Wolves of the Calla dt-5

by Stephen King

  "Yes," Susannah said. "Jack Kennedy. God love him." She turned to Roland. "He was a gunslinger."

  Roland's eyebrows rose. "Do you say so?"

  "Aye. And I say true."

  "In any case," Callahan said, "there's always been a question as to whether the man who killed him acted alone, or whether he was part of a larger conspiracy. And sometimes I'd wake in the middle of the night and think, 'Why don't you go and see? Why don't you stand in front of that door with the box in your arms and think, "Dallas, November 22nd, 1963"? Because if you do that the door will open and you can go there, just like the man in Mr. Wells's story of the time machine. And perhaps you could change what happened that day. If there was ever a watershed moment in American life, that was it. Change that, change everything that came after. Vietnam… the race riots… everything.'"

  "Jesus," Eddie said respectfully. If nothing else, you had to respect the ambition of such an idea. It was right up there with the peg-legged sea captain chasing the white whale. "But Pere… what if you did it and changed things for the worse?"

  "Jack Kennedy was not a bad man," Susannah said coldly. "Jack Kennedy was a good man. A great man."

  "Maybe so. But do you know what? I think it takes a great man to make a great mistake. And besides, someone who came after him might have been a really bad guy. Some Big Coffin Hunter who never got a chance because of Lee Harvey Oswald, or whoever it was."

  "But the ball doesn't allow such thoughts," Callahan said. "I believe it lures people on to acts of terrible evil by whispering to them that they will do good. That they'll make things not just a little better but all better."

  "Yes," Roland said. His voice was as dry as the snap of a twig in a fire.

  "Do you think such traveling might actually be possible?" Callahan asked him. "Or was it only the thing's persuasive lie? Its glammer?"

  "I believe it's so," Roland said. "And I believe that when we leave the Calla, it will be by that door."

  "Would that I could come with you!" Callahan said. He spoke with surprising vehemence.

  "Mayhap you will," Roland said. "In any case, you finally put the box-and the ball within-inside your church. To quiet it."

  "Yes. And mostly it's worked. Mostly it sleeps."

  "Yet you said it sent you todash twice."

  Callahan nodded. The vehemence had flared like a pine-knot in a fireplace and disappeared just as quickly. Now he only looked tired. And very old, indeed. "The first time was to Mexico. Do you remember way back to the beginning of my story? The writer and the boy who believed?"

  They nodded.

  "One night the ball reached out to me when I slept and took me todash to Los Zapatos, Mexico. It was a funeral. The writer's funeral."

  "Ben Mears," Eddie said. "The Air Dance guy."

  "Yes."

  "Did folks see you?" Jake asked. "Because they didn't see us."

  Callahan shook his head. "No. But they sensed me. When I walked toward them, they moved away. It was as if I'd turned into a cold draft. In any case, the boy was there-Mark Petrie. Only he wasn't a boy any longer. He was in his young manhood. From that, and from the way he spoke of Ben-'There was a time when I would have called fifty-nine old' is how he began his eulogy-I'd guess that this might have been the mid-1990s. In any case, I didn't stay long… but long enough to decide that my young friend from all that long time ago had turned out fine. Maybe I did something right in 'Salem's Lot, after all." He paused a moment and then said, "In his eulogy, Mark referred to Ben as his father. That touched me very, very deeply."

  "And the second time the ball sent you todash?" Roland asked. "The time it sent you to the Castle of the King?"

  "There were birds. Great fat black birds. And beyond that I'll not speak. Not in the middle of the night." Callahan spoke in a dry voice that brooked no argument. He stood up again. "Another time, perhaps."

  Roland bowed acceptance of this. "Say thankya."

  "Will'ee not turn in, folks?"

  "Soon," Roland said.

  They thanked him for his story (even Oy added a single, sleepy bark) and bade him goodnight. They watched him go and for several seconds after, they said nothing.

  TWENTY

  It was Jake who broke the silence. "That guy Walter was behind us, Roland! When we left the way station, he was behind us! Pere Callahan, too!"

