Wolves of the Calla

ONE

If anything about the ride into Calla Bryn Sturgis surprised Eddie, it was how easily and naturally he took to horseback. Unlike Susannah and Jake, who had both ridden at summer camp, Eddie had never even petted a horse. When he'd heard the clop of approaching hooves on the morning after what he thought of as Todash Number Two, he'd felt a sharp pang of dread. It wasn't the riding he was afraid of, or the animals themselves; it was the possibility-hell, the strong probability - of looking like a fool. What kind of gunslinger had never ridden a horse?

Yet Eddie still found time to pass a word with Roland before they came. "It wasn't the same last night."

Roland raised his eyebrows.

"It wasn't nineteen last night."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean."

"I don't know, either," Jake put in, "but he's right. Last night New York felt like the real deal. I mean, I know we were todash, but still…"

"Real," Roland had mused.

And Jake, smiling, said: "Real as roses."

TWO

The Slightmans were at the head of the Calla's party this time, each leading a pair of mounts by long hacks. There was nothing very intimidating about the horses of Calla Bryn Sturgis; certainly they weren't much like the ones Eddie had imagined galloping along the Drop in Roland's tale of long-ago Mejis. These beasts were stubby, sturdy-legged creatures with shaggy coats and large, intelligent eyes. They were bigger than Shetland ponies, but a very long cast from the fiery-eyed stallions he had been expecting. Not only had they been saddled, but a proper bedroll had been lashed to each mount.

As Eddie walked toward his (he didn't need to be told which it was, he knew: the roan), all his doubts and worries fell away. He only asked a single question, directed at Ben Slightman the Younger after examining the stirrups. "These are going to be too short for me, Ben-can you show me how to make them longer?"

When the boy dismounted to do it himself, Eddie shook his head. "It'd be best if I learned," he said. And with no embarrassment at all.

As the boy showed him, Eddie realized he didn't really need the lesson. He saw how it was done almost as soon as Benny's fingers flipped up the stirrup, revealing the leather tug in back. This wasn't like hidden, subconscious knowledge, and it didn't strike him as anything supernatural, either. It was just that, with the horse a warm and fragrant reality before him, he understood how everything worked. He'd only had one experience exactly like this since coming to Mid-World, and that had been the first time he'd strapped on one of Roland's guns.

"Need help, sugar?" Susannah asked.

"Just pick me up if I go off on the other side," he grunted, but of course he didn't do any such thing. The horse stood steady, swaying just the slightest bit as Eddie stepped into the stirrup and then swung into the plain black ranchhand's saddle.

Jake asked Benny if he had a poncho. The foreman's son looked doubtfully up at the cloudy sky. "I really don't think it's going to rain," he'd said. "It's often like this for days around Reaptide-"

"I want it for Oy." Perfectly calm, perfectly certain. He feels exactly like I do, Eddie thought. As if he's done this a thousand times before.

The boy drew a rolled oilskin from one of his saddlebags and handed it to Jake, who thanked him, put it on, and then tucked Oy into the capacious pocket which ran across the front like a kangaroo's pouch. There wasn't a single protest from the bumbler, either. Eddie thought: If I told Jake I'd expected Oy to trot along behind us like a sheepdog, would he say, "He always rides like this"?No… but he might think it.

As they set off, Eddie realized what all this reminded him of: stories he'd heard of reincarnation. He had tried to shake the idea off, to reclaim the practical, tough-minded Brooklyn boy who had grown up in Henry Dean's shadow, and wasn't quite able to do it. The thought of reincarnation might have been less unsettling if it had come to him head-on, but it didn't. What he thought was that he couldn't be from Roland's line, simply couldn't. Not unless Arthur Eld had at some point stopped by Co-Op City, that was. Like maybe for a redhot and a piece of Dahlie Lundgren's fried dough. Stupid to project such an idea from the ability to ride an obviously docile horse without lessons. Yet the idea came back at odd moments through the day, and had followed him down into sleep last night: the Eld. The line of the Eld.

THREE

They nooned in the saddle, and while they were eating popkins and drinking cold coffee, Jake eased his mount in next to Roland's. Oy peered at the gunslinger with bright eyes from the front pocket of the poncho. Jake was feeding the bumbler pieces of his popkin, and there were crumbs caught in Oy's whiskers.

"Roland, may I speak to you as dinh?" Jake sounded slightly embarrassed.

"Of course." Roland drank coffee and then looked at the boy, interested, all the while rocking contentedly back and forth in the saddle.

"Ben-that is, both Slightmans, but mostly the kid-asked if I'd come and stay with them. Out at the Rocking B."

"Do you want to go?" Roland asked.

The boy's cheeks flushed thin red. "Well, what I thought is that if you guys were in town with the Old Fella and I was out in the country-south of town, you ken-then we'd get two different pictures of the place. My Dad says you don't see anything very well if you only look at it from one viewpoint."

"True enough," Roland said, and hoped neither his voice nor his face would give away any of the sorrow and regret he suddenly felt. Here was a boy who was now ashamed of being a boy. He had made a friend and the friend had invited him to stay over, as friends sometimes do. Benny had undoubtedly promised that Jake could help him feed the animals, and perhaps shoot his bow (or his bah, if it shot bolts instead of arrows). There would be places Benny would want to share, secret places he might have gone to with his twin in other times. A platform in a tree, mayhap, or a fishpond in the reeds special to him, or a stretch of riverbank where pirates of eld were reputed to have buried gold and jewels. Such places as boys go. But a large part of Jake Chambers was now ashamed to want to do such things. This was the part that had been despoiled by the doorkeeper in Dutch Hill, by Gasher, by the Tick-Tock Man. And by Roland himself, of course. Were he to say no to Jake's request now, the boy would very likely never ask again. And never resent him for it, which was even worse. Were he to say yes in the wrong way-with even the slightest trace of indulgence in his voice, for instance-the boy would change his mind.

The boy. The gunslinger realized how much he wanted to be able to go on calling Jake that, and how short the time to do so was apt to be. He had a bad feeling about Calla Bryn Sturgis.

"Go with them after they dine us in the Pavilion tonight," Roland said. "Go and do ya fine, as they say here."

"Are you sure? Because if you think you might need me-"

"Your father's saying is a good one. My old teacher-"

"Cort or Vannay?"

"Cort. He used to tell us that a one-eyed man sees flat. It takes two eyes, set a little apart from each other, to see things as they really are. So aye. Go with them. Make the boy your friend, if that seems natural. He seems likely enough."

"Yeah," Jake said briefly. But the color was going down in his cheeks again. Roland was pleased to see this.

"Spend tomorrow with him. And his friends, if he has a gang he goes about with."

Jake shook his head. "It's far out in the country. Ben says that Eisenhart's got plenty of help around the place, and there are some kids his age, but he's not allowed to play with them. Because he's the foreman's son, I guess."

Roland nodded. This did not surprise him. "You'll be offered graf tonight in the Pavilion. Do you need me to tell you it's iced tea once we're past the first toast?"

Jake shook his head.

Roland touched his temple, his lips, the corner of one eye, his lips again. "Head clear. Mouth shut. See much. Say little."

Jake grinned briefly and gave him a thumbs-up. "What about you?"

"The three of us will stay with the priest tonight. I'm in hopes that tomorrow we may hear his tale."

"And see…" They had fallen a bit behind the others, but Jake still lowered his voice. "See what he told us about?"

"That I don't know," Roland said. "The day after tomorrow, we three will ride out to the Rocking B. Perhaps noon with sai Eisenhart and have a bit of palaver. Then, over the next few days, the four of us will have a look at this town, both the inner and the outer. If things go well for you at the ranch, Jake, I'd have you stay there as long as you like and as much as they'll have you."

"Really?" Although he kept his face well (as the saying went), the gunslinger thought Jake was very pleased by this.

"Aye. From what I make out-what I ken -there's three big bugs in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Overholser's one. Took, the storekeeper, is another. The third one's Eisenhart. I'd hear what you make of him with great interest."

"You'll hear," Jake said. "And thankee-sai." He tapped his throat three times. Then his seriousness broke into a broad grin. A boy's grin. He urged his horse into a trot, moving up to tell his new friend that yes, he might stay the night, yes, he could come and play.

FOUR

"Holy wow," Eddie said. The words came out low and slow, almost the exclamation of an awestruck cartoon character. But after nearly two months in the woods, the view warranted an exclamation. And there was the element of surprise. At one moment they'd just been clopping along the forest trail, mostly by twos (Overholser rode alone at the head of the group, Roland alone at its tail). At the next the trees were gone and the land itself fell away to the north, south, and east. They were thus presented with a sudden, breathtaking, stomach-dropping view of the town whose children they were supposed to save.

Yet at first, Eddie had no eyes at all for what was spread out directly below him, and when he glanced at Susannah and Jake, he saw they were also looking beyond the Calla. Eddie didn't have to look around at Roland to know he was looking beyond, too. Definition of a wanderer, Eddie thought, a guy who's always looking beyond.

"Aye, quite the view, we tell the gods thankee," Overholser said complacently; and then, with a glance at Callahan, "Man Jesus as well, a'course, all gods is one when it comes to thanks, so I've heard, and 'tis a good enough saying."

He might have prattled on. Probably did; when you were the big farmer, you usually got to have your say, and all the way to the end. Eddie took no notice. He had returned his attention to the view.

Ahead of them, beyond the village, was a gray band of river running south. The branch of the Big River known as Devar-Tete Whye, Eddie remembered. Where it came out of the forest, the Devar-Tete ran between steep banks, but they lowered as the river entered the first cultivated fields, then fell away entirely. He saw a few stands of palm trees, green and improbably tropical. Beyond the moderate-sized village, the land west of the river was a brilliant green shot through everywhere with more gray. Eddie was sure that on a sunny day, that gray would turn a brilliant blue, and that when the sun was directly overhead, the glare would be too bright to look at. He was looking at rice-fields. Or maybe you called them paddies.

Beyond them and east of the river was desert, stretching for miles. Eddie could see parallel scratches of metal running into it, and made them for railroad tracks.

And beyond the desert-or obscuring the rest of it-was simple blackness. It rose into the sky like a vapory wall, seeming to cut into the low-hanging clouds.

"Yon's Thunderclap, sai," Zalia Jaffords said.

Eddie nodded. "Land of the Wolves. And God knows what else."

"Yer-bugger," Slightman the Younger said. He was trying to sound bluff and matter-of-fact, but to Eddie he looked plenty scared, maybe on the verge of tears. But the Wolves wouldn't take him, surely-if your twin died, that made you a singleton by default, didn't it? Well, it had certainly worked for Elvis Presley, but of course the King hadn't come from Calla Bryn Sturgis. Or even Calla Lockwood to the south.

"Naw, the King was a Mis'sippi boy," Eddie said, low.

Tian turned in his saddle to look at him. "Beg your pardon, sai?"

Eddie, not aware that he'd spoken aloud, said: "I'm sorry. I was talking to myself."

Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions) came striding back up the path from ahead of them in time to hear this. "Those who hold conversation with themselves keep sorry company. This is an old saying of the Calla, sai Eddie, don't take it personally, I beg."

"And, as I've said before and will undoubtedly say again, you can't get snot off a suede jacket, my friend. An old saying from Calla Bryn Brooklyn."

Andy's innards clicked. His blue eyes flashed. "Snot: mucus from the nose. Also a disrespectful or supercilious person. Suede: this is a leather product which-"

"Never mind, Andy," Susannah said. "My friend is just being silly. He does this quite frequently."

"Oh yes," Andy said. "He is a child of winter. Would you like me to tell your horoscope, Susannah-sai? You will meet a handsome man! You will have two ideas, one bad and one good! You will have a dark-haired-"

"Get out of here, idiot," Overholser said. "Right into town, straight line, no wandering. Check that all's well at the Pavilion. No one wants to hear your goddamned horoscopes, begging your pardon, Old Fella."

Callahan made no reply. Andy bowed, tapped his metal throat three times, and set off down the trail, which was steep but comfortingly wide. Susannah watched him go with what might have been relief.

"Kinda hard on him, weren't you?" Eddie asked.

"He's but a piece of machinery," Overholser said, breaking the last word into syllables, as if speaking to a child.

"And he can be annoying," Tian said. "But tell me, sais, what do you think of our Calla?"

Roland eased his horse in between Eddie's and Callahan's. "It's very beautiful," he said. "Whatever the gods may be, they have favored this place. I see corn, sharproot, beans, and… potatoes? Are those potatoes?"

"Aye, spuds, do ya," Slightman said, clearly pleased by Roland's eye.

"And yon's all that gorgeous rice," Roland said.

"All smallholds by the river," Tian said, "where the water's sweet and slow. And we know how lucky we are. When the rice comes ready-either to plant or to harvest-all the women go together. There's singing in the fields, and even dancing."

"Come-come-commala," Roland said. At least that was what Eddie heard.

Tian and Zalia brightened with surprise and recognition. The Slightmans exchanged a glance and grinned. "Where did you hear The Rice Song?" die Elder asked. "When?"

"In my home," said Roland. "Long ago. Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla." He pointed to the west, away from the river. "There's the biggest farm, deep in wheat. Yours, sai Overholser?"

"So it is, say thankya."

"And beyond, to the south, more farms… and then the ranches. That one's cattle… that one sheep… that one cattle… more cattle… more sheep…"

"How can you tell the difference from so far away?" Susannah asked.

"Sheep eat the grass closer to the earth, lady-sai," Overholser said. "So where you see the light brown patches of earth, that's sheep-graze land. The others-what you'd call ocher, I guess-that's cattle-graze."

Eddie thought of all the Western movies he'd seen at the Majestic: Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Lee Van Cleef. "In my land, they tell legends of range-wars between the ranchers and the sheep-farmers," he said. "Because, it was told, the sheep ate the grass too close. Took even the roots, you ken, so it wouldn't grow back again."

"That's plain silly, beg your pardon," Overholser said. "Sheep do crop grass close, aye, but then we send the cows over it to water. The manure they drop is full of seed."

"Ah," Eddie said. He couldn't think of anything else. Put that way, the whole idea of range wars seemed exquisitely stupid.

"Come on," Overholser said. "Daylight's wasting, do ya, and there's a feast laid on for us at the Pavilion. The whole town'll be there to meet you."

And to give us a good looking-over, too, Eddie thought.

"Lead on," Roland said. "We can be there by late day. Or am I wrong?"

"Nup," Overholser said, then drove his feet into his horse's sides and yanked its head around (just looking at this made Eddie wince). He headed down the path. The others followed.

FIVE

Eddie never forgot their first encounter with those of the Calla; that was one memory always within easy reach. Because everything that happened had been a surprise, he supposed, and when everything's a surprise, experience takes on a dreamlike quality. He remembered the way the torches changed when the speaking was done-their strange, varied light. He remembered Oy's unexpected salute to the crowd. The upturned faces and his suffocating panic and his anger at Roland. Susannah hoisting herself onto the piano bench in what the locals called the musica. Oh yeah, that memory always. You bet. But even more vivid than this memory of his beloved was that of the gunslinger.

Of Roland dancing.

But before any of these things came the ride down the Calla's high street, and his sense of forboding. His premonition of bad days on the way.

SIX

They reached the town proper an hour before sunset. The clouds parted and let through the day's last red light. The street was empty. The surface was oiled dirt. The horses' hooves made muffled thuds on the wheel-marked hardpack. Eddie saw a livery stable, a place called the Travelers' Rest that seemed a combination lodging-house and eating-house, and, at the far end of the street, a large two-story that just about had to be the Calla's Gathering Hall. Off to the right of this was the flare of torches, so he supposed there were people waiting there, but at the north end of town where they entered there were none.

The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland's tale of Susan's final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose around her neck. Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had called lamb-slaughterer's eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost gently at her as she passed on her way to… well, on her way to charyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old People.

As they rode into Calla Bryn Sturgis, Eddie kept expecting that man, those lamb-slaughterer's eyes, and the handful of cornshucks. Because this town felt bad to him. Not evil-evil as Mejis had likely been on the night of Susan Delgado's death- but bad in a simpler way. Bad as in bad luck, bad choices, bad omens. Bad ka, maybe.

He leaned toward Slightman the Elder. "Where in the heck is everyone, Ben?"

"Yonder," Slightman said, and pointed to the flare of the torches.

"Why are they so quiet?" Jake asked.

"They don't know what to expect," Callahan said. "We're cut off here. The outsiders we do see from time to time are the occasional peddler, harrier, gambler… oh, and the lake-boat marts sometimes stop in high summer."

"What's a lake-boat mart?" Susannah asked.

Callahan described a wide flatboat, paddlewheel-driven and gaily painted, covered with small shops. These made their slow way down the Devar-Tete Whye, stopping to trade at the Callas of the Middle Crescent until their goods were gone. Shoddy stuff for the most part, Callahan said, but Eddie wasn't sure he trusted him entirely, at least on the subject of the lake-boat marts; he spoke with the almost unconscious distaste of the longtime religious.

"And the other outsiders come to steal their children," Callahan concluded. He pointed to the left, where a long wooden building seemed to take up almost half the high street. Eddie counted not two hitching rails or four, but eight. Long ones. "Took's General Store, may it do ya fine," Callahan said, with what might have been sarcasm.

They reached the Pavilion. Eddie later put the number present at seven or eight hundred, but when he first saw them- a mass of hats and bonnets and boots and work-roughened hands beneath the long red light of that day's evening sun-the crowd seemed enormous, untellable.

They will throw shit at us, he thought. Throw shit at us and yell "Charyou tree." The idea was ridiculous but also strong.

The Calla-folk moved back on two sides, creating an aisle of green grass which led to a raised wooden platform. Ringing the Pavilion were torches caught in iron cages. At that point, they still all flared a quite ordinary yellow. Eddie's nose caught the strong reek of oil.

