Song of Susannah - Stephen King [50]
“Are you there, Odetta?” Pleasantly teasing. “Are you there, you interfering bitch?”
She kept silent.
“She’s in there,” Mia said. “I don’t know why she’s not answering, I’m not holding her just now.”
“Oh, I think I know why,” Sayre said indulgently. “She doesn’t like that name, for one thing.” Then, in a reference Susannah didn’t get: “ ‘Don’t call me Clay no more, Clay my slave name, call me Muhammad Ali!’ Right, Susannah? Or was that after your time? A little after, I think. Sorry. Time can be so confusing, can’t it? Never mind. I have something to tell you in a minute, my dear. You won’t like it very much, I fear, but I think you should know.”
Susannah kept silent. It was getting harder.
“As for the immediate future of your chap, Mia, I’m surprised you’d even feel it necessary to ask,” Sayre told her. He was a smoothie, whoever he was, his voice containing exactly the right amount of outrage. “The King keeps his promises, unlike some I could name. And, issues of our integrity aside, think of the practical issues! Who else should have the keeping of perhaps the most important child to ever be born…including Christ, including Buddha, including the Prophet Muhammad? To who else’s breast, if I may be crude, would we trust his suck?”
Music to her ears, Susannah thought dismally. All the things she’s been thirsting to hear. And why? Because she is Mother.
“You’d trust him to me!” Mia cried. “Only to me, of course! Thank you! Thank you!”
Susannah spoke at last. Told her not to trust him. And was, of course, roundly ignored.
“I’d no more lie to you than break a promise to my own mother,” said the voice on the phone. (Did you ever have one, sugar? Detta wanted to know.) “Even though the truth sometimes hurts, lies have a way of coming back to bite us, don’t they? The truth of this matter is you won’t have your chap for long, Mia, his childhood won’t be like that of other children, normal children—”
“I know! Oh, I know!”
“—but for the five years you do have him…or perhaps seven, it might be as many as seven…he’ll have the best of everything. From you, of course, but also from us. Our interference will be minimal—”
Detta Walker leaped forward, as quick and as nasty as a grease-burn. She was only able to take possession of Susannah Dean’s vocal cords for a moment, but it was a precious moment.
“Dass raht, dahlin, dass raht,” she cackled, “he won’t come in yo’ mouf or get it in you’ hair!”
“Shut that bitch UP!” Sayre whipcracked, and Susannah felt the jolt as Mia shoved Detta head over heels—but still cackling—to the back of their shared mind again. Once more into the brig.
Had mah say, though, damn if I didn’t! Detta cried. Ah tole that honky muhfuh!
Sayre’s voice in the telephone’s earpiece was cold and clear. “Mia, do you have control or not?”
“Yes! Yes, I do!”
“Then don’t let that happen again.”
“I won’t!”
And somewhere—it felt like above her, although there were no real directions here at the back of the shared mind—something clanged shut. It sounded like iron.
We really are in the brig, she told Detta, but Detta just went on laughing.
Susannah thought: I’m pretty sure I know who she is, anyway. Besides me, that is. This truth seemed obvious to her. The part of Mia that wasn’t either Susannah or something summoned from the void world to do the Crimson King’s bidding…surely the third part really was the Oracle, elemental or not; the female force that had at first tried to molest Jake and then had taken Roland, instead. That sad, craving spirit. She finally had the body she needed. One capable of carrying the chap.
“Odetta?” Sayre’s voice, teasing and cruel. “Or Susannah, if you like that better? I promised you news, didn’t I? It’s kind of a good news–bad news thing, I’m afraid. Would you like to hear it?”
Susannah held her silence.
“The bad news is that Mia’s chap may not be able to fulfill the destiny of his name by killing his father, after all. The good news is that Roland