Wolves of the Calla dt-5

by Stephen King

  "That's quite the hookup, say thankya," Diego Adams remarked.

  "Susannah thought it up," Zalia said as Susannah got into her wheelchair. "She calls it a docker's clutch."

  It wasn't, Eddie thought, not quite, but it was close. He felt an admiring smile lift the corners of his mouth, and saw a similar one on Roland's. And Jake's. By God, even Oy appeared to be grinning.

  "Will it draw water, that's what I wonder," Bucky Javier said. That such a question should even be asked, Eddie thought, only emphasized the difference between the gunslingers and the Calla-folken. Eddie and his mates had known from first look what the hookup was and how it would work. Javier, however, was a smallhold farmer, and as such, saw the world in a very different way.

  You need us, Eddie thought toward the little cluster of men standing on the porch-the farmers in their dirty white pants, Adams in his chaps and manure-splattered shor'boots. Boy, do you ever.

  Susannah wheeled to the front of the porch and folded her stumps beneath her so she appeared almost to be standing in her chair. Eddie knew how much this posture hurt her, but no discomfort showed on her face. Roland, meanwhile, was looking down into the pouches she wore. There were four dishes in each, plain things with no pattern on them. Practice-dishes.

  Zalia walked across to the barn. Although Roland and Eddie had noted the blanket tacked up there as soon as they arrived, the others noticed it for the first time when Zalia pulled it down. Drawn in chalk on the barnboards was the outline of a man-or a manlike being-with a frozen grin on his face and the suggestion of a cloak fluttering out behind him. This wasn't work of the quality produced by the Tavery twins, nowhere near, but those on the porch recognized a Wolf when they saw one. The older children oohed softly. The Estradas and the Javiers applauded, but looked apprehensive even as they did so, like people who fear they may be whistling up the devil. Andy complimented the artist ("whoever she may be," he added archly), and Gran-pere told him again to shut his trap. Then he called out that the Wolves he'd seen were quite a spot bigger. His voice was shrill with excitement.

  "Well, I drew it to man-size," Zalia said (she had actually drawn it to husband-size). "If the real thing turns out to make a bigger target, all to the good. Hear me, I beg." This last came out uncertainly, almost as a question.

  Roland nodded. "We say thankya."

  Zalia shot him a grateful look, then stepped away from the outline on the wall. Then she looked at Susannah. "When you will, lady."

  For a moment Susannah only remained where she was, about sixty yards from the barn. Her hands lay between her breasts, the right covering the left. Her head was lowered. Her ka-mates knew exactly what was going on in that head: I aim with my eye, shoot with my hand, kill with my heart. Their own hearts went out to her, perhaps carried by Jake's touch or Eddie's love, encouraging her, wishing her well, sharing their excitement. Roland watched fiercely. Would one more dab hand with the dish turn things in their favor? Perhaps not. But he was what he was, and so was she, and he wished her true aim with every last bit of his will.

  She raised her head. Looked at the shape chalked on the barn wall. Still her hands lay between her breasts. Then she cried out shrilly, as Margaret Eisenhart had cried out in the yard of the Rocking B, and Roland felt his hard-beating heart rise. In that moment he had a clear and beautiful memory of David, his hawk, folding his wings in a blue summer sky and dropping at his prey like a stone with eyes.

  "Riza!"

  Her hands dropped and became a blur. Only Roland, Eddie, and Jake were able to mark how they crossed at the waist, the right hand seizing a dish from the left pouch, the left hand seizing one from the right. Sai Eisenhart had thrown from the shoulder, sacrificing time in order to gain force and accuracy.

  Susannah's arms crossed below her ribcage and just above the arms of her wheelchair, the dishes finishing their cocking arc at about the height of her shoulderblades. Then they flew, crisscrossing in midair a moment before thudding into the side of the barn.

  Susannah's arms finished straight out before her; for a moment she looked like an impresario who has just introduced the featured act. Then they dropped and crossed, seizing two more dishes. She flung them, dipped again, and flung the third set. The first two were still quivering when the last two bit into the side of the barn, one high and one low.

