by Stephen King
“Ye’ll know soon enough. Don’t mind it now, Sheemie. Go on-best be on your way.”
Yet he lingered.
“What?” she asked, trying not to be impatient. “Sheemie, what is it?”
“I’d like to take a fin de ano kiss from ye, so I would.” Sheemie’s face had gone an alarming shade of red.
Susan laughed in spite of herself, then stood on her toes and kissed the comer of his mouth. With that, Sheemie floated out to the Bar K with his load of fire.
4
Reynolds rode out to Citgo the following day, galloping with a scarf wrapped around his face so only his eyes peered out. He would be very glad to get out of this damned place that couldn’t decide if it was ranch-land or seacoast. The temperature wasn’t all that low, but after coming in over the water, the wind cut like a razor. Nor was that all-there was a brooding quality to Hambry and all of Mejis as the days wound down toward the Reap; a haunted feeling he didn’t care for a bit. Roy felt it, too. Reynolds could see it in his eyes.
No, he’d be glad to have those three baby knights so much ash in the wind and this place just a memory.
He dismounted in the crumbling refinery parking lot, tied his horse to the bumper of a rusty old hulk with the mystery-word chevrolet barely readable on its tailboard, then walked toward the oilpatch. The wind blew hard, chilling him even through the ranch-style sheepskin coat he wore, and twice he had to yank his hat down around his ears to keep it from blowing off. On the whole, he was glad he couldn’t see himself; he probably looked like a fucking farmer.
The place seemed fine, though… which was to say, deserted. The wind made a lonely soughing sound as it combed through the firs on either side of the pipe. You’d never guess that there were a dozen pairs of eyes looking out at you as you strolled.
“Hai!” he called. “Come on out here, pard, and let’s have some palaver.”
For a moment there was no response; then Hiram Quint of the Piano Ranch and Barkie Callahan of the Travellers’ Rest came ducking their way out through the trees. Holy shit, Reynolds thought, somewhere between awe and amusement. There ain’t that much beef in a butcher shop.
There was a wretched old musketoon stuck into the waistband of Quint’s pants; Reynolds hadn’t seen one in years. He thought that if Quint was lucky, it would only misfire when he pulled the trigger. If he was unlucky, it would blow up in his face and blind him.
“All quiet?” he asked.
Quint replied in Mejis bibble-babble. Barkie listened, then said: “All well, sai. He say he and his men grow impatient.” Smiling cheerfully, his face giving no indication of what he was saying, Barkie added: “If brains was blackpowder, this ijit couldn’t blow his nose.”
“But he’s a trustworthy idiot?”
Barkie shrugged. It might have been assent.
They went through the trees. Where Roland and Susan had seen almost thirty tankers, there were now only half a dozen, and of those six, only two actually had oil in them. Men sat on the ground or snoozed with their sombreros over their faces. Most had guns that looked about as trustworthy as the one in Quint’s waistband. A few of the poorer vaqs had bolas. On the whole, Reynolds guessed they would be more effective.
“Tell Lord Perth here that if the boys come, it’s got to be an ambush, and they’ll only have one chance to do the job right,” Reynolds said to Barkie.
Barkie spoke to Quint. Quint’s lips parted in a grin, revealing a scarifying picket of black and yellow fangs. He spoke briefly, then put his hands out in front of them and closed them into huge, scarred fists, one above the other, as if wringing the neck of an invisible enemy. When Barkie began to translate, Clay Reynolds waved it away. He had caught only one word, but it was enough: muerto.
5
All that pre-Fair week, Rhea sat in front of the glass, peering into its depths. She had taken time to sew Ermot’s head back onto his body with clumsy stitches of black thread, and she sat with the decaying snake around her neck as she watched and dreamed, not noticing the stench that began to arise from the reptile as time passed. Twice Musty came nigh, mewing for food, and each time Rhea batted the troublesome thing away without so much as a glance. She herself grew more and more gaunt, her eyes now looking like the sockets of the skulls stored in the net by the door to her bedroom. She dozed occasionally as she sat with the ball in her lap and the stinking snakeskin looped about her throat, her head down, the sharp point of her chin digging at her chest, runners of drool hanging from the loose puckers of her lips, but she never really slept. There was too much to see, far too much to see.