Overholser dismounted. So did the others of his party. Eddie, Susannah, and Jake looked at Roland. Roland sat as he was for a moment, leaning slightly forward, one arm cast across the pommel of his saddle, seeming lost in his own thoughts. Then he took off his hat and held it out to the crowd. He tapped his throat three times. The crowd murmured. In appreciation or surprise? Eddie couldn't tell. Not anger, though, definitely not anger, and that was good. The gunslinger lifted one booted foot across the saddle and lightly dismounted. Eddie left his horse more carefully, aware of all the eyes on him. He'd put on Susannah's harness earlier, and now he stood next to her mount, back-to. She slipped into the harness with the ease of long practice. The crowd murmured again when they saw her legs were missing from just above the knees.

Overholser started briskly up the path, shaking a few hands along the way. Callahan walked directly behind him, occasionally sketching the sign of the cross in the air. Other hands reached out of the crowd to secure the horses. Roland, Eddie, and Jake walked three abreast. Oy was still in the wide front pocket of the poncho Benny had loaned Jake, looking about with interest.

Eddie realized he could actually smell the crowd-sweat and hair and sunburned skin and the occasional splash of what the characters in the Western movies usually called (with contempt similar to Callahan's for the lake-boat marts) "foo-foo water." He could also smell food: pork and beef, fresh bread, frying onions, coffee and graf. His stomach rumbled, yet he wasn't hungry. No, not really hungry. The idea that the path they were walking would disappear and these people would close in on them wouldn't leave his mind. They were so quiet! Somewhere close by he could hear the first nightjars and whippoor-wills tuning up for evening.

Overholser and Callahan mounted the platform. Eddie was alarmed to see that none of the others of the party which had ridden out to meet them did. Roland walked up the three broad wooden steps without hesitation, however. Eddie followed, conscious that his knees were a little weak.

"You all right?" Susannah murmured in his ear.

"So far."

To the left of the platform was a round stage with seven men on it, all dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and sashes. Eddie recognized the instruments they were holding, and although the mandolin and banjo made him think their music would probably be of the shitkicking variety, the sight of them was still reassuring. They didn't hire bands to play at human sacrifices, did they? Maybe just a drummer or two, to wind up the spectators.

Eddie turned to face the crowd with Susannah on his back. He was dismayed to see that the aisle that had begun where the high street ended was indeed gone now. Faces tilted up to look at him. Women and men, old and young. No expression on those faces, and no children among them. These were faces that spent most of their time out in the sun and had the cracks to prove it. That sense of foreboding would not leave him.

Overholser stopped beside a plain wooden table. On it was a large billowy feather. The farmer took it and held it up. The crowd, quiet to begin with, now fell into a silence so disquietingly deep that Eddie could hear the rattling rales in some old party's chest as he or she breathed.

"Put me down, Eddie," Susannah said quietly. He didn't like to, but he did.

"I'm Wayne Overholser of Seven-Mile Farm," Overholser said, stepping to the edge of the stage with the feather held before him. "Hear me now, I beg."

"We say thankee-sai," they murmured.

Overholser turned and held one hand out to Roland and his tet, standing there in their travel-stained clothes (Susannah didn't stand, exactly, but rested between Eddie and Jake on her haunches and one propped hand). Eddie thought he had never felt himself studied more eagerly.

"We men of the Calla heard Tian Jaffords, George Telford, Diego Adams, and all others who would speak at the Gathering Hall," Overholser said. "There I did speak myself. 'They'll come and take the children,' I said, meaning the Wolves, a'course, 'then they'll leave us alone again for a generation or more. So 'tis, so it's been, I say leave it alone.' I think now those words were mayhap a little hasty."

A murmur from the crowd, soft as a breeze.

"At this same meeting we heard Pere Callahan say there were gunslingers north of us."

Another murmur. This one was a little louder. Gunslingers… Mid-World… Gilead.

"It was taken among us that a party should go and see. These are the folk we found, do ya. They claim to be… what Pere Callahan said they were." Overholser now looked uncomfortable. Almost as if he were suppressing a fart. Eddie had seen this expression before, mostly on TV, when politicians faced with some fact they couldn't squirm around were forced to backtrack. "They claim to be of the gone world. Which is to say…"

Go on, Wayne, Eddie thought, get it out. You can do it.

"… which is to say of Eld's line."

"Gods be praised!" some woman shrieked. "Gods've sent em to save our babbies, so they have!"

There were shushing sounds. Overholser waited for quiet with a pained look on his face, then went on. "They can speak for themselves-and must-but I've seen enough to believe they may be able to help us with our problem. They carry good guns-you see em-and they can use em. Set my watch and warrant on it, and say thankya."

This time the murmur from the crowd was louder, and Eddie sensed goodwill in it. He relaxed a little.

"All right, then, let em stand before'ee one by one, that ye might hear their voices and see their faces very well. This is their dinh." He lifted a hand to Roland.

The gunslinger stepped forward. The red sun set his left cheek on fire; the right was painted yellow with torchglow. He put out one leg. The thunk of the worn bootheel on the boards was very clear in the silence; Eddie for no reason thought of a fist knocking on a coffintop. He bowed deeply, open palms held out to them. "Roland of Gilead, son of Steven," he said. "The Line of Eld."

They sighed.

"May we be well-met." He stepped back, and glanced at Eddie.

This part he could do. "Eddie Dean of New York," he said. "Son of Wendell." At least that's what Ma always claimed, he thought. And then, unaware he was going to say it: "The Line of Eld. The ka-tet of Nineteen."

He stepped back, and Susannah moved forward to the edge of the platform. Back straight, looking out at them calmly, she said, "I am Susannah Dean, wife of Eddie, daughter of Dan, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of Nineteen, may we be well-met and do ya fine." She curtsied, holding out her pretend skirts.

At this there was both laughter and applause.

While she spoke her piece, Roland bent to whisper a brief something in Jake's ear. Jake nodded and then stepped forward confidently. He looked very young and very handsome in the day's end light.

He put out his foot and bowed over it. The poncho swung comically forward with Oy's weight. "I am Jake Chambers, son of Elmer, the Line of Eld, the ka-tet of the Ninety and Nine."

Ninety-nine? Eddie looked at Susannah, who offered him a very small shrug. What's this ninety-nine shit? Then he thought what the hell. He didn't know what the ka-tet of Nineteen was, either, and he'd said it himself.

But Jake wasn't done. He lifted Oy from the pocket of Benny Slightman's poncho. The crowd murmured at the sight of him. Jake gave Roland a quick glance-Are you sure? it asked- and Roland nodded.

At first Eddie didn't think Jake's furry pal was going to do anything. The people of the Calla-the folken -had gone completely quiet again, so quiet that once again the evensong of the birds could be heard clearly.

Then Oy rose up on his rear legs, stuck one of them forward, and actually bowed over it. He wavered but kept his balance. His little black paws were held out with the palms up, like Roland's. There were gasps, laughter, applause. Jake looked thunderstruck.

"Oy!" said the bumbler. "Eld! Thankee!" Each word clear. He held the bow a moment longer, then dropped onto all fours and scurried briskly back to Jake's side. The applause was thunderous. In one brilliant, simple stroke, Roland (for who else, Eddie thought, could have taught die bumbler to do that) had made these people into their friends and admirers. For tonight, at least.

So that was the first surprise: Oy bowing to the assembled Calla folken and declaring himself an-tet with his traveling-mates. The second came hard on its heels. "I'm no speaker," Roland said, stepping forward again. "My tongue tangles worse than a drunk's on Reap-night. But Eddie will set us on with a word, I'm sure."

This was Eddie's turn to be thunderstruck. Below them, the crowd applauded and stomped appreciatively on the ground. There were cries of Thankee-sai and Speak you well and Hear him, hear him. Even the band got into the act, playing a flourish that was ragged but loud.

He had time to shoot Roland a single frantic, furious look: What in the blue fuck are you doing to me? The gunslinger looked back blandly, then folded his arms across his chest. The applause was fading. So was his anger. It was replaced by terror. Overholser was watching him with interest, arms crossed in conscious or unconscious imitation of Roland. Below him, Eddie could see a few individual faces at the front of the crowd: the Slightmans, the Jaffordses. He looked in the other direction and there was Callahan, blue eyes narrowed. Above them, the ragged cruciform scar on his forehead seemed to glare.

What the hell am I supposed to say to them?

Better say somethin, Eds, his brother Henry spoke up. They're waiting.

"Cry your pardon if I'm a little slow getting started," he said.

"We've come miles and wheels and more miles and wheels, and you're the first folks we've seen in many a-"

Many a what? Week, month, year, decade?

Eddie laughed. To himself he sounded like the world's biggest idiot, a fellow who couldn't be trusted to hold his own dick at watering-time, let alone a gun. "In many a blue moon."

They laughed at that, and hard. Some even applauded. He had touched the town's funnybone without even realizing it. He relaxed, and when he did he found himself speaking quite naturally. It occurred to him, just in passing, that not so long ago the armed gunslinger standing in front of these seven hundred frightened, hopeful people had been sitting in front of the TV in nothing but a pair of yellowing underpants, eating Cheetos, done up on heroin, and watching Yogi Bear.

"We've come from afar," he said, "and have far yet to go. Our time here will be short, but we'll do what we can, hear me, I beg."

"Say on, stranger!" someone called. "You speak fair!"

Yeah? Eddie thought. News to me, fella.

A few cries of Aye and Do ya.

"The healers in my barony have a saying," Eddie told them. 'First, do no harm.' " He wasn't sure if this was a lawyer-motto or a doctor-motto, but he'd heard it in quite a few movies and TV shows, and it sounded pretty good. "We would do no harm here, do you ken, but no one ever pulled a bullet, or even a splinter from under a kid's fingernail, without spilling some blood."

There were murmurs of agreement. Overholser, however, was poker-faced, and in the crowd Eddie saw looks of doubt. He felt a surprising flush of anger. He had no right to be angry at these people, who had done them absolutely no harm and had refused them absolutely nothing (at least so far), but he was, just the same.

"We've got another saying in the barony of New York," he told them. " 'There ain't no free lunch.' From what we know of your situation, it's serious. Standing up against these Wolves would be dangerous. But sometimes doing nothing just makes people feel sick and hungry."

"Hear him, hear him!" the same someone at the back of the crowd called out. Eddie saw Andy the robot back there, and near him a large wagon full of men in voluminous cloaks of either black or dark blue. Eddie assumed that these were the Manni-folk.

"We'll look around," Eddie said, "and once we understand the problem, we'll see what can be done. If we think the answer's nothing, we'll tip our hats to you and move along." Two or three rows back stood a man in a battered white cowboy hat. He had shaggy white eyebrows and a white mustache to match. Eddie thought he looked quite a bit like Pa Cartwright on that old TV show, Bonanza. This version of the Cartwright patriarch looked less than thrilled with what Eddie was saying.

"If we can help, we'll help," he said. His voice was utterly flat now. "But we won't do it alone, folks. Hear me, I beg. Hear me very well. You better be ready to stand up for what you want. You better be ready to fight for the things you'd keep."

With that he stuck out a foot in front of him-the moccasin he wore didn't produce the same fist-on-coffintop thud, but Eddie thought of it, all the same-and bowed. There was dead silence. Then Tian Jaffords began to clap. Zalia joined him. Benny also applauded. His father nudged him, but the boy went on clapping, and after a moment Slightman the Elder joined in.

Eddie gave Roland a burning look. Roland's own bland expression didn't change. Susannah tugged the leg of his pants and Eddie bent to her.

"You did fine, sugar."

"No thanks to him." Eddie nodded at Roland. But now that it was over, he felt surprisingly good. And talking was really not Roland's thing, Eddie knew that. He could do it when he had no backup, but he didn't care for it.

So now you know what you are, he thought. Roland of Gilead's mouthpiece.

And yet was that so bad? Hadn't Cuthbert Allgood had the job long before him?

Callahan stepped forward. "Perhaps we could set them on a bit better than we have, my friends-give them a proper Calla Bryn Sturgis welcome."

He began to applaud. The gathered folken joined in immediately this time. The applause was long and lusty. There were cheers, whistles, stamping feet (the foot-stamping a little less than satisfying without a wood floor to amplify the sound). The musical combo played not just one flourish but a whole series of them. Susannah grasped one of Eddie's hands. Jake grasped the other. The four of them bowed like some rock group at the end of a particularly good set, and the applause redoubled.

At last Callahan quieted it by raising his hands. "Serious work ahead, folks," he said. "Serious things to think about, serious things to do. But for now, let's eat. Later, let's dance and sing and be merry!" They began to applaud again and Callahan quieted them again. "Enough!" he cried, laughing. "And you Manni at the back, I know you haul your own rations, but there's no reason on earth for you not to eat and drink what you have with us. Join us, do ya! May it do ya fine!"

May it do us all fine, Eddie thought, and still that sense of foreboding wouldn't leave him. It was like a guest standing on the outskirts of the party, just beyond the glow of the torches. And it was like a sound. A boot heel on a wooden floor. A fist on the lid of a coffin.

SEVEN

Although there were benches and long trestle tables, only the old folks ate their dinners sitting down. And a famous dinner it was, with literally two hundred dishes to choose among, most of them homely and delicious. The doings began with a toast to the Calla. It was proposed by Vaughn Eisenhart, who stood with a bumper in one hand and the feather in the other. Eddie thought this was probably the Crescent's version of the National Anthem.

"May she always do fine!" the rancher cried, and tossed off his cup of graf in one long swallow. Eddie admired the man's throat, if nothing else; Calla Bryn Sturgis graf was so hard that just smelling it made his eyes water.

"DO YA! " the folken responded, and cheered, and drank.

At that moment the torches ringing the Pavilion went the deep crimson of the recently departed sun. The crowd oohed and aahed and applauded. As technology went, Eddie didn't think it was such of a much-certainly not compared to Blaine the Mono, or the dipolar computers that ran Lud-but it cast a pretty light over the crowd and seemed to be non-toxic. He applauded with the rest. So did Susannah. Andy had brought her wheelchair and unfolded it for her with a compliment (he also offered to tell her about the handsome stranger she would soon meet). Now she wheeled her way amongst the little knots of people with a plate of food on her lap, chatting here, moving on, chatting there and moving on again. Eddie guessed she'd been to her share of cocktail parties not much different from this, and was a little jealous of her aplomb.

Eddie began to notice children in the crowd. Apparenty the folken had decided their visitors weren't going to just haul out their shooting irons and start a massacre. The oldest kids were allowed to wander about on their own. They traveled in the protective packs Eddie recalled from his own childhood, scoring massive amounts of food from the tables (although not even the appetites of voracious teenagers could make much of a dent in that bounty). They watched the outlanders, but none quite dared approach.

The youngest children stayed close to their parents. Those of the painful 'tween age clustered around the slide, swings, and elaborate monkey-bar construction at the very far end of the Pavilion. A few used the stuff, but most of them only watched the party with the puzzled eyes of those who are somehow caught just wrongways. Eddie's heart went out to them. He could see how many pairs there were-it was eerie-and guessed that it was these puzzled children, just a little too old to use the playground equipment unselfconsciously, who would give up the greatest number to the Wolves… if the Wolves were allowed to do their usual thing, that was. He saw none of the "roont" ones, and guessed they had deliberately been kept apart, lest they cast a pall on the gathering. Eddie could understand that, but hoped they were having a party of their own somewhere. (Later he found that this was exactly the case- cookies and ice cream behind Callahan's church.)

Jake would have fit perfectly into the middle group of children, had he been of the Calla, but of course he wasn't. And he'd made a friend who suited him perfectly: older in years, younger in experience. They went about from table to table, grazing at random. Oy trailed at Jake's heels contentedly enough, head always swinging from side to side. Eddie had no doubt whatever that if someone made an aggressive move toward Jake of New York (or his new friend, Benny of the Calla), that fellow would find himself missing a couple of fingers. At one point Eddie saw the two boys look at each other, and although not a word passed between them, they burst out laughing at exactly the same moment. And Eddie was reminded so forcibly of his own childhood friendships that it hurt.

Not that Eddie was allowed much time for introspection. He knew from Roland's stories (and from having seen him in action a couple of times) that the gunslingers of Gilead had been much more than peace officers. They had also been messengers, accountants, sometimes spies, once in awhile even executioners. More than anything else, however, they had been diplomats. Eddie, raised by his brother and his friends with such nuggets of wisdom as Why can't you eat me like your sister does and I fucked your mother and she sure was fine, not to mention the ever-popular I don't shut up I grow up, and when I look at you I throw up, would never have thought of himself a diplomat, but on the whole he thought he handled himself pretty well. Only Telford was hard, and the band shut him up, say thankya.

God knew it was a case of sink or swim; the Calla-folk might be frightened of the Wolves, but they weren't shy when it came to asking how Eddie and the others of his tet would handle them. Eddie realized Roland had done him a very big favor, making him speak in front of the entire bunch of them. It had warmed him up a little for this.

