Wolves of the Calla dt-5

by Stephen King

  "Fuck-commala!" she cried, then clapped her hands to her mouth and looked at Callahan, who was sitting on the back steps. That fellow only smiled and waved cheerfully, affecting deafness.

  She stamped over to Eddie and Jake, blushing to the tips of her ears and furious. "Ye must tell him to give me another chance, say will ya please," she told Eddie. "I can do it, I know I can do it-"

  Eddie put a hand on her arm, stemming the flood. "He knows it, too, Zee. You're in."

  She looked at him with burning eyes, lips pressed so tightly together they were almost gone. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah," Eddie said. "You could pitch for the Mets, darlin."

  Now it was down to Margaret and Rosalita. They both hit the radishes at fifty yards. To Jake, Eddie murmured: "Buddy, I would have told you that was impossible if I hadn't just seen it."

  At sixty yards, Margaret Eisenhart missed cleanly. Rosalita raised her plate over her right shoulder-she was a lefty-hesitated, then screamed "Riza!" and threw. Sharp-eyed though he was, Roland wasn't entirely sure if the plate's edge clipped the side of the radish or if the wind toppled it over. In either case, Rosalita raised her fists over her head and shook them, laughing.

  "Fair-day goose! Fair-day goose!" Margaret began calling. The others joined in. Soon even Callahan was chanting.

  Roland went to Rosa and gave her a hug, brief but strong. As he did so he whispered in her ear that while he had no goose, he might be able to find a certain long-necked gander for her, come evening.

  "Well," she said, smiling, "when we get older, we take our prizes where we find them. Don't we?"

  Zalia glanced at Margaret. "What did he say to her? Did'ee kennit?"

  Margaret Eisenhart was smiling. "Nothing you haven't heard yourself, I'm sure," she said.

  NINE

  Then the ladies were gone. So was the Pere, on some errand or other. Roland of Gilead sat on the bottom porch step, looking downhill toward the site of the competition so lately completed. When Susannah asked him if he was satisfied, he nodded. "Yes, I think all's well there. We have to hope it is, because time's closing now. Things will happen fast." The truth was that he had never experienced such a confluence of events… but since Susannah had admitted her pregnancy, he had calmed nevertheless.

  You've recalled the truth of ka to your truant mind, he thought. And it happened because this woman showed a kind of bravery the rest of us couldn't quite muster up.

  "Roland, will I be going back out to the Rocking B?" Jake asked.

  Roland considered, then shrugged. "Do you want to?"

  "Yes, but this time I want to take the Ruger." Jake's face pinked a little, but his voice remained steady. He had awakened with this idea, as if the dreamgod Roland called Nis had brought it to him in his sleep. "I'll put it at the bottom of my bedroll and wrap it in my extra shirt. No one needs to know it's there." He paused. "I don't want to show it off to Benny, if that's what you're thinking."

  The idea had never crossed Roland's mind. But what was in Jake's mind? He posed the question, and Jake's answer was the sort one gives when one has charted the likely course of a discussion well in advance.

  "Do you ask as my dinh?"

  Roland opened his mouth to say yes, saw how closely Eddie and Susannah were watching him, and reconsidered. There was a difference between keeping secrets (as each of them had in his own way kept the secret of Susannah's pregnancy) and following what Eddie called "a hunch." The request under Jake's request was to be on a longer rope. Simple as that. And surely Jake had earned the right to a little more rope. This was not the same boy who had come into Mid-World shivering and terrified and nearly naked.

  "Not as your dinh," he said. "As for the Ruger, you may take it anywhere, and at any time. Did you not bring it to the tet in the first place?"

  "Stole it," Jake said in a low voice. He was staring at his knees.

  "You took what you needed to survive," Susannah said. "There's a big difference. Listen, sugar-you're not planning to shoot anyone, are you?"

  "Not planning to, no."

  "Be careful," she said. "I don't know what you've got in your head, but you be careful."

  "And whatever it is, you better get it settled in the next week or so," Eddie told him.

  Jake nodded, then looked at Roland. "When are you planning to call the town meeting?"

