The Waste Lands (29 page)

“What was that, Roland?”

“A billy-bumbler.”

“No good to eat?”

Roland shook his head. “Tough. Sour. I’d rather eat dog.”

“Have you?” Susannah asked. “Eaten dog, I mean?”

Roland nodded, but did not elaborate. Eddie found himself thinking of a line from an old Paul Newman movie:
That’s right, lady—eaten em and lived like one.

Birds sang cheerily in the trees. A light breeze blew along the road. Eddie and Susannah turned their faces up to it gratefully, then looked at each other and smiled. Eddie was struck again by his gratitude for her—it was scary to have someone to love, but it was also very fine.

“Who made this road?” Eddie asked.

“People who have been gone a long time,” Roland said.

“The same ones who made the cups and dishes we found?” Susannah asked.

“No—not them. This used to be a coach-road, I imagine, and if it’s still here, after all these years of neglect, it must have been a great one indeed . . . perhaps
the
Great Road. If we dug down, I imagine we’d find the gravel undersurface, and maybe the drainage system, as well. As long as we’re here, let’s have a bite to eat.”

“Food!” Eddie cried. “Bring it on! Chicken Florentine! Polynesian shrimp! Veal lightly sautéed with mushrooms and—”

Susannah elbowed him. “Quit it, white boy.”

“I can’t help it if I’ve got a vivid imagination,” Eddie said cheerfully.

Roland slipped his purse off his shoulder, hunkered down, and began to put together a small noon meal of dried meat wrapped in olive-colored leaves. Eddie and Susannah had discovered that these leaves tasted a little like spinach, only much stronger.

Eddie wheeled Susannah over to him and Roland handed her three of what Eddie called “gunslinger burritos.” She began to eat.

When Eddie turned back, Roland was holding out three of the wrapped pieces of meat to him—and something else, as well. It was the chunk of ash with the key growing out of it. Roland had taken it off the rawhide string, which now lay in an open loop around his neck.

“Hey, you need that, don’t you?” Eddie asked.

“When I take it off, the voices return, but they’re very distant,” Roland said. “I can deal with them. Actually, I hear them even when I’m wearing it—like the voices of men who are speaking low over the next hill. I think that’s because the key is yet unfinished. You haven’t worked on it since you gave it to me.”

“Well . . . you were wearing it, and I didn’t want to . . .”

Roland said nothing, but his faded blue eyes regarded Eddie with their patient teacher’s look.

“All right,” Eddie said, “I’m afraid of fucking it up. Satisfied?”

“According to your brother, you fucked everything up . . . isn’t that right?” Susannah asked.

“Susannah Dean, Girl Psychologist. You missed your calling, sweetheart.”

Susannah wasn’t offended by the sarcasm. She lifted the waterskin with her elbow, like a redneck tipping a jug, and drank deeply. “It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

Eddie, who realized he hadn’t finished the slingshot, either—not yet, at least—shrugged.

“You have to finish it,” Roland said mildly. “I think the time is coming when you’ll have to put it to use.”

Eddie started to speak, then closed his mouth. It sounded easy when you said it right out like that, but neither of them really understood the bottom line. The bottom line was this: seventy per cent or eighty or even ninety-eight and a half just wouldn’t do. Not this time. And if he
did
screw up, he couldn’t just toss the thing over his shoulder and walk away. For one thing, he hadn’t seen another ash-tree since the day he had cut this particular piece of wood. But mostly the thing that was fucking him up was just this: it was all or nothing. If he messed up even a little, the key wouldn’t turn when they needed it to turn. And he was increasingly nervous about that little squiggle at the end. It looked simple, but if the curves weren’t exactly right . . .

It won’t work the way it is now, though; that much you do know
.

He sighed, looking at the key. Yes, that much he did know. He would have to try to finish it. His fear of failure would make it even harder than it maybe had to be, but he would have to swallow the fear and try anyway. Maybe he could even bring it off. God knew he had brought off a lot in the weeks since Roland had entered his mind on a Delta jet bound into JFK Airport. That he was still alive and sane was an accomplishment in itself.

