The Drawing of the Three

been sleepin. Got dis bidness all figured out. Here's what I want you to do, whitebread: put yo hands behin you and feel aroun until you find a loop jus like d'one I got roun yo neck. There be three of em. I been braidin while you been sleepin, lazybones!' She cackled again. 'When you feel dat loop, you goan put yo wrists right one against t'other an slip em through it.

'Den you goan feel my hand pullin that runnin knot tight, and when you feel dat, you goan say 'Dis my chance to toin it aroun on disyere nigger bitch. Right here, while she ain't got her good hold on dat jerk-rope.' But—' Here Detta's voice became muffled as well as a Southern darkie caricature. '—you better take a look aroun befo you go doin anythin rash.'

Eddie did. Detta looked more witchlike than ever, a dirty, matted thing that would have struck tear into hearts much stouter than his own. The dress she had been wearing in Macy's when the gunslinger snatched her was now filthy and torn. She'd used the knife she had taken from the gunslinger's purse—the one he and Roland had used to cut the masking tape away—to slash her dress in two other places, creating makeshift holsters just above the swell of her hips. The worn butts of the gunslinger's revolvers protruded from them.

Her voice was muffled because the end of the rope was clenched in her teeth. A freshly cut end protruded from one side of her grin; the rest of the line, the part which led to the noose around his neck, protruded from the other side. There was something so predatory and barbaric about this image— the rope caught in the grin—that he was frozen, staring at her with a horror that only made her grin widen.

'You try to be cute while I be takin care of yo hans,' she said in her muffled voice, 'I goan joik yo win'pipe shut wif my teef, graymeat. And dat time I not be lettin up agin. You understan?'

He didn't trust himself to speak. He only nodded.

'Good. Maybe you be livin a little bit longer after all.'

'If I don't,' Eddie croaked, 'you're never going to have the pleasure of shoplifting in Macy's again, Detta. Because he'll know, and then it'll be everybody out of the pool.'

'Hush up,' Detta said … almost crooned. 'You jes hush up. Leave the thinkin to the folks dat kin do it. All you got to do is be feelin aroun fo dat next loop.'

6

I been braidin while you been sleepin, she had said, and with disgust and mounting alarm, Eddie discovered she meant exactly what she said. The rope had become a series of three running slip- knots. The first she had noosed around his neck as he slept. The second secured his hands behind his back. Then she pushed him roughly over on his side and told him to bring his feet up until his heels touched his butt. He saw where this was leading and balked. She pulled one of Roland's revolvers from the slit in her dress, cocked it, and pressed the muzzle against Eddie's temple.

'You do it or I do it, graymeat,' she said in that crooning voice. 'Only if I do it, you goan be dead when I do. I jes kick some san' over de brains dat squoit out d'other side yo haid, cover de hole wit yo hair. He think you be sleepin!' She cackled again.

Eddie brought his feet up, and she quickly secured the third running slip-knot around his ankles.

'There. Trussed up just as neat as a calf at a ro-day-o.'

That described it as well as anything, Eddie thought. If he tried to bring his feet down from a position which was already growing uncomfortable, he would tighten the slipknot holding his ankles even more. That would tighten the length of rope between his ankles and his wrists, which would in turn tighten that slipknot, and the rope between his wrists and the noose she'd put around his neck, and …

She was dragging him, somehow dragging him down the beach.

'Hey! What—'

He tried to pull back and felt everything tighten—including his ability to draw breath. He let himself go as limp as possible (and keep those feet up, don't forget that, asshole, because if you lower your feet enough you're going to strangle) and let her drag him along the rough ground. A jag of rock peeled skin away from his cheek, and he felt warm blood begin to flow. She was panting harshly. The sound of the waves and the boom of surf ramming into the rock tunnel were louder.

Drown me? Sweet Christ, is that what she means to do?

No, of course not. He thought he knew what she meant to do even before his face plowed through the twisted kelp which marked the high tide line, dead salt-stinking stuff as cold as the fingers of drowned sailors.

He remembered Henry saying once, Sometimes they'd shoot one of our guys. An American, I mean—they knew an ARVN was no good, because wasn't any of us that'd go after a gook in the bush. Not unless he was some fresh fish just over from the States. They'd guthole him, leave him screaming, then pick off the guys that tried to save him. They'd keep doing that until the guy died. You know what they called a guy like that, Eddie?

Eddie had shaken his head, cold with the vision of it.

They called him a honeypot, Henry had said. Something sweet. Something to draw flies. Or maybe even a bear.

That's what Detta was doing: using him as a honeypot.

She left him some seven feet below the high tide line, left him without a word, left him facing the ocean. It was not the tide coming in to drown him that the gunslinger, looking through the door, was supposed to see, because the tide was on the ebb and wouldn't get up this far again for another six hours. And long before then …

Eddie rolled his eyes up a little and saw the sun striking a long gold track across the ocean. What was it? Four o'clock ? About that. Sunset would come around seven.

It would be dark long before he had to worry about the tide.

And when dark came, the lobstrosities would come rolling out of the waves; they would crawl their questioning way up the beach to where he lay helplessly trussed, and then they would tear him apart.

7

That time stretched out interminably for Eddie Dean. The idea of time itself became a joke. Even his horror of what was going to happen to him when it got dark faded as his legs began to throb with a discomfort which worked its way up the scale of feeling to pain and finally to shrieking agony. He would relax his muscles, all the knots would pull tight, and when he was on the verge of strangling he would manage somehow to pull his ankles up again, releasing the pressure, allowing some breath to return. He was no longer sure he could make it to dark. There might come a time when he would simply be unable to bring his legs back up.

CHAPTER 3