He told all of them the same things, over and over. It would be impossible to talk strategy until they had gotten a good look at the town. Impossible to tell how many men of the Calla would need to join them. Time would show. They'd peek at daylight. There would be water if God willed it. Plus every other cliche he could think of. (It even crossed his mind to promise them a chicken in every pot after the Wolves were vanquished, but he stayed his tongue before it could wag so far.) A smallhold farmer named Jorge Estrada wanted to know what they'd do if the Wolves decided to light the village on fire. Another, Garrett Strong, wanted Eddie to tell them where the children would be kept safe when the Wolves came. "For we can't leave em here, you must kennit very well," he said. Eddie, who realized he kenned very little, sipped at his graf and was noncommittal. A fellow named Neil Faraday (Eddie couldn't tell if he was a smallhold farmer or just a hand) approached and told Eddie this whole thing had gone too far. "They never take all the children, you know," he said. Eddie thought of asking Faraday what he'd make of someone who said, "Well, only two of them raped my wife," and decided to keep the comment to himself. A dark-skinned, mustached fellow named Louis Haycox introduced himself and told Eddie he had decided Tian Jaffords was right. He'd spent many sleepless nights since the meeting, thinking it over, and had finally decided that he would stand and fight. If they wanted him, that was. The combination of sincerity and terror Eddie saw in the man's face touched him deeply. This was no excited kid who didn't know what he was doing but a full-grown man who probably knew all too well.

So here they came with their questions and there they went with no real answers, but looking more satisfied even so. Eddie talked until his mouth was dry, then exchanged his wooden cup of graf for cold tea, not wanting to get drunk. He didn't want to eat any more, either; he was stuffed. But still they came. Cash and Estrada. Strong and Echeverria. Winkler and Spalter (cousins of Overholser's, they said). Freddy Rosario and Farren Posella… or was it Freddy Posella and Farren Rosario?

Every ten or fifteen minutes the torches would change color again. From red to green, from green to orange, from orange to blue. The jugs of graf circulated. The talk grew louder. So did the laughter. Eddie began to hear more frequent cries of Yer-bugger and something that sounded like Dive-down!, always followed by laughter.

He saw Roland speaking with an old man in a blue cloak. The old fellow had the thickest, longest, whitest beard Eddie had ever seen outside of a TV Bible epic. He spoke earnestly, looking up into Roland's weatherbeaten face. Once he touched the gunslinger's arm, pulled it a little. Roland listened, nodded, said nothing-not while Eddie was watching him, anyway. But he's interested, Eddie thought. Oh yeah -old long tall and ugly's hearing something that interests him a lot.

The musicians were trooping back to the bandstand when someone else stepped up to Eddie. It was the fellow who had reminded him of Pa Cartwright.

"George Telford," he said. "May you do well, Eddie of New York." He gave his forehead a perfunctory tap with the side of his fist, then opened the hand and held it out. He wore rancher's headgear-a cowboy hat instead of a farmer's sombrero-but his palm felt remarkably soft, except for a line of callus running along the base of his fingers. That's where he holds the reins, Eddie thought, and when it comes to work, that's probably it.

Eddie gave a little bow. "Long days and pleasant nights, sai Telford." It crossed his mind to ask if Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe were back at the Ponderosa, but he decided again to keep his wiseacre mouth shut.

"May'ee have twice the number, son, twice the number." He looked at the gun on Eddie's hip, then up at Eddie's face. His eyes were shrewd and not particularly friendly. "Your dinh wears the mate of that, I ken."

Eddie smiled, said nothing.

"Wayne Overholser says yer ka-babby put on quite a shooting exhibition with another 'un. I believe yer wife's wearing it tonight?"

"I believe she is," Eddie said, not much caring for that ka-babby thing. He knew very well that Susannah had the Ruger. Roland had decided it would be better if Jake didn't go armed out to Eisenhart's Rocking B.

"Four against forty'd be quite a pull, wouldn't you say?" Telford asked. "Yar, a hard pull that'd be. Or mayhap there might be sixty come in from the east; no one seems to remember for sure, and why would they? Twenty-three years is a long time of peace, tell God aye and Man Jesus thankya."

Eddie smiled and said a little more nothing, hoping Telford would move along to another subject. Hoping Telford would go away, actually.

No such luck. Pissheads always hung around: it was almost a law of nature. "Of course four armed against forty… or sixty… would be a sight better than three armed and one standing by to raise a cheer. Especially four armed with hard calibers, may you hear me."

"Hear you just fine," Eddie said. Over by the platform where they had been introduced, Zalia Jaffords was telling Susannah something. Eddie thought Suze also looked interested. She gets the farmer's wife, Roland gets the Lord of the fuckin Rings, Jake gets to make a friend, and what do I get? A guy who looks like Pa Cartwright and cross-examines like Perry Mason.

"Do you have more guns?" Telford asked. "Surely you must have more, if you think to make a stand against the Wolves. Myself, I think the idea's madness; I've made no secret of it. Vaughn Eisenhart feels the same-"

"Overholser felt that way and changed his mind," Eddie said in a just-passing-the-time kind of way. He sipped tea and looked at Telford over the rim of his cup, hoping for a frown. Maybe even a brief look of exasperation. He got neither.

"Wayne the Weathervane," Telford said, and chuckled. "Yar, yar, swings this way and that. Wouldn't be too sure of him yet, young sai."

Eddie thought of saying, If you think this is an election you better think again, and then didn't. Mouth shut, see much, say little.

"Do'ee have speed-shooters, p'raps?" Telford asked. "Or grenados?"

"Oh well," Eddie said, "that's as may be."

" "I never heard of a woman gunslinger."

"No?"

"Or a boy, for that matter. Even a 'prentice. How are we to know you are who you say you are? Tell me, I beg."

"Well, that's a hard one to answer," Eddie said. He had taken a strong dislike to Telford, who looked too old to have children at risk.

"Yet people will want to know," Telford said. "Certainly before they bring the storm."

Eddie remembered Roland's saying We may be cast on but no man may cast us back. It was clear they didn't understand that yet. Certainly Telford didn't. Of course there were questions that had to be answered, and answered yes; Callahan had mentioned that and Roland had confirmed it. Three of them. The first was something about aid and succor. Eddie didn't think those questions had been asked yet, didn't see how they could have been, but he didn't think they would be asked in the Gathering Hall when the time came. The answers might be given by little people like Posella and Rosario, who didn't even know what they were saying. People who did have children at risk.

"Who are you really?" Telford asked. "Tell me, I beg."

"Eddie Dean, of New York. I hope you're not questioning my honesty. I hope to Christ you're not doing that."

Telford took a step back, suddenly wary. Eddie was grimly glad to see it. Fear wasn't better than respect, but by God it was better than nothing. "Nay, not at all, my friend! Please! But tell me this-have you ever used the gun you carry? Tell me, I beg."

Eddie saw that Telford, although nervous of him, didn't really believe it. Perhaps there was still too much of the old Eddie Dean, the one who really had been of New York, in his face and manner for this rancher-sai to believe it, but Eddie didn't think that was it. Not the bottom of it, anyway. Here was a fellow who'd made up his mind to stand by and watch creatures from Thunderclap take the children of his neighbors, and perhaps a man like that simply couldn't believe in the simple, final answers a gun allowed. Eddie had come to know those answers, however. Even to love them. He remembered their single terrible day in Lud, racing Susannah in her wheelchair under a gray sky while the god-drums pounded. He remembered Frank and Luster and Topsy the Sailor; thought of a woman named Maud kneeling to kiss one of the lunatics Eddie had shot to death. What had she said? You shouldn't've shot Winston, for 'twas his birthday. Something like that.

"I've used this one and the other one and the Ruger as well," he said. "And don't you ever speak to me that way again, my friend, as if the two of us were on the inside of some funny joke."

"If I offended in any way, gunslinger, I cry your pardon."

Eddie relaxed a little. Gunslinger. At least the silver-haired son of a bitch had the wit to say so even if he might not believe so.

The band produced another flourish. The leader slipped his guitar-strap over his head and called, "Come on now, you all! That's enough food! Time to dance it off and sweat it out, so it is!"

Cheers and yipping cries. There was also a rattle of explosions that caused Eddie to drop his hand, as he had seen Roland drop his on a good many occasions.

"Easy, my friend," Telford said. "Only little bangers. Children setting off Reap-crackers, you ken."

"So it is," Eddie said. "Cry your pardon."

"No need." Telford smiled. It was a handsome Pa Cartwright smile, and in it Eddie saw one thing clear: this man would never come over to their side. Not that was, until and unless every Wolf out of Thunderclap lay dead for the town's inspection in this very Pavilion. And if that happened, he would claim to have been with them from the very first.

EIGHT

The dancing went on until moonrise, and that night the moon showed clear. Eddie took his turn with several ladies of the town. Twice he waltzed with Susannah in his arms, and when they danced the squares, she turned and crossed-allamand left, allamand right-in her wheelchair with pretty precision. By the ever-changing light of the torches, her face was damp and delighted. Roland also danced, gracefully but (Eddie thought) with no real enjoyment or flair for it. Certainly there was nothing in it to prepare them for what ended the evening. Jake and Benny Slightman had wandered off on their own, but once Eddie saw them kneeling beneath a tree and playing a game that looked suspiciously like mumblety-peg.

When the dancing was done, there was singing. This began with the band itself-a mournful love-ballad and then an uptempo number so deep in the Calla's patois that Eddie couldn't follow the lyric. He didn't have to in order to know it was at least mildly ribald; there were shouts and laughter from the men and screams of glee from the ladies. Some of the older ones covered their ears.

After these first two tunes, several people from the Calla mounted the bandstand to sing. Eddie didn't think any of them would have gotten very far on Star Search, but each was greeted warmly as they stepped to the front of the band and were cheered lustily (and in the case of one pretty young matron, lustfully) as they stepped down. Two girls of about nine, obviously identical twins, sang a ballad called "Streets of Campara" in perfect, aching harmony, accompanied by just a single guitar which one of them played. Eddie was struck by the rapt silence in which the folken listened. Although most of the men were now deep in drink, not a single one of these broke the attentive quiet. No baby-bangers went off. A good many (the one named Haycox among them) listened with tears streaming down their faces. If asked earlier, Eddie would have said of course he understood the emotional weight beneath which this town was laboring. He hadn't. He knew that now.

When the song about the kidnapped woman and the dying cowboy ended, there was a moment of utter silence-not even the nightbirds cried. It was followed by wild applause. Eddie thought, If they showed hands on what to do about the Wolves right now, not even Pa Cartwright would dare vote to stand aside.

The girls curtsied and leaped nimbly down to the grass. Eddie thought that would be it for the night, but then, to his surprise, Callahan climbed on stage.

He said, "Here's an even sadder song my mother taught me" and then launched into a cheerful Irish ditty called "Buy Me Another Round You Booger You." It was at least as dirty as the one the band had played earlier, but this time Eddie could understand most of the words. He and the rest of the town gleefully joined in on the last line of every verse: Before yez put me in the ground, buy me another round, you booger you!

Susannah rolled her wheelchair over to the gazebo and was helped up during the round of applause that followed the Old Fella's song. She spoke briefly to the three guitarists and showed them something on the neck of one of the instruments. They all nodded. Eddie guessed they either knew the song or a version of it.

The crowd waited expectantly, none more so than the lady's husband. He was delighted but not entirely surprised when she voyaged upon "Maid of Constant Sorrow," which she had sometimes sung on the trail. Susannah was no Joan Baez, but her voice was true, full of emotion. And why not? It was the song of a woman who has left her home for a strange place. When she finished, there was no silence, as after the little girls' duet, but a round of honest, enthusiastic applause. There were cries of Yar! and Again! and More staves! Susannah offered no more staves (for she'd sung all the ones she knew) but gave them a deep curtsy, instead. Eddie clapped until his hands hurt, then stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth and whistled.

And then-the wonders of this evening would never end, it seemed-Roland himself was climbing up as Susannah was handed carefully down.

Jake and his new pal were at Eddie's side. Benny Slightman was carrying Oy. Until tonight Eddie would have said the bumbler would have bitten anyone not of Jake's ka-tet who tried that.

"Can he sing?" Jake asked.

"News to me if he can, kiddo," Eddie said. "Let's see." He had no idea what to expect, and was a little amused at how hard his heart was thumping.

NINE

Roland removed his holstered gun and cartridge belt. He handed them down to Susannah, who took them and strapped on the belt high at the waist. The cloth of her shirt pulled tight when she did it, and for a moment Eddie thought her breasts looked bigger. Then he dismissed it as a trick of the light

The torches were orange. Roland stood in their light, gunless and as slim-hipped as a boy. For a moment he only looked out over the silent, watching faces, and Eddie felt Jake's hand, cold and small, creep into his own. There was no need for the boy to say what he was thinking, because Eddie was thinking it himself. Never had he seen a man who looked so lonely, so far from the run of human life with its fellowship and warmth. To see him here, in this place of fiesta (for it was a fiesta, no matter how desperate the business that lay behind it might be), only underlined the truth of him: he was the last. There was no other. If Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy were of his line, they were only a distant shoot, far from the trunk. Afterthoughts, almost. Roland, however… Roland…

Hush, Eddie thought. You don't want to think about such things. Not tonight.

Slowly, Roland crossed his arms over his chest, narrow and tight, so he could lay the palm of his right hand on his left cheek and the palm of his left hand on his right cheek. This meant zilch to Eddie, but the reaction from the seven hundred or so Calla-folk was immediate: a jubilant, approving roar that went far beyond mere applause. Eddie remembered a Rolling Stones concert he'd been to. The crowd had made that same sound when the Stones' drummer, Charlie Watts, began to tap his cowbell in a syncopated rhythm that could only mean "Honky Tonk Woman."

Roland stood as he was, arms crossed, palms on cheeks, until they quieted. "We are well-met in the Calla," he said. "Hear me, I beg."

"We say thankee! " they roared. And "Hear you very well!"

Roland nodded and smiled. "But I and my friends have been far and we have much yet to do and see. Now while we bide, will you open to us if we open to you?"

Eddie felt a chill. He felt Jake's hand tighten on his own. It's the first of the questions, he thought.

Before the thought was completed, they had roared their answer: "Aye, and thankee!"

"Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?"

There goes the second one, Eddie thought, and now it was him squeezing Jake's hand. He saw Telford and the one named Diego Adams exchange a dismayed, knowing look. The look of men suddenly realizing that the deal is going down right in front of them and they are helpless to do anything about it. Too late, boys, Eddie thought.

"Gunslingers!" someone shouted. "Gunslingers fair and true, say thankee! Say thankee in God's name!"

Roars of approval. A thunder of shouts and applause. Cries of thankee and aye and even yer-bugger.

As they quieted, Eddie waited for him to ask the last question, the most important one: Do you seek aid and succor?

Roland didn't ask it. He said merely, "We'd go our way for tonight, and put down our heads, for we're tired. But I'd give'ee one final song and a little step-toe before we leave, so I would, for I believe you know both."

A jubilant roar of agreement met this. They knew it, all right.

"I know it myself, and love it," said Roland of Gilead. "I know it of old, and never expected to hear 'The Rice Song' again from any lips, least of all from my own. I am older now, so I am, and not so limber as I once was. Cry your pardon for the steps I get wrong-"

"Gunslinger, we say thankee!" a woman called. "Such joy we feel, aye!"

"And do I not feel the same?" the gunslinger asked gently. "Do I not give you joy from my joy, and water I carried with the strength of my arm and my heart?"

"Give you to eat of the green-crop," they chanted as one, and Eddie felt his back prickle and his eyes tear up.

"Oh my God," Jake sighed. "He knows so much…"

"Give you joy of the rice," Roland said.

He stood for a moment longer in the orange glow, as if gathering his strength, and then he began to dance something that was caught between a jig and a tap routine. It was slow at first, very slow, heel and toe, heel and toe. Again and again his bootheels made that fist-on-coffintop sound, but now it had rhythm. Just rhythm at first, and then, as the gunslinger's feet began to pick up speed, it was more than rhythm: it became a kind of jive. That was the only word Eddie could think of, the only one that seemed to fit.

Susannah rolled up to them. Her eyes were huge, her smile amazed. She clasped her hands tightly between her breasts. "Oh, Eddie!" she breathed. "Did you know he could do this? Did you have any slightest idea?"

"No," Eddie said. "No idea."

TEN

Faster moved the gunslinger's feet in their battered and broken old boots. Then faster still. The rhythm becoming clearer and clearer, and Jake suddenly realized he knew that beat. Knew it from the first time he'd gone todash in New York. Before meeting Eddie, a young black man with Walkman earphones on his head had strolled past him, bopping his sandaled feet and going "Cha-da-ba, cha-da-fow!" under his breath. And that was the rhythm Roland was beating out on the bandstand, each Bow! accomplished by a forward kick of the leg and a hard skip of the heel on wood.

Around them, people began to clap. Not on the beat, but on the off-beat. They were starting to sway. Those women wearing skirts held them out and swirled them. The expression Jake saw on all the faces, oldest to youngest, was the same: pure joy. Not just that, he thought, and remembered a phrase his English teacher had used about how some books make us feel: the ecstasy of perfect recognition.

Sweat began to gleam on Roland's face. He lowered his crossed arms and started clapping. When he did, the Calla-folken began to chant one word over and over on the beat: "Come!… Come!… Come!… Come! It occurred to Jake that this was the word some kids used for jizz, and he suddenly doubted if that was mere coincidence.

Of course it's not. Like the black guy bopping to that same beat. It's all the Beam, and it's all nineteen.

"Come!… Come!… Come!"

Eddie and Susannah had joined in. Benny had joined in. Jake abandoned thought and did the same.

ELEVEN

In the end, Eddie had no real idea what the words to "The Rice Song" might have been. Not because of the dialect, not in Roland's case, but because they spilled out too fast to follow. Once, on TV, he'd heard a tobacco auctioneer in South Carolina. This was like that. There were hard rhymes, soft rhymes, off-rhymes, even rape-rhymes-words that didn't rhyme at all but were forced to for a moment within the borders of the song. It wasn't a song, not really; it was like a chant, or some delirious streetcorner hip-hop. That was the closest Eddie could come. And all the while, Roland's feet pounded out their entrancing rhythm on the boards; all the while the crowd clapped and chanted Come, come, come, come.