And it was hers for the seeing. These days she didn’t even have to pass her hands above the glass to open its pink mists. All the Barony’s meanness, all its petty (and not so petty) cruelties, all its cozening and lying lay before her. Most of what she saw was small and demeaning stuff-masturbating boys peeking through knotholes at their undressed sisters, wives going through husbands’ pockets, looking for extra money or tobacco, Sheb the piano-player licking the seat of the chair where his favorite whore had sat for awhile, a maid at Seafront spitting into Kimba Rimer’s pillowcase after the Chancellor had kicked her for being slow in getting out of his way.
These were all things which confirmed her opinion of the society she had left behind. Sometimes she laughed wildly; sometimes she spoke to the people she saw in the glass ball, as if they could hear her. By the third day of the week before Reaping, she had ceased her trips to the privy, even though she could carry the ball with her when she went, and the sour stench of urine began to rise from her.
By the fourth day, Musty had ceased coming near her. Rhea dreamed in the ball and lost herself in her dreams, as others had done before her; deep in the petty pleasures of far seeing, she was unaware that the pink ball was stealing the wrinkled remains of her anima. She likely would have considered it a fair trade if she had known. She saw all the things people did in the shadows, and they were the only things she cared for, and for them she almost certainly would have considered her life’s force a fair trade.
6
“Here,” the boy said, “let me light it, gods damn you.” Jonas would have recognized the speaker; he was the lad who had waved a severed dog’s tail across the street at Jonas and called, We’re Big Coffin Hunters just like you!
The boy to whom this charming child had spoken tried to hold onto the piece of liver they had copped from the knacker’s behind the Low Market. The first boy seized his ear and twisted. The second boy howled and held the chunk of liver out, dark blood running down his grimy knuckles as he did.
“That’s better,” the first boy said, taking it. “You want to remember who the capataz is, round here.”
They were behind a bakery stall in the Low Market. Nearby, drawn by the smell of hot fresh bread, was a mangy mutt with one blind eye. He stared at them with hungry hope.
There was a slit in the chunk of raw meat. Poking out of it was a green big-bang fuse. Below the fuse, the liver bulged like the stomach of a pregnant woman. The first boy took a sulfur match, stuck it between his protruding front teeth, and lit it.
“He won’t never!” said a third boy, in an agony of hope and anticipation.
“Thin as he is?” the first boy said. “Oh yes he will. Bet ye my deck of cards against yer hosstail.”
The third boy thought it over and shook his head.
The first boy grinned. “It’s a wise child ye are,” he said, and lit the big-bang’s fuse. “Hey, cully!” he called to the dog. “Want a bite o’ sumpin good? Here ye go!”
He threw the chunk of raw liver. The scrawny dog never hesitated at the hissing fuse, but lunged forward with its one good eye fixed on the first decent food it had seen in days. As it snatched the liver out of the air, the big-bang the boys had slipped into it went off. There was a roar and a flash. The dog’s head disintegrated from the jaws down. For a moment it continued to stand there, dripping, staring at them with its one good eye, and then it collapsed.
“T
oadjer!” the first boy jeered. “Toadjer he’d take it! Happy Reap to us, eh?”
“What are you boys doing?” a woman’s voice called sharply. “Get out of there, ye ravens!”
The boys fled, cackling, into the bright afternoon. They did sound like ravens.
7
Cuthbert and Alain sat their horses at the mouth of Eyebolt. Even with the wind blowing the sound of the thinny away from them, it got inside your head and buzzed there, rattling your teeth.
“I hate it,” Cuthbert said through clenched teeth. “Gods, let’s be quick.”
“Aye,” Alain said. They dismounted, bulky in their ranch-coats, and tied their horses to the brush which lay across the front of the canyon. Ordinarily, tethering wouldn’t have been necessary, but both boys could see the horses hated the whining, grinding sound as much as they did. Cuthbert seemed to hear the thinny in his mind, speaking words of invitation in a groaning, horribly persuasive voice.