  "Yes," Roland said. "As far back as that, Callahan was in our story. It makes my stomach flutter. As though I'd lost gravity."

  Eddie dabbed at the corner of his eye. "Whenever you show emotion like that, Roland," he said, "I get all warm and squashy inside." Then, when Roland only looked at him, "Ah, come on, quit laughin. You know I love it when you get the joke, but you're embarrassing me."

  "Cry pardon," Roland said with a faint smile. "Such humor as I have turns in early."

  "Mine stays up all night," Eddie said brightly. "Keeps me awake. Tells me jokes. Knock-knock, who's there, icy, icy who, icy your underwear, yock-yock-yock!"

  "Is it out of your system?" Roland asked when he had finished.

  "For the time being, yeah. But don't worry, Roland, it always comes back. Can I ask you something?"

  "Is it foolish?"

  "I don't think so. I hope not.

  "Then ask."

  "Those two men who saved Callahan's bacon in the laundrymat on the East Side-were they who I think they were?"

  "Who do you think they were?"

  Eddie looked at Jake. "What about you, O son of Elmer? Got any ideas?"

  "Sure," Jake said. "It was Calvin Tower and the other guy from the bookshop, his friend. The one who told me the Samson riddle and the river riddle." He snapped his fingers once, then twice, then grinned. "Aaron Deepneau."

  "What about the ring Callahan mentioned?" Eddie asked him. "The one with Ex Libris on it? I didn't see either of them wearing a ring like that."

  "Were you looking?" Jake asked him.

  "No, not really. But-"

  "And remember that we saw him in 1977," Jake said. "Those guys saved Pere's life in 1981. Maybe someone gave Mr. Tower the ring during the four years between. As a present. Or maybe he bought it himself."

  "You're just guessing," Eddie said.

  "Yeah," Jake agreed. "But Tower owns a bookshop, so him having a ring with Ex Libris on it fits. Can you tell me it doesn't feel right?"

  "No. I'd have to put it in the ninetieth percentile, at least. But how could they know that Callahan…" Eddie trailed off, considered, then shook his head decisively. "Nah, I'm not even gonna get into it tonight. Next thing we'll be discussing the Kennedy assassination, and I'm tired."

  "We're all tired," Roland said, "and we have much to do in the days ahead. Yet the Pere's story has left me in a strangely disturbed frame of mind. I can't tell if it answers more questions than it raises, or if it's the other way around."

  None of them responded to dьs.

  "We are ka-tet, and now we sit together an-tet," Roland said. "In council. Late as it is, is there anything else we need to discuss before we part from one another? If so, you must say." When there was no response, Roland pushed back his chair. "All right, then I wish you all-"

  "Wait."

  It was Susannah. It had been so long since she'd spoken that they had nearly forgotten her. And she spoke in a small voice not much like her usual one. Certainly it didn't seem to belong to the woman who had told Eben Took that if he called her brownie again, she'd pull the tongue out of his head and wipe his ass with it.

  "There might be something."

  That same small voice.

  "Something else."

  And smaller still.

  She looked at them, each in turn, and when she came to the gunslinger he saw sorrow in those eyes, and reproach, and weariness. He saw no anger. If she'd been angry, he thought later, I might not have felt quite so ashamed.

  "I think I might have a little problem," she said. "I don't see how it can be… how it can possibly be… but boys, I think I might be a little bit in the family way."<
br />
  Having said that, Susannah Dean/Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker/Mia daughter of none put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Part Three

  The Wolves

  Chapter I:

  Secrets

  ONE

  Behind the cottage of Rosalita Munoz was a tall privy painted sky-blue. Jutting from the wall to the left as the gunslinger entered, late on the morning after Pere Callahan had finished his story, was a plain iron band with a small disc of steel set eight inches or so beneath. Within this skeletal vase was a double sprig of saucy susan. Its lemony, faintly astringent smell was the privy's only aroma. On the wall above the seat of ease, in a frame and beneath glass, was a picture of the Man Jesus with his praying hands held just below his chin, his reddish locks spilling over his shoulders, and his eyes turned up to His Father. Roland had heard there were tribes of slow mutants who referred to the Father of Jesus as Big Sky Daddy.

