The gunslinger - Stephen King [81]
The boy gave a surprised grunt and suddenly lurched to the side, arms pinwheeling in slow, wide revolutions. It seemed that he tottered on the brink for a very long time indeed before stepping forward again.
“It almost went on me,” he said softly, without emotion. “There’s a hole. Step over if you don’t want to take a quick trip to the bottom. Simon says take one giant step.”
That was a game the gunslinger knew as Mother Says, remembered well from childhood games with Cuthbert, Jamie, and Alain, but he said nothing, only stepped over.
“Go back,” Jake said, unsmiling. “You forgot to say ‘May I?’ ”
“Cry your pardon, but I think not.”
The crosstie the boy had stepped on had given way almost entirely and flopped downward lazily, swinging on a rotten rivet.
Upward, still upward. It was a nightmare walk and so seemed to go on much longer than it did; the air itself seemed to thicken and become like taffy, and the gunslinger felt as if he might be swimming rather than walking. Again and again his mind tried to turn itself to thoughtful, lunatic consideration of the awful space between this trestle and the river below. His brain viewed it in spectacular detail, and how it would be: the scream of twisting, giving metal, the lurch as his body slid off to the side, the grabbing for nonexistent handholds with the fingers, the swift rattle of bootheels on treacherous, rotted steel—and then down, turning over and over, the warm spray in his crotch as his bladder let go, the rush of wind against his face, rippling his hair up in a caricature of fright, pulling his eyelids back, the dark water rushing to meet him, faster, outstripping even his own scream—
Metal screamed beneath him and he stepped past it unhurriedly, shifting his weight, at that crucial moment not thinking of the drop, or of how far they had come, or of how far might be left. Not thinking that the boy was expendable and that the sale of his honor was now, at last, nearly negotiated. What a relief it would be when the deal was done!
“Three ties out,” the boy said coolly. “I’m gonna jump. Here! Right here! Geronimo!”
The gunslinger saw him silhouetted for a moment against the daylight, an awkward, hunched spread-eagle, arms out as if, should all else fail, there was the possibility of flight. He landed and the whole edifice swayed drunkenly under his weight. Metal beneath them protested and something far below fell, first with a crash, then with a splash.
“Are you over?” the gunslinger asked.
“Yar,” the boy said, “but it’s very rotten. Like the ideas of certain people, maybe. I don’t think it will hold you any further than where you are now. Me, but not you. Go back. Go back now and leave me alone.”
His voice was cold, but there was hysteria underneath, beating as his heart had beat when he jumped back onto the handcar and Roland had caught him.
The gunslinger stepped over the break. One large step did it. One giant step. Mother, may I? Yes-you-may. The boy was shuddering helplessly. “Go back. I don’t want you to kill me.”
“For love of the Man Jesus, walk,” the gunslinger said roughly. “It’s going to fall down for sure if we stand here palavering.”
The boy walked drunkenly now, his hands held out shudderingly before him, fingers splayed.
They went up.
Yes, it was much more rotten now. There were frequent breaks of one, two, even three ties, and the gunslinger expected again and again that they would find the long empty space between rails that would either force them back or make them walk on the rails themselves, balanced giddily over the chasm.
He kept his eyes fixed on the daylight.
The glow had taken on a color—blue—and as it came closer it became softer, paling the radiance of the fot-suls. Fifty yards or a hundred still to cover? He could not say.
They walked, and now he looked at his feet, crossing from tie to tie. When he looked up again, the glow ahead had grown to a hole, and it was not just light but a way