Detta would cackle as he tried to move her without upending her. “You havin a good time back dere, honeychile?” she asked each time the chair ran into one of these dry bogs.
When the gunslinger moved over to help, Eddie motioned him away. “You’ll get your chance,” he said. “We’ll switch off.” But I think my turns are going to be a hell of a lot longer than his, a voice in his head spoke up. The way he looks, he’s going to have his hands full just keeping himself moving before much longer, let alone moving the woman in this chair. No sir, Eddie, I’m afraid this Bud’s for you. It’s God’s revenge, you know it? All those years you spent as a junkie, and guess what? You’re finally the pusher!
He uttered a short out-of-breath laugh.
“What’s so funny, white boy?” Detta asked, and although Eddie thought she meant to sound sarcastic, it came out sounding just a tiny bit angry.
Ain’t supposed to be any laughs in this for me, he thought. None at all. Not as far as she’s concerned.
“You wouldn’t understand, babe. Just let it lie.”
“I be lettin you lie before this be all over,” she said. “Be lettin you and yo bad-ass buddy there lie in pieces all ovah dis beach. Sho. Meantime you better save yo breaf to do yo pushin with. You already sound like you gettin a little sho’t winded.”
“Well, you talk for both of us, then,” Eddie panted. “You never seem to run out of wind.”
“I goan break wind, graymeat! Goan break it ovah yo dead face!”
“Promises, promises.” Eddie shoved the chair out of the sand and onto relatively easier going—for awhile, at least. The sun was not yet fully up, but he had already worked up a sweat.
This is going to be an amusing and informative day, he thought. I can see that already.
Stopping.
That was the next thing.
They had struck a firm stretch of beach. Eddie pushed the chair along faster, thinking vaguely that if he could keep this bit of extra speed, he might be able to drive right through the next sandtrap he happened to strike on pure impetus.
All at once the chair stopped. Stopped dead. The crossbar on the back hit Eddie’s chest with a thump. He grunted. Roland looked around, but not even the gunslinger’s cat-quick reflexes could stop the Lady’s chair from going over exactly as it had threatened to do in each of the sandtraps. It went and Detta went with it, tied and helpless but cackling wildly. She still was when Roland and Eddie finally managed to right the chair again. Some of the ropes had drawn so tight they must be cutting cruelly into her flesh, cutting off the circulation to her extremities; her forehead was slashed and blood trickled into her eyebrows. She went on cackling just the same.
The men were both gasping, out of breath, by the time the chair was on its wheels again. The combined weight of it and the woman in it must have totaled two hundred and fifty pounds, most of it chair. It occurred to Eddie that if the gunslinger had snatched Detta from his own when, 1987, the chair might have weighed as much as sixty pounds less.
Detta giggled, snorted, blinked blood out of her eyes.
“Looky here, you boys done opsot me,” she said.
“Call your lawyer,” Eddie muttered. “Sue us.”
“An got yoselfs all tuckered out gittin me back on top agin. Must have taken you ten minutes, too.”
The gunslinger took a piece of his shirt—enough of it was gone now so the rest didn’t much matter—and reached forward with his left hand to mop the blood away from the cut on her forehead. She snapped at him, and from the savage click those teeth made when they came together, Eddie thought that, if Roland had been only one instant slower in drawing back, Detta Walker would have evened up the number of fingers on his hands for him again.