  "According to the robot, we have ten days left before the Wolves come. So…" Roland calculated briefly. "Town gathering in six days. Will that suit you?"

  Jake nodded again.

  "Are you sure you don't want to tell us what's on your mind?"

  "Not unless you ask as dinh," Jake said. "It's probably nothing, Roland. Really."

  Roland nodded dubiously and began rolling another smoke. Having fresh tobacco was wonderful. "Is there anything else? Because, if there isn't-"

  "There is, actually," Eddie said.

  "What?"

  "I need to go to New York," Eddie said. He spoke casually, as if proposing no more than a trip to the mercantile to buy a pickle or a licorice stick, but his eyes were dancing with excitement. "And this time I'll have to go in the flesh. Which means using the ball more direcdy, I guess. Black Thirteen. I hope to hell you know how to do it, Roland."

  "Why do you need to go to New York?" Roland asked. "This I do ask as dinh."

  "Sure you do," Eddie said, "and I'll tell you. Because you're right about time getting short. And because the Wolves of the Calla aren't the only ones we have to worry about."

  "You want to see how close to July fifteenth it's getting," Jake said. "Don't you?"

  "Yeah," Eddie said. "We know from when we all went todash that time is going faster in that version of New York, 1977. Remember the date on the piece of The New York Times I found in the doorway?"

  "June second," Susannah said.

  "Right. We're also pretty sure that we can't double back in time in that world; it's later every time we go there. Right?"

  Jake nodded emphatically. "Because that world's not like the others… unless maybe it was just being sent todash by Black Thirteen that made us feel that way?"

  "I don't think so," Eddie said. "That little piece of Second Avenue between the vacant lot and maybe on up to Sixtieth is a very important place. I think it's a doorway. One big doorway."

  Jake Chambers was looking more and more excited. "Not all the way up to Sixtieth. Not that far. Second Avenue between Forty-sixth and Fifty-fourth, that's what I think. On the day I left Piper, I felt something change when I got to Fifty-fourth Street.

  It's those eight blocks. The stretch with the record store on it, and Chew Chew Mama, and The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. And the vacant lot, of course. That's the other end. It… I don't know…"

  Eddie said, "Being there takes you into a different world. Some kind of key world. And I think that's why time always runs one way-"

  Roland held up his hand. "Stop."

  Eddie stopped, looking at Roland expectantly, smiling a little. Roland was not smiling. Some of his previous sense of well-being had passed away. Too much to do, gods damn it. And not enough time in which to do it.

  "You want to see how near time has run to the day the agreement becomes null and void," he said. "Have I got that right?"

  "You do."

  "You don't need to go to New York physically to do that, Eddie. Todash would serve nicely."

  "Todash would do fine to check the day and the month, sure, but there's more. We've been dumb about that vacant lot, you guys. I mean really dumb."

  TEN

  Eddie believed they could own the vacant lot without ever touching Susannah's inherited fortune; he thought Callahan's story showed quite clearly how it could be done. Not the rose; the rose was not to be owned (by them or anyone) but to be protected. And they could do it. Maybe.

  Frightened or not, Calvin Tower had been waiting in that deserted laundrymat to save Pere Callahan's bacon. And frightened or not, Calvin Tower had refused-as of May 31st, 1977, anyway-to sell his last
piece of real property to the Sombra Corporation. Eddie thought that Calvin Tower was, in the words of the song, holding out for a hero.

  Eddie had also been thinking about the way Callahan had hidden his face in his hands the first time he mentioned Black Thirteen. He wanted it the hell out of his church… but so far he'd kept it anyway. Like the bookshop owner, the Pere had been holding out. How stupid they had been to assume Calvin Tower would ask millions for his lot! He wanted to be shed of it. But not until the right person came along. Or the right ka-tet.

  "Suziella, you can't go because you're pregnant," Eddie said. "Jake, you can't go because you're a kid. All other questions aside, I'm pretty sure you couldn't sign the kind of contract I've been thinking about ever since Callahan told us his story. I could take you with me, but it sounds like you've got something you want to check into over here. Or am I wrong about that?"

