McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [85]
Roland opened his tobacco pouch, took out one of Rosalita’s rice-pulls, and drifted it toward the plate’s sharp edge. The square of thin paper fluttered to the porch a moment later, cut neatly in two. Only for the fun of the thing, Roland thought, and almost smiled.
“What metal?” he asked. “Does thee know?”
She raised her eyebrows slightly at this Manni form of address but didn’t comment on it. “Titanium is what Andy calls it. It comes from a great old factory building, far north, in Calla Sen Chre. There are many ruins there. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard the tales. It sounds spooky.”
Roland nodded. “And the plates—how are they made?”
“It’s the ladies of Calla Sen Chre who make them, and send them to the Callas all round about. Although Calla Divine is as far south as that sort of trading reaches, I think.”
“The ladies make these,” Roland mused. “The ladies.”
“Somewhere there’s a machine that still makes ’em, that’s all it is,” Eisenhart said. Roland was amused at his tone of gruff defensive-ness. “Comes down to no more than pushing a button, I ’magine.”
Margaret, looking at him with a woman’s smile, said nothing to this, either for or against. Perhaps she didn’t know about the manufacture of the plates, but she certainly knew the politics that keep a marriage sweet.
“So there are Sisters north and south of here along the Arc,” Roland said. “And all of them throw the plate.”
“Aye—from Sen Chre to Divine south of us. Further south or north, I don’t know. We like to help and we like to talk. We throw our plates once a month, in memory of how Lady Oriza did for Gray Dick, but few of us are any good at it.”
“Are you good at it, sai?”
She was silent, biting at the corner of her lip again.
“Show him,” Eisenhart growled. “Show him and be done.”
They walked down the steps, the rancher’s wife leading the way, Eisenhart behind her, Roland third. Behind them the kitchen door opened and banged shut.
“Gods-a-glory, missus Eisenhart’s gonna throw the dish!” Benny Slightman cried gleefully. “Jake! You won’t believe it!”
“Send ’em back in, Vaughn,” she said. “They don’t need to see this.”
“Nar, let ’em look,” Eisenhart said. “Don’t hurt a boy to see a woman do well.”
“Send them back, Roland, aye?” She looked at him, flushed and flustered and very pretty. To Roland she looked ten years younger than when she’d come out on the porch, but he wondered how she’d fling in such a state. It was something he much wanted to see, because ambushing was brutal work, quick and emotional.
“I agree with your husband,” he said. “I’d let them stay.”
“Have it as you like,” she said. Roland saw she was actually pleased, that she wanted an audience, and his hope increased. He thought it increasingly likely that this pretty middle-aged wife, this exile from the Manni with her small breasts and salt-and-pepper hair, had a hunter’s heart. Not a gunslinger’s heart, but at this point he would settle for a few hunters—a few killers—male or female.
She marched toward the barn, and when they were fifty yards from the stuffy-guys flanking its door, he touched her shoulder and made her stop.
“Nay,” she said, “’tis too far.”
“I’ve seen you fling as far and half again,” her husband said, and stood firm in the face of her angry look. “I have.”
“Not with a gunslinger from the Line of Eld standing by my right elbow, you haven’t,” she said, but she stayed where she was.
Roland went to the barn door and took the grinning sharproot head from the stuffy on the left side. He went into the barn. Here was a stall filled with freshly picked potatoes. He took one of the potatoes and set it atop the stuffy-guy’s shoulders, where the sharproot had been. It was a good-sized spud, but the contrast was still comic; the stuffy-guy now looked like Mr. Tinyhead in a carnival show or street fair.
“Oh, Roland, no!” she cried, sounding genuinely shocked. “I could never!”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, and stood aside.