Come on, Bert. Leave all this foolishness behind: the drums, the pride, the fear of death, the loneliness you laugh at because laughing’s all you can think to do. And the girl, leave her, too. You love her, don’t you? And even if you don’t, you want her. It’s sad that she loves your friend instead of you, but if you come to me, all that will stop bothering you very soon. So come on. What are you waiting for?
“What am I waiting for?” he muttered.
“Huh?”
“I said, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this done and get the holy hell out of here.”
From their saddlebags they each took a small cotton bag. These contained gunpowder extracted from the smaller firecrackers Sheemie had brought them two days before. Alain dropped to his knees, pulled his knife, and began to crawl backward, digging a trench as far under the roll of brush as he could.
“Dig it deep,” Cuthbert said. “We don’t want the wind to blow it away.”
Alain gave him a look which was remarkably hot. “Do you want to do it? Just so you can make sure it’s done right?”
It’s the thinny, Cuthbert thought. It’s working on him, too.
“No, Al,” he said humbly. “You’re doing fine for someone who’s both blind and soft in the head. Go on.”
Alain looked at him fiercely a moment longer, then grinned and resumed the trench under the brush. “You’ll die young, Bert.”
“Aye, likely.” Cuthbert dropped to his own knees and began to crawl after Alain, sprinkling gunpowder into the trench and trying to ignore the buzzy, cajoling voice of the thinny. No, the gunpowder probably wouldn’t blow away, not unless there was a full gale. But if it rained, even the rolls of brush wouldn’t be much protection. If it rained-
Don’t think of that, he told himself. That’s ka.
They finished loading gunpowder trenches under both sides of the brush barrier in only ten minutes, but it felt longer. To the horses as well, it seemed; they were stamping impatiently at the far end of their tethers, their ears laid back and their eyes rolling. Cuthbert and Alain untied them and mounted up. Cuthbert’s horse actually bucked twice… except it felt more to Cuthbert as if the poor old thing were shuddering.
In the middle distance, bright sunshine twanged of bright steel. The tankers at Hanging Rock. They had been pulled in as light to the sandstone outcrop as possible, but when the sun was high, most of the shadow disappeared, and concealment disappeared with it.
“I really can’t believe it,” Alain said as they started back. It would be a long ride, including a wide swing around Hanging Rock to make sure they weren’t seen. “They must think we’re blind.”
“It’s stupid they think we are,” Cuthbert said, “but I suppose it comes to the same.” Now that Eyebolt Canyon was falling behind them, he felt almost giddy with relief. Were they going in there a few days from now? Actually going in, riding to within mere yards of where that cursed puddle started? He couldn’t believe it… and he made himself stop thinking about it before he could start believing it.
“More riders heading out to Hanging Rock,” Alain said, pointing back toward the woods beyond the canyon. “Do you see them?”
They were small as ants from this distance, but Bert saw them very well. “Changing the guard. The important thing is that they don’t see us- you don’t think they can, do you?”
“Over here? Not likely.”
Cuthbert didn’t think so, either.
“They’ll all be down come Reap, won’t they?” Alain asked. “It won’t do us much good to only catch a few.”
“Yes-I’m pretty sure they all will.”
“Jonas and his pals?”
“Them, too.”
Ahead of them, the Bad Grass grew closer. The wind blew hard in their faces, making their eyes water, but Cuthbert didn’t mind. The sound of the thinny was down to a faint drone behind him, and would soon be gone completely. Right now that was all he needed to make him happy.
“Do you think we’ll get away with it, Bert?”
“Dunno,” Cuthbert said. Then he thought of the gunpowder trenches lying beneath the dry rolls of brush, and grinned. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Al: they’ll know we were here.”
8
In Mejis, as in every other Barony of Mid-World, the week before a Fair-Day was a political week. Important people came in from the farther corners of the Barony, and there were a good many Conversationals leading up to the main Conversational on Reaping Day. Susan was expected to be present at these-mostly as a decorative testimony to the Mayor’s continuing puissance. Olive was also present, and, in a cruelly comic dumb-show that only the women truly appreciated, they sat on either side of the aging cockatoo, Susan pouring the coffee, Olive passing the cake, both of them gracefully accepting compliments on food and drink they’d had no hand in preparing.
