McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [83]
Lady Oriza, whom Roland would hear referred to as the Lady of the Plate in some of his wanderings, raised her glass of wine and toasted the body. She said . . .
“May your first day in hell last ten thousand years,” Roland murmured. Margaret nodded. “Aye, and let that one be the shortest. A terrible toast, but one I’d gladly give each of the outlaws who dare to take our babies. Each and every one!” Her visible hand clenched. In the fading red light she looked feverish and ill. And, Roland thought, she looked like her father. “We had six, do ya. An even half-dozen. Has my husband told you why none of them are here, to help with the reap-tide slaughtering and penning? Has he told you that, gunslinger?”
“Margaret, there’s no need,” Eisenhart said. He shifted uncomfortably in his rocker.
“Ah, but mayhap there is. It goes back to what we were saying before. Mayhap ye pay a price for leaping, but sometimes ye pay an even higher one for looking. Our children grew up free and clear, with no child-thieves to worry about. I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before the Wolves came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod. The youngest be only fifteen, do ya see. And I’d never turn my back on ’em, or my face from ’em, as some would to their get, simply because they have the audacity to wriggle out from beneath a hard fist. Some ye may have visited even this day, gunslinger, or am I wrong?”
“Margaret—” her husband began.
She ignored him. “But ours’d not be s’lucky with their own children, and they knew it. And so they’re gone. Some north along the Arc, some south. Looking for a place where the Wolves don’t come.”
She turned to Eisenhart, and although she spoke to Roland, it was her husband she looked at as she had her final word.
“One of every two; that’s the outlaw bounty. That’s what they take every twenty-some years. Except for us. They took all of our children, although they never laid their hands on a single one.”
Silence fell on the back porch. The condemned steers in the slaughter-pen mooed moronically. From the kitchen came the sound of boy-laughter.
Eisenhart had dropped his head. Roland could see nothing but the extravagant bush of his mustache, but he didn’t need to see the man’s face to know that he was either weeping or struggling very hard not to.
“I’d not make’ee feel bad for all the rice of the Arc,” she said, and stroked her husband’s shoulder with infinite tenderness. “And they come back betimes, aye, which is more than the dead do, except in our dreams. They’re not so old that they don’t miss their mother, or have how-do-ye-do-it questions for their da’. But they’re gone, nevertheless. And that’s the price of safety.” She looked down at Eisenhart for a moment, one hand on his shoulder and the other still beneath her apron. “Now tell how angry with me you are,” she said, “for I’d know.”
Eisenhart shook his head. “Not angry,” he said in a muffled voice.
“And have’ee changed your mind?”
Eisenhart shook his head again.
“Stubborn old thing,” she said, but she spoke with good-humored affection. “Stubborn as a stick, aye, and we all say thankya.”
“I’m thinking about it,” he said, still not looking up. “Still thinking, which is more than I expected at this late date—usually I make up my mind and there’s the end of it.
“Roland, I understand young Jake showed Overholser and the rest of ’em some shooting out in the woods. Might be we could show you something right here that’d raise your