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"I can see that plate as clearly as I can see you now, Eddie My ave it to Aunt Blue and she cried and cried over it I think she&039;d seen a plate like that once when she and my mother were children, only of course their parents could never have afforded such a thing There was none of the forspecial as kids After the reception Aunt Blue and her husband left for the Great Smokies on their honeymoon They went on the train" She looked at Eddie
"In the Jiht! In the Crow car! In those days that&039;s what Negros rode in and where they ate That&039;s e&039;re trying to change in Oxford Town "
She looked at hi hiht in the ork of his own ain: wet diapers and those words Oxford TownOnly suddenly other words ca it over and over until his mother asked if he couldn&039;t please stop so she could hear Walter Cronkite
So over and over by Henry in a nasal et it, and was that any real surprise? He could have been no ate soon The words gave hiht?"
"Yes Why?"
"You shivered"
He srave"
She laughed "Anyway, at least I didn&039;t spoil the wedding It happened ere walking back to the railway station We stayed the night with a friend of Aunt Blue&039;s, and in the ht away, but when the driver saere colored, he drove off like his head was on fire and his ass was catching Aunt Blue&039;s friend had already gone ahead to the depot with our luggage�Dthere was a lot of it, because ere going to spend a week in New YorkI re he couldn&039;t wait to see ht up when the clock in Central Park struck the hour and all the aniht as alk to the station Mythat was a fine idea, it wasn&039;t but a s after three days on one train just behind us and half a day on another one just ahead of us My father said yes, and it was gorgeous weather besides, but I think I knew even at five that he was mad and she was embarrassed and both of thedown the street I was on the inside becausetoo close to the traffic I re if low or soht not hurt, and that hen the brick ca went dark for a while Then the dreams started Vivid dreams"
She smiled
"Like this dream, Eddie"
"Did the brick fall, or did someone bomb you?"
"They never found anyone The police ( after, when I was sixteen or so) found the place where they thought the brick had been, but there were other bricksand more were loose It was just outside theof a fourth-floor roo that had been conde there just the saht"
"Sure," Eddie said
"No one saw anyone leaving the building, so it went down as an accident MyShe didn&039;t even bother trying to tellover how the cab-driver had taken one look at us and driven off It was thatelse thatout, and saw us coers
"Will your lobster-creatures come out soon?"
"No," Eddie said "Not until dusk So one of your ideas is that all of this is a coot bopped by the brick Only this ti"
"Yes"
"What&039;s the other one?"
Odetta&039;s face and voice were cales which all added up to Oxford Town , Oxford TownHow did the song go? Two ate soon Not quite right, but it was close Close
"I one insane," she said
7
The first words which caone insane, Odetta, you&039;re nuts
Brief consideration, however, ument to take
Instead he re by her wheelchair, his knees drawn up, his hands holding his wrists
"Were you really a heroin addict?"
"A an alcoholic, or &039;basing It&039;s not a thing you ever get over I used to hear that and go &039;Yeah, yeah, right, right,&039; in my head, you know, but now I understand I still want it, and I guess part of me will alant it, but the physical part has passed"
"What&039;s &039;basing?" she asked
"So that hasn&039;t been invented yet in your when It&039;s so TNT into an A-bomb"
"You did it?"
