The Waste Lands (Page 88)

Mercy, the blind woman, cackled. “I heard that! Someone be thankin’ the cook, Auntie!”

“Ay,” Aunt Talitha said, laughing herself. “So he do.” The two women who had served the food were returning yet again. One carried a steaming jug; the other had a number of thick ceramic cups balanced precariously on her tray.

Aunt Talitha was sitting at the head of the table with Roland by her right hand. Now he leaned over and murmured something in her ear. She listened, her smile fading a little, then nodded.

“Si, Bill, and Till,” she said. “You three stay. We are going to have us a little palaver with this gunslinger and his friends, on account of they mean to move along this very afternoon. The rest of you take your coffee in the kitchen and so cut down the babble. Mind you make your manners before you go!” Bill and Till, the albino twins, remained sitting at the foot of the table. The others formed a line and moved slowly past the travellers. Each of them shook hands with Eddie and Susannah, then kissed Jake on the cheek. The boy accepted this with good grace, but Eddie could see he was both surprised and embarrassed. When they reached Roland, they knelt before him and touched the sandalwood butt of the revolver which jutted from the holster he wore on his left hip. He put his hands on their shoulders and kissed their old brows. Mercy was the last; she flung her arms around Roland’s waist and baptized his cheek with a wet, ringing kiss.

“Gods bless and keep ye, gunslinger! If only I could see ye!” “Mind your manners, Mercy!” Aunt Talitha said sharply, but Roland ignored her and bent over the blind woman.

He took her hands gently but firmly in his own, and raised them to his face. “See me with these, beauty,” he said, and closed his eyes as her fingers, wrinkled and misshapen with arthritis, patted gently over his brow, his cheeks, his lips and chin.

“Ay, gunslinger!” she breathed, lifting the sightless sockets of her eyes to his faded blue ones. “I see you very well! ‘Tis a good face, but full of sadness and care. I fear for you and yours.”

“Yet we are well met, are we not?” he asked, and planted a gentle kiss on the smooth, worn skin of her forehead.

“Ay—so we are. So we are. Thank’ee for your kiss, gunslinger. From my heart I thank’ee.”

“Go on, Mercy,” Aunt Talitha said in a gentler voice. “Get your coffee.” Mercy rose to her feet. The old man with the crutch and peg leg guided her hand to the waistband of his pants. She seized it and, with a final salute to Roland and his band, allowed him to lead her away. Eddie wiped at his eyes, which were wet. “Who blinded her?” he asked hoarsely. “Harriers,” Aunt Talitha said. “Did it with a branding-iron, they did. Said it was because she was looking at em pert. Twenty-five years agone, that was. Drink your coffee, now, all of you! It’s nasty when it’s hot, but it ain’t nothin but roadmud once it’s cold.”

Eddie lifted the cup to his mouth and sipped experimentally. He wouldn’t have gone so fur us to call it roadmud, hut it wasn’t exactly Blue Mountain Blend, either.

Susannah tasted hers and looked amazed. “Why, this is chicory!” Talitha glanced at her. “I know it not. Dockey is all I know, and dockey-coffee’s all we’ve had since I had the woman’s curse—and that curse was lifted from me long, long ago.” “How old are you, ma’am?” Jake asked suddenly. Aunt Talitha looked at him, surprised, then cackled. “In truth, lad, I disremember. I recall sitting in this same place and having a party to celebrate my eighty, but there were over fifty people settin out on this lawn that day, and Mercy still had her eyes.” Her own eyes dropped to the humbler lying at Jake’s feet. Oy didn’t remove his muzzle from Jake’s ankle, but he raised his gold-ringed eyes to gaze at her. “A billy-bumbler, by Daisy! It’s been long and long since I’ve seen a humbler in company with people . . . seems they have lost the memory of the days when they walked with men.” One of the albino twins bent down to pat Oy. Oy pulled away from him. “Once they used to herd sheep,” Bill (or perhaps it was Till) said to Jake. “Did ye know that, youngster?”

Jake shook his head.

“Do he talk?” the albino asked. “Some did, in the old days.”

“Yes, he does.” He looked down at the humbler, who had returned his head to Jake’s ankle as soon as the strange hand left his general area. “Say your name, Oy.”

Oy only looked up at him.

“Oy!” Jake urged, but Oy was silent. Jake looked at Aunt Talitha and the twins, mildly chagrined. “Well, he does . . . but I guess he only does it when he wants to.”

“That boy doesn’t look as if he belongs here,” Aunt Talitha said to Roland. “His clothes are strange . . . and his eyes are strange, as well.” “He hasn’t been here long.” Roland smiled at Jake, and Jake smiled uncertainly back. “In a month or two, no one will be able to see his strangeness.” “Ay? I wonder, so I do. And where does he come from?” “Far from here,” the gunslinger said. “Very far.” She nodded. “And when will he go back?” ^ “Never,” Jake said. “This is my home now.” “Gods pity you, then,” she said, “for the sun is going down on the world. It’s going down forever.”

At that Susannah stirred uneasily; one hand went to her belly, as if her stomach was upset.

“Suze?” Eddie asked. “You all right?”

She tried to smile, but it was a weak effort; her normal confidence and self-possession seemed to have temporarily deserted her. “Yes, of course. A goose walked over my grave, that’s all.” Aunt Talitha gave her a long, assessing look that seemed to make Susannah uncomfortable . . . and then smiled. ” ‘A goose on my grave’— ha! I haven’t heard that one in donkey’s years.”