Wolves of the Calla

'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.

'Eddie?' Roland asked.

'Listen to your brother, Eddie!' his mother cried from the cave's dark and sloping throat. On the rock floor, scatters of small bones gleamed. 'He gave up his life for you, his whole life, the least you could do is listen to him!'

'Eddie, are you all right?'

Now came the voice of Csaba Drabnik, known in Eddie's crowd as the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Csaba was telling Eddie to give him a cigarette or he'd pull Eddie's fuckin pants down. Eddie tore his attention away from this frightening but fascinating gabble with an effort.

'Yeah,' he said. 'I guess so.'

'The voices are coming from your own head. The cave finds them and amplifies them somehow. Sends them on. It's a little upsetting, I know, but it's meaningless.'

'Why'd you let em kill me, bro?' Henry sobbed. 'I kept thinking you'd come, but you never did!'

'Meaningless,' Eddie said. 'Okay, got it. What do we do now?'

'According to both stories I've heard of this place-Callahan's and Henchick's-the door will open when I open the box.'

Eddie laughed nervously. 'I don't even want you to take the box out of the bag, how's that for chickenshit?'

'If you've changed your mind…'

Eddie was shaking his head. 'No. I want to go through with it.' He flashed a sudden, bright grin. 'You're not worried about me scoring, are you? Finding the man and getting high?'

From deep in the cave, Henry exulted, 'It's China White, bro! Them niggers sell the best!'

'Not at all,' Roland said. 'There are plenty of things I am worried about, but you returning to your old habits isn't one of them.'

'Good.' Eddie stepped a little farther into the cave, looking at the free-standing door. Except for the hieroglyphics on the front and the crystal knob with the rose etched on it, this one looked exactly like the ones on the beach. 'If you go around-?'

'If you go around, the door's gone,' Roland said. 'There is a hell of a drop-off, though… all the way to Na'ar, for all I know. I'd mind that, if I were you.'

'Good advice, and Fast Eddie says thankya.' He tried the crystal doorknob and found it wouldn't budge in either direction. He had expected that, too. He stepped back.

Roland said, 'You need to think of New York. Of Second Avenue in particular, I think. And of the time. The year of nineteen and seven-seven.'

'How do you think of a year?'

When Roland spoke, his voice betrayed a touch of impatience. 'Think of how it was on the day you and Jake followed Jake's earlier self, I suppose.'

Eddie started to say that was the wrong day, it was too early, then closed his mouth. If they were right about the rules, he couldn't go back to that day, not todash, not in the flesh, either. If they were right, time over there was somehow hooked to time over here, only running a little faster. If they were right about the rules… if there were rules…

Well, why don't you just go and see?

'Eddie? Do you want me to try hypnotizing you?' Roland had drawn a shell from his gunbelt. 'It can make you see the past more clearly.'

'No. I think I better do this straight and wide-awake.'

Eddie opened and closed his hands several times, taking and releasing deep breaths as he did so. His heart wasn't running particularly fast-was going slow, if anything-but each beat seemed to shiver through his entire body. Christ, all this would have been so much easier if there were just some controls you could set, like in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine or that movie about the Morlocks!

'Hey, do I look all right?' he asked Roland. 'I mean, if I land on Second Avenue at high noon, how much attention am I going to attract?'

'If you appear in front of people,' Roland said, 'probably quite a lot. I'd advise you to ignore anyone who wants to palaver with you on the subject and vacate the area immediately.'

'That much I know. I meant how do I look clotheswise?'

Roland gave a small shrug. 'I don't know, Eddie. It's your city, not mine.'

Eddie could have demurred. Brooklyn was his city. Had been, anyway. As a rule he hadn't gone into Manhattan from one month to the next, thought of it almost as another country. Still, he supposed he knew what Roland meant. He inventoried himself and saw a plain flannel shirt with horn buttons above dark-blue jeans with burnished nickel rivets instead of copper ones, and a button-up fly. (Eddie had seen zippers in Lud, but none since.) He reckoned he would pass for normal on the street. New York normal, at least. Anyone who gave him a second look would think cafe waiter/artist-wannabe playing hippie on his day off. He didn't think most people would even bother with the first look, and that was absolutely to the good. But there was one thing he could add-

'Have you got a piece of rawhide?' he asked Roland.

From deep in the cave, the voice of Mr. Tubther, his fifth-grade teacher, cried out with lugubrious intensity. 'You had potential! You were a wonderful student, and look at what you turned into! Why did you let your brother spoil you?'

To which Henry replied, in sobbing outrage: 'He let me die! He killed me!'

Roland swung his purse off his shoulder, put it on the floor at the mouth of the cave beside the pink bag, opened it, rummaged through it. Eddie had no idea how many things were in there; he only knew he'd never seen the bottom of it. At last the gunslinger found what Eddie had asked for and held it out.

While Eddie tied back his hair with the hank of rawhide (he thought it finished off the artistic-hippie look quite nicely), Roland took out what he called his swag-bag, opened it, and began to empty out its contents. There was the partially depleted sack of tobacco Callahan had given him, several kinds of coin and currency, a sewing kit, the mended cup he had turned into a rough compass not far from Shardik's clearing, an old scrap of map, and the newer one the Tavery twins had drawn. When the bag was empty, he took the big revolver with the sandalwood grip from the holster on his left hip. He rolled the cylinder, checked the loads, nodded, and snapped the cylinder back into place. Then he put the gun into the swag-bag, yanked the lacings tight, and tied them in a clove hitch that would come loose at a single pull. He held the bag out to Eddie by the worn strap.

At first Eddie didn't want to take it. 'Nah, man, that's yours.'

'These last weeks you've worn it as much as I have. Probably more.'

'Yeah, but this is New York we're talking about, Roland. In New York, everybody steals.'

'They won't steal from you. Take the gun.'

Eddie looked into Roland's eyes for a moment, then took the swag-bag and slung the strap over his shoulder. 'You've got a feeling.'

'A hunch, yes.'

'Ka at work?'

Roland shrugged. 'It's always at work.'

'All right,' Eddie said. 'And Roland-if I don't make it back, take care of Suze.'