"Christ, no Heroin wasI told you"
"You don&039;t seem like an addict," she said
Eddie actually was fairly spiffyif, that was, one ignored the ga from his body and clothes (he could rinse hi soap, he could not really wash either) His hair had been short when Roland stepped into his life (the better to sail through custo joke that had turned out to be), and was a still a respectable length He shaved every erly at first, but with increasing confidence He&039;d been too young for shaving to be part of his life when Henry left for &039;Na deal to Henry back then, either; he never grew a beard, but soed hi the stubble" When he came back, however, Henry was a maniac on the subject (as he was on a few others�Dfoot-powder after showering; teeth to be brushed three or four times a day and followed by a chaser ofup) and he turned Eddie into a fanatic as well The stubble wasNow this habit was deep in his grain, like the others Henry had taught hi, of course, the one you took care of with a needle
"Too clean-cut?" he asked her, grinning
"Too white," she said shortly, and then was quiet for asternly out at the sea Eddie was quiet, too If there was a co like that, he didn&039;t knohat it was
"I&039;m sorry," she said "That was very unkind, very unfair, and very unlike ht"
"It&039;s not It&039;s like a white person saying souessed you were a nigger&039; to soht skin"
"You like to think of yourself as more fair-minded," Eddie said
"What we like to think of ourselves and e really are rarely have much in common, I should think, but yes�DI like to think of y, Eddie"
"On one condition"
"What&039;s that?" she was sood He liked it when he was able to make her smile
"Give this a fair chance That&039;s the condition"
"Give what a fair chance?" She sounded slightly aht have bristled at that tone in so boned, but with her it was different With her it was all right He supposed with her just about anything would have been
"That there&039;s a third alternative That this really is happening I ood at this philosophical shit, or, you know, metamorphosis or whatever the hell you call it�D"
"Do you mean metaphysics?"
"Maybe I don&039;t know I think so But I know you can&039;t go around disbelieving what your senses tell you Why, if your idea about this all being a dreaht�D"
"I didn&039;t say a dream�D"
"Whatever you said, that&039;s what it comes down to, isn&039;t it? A false reality?"
If there had been soo, it was gone now "Philosophy and , Eddie, but you must have been a hell of a debater in school"
"I was never in debate That was for gays and hags and wi? What&039;s a bag?"
"Just soays?"
He looked at her for a s Neverus anyplace What I&039; to say is that if it&039;s all a dreaination"
Her smile faltered "Younobody bopped you"
"Nobody bopped you, either"
Now her sone "No one that I remember," she corrected with some sharpness
"Me either!" he said "You told uys weren&039;t exactly cheery joy when they couldn&039;t find the dope they were after One of theun I could be lying in a Bellevue ward right now, drea hohile they were interrogating me, I became violent and had to be subdued"
"It&039;s not the saent socially active black lady with no legs and I&039;rin,it as an amiable jape, but she flared at hi onna take getting used to"
"You should have been on the debate club anyway"
"Fuck," he said, and the turn of her eyes ain that the difference between the to each other from separate islands The water betas tiotten her attention "I don&039;t want to debate you I want to wake you up to the fact that you are awake, that&039;s all"
"Ito the dictates of your third alternative as long as thisthis situationcontinued to go on, except for one thing: There&039;s a fundamental difference bethat happened to you and what happened to e, that you haven&039;t seen it"
"Then show it to me"
"There is no discontinuity in your consciousness There is a very large one in mine"
"I don&039;t understand"
"I mean you can account for all of your time," Odetta said "Your story follows from point to point: the airplane, the incursion by thatthatby him�D
She nodded toward the foothills with clear distaste
"The stashing of the drugs, the officers who took you into custody, all the rest It&039;s a fantastic story, it has nolinks
"As for myself, I arrived back froht back toa very bad headache, and sleep is the only ood for the really bad ones But it was close on ht I would watch the news first Sooode left I wanted to find out if their cases had been resolved
"I dried off and put onroo about a speech Krushchev had just made about the American advisors in Viet NamHe said, &039;We have a fil down this beach You say you saw one, and that I was in Macy&039;s, and that I was stealing All of this is preposterous enough, but even if it was so, I could find so better to steal than costume jewelry I don&039;t wear jewelry"
"You better look at your hands again, Odetta," Eddie said quietly
For a very long tie and vulgar to be anything but paste, to the large opal on the third finger of her right hand, which was too large and vulgar to be anything but real
"None of this is happening," she repeated firenuinely angry for the first time "Every time someone pokes a hole in your neat little story, you just retreat to that &039;none of this is happening&039; shit You have to wise up, &039;Detta"
"Don&039;t call me that! I hate that!" she burst out so shrilly that Eddie recoiled
"Sorry Jesus! I didn&039;t know"
"I went fro room to this deserted beach And what really happened was that so-bellied redneck deputy hit me upside the head with a club and that is all!"