Eddie handed the key back to Roland. “Wear it for now,” he said. “I’ll go back to work when we stop for the night.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

Roland nodded, took the key, and began to re-knot the rawhide string. He worked slowly, but Eddie did not fail to notice how dextrously the remaining fingers on his right hand moved. The man was nothing if not adaptable.

“Something
is
going to happen, isn’t it?” Susannah asked suddenly.

Eddie glanced up at her. “What makes you say so?”

“I sleep with you, Eddie, and I know you dream every night now. Sometimes you talk, too. They don’t seem like nightmares, exactly, but it’s pretty clear that
something
is going on inside your head.”

“Yes. Something is. I just don’t know what.”

“Dreams are powerful,” Roland remarked. “You don’t remember the ones you’re having at all?”

Eddie hesitated. “A little, but they’re confused. I’m a kid again, I know that much. It’s after school. Henry and I are shooting hoops at the old Markey Avenue playground, where the Juvenile Court Building is now. I want Henry to take me to see a place over in Dutch Hill. An old house. The kids used to call it The Mansion, and everyone said it was haunted. Maybe it even was. It was creepy, I know that much.
Real
creepy.”

Eddie shook his head, remembering.

“I thought of The Mansion for the first time in years when we were in the bear’s clearing, and I put my head close to that weird box. I dunno—maybe that’s why I’m having the dream.”

“But you don’t think so,” Susannah said.

“No. I think whatever’s happening is a lot more complicated than just remembering stuff.”

“Did you and your brother actually go to this place?” Roland asked.

“Yeah—I talked him into it.”

“And did something happen?”

“No. But it was scary. We stood there and looked at it for a little while, and Henry teased me—saying he was going to make me go in and pick up a souvenir, stuff like that—but I knew he didn’t really mean it. He was as scared of the place as I was.”

“And that’s it?” Susannah asked. “You just dream of going to this place? The Mansion?”

“There’s a little more than that. Someone comes . . . and then just kind of hangs out. I notice him in the dream, but just a little . . . like out of the corner of my eye, you know? Only I know we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know each other.”

“Was this someone really there that day?” Roland asked. He was watching Eddie intently. “Or is he only a player in this dream?”

“That was a long time ago. I couldn’t have been more than thirteen. How could I remember a thing like that for sure?”

Roland said nothing.

“Okay,” Eddie said at last. “Yeah. I think he was there that day. A kid who was either carrying a gym-bag or wearing a backpack, I can’t remember which. And sunglasses that were too big for his face. The ones with the mirror lenses.”

“Who was this person?” Roland asked.

Eddie was silent for a long time. He was holding the last of his
burritos à la Roland
in one hand, but he had lost his appetite. “I think it’s the kid you met at the way station,” he said at last. “I think your old friend Jake was hanging around, watching me and Henry on the afternoon we went over to Dutch Hill. I think he followed us. Because he hears the voices, just like you, Roland. And because he’s sharing my dreams, and I’m sharing his. I think that what I remember is what’s happening now, in Jake’s when. The kid is trying to come back here. And if the key isn’t done when he makes his move—or if it’s done wrong—he’s probably going to die.”

Roland said, “Maybe he has a key of his own. Is that possible?”

“Yeah, I think it is,” Eddie said, “but it isn’t enough.” He sighed and stuck the last burrito in his pocket for later.
“And I don’t think he knows that.”

THEY MOVED ALONG, ROLAND and Eddie trading off on Susannah’s wheelchair. They picked the left-hand wheelrut. The chair bumped and pitched, and every now and then Eddie and Roland had to lift it over the cobbles which stuck out of the dirt here and there like old teeth. They were still making faster, easier time than they had in a week, however. The ground was rising, and when Eddie looked over his shoulder he could see the forest sloping away in what looked like a series of gentle steps. Far to the northwest, he could see a ribbon of water spilling over a fractured rock face. It was, he realized with wonder, the place they had dubbed “the shooting gallery.” Now it was almost lost behind them in the haze of this dreaming summer afternoon.

“Whoa down, boy!” Susannah called sharply. Eddie faced forward again just in time to keep from pushing the wheelchair into Roland. The gunslinger had stopped and was peering into the tangled bushes at the left of the road.

