The Gook meeting hall was chilly, and birds-what the New Yorkers thought of as swallows and Roland called bin-rusties-had gotten into the second floor, but otherwise they did indeed have the place to themselves. Once he was under a roof, Oy seemed freed of his compulsion to either face northwest or turn in circles, and he immediately reverted to his essential curious nature, bounding up the rickety stairs toward the soft flutterings and cooings above. He began his shrill yapping, and soon the members of the tet saw the bin-rusties streaking away toward less populated areas of Mid-World. Although, if Roland was right, Jake thought, the ones heading in the direction of the River Whye would all too soon be turned into birdsicles.
The first floor consisted of a single large room. Tables and benches had been stacked against the walls. Roland, Eddie, and Jake carried these to the glassless windows, which were mercifully small, and covered the openings. The ones on the northwest side they covered from the outside, so the wind from that direction would press them tighter rather than blow them over.
While they did this, Susannah rolled her wheelchair into the mouth of the fireplace, a thing she was able to accomplish without even ducking her head. She peered up, grasped a rusty hanging ring, and pulled it. There was a hellish skreek sound… a pause… and then a great black cloud of soot descended on her in a flump. Her reaction was immediate, colorful, and all Detta Walker.
“Oh, kiss my ass and go to heaven!” she screamed. “You cock-knocking motherfucker, just lookit this shittin mess!”
She rolled back out, coughing and waving her hands in front of her face. The wheels of her chair left tracks in the soot. A huge pile of the stuff lay in her lap. She slapped it away in a series of hard strokes that were more like punches.
“Filthy fucking chimbly! Dirty old cunt-tunnel! You badass, sonofabitching-”
She turned and saw Jake staring at her, openmouthed and wide-eyed. Beyond him, on the stairs, Oy was doing the same thing.
“Sorry, honey,” Susannah said. “I got a little carried away. Mostly I’m mad at myself. I grew up with stoves n fireplaces, and should have known better.”
In a tone of deepest respect, Jake said, “You know better swears than my father. I didn’t think anyone knew better swears than my father.”
Eddie went to Susannah and started wiping at her face and neck. She brushed his hands away. “You’re just spreadin it around. Let’s go see if we can find that gook, or whatever it is. Maybe there’s still water.”
“There will be if God wills it,” Roland said.
She swiveled to regard him with narrowed eyes. “You being smart, Roland? You don’t want to be smart while I’m sittin here like Missus Tarbaby.”
“No, sai, never think it,” Roland said, but there was the tiniest twitch at the left corner of his mouth. “Eddie, see if you can find gook-water so Susannah can clean herself. Jake and I will begin gathering wood. We’ll need you to help us as soon as you can. I hope our friend Bix has made it to his side of the river, because I think time is shorter than he guessed.”
12
The town well was on the other side of the meeting hall, in what Eddie thought might once have been the town common. The rope hanging from the crank-operated drum beneath the well’s rotting cap was long gone, but that was no problem; they had a coil of good rope in their gunna.
“The problem,” Eddie said, “is what we’re going to tie to the end of the rope. I suppose one of Roland’s old saddlebags might-”
“What’s that, honeybee?” Susannah was pointing at a patch of high grass and brambles on the left side of the well.
“I don’t see…” But then he did. A gleam of rusty metal. Taking care to be scratched by the thorns as little as possible, Eddie reached into the tangle and, with a grunt of effort, pulled out a rusty bucket with a coil of dead ivy inside. There was even a handle.
“Let me see that,” Susannah said.
He dumped out the ivy and handed it over. She tested the handle and it broke immediately, not with a snap but a soft, punky sigh. Susannah looked at him apologetically and shrugged.
“’S okay,” Eddie said. “Better to know now than when it’s down in the well.” He tossed the handle aside, cut off a chunk of their rope, untwisted the outer strands to thin it, and threaded what was left through the holes that had held the old handle.
“Not bad,” Susannah said. “You mighty handy for a white boy.” She peered over the lip of the well. “I can see the water. Not even ten feet down. Ooo, it looks cold. ”
“Chimney sweeps can’t be choosers,” Eddie said.
The bucket splashed down, tilted, and began to fill. When it sank below the surface of the water, Eddie hauled it back up. It had sprung several leaks at spots where the rust had eaten through, but they were small ones. He took off his shirt, dipped it in the water, and began to wash her face.
“Oh my goodness!” he said. “I see a girl!”
She took the balled-up shirt, rinsed it, wrung it out, and began to do her arms. “At least I got the dang flue open. You can draw some more water once I get the worst of this mess cleaned off me, and when we get a fire going, I can wash in warm-”
Far to the northwest, they heard a low, thudding crump. There was a pause, then a second one. It was followed by several more, then a perfect fusillade. Coming in their direction like marching feet. Their startled eyes met.
Eddie, bare to the waist, went to the back of her wheelchair. “I think we better speed this up.”
In the distance-but definitely moving closer-came sounds that could have been armies at war.
“I think you’re right,” Susannah said.
13
When they got back, they saw Roland and Jake running toward the meeting hall with armloads of decaying lumber and splintered chunks of wood. Still well across the river but definitely closer, came those low, crumping explosions as trees in the path of the starkblast yanked themselves inward toward their tender cores. Oy was in the middle of the overgrown high street, turning and turning.
Susannah tipped herself out of her wheelchair, landed neatly on her hands, and began crawling toward the meetinghouse.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eddie asked.
“You can carry more wood in the chair. Pile it high. I’ll get Roland to give me his flint and steel, get a fire going.”
“But-”
“Mind me, Eddie. Let me do what I can. And put your shirt back on. I know it’s wet, but it’ll keep you from getting scratched up.”
He did so, then turned the chair, tilted it on its big back wheels, and pushed it toward the nearest likely source of fuel. As he passed Roland, he gave the gunslinger Susannah’s message. Roland nodded and kept running, peering over his armload of wood.
The three of them went back and forth without speaking, gathering wood against the cold on this weirdly warm afternoon. The Path of the Beam in the sky was temporarily gone, because all the clouds were in motion, roiling away to the southeast. Susannah had gotten a fire going, and it roared beastily up the chimney. The big downstairs room had a huge jumble of wood in the center, some with rusty nails poking out. So far none of them had been cut or punctured, but Eddie thought it was just a matter of time. He tried to remember when he’d last had