"But your memories don&039;t stop in Oxford ," he said softly
"W-What?" Uncertain again Or s
"If you got whacked in Oxford , how come your memories don&039;t stop there?"
"There isn&039;t always a lot of logic to things like this" She was rubbing her teain "And now, if it&039;s all the same to you, Eddie, I&039;d just as soon end the conversation My headache is back It&039;s quite bad"
"I guess whether or not logic figures in all depends on what you want to believe I saw you in Macy&039;s, Odetta I saw you stealing You say you don&039;t do things like that, but you also told h you&039;d looked down at your hands several tis were there then, but it was as if you couldn&039;t see them until I called your attention to them and made you see them"
"I don&039;t want to talk about it!" she shouted "My head hurts!"
"All right But you knohere you lost track of time, and it wasn&039;t in Oxford "
"Leave er toiling his way back with two full water-skins, one tied around his waist and the other slung over his shoulders He looked very tired
"I wish I could help you," Eddie said, "but to do that, I guess I&039;d have to be real"
He stood by her for a ers steadilyher temples
Eddie went to meet Roland
8
"Sit down" Eddie took the bags "You look all in"
"I aain"
Eddie looked at the gunslinger&039;s flushed cheeks and brow, his cracked lips, and nodded "I hoped it wouldn&039;t happen, but I&039;m not that surprised, man You didn&039;t bat for the cycle Balazar didn&039;t have enough Keflex"
"I don&039;t understand you"
"If you don&039;t take a penicillin drug long enough, you don&039;t kill the infection You just drive it underground A few days go by and it comes back We&039;ll need o to In the meantime you&039;ll just have to take it easy" But Eddie was thinking unhappily of Odetta&039;s er treks it took to find water He wondered if Roland could have picked a worse time to have a relapse He supposed it was possible; he just didn&039;t see how
"I have to tell you so about Odetta"
"That&039;s her name?"
"Uh-huh"
"It&039;s very lovely," the gunslinger said
"Yeah I thought so, too What isn&039;t so lovely is the way she feels about this place She doesn&039;t think she&039;s here"
"I know And she doesn&039;t like ht, but that doesn&039;t keep her froer of a hallucination He didn&039;t say it, only nodded
"The reasons are aler said "She&039;s not the woh, you see Not at all&039;&039;
Eddie stared, then suddenly nodded, excited That blurred gliht Jesus Christ, of course he was! That hadn&039;t been Odetta at all
Then he reh the scarves and had just as carelessly gone about the business of stuffing the junk jewelry into her big purse�Dalht
The rings had been there
Sas
But that doesn&039;t necessarily ht wildly, but that would only hold for a second He had studied her hands They were the saunslinger continued "She is not" His blue eyes studied Eddie carefully
"Her hands�D"
"Listen," the gunslinger said, "and listen carefully Our lives ain, and yours because you have fallen in love with her"
Eddie said nothing
"She is tomen in the same body She was one woman when I entered her, and another when I returned here"
Now Eddie could say nothing
"There was soe, but either I didn&039;t understand it or I did and it&039;s slipped away It seemed important"
Roland looked past Eddie, looked to the beached wheel-chair, standing alone at the end of its short track from nowhere Then he looked back at Eddie
"I understand very little of this, or how such a thing can be, but you uard Do you understand that?"
"Yes" Eddie&039;s lungs felt as if they had very little wind in theoer&039;s understanding of the sort of thing the gunslinger was speaking of�Dbut he didn&039;t have the breath to explain, not yet He felt as if Roland had kicked all his breath out of him
"Good Because the woman I entered on the other side of the door was as deadly as those lobster-things that coht"