What Eddie could pick out went like this:

Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla

I-sissa 'ay a-bralla

Dey come a-folla

Down come a-rivva

Or-i-za we kivva

Rice be a green-o

See all we seen-o

Seen-o the green-o

Come-come-commala!

Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla

Deep inna walla

Grass come-commala

Under the sky-o

Grass green n high-o

Girl n her fella

Lie down togetha

They slippy 'ay slide-o

Under 'ay sky-o

Come-come-commala

Rice come a-falla!

At least three more verses followed these two. By then Eddie had lost track of the words, but he was pretty sure he got the idea: a young man and woman, planting both rice and children in the spring of the year. The song's tempo, suicidally speedy to begin with, sped up and up until the words were nothing but a jargon-spew and the crowd was clapping so rapidly their hands were a blur. And the heels of Roland's boots had disappeared entirely. Eddie would have said it was impossible for anyone to dance at that speed, especially after having consumed a heavy meal.

Slow down, Roland, he thought. It's not like we can call 911 if you vapor-lock.

Then, on some signal neither Eddie, Susannah, nor Jake understood, Roland and the Calla-folken stopped in mid-career, threw their hands to the sky, and thrust their hips forward, as if in coitus. "COMMALA!" they shouted, and that was the end.

Roland swayed, sweat pouring down his cheeks and brow… and tumbled off the stage into the crowd. Eddie's heart took a sharp upward lurch in his chest. Susannah cried out and began to roll her wheelchair forward. Jake stopped her before she could get far, grabbing one of the push-handles.

"I think it's part of the show!" he said.

"Yar, I'm pretty sure it is, too," Benny Slightman said.

The crowd cheered and applauded. Roland was conveyed through them and above them by willing upraised arms. His own arms were raised to the stars. His chest heaved like a bellows. Eddie watched in a kind of hilarious disbelief as the gunslinger rolled toward them as if on the crest of a wave.

"Roland sings, Roland dances, and to top it all off," he said, "Roland stage-dives like Joey Ramone."

"What are you talking about, sugar?" Susannah asked.

Eddie shook his head. "Doesn't matter. But nothing can top that. It's got to be the end of the party."

It was.

TWELVE

Half an hour later, four riders moved slowly down the high street of Calla Bryn Sturgis. One was wrapped in a heavy salide. Frosty plumes came from their mouths and those of their mounts on each exhale. The sky was filled with a cold strew of diamond-chips, Old Star and Old Mother brightest among them. Jake had already gone his way with the Slightmans to Eisenhart's Rocking B. Callahan led the other three travelers, riding a bit ahead of them. But before leading them anywhere, he insisted on wrapping Roland in the heavy blanket.

"You say it's not even a mile to your place-" Roland began.

"Never mind your blather," Callahan said. "The clouds have rolled away, the night's turned nigh-on cold enough to snow, and you danced a commala such as I've never seen in my years here."

"How many years would that be?" Roland asked.

Callahan shook his head. "I don't know. Truly, gunslinger, I don't. I know well enough when I came here-that was the winter of 1983, nine years after I left the town of Jerusalem's Lot. Nine years after I got this." He raised his scarred hand briefly.

"Looks like a burn," Eddie remarked.

Callahan nodded, but said no more on the subject. "In any case, time over here is different, as you all must very well know."

"It's in drift," Susannah said. "Like the points of the compass."

Roland, already wrapped in the blanket, had seen Jake off with a word… and with something else, as well. Eddie heard the clink of metal as something passed from the hand of the gunslinger to that of the 'prentice. A bit of money, perhaps.

Jake and Benny Slightman rode off into the dark side by side. When Jake turned and offered a final wave, Eddie had returned it with a surprising pang. Christ, you're not his father, he thought. That was true, but it didn't make the pang go away.

"Will he be all right, Roland?" Eddie had expected no other answer but yes, had wanted nothing more than a bit of balm for that pang. So the gunslinger's long silence alarmed him.

At long last Roland replied, "We'll hope so." And on the subject of Jake Chambers, he would say no more.

THIRTEEN

Now here was Callahan's church, a low and simple log building with a cross mounted over the door.

"What name do you call it, Pere?" Roland asked.

"Our Lady of Serenity."

Roland nodded. "Good enough."

"Do you feel it?" Callahan asked. "Do any of you feel it?" He didn't have to say what he was talking about.

Roland, Eddie, and Susannah sat quietly for perhaps an entire minute. At last Roland shook his head.

Callahan nodded, satisfied. "It sleeps." He paused, then added: "Tell God thankya."

"Something's there, though," Eddie said. He nodded toward the church. "It's like a… I don't know, a weight, almost."

"Yes," Callahan said. "Like a weight. It's awful. But tonight it sleeps. God be thanked." He sketched a cross in the frosty air.

Down a plain dirt track (but smooth, and bordered with carefully tended hedges) was another log building. Callahan's house, what he called the rectory.

"Will you tell us your story tonight?" Roland said.

Callahan glanced at the gunslinger's thin, exhausted face and shook his head. "Not a word of it, sai. Not even if you were fresh. Mine is no story for starlight. Tomorrow at breakfast, before you and your friends are off on your errands-would that suit?"

"Aye," Roland said.

"What if it wakes up in the night?" Susannah asked, and cocked her head toward the church. "Wakes up and sends us todash?"

"Then we'll go," Roland said.

"You've got an idea what to do with it, don't you?" Eddie asked.

"Perhaps," Roland said. They started down the path to the house, including Callahan among them as naturally as breathing.

"Anything to do with that old Manni guy you were talking to?" Eddie asked.

"Perhaps," Roland repeated. He looked at Callahan. "Tell me, Pere, has it ever sent you todash? You know the word, don't you?"

"I know it," Callahan said. "Twice. Once to Mexico. A little town called Los Zapatos. And once… I think… to the Castle of the King. I believe that I was very lucky to get back, that second time."

"What King are you talking about?" Susannah asked. "Arthur Eld?"

Callahan shook his head. The scar on his forehead glared in the starlight. "Best not to talk about it now," he said. "Not at night." He looked at Eddie sadly. "The Wolves are coming. Bad enough. Now comes a young man who tells me the Red Sox lost the World Series again… to the Mets?"

"Afraid so," Eddie said, and his description of the final game-a game that made little sense to Roland, although it sounded a bit like Points, called Wickets by some-carried them up to the house. Callahan had a housekeeper. She was not in evidence but had left a pot of hot chocolate on the hob.

While they drank it, Susannah said: "Zalia Jaffords told me something that might interest you, Roland."

The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.

"Her husband's grandfadier lives with them. He's reputed to be the oldest man in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Tian and the old man haven't been on good terms in years-Zalia isn't even sure what they're pissed off about, it's that old-but Zalia gets on with him very well. She says he's gotten quite senile over the last couple of years, but he still has his bright days. And he claims to have seen one of these Wolves. Dead." She paused. "He claims to have killed it himself."

"My soul!" Callahan exclaimed. "You don't say so!"

"I do. Or rather, Zalia did."

"That," Roland said, "would be a tale worth hearing. Was it the last time the Wolves came?"

"No," Susannah said. "And not the time before, when even Overholser would have been not long out of his clouts. The time before that."

"If they come every twenty-three years," Eddie said, "that's almost seventy years ago."

Susannah nodded. "But he was a man grown, even then. He told Zalia that a moit of them stood out on the West Road and waited for the Wolves to come. I don't know how many a moit might be-"

"Five or six," Roland said. He was nodding over his chocolate.

"Anyway, Tian's Gran-pere was among them. And they killed one of the Wolves."

"What was it?" Eddie asked. "What did it look like with its mask off?"

"She didn't say," Susannah replied. "I don't think he told her. But we ought to-"

A snore arose, long and deep. Eddie and Susannah turned, startled. The gunslinger had fallen asleep. His chin was on his breastbone. His arms were crossed, as if he'd drifted off to sleep still thinking of the dance. And the rice.

FOURTEEN

There was only one extra bedroom, so Roland bunked in with Callahan. Eddie and Susannah were thus afforded a sort of rough honeymoon: their first night together by themselves, in a bed and under a roof. They were not too tired to take advantage of it. Afterward, Susannah passed immediately into sleep. Eddie lay awake a litde while. Hesitantly, he sent his mind out in the direction of Callahan's tidy little church, trying to touch the thing that lay within. Probably a bad idea, but he couldn't resist at least trying. There was nothng. Or rather, a nothing in front of a something.

/ could wake it up, Eddie diought. I really think I could.

Yes, and someone with an infected tooth could rap it with a hammer, but why would you?

We'll have to wake it up eventually. I think we're going to need it.

Perhaps, but that was for another day. It was time to let this one go.

Yet for awhile Eddie was incapable of doing that. Images flashed in his mind, like bits of broken mirror in bright sunlight. The Calla, lying spread out below them beneath the cloudy sky, the Devar-Tete Whye a gray ribbon. The green beds at its edge: rice come a-falla. Jake and Benny Slightman looking at each other and laughing without a word passed between them to account for it. The aisle of green grass between the high street and the Pavilion. The torches changing color. Oy, bowing and speaking (Eld! Thankee!) with perfect clarity. Susannah singing: "I've known sorrow all my days."

Yet what he remembered most clearly was Roland standing slim and gunless on the boards with his arms crossed at the chest and his hands pressed against his cheeks; those faded blue eyes looking out at the folken. Roland asking questions, two of three. And then the sound of his boots on the boards, slow at first, then speeding up. Faster and faster, until they were a blur in the torchlight. Clapping. Sweating. Smiling. Yet his eyes didn't smile, not those blue bombardier's eyes; they were as cold as ever.

Yet how he had danced! Great God, how he had danced in the light of the torches.

Come-come-commala, rice come a-falla, Eddie thought.

Beside him, Susannah moaned in some dream.

Eddie turned to her. Slipped his hand beneath her arm so he could cup her breast His last thought was for Jake. They had better take care of him out at that ranch. If they didn't, they were going to be one sorry-ass bunch of cowpunchers.

Eddie slept. There were no dreams. And beneath them as the night latened and die moon set, this borderland world turned like a dying clock.

ONE

Roland awoke from another vile dream of Jericho Hill in the hour before dawn. The horn. Something about Arthur Eld's horn. Beside him in the big bed, the Old Fella slept with a frown on his face, as if caught in his own bad dream. It creased his broad brow zigzag, breaking the arms of the cross scarred into the skin there.

It was pain that had wakened Roland, not his dream of the horn spilling from Cuthbert's hand as his old friend fell. The gunslinger was caught in a vise of it from the hips all the way down to his ankles. He could visualize the pain as a series of bright and burning rings. This was how he paid for his outrageous exertions of the night before. If that was all, all would have been well, but he knew there was more to this than just having danced the commala a little too enthusiastically. Nor was it the rheumatiz, as he had been telling himself these last few weeks, his body's necessary period of adjustment to the damp weather of this fall season. He was not blind to the way his ankles, especially the right one, had begun to thicken. He had observed a similar thickening of his knees, and although his hips still looked fine, when he placed his hands on them, he could feel the way the right one was changing under the skin. No, not the rheumatiz that had afflicted Cort so miserably in his last year or so, keeping him inside by his fire on rainy days. This was something worse. It was arthritis, the bad kind, the dry kind. It wouldn't be long before it reached his hands. Roland would gladly have fed his right one to the disease, if that would have satisfied it; he had taught it to do a good many things since the lobstrosities had taken the first two fingers, but it was never going to be what it was. Only ailments didn't work that way, did they? You couldn't placate them with sacrifices. The arthritis would come when it came and go where it wanted to go.

I might have a year, he thought, lying in bed beside the sleeping religious from Eddie and Susannah and Jake's world. I might even have two.

No, not two. Probably not even one. What was it Eddie sometimes said? Quit kidding yourself. Eddie had a lot of sayings from his world, but that was a particularly good one. A particularly apt one.

Not that he would cry off the Tower if Old Bone-Twist Man took his ability to shoot, saddle a horse, cut a strip of rawhide, even to chop wood for a campfire, so simple a thing as that; no, he was in it until the end. But he didn't relish the picture of riding along behind the others, dependent upon them, perhaps tied to his saddle with the reins because he could no longer hold the pommel. Nothing but a drag-anchor. One they wouldn't be able to pull up if and when fast sailing was required.

If it gets to that, I'll kill myself.

But he wouldn't. That was the truth. Quit kidding yourself.

Which brought Eddie to mind again. He needed to talk to Eddie about Susannah, and right away. This was the knowledge with which he had awakened, and perhaps worth the pain. It wouldn't be a pleasant talk, but it had to be done. It was time Eddie knew about Mia. She would find it more difficult to slip away now that they were in a town-in a house-but she would have to, just the same. She could argue with her baby's needs and her own cravings no more than Roland could argue with the bright rings of pain which circled his right hip and knee and both ankles but had so far spared his talented hands. If Eddie wasn't warned, there might be terrible trouble. More trouble was something they didn't need now; it might sink them.

Roland lay in the bed, and throbbed, and watched the sky lighten. He was dismayed to see that brightness no longer bloomed dead east; it was a little off to the south, now.

Sunrise was also in drift.

TWO

The housekeeper was good-looking, about forty. Her name was Rosalita Munoz, and when she saw the way Roland walked to the table, she said: "One cup coffee, then you come with me."

Callahan cocked his head at Roland when she went to the stove to get the pot. Eddie and Susannah weren't up yet. The two of them had the kitchen to themselves. "How bad is it with you, sir?"

"It's only the rheumatiz," Roland said. "Goes through all my family on my father's side. It'll work out by noon, given bright sunshine and dry air."

"I know about the rheumatiz," Callahan said. "Tell God thankya it's no worse."

"I do." And to Rosalita, who brought heavy mugs of steaming coffee. "I tell you thankya, as well."

She put down the cups, curtsied, and then regarded him shyly and gravely. "I never saw the rice-dance kicked better, sai."

Roland smiled crookedly. "I'm paying for it this morning."

"I'll fix you," she said. "I've a cat-oil, special to me. It'll first take the pain and then the limp. Ask Pere."

Roland looked at Callahan, who nodded.

"Then I'll take you up on it. Thankee-sai."

She curtsied again, and left them.

"I need a map of the Calla," Roland said when she was gone. "It doesn't have to be great art, but it has to be accurate, and true as to distance. Can you draw one for me?"

"Not at all," Callahan said composedly. "I cartoon a little, but I couldn't draw you a map that would take you as far as the river, not even if you put a gun to my head. It's just not a talent I have. But I know two that could help you there." He raised his voice. "Rosalita! Rosie! Come to me a minute, do ya!"

THREE

Twenty minutes later, Rosalita took Roland by the hand, her grip firm and dry. She led him into the pantry and closed the door. "Drop yer britches, I beg," she said. "Be not shy, for I doubt you've anything I haven't seen before, unless men are built summat different in Gilead and the Inners."

"I don't believe they are," Roland said, and let his pants fall.

The sun was now up but Eddie and Susannah were still down. Roland was in no hurry to wake them. There would be plenty of early days ahead-and late evenings, too, likely-but this morning let them enjoy the peace of a roof over their heads, the comfort of a feather mattress beneath their bodies, and the exquisite privacy afforded by a door between their secret selves and the rest of the world.

Rosalita, a bottle of pale, oily liquid in one hand, drew in a hiss over her full lower lip. She looked at Roland's right knee, then touched his right hip with her left hand. He flinched away a bit from the touch, although it was gentleness itself.

She raised her eyes to him. They were so dark a brown they were almost black. "This isn't rheumatiz. It's arthritis. The kind that spreads fast."

"Aye, where I come from some call it dry twist," he said. "Not a word of it to the Pere, or to my friends."

Those dark eyes regarded him steadily. "You won't be able to keep this a secret for long."

"I hear you very well. Yet while I can keep the secret, I will keep the secret. And you'll help me."

"Aye," she said. "No fear. I'll bide'ee."

"Say thankya. Now, will that help me?"

She looked at the bottle and smiled. "Aye. It's mint and spriggum from the swamp. But the secret's the cat's bile that's in it-not but three drops in each bottle, ye ken. They're the rock-cats that come in out of the desert, from the direction of the great darkness." She tipped up the bottle and poured a little of the oily stuff into her palm. The smell of the mint struck Roland's nose at once, followed by some other smell, a lower smell, which was far less pleasant. Yes, he reckoned that could be the bile of a puma or a cougar or whatever they meant by a rock-cat in these parts.

When she bent and rubbed it into his kneecaps, the heat was immediate and intense, almost too strong to bear. But when it moderated a bit, there was more relief than he would have dared hope for.

When she had finished anointing him, she said: "How be your body now, gunslinger-sai?"

Instead of answering with his mouth, he crushed her against his lean, undressed body and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back with an artless lack of shame and whispered in his ear, "If 'ee are who 'ee say 'ee are, 'ee mustn't let un take the babbies. No, not a single one. Never mind what the big bugs like Eisenhart and Telford might say."

"We'll do the best we can," he said.

"Good. Thankya." She stepped back, looked down. "One part of 'ee has no arthritis, nor rheumatiz, either. Looks quite lively. Perhaps a lady might look at the moon tonight, gunslinger, and pine for company."

"Perhaps she'll find it," Roland said. "Will you give me a bottle of that stuff to take on my travels around the Calla, or is it too dear?"

"Nay, not too dear," she said. In her flirting, she had smiled. Now she looked grave again. "But will only help'ee a little while, I think."

"I know," Roland said. "And no matter. We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back."

"Aye," she said. "So it does."

FOUR

When he came out of the pantry, buckling his belt, he finally heard stirring in the other room. The murmur of Eddie's voice followed by a sleepy peal of female laughter. Callahan was at the stove, pouring himself fresh coffee. Roland went to him and spoke rapidly.

