The waste lands - Stephen King [91]
Eddie helped Susannah out of the harness and placed her in the chair. She put her hands against the small of her back, stretched, and grimaced with pleasure. Both Eddie and Roland heard the small crackle her spine made as it stretched.
Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, twitched its sharp, whiskery snout as if to say Huh! Big deal!, then strolled the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie noted its tail—long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring.
“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