  For a moment there was utter silence in the Jaffordses' yard. Not even a bird called. The eight plates ran in a perfectly straight line from the throat of the chalked figure to what would have been its upper midsection. They were all two and a half to three inches apart, descending like buttons on a shirt. And she had thrown all eight in no more than three seconds.

  "Do'ee mean to use the dish against the Wolves?" Bucky Javier asked in a queerly breathless voice. "Is that it?"

  "Nothing's been decided," Roland said stolidly.

  In a barely audible voice that held both shock and wonder, Deelie Estrada said: "But if that'd been a man, hear me, he'd be cutlets."

  It was Gran-pere who had the final word, as perhaps gran-peres should: "Yer-bugger!"

  SIX

  On their way back out to the main road (Andy walked at a distance ahead of them, carrying the folded wheelchair and playing something bagpipey through his sound system), Susannah said musingly: "I may give up the gun altogether, Roland, and just concentrate on the dish. There's an elemental satisfaction to giving that scream and then throwing."

  "You reminded me of my hawk," Roland admitted.

  Susannah's teeth flashed white in a grin. "Ifelt like a hawk. Riza! O-Riza! Just saying the word puts me in a throwing mood."

  To Jake's mind this brought some obscure memory of Gasher ("Yer old pal, Gasher," as the gentleman himself had been wont to say), and he shivered.

  "Would you really give up the gun?" Roland asked. He didn't know if he was amused or aghast.

  "Would you roll your own smokes if you could get tailor-mades?" she asked, and then, before he could answer: "No, not really. Yet the dish is a lovely weapon. When they come, I hope to throw two dozen. And bag my limit."

  "Will there be a shortage of plates?" Eddie asked.

  "Nope," she said. "There aren't very many fancy ones- like the one sai Eisenhart threw for you, Roland-but they've hundreds of practice-plates. Rosalita and Sarey Adams are sorting through them, culling out any that might fly crooked." She hesitated, lowered her voice. "They've all been out here, Roland, and although Sarey's brave as a lion and would stand fast against a tornado…"

  "Hasn't got it, huh?" Eddie asked sympathetically.

  "Not quite," Susannah agreed. "She's good, but not like the others. Nor does she have quite the same ferocity."

  "I may have something else for her," Roland said.

  "What would that be, sugar?"

  "Escort duty, mayhap. We'll see how they shoot, day after tomorrow. A little competition always livens things up. Five o' the clock, Susannah, do they know?"

  "Yes. Most of the Calla would turn up, if you allowed them."

  This was discouraging… but he should have expected it. I've been too long out of the world of people, he thought. So I have.

  "No one but the ladies and ourselves," Roland said firmly.

  "If the Calla-folken saw the women throw well, it could swing a lot of people who are on the fence."

  Roland shook his head. He didn't want them to know how well the women threw, that was very nearly the whole point. But that the town knew they were throwing… that might not be such a bad thing. "How good are they, Susannah? Tell me."

  She thought about it, then smiled. "Killer aim," she said. "Every one."

  "Can you teach them that crosshand throw?"

  Susannah considered the question. You could teach anyone just about anything, given world enough and time, but they had neither. Only thirteen days left now, and by the day the Sisters of Oriza (including their newest member, Susannah of New York) met for the exhibition in Pere Callahan's back yard, there would be only a week and a half. The crosshand thro
w had come naturally to her, as everything about shooting had. But the others…

  "Rosalita will learn it," she said at last. "Margaret Eisenhart could learn it, but she might get flustered at the wrong time. Zalia? No. Best she throw one plate at a time, always with her right hand. She's a little slower, but I guarantee every plate she throws will drink something's blood."

  "Yeah," Eddie said. "Until a sneetch homes in on her and blows her out of her corset, that is."

  Susannah ignored this. "We can hurt them, Roland. Thou knows we can."

  Roland nodded. What he'd seen had encouraged him mightily, especially in light of what Eddie had told him. Susannah and Jake also knew Gran-pere's ancient secret now. And, speaking of Jake…

  "You're very quiet today," Roland said to the boy. "Is everything all right?"