"I saw pokeberries on the left of your drive between here and your church."

"Yes, and they're ripe. Your eyes are sharp."

"Never mind my eyes, do ya. I would go out to pick my hat full. I'd have Eddie join me while his wife perhaps cracks an egg or three. Can you manage that?"

"I believe so, but-"

"Good," Roland said, and went out.

FIVE

By the time Eddie came, Roland had already half-filled his hat with the orange berries, and also eaten several good handfuls. The pain in his legs and hips had faded with amazing rapidity. As he picked, he wondered how much Cort would have paid for a single bottle of Rosalita Munoz's cat-oil.

"Man, those look like the wax fruit our mother used to put out on a doily every Thanksgiving," Eddie said. "Can you really eat them?"

Roland picked a pokeberry almost as big as the tip of his own finger and popped it into Eddie's mouth. "Does that taste like wax, Eddie?"

Eddie's eyes, cautious to begin with, suddenly widened. He swallowed, grinned, and reached for more. "Like cranberries, only sweeter. I wonder if Suze knows how to make muffins? Even if she doesn't, I bet Callahan's housekeeper-"

"Listen to me, Eddie. Listen closely and keep a rein on your emotions. For your father's sake."

Eddie had been reaching for a bush that was particularly heavy with pokeberries. Now he stopped and simply looked at Roland, his face expressionless. In this early light, Roland could see how much older Eddie looked. How much he had grown up was really extraordinary.

"What is it?"

Roland, who had held this secret in his own counsel until it seemed more complex than it really was, was surprised at how quickly and simply it was told. And Eddie, he saw, wasn't completely surprised.

"How long have you known?"

Roland listened for accusation in this question and heard none. "For certain? Since I first saw her slip into the woods. Saw her eating…" Roland paused. "… what she was eating. Heard her speaking with people who weren't there. I've suspected much longer. Since Lud."

"And didn't tell me."

"No." Now the recriminations would come, and a generous helping of Eddie's sarcasm. Except they didn't.

"You want to know if I'm pissed, don't you? If I'm going to make this a problem."

"Are you?"

"No. I'm not angry, Roland. Exasperated, maybe, and I'm scared to fuckin death for Suze, but why would I be angry with you? Aren't you the dinh?" It was Eddie's turn to pause. When he spoke again, he was more specific. It wasn't easy for him, but he got it out. "Aren't you my dinh?"

"Yes," Roland said. He reached out and touched Eddie's arm. He was astounded by his desire-almost his need-to explain. He resisted it. If Eddie could call him not just dinh but his dinh, he ought to behave as dinh. What he said was, "You don't seem exactly stunned by my news."

"Oh, I'm surprised," Eddie said. "Maybe not stunned, but… well…" He picked berries and dropped them into Roland's hat. "I saw some things, okay? Sometimes she's too pale. Sometimes she winces and grabs at herself, but if you ask her, she says it's just gas. And her boobs are bigger. I'm sure of it. But Roland, she's still having her period! A month or so ago I saw her burying the rags, and they were bloody. Soaked. How can that be? If she caught pregnant when we pulled Jake through-while she was keeping the demon of the circle occupied-that's got to be four months at least, and probably five. Even allowing for the way time slips around now, it's gotta be."

Roland nodded. "I know she's been having her monthlies. And that's proof conclusive it isn't your baby. The thing she's carrying scorns her woman's blood." Roland thought of her squeezing the frog in her fist, popping it. Drinking its black bile. Licking it from her fingers like syrup.

"Would it…" Eddie made as if to eat one of the pokeberries, decided against it, and tossed it into Roland's hat instead. Roland thought it would be a while before Eddie felt the stirrings of true appetite again. "Roland, would it even look like a human baby?"

"Almost surely not."

"What, then?"

And before he could stay them, the words were out. "Better not to name the devil."

Eddie winced. What little color remained in his face now left it.

"Eddie? Are you all right?"

"No," Eddie said. "I am most certainly not all right. But I'm not gonna faint like a girl at an Andy Gibb concert, either. What are we going to do?"

"For the time being, nothing. We have too many other things to do."

"Don't we just," Eddie said. "Over here, the Wolves come in twenty-four days, if I've got it figured right. Over there in New York, who knows what day it is? The sixth of June? The tenth? Closer to July fifteenth than it was yesterday, that's for sure. But Roland-if what she's got inside her isn't human, we can't be sure her pregnancy will go nine months. She might pop it in six. Hell, she might pop it tomorrow."

Roland nodded and waited. Eddie had gotten this far; surely he would make it the rest of the way.

And he did. "We're stuck, aren't we?"

"Yes. We can watch her, but there's not much else we can do. We can't even keep her still in hopes of slowing things down, because she'd very likely guess why we were doing it. And we need her. To shoot when the time comes, but before that, we'll have to train some of these people with whatever weapons they feel comfortable with. It'll probably turn out to be bows." Roland grimaced. In the end he had hit the target in the North Field with enough arrows to satisfy Cort, but he had never cared for bow and arrow or bah and bolt. Those had been Jamie DeCurry's choice of weapons, not his own.

"We're really gonna go for it, aren't we?"

"Oh yes."

And Eddie smiled. Smiled in spite of himself. He was what he was. Roland saw it and was glad.

SIX

As they walked back to Callahan's rectory-house, Eddie asked: "You came clean with me, Roland, why not come clean widi her?"

"I'm not sure I understand you."

"Oh, I think you do," Eddie said.

"All right, but you won't like the answer."

"I've heard all sorts of answers from you, and I couldn't say I've cared for much more than one in five." Eddie considered. "Nah, that's too generous. Make it one in fifty."

"The one who calls herself Mia-which means mother in the High Speech-kens she's carrying a child, although I doubt she kens what kind of a child."

Eddie considered this in silence.

"Whatever it is, Mia thinks of it as her baby, and she'll protect it to the limit of her strength and life. If that means taking over Susannah's body-the way Detta Walker sometimes took over Odetta Holmes-she'll do it if she can."

"And probably she could," Eddie said gloomily. Then he turned directly to Roland. "So what I think you're saying- correct me if I've got it wrong-is that you don't want to tell Suze she might be growing a monster in her belly because it might impair her efficiency."

Roland could have quibbled about the harshness of this judgment, but chose not to. Essentially, Eddie was right.

As always when he was angry, Eddie's street accent became more pronounced. It was almost as though he were speaking through his nose instead of his mouth. "And if anything changes over the next month or so-if she goes into labor and pops out the Creature from the Black Lagoon, for instance-she's gonna be completely unprepared. Won't have a clue."

Roland stopped about twenty feet from the rectory-house. Inside the window, he could see Callahan talking to a couple of young people, a boy and a girl. Even from here he could see they were twins.

"Roland?"

"You say true, Eddie. Is there a point? If so, I hope you'll get to it. Time is no longer just a face on the water, as you yourself pointed out. It's become a precious commodity."

Again he expected a patented Eddie Dean outburst complete with phrases such as kiss my ass or eat shit and die. Again, no such outburst came. Eddie was looking at him, that was all. Steadily and a little sorrowfully. Sorry for Susannah, of course, but also for the two of them. The two of them standing here and conspiring against one of the tet.

"I'm going to go along with you," Eddie said, "but not because you're the dinh, and not because one of those two is apt to come back brainless from Thunderclap." He pointed to the pair of kids the Old Fella was talking to in his living room. "I'd trade every kid in this town for the one Suze is carrying. If it was a kid. My kid."

"I know you would," Roland said.

"It's the rose I care about," Eddie said. "That's the only thing worth risking her for. But even so, you've got to promise me that if things go wrong-if she goes into labor, or if this Mia chick starts taking over-we'll try to save her."

"I would always try to save her," Roland said, and then had a brief, nightmare image-brief but very clear-of Jake dangling over die drop under the mountains.

"You swear that?" Eddie asked.

"Yes," Roland said. His eyes met those of the younger man. In his mind, however, he saw Jake falling into the abyss.

SEVEN

They reached the rectory door just as Callahan was ushering the two young people out. They were, Roland thought, very likely the most gorgeous children he had ever seen. Their hair was black as coal, the boy's shoulder-length, the girl's bound by a white ribbon and falling all the way to her bottom. Their eyes were dark, perfect blue. Their skin was creamy-pale, their lips a startling, sensuous red. There were faint spatters of freckles on their cheeks. So far as Roland could tell, the spatters were also identical. They looked from him to Eddie and then back to Susannah, who leaned in the kitchen doorway with a dish-wiper in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. Their shared expression was one of curious wonder. He saw caution in their faces, but no fear.

"Roland, Eddie, I'd like you to meet the Tavery twins, Frank and Francine. Rosalita fetched them-the Taverys live not half a mile away, do ya. You'll have your map by this afternoon, and I doubt if you'll ever have seen a finer one in all your life. It's but one of the talents they have."

The Tavery twins made their manners, Frank with a bow and Francine with a curtsy.

"You do us well and we say thankya," Roland told them.

An identical blush suffused their astoundingly creamy complexions; they muttered their thanks and prepared to slip away. Before they could, Roland put an arm around each narrow but well-made pair of shoulders and led the twins a little way down the walk. He was taken less by their perfect child's beauty than by the piercing intelligence he saw in their blue eyes. He had no doubt they would make his map; he also had no doubt that Callahan had had Rosalita fetch them as a kind of object lesson, were one still needed: with no interference, one of these beautiful children would be a grizzling idiot a month from now.

"Sai?" Frank asked. Now there was a touch of worry in his voice.

"Fear me not," Roland said, "but hear me well."

EIGHT

Callahan and Eddie watched Roland walk the Tavery twins slowly along the rectory's flagstoned path and toward the dirt drive. Both men shared the same thought: Roland looked like a benevolent gran-pere.

Susannah joined them, watched, then plucked Eddie's shirt. "Come with me a minute."

He followed her into the kitchen. Rosalita was gone and they had it to themselves. Susannah's brown eyes were enormous, shining.

"What is it?" he asked her.

"Pick me up."

He did.

"Now kiss me quick, while you have the chance."

"Is that all you want?"

"Isn't it enough? It better be, Mister Dean."

He kissed her, and willingly, but couldn't help marking how much larger her breasts were as they pressed against him. When he drew his face away from hers, he found himself looking for traces of the other one in her face. The one who called herself Mother in the High Speech, He saw only Susannah, but he supposed that from now on he would be condemned to look. And his eyes kept trying to go to her belly. He tried to keep them away, but it was as if they were weighted. He wondered how much that was between them would change now. It was not a pleasant speculation.

"Is that better?" he asked.

"Much." She smiled a little, and then the smile faded. "Eddie? Is something wrong?"

He grinned and kissed her again. "You mean other than that we're all probably gonna die here? Nope. Nothing at all."

Had he lied to her before? He couldn't remember, but he didn't think so. And even if he had, he had never done so with such baldness. With such calculation.

This was bad.

NINE

Ten minutes later, rearmed with fresh mugs of coffee (and a bowl of pokeberries), they went out into the rectory's small back yard. The gunslinger lifted his face into the sun for a moment, relishing its weight and heat. Then he turned to Callahan. "We three would hear your story now, Pere, if you'd tell it. And then mayhap stroll up to your church and see what's there."

"I want you to take it," Callahan said. "It hasn't desecrated the church, how could it when Our Lady was never consecrated to begin with? But it's changed it for the worse. Even when the church was still a building, I felt the spirit of God inside it. No more. That thing has driven it out. I want you to take it."

Roland opened his mouth to say something noncommittal, but Susannah spoke before he could. "Roland? You all right?"

He turned to her. "Why, yes. Why would I not be?"

"You keep rubbing your hip."

Had he been? Yes, he saw, he had. The pain was creeping back already, in spite of the warm sun, in spite of Rosalita's cat-oil. The dry twist.

"It's nothing," he told her. "Just a touch of the rheumatiz."

She looked at him doubtfully, then seemed to accept. This is a hell of a way to start, Roland thought, with at least two of us keeping secrets. We can't go on so. Not for long.

He turned to Callahan. "Tell us your tale. How you came by your scars, how you came here, and how you came by Black Thirteen. We would hear every word."

"Yes," Eddie murmured.

"Every word," Susannah echoed.

All three of them looked at Callahan-the Old Fella, the religious who would allow himself to be called Pere but not priest. His twisted right hand went to the scar on his forehead and rubbed at it. At last he said: " 'Twas the drink. That's what I believe now. Not God, not devils, not predestination, not the company of saints. 'Twas the drink." He paused, thinking, then smiled at them. Roland remembered Nort, the weed-eater in Tull who had been brought back from the dead by the man in black. Nort had smiled like that. "But if God made the world, then God made the drink. And that is also His will."

Ka, Roland thought.

Callahan sat quiet, rubbing the scarred crucifix on his forehead, gathering his thoughts. And then he began to tell his story.

ONE

It was the drink, that was what he came to believe when he finally stopped it and clarity came. Not God, not Satan, not some deep psychosexual battle between his blessed mither and his blessed Da'. Just the drink. And was it surprising that whiskey should have taken him by the ears? He was Irish, he was a priest, one more strike and you're out.

From seminary in Boston he'd gone to a city parish in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parishioners had loved him (he wouldn't refer to them as his flock, flocks were what you called seagulls on their way to the town dump), but after seven years in Lowell, Callahan had grown uneasy. When talking to Bishop Dugan in the Diocese office, he had used all the correct buzzwords of the time to express this unease: anomie, urban malaise, an increasing lack of empathy, a sense of disconnection from the life of the spirit. He'd had a nip in the bathroom before his appointment (followed by a couple of Wintergreen Life Savers, no fool he), and had been particularly eloquent that day. Eloquence does not always proceed from belief, but often proceeds from the bottle. And he was no liar. He had believed what he was saying that day in Dugan's study. Every word. As he believed in Freud, the future of the Mass spoken in English, the nobility of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, and the idiocy of his widening war in Vietnam: waist-deep in the Wide Muddy, and the big fool said to push on, as the old folk-tune had it. He believed in large part because those ideas (if they were ideas and not just cocktail-party chatter) had been currently trading high on the intellectual Big Board. Social Conscience is up two and a third, Hearth and Home down a quarter but still your basic blue-chip stock. Later it all became simpler. Later he came to understand that he wasn't drinking too much because he was spiritually unsettled but spiritually unsettled because he was drinking too much. You wanted to protest, to say that couldn't be it, or not just that, it was too simple. But it was that, just that. God's voice is still and small, the voice of a sparrow in a cyclone, so said the prophet Isaiah, and we all say thankya. It's hard to hear a small voice clearly if you're shitass drunk most of the time. Callahan left America for Roland's world before the computer revolution spawned the acronym GIGO-garbage in, garbage out-but in plenty of time to hear someone at an AA meeting observe that if you put an asshole on a plane in San Francisco and flew him to the east coast, the same asshole got off in Boston. Usually with four or five drinks under his belt. But that was later. In 1964 he had believed what he believed, and plenty of people had been anxious to help him find his way. From Lowell he had gone to Spofford, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. There he stayed for five years, and then he began to feel restless again. Consequently, he began to talk the talk again. The kind the Diocesan Office listened to. The kind that got you moved on down the line. Anomie. Spiritual disconnection (this time from his suburban parishioners). Yes, they liked him (and he liked them), but something still seemed to be wrong. And there was something wrong, mostly in the quiet bar on the corner (where everybody also liked him) and in the liquor cabinet in the rectory living room. Beyond small doses, alcohol is a toxin, and Callahan was poisoning himself on a nightly basis. It was the poison in his system, not the state of the world or that of his own soul, which was bringing him down. Had it always been that obvious? Later (at another AA meeting) he'd heard a guy refer to alcoholism and addiction as the elephant in the living room: how could you miss it? Callahan hadn't told him, he'd still been in the first ninety days of sobriety at that point and that meant he was supposed to just sit there and be quiet ("Take the cotton out of your ears and stick it in your mouth," the old-timers advised, and we all say thankya), but he could have told him, yes indeed. You could miss the elephant if it was a magic elephant, if it had the power-like The Shadow-to cloud men's minds. To actually make you believe that your problems were spiritual and mental but absolutely not boozical. Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car. When you looked back in sobriety, the things you'd said and done made you wince ("I'd sit in a bar solving all the problems of the world, then not be able to find my car in the parking lot," one fellow at a meeting remembered, and we all say thankya). The things you thought were even worse. How could you spend the morning puking and the afternoon believing you were having a spiritual crisis? Yet he had. And his superiors had, possibly because more than a few of them were having their own problems with the magic elephant. Callahan began thinking that a smaller church, a rural parish, would put him back in touch with God and himself. And so, in the spring of 1969, he found himself in New England again. Northern New England, this time. He had set up shop-bag and baggage, crucifix and chasuble-in the pleasant little town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. There he had finally met real evil. Looked it in the face.

And flinched.

TWO

"A writer came to me," he said. "A man named Ben Mears."

"I think I read one of his books," Eddie said. "Air Dance, it was called. About a man who gets hung for the murder his brother committed?"

Callahan nodded. "That's the one. There was also a teacher named Matthew Burke, and they both believed there was a vampire at work in 'Salem's Lot, the kind who makes other vampires."

"Is there any other kind?" Eddie asked, remembering about a hundred movies at the Majestic and maybe a thousand comic books purchased at (and sometimes stolen from) Dahlie's.

"There is, and we'll get there, but never mind that now. Most of all, there was a boy who believed. He was about the same age as your Jake. They didn't convince me-not at first-but they were convinced, and it was hard to stand against their belief. Also, something-was going on in The Lot, that much was certain. People were disappearing. There was an atmosphere of terror in the town. Impossible to describe it now, sitting here in the sun, but it was there. I had to officiate at the funeral of another boy. His name was Daniel Glick. I doubt he was this vampire's first victim in The Lot, and he certainly wasn't the last, but he was the first one who turned up dead. On the day of Danny Glick's burial, my life changed, somehow. And I'm not talking about the quart of whiskey a day anymore, either. Something changed in my head. I felt it. Like a switch turning. And although I haven't had a drink in years, that switch is still turned."

