sleepy, wall-eyed surprise) to a grove of willows. From the hollow within, a horse whickered softly. Rusher whickered in return, stamping one hoof and nodding his head up and down.
His rider ducked his own head as he passed through the willow fronds, and suddenly there was a narrow and inhuman white face hanging before him, its upper half all but swallowed by black, pupilless eyes.
He dipped for his guns-the third time tonight he’d done that, and for the third time there was nothing there. Not that it mattered; already he recognized what was hanging before him on a string: that idiotic rook’s skull.
The young man who was currently calling himself Arthur Heath had taken it off his saddle (it amused him to call the skull so perched their lookout, “ugly as an old gammer, but perfect cheap to feed”) and hung it here as a prank greeting. Him and his jokes! Rusher’s master batted it aside hard enough to break the string and send the skull flying into the dark.
“Fie, Roland,” said a voice from the shadows. It was reproachful, but there was laughter bubbling just beneath… as there always was. Cuthbert was his oldest friend-the marks of their first teeth had been embedded on many of the same toys-but Roland had in some ways never understood him. Nor was it just his laughter; on the long-ago day when Hax, the palace cook, was to be hung for a traitor on Gallows Hill, Cuthbert had been in an agony of terror and remorse. He’d told Roland he couldn’t stay, couldn’t watch… but in the end he had done both. Because neither the stupid jokes nor the easy surface emotions were the truth of Cuthbert Allgood.
As Roland entered the hollow at the center of the grove, a dark shape stepped out from behind the tree where it had been keeping. Halfway across the clearing, it resolved itself into a tall, narrow-hipped boy who was barefooted below his jeans and bare-chested above them. In one hand he held an enormous antique re
volver-a kind which was sometimes called a beer-barrel because of the cylinder’s size.
“Fie,” Cuthbert repeated, as if he liked the sound of this word, not archaic only in forgotten backwaters like Mejis. “That’s a fine way to treat the guard o’ the watch, smacking the poor thin-faced fellow halfway to the nearest mountain-range!”
“If I’d been wearing a gun, I likely would have blown it to smithereens and woken half the countryside.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be going about strapped,” Cuthbert answered mildly. “You’re remarkably ill-looking, Roland son of Steven, but nobody’s fool even as you approach the ancient age of fifteen.”
“I thought we agreed we’d use the names we’re travelling under. Even among ourselves.”
Cuthbert stuck out his leg, bare heel planted in the turf, and bowed with his arms outstretched and his hands strenuously bent at the wrist-an inspired imitation of the sort of man for whom court has become career. He also looked remarkably like a heron standing in a marsh, and Roland snorted laughter in spite of himself. Then he touched the inside of his left wrist to his forehead, to see if he had a fever. He felt feverish enough inside his head, gods knew, but the skin above his eyes felt cool.
“I cry your pardon, gunslinger,” Cuthbert said, his eyes and hands still turned humbly down.
The smile on Roland’s face died. “And don’t call me that again, Cuthbert. Please. Not here, not anywhere. Not if you value me.”
Cuthbert dropped his pose at once and came quickly to where Roland sat his horse. He looked honestly humbled.
“Roland-Will-I’m sorry.”
Roland clapped him on the shoulder. “No harm done. Just remember from here on out. Mejis may be at the end of the world… but it still is the world. Where’s Alain?”
“Dick, do you mean? Where do you think?” Cuthbert pointed across the clearing, to where a dark hulk was either snoring or slowly choking to death.