  The image of the Man Jesus was in profile, and Roland was glad. Had He been facing him full on, the gunslinger wasn't sure he could have done his morning business without closing his eyes, full though his bladder was. Strange place to put a picture of God's Son, he thought, and then realized it wasn't strange at all. In the ordinary course of things, only Rosalita used this privy, and the Man Jesus would have nothing to look at but her prim back.

  Roland Deschain burst out laughing, and when he did, his water began to flow.

  TWO

  Rosalita had been gone when he awoke, and not recently: her side of the bed had been cold. Now, standing outside her tall blue oblong of a privy and buttoning his flies, Roland looked up at the sun and judged the time as not long before noon. Judging such things without a clock, glass, or pendulum had become tricky in these latter days, but it was still possible if you were careful in your calculations and willing to allow for some error in your result. Cort, he thought, would be aghast if he saw one of his pupils-one of his graduated pupils, a gunslinger-beginning such a business as this by sleeping almost until midday. And this was the beginning. All the rest had been ritual and preparation, necessary but not terribly helpful. A kind of dancing the rice-song. Now that part was over. And as for sleeping late…

  "No one ever deserved a late lying-in more," he said, and walked down the slope. Here a fence marked the rear of Callahan's patch (or perhaps the Pere thought of it as God's patch). Beyond it was a small stream, babbling as excitedly as a little girl telling secrets to her best friend. The banks were thick with saucy susan, so there was another mystery (a minor one) solved. Roland breathed deeply of the scent.

  He found himself thinking of ka, which he rarely did. (Eddie, who believed Roland thought of little else, would have been astounded.) Its only true rule was Stand aside and let me work. Why in God's name was it so hard to learn such a simple thing? Why always this stupid need to meddle? Every one of them had done it; every one of them had known Susannah Dean was pregnant. Roland himself had known almost since the time of her kindling, when Jake had come through from the house in Dutch Hill. Susannah herself had known, in spite of the bloody rags she had buried at the side of the trail. So why had it taken them so long to have the palaver they'd had last night? Why had they made such a business of it? And how much might have suffered because of it?

  Nothing, Roland hoped. But it was hard to tell, wasn't it?

  Perhaps it was best to let it go. This morning that seemed like good advice, because he felt very well. Physically, at least. Hardly an ache or a-

  "I thought'ee meant to turn in not long after I left ye, gunslinger, but Rosalita said you never came in until almost the dawn."

  Roland turned from the fence and his thoughts. Callahan was today dressed in dark pants, dark shoes, and a dark shirt with a notched collar. His cross lay upon his bosom and his crazy white hair had been partially tamed, probably with some sort of grease. He bore the gunslinger's regard for a little while and then said, "Yesterday I gave the Holy Communion to those of the smallholds who take it. And heard their confessions. Today's my day to go out to the ranches and do the same. There's a goodish number of cowboys who hold to what they mostly call the Crossway. Rosalita drives me in the buckboard, so when it comes to lunch and dinner, you must shift for yourselves."

  "We can do that," Roland said, "but do you have a few minutes to talk to me?"

  "Of course," Callahan said. "A man who can't stay a bit shouldn't approach in the first place. Good advice, I think, and not just for priests."

  "Would you hear my confession?"

  Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Do'ee hold to the Man Jesus, then?"

  Roland shook his head. "Not a bit. Will you hear it anyway, I beg? And keep it to yourself?"

  Callahan shrugged. "As to keeping what you say to myself, that's easy. It's what we do. Just don't mistake discretion for absolution." He favored Roland with a wintry smile. "We Catholics save that for ourselves, may it do ya."

  The thought of absolution had never crossed Roland's mind, and he found the idea that he might need it (or that this man could give it) almost comic. He rolled a cigarette, doing it slowly, thinking of how to begin and how much to say. Callahan waited, respectfully quiet.