Susannah thought: That's when you went todash, Father Callahan.

Eddie thought: That's when you went nineteen, pal. Or maybe it's ninety-nine. Or maybe it's both, somehow.

Roland simply listened. His mind was clear of reflection, a perfect receiving machine.

"The writer, Mears, had fallen in love with a town girl named Susan Norton. The vampire took her. I believe he did it partly because he could, and partly to punish Mears for daring to form a group-a ka-tet-that would try to hunt him. We went to the place the vampire had bought, an old wreck called the Marsten House. The thing staying there went by the name of Barlow."

Callahan sat, considering, looking through them and back to those old days. At last he resumed.

"Barlow was gone, but he'd left the woman. And a letter. It was addressed to all of us, but was directed principally to me. The moment I saw her lying there in the cellar of the Marsten House I understood it was all true. The doctor with us listened to her chest and took her blood pressure, though, just to be sure. No heartbeat. Blood pressure zero. But when Ben pounded the stake into her, she came alive. The blood flowed. She screamed, over and over. Her hands… I remembered the shadows of her hands on the wall…"

Eddie's hand gripped Susannah's. They listened in a horrified suspension that was neither belief nor disbelief. This wasn't a talking train powered by malfunctioning computer circuits, nor men and women who had reverted to savagery. This was something akin to the unseen demon that had come to the place where they had drawn Jake. Or the doorkeeper in Dutch Hill.

"What did he say to you in his note, this Barlow?" Roland asked.

"That my faith was weak and I would undo myself. He was right, of course. By then the only thing I really believed in was Bushmill's. I just didn't know it. He did, though. Booze is also a vampire, and maybe it takes one to know one.

"The boy who was with us became convinced that this prince of vampires meant to kill his parents next, or turn them. For revenge. The boy had been taken prisoner, you see, but he escaped and killed the vampire's half-human accomplice, a man named Straker."

Roland nodded, thinking this boy sounded more and more like Jake. "What was his name?"

"Mark Petrie. I went with him to his house, and with all the considerable power my church affords: the cross, the stole, the holy water, and of course the Bible. But I had come to think of these things as symbols, and that was my Achilles' heel. Barlow was there. He had Petrie's parents. And then he had the boy. I held up my cross. It glowed. It hurt him. He screamed." Callahan smiled, recalling that scream of agony. The look of it chilled Eddie's heart. "I told him that if he hurt Mark, I'd destroy him, and at that moment I could have done it. He knew it, too. His response was that before I did, he'd rip the child's throat out. And he could have done it."

"Mexican standoff," Eddie murmured, remembering a day by the Western Sea when he had faced Roland in a strikingly similar situation. "Mexican standoff, baby."

"What happened?" Susannah asked.

Callahan's smile faded. He was rubbing his scarred right hand the way the gunslinger had rubbed his hip, without seeming to realize it. "The vampire made a proposal. He would let the boy go if I'd put down the crucifix I held. We'd face each other unarmed. His faith against mine. I agreed. God help me, I agreed. The boy"

THREE

The boy is gone, like an eddy of dark water.

Barlow seems to grow taller. His hair, swept back from his brow in the European manner, seems to float around his skull. He's wearing a dark suit and a bright red tie, impeccably knotted, and to Callahan he seems part of the darkness that surrounds him. Mark Petrie's parents lie dead at his feet, their skulls crushed.

"Fulfill your part of the bargain, shaman."

But why should he? Why not drive him off, settle for a draw this night? Or kill him outright? Something is wrong with the idea, terribly wrong, but he cannot pick out just what it is. Nor will any of the buzzwords that have helped him in previous moments of crisis be of any help to him here. This isn't anomie, lack of empathy, or the existential grief of the twentieth century; this is a vampire. And -

And his cross, which had been glowing fiercely, is growing dark.

Fear leaps into his belly like a confusion of hot wires. Barlow is walking toward him across the Petrie kitchen, and Callahan can see the things fangs very clearly because Barlow is smiling. It is a winner's smile.

Callahan takes a step backward. Then two. Then his buttocks strike the edge of the table, and the table pushes back against the wall, and then there is nowhere left to go.

"Sad to see a man's faith fail, " says Barlow, and reaches out.

Why should he not reach out? The cross Callahan is holding up is now dark. Now it's nothing but a piece of plaster, a cheap piece of rick-rack his mother bought in a Dublin souvenir shop, probably at a scalper's price. The power it had sent ramming up his arm, enough spiritual voltage to smash down walls and shatter stone, is gone.

Barlow plucks it from his fingers. Callahan cries out miserably, the cry of a child who suddenly realizes the bogeyman has been real all along, waiting patiently in the closet for its chance. And now comes a sound that will haunt him for the rest of his life, from New York and the secret highways of America to the AA meetings in Topeka where he finally sobered up to the final stop in Detroit to his life here, in Calla Bryn Sturgis. He will remember that sound when his forehead is scarred and he fully expects to be killed. He will remember it when he is killed. The sound is two dry snaps as Barlow breaks the arms of the cross, and the meaningless thump as he throws what remains on the floor. And he'll also remember the cosmically ludicrous thought which came, even as Barlow reached for him: God, I need a drink.

FOUR

The Pere looked at Roland, Eddie, and Susannah with the eyes of one who is remembering the absolute worst moment of his life. "You hear all sorts of sayings and slogans in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's one that recurs to me whenever I think of that night. Of Barlow taking hold of my shoulders."

"What?" Eddie asked.

"Be careful what you pray for," Callahan said. "Because you just might get it."

"You got your drink," Roland said.

"Oh yes," Callahan said. "I got my drink."

FIVE

Barlow's hands are strong, implacable. As Callahan is drawn forward, he suddenly understands what is going to happen. Not death. Death would be a mercy compared to this.

No, please no, he tries to say, but nothing comes out of his mouth but one small, whipped moan.

"Now, priest," the vampire whispers.

Callahan's mouth is pressed against the reeking flesh of the vampires cold throat. There is no anomie, no social dysfunction, no ethical or racial ramifications. Only the stink of death and one vein, open and pulsing with Barlow's dead, infected blood. No sense of existential bss, no postmodern grief for the death of the American value system, not even the religio-psychological guilt of Western man. Only the effort to hold his breath forever, or twist his head away, or both. He cannot. He holds on for what seems like aeons, smearing the blood across his cheeks and forehead and chin like warpaint. To no avail. In the end he does what all alcoholics must do once the booze has taken them by the ears: he drinks.

Strike three. You're out.

SIX

"The boy got away. There was that much. And Barlow let me go. Killing me wouldn't have been any fun, would it? No, the fun was in letting me live.

"I wandered for an hour or more, through a town that was less and less there. There aren't many Type One vampires, and that's a blessing because a Type One can cause one hell of a lot of mayhem in an extremely short period of time. The town was already half-infected, but I was too blind-too shocked -to realize it. And none of the new vampires approached me. Barlow had set his mark on me as surely as God set his mark on Cain before sending him off to dwell in the land of Nod. His watch and his warrant, as you'd say, Roland.

"There was a drinking fountain in the alley beside Spencer's Drugs, the sort of thing no Public Health Office would have sanctioned a few years later, but back then there was one or two in every small town. I washed Barlow's blood off my face and neck there. Tried to wash it out of my hair, too. And then I went to St. Andrews, my church. I'd made up my mind to pray for a second chance. Not to the God of the theologians who believe that everything holy and unholy ultimately comes from inside us, but to the old God. The one who proclaimed to Moses that he should not suffer a witch to live and gave unto his own son the power to raise from the dead. A second chance is all I wanted. My life for that.

"By the time I got to St. Andrews, I was almost running.

There were three doors going inside. I reached for the middle one. Somewhere a car backfired, and someone laughed. I remember those sounds very clearly. It's as if they mark the border of my life as a priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church."

"What happened to you, sugar?" Susannah asked.

"The door rejected me," Callahan said. "It had an iron handle, and when I touched it, fire came out of it like a reverse stroke of lightning. It knocked me all the way down the steps and onto the cement path. It did this." He raised his scarred right hand.

"And that?" Eddie asked, and pointed to his forehead.

"No," Callahan said. "That came later. I picked myself up. Walked some more. Wound up at Spencer's again. Only this time I went in. Bought a bandage for my hand. And then, while I was paying, I saw the sign. Ride The Big Gray Dog."

"He means Greyhound, sugar," Susannah told Roland. "It's a nationwide bus company."

Roland nodded and twirled a finger in his go-on gesture.

"Miss Coogan told me the next bus went to New York, so I bought a ticket on that one. If she'd told me it went to Jacksonville or Nome or Hot Burgoo, South Dakota, I would have gone to one of those places. All I wanted to do was get out of that town. I didn't care that people were dying and worse than dying, some of them my friends, some of them my parishioners. I just wanted to get out Can you understand that?"

"Yes," Roland said with no hesitation. "Very well."

Callahan looked into his face, and what he saw there seemed to reassure him a little. When he continued, he seemed calmer.

"Loretta Coogan was one of the town spinsters. I must have frightened her, because she said I'd have to wait for the bus outside. I went out. Eventually the bus came. I got on and gave the driver my ticket. He took his half and gave me my half. I sat down. The bus started to roll. We went under the flashing yellow blinker at the middle of town, and that was the first mile. The first mile on the road that took me here. Later on-maybe four-thirty in the morning, still dark outside-the bus stopped in"

SEVEN

"Hartford," the bus driver says. "This is Hartford, Mac. We got a twenty-minute rest stop. Do you want to go in and get a sandwich or something?"

Callahan fumbles his wallet out of his pocket with his bandaged hand and almost drops it. The taste of death is in his mouth, a moronic, mealy taste like a spoiled apple. He needs something to take away that taste, and if nothing will take it away something to change it, and if nothing will change it at least something to cover it up, the way you might cover up an ugly gouge in a wood floor with a piece of cheap carpet.

He holds out a twenty to the bus driver and says, "Can you get me a bottle?"

"Mister, the rules - "

"And keep the change, of course. A pint would be fine."

"I don't need nobody cutting up cm my bus. We'll be in New York in two hours. You can get anything you want once we're there." The bus driver tries to smile. "It's Fun City, you know."

Callahan -he's no longer Father Callahan, the flash of fire from the doorhandle answered that question, at least -adds a ten to the twenty. Now he's holding out thirty dollars. Again he tells the driver a pint would be fine, and he doesn't expect any change. This time the driver, not an idiot, takes the money. "But don't you go cutting up on me, " he repeats. "I don't need nobody cutting up on my bus. "

Callahan nods. No cutting up, that's a big ten-four. The driver goes into the combination grocery store-liquor store-short-order restaurant that exists here on the rim of Hartford, on the rim of morning, under yellow hi-intensity lights. There are secret highways in America, highways in hiding. This place stands at one of the entrance ramps leading into that network of darkside roads, and Callahan senses it. It's in the way the Dixie cups and crumpled cigarette packs blow across the tarmac in the pre-dawn wind. It whispers from the sign on the gas pumps, the one that says pay for gas in advance after sundown. It's in the teenage boy across the street, sitting on a porch stoop at four-thirty in the morning with his head in his arms, a silent essay in pain. The secret highways are out close, and they whisper to him. "Come on, buddy, " they say. "Here is where you can forget everything, even the name they tied on you when you were nothing but a naked, blatting baby still smeared with your mother's blood. They tied a name to you like a can to a dog's tail, didn't they? But you don't need to drag it around here. Come. Come on. "But he goes nowhere. He's waiting for the bus driver, and pretty soon the bus driver comes back, and he's got a pint of Old Log Cabin in a brown paper sack. This is a brand Callahan knows well, a pint of the stuff probably goes for two dollars and a quarter out here in the boonies, which means the bus driver has just earned himself a twenty-eight-dollar tip, give or take. Not bad. But it's the American way, isn't it? Give a lot to get a little. And if the Log Cabin will take that terrible taste out of his mouth -much worse than the throbbing in his burned hand -it will be worth every penny of the thirty bucks. Hell, it would be worth a C-note.

"No cutting up, " the driver says. "I'll put you out right in the middle of the Cross Bronx Expressway if you start cutting up. I swear to God I will"

By the time the Greyhound pulls into the Port Authority, Don Callahan is drunk. But he doesn't cut up; he simply sits quietly until it's time to get off and join the flow of six o'clock humanity under the cold fluorescent lights: the junkies, the cabbies, the shoeshine boys, the girls who'll blow you for ten dollars, the boys dressed up as girls who'll blow you for five dollars, the cops twirling their nightsticks, the dope dealers carrying their transistor radios, the blue-collar guys who are just coming in from New Jersey. Callahan joins them, drunk but quiet; the nightstick-twirling cops do not give him so much as a second glance. The Port Authority air smells of cigarette smoke and joysticks and exhaust. The docked buses rumble. Everyone here looks cut loose. Under the cold white fluorescents, they all look dead.

No, he thinks, walking under a sign reading to STREET. Not dead, that's wrong. Un ndead.

EIGHT

"Man," Eddie said. "You been to the wars, haven't you? Greek, Roman, and Vietnam."

When the Old Fella began, Eddie had been hoping he'd gallop through his story so they could go into the church and look at whatever was stashed there. He hadn't expected to be touched, let alone shaken, but he had been. Callahan knew stuff Eddie thought no one else could possibly know: the sadness of Dixie cups rolling across the pavement, the rusty hopelessness of that sign on the gas pumps, the look of the human eye in the hour before dawn.

Most of all about how sometimes you had to have it.

"The wars? I don't know," Callahan said. Then he sighed and nodded. "Yes, I suppose so. I spent that first day in movie theaters and that first night in Washington Square Park. I saw that the other homeless people covered themselves up with newspapers, so that's what I did. And here's an example of how life-the quality of life and the texture of life-seemed to have changed for me, beginning on the day of Danny Glick's burial. You won't understand right away, but bear with me." He looked at Eddie and smiled. "And don't worry, son, I'm not going to talk the day away. Or even the morning."

"You go on and tell it any old way it does ya fine," Eddie said.

Callahan burst out laughing. "Say thankya! Aye, say thankya big! What I was going to tell you is that I'd covered my top half with the Daily News and the headline said HITLER BROTHERS STRIKE IN QUEENS."

"Oh my God, the Hitler Brothers," Eddie said. "I remember them. Couple of morons. They beat up… what? Jews? Blacks?"

"Both," Callahan said. "And carved swastikas on their foreheads. They didn't have a chance to finish mine. Which is good, because what they had in mind after the cutting was a lot more than a simple beating. And that was years later, when I came back to New York."

"Swastika," Roland said. "The sigul on the plane we found near River Crossing? The one with David Quick inside it?"

"Uh-huh," Eddie said, and drew one in the grass with the toe of his boot. The grass sprang up almost immediately, but not before Roland saw that yes, the mark on Callahan's forehead could have been meant to be one of those. If it had been finished.

"On that day in late October of 1975," Callahan said, "the Hitler Brothers were just a headline I slept under. I spent most of that second day in New York walking around and fighting the urge to score a bottle. There was part of me that wanted to fight instead of drink. To try and atone. At the same time, I could feel Barlow's blood working into me, getting in deeper and deeper. The world smelled different, and not better. Things looked different, and not better. And the taste of him came creeping back into my mouth, a taste like dead fish or rotten wine.

"I had no hope of salvation. Never think it. But atonement isn't about salvation, anyway. Not about heaven. It's about clearing your conscience here on earth. And you can't do it drunk. I didn't think of myself as an alcoholic, not even then, but I did wonder if he'd turned me into a vampire. If the sun would start to burn my skin, and I'd start looking at ladies' necks." He shrugged, laughed. "Or maybe gentlemen's. You know what they say about the priesthood; we're just a bunch of closet queers running around and shaking the cross in people's faces."

"But you weren't a vampire," Eddie said.

"Not even a Type Three. Nothing but unclean. On the outside of everything. Cast away. Always smelling his stink and always seeing the world the way things like him must see it, in shades of gray and red. Red was the only bright color I was allowed to see for years. Everything else was just a whisper.

"I guess I was looking for a ManPower office-you know, the day-labor company? I was still pretty rugged in those days, and of course I was a lot younger, as well.

"I didn't find ManPower. What I did find was a place called Home. This was on First Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, not far from the U.N."

Roland, Eddie, and Susannah exchanged a look. Whatever Home was, it had existed only two blocks from the vacant lot. Only it wouldn't have been vacant back then, Eddie thought. Not back in 1975. In '75 it would still have been Tom and Jerry's Artistic Deli, Party Platters Our Specialty. He suddenly wished Jake were here. Eddie thought that by now the kid would have been jumping up and down with excitement.

"What kind of shop was Home?" Roland asked.

"Not a shop at all. A shelter. A wet shelter. I can't say for sure that it was the only one in Manhattan, but I bet it was one of the very few. I didn't know much about shelters then-just a little bit from my first parish-but as time went by, I learned a great deal. I saw the system from both sides. There were times when I was the guy who ladled out the soup at six p.m. and passed out the blankets at nine; at other times I was the guy who drank the soup and slept under the blankets. After a head-check for lice, of course.

"There are shelters that won't let you in if they smell booze on your breath. And there are ones where they'll let you in if you claim you're at least two hours downstream from your last drink. There are places-a few-that'll let you in pissyassed drunk, as long as they can search you at the door and get rid of all your hooch. Once that's taken care of, they put you in a special locked room with the rest of the low-bottom guys. You can't slip out to get another drink if you change your mind, and you can't scare the folks who are less soaked than you are if you get the dt's and start seeing bugs come out of the walls. No women allowed in the lockup; they're too apt to get raped. It's just one of the reasons more homeless women die in the streets than homeless men. That's what Lupe used to say."

