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"Yes, those. Perhaps one of those is responsible. Mayhap the fellow will be able to tell us, if we take him alive."
"Sma' chance of that," Peavy growled.
I thought there was a good chance. If we could identify him and close on him in the daytime, that was.
"How many of these salties are there?" I asked.
"Not s'many as in the old days, because now it's just the one plug, don'tcha see it. I sh'd say no more'n . . . two hundred."
I met Jamie's eyes, and saw a glint of humor in them. "No fret, Roland," said he. "I'm sure we can interview em all by Reaptide. If we hurry."
He was exaggerating, but I still saw several weeks ahead of us in Debaria. We might interview the skin-man and still not be able to pick him out, either because he was a masterful liar or because he had no guilt to cover up; his day-self might truly not know what his night-self was doing. I wished for Cuthbert, who could look at things that seemed unrelated and spot the connections, and I wished for Alain, with his power to touch minds. But Jamie wasn't so bad, either. He had, after all, seen what I should have seen myself, what was right in front of my nose. On one matter I was in complete accord with Sheriff Hugh Peavy: I hated mysteries. It's a thing that has never changed in this long life of mine. I'm not good at solving them; my mind has never run that way.
When we trooped back into the office, I said, "I have some questions I must ask you, Sheriff. The first is, will you open to us, if we open to you? The second--"
"The second is do I see you for what you are and accept what you do. The third is do I seek aid and succor. Sheriff Peavy says yar, yar, and yar. Now for gods' sake set your brains to working, fellows, for it's over two weeks since this thing showed up at Serenity, and that time it didn't get a full meal. Soon enough it'll be out there again."
"It only prowls at night," Jamie said. "You're sure of that much?"
"I am."
"Does the moon have any effect on it?" I asked. "Because my father's advisor--and our teacher that was--says that in some of the old legends . . ."
"I've heard the legends, sai, but in that they're wrong. At least for this particular creatur' they are. Sometimes the moon's been full when it strikes--it was Full Peddler when it showed up at Serenity, all covered with scales and knobs like an alligator from the Long Salt Swamps--but it did its work at Timbersmith when the moon was dark. I'd like to tell you different, but I can't. I'd also like to end this without having to pick anyone else's guts out of the bushes or pluck some other kiddie's head off'n a fencepost. Ye've been sent here to help, and I hope like hell you can . . . although I've got my doubts."
*
When I asked Peavy if there was a good hotel or boardinghouse in Debaria, he chuckled.
"The last boardinghouse was the Widow Brailley's. Two year ago, a drunk saddletramp tried to rape her in her own outhouse, as she sat at business. But she was always a trig one. She'd seen the look in his eye, and went in there with a knife under her apron. Cut his throat for him, she did. Stringy Bodean, who used to be our Justice Man before he decided to try his luck at raising horses in the Crescent, declared her not guilty by reason of self-defense in about five minutes, but the lady decided she'd had enough of Debaria and trained back to Gilead, where she yet bides, I've no doubt. Two days after she left, some drunken buffoon burned the place to the ground. The hotel still stands. It's called the Delightful View. The view ain't delightful, young fellows, and the beds is full of bugs as big as toads' eyeballs. I wouldn't sleep in one without putting on a full suit of Arthur Eld's armor."
And so we ended up spending our first night in Debaria in the large drunk-and-disorderly cell, beneath Peavy's chalked map. Salty Sam had been set free, and we had the jail to ourselves. Outside, a strong wind had begun to blow off the alkali flats to the west of town. The moaning sound it made around the eaves caused me to think again of the story my mother used to read to me when I was just a sma' toot myself--the story of Tim Stoutheart and the starkblast Tim had to face in the Great Woods north of New Canaan. Thinking of the boy alone in those woods has always chilled my heart, just as Tim's bravery has always warmed it. The stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.
After one particularly strong gust--the Debaria wind was warm, not cold like the starkblast--struck the side of the jail and puffed alkali grit in through the barred window, Jamie spoke up. It was rare for him to start a conversation.
"I hate that sound, Roland. It's apt to keep me awake all night."
I loved it myself; the sound of the wind has always made me think of good times and far places. Although I confess I could have done without the grit.
"How are we supposed to find this thing, Jamie? I hope you have some idea, because I don't."
"We'll have to talk to the salt-miners. That's the place to start. Someone may have seen a fellow with blood on him creeping back to where the salties live. Creeping back naked. For he can't come back clothed, unless he takes them off beforehand."
That gave me a little hope. Although if the one we were looking for knew what he was, he might take his clothes off when he felt an attack coming on, hide them, then come back to them later. But if he didn't know . . .
It was a small thread, but sometimes--if you're careful not to break it--you can pull on a small thread and unravel a whole garment.
"Goodnight, Roland."
"Goodnight, Jamie."
I closed my eyes and thought of my mother. I often did that year, but for once they weren't thoughts of how she had looked dead, but of how beautiful she had been in my early childhood, as she sat beside me on my bed in the room with the colored glass windows, reading to m
e. "Look you, Roland," she'd say, "here are the billy-bumblers sitting all a-row and scenting the air. They know, don't they?"
"Yes," I would say, "the bumblers know."
"And what is it they know?" the woman I would kill asked me. "What is it they know, dear heart?"
"They know the starkblast is coming," I said. My eyes would be growing heavy by then, and minutes later I would drift off to the music of her voice.
As I drifted off now, with the wind outside blowing up a strong gale.
*
I woke in the first thin light of morning to a harsh sound: BRUNG! BRUNG! BRUNNNNG!
Jamie was still flat on his back, legs splayed, snoring. I took one of my revolvers from its holster, went out through the open cell door, and shambled toward that imperious sound. It was the jing-jang Sheriff Peavy had taken so much pride in. He wasn't there to answer it; he'd gone home to bed, and the office was empty.
Standing there bare-chested, with a gun in my hand and wearing nothing but the swabbies and slinkum I'd slept in--for it was hot in the cell--I took the listening cone off the wall, put the narrow end in my ear, and leaned close to the speaking tube. "Yes? Hello?"
"Who the hell's this?" a voice screamed, so loud that it sent a nail of pain into the side of my head. There were jing-jangs in Gilead, perhaps as many as a hundred that still worked, but none spoke so clear as this. I pulled the cone away, wincing, and could still hear the voice coming out of it.
"Hello? Hello? Gods curse this fucking thing! HELLO?"
"I hear you," I said. "Lower thy voice, for your father's sake."
"Who is this?" There was just enough drop in volume for me to put the listening cone a little closer to my ear. But not in it; I would not make that mistake twice.
"A deputy." Jamie DeCurry and I were the farthest things in the world from that, but simplest is usually best. Always best, I wot, when speaking with a panicky man on a jing-jang.