  "I do fine, thankya," Jake said. He had been watching Andy. Thinking of how Andy had rocked the baby. Thinking that if Tian and Zalia and the other kids all died and Andy was left to raise Aaron, baby Aaron would probably die within six months. Die, or turn into the weirdest kid in the universe. Andy would diaper him, Andy would feed him all the correct stuff, Andy would change him when he needed changing and burp him if he needed burping, and there would be all sorts of cradle-songs. Each would be sung perfectly and none would be propelled by a mother's love. Or a father's. Andy was just Andy, Messenger Robot, Many Other Functions. Baby Aaron would be better off being raised by… well, by wolves.

  This thought led him back to the night he and Benny had tented out (they hadn't done so since; the weather had turned chilly). The night he had seen Andy and Benny's Da' palavering. Then Benny's Da' had gone wading across the river. Headed east.

  Headed in the direction of Thunderclap.

  "Jake, are you sure you're okay?" Susannah asked.

  "Yessum," Jake said, knowing this would probably make her laugh. It did, and Jake laughed with her, but he was still thinking of Benny's Da'. The spectacles Benny's Da' wore. Jake was pretty sure he was the only one in town who had them. Jake had asked him about that one day when the three of them had been riding in one of the Rocking B's two north fields, looking out strays. Benny's Da' had told him a story about trading a beautiful true-threaded colt for the specs-from one of the lake-mart boats it had been, back when Benny's sissa had been alive, Oriza bless her. He had done it even though all of the cowpokes-even Vaughn Eisenhart himself, do ya not see-had told him such spectacles never worked; they were no more useful than Andy's fortunes. But Ben Slightman had tried them on, and they had changed everything. All at once, for the first time since he'd been maybe seven, he'd been able to really see the world.

  He had polished his specs on his shirt as they rode, held them up to the sky so that twin spots of light swam on his cheeks, then put them back on. "If I ever lose em or break em, I don't know what I'd do," he'd said. "I got along without such just fine for twenty years or more, but a person gets used to something better in one rip of a hurry."

  Jake thought it was a good story. He was sure Susannah would have believed it (assuming the singularity of Slightman's spectacles had occurred to her in the first place). He had an idea Roland would have believed it, too. Slightman told it in just the right way: a man who still appreciated his good fortune and didn't mind letting folks know that he'd been right about something while quite a number of other people, his boss among them, had been wide of the mark. Even Eddie might have swallowed it. The only thing wrong with Slightman's story was that it wasn't true. Jake didn't know what the real deal was, his touch didn't go that deep, but he knew that much. And it worried him.

  Probably nothing, you know. Probably he just got them in some way that wouldn't sound so good. For all you know, one of the Manni brought them back from some other world, and Benny's Da' stole them.

  That was one possibility; if pressed, Jake could have come up with half a dozen more. He was an imaginative boy.

  Still, when added to what he'd seen by the river, it worried him. What kind of business could Eisenhart's foreman have on the far side of the Whye? Jake didn't know. And still, each time he thought to raise this subject with Roland, something kept him quiet.

  And after giving him a hard time about keeping secrets!

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But-

  But what, little trailhand?

  But Benny, that was what. Benny was the problem. Or maybe it was Jake himself who was actually the problem. He'd never been much good at making friends, and now he had a good one. A real one. The thought of getting Benny's Da' in trouble made him feel sick to his stomach.

  SEVEN

  Two days later, at five o' the clock, Rosalita, Zalia, Margaret Eisenhart, Sarey Adams, and Susannah Dean gathered in the field just west of Rosa's neat privy. There were a lot of giggles and not a few bursts of nervous, shrieky laughter. Roland kept his distance, and instructed Eddie and Jake to do the same. Best to let them get it out of their systems.

  Set against the rail fence, ten feet apart from each other, were stuffies with plump sharproot heads. Each head was wrapped in a gunnysack which had been tied to make it look like the hood of a cloak. At the foot of each guy were three baskets. One was filled with more sharproot. Another was filled with potatoes. The contents of the third had elicited groans and cries of protest. These three were filled with radishes. Roland told them to quit their mewling; he'd considered peas, he said. None of them (even Susannah) was entirely sure he was joking.