“You keep that up, I’m gonna revoke your driver’s license,” Susannah said waspily.

Eddie ignored her. He was following Roland’s gaze. “What is it?”

“One way to find out.” He turned, hoisted Susannah from her chair, and planted her on his hip. “Let’s all take a look.”

“Put me down, big boy—I can make my way. Easier’n you boys, if you really want to know.”

As Roland gently lowered her to the grassy wheelrut, Eddie peered into the woods. The late light threw overlapping crosses of shadow, but he thought he saw what had caught Roland’s eye. It was a tall gray stone, almost completely hidden in a shag of vines and creepers.

Susannah slipped into the woods at the side of the road with eely sinuousness. Roland and Eddie followed.

“It’s a marker, isn’t it?” Susannah was propped on her hands studying the rectangular chunk of rock. It had once been straight, but now it leaned drunkenly to the right, like an old gravestone.

“Yes. Give me my knife, Eddie.”

Eddie handed it over, then hunkered next to Susannah as the gunslinger cut away the vines. As they fell, he could see eroded letters carved into the stone, and he knew what they said before Roland had uncovered even half of the inscription:

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” Susannah asked at last. Her voice was soft and awestruck; her eyes ceaselessly measured the gray stone plinth.

“It means that we’re nearing the end of this first stage.” Roland’s face was solemn and thoughtful as he handed his knife back to Eddie. “I think that we’ll keep to this old coach-road now—or rather, it will keep to us. It has taken up the path of the Beam. The woods will end soon. I expect a great change.”

“What is Mid-World?” Eddie asked.

“One of the large kingdoms which dominated the earth in the times before these. A kingdom of hope and knowledge and light—the sort of things we were trying to hold on to in my land before the darkness overtook us, as well. Some day if there’s time, I’ll tell you all the old stories . . . the ones I know, at least. They form a large tapestry, one which is beautiful but very sad.

“According to the old tales, a great city once stood at the edge of Mid-World—perhaps as great as your city of New York. It will be in ruins now, if it still exists at all. But there may be people . . . or monsters . . . or both. We’ll have to be on our guard.”

He reached out his two-fingered right hand and touched the inscription. “Mid-World,” he said in a low, meditative voice. “Who would have thought . . .” He trailed off.

“Well, there’s no help for it, is there?” Eddie asked.

The gunslinger shook his head. “No help.”

“Ka,”
Susannah said suddenly, and they both looked at her.

THERE WERE TWO HOURS of daylight left, and so they moved on. The road continued southeast, along the path of the Beam, and two other overgrown roads—smaller ones—joined the one they were following. Along one side of the second were the mossy, tumbled remains of what must have once been an immense rock wall. Nearby, a dozen fat billy-bumblers sat upon the ruins, watching the pilgrims with their odd gold-ringed eyes. To Eddie they looked like a jury with hanging on its mind.

The road continued to grow wider and more clearly defined. Twice they passed the shells of long-deserted buildings. The second one, Roland said, might have been a windmill. Susannah said it looked haunted. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” the gunslinger replied. His matter-of-fact tone chilled both of them.

When darkness forced a halt, the trees were thinning and the breeze which had chased around them all day became a light, warm wind. Ahead, the land continued to rise.

“We’ll come to the top of the ridge in a day or two,” Roland said. “Then we’ll see.”

“See what?” Susannah asked, but Roland only shrugged.

That night Eddie began to carve again, but with no real feeling of inspiration. The confidence and happiness he’d felt as the key first began to take shape had left him. His fingers felt clumsy and stupid. For the first time in months he thought longingly of how good it would be to have some heroin. Not a lot; he felt sure that a nickel bag and a rolled-up dollar bill would send him flying through this little carving project in no time flat.

“What are you smiling about, Eddie?” Roland asked. He was sitting on the other side of the campfire; the low, wind-driven flames danced capriciously between them.

“Was I smiling?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking about how stupid some people can be—you put them in a room with six doors, they’ll still walk into the walls. And then have the nerve to bitch about it.”