'Yeah, Nort, yeah!' The little one sounds almost rabid with excitement now, and Callahan knows the real hurting's about to start. He remembers an old Dylan song called 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' and thinks , It fits. Better than 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' that's for sure.
He's enveloped by a fog of garlic and tomatoes. Someone had Italian for dinner, possibly while Callahan was getting his face slapped in the hospital. A shape looms out of the dazzle. The big guy. 'Doesn't matter to you who hired us,' says George/Nort. 'Thing is, we were hired, and as far as anyone's ever gonna be concerned, Faddah, you're just another niggah-lovvah like that guy Magruder and the Hitler Brothers done cleaned your clock. Mostly we're dedicated, but we will work for a dollar, like any good American.' He pauses, and then comes the ultimate, existential absurdity: 'We're popular in Queens, you know .'
'Fuck yourself, ' Callahan says, and then the entire right side of his face explodes in agony. Lennie has kicked him with a steel-toed work-boot, breaking his jaw in what will turn out to be a total of four places.
'Nice talk ,' he hears Lennie say dimly from the insane universe where God has clearly died and lies stinking on the floor of a pillaged heaven. 'Nice talk for a Faddah.' Then his voice goes up, becomes the excited, begging whine of a child: 'Let me, Nort! C'mon, let me! I wanna do it !'
'No way,' George/Nort says. 'I do the forehead swastikas, you always fuck them up. You can do the ones on his hands, okay?'
'He's tied up! His hands re covered in thatfuckin — '
'After he's dead, ' George/Nort explains with a terrible patience. 'We'll unwrap his hands after he's dead and you can — '
'Nort , please/ I'll do that thing you like. And listen!' Lennie's voice brightens. 'Tell you what! If I start to fuck up, you tell me and I'll stop! Please, Nort ? Please?'
'Well …' Callahan has heard this tone before, too. The indulgent father who can't deny a favorite, if mentally challenged, child. 'Well, okay .'
His vision is clearing. He wishes to God it wasn't. He sees Lennie remove a flashlight from the backpack. George has pulled a folded scalpel from his fanny-pack. They exchange tools. George trains the flashlight on Callahan's rapidly swelling face. Callahan winces and slits his eyes. He has just enough vision to see Lennie swing the scalpel out with his tiny yet dexterous fingers.
'Ain't this gonna be good/' Lennie cries. He is rapturous with excitement. 'Ain't this gonna be so good /'
'Just don't fuck it up,' George says.
Callahan thinks , If this was a movie, the cavalry would come just about now. Or the cops. Or fucking Sherlock Holmes in H. G. Wells's time machine.
But Lennie kneels in front of him, the hardon in his pants all too visible, and the cavalry doesn't come. He leans forward with the scalpel outstretched, and the cops don't come. Callahan can smell not garlic and tomatoes on this one but sweat and cigarettes.
'Wait a second, Bill,' George/Nort says, 'I got an idea, let me draw it on for you first. I got a pen in my pocket. '
'Fuck that,' Lennie/Bill breathes. He stretches out the scalpel. Callahan can see the razor- sharp blade trembling as the little man's excitement is communicated to it, and then it passes from his field of vision. Something cold traces his brow, then turns hot, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't come. Blood pours into his eyes, dousing his vision, and neither does James Bond Perry Mason Travis McGee Hercule Poirot Miss Fucking Marple.
The long white face of Barlow rises in his mind. The vampire's hair floats around his head. Barlow reaches out. 'Come, false priest, 'he's saying 'learn of a true religion.' There are two dry snapping sounds as the vampire's fingers break off the arms of the cross his mother gave him.
'Oh you fuckin nutball ,' George/Nort groans, 'that ain't a swastika, that's a fuckin cross/ Gimme that !'
'Stop it, Nort, gimme a chance, I ain't done!'
Squabbling over him like a couple of kids while his balls ache and his broken jaw throbs and his sight drowns in blood. All those seventies-era arguments about whether or not God was dead, and Christ, look at him! Just look at him! How could there be any doubt?
And that is when the cavalry arrives.
NINE 'What exactly do you mean?' Roland asked. 'I would hear this part very well, Pere.'
They were still sitting at the table on the porch, but the meal was finished, the sun was down, and Rosalita had brought 'seners. Callahan had broken his story long enough to ask her to sit with them and so she had. Beyond the screens, in the rectory's dark yard, bugs hummed, thirsty for the light.
Jake touched what was in the gunslinger's mind. And, suddenly impatient with all this secrecy, he put the question himself: 'Were we the cavalry, Pere?'
Roland looked shocked, then actually amused. Callahan only looked surprised.
'No,' he said. 'I don't think so.'
'You didn't see them, did you?' Roland asked. 'You never actually saw the people who rescued you.'
'I told you the Hitler Brothers had a flashlight,' Callahan said. 'Say true. But these other guys, the cavalry…'
TEN
