Song of Susannah

On the corner of Lex and Sixty-first they stopped again. Jake pointed across the street. Callahan saw the green awning and nodded. It was imprinted with a cartoon porker that was grinning blissfully in spite of having been roasted a bright and smoking red. The dixie pig was written on the awning’s overhang. Parked in a row in front of it were five long black limousines with their accent lights glowing a slightly blurred yellow in the dark. Callahan realized for the first time that a mist was creeping down the Avenue.

“Here,” Jake said, and handed him the Ruger. The boy rummaged in his pockets and came up with two big handfuls of cartridges. They gleamed dully in the pervasive orange glow of the streetlamps. “Put em all in your breast pocket, Pere. Easier to get at that way, all right?”

Callahan nodded.

“Ever shot a gun before?”

“No,” Callahan said. “Have you ever fired one of those plates?”

Jake’s lips parted in a grin. “Benny Slightman and I snuck a bunch of the practice dishes out to the riverbank and had a match one night. He wasn’t much good, but…”

“Let me guess. You were.”

Jake shrugged, then nodded. He had no words to express how fine the plates had felt in his hands, how savagely right. But perhaps that was natural. Susannah had also taken quickly and naturally to throwing the Oriza. That Pere Callahan had seen for himself.

“All right, what’s our plan?” Callahan asked. Now that he had decided to go through it all the way to the end, he was more than willing to give leadership over to the boy. Jake was, after all, the gunslinger.

The boy shook his head. “There is none,” he said, “not really. I go in first. You right behind me. Once we’re through the door, we spread apart. Ten feet between us any time we have ten feet to give, Pere-do you understand? So that no matter how many there are or how close they are, no one of them can get both of us at the same time.”

This was Roland’s teaching, and Callahan recognized it as such. He nodded.

“I’ll be able to follow her by touch, and Oy will be able to by scent,” Jake said. “Move with us. Shoot whatever asks to be shot, and without hesitation, do you understand?”

“Aye.”

“If you kill something that has what looks like a useful weapon, take it. If you can scoop it up on the move, that is. We have to keep moving. We have to keep taking it to them. We have to be relentless. Can you scream?”

Callahan considered it, then nodded.

“Scream at them,” Jake said. “I’ll be doing the same. And I’ll be moving. Maybe running, more likely at a good fast walk. Make sure that every time I look on my right, I see the side of your face.”

“You’ll see it,” Callahan said, and thought: Until one of them drops me, at least. “After we bring her out of there, Jake, am I a gunslinger?'

Jake’s grin was wolfish, all his doubts and fears put behind him. “Khef, ka, and ka-tet,” he said. “Look, there’s the walk light. Let’s cross.”

EIGHTEEN

The driver’s seat of the first limo was empty. There was a fellow in a cap and a uniform behind the wheel of the second, but to Pere Callahan the sai looked asleep. Another man in cap and uniform was leaning against the sidewalk side of the third limo. The coal of a cigarette made a lazy arc from his side to his mouth and then back down again. He glanced their way, but with no appreciable interest. What was there to see? A man going on elderly, a boy going on teenage, and a scurrying dog. Big deal.

When they gained the other side of Sixty-first, Callahan saw a sign on a chrome stand in front of the restaurant:

CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION

What exactly did you call tonight’s function at the Dixie Pig? Callahan wondered. A baby shower? A birthday party?

“What about Oy?” he asked Jake in a low voice.

“Oy stays with me.”

Only four words, but they were enough to convince Callahan Jake knew what he did: this was their night to die. Callahan didn’t know if they’d manage to go out in a blaze of glory, but they would be going out, all three of them. The clearing at the end of the path was now hidden from their view by only a single turn; they would enter it three abreast. And little as he wanted to die while his lungs were still clear and his eyes could still see, Callahan understood that things could have been much worse. Black Thirteen had been stuffed away in another dark place where it would sleep, and if Roland did indeed remain standing when the hurly-burly was done, the battle lost and won, then he would track it down and dispose of it as he saw fit. Meanwhile-

“Jake, listen to me a second. This is important.”

Jake nodded, but he looked impatient.

“Do you understand that you are in danger of death, and do you ask forgiveness for your sins?”

The boy understood he was being given last rites. “Yes,” he said.

“Are you sincerely sorry for those sins?”

“Yes.”

“Repent of them?”

“Yes, Pere.”

Callahan sketched the sign of the cross in front of him. “Nomine Patris, nomini Fili, nomine-”

Oy barked. Just once, but with excitement. And it was a bit muffled, that bark, for he had found something in the gutter and was holding it up to Jake in his mouth. The boy bent and took it.

“What?” Callahan asked. “What is it?”

“It’s what she left for us,” Jake said. He sounded enormously relieved, almost hopeful again. “What she dropped while Mia was distracted and crying about the song. Oh man-we might have a chance, Pere. We might just have a chance after all.”

He put the object in the Pere’s hand. Callahan was surprised by its weight, and then struck almost breathless by its beauty. He felt the same dawning of hope. It was probably stupid, but it was there, all right.

He held the scrimshaw turtle up to his face and ran the pad of his index finger over the question-mark-shaped scratch on its shell. Looked into its wise and peaceful eyes. “How lovely it is,” he breathed. “Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “Probably. She calls it the skolpadda, and it may help us, but it can’t kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there.” He nodded toward the Dixie Pig. “Only we can do that, Pere. Will you?”

“Oh yes,” Callahan said calmly. He put the turtle, the skolpadda, into his breast pocket. “I’ll shoot until the bullets are gone or I’m dead. If I run out of bullets before they kill me, I’ll club them with the gun-butt.”

“Good. Let’s go give them some last rites.”

They walked past the closed sign on its chrome post, Oy trotting between them, his head up and his muzzle wearing that toothy grin. They mounted the three steps to the double doors without hesitating. At the top, Jake reached into the pouch and brought out two of the plates. He tapped them together, nodded at the dull ringing sound, and then said: “Let’s see yours.”

Callahan lifted the Ruger and held the barrel beside his right cheek like a duelist. Then he touched his breast pocket, which bulged and drooped with shells.

Jake nodded, satisfied. “Once we’re in, we stay together. Always together, with Oy between. On three. And once we start, we don’t stop until we’re dead.”

“Never stop.”

“Right. Are you ready?”

“Yes. God’s love on you, boy.”

“And on you, Pere. One… two… three.” Jake opened the door and together they went into dim light and the sweet tangy smell of roasting pork.

STAVE: Commala-come-ki ,
There’s a time to live and one to die.
With your back against the final wall
Ya gotta let the bullets fly.

RESPONSE: Commala-come ki !
Let the bullets fly!
Don’t ’ee mourn for me, my lads
When it comes my day to die.

13th STANZA