  "You're not wrong," Jake said. "But I'd almost go with you, anyway. This sounds really good."

  Eddie smiled. "Almost only counts with grenados and horseshoes, kid. As for sending Roland, no offense, boss, but you're not all that suave in our world. You… um… lose something in the translation."

  Susannah burst out laughing.

  "How much are you thinking of offering him?" Jake asked. "I mean, it has to be something, doesn't it?"

  "A buck," Eddie said. "I'll probably have to ask Tower to loan it to me, but-"

  "No, we can do better than that," Jake said, looking serious. "I've got five or six dollars in my knapsack, I'm pretty sure." He grinned. "And we can offer him more, later on. When things kind of settle down on this side."

  "If we're still alive," Susannah said, but she also looked excited. "You know what, Eddie? You just might be a genius."

  "Balazar and his friends won't be happy if sai Tower sells us his lot," Roland said.

  "Yeah, but maybe we can persuade Balazar to leave him alone," Eddie said. A grim little smile was playing around the corners of his mouth. "When it comes right down to it, Roland, Enrico Balazar's the kind of guy I wouldn't mind killing twice."

  "When do you want to go?" Susannah asked him.

  "The sooner the better," Eddie said. "For one thing, not knowing how late it is over there in New York is driving me nuts. Roland? What do you say?"

  "I say tomorrow," Roland said. "We'll take the ball up to the cave, and then we'll see if you can go through the door to Calvin Tower's where and when. Your idea is a good one, Eddie, and I say thankya."

  Jake said, "What if the ball sends you to the wrong place? The wrong version of 1977, or…" He hardly knew how to finish. He was remembering how thin everything had seemed when Black Thirteen had first taken them todash, and how endless darkness seemed to be waiting behind the painted surface realities around them. "… or someplace even farther?" he finished.

  "In that case, I'll send back a postcard." Eddie said it with a shrug and a laugh, but for just a moment Jake saw how frightened he was. Susannah must have seen it, too, because she took Eddie's hand in both of hers and squeezed it.

  "Hey, I'll be fine," Eddie said.

  "You better be," Susannah replied. "You just better."

  Chapter II:

  The Dogan,

  Part I

  ONE

  When Roland and Eddie entered Our Lady of Serenity the following morning, daylight was only a distant rumor on the northeast horizon. Eddie lit their way down the center aisle with a 'sener, his lips pressed tightly together. The thing they had come for was humming. It was a sleepy hum, but he hated the sound of it just the same. The church itself felt freaky. Empty, it seemed too big, somehow. Eddie kept expecting to see ghostly figures (or perhaps a complement of the vagrant dead) sitting in the pews and looking at them with otherworldly disapproval.

  But the hum was worse.

  When they reached the front, Roland opened his purse and took out the bowling bag which Jake had kept in his knapsack until yesterday. The gunslinger held it up for a moment and they could both read what was printed on the side: NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MID-WORLD LANES.

  "Not a word from now until I tell you it's all right," Roland said. "Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  Roland pressed his thumb into the groove between two of the floorboards and the hidey-hole in the preacher's cove sprang open. He lifted the top aside. Eddie had once seen a movie on TV about guys disposing of live explosives during the London Blitz-UXB, it had been called-and Roland's movements now recalled that film strongly to his mind. And why not? If they were right about what was in this hiding place-and Eddie knew they were-then it was an unexploded bomb.

  Roland folded back the white linen surplice, exposing the box. The hum rose. Eddie's breath stopped in his throat. He felt the skin all over his body grow cold. Somewhere close, a monster of nearly unimaginable malevolence had half-opened one sleeping eye.

  The hum dropped back to its former sleepy pitch and Eddie breathed again.

  Roland handed him the bowling bag, motioning for Eddie to hold it open. With misgivings (part of him wanted to whisper in Roland's ear that they should forget the whole thing), Eddie did as he was bidden. Roland lifted the box out, and once again the hum rose. In the rich, if limited, glow of the 'sener, Eddie could see sweat on the gunslinger's brow. He could feel it on his own. If Black Thirteen awoke and pitched them out into some black limbo…

  I won't go. I'll fight to stay with Susannah.