  At last Roland said, "There was a prophecy that I should draw three and that we should become ka-tet. Never mind who made it; never mind anything that came before. I won't worry that old knot, never again if I can help it. There were three doors. Behind the second was the woman who became Eddie's wife, although she did not at that time call herself Susannah…"

  THREE

  So Roland told Callahan the part of their story which bore directly upon Susannah and the women who had been before her. He concentrated on how they'd saved Jake from the doorkeeper and drawn the boy into Mid-World, telling how Susannah (or perhaps at that point she had been Detta) had held the demon of the circle while they did their work. He had known the risks, Roland told Callahan, and he had become certain-even while they were still riding Blaine the Mono-that she had not survived the risk of pregnancy. He had told Eddie, and Eddie hadn't been all that surprised. Then Jake had told him. Scolded him with it, actually. And he had taken the scolding, he said, because he felt it was deserved. What none of them had fully realized until last night on the porch was that Susannah herself had known, and perhaps for almost as long as Roland. She had simply fought harder.

  "So, Pere-what do you think?"

  "You say her husband agreed to keep the secret," Callahan replied. "And even Jake-who sees clearly-"

  "Yes," Roland said. "He does. He did. And when he asked me what we should do, I gave him bad advice. I told him we'd be best to let ka work itself out, and all the time I was holding it in my hands, like a caught bird."

  "Things always look clearer when we see them over our shoulder, don't they?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you tell her last night that she's got a demon's spawn growing in her womb?"

  "She knows it's not Eddie's."

  "So you didn't. And Mia? Did you tell her about Mia, and the casde banqueting hall?"

  "Yes," Roland said. "I think hearing that depressed her but didn't surprise her. There was the other-Detta-ever since the accident when she lost her legs." It had been no accident, but Roland hadn't gone into the business of Jack Mort with Callahan, seeing no reason to do so. "Detta Walker hid herself well from Odetta Holmes. Eddie and Jake say she's a schizophrenic." Roland pronounced this exotic word with great care.

  "But you cured her," Callahan said. "Brought her face-to-face with her two selves in one of those doorways. Did you not?"

  Roland shrugged. "You can burn away warts by painting them with silver metal, Pere, but in a person prone to warts, they'll come back."

  Callahan surprised him by throwing his head back to the sky and bellowing laughter. He laughed so long and hard he finally had to take his handkerchief from his back pocket and wipe his eyes with it. "Roland, you may be quick with a gun and as brave as Satan on Saturday night, but you're no psychiatrist. To compare schizophrenia
to warts... oh, my!"

  "And yet Mia is real, Pere. I've seen her myself. Not in a dream, as Jake did, but with my own two eyes."

  "Exactly my point," Callahan said. "She's not an aspect of the woman who was born Odetta Susannah Holmes. She is she."

  "Does it make a difference?"

  "I think it does. But here is one thing I can tell you for sure: no matter how things lie in your fellowship-your ka-tet-this must be kept a dead secret from the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Today, things are going your way. But if word got out that the female gunslinger with the brown skin might be carrying a demon-child, the folken'd go the other way, and in a hurry. With Eben Took leading the parade. I know that in the end you'll decide your course of action based on your own assessment of what the Calla needs, but the four of you can't beat the Wolves without help, no matter how good you are with such calibers as you carry. There's too much to manage." Reply was unneccessary. Callahan was right. "What is it you fear most?" Callahan asked.

  "The breaking of the tet," Roland said at once.

  "By that you mean Mia's taking control of the body they share and going off on her own to have the child?"

  "If that happened at the wrong time, it would be bad, but all might still come right. "If Susannah came back. But what she carries is nothing but poison with a heartbeat." Roland looked bleakly at the religious in his black clothes. "I have every reason to believe it would begin its work by slaughtering the mother."

  "The breaking of the tet," Callahan mused. "Not the death of your friend, but the breaking of the tet. I wonder if your friends know what sort of man you are, Roland?"

  "They know," Roland said, and on that subject said no more.

  "What would you have of me?"

  "First, an answer to a question. It's clear to me that Rosalita knows a good deal of rough doctoring. Would she know enough to turn the baby out before its time? And the stomach for what she might find?"