Wolves of the Calla

TWO

He went through thinking about two things: the year 1977 and the men's room on the main floor of the New York Public Library. He stepped into a bathroom stall with graffiti on the walls (BANGO SKANK had been there) and the sound of a flushing urinal somewhere to his left. He waited for whoever it was to leave, then stepped out of the stall.

It took him only ten minutes to find what he needed. When he stepped back through the door into the cave, he was holding a book under his arm. He asked Eddie to step outside with him, and didn't have to ask twice. In the fresh air and breezy sunshine (the previous night's clouds had blown away), Eddie took the bullets from his ears and examined the book. It was called Yankee Highways.

'The Father's a library thief,' Eddie remarked. 'You're exactly the sort of person who makes the fees go up.'

'I'll return it someday,' Callahan said. He meant it. 'The important thing is I got lucky on my second try. Check page one-nineteen.'

Eddie did. The photograph showed a stark white church sitting on a hill above a dirt road. East Stoneham Methodist Meeting Hall, the caption said. Built 1819. Eddie thought: Add em, come out with nineteen. Of course.

He mentioned this to Callahan, who smiled and nodded. 'Notice anything else?'

Of course he did. 'It looks like the Calla Gathering Hall.'

'So it does. Its twin, almost.' Callahan took a deep breath. 'Are you ready for round two?'

'I guess so.'

'This one's apt to be longer, but you should be able to pass the time. There's plenty of reading matter.'

'I don't think I could read,' Eddie said. 'I'm too fucking nervous, pardon my French. Maybe I'll see what's in the lining of the bag.'

But Eddie forgot about the object in the lining of the pink bag; it was Susannah who eventually found that, and when she did, she was no longer herself.

THREE

Thinking 1977 and holding the book open to the picture of the Methodist Meeting Hall in East Stoneham, Callahan stepped through the unfound door for the second time. He came out on a brilliantly sunny New England morning. The church was there, but it had been painted since its picture had been taken for Yankee Highways, and the road had been paved. Sitting nearby was a building that hadn't been in the photo: the East Stoneham General Store. Good.

He walked down there, followed by the floating doorway, reminding himself not to spend one of the quarters, which had come from his own little stash, unless he absolutely had to. The one from Jake was dated 1969, which was okay. His, however, was from 1981, and that wasn't. As he walked past the Mobil gas pumps (where regular was selling for forty-nine cents a gallon), he transferred it to his back pocket.

When he entered the store-which smelled almost exactly like Took's-a bell jingled. To the left was a stack of Portland Press- Heralds, and the date gave him a nasty little shock. When he'd taken the book from the New York Public Library, not half an hour ago by his body's clock, it had been June 26th. The date on these papers was the 27th.

He took one, reading the headlines (a flood in New Orleans, the usual unrest among the homicidal idiots of the mideast) and noting the price: a dime. Good. He'd get change back from his '69 quarter. Maybe buy a piece of good old Made in the U.S.A. salami. The clerk looked him over with a cheerful eye as he approached the counter.

'That do it?' he asked.

'Well, I tell you what,' Callahan said. 'I could use a point toward the post office, if that does ya.'

The clerk raised an eyebrow and smiled. 'You sound like you're from these parts.'

'Do you say so, then?' Callahan asked, also smiling.

'Ayuh. Anyway, post office is easy. Ain't but a mile down this road, on your left.' He pronounced road rud, exactly as Jamie Jaffords might have done.

'Good enough. And do you sell salami by the slice?'

'I'll sell it just about any old way you want to buy it,' the clerk said amiably. 'Summer visitor, are you?' It came out summah visitah, and Callahan almost expected him to add Tell me, I beg.

'You could call me that, I guess,' Callahan said.

FOUR

In the cave, Eddie fought against the faint but maddening jangle of the chimes and peered through the half-open door. Callahan was walking down a country road. Goody gumdrops for him. Meantime, maybe Mrs. Dean's little boy would try having himself a bit of a read. With a cold (and slightly trembling) hand, he reached into the bookcase and pulled out a volume two down from one that had been turned upside down, one that would certainly have changed his day had he happened to grab it. What he came up with instead was Four Short Novels of Sherlock Holmes. Ah, Holmes, another great sage and eminent junkie. Eddie opened to A Study in Scarlet and began to read. Every now and then he found himself looking down at the box, where Black Thirteen pulsed out its weird force. He could just see a curve of glass. After a little bit he gave up trying to read, only looking at the curve of glass, growing more and more fascinated. But the chimes were fading, and that was good, wasn't it? After a little while he could hardly hear them at all. A little while after that, a voice crept past the bullets in his ears and began to speak to him. Eddie listened.

FIVE

'Pardon me, ma'am.'

'Ayuh?' The postmistress was a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed to meet the public with hair of a perfect beauty-shop blue- white.

'I'd like to leave a letter for some friends of mine,' Callahan said. 'They're from New York, and they'd likely be General Delivery customers.' He had argued with Eddie that Calvin Tower, on the run from a bunch of dangerous hoods who would almost certainly still want his head on a stick, wouldn't do anything so dumb as sign up for mail. Eddie had reminded him of how Tower had been about his fucking precious first editions, and Callahan had finally agreed to at least try this.

'Summer folk?'

'Do ya,' Callahan agreed, but that wasn't quite right. 'I mean ayuh. Their names are Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau. I guess that isn't information you're supposed to give someone just in off the street, but-'

'Oh, we don't bother much about such things out in these parts,' she said. Parts came out pahts. 'Just let me check the list… we have so many between Memorial Day and Labor Day…'

She picked up a clipboard with three or four tattered sheets of paper on it from her side of the counter. Lots of handwritten names. She flicked over the first sheet to the second, then from the second to the third.

'Deepneau!' she said. 'Ayuh, there's that one. Now…just let me see if I can find't'other 'un…'

'Never mind,' Callahan said. All at once he felt uneasy, as though something had gone wrong back on the other side. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing but the door, and the cave, and Eddie sitting there cross-legged with a book in his lap.

'Got somebody chasin ya?' the postlady asked, smiling.

Callahan laughed. It sounded forced and stupid to his own ears, but the postlady seemed to sense nothing wrong. 'If I were to write Aaron a note and put it in a stamped envelope, would you see that he gets it when he comes in? Or when Mr. Tower comes in?'

'Oh, no need to buy a stamp,' said she, comfortably. 'Glad to do it.'

Yes, it was like the Calla. Suddenly he liked this woman very much. Liked her big-big.

Callahan went to the counter by the window (the door doing a neat do-si-do around him when he turned) and jotted a note, first introducing himself as a friend of the man who had helped Tower with Jack Andolini. He told Deepneau and Tower to leave their car where it was, and to leave some of the lights on in the place where they were staying, and then to move somewhere close by-a barn, an abandoned camp, even a shed. To do it immediately. Leave a note with directions to where you are under the driver's side floormat of your car, or under the back porch step, he wrote. We'll be in touch. He hoped he was doing this right; they hadn't talked things out this far, and he'd never expected to have to do any cloak-and-dagger stuff. He signed as Roland had told him to: Callahan, of the Eld. Then, in spite of his growing unease, he added another line, almost slashing the letters into the paper: And make this trip to the post office your LAST. How stupid can you be???

He put the note in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote AARON DEEPNEAU OR CALVIN TOWER, GENERAL DELIVERY On the front.

He took it back to the counter. 'I'll be happy to buy a stamp,' he told her again.

'Nawp, just two cent' for the envelope and we're square.'

He gave her the nickel left over from the store, took back his three cents change, and headed for the door. The ordinary one.