  Of course he would. But he was still relieved when Roland slipped the elaborately carved ghostwood box into the queer metallic bag they'd found in the vacant lot. The hum didn't disappear entirely, but subsided to a barely audible drone. And when Roland gently pulled the drawstring running around the top of the bag, closing its mouth, the drone became a distant whisper. It was like listening to a seashell.

  Eddie sketched the sign of the cross in front of himself. Smiling faintly, Roland did the same.

  Outside the church, the northeast horizon had brightened appreciably - there would be real daylight after all, it seemed.

  "Roland."

  The gunslinger turned toward him, eyebrows raised. His left fist was closed around the bag's throat; he was apparently not willing to trust the weight of the box to the bag's drawstring, stout as it looked.

  "If we were todash when we found that bag, how could we have picked it up?"

  Roland considered this. Then he said, "Perhaps the bag is todash, too."

  "Still?"

  Roland nodded. "Yes, I think so. Still."

  "Oh." Eddie thought about it. "That's spooky."

  "Changing your mind about revisiting New York, Eddie?" Eddie shook his head. He was scared, though. Probably more scared than he'd been at any time since standing up in the aisle of the Barony Coach to riddle Blaine.

  TWO

  By the time they were halfway along the path leading to the Doorway Cave (It's upsy, Henchick had said, and so it had been, and so it was), it was easily ten o' the clock and remarkably warm. Eddie stopped, wiped the back of his neck with his bandanna, and looked out over the twisting arroyos to the north. Here and there he could see black, gaping holes and asked Roland if they were the garnet mines. The gunslinger told him they were. "

  "And which one have you got in mind for the kiddies? Can we see it from here?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes." Roland drew the single gun he was wearing and pointed it. "Look over the sight."

  Eddie did and saw a deep draw which made the shape of a jagged double S. It was filled to the top with velvety shadows; he guessed there might be only half an hour or so at midday when the sun reached the bottom. Farther to the north, it appeared to dead-end against a massive rock-face. He supposed the mine entrance was there, but it was too dark to make out. To the southeast this arroyo opened on a dirt track that wound its way back to East Road. Beyond East Road were fields sloping down to fading but still green plots of rice. Beyond the rice was the river.

  "Makes me think of the story you told us," Eddie said. "Eye-bolt Canyon."r />
  "Of course it does."

  "No thinny to do the dirty work, though."

  "No," Roland agreed. "No thinny."

  "Tell me the truth: Are you really going to stick this town's kids in a mine at the end of a dead-end arroyo?"

  "No."

  "The folken think you… that we mean to do that. Even the dish-throwing ladies think that."

  "I know they do," Roland said. "I want them to."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't believe there's anything supernatural about the way the Wolves find the children. After hearing Gran-pere Jaffords's story, I don't think there's anything supernatural about the Wolves, for that matter. No, there's a rat in this particular corn-crib. Someone who goes squealing to the powers that be in Thunderclap."

  "Someone different each time, you mean. Each twenty-three or twenty-four years."

  "Yes."

  "Who'd do that?" Eddie asked. "Who could do that?"

  "I'm not sure, but I have an idea."

  "Took? Kind of a handed-down thing, from father to son?"

  "If you're rested, Eddie, I think we'd better press on."

  "Overholser? Maybe that guy Telford, the one who looks like a TV cowboy?"

  Roland walked past him without speaking, his new shor'boots gritting on the scattered pebbles and rock-splinters. From his good left hand, the pink bag swung back and forth. The thing inside was still whispering its unpleasant secrets.

  "Chatty as ever, good for you," Eddie said, and followed him.

  THREE

  The first voice which arose from the depths of the cave belonged to the great sage and eminent junkie.

  "Oh, wookit the wittle sissy!" Henry moaned. To Eddie, he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge's dead partner in A Christmas Carol, funny and scary at the same time. "Does the wittle sissy think he's going back to Noo-Ork? You'll go a lot farther than that if you try it, bro. Better hunker where you are…just do your little carvings… be a good little homo…" The dead brother laughed. The live one shivered.