Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,27

his riddles, Eddie had mused on Roland’s tale of the Fair-Day goose. From there his mind had returned to Henry, travelling from Point A to Point B through the magic of associative thinking. Or, if you wanted to get Zen about it, via Trans-Bird Airlines: goose to turkey. He and Henry had once had a discussion about getting off heroin. Henry had claimed that going cold turkey wasn’t the only way; there was also, he said, such a thing as going cool turkey. Eddie asked Henry what you called a hype who had just administered a hot shot to himself, and, without missing a beat, Henry had said, You call that baked turkey. How they had laughed . . . but now, all this long, strange time later, it looked very much as if the joke was going to be on the younger Dean brother, not to mention the younger Dean brother’s new friends. Looked like they were all going to be baked turkey before much longer.

Unless you can yank it out of the zone.

Yes.

Then do it, Eddie. It was Henry’s voice again, that old resident of his head, but now Henry sounded sober and clear-minded. Henry sounded like his friend instead of his enemy, as if all the old conflicts were finally settled, all the old hatchets buried. Do it—make the devil set himself on fire. It’ll hurt a little, maybe, but you’ve hurt worse. Hell, I hurt you worse myself, and you survived. Survived just fine. And you know where to look.

Of course. In their palaver around the campfire Jake had finally managed to light. Roland had asked the kid a riddle to loosen him up, Jake had struck a spark into the kindling, and then they had all sat around the fire, talking. Talking and riddling.

Eddie knew something else, too. Blaine had answered hundreds of riddles as they ran southeast along the Path of the Beam, and the others believed that he had answered every single one of them without hesitation. Eddie had thought much the same . . . but now, as he cast his mind back over the contest, he realized an interesting thing: Blaine had hesitated.

Once.

He was pissed, too. Like Roland was.

The gunslinger, although often exasperated by Eddie, had shown real anger toward him just a single time after the business of carving the key, when Eddie had almost choked. Roland had tried to cover the depth of that anger—make it seem like nothing but more exasperation—but Eddie had sensed what was underneath. He had lived with Henry Dean for a long time, and was still exquisitely attuned to all the negative emotions. It had hurt him, too—not Roland’s anger itself, exactly, but the contempt with which it had been laced. Contempt had always been one of Henry’s favorite weapons.

Why did the dead baby cross the road? Eddie had asked. Because it was stapled to the chicken, nyuck-nyuck-nyuck!

Later, when Eddie had tried to defend his riddle, arguing that it was tasteless but not pointless, Roland’s response had been strangely like Blaine’s: I don’t care about taste. It’s senseless and unsolvable, and that’s what makes it silly. A good riddle is neither.

But as Jake finished riddling Blaine, Eddie realized a wonderful, liberating thing: that word good was up for grabs. Always had been, always would be. Even if the man using it was maybe a thousand years old and could shoot like Buffalo Bill, that word was still up for grabs. Roland himself had admitted he had never been very good at the riddling game. His tutor claimed that Roland thought too deeply; his father thought it was lack of imagination. Whatever the reason, Roland of Gilead had never won a Fair-Day riddling. He had survived all his contemporaries, and that was certainly a prize of sorts, but he had never carried home a prize goose. I could always haul a gun faster than any of my mates, but I’ve never been much good at thinking around corners.

Eddie remembered trying to tell Roland that jokes were riddles designed to help you build up that often overlooked talent, but Roland had ignored him. The way, Eddie supposed, a color-blind person would ignore someone’s description of a rainbow.

Eddie thought Blaine also might have trouble thinking around corners.

He realized he could hear Blaine asking the others if they had any more riddles—even asking Oy. He could hear the mockery in Blaine’s voice, could hear it very well. Sure he could. Because he was coming back. Back from that