  Callahan, today dressed in jeans and a stockman's vest of many pockets, ambled out onto the porch, where Roland sat smoking and waiting for the ladies to settle down. Jake and Eddie were playing draughts close by.

  "Vaughn Eisenhart's out front," the Pere told Roland. "Says he'll go on down to Tooky's and have a beer, but not until he passes a word with'ee."

  Roland sighed, got up, and walked through the house to the front. Eisenhart was sitting on the seat of a one-horse fly, shor'boots propped on the splashboard, looking moodily off toward Callahan's church.

  "G'day to ya, Roland," he said.

  Wayne Overholser had given Roland a cowboy's broad-brimmed hat some days before. He tipped it to the rancher and waited.

  "I guess you'll be sending the feather soon," Eisenhart said. "Calling a meeting, if it please ya."

  Roland allowed as how that was so. It was not the town's business to tell knights of Eld how to do their duty, but Roland would tell them what duty was to be done. That much he owed them.

  "I want you to know that when the time comes, I'll touch it and send it on. And come the meeting, I'll say aye."

  "Say thankya," Roland replied. He was, in fact, touched. Since joining with Jake, Eddie, and Susannah, it seemed his heart had grown. Sometimes he was sorry. Mostly he wasn't.

  "Took won't do neither."

  "No," Roland agreed. "As long as business is good, the Tooks of the world never touch the feather. Nor say aye."

  "Overholser's with him."

  This was a blow. Not an entirely unexpected one, but he'd hoped Overholser would come around. Roland had all the support he needed, however, and supposed Overholser knew it. If he was wise, the farmer would just sit and wait for it to be over, one way or the other. If he meddled, he would likely not see another year's crops into his barns.

  "I wanted ye to know one thing," Eisenhart said. "I'm in with'ee because of my wife, and my wife's in with'ee because she's decided she wants to hunt. This is what all such things as the dish-throwing comes to in the end, a woman telling her man what'll be and what won't. It ain't the natural way. A man's meant to rule his woman. Except in the matter of the babbies, o'course."

  "She gave up everything she was raised to when she took you to husband," Roland said. "Now it's your turn to give a little."

  "Don't ye think I know that? But if you get her killed, Roland, you'll take my curse with you when ye leave the Calla. If'ee do. No matter how many children ye save."

  Roland, who had been cursed before, nodded. "If ka wills, Vaughn, she'll come back to you."


  "Aye. But remember what I said."

  "I will."

  Eisenhart slapped the reins on the horse's back and the fly began to roll.

  EIGHT

  Each woman halved a sharproot head at forty yards, fifty yards, and sixty.

  "Hit the head as high up into the hood as you can get," Roland said. "Hitting them low will do no good."

  "Armor, I suppose?" Rosalita asked.

  "Aye," Roland said, although that was not the entire truth. He wouldn't tell them what he now understood to be the entire truth until they needed to know it.

  Next came the taters. Sarey Adams got hers at forty yards, clipped it at fifty, and missed entirely at sixty; her dish sailed high. She uttered a curse that was far from ladylike, then walked head-down to the side of the privy. Here she sat to watch the rest of the competition. Roland went over and sat beside her. He saw a tear trickling from the corner of her left eye and down her wind-roughened cheek.

  "I've let ye down, stranger. Say sorry."

  Roland took her hand and squeezed it. "Nay, lady, nay. There'll be work for you. Just not in the same place as these others. And you may yet throw the dish."

  She gave him a wan smile and nodded her thanks.

  Eddie put more sharproot "heads" on the stuffy-guys, then a radish on top of each. The latter were all but concealed in the shadows thrown by the gunnysack hoods. "Good luck, girls," he said. "Better you than me." Then he stepped away.

  "Start from ten yards this time!" Roland called.

  At ten, they all hit. And at twenty. At thirty yards, Susannah threw her plate high, as Roland had instructed her to do. He wanted one of the Calla women to win this round. At forty yards, Zalia Jaffords hesitated too long, and the dish she flung chopped the sharproot head in two rather than the radish sitting on top.