time, then simply drops instead of flexing downward. The boxers’ claws hang limp.
“Dinnah will soon be served, mawster,” Eddie says. “You have your choice: filet of creepy-crawler or filet of creepy-crawler. Which strikes your fancy, mawster?”
“I don’t understand you,” the gunslinger said.
“Sure you do,” Eddie said. “You just don’t have any sense of humor. What happened to it?”
“Shot off in one war or another, I guess.”
Eddie smiles at that. “You look and sound a little more alive tonight, Roland.”
“I am, I think.”
“Well, maybe you could even walk for awhile tomorrow. I’ll tell you very frankly, my friend, dragging you is the pits and the shits.”
“I’ll try.”
“You do that.”
“You look a little better, too,” Roland ventures. His voice cracks on the last two words like the voice of a young boy. If I don’t stop talking soon, he thought, I won’t be able to talk at all again.
“I guess I’ll live.” He looks at Roland expressionlessly. “You’ll never know how close it was a couple of times, though. Once I took one of your guns and put it against my head. Cocked it, held it there for awhile, and then took it away. Eased the hammer down and shoved it back in your holster. Another night I had a convulsion. I think that was the second night, but I’m not sure.” He shakes his head and says something the gunslinger both does and doesn’t understand. “Michigan seems like a dream to me now.”
Although his voice is down to that husky murmur again and he knows he shouldn’t be talking at all, the gunslinger has to know one thing. “What stopped you from pulling the trigger?”
“Well, this is the only pair of pants I’ve got,” Eddie says. “At the last second I thought that if I pulled the trigger and it was one of those dud shells, I’d never get up the guts to do it again . . . and once you shit your pants, you gotta wash ’em right away or live with the stink forever. Henry told me that. He said he learned it in Nam. And since it was nighttime and Lester the Lobster was out, not to mention all his friends—”
But the gunslinger is laughing, laughing hard, although only an occasional cracked sound actually escapes his lips. Smiling a little himself, Eddie says: “I think maybe you only got your sense of humor shot off up to the elbow in that war.” He gets up, meaning to go up the slope to where there will be fuel for a fire, Roland supposes.
“Wait,” he whispers, and Eddie looks at him. “Why, really?”
“I guess because you needed me. If I’d killed myself, you would have died. Later on, after you’re really on your feet again, I may, like, re-examine my options.” He looks around and sighs deeply.
“There may be a Disneyland or Coney Island somewhere in your world, Roland, but what I’ve seen of it so far really doesn’t interest me much.”
He starts away, pauses, and looks back again at Roland. His face is somber, although some of the sickly pallor has left it. The shakes have become no more than occasional tremors.
“Sometimes you really don’t understand me, do you?”
“No,” the gunslinger whispers. “Sometimes I don’t.”
“Then I’ll elucidate. There are people who need people to need them. The reason you don’t understand is because you’re not one of those people. You’d use me and then toss me away like a paper bag if that’s what it came down to. God fucked you, my friend. You’re just smart enough so it would hurt you to do that, and just hard enough so you’d go ahead and do it anyway. You wouldn’t be able to help yourself. If I was lying on the beach there and screaming for help, you’d walk over me if I was between you and your goddam Tower. Isn’t that pretty close to the truth?”
Roland says nothing, only watches Eddie.
“But not everyone is like that. There are people who need people to need them. Like the Barbra Streisand song. Corny, but true. It’s just another way of being hooked through the bag.”
Eddie gazes at him.
“But when it comes to that, you’re clean, aren’t you?”
Roland watches him.
“Except for your Tower.” Eddie utters a short laugh. “You’re a Tower junkie, Roland.”
“Which war was it?” Roland whispers.
“What?”
“The one where you got your sense of nobility and purpose shot off?”
Eddie recoils as if Roland has reached out and slapped him.
“I’m gonna go get some water,” he says shortly. “Keep an eye