Susan found it almost impossible to look at Olive’s smiling, unhappy face. Her husband would never lie with Pat Delgado’s daughter… but sai Thorin didn’t know that, and Susan couldn’t tell her. She had only to glimpse the Mayor’s wife from the comer other eye to remember what Roland had said that day on the Drop: For a moment I thought she was my mother. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Olive Thorin was nobody’s mother. That was what had opened the door to this horrible situation in the first place.
There had been something much on Susan’s mind to do, but with the round of activities at Mayor’s House, it was but three days to Reaping before she got the chance. Finally, following this latest Conversational, she was able to slip out of Pink Dress with Applique (how she hated it! how she hated them all!) and jump back into jeans, a plain riding shirt, and a ranch-coat. There was no time to braid her hair, as she was expected back for Mayor’s Tea, but Maria tied it back for her and off she had gone to the house she would shortly be leaving forever.
Her business was in the back room of the stable-the room her father had used as an office-but she went into the house first and heard what she’d hoped to hear: her aunt’s ladylike, whistling snores. Lovely.
Susan got a slice of bread and honey and took it out to the barn-stable, protecting it as best she could from the clouds of dust that blew across the yard in the wind. Her aunt’s stuffy-guy rattled on his post in the garden.
She ducked into the sweet-smelling shadows of the barn. Pylon and Felicia nickered hello, and she divided what she hadn’t eaten between them. They seemed pleased enough to get it. She made especially of Felicia, whom she would soon be leaving behind.
She had avoided the little office since her father died, afraid of exactly the sort of pang that struck her when she lifted the latch and went in. The narrow windows were now covered with cobwebs, but they still let in autumn’s bright light, more than enough for her to be able to see the pipe in the ashtray-the red one, his favorite, the one he called his thinking-pipe- and a bit of tack laid over the back of his desk chair. He had probably been mending it by gaslight, had put it by thinking to finish the next day… then the snake had done its dance under Foam’s hoofs and there had never been a next
day. Not for Pat Delgado.
“Oh, Da,” she said in a small and broken voice. “How I do miss thee.”
She crossed to the desk and ran her fingers along its surface, leaving trails of dust. She sat down in his chair, listened to it creak under her as it had always creaked under him, and that pushed her over the edge. For the next five minutes she sat there and wept, screwing her fists into her eyes as she had as a wee shim. Only now, of course, there was no Big Pat to come upon her and jolly her out of it, taking her on his lap and kissing her in that sensitive place under her chin (especially sensitive to the bristles on his upper lip, it had been) until her tears turned to giggles. Time was a face on the water, and this time it was the face of her father.
At last her tears tapered to sniffles. She opened the desk drawers, one after another, finding more pipes (many rendered useless by his constant stem-chewing), a hat, one of her own dolls (it had a broken arm Pat had apparently never gotten around to putting right), quill-pens, a little flask- empty but with a faint smell of whiskey still present around its neck. The only item of interest was in the bottom drawer: a pair of spurs. One still had its star rowel, but the other had been broken off. These were, she was almost positive, the spurs he had been wearing on the day he died.
If my da was here, she had begun that day on the Drop. But he’s not, Roland had said. He’s dead.
A pair of spurs, a broken-off rowel.
She bounced them in her hand, in her mind’s eye seeing Ocean Foam rear, spilling her father (one spur catches in a stirrup; the rowel breaks free), then stumbling sideways and falling atop him. She saw this clearly, but she didn’t see the snake Fran Lengyll had told them about. That she didn’t see at all.
She put the spurs back where she had found them, got up, and looked at the shelf to the right of the desk, handy to Pat Delgado’s smart hand. Here was a line of leather-bound ledgers, a priceless trove of books in a society that had forgotten how to make paper. Her father had been the man in charge of the Barony’s horse for almost thirty years, and here were his stockline books to prove it.