by Stephen King
And smaller still.
"I--"
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."
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 Cross-way. 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 katet. 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 castle 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?"
They would all have to be there, of course--he and Eddie, Jake, too, as little as Roland liked the thought of it. Because the thing inside her had surely quickened by now, and even if its time hadn't come, it would be dangerous. And its time is almost certainly close, he thought. I don't know it for sure, but I feel it. I--
The thought broke off as he became aware of Callahan's expression: horror, disgust, and mounting anger.
"Rosalita would never do such a thing. Mark well what I say. She'd die first."
Roland was perplexed. "Why?"
"Because she's a Catholic!"
"I don't understand."
Callahan saw the gunslinger really did not, and the sharpest edge of his anger was blunted. Yet Roland sensed that a great deal remained, like the bolt behind the head of an arrow. "It's abortion you're talking about!"
"Yes?"
"Roland . . . Roland." Callahan lowered his head, and when he raised it, the anger appeared to be gone. In its place was a stony obduracy the gunslinger had seen before. Roland could no more break it than he could lift a mountain with his bare hands. "My church divides sins into two: venial sins, which are bearable in the sight of God, and mortal ones, which are not. Abortion is a mortal sin. It is murder."
"Pere, we are speaking of a demon, not a human being."
"So you say. That's God's business, not mine."
"And if it kills her? Will you say the same then and so wash your hands of her?"
Roland had never heard the tale of Pontius Pilate and Callahan knew it. Still, he winced at the image. But his reply was firm enough. "You who spoke of the breaking of your tet before you spoke of the taking of her life! Shame on you. Shame."
"My quest--the quest of my ka-tet--is the Dark Tower, Pere. It's not saving this world we're about, or even this universe, but all universes. All of existence."
"I don't care," Callahan said. "I can't care. Now listen to me, Roland son of Steven, for I would have you hear me very well. Are you listening?"
Roland sighed. "Say thankya."
"Rosa won't give the woman an abortion. There are others in town who could, I have no doubt--even in a place where children are taken every twenty-some years by monsters from the dark land, such filthy arts are undoubtedly preserved--but if you go to one of them, you won't need to worry about the Wolves. I'll raise every hand in Calla Bryn Sturgis against you long before they come."
Roland gazed at him unbelievingly. "Even though you know, as I'm sure you do, that we may be able to save a hundred other children? Human children, whose first task on earth would not be to eat their mothers?"
Callahan might not have heard. His face was very pale. "I'll have more, do it please ya . . . and even if it don't. I'll have your word, sworn upon the face of your father, that you'll never suggest an abortion to the woman herself."
A queer thought came to Roland: Now that this subject had arisen--had pounced upon them, like Jilly out of her box--Susannah was no longer Susannah to this man. She had become the woman. And another thought: How many monsters had Pere Callahan slain himself, with his own hand?
As often happened in times of extreme stress, Roland's father spoke to him. This situation is not quite beyond saving, but should you carry on much further--should you give voice to such thoughts--it will be.
"I want your promise, Roland."
"Or you'll raise the town."
"Aye."
"And suppose Susannah decides to abort herself? Women do it, and she's very far from stupid. She knows the stakes."
"Mia--the baby's true mother--will prevent it."
"Don't be so sure. Susannah Dean's sense of self-preservation is very strong. And I believe her dedication to our quest is even stronger."
Callahan hesitated. He looked away, lips pressed together in a tight white line. Then he looked back. "You will prevent it," he said. "As her dinh."
Roland thought, I have just been Castled.
"All right," he said. "I will tell her of our talk and make sure she understands the position you've put us in. And I'll tell her that she must not tell Eddie."
"Why not?"
"Because he'd kill you, Pere. He'd kill you for your interference."
Roland was somewhat gratified by the widening of Callahan's eyes. He reminded himself again that he must raise no feelings in himself against this man, who simply was what he was. Had he not already spoken to them of the trap he carried with him wherever he went?
"Now listen to me as I've listened to you, for you now have a responsibility to all of us. Especially to 'the woman.' "
Callahan winced a little, as if struck. But he nodded. "Tell me what you'd have."
"For one thing, I'd have you watch her when you can. Like a hawk! In particular I'd have you watch for her working her fingers here." Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow. "Or here." Now he rubbed at his left temple. "Listen to her way of speaking. Be aware if it speeds up. Watch for her to start moving in little jerks." Roland snapped a hand up to his head, scratched it, snapped it back down. He tossed his head to the right, then looked back at Callahan. "You see?"
"Yes. These are the signs that Mia is coming?"
Roland nodded. "I don't want her left alone anymore when she's Mia. Not if I can help it."
"I understand," Callahan said. "But Roland, it's hard for me to believe that a newborn, no matter who or what the father might have been--"
"Hush," Roland said. "Hush, do ya." And when Callahan had duly hushed: "What you think or believe is nothing to me. You've yourself to look out for, and I wish you well. But if Mia or Mia
's get harms Rosalita, Pere, I'll hold you responsible for her injuries. You'll pay to my good hand. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, Roland." Callahan looked both abashed and calm. It was an odd combination.
"All right. Now here's the other thing you can do for me. Comes the day of the Wolves, I'm going to need six folken I can absolutely trust. I'd like to have three of each sex."
"Do you care if some are parents with children at risk?"
"No. But not all. And none of the ladies who may be throwing the dish--Sarey, Zalia, Margaret Eisenhart, Rosalita. They'll be somewhere else."
"What do you want these six for?"
Roland was silent.
Callahan looked at him a moment longer, then sighed. "Reuben Caverra," he said. "Reuben's never forgot his sister and how he loved her. Diane Caverra, his wife . . . or do'ee not want couples?"
No, a couple would be all right. Roland twirled his fingers, gesturing for the Pere to continue.
"Cantab of the Manni, I sh'd say; the children follow him like he was the Pied Piper."
"I don't understand."
"You don't need to. They follow him, that's the important part. Bucky Javier and his wife . . . and what would you say to your boy, Jake? Already the town children follow him with their eyes, and I suspect a number of the girls are in love with him."
"No, I need him."
Or can't bear to have him out of your sight? Callahan wondered . . . but did not say. He had pushed Roland as far as was prudent, at least for one day. Further, actually.
"What of Andy, then? The children love him, too. And he'd protect them to the death."
"Aye? From the Wolves?"
Callahan looked troubled. Actually it had been rock-cats he'd been thinking of. Them, and the sort of wolves that came on four legs. As for the ones that came out of Thunderclap . . .
"No," Roland said. "Not Andy."
"Why not? For 't isn't to fight the Wolves you want these six for, is it?"
"Not Andy," Roland repeated. It was just a feeling, but his feelings were his version of the touch. "There's time to think about it, Pere . . . and we'll think, too."
"You're going out into the town."
"Aye. Today and every day for the next few."
Callahan grinned. "Your friends and I would call it 'schmoozing.' It's a Yiddish word."