Wizard and glass - Stephen King [17]
“And us?” Susannah asked. “What do Eddie and I do?”
“Think,” Roland said. “Think, for your fathers’ sakes.”
“ ‘I do not shoot with my hand,’ ” Eddie said. He suddenly felt far away, strange to himself. It was the way he’d felt when he had seen first the slingshot and then the key in pieces of wood, just waiting for him to whittle them free . . . and at the same time this feeling was not like that at all.
Roland was looking at him oddly. “Yes, Eddie, you say true. A gunslinger shoots with his mind. What have you thought of?”
“Nothing.” He might have said more, but all at once a strange image—a strange memory—intervened: Roland hunkering by Jake at one of their stopping-points on the way to Lud. Both of them in front of an unlit campfire. Roland once more at his everlasting lessons. Jake’s turn this time. Jake with the flint and steel, trying to quicken the fire. Spark after spark licking out and dying in the dark. And Roland had said that he was being silly. That he was just being . . . well . . . silly.
“No,” Eddie said. “He didn’t say that at all. At least not to the kid, he didn’t.”
“Eddie?” Susannah. Sounding concerned. Almost frightened.
Well why don’t you ask him what he said, bro? That was Henry’s voice, the voice of the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. First time in a long time. Ask him, he’s practically sitting right next to you, go on and ask him what he said. Quit dancing around like a baby with a load in his diapers.
Except that was a bad idea, because that wasn’t the way things worked in Roland’s world. In Roland’s world everything was riddles, you didn’t shoot with your hand but with your mind, your motherfucking mind, and what did you say to someone who wasn’t getting the spark into the kindling? Move your flint in closer, of course, and that’s what Roland had said: Move your flint in closer, and hold it steady.
Except none of that was what this was about. It was close, yes, but close only counts in horseshoes, as Henry Dean had been wont to say before he became the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. Eddie’s memory was jinking a little because Roland had embarrassed him . . . shamed him . . . made a joke at his expense . . .
Probably not on purpose, but . . . something. Something that had made him feel the way Henry always used to make him feel, of course it was, why else would Henry be here after such a long absence?
All of them looking at him now. Even Oy.
“Go on,” he told Roland, sounding a little waspish. “You wanted us to think, we’re thinking, already.” He himself was thinking so hard
(I shoot with my mind)
that his goddam brains were almost on fire, but he wasn’t going to tell old long, tall, and ugly that. “Go on and ask Blaine some riddles. Do your part.”
“As you will, Eddie.” Roland rose from his seat, went forward, and laid his hand on the scarlet rectangle again. The route-map reappeared at once. The green dot had moved farther beyond Rilea, but it was clear to Eddie that the mono had slowed down significantly, either obeying some built-in program or because Blaine was having too much fun to hurry.
“IS YOUR KA-TET READY TO CONTINUE OUR FAIR-DAY RIDDLING, ROLAND SON OF STEVEN?”
“Yes, Blaine,” Roland said, and to Eddie his voice sounded heavy. “I will riddle you alone for awhile now. If you have no objection.”
“AS DINH AND FATHER OF YOUR KA-TET, SUCH IS YOUR RIGHT. WILL THESE BE FAIR-DAY RIDDLES?”
“Yes.”
“GOOD.” Loathsome satisfaction in that voice. “I WOULD HEAR MORE OF THOSE.”
“All right.” Roland