Wolves of the Calla

'I'm sorry. I just wanted to say I'm glad you came here. We had some fun, didn't we?'

'Yeah,' Jake said, and thought: No one would believe he's older than me. He sounds about… I don't know… five, or something. That was mean, but Jake had an idea that if he wasn't mean, he might actually start to cry. He hated Roland for sentencing him to this last night at the Rocking B. 'Yeah, fun big-big.'

'I'm gonna miss you. But I'll bet they put up a statue of you guys in the Pavilion, or something.' Guys was a word Benny had picked up from Jake, and he used it every chance he got.

'I'll miss you, too,' Jake said.

'You're lucky, getting to follow the Beam and travel places. I'll probably be here in this shitty town the rest of my life.'

No, you won't. You and your Da' are going to do plenty of wandering… if you're lucky and they let you out of town, that is. What you're going to do, I think, is spend the rest of your life dreaming about this shitty little town. About a place that was home. And it's my doing. I saw... and I told. But what else could I do?

'Jake?'

He could stand no more. It would drive him mad. 'Go to sleep, Benny. And let me go to sleep.'

'Okay.'

Benny rolled over to face the wall. In a little while his breathing slowed. A little while after that, he began snoring. Jake lay awake until nearly midnight, and then he went to sleep, too. And had a dream. In it Roland was down on his knees in the dust of East Road, facing a great horde of oncoming Wolves that stretched from the bluffs to the river. He was trying to reload, but both of his hands were stiff and one was short two fingers. The bullets fell uselessly in front of him. He was still trying to load his great revolver when the Wolves rode him down.

THIRTEEN

Dawn of Wolf's Eve. Eddie and Susannah stood at the window of the Pere's guest room, looking down the slope of lawn to Rosa's cottage.

'He's found something with her,' Susannah said. 'I'm glad for him.'

Eddie nodded. 'How you feeling?'

She smiled up at him. 'I'm fine,' she said, and meant it. 'What about you, sugar?'

'I'll miss sleeping in a real bed with a roof over my head, and I'm anxious to get to it, but otherwise I'm fine, too.'

'Things go wrong, you won't have to worry about the accommodations.'

'That's true,' Eddie said, 'but I don't think they're going to go wrong. Do you?'

Before she could answer, a gust of wind shook the house and whistled beneath the eaves. The seminon saying good day to ya, Eddie guessed.

'I don't like that wind,' she said. 'It's a wild-card.'

Eddie opened his mouth.

'And if you say anything about ka, I'll punch you in the nose.'

Eddie closed his mouth again and mimed zipping it shut. Susannah went to his nose anyway, a brief touch of knuckles like a feather. 'We've got a fine chance to win,' she said. 'They've had everything their own way for a long time, and it's made em fat. Like Blaine.'

'Yeah. Like Blaine.'

She put a hand on his hip and turned him to her. 'But things could go wrong, so I want to tell you something while it's just the two of us, Eddie. I want to tell you how much I love you.' She spoke simply, with no drama.

'I know you do,' he said, 'but I'll be damned if I know why.'

'Because you make me feel whole,' she said. 'When I was younger, I used to vacillate between thinking love was this great and glorious mystery and thinking it was just something a bunch of Hollywood movie producers made up to sell more tickets back in the Depression, when Dish Night kind of played out.'

Eddie laughed.

'Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You… Eddie, you fill me up.' She took his hand and began to lead him back to the bed. 'And right now I'd like you to fill me up the other way.'

'Suze, is it safe?'

'I don't know,' she said, 'and I don't care.'

They made love slowly, the pace only building near the end. She cried out softly against his shoulder, and in the instant before his own climax blotted out reflection, Eddie thought: I'm going to lose her if I'm not careful. I don't know how I know that… but I do. She'll just disappear.

'I love you, too,' he said when they were finished and lying side by side again.

'Yes.' She took his hand. 'I know. I'm glad.'

'It's good to make someone glad,' he said. 'I didn't use to know that.'

'It's all right,' Susannah said, and kissed the corner of his mouth. 'You learn fast.'

FOURTEEN

There was a rocker in Rosa's little living room. The gunslinger sat in it naked, holding a clay saucer in one hand. He was smoking and looking out at the sunrise. He wasn't sure he would ever again see it rise from this place.

Rosa came out of the bedroom, also naked, and stood in the doorway looking at him. 'How're y'bones, tell me, I beg?'

Roland nodded. 'That oil of yours is a wonder.'

''Twon'tlast.'

'No,' Roland said. 'But there's another world-my friends' world-and maybe they have something there that will. I've got a feeling we'll be going there soon.'

'More fighting to do?'

'I think so, yes.'

'You won't be back this way in any case, will you?'

Roland looked at her. 'No.'

'Are you tired, Roland?'

'To death,' said he.

'Come back to bed a little while, then, will ya not?'

He crushed out his smoke and stood. He smiled. It was a younger man's smile. 'Say thankya.'

'Thee's a good man, Roland of Gilead.'

He considered this, then slowly shook his head. 'All my life I've had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow.'

She held out a hand to him. 'Come ye, Roland. Come commala.' And he went to her.

FIFTEEN

Early that afternoon, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and Pere Callahan rode out the East Road-which was actually a north road at this point along the winding Devar-Tete Whye-with shovels concealed in the bedrolls at the backs of their saddles. Susannah had been excused from this duty on account of her pregnancy. She had joined the Sisters of Oriza at the Pavilion, where a larger tent was being erected and preparations for a huge evening meal were already going forward. When they left, Calla Bryn Sturgis had already begun to fill up, as if for a Fair-Day. But there was no whooping and hollering, no impudent rattle of firecrackers, no rides being set up on the Green. They had seen neither Andy nor Ben Slightman, and that was good.

'Tian?' Roland asked Eddie, breaking the rather heavy silence among them.

'He'll meet me at the rectory. Five o'clock.'

'Good,' Roland said. 'If we're not done out here by four, you're excused to ride back on your own.'

'I'll go with you, if you like,' Callahan said. The Chinese believed that if you saved a man's life, you were responsible for him ever after. Callahan had never given the idea much thought, but after pulling Eddie back from the ledge above the Doorway Cave, it seemed to him there might be truth in the notion.

'Better you stay with us,' Roland said. 'Eddie can take care of this. I've got another job for you out here. Besides digging, I mean.'

'Oh? And what might that be?' Callahan asked.

Roland pointed at the dust-devils twisting and whirling ahead of them on the road. 'Pray away this damned wind. And the sooner the better. Before tomorrow morning, certainly.'