"Lupe?" Eddie asked.

"I'll get to him, but for now, suffice it to say that he was the architect of Home's alcohol policy. At Home, they kept the booze in lockup, not the drunks. You could get a shot if you needed one, and if you promised to be quiet. Plus a sedative chaser. This isn't recommended medical procedure-I'm not even sure it was legal, since neither Lupe nor Rowan Magruder were doctors-but it seemed to work. I came in sober on a busy night, and Lupe put me to work. I worked free for the first couple of days, and then Rowan called me into his office, which was roughly the size of a broom closet. He asked me if I was an alcoholic. I said no. He asked me if I was wanted by the police. I said no. He asked if I was on the run from anything. I said yes, from myself. He asked me if I wanted to work, and I started to cry. He took that as a yes.

"I spent the next nine months-until June of 1976-working at Home. I made the beds, I cooked in the kitchen, I went on fund-raising calls with Lupe or sometimes Rowan, I took drunks to AA meetings in the Home van, I gave shots of booze to guys that were shaking too badly to hold the glasses themselves. I took over the books because I was better at it than Magruder or Lupe or any of the other guys who worked there. Those weren't the happiest days of my life, I'd never go that far, and the taste of Barlow's blood never left my mouth, but they were days of grace. I didn't think a lot. I just kept my head down and did whatever I was asked to do. I started to heal.

"Sometime during that winter, I realized that I'd started to change. It was as if I'd developed a kind of sixth sense. Sometimes I heard chiming bells. Horrible, yet at the same time sweet. Sometimes, when I was on the street, things would start to look dark even if the sun was shining. I can remember looking down to see if my shadow was still there. I'd be positive it wouldn't be, but it always was."

Roland's ka-tet exchanged a glance.

"Sometimes there was an olfactory element to these fugues. It was a bitter smell, like strong onions all mixed with hot metal. I began to suspect that I had developed a form of epilepsy."

"Did you see a doctor?" Susannah asked.

"I did not. I was afraid of what else he might find. A brain tumor seemed most likely. What I did was keep my head down and keep working. And then one night I went to a movie in Times Square. It was a revival of two Clint Eastwood Westerns. What they used to call Spaghetti Westerns?"

"Yeah," Eddie said.

"I started hearing the bells. The chimes. And smelling that smell, stronger than ever. All this was coming from in front of me, and to the left. I looked there and saw two men, one rather elderly, the other younger. They were easy enough to pick out, because the place was three-quarters empty. The younger man leaned close to the older man. The older man never took his eyes off the screen, but he put his arm around the younger man's shoulders. If I'd seen that on any other night, I would have been pretty positive what was going on, but not that night. I watched. And I started to see a kind of dark blue light, first just around the younger man, then around both of them. It was like no other light I'd ever seen. It was like the darkness I felt sometimes on the street, when the chimes started to play in my head. Like the smell. You knew those things weren't there, and yet they were. And I understood. I didn't accept it-that came later-but I understood. The younger man was a vampire."

He stopped, thinking about how to tell his tale. How to lay it out.

"I believe there are at least three types of vampires at work in our world. I call them Types One, Two, and Three. Type Ones are rare. Barlow was a Type One. They live very long lives, and may spend extended periods-fifty years, a hundred, maybe two hundred-in deep hibernation. When they're active, they're capable of making new vampires, what we call the undead. These undead are Type Twos. They are also capable of making new vampires, but they aren't cunning." He looked at Eddie and Susannah. "Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?"

Susannah shook her head. Eddie nodded.

"The undead in that movie were zombies, utterly brain-dead. Type Two vampires are more intelligent than that, but not much. They can't go out during the daylight hours. If they try, they are blinded, badly burned, or killed. Although I can't say for sure, I believe their life-spans are usually short. Not because the change from living and human to undead and vampire shortens life, but because the existences of Type Two vampires are extremely perilous.

"In most cases-this is what I believe, not what I know-Type Two vampires create other Type Two vampires, in a relatively small area. By this phase of the disease-and it is a disease-the Type One vampire, the king vampire, has usually moved on. In 'Salem's Lot, they actually killed the son of a bitch, one of what might have been only a dozen in the entire world.

"In other cases, Type Twos create Type Threes. Type Threes are like mosquitoes. They can't create more vampires, but they can feed. And feed. And feed."

"Do they catch AIDS?" Eddie asked. "I mean, you know what that is, right?"

"I know, although I never heard the term until the spring of 1983, when I was working at the Lighthouse Shelter in Detroit and my time in America had grown short. Of course we'd known for almost ten years that there was something. Some of the literature called it GRID-Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. In 1982 there started to be newspaper articles about a new disease called 'Gay Cancer,' and speculations that it might be catching. On the street some of the men called it Fucksore Disease, after the blemishes it left. I don't believe that vampires die of it, or even get sick from it. But they can have it. And they can pass it on. Oh, yes. And I have reason to think that." Callahan's lips quivered, then firmed.

"When this vampire-demon made you drink his blood, he gave you the ability to see these things," Roland said.

"Yes."

"All of them, or just the Threes? The little ones?"

"The little ones," Callahan mused, then voiced a brief and humorless laugh. "Yes. I like that. In any case, Threes are all I've ever seen, at least since leaving Jerusalem's Lot. But of course Type Ones like Barlow are very rare, and Type Twos don't last long. Their very hunger undoes them. They're always ravenous. Type Threes, however, can go out in daylight. And they take their principal sustenance from food, just as we do."

"What did you do that night?" Susannah asked. "In the theater?"

"Nothing," Callahan said. "My whole time in New York- my first time in New York-I did nothing until April. I wasn't sure, you see. I mean, my heart was sure, but my head refused to go along. And all the time, there was interference from the most simple thing of all: I was a dry alcoholic. An alcoholic is also a vampire, and that part of me was getting thirstier and thirstier, while the rest of me was trying to deny my essential nature. So I told myself I'd seen a couple of homosexuals canoodling in the movies, nothing more than that. As for the rest of it-the chimes, the smell, the dark-blue light around the young one-I convinced myself it was epilepsy, or a holdover from what Barlow had done to me, or both. And of course about Barlow I was right His blood was awake inside me. It saw."

"It was more than that," Roland said.

Callahan turned to him.

"You went todash, Pere. Something was calling you from this world. The thing in your church, I suspect, although it would not have been in your church when you first knew of it."

"No," Callahan said. He was regarding Roland with wary respect. "It was not. How do you know? Tell me, I beg."

Roland did not. "Go on," he said. "What happened to you next?"

"Lupe happened next," Callahan said.

NINE

His last name was Delgado.

Roland registered only a moment of surprise at this-a widening of the eyes-but Eddie and Susannah knew the gunslinger well enough to understand that even this was extraordinary. At the same time they had become almost used to these coincidences that could not possibly be coincidences, to the feeling that each one was the click of some great turning cog.

Lupe Delgado was thirty-two, an alcoholic almost five one-day-at-a-time years from his last drink, and had been working at Home since 1974. Magruder had founded the place, but it was Lupe Delgado who invested it with real life and purpose. During his days, he was part of the maintenance crew at the Plaza Hotel, on Fifth Avenue. Nights, he worked at the shelter. He had helped to craft Home's "wet" policy, and had been the first person to greet Callahan when he walked in.

"I was in New York a little over a year that first time," Callahan said, "but by March of 1976, I had…" He paused, struggling to say what all three of them understood from the look on his face. His skin had flushed rosy except for where the scar lay; that seemed to glow an almost preternatural white by comparison.

"Oh, okay, I suppose you'd say that by March I'd fallen in love with him. Does that make me a queer? A faggot? I don't know. They say we all are, don't they? Some do, anyway. And why not? Every month or two there seemed to be another story in the paper about a priest with a penchant for sticking his hand up the altar boys' skirts. As for myself, I had no reason to think of myself as queer. God knows I wasn't immune to the turn of a pretty female leg, priest or not, and molesting the altar boys never crossed my mind. Nor was there ever anything physical between Lupe and me. But I loved him, and I'm not just talking about his mind or his dedication or his ambitions for Home. Not just because he'd chosen to do his real work among the poor, like Christ, either. There was a physical attraction."

Callahan paused, struggled, then burst out: "God, he was beautiful. Beautiful!"

"What happened to him?" Roland asked.

"He came in one snowy night in late March. The place was full, and the natives were restless. There had already been one fistfight, and we were still picking up from that. There was a guy with a full-blown fit of the dt's, and Rowan Magruder had him in back, in his office, feeding him coffee laced with whiskey. As I think I told you, we had no lockup room at Home. It was dinnertime, half an hour past, actually, and three of the volunteers hadn't come in because of the weather. The radio was on and a couple of women were dancing. 'Feeding time in the zoo,' Lupe used to say.

"I was taking off my coat, heading for the kitchen… this fellow named Frank Spinelli collared me… wanted to know about a letter of recommendation I'd promised to write him… there was a woman, Lisa somebody, who wanted help with one of the AA steps, 'Made a list of those we had harmed'… there was a young guy who wanted help with a job application, he could read a little but not write… something starting to burn on the stove… complete confusion. And I liked it. It had a way of sweeping you up and carrying you along. But in the middle of it all, I stopped. There were no bells and the only aromas were drunk's b.o. and burning food… but that light was around Lupe's neck like a collar. And I could see marks there. Just little ones. No more than nips, really.

"I stopped, and I must have reeled, because Lupe came hurrying over. And then I could smell it, just faintly: strong onions and hot metal. I must have lost a few seconds, too, because all at once the two of us were in the corner by the filing cabinet where we keep the AA stuff and he was asking me when I last ate. He knew I sometimes forgot to do that.

"The smell was gone. The blue glow around his neck was gone. And those little nips, where something had bitten him, they were gone, too. Unless the vampire's a real guzzler, the marks go in a hurry. But I knew. It was no good asking him who he'd been with, or when, or where. Vampires, even Type Threes-especially Type Threes, maybe-have their protective devices. Pond-leeches secrete an enzyme in their saliva that keeps the blood flowing while they're feeding. It also numbs the skin, so unless you actually see the thing on you, you don't know what's happening. With these Type Three vampires, it's as if they carry a kind of selective, short-term amnesia in their saliva.

"I passed it off somehow. Told him I'd just felt light-headed for a second or two, blamed it on coming out of the cold and into all the noise and light and heat. He accepted it but told me I had to take it easy. "You're too valuable to lose, Don,' he said, and then he kissed me. Here." Callahan touched his right cheek with his scarred right hand. "So I guess I lied when I said there was nothing physical between us, didn't I? There was that one kiss. I can still remember exactly how it felt. Even the little prickle of fine stubble on his upper lip… here."

"I'm so very sorry for you," Susannah said.

"Thank you, my dear," he said. "I wonder if you know how much that means? How wonderful it is to have condolence from one's own world? It's like being a castaway and getting news from home. Or fresh water from a spring after years of stale bottled stuff." He reached out, took her hand in both of his, and smiled. To Eddie, something in that smile looked forced, or even false, and he had a sudden ghastly idea. What if Pere Callahan was smelling a mixture of bitter onions and hot metal right now? What if he was seeing a blue glow, not around Susannah's neck like a collar, but around her stomach like a belt?

Eddie looked at Roland, but there was no help there. The gunslinger's face was expressionless.

"He had AIDS, didn't he?" Eddie asked. "Some gay Type Three vampire bit your friend and passed it on to him."

"Gay," Callahan said. "Do you mean to tell me that stupid word actually…" He trailed off, shaking his head.

"Yep," Eddie said. "The Red Sox still haven't won the Series and homos are gays."

"Eddie!" Susannah said.

"Hey," Eddie said, "do you think it's easy being the one who left New York last and forgot to turn off the lights? Cause it's not. And let me tell you, I'm feeling increasingly out of date myself." He turned back to Callahan. "Anyway, that is what happened, isn't it?"

"I think so. You have to remember that I didn't know a great deal myself at that time, and was denying and repressing what I did know. With great vigor, as President Kennedy used to say. I saw the first one-the first 'little one'-in that movie theater in the week between Christmas and New Year's of 1975." He gave a brief, barking laugh. "And now that I think back, that theater was called the Gaiety. Isn't that surprising?" He paused, looking into their faces with some puzzlement. "It's not. You're not surprised at all."

"Coincidence has been cancelled, honey," Susannah said. "What we're living in these days is more like the Charles Dickens version of reality."

"I don't understand you."

"You don't need to, sug. Go on. Tell your tale."

The Old Fella took a moment to find the dropped thread, then went on.

"I saw my first Type Three in late December of 1975. By that night about three months later when I saw the blue glow around Lupe's neck, I'd come across half a dozen more. Only one of them at prey. He was down in an East Village alley with another guy. He-the vampire-was standing like this." Callahan rose and demonstrated, arms out, palms propped against an invisible wall. "The other one-the victim-was between his propped arms, facing him. They could have been talking. They could have been kissing. But I knew-I knew -that it wasn't either one.

"The others… I saw a couple in restaurants, both of them eating alone. That glow was all over their hands and their faces-smeared across their lips like… like electric blueberry juice-and the burned-onion smell hung around them like some kind of perfume." Callahan smiled briefly. "It strikes me how every description I try to make has some kind of simile buried in it. Because I'm not just trying to describe them, you know, I'm trying to understand them. Still trying to understand them. To figure out how there could have been this other world, this secret world, there all the time, right beside the one I'd always known."

Roland's right, Eddie thought. It's todash. Got to be. He doesn't know it, but it is. Does that make him one of us? Part of our ka-tet?

"I saw one in line at Marine Midland Bank, where Home did its business," Callahan said. "Middle of the day. I was in the Deposit line, this woman was in Withdrawals. That light was all around her. She saw me looking at her and smiled. Fearless eye contact. Flirty." He paused. "Sexy."

"You knew them, because of the vampire-demon's blood in you," Roland said. "Did they know you?"

"No," Callahan said promptly. "If they'd been able to see me-to isolate me-my life wouldn't have been worth a dime. Although they came to know about me. That was later, though.

"My point is, I saw them. I knew they were there. And when I saw what had happened to Lupe, I knew what had been at him. They see it, too. Smell it. Probably hear the chimes, as well. Their victims are marked, and after that more are apt to come, like bugs to a light. Or dogs, all determined to piss on the same telephone pole.

"I'm sure that night in March was the first time Lupe was bitten, because I never saw that glow around him before… or the marks on the side of his throat, which looked like no more than a couple of shaving nicks. But he was bitten repeatedly after that. It had something to do with the nature of the business we were in, working with transients. Maybe drinking alcohol-laced blood is a cheap high for them. Who knows?

"In any case, it was because of Lupe that I made my first kill. The first of many. This was in April…"

TEN

This is April and the air has finally begun to feel and smell like spring. Callahan has been at Home since five, first writing checks to cover end-of-the-month bills, then working on his culinary specialty, which he calls Toads n Dumplins Stew. The meat is actually stewing beef, but the colorful name amuses him.

He has been washing the big steel pots as he goes along, not because he needs to (one of the few things there's no shortage of at Home is cooking gear) but because that's the way his mother taught him to operate in the kitchen: clean as you go.

He takes a pot to the back door, holds it against his hip with one hand, turns the knob with his other hand. He goes out into the alley, meaning to toss the soapy water into the sewer grating out there, and then he stops. Here is something he has seen before, down in the Village, but then the two men -the one standing against the wall, the one in front of him, leaning forward with his hands propped against the bricks -were only shadows. These two he can see clearly in the light from the kitchen, and the one leaning back against the wall, seemingly asleep with his head turned to the side, exposing his neck, is someone Callahan knows.

It is Lupe.

Although the open door has lit up this part of the alley, and Callahan has made no effort to be quiet -has, in fact, been singing Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" -neither of them notices him. They are entranced. The man in front of Lupe looks to be about fifty, well dressed in a suit and a tie. Beside him, an expensive Mark Cross briefcase rests on the cobbles. This man's head is thrust forward and tilted. His open lips are sealed against the right side of Lupe's neck. What's under there?Jugular? Carotid? Callahan doesn't remember, nor does it matter. The chimes don't play this time, but the smell is overwhelming, so rank that tears burst from his eyes and clear mucus immediately begins to drip from his nostrils. The two men opposite him blaze with that dark blue light, and Callahan can see it swirling in rhythmic pulses. That's their breathing, he thinks. It's their breathing, stirring that shit around. Which means it's real.

Callahan can hear, very faintly, a liquid smooching sound. It's the sound you hear in a movie when a couple is kissing passionately, really pouring it on.

He doesn't think about what he does next. He puts down thepotful of sudsy, greasy water. It clanks loudly on the concrete stoop, but the couple leaning against the alley wall opposite don't stir; they remain lost in their dream. Callahan takes two steps backward into the kitchen. On the counter is the cleaver he's been using to cube the stew-beef. Its blade gleams brightly. He can see his face in it and thinks, Well at least I'm not one; my reflection's still there. Then he closes his hand around the rubber grip. He walks back out into the alley. He steps over the pot of soapy water. The air is mild and damp. Somewhere water is dripping. Somewhere a radio is blaring "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." Moisture in the air makes a halo around the light on the far side of the alley. It's April in New York, and ten feet from where Callahan -not long ago an ordained priest of the Catholic Church -stands, a vampire is taking blood from his prey. From the man with whom Donald Callahan has fallen in love.

"Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?" Elton John sings, and Callahan steps forward, raising the cleaver. He brings it down and it sinks deep into the vampire's skull. The sides of the vampire's face push out like wings. He raises his head suddenly, like a predator that has just heard the approach of something bigger and more dangerous than he is. A moment later he dips slightly at the knees, as if meaning to pick up the briefcase, then seems to decide he can do without it. He turns and walks slowly toward the mouth of the alley. Toward the sound of Elton John, who is now singing "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my lii-ife tonight." The cleaver is still sticking out of the thing's skull. The handle waggles back and forth with each step like a stiff little tail. Callahan sees some blood, but not the ocean he would have expected. At that moment he is too deep in shock to wonder about this, but later he will come to believe that there is precious little liquid blood in these beings; whatever keeps them moving, it's more magical than the miracle of blood. Most of what was their blood has coagulated as firmly as the yolk of a hard-cooked egg.

It takes another step, then stops. Its shoulders slump. Callahan loses sight of its head when it sags forward. And then, suddenly, the clothes are collapsing, crumpling in on themselves, drifting down to the wet surface of the alley.

Feeling like a man in a dream, Callahan goes forward to examine them. Lupe Delgado stands against the wall, head back, eyes shut, still lost in whatever dream the vampire has cast over him. Blood trickles down his neck in small and unimportant streams.

Callahan looks at the clothes. The tie is still knotted. The shirt is still inside the suit-coat, and still tucked into the suit pants. He knows that if he unzipped the fly of those suit pants, he would see the underwear inside. He picks up one arm of the coat, mostly to confirm its emptiness by touch as well as sight, and the vampire's watch tumbles out of the sleeve and lands with a clink beside what looks like a class ring.

There is hair. There are teeth, some with fillings. Of the rest of Mr. Mark Cross Briefcase, there is no sign.

Callahan gathers up the clothes. Elton John is still singing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," but maybe that's not surprising. It's a pretty long song, one of those four-minute jobs, must be. He puts the watch on his own wrist and the ring on one of his own fingers, just for temporary safekeeping. He takes the clothes inside, walking past Lupe. Lupe's still lost in his dream. And the holes in his neck, little bigger than pinpricks to start with, are disappearing.

The kitchen is miraculously empty. Off it, to the left, is a door marked storage. Beyond it is a short hall with compartments on both sides. These are behind locked gates made of heavy chickenwire, to discourage pilferage. Canned goods on one side, dry goods on the other. Then clothes. Shirts in one compartment. Pants in another. Dresses and skirts in another. Coats in yet another. At the very end of the hall is a beat-up wardrobe marked MISCELLANY. Callahan finds the vampire's wallet and sticks it in his pocket, on top of his own. The two of them together make quite a lump. Then he unlocks the wardrobe and tosses in the vampire's unsorted clothes. It's easier than trying to take his ensemble apart, although he guesses that when the underwear is found inside the pants, there will be grumbling. At Home, used underwear is not accepted.

"We may cater to the low-bottom crowd," Rowan Magruder has told Callahan once, "but we do have our standards."

Never mind their standards now. There's the vampire's hair and teeth to think about. His watch, his ring, his wallet… and God, his briefcase and his shoes! They must still be out there!

Don't you dare complain, he tells himself. Not when ninety-five per cent of him is gone, just conveniently disappeared like the monster in the last reel of a horror movie. God's been with you so far-I think it's God-so don't you dare complain.

Nor does he. He gathers up the hair, the teeth, the briefcase, and takes them to the end of the alley, splashing through puddles, and tosses them over the fence. After a moment's consideration he throws the watch, wallet, and ring over, too. The ring sticks on his finger for a moment and he almost panics, but at last it comes off and over it goes -plink. Someone will take care of this stuff for him. This is New York, after all. He goes back to Lupe and sees the shoes. They are too good to throw away, he thinks; there are years of wear left in those babies. He picks them up and walks back into the kitchen with them dangling from the first two fingers of his right hand. He's standing there with them by the stove when Lupe comes walking into the kitchen from the alley.

"Don?" he asks. His voice is a little furry, the voice of someone who has just awakened from a sound sleep. It also sounds amused. He points at the shoes hooked over the tips of Callahan's fingers. "Were you going to put those in the stew?"

"It might improve the flavor, but no, just in storage," Callahan says. He is astounded by the calmness of his own voice. And his heart! Beating along at a nice regular sixty or seventy beats a minute. "Someone left them out back. What have you been up to?"

Lupe gives him a smile, and when he smiles, he is more beautiful than ever. "Just out there, having a smoke," he says. "It was too nice to come in. Didn't you see me?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," Callahan said. "You looked lost in your own little world, and I didn't want to interrupt you. Open the storage-room door for me, would you?"

Lupe opens the door. "That looks like a really nice pair," he says. "Bally. What's someone doing, leaving Bally shoes for the drunks'?"

"Someone must have changed his mind about them," Callahan says. He hears the bells, that poison sweetness, and grits his teeth against the sound. The world seems to shimmer for a moment. Not now, he thinks. Ah, not now, please.

It's not a prayer, he prays little these days, but maybe something hears, because the sound of the chimes fades. The world steadies. From the other room someone is bawling for supper. Someone else is cursing. Same old same old. And he wants a drink. That's the same, too, only the craving is fiercer than it's ever been. He keeps thinking about how the rubber grip felt in his hand. The weight of the cleaver. The sound it made. And the taste is back in his mouth. The dead taste of Barlow's blood. That, too. What did the vampire say in the Petries' kitchen, after it had broken the crucifix his mother had given him? That it was sad to see a man's faith fail.

I'll sit in on the AA meeting tonight, he thinks, putting a rubber band around the Bally loafers and tossing them in with the rest of the footwear. Sometimes the meetings help. He never says, "I'm Don and I'm an alcoholic," but sometimes they help.

Lupe is so close behind him when he turns around that he gasps a little.

"Easy, boy," Lupe says, laughing. He scratches his throat casually. The marks are still there, but they'll be gone in the morning. Still, Callahan knows the vampires see something. Or smell it. Or some damn thing.

"Listen," he says to Lupe, "I've been thinking about getting out of the city for a week or two. A little R and R. Why don't we go together? We could go upstate. Do some fishing."

"Can't," Lupe says. "I don't have any vacation time coming at the hotel until June, and besides, we're shorthanded here. But if you want to go, I'll square it with Rowan. No problem." Lupe looks at him closely. "You could use some time off, looks like. You look tired. And you're jumpy."

"Nah, it was just an idea," Callahan says. He's not going anywhere. If he stays, maybe he can watch out for Lupe. And he knows something now. Killing them is no harder than swatting bugs on a wall. And they don't leave much behind. E-ZKleen-Up, as they say in the TV ads. Lupe will be all right. The Type Threes like Mr. Mark Cross Briefcase don't seem to kill their prey, or even change them. At least not that he can see, not over the short term. But he will watch, he can do that much. He will mount a guard. It will be one small act of atonement for Jerusalem's Lot. And Lupe will be all right.

ELEVEN

"Except he wasn't," Roland said. He was carefully rolling a cigarette from the crumbs at the bottom of his poke. The paper was brittle, the tobacco really not much more than dust.

"No," Callahan agreed. "He wasn't. Roland, I have no cigarette papers, but I can do you better for a smoke than that. There's good tobacco in the house, from down south. I don't use it, but Rosalita sometimes likes a pipe in the evening."

"I'll take you up on that later and say thankya," the gunslinger said. "I don't miss it as much as coffee, but almost. Finish your tale. Leave nothing out, I think it's important we hear it all, but-"

"I know. Time is short."

"Yes," Roland said. "Time is short."

"Then briefly put, my friend contracted this disease-AIDS became the name of choice?"

He was looking at Eddie, who nodded.

"All right," Callahan said. "It's as good a name as any, I guess, although the first thing I think of when I hear that word is a kind of diet candy. You may know it doesn't always spread fast, but in my friend's case, it moved like a fire in straw. By mid-May of 1976, Lupe Delgado was very ill. He lost his color. He was feverish a lot of the time. He'd sometimes spend the whole night in the bathroom, vomiting. Rowan would have banned him from the kitchen, but he didn't need to-Lupe banned himself. And then the blemishes began to show up."

"They called those Eaposi's sarcoma, I think," Eddie said. "A skin disease. Disfiguring."

Callahan nodded. "Three weeks after the blemishes started showing up, Lupe was in New York General. Rowan Magruder and I went to see him one night in late June. Up until then we'd been telling each other he'd turn it around, come out of it better than ever, hell, he was young and strong. But that night we knew the minute we were in the door that he was all through. He was in an oxygen tent. There were IV lines running into his arms. He was in terrible pain. He didn't want us to get close to him. It might be catching, he said. In truth, no one seemed to know much about it."

"Which made it scarier than ever," Susannah said.

"Yes. He said the doctors believed it was a blood disease spread by homosexual activity, or maybe by sharing needles. And what he wanted us to know, what he kept saying over and over again, was that he was clean, all the drug tests came back negative. 'Not since nineteen-seventy,' he kept saying. 'Not one toke off one joint. I swear to God.' We said we knew he was clean. We sat on either side of his bed and he took our hands."

Callahan swallowed. There was an audible click in his throat.

"Our hands… he made us wash them before we left. Just in case, he said. And he thanked us for coming. He told Rowan that Home was the best thing that ever happened to him. That as far as he was concerned, it really was home.

"I never wanted a drink as badly as I did that night, leaving New York General. I kept Rowan right beside me, though, and the two of us walked past all the bars. That night I went to bed sober, but I lay there knowing it was really just a matter of time. The first drink is the one that gets you drunk, that's what they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, and mine was somewhere close. Somewhere a bartender was just waiting for me to come in so he could pour it out.

"Two nights later, Lupe died."

"There must have been three hundred people at the funeral, almost all of them people who'd spent time in Home. There was a lot of crying and a lot of wonderful things said, some by folks who probably couldn't have walked a chalk line. When it was over, Rowan Magruder took me by the arm and said, "I don't know who you are, Don, but I know what you are- one hell of a good man and one hell of a bad drunk who's been dry for… how long has it been?"

"I thought about going on with the bullshit, but it just seemed like too much work. 'Since October of last year,' I said.

" 'You want one now,' he said. 'That's all over your face. So I tell you what: if you think taking a drink will bring Lupe back, you have my permission. In fact, come get me and we'll go down to the Blarney Stone together and drink up what's in my wallet first. Okay?'

" 'Okay,' I said."

"He said, "You getting drunk today would be the worst memorial to Lupe I could think of. Like pissing in his dead face.'

"He was right, and I knew it. I spent the rest of that day the way I spent my second one in New York, walking around, fighting that taste in my mouth, fighting the urge to score a bottle and stake out a park bench. I remember being on Broadway, then over on Tenth Avenue, then way down at Park and Thirtieth. By then it was getting dark, cars going both ways on Park with their lights on. The sky all orange and pink in the west, and the streets full of this gorgeous long light.

"A sense of peace came over me, and I thought, 'I'm going to win. Tonight at least, I'm going to win.' And that was when the chimes started. The loudest ever. I felt as if my head would burst. Park Avenue shimmered in front of me and I thought, Why, it's not real at all. Not Park Avenue, not any of it. It's just a gigantic swatch of canvas. New York is nothing but a backdrop painted on that canvas, and what's behind it? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. Just blackness.

"Then things steadied again. The chimes faded… faded… finally gone. I started to walk, very slowly. Like a man walking on thin ice. What I was afraid of was that if I stepped too heavily, I might plunge right out of the world and into the darkness behind it. I know that makes absolutely no sense- hell, I knew it then-but knowing a thing doesn't always help. Does it?"

"No," Eddie said, thinking of his days snorting heroin with Henry.

"No," said Susannah.

"No," Roland agreed, thinking of Jericho Hill. Thinking of the fallen horn.

"I walked one block, then two, then three. I started to think it was going to be okay. I mean, I might get the bad smell, and I might see a few Type Threes, but I could handle those things. Especially since the Type Threes didn't seem to recognize me. Looking at them was like looking through one-way glass at suspects in a police interrogation room. But that night I saw something much, much worse than a bunch of vampires."

"You saw someone who was actually dead," Susannah said.

Callahan turned to her with a look of utter, flabbergasted surprise. "How… how do you…"

"I know because I've been todash in New York, too," Susannah said. "We all have. Roland says those are people who either don't know they've passed on or refuse to accept it. They're… what'd you call em, Roland?"

"The vagrant dead," the gunslinger replied. "There aren't many."

"There were enough," Callahan said, "and they knew I was there. Mangled people on Park Avenue, one of them a man without eyes, one a woman missing the arm and leg on the right side of her body and burned all over, both of them looking at me, as if they thought I could… fix them, somehow.

"I ran. And I must have run one hell of a long way, because when I came back to something like sanity, I was sitting on the curb at Second Avenue and Nineteenth Street, head hung down, panting like a steam engine.

"Some old geezer came along and asked if I was all right. By then I'd caught enough of my breath to tell him that I was. He said that in that case I'd better move along, because there was an NYPD radio-car just a couple of blocks away and it was coming in our direction. They'd roust me for sure, maybe bust me. I looked the old guy in the eyes and said, 'I've seen vampires. Killed one, even. And I've seen the walking dead. Do you think I'm afraid of a couple of cops in a radio-car?'

"He backed off. Said to keep away from him. Said I'd looked okay, so he tried to do me a favor. Said this was what he got. 'In New York, no good deed goes unpunished,' he said, and stomped off down the street like a kid having a tantrum.

"I started laughing. I got up off the curb and looked down at myself. My shirt was untucked all the way around. I had crud on my pants from running into something, I couldn't even remember what. I looked around, and there by all the saints and all the sinners was the Americano Bar. I found out later there are several of them in New York, but I thought then that one had moved down from the Forties just for me. I went inside, took the stool at the end of the bar, and when the bartender came down, I said, "You've been keeping something for me.'

" 'Is that so, my pal?' he said.

" 'Yes,' I said.

" 'Well,' he said, "you tell me what it is, and I'll get it for you.'

" 'It's Bushmill's, and since you've had it since last October, why don't you add the interest and make it a double.'

Eddie winced. "Bad idea, man."

"Right then it seemed like the finest idea ever conceived by the mind of mortal man. I'd forget Lupe, stop seeing dead people, perhaps even stop seeing the vampires… the mosquitoes, as I came to think of them.

"By eight o'clock I was drunk. By nine, I was very drunk. By ten, I was as drunk as I'd ever been. I have a vague memory of the barman throwing me out. A slightly better one of waking up the next morning in the park, under a blanket of newspapers."

"Back to the beginning," Susannah murmured.

"Aye, lady, back to the beginning, you say true, I say thankya. I sat up. I thought my head was going to split wide open. I put it down between my knees, and when it didn't explode, I raised it again. There was an old woman sitting on a bench about twenty yards away from me, just an old lady with a kerchief on her head feeding the squirrels from a paper bag filled with nuts.

Only that blue light was crawling all over her cheeks and brow, going into and out of her mouth when she breathed. She was one of them. A mosquito. The walking dead were gone, but I could still see the Type Threes.

"Getting drunk again seemed like a logical response to this, but I had one small problem: no money. Someone had apparendy rolled me while I was sleeping it off under my newspaper blanket, and there goes your ballgame." Callahan smiled. There was nothing pleasant about it.

"That day I did find ManPower. I found it the next day, too, and the day after that. Then I got drunk. That became my habit during the Summer of the Tall Ships: work three days sober, usually shoving a wheelbarrow on some construction site or lugging big boxes for some company moving floors, then spend one night getting enormously drunk and the next day recovering. Then start all over again. Take Sundays off. That was my life in New York that summer. And everywhere I went, it seemed that I heard that Elton John song, 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight' I don't know if that was the summer it was popular or not. I only know I heard it everywhere. Once I worked five days straight for Covay Movers. The Brother Outfit, they called themselves. For sobriety, that was my personal best that July. The guy in charge came up to me on the fifth day and asked me how I'd like to hire on full-time.

" 'I can't,' I said. 'The day-labor contracts specifically forbid their guys from taking a steady job with any outside company for a month.'

" 'Ah, fuck that,' he says, 'everyone winks at that bullshit. What do you say, Donnie? You're a good man. And I got an idea you could do a little more than buck furniture up on the truck. You want to think about it tonight?'

"I thought about it, and thinking led back to drinking, as it always did that summer. As it always does for those of the alcoholic persuasion. Back to me sitting in some little bar across from the Empire State Building, listening to Elton John on the juke-box. 'Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?' And when I went back to work, I checked in with a different day-labor company, one that had never heard of the fucking Brother Outfit."

Callahan spat out the word fucking in a kind of desperate snarl, as men do when vulgarity has become for them a kind of linguistic court of last resort.

"You drank, you drifted, you worked," Roland said. "But you had at least one other piece of business that summer, did you not?"

"Yes. It took me a little while to get going. I saw several of them-the woman feeding the squirrels in the park was only the first-but they weren't doing anything. I mean, I knew what they were, but it was still hard to kill them in cold blood. Then, one night in Battery Park, I saw another one feeding. I had a fold-out knife in my pocket by then, carried it everywhere. I walked up behind him while he was eating and stabbed him four times: once in the kidneys, once between the ribs, once high up in the back, once in the neck. I put all my strength into the last one. The knife came out the other side with the thing's Adam's apple skewered on it like a piece of steak on a shish kebab. Made a kind of ripping sound."

Callahan spoke matter-of-factly, but his face had grown very pale.

"What had happened in the alley behind Home happened again-the guy disappeared right out of his clothes. I'd expected it, but of course I couldn't be sure until it actually happened."

"One swallow does not make a summer," Susannah said.

Callahan nodded. "The victim was this kid of about fifteen, looked Puerto Rican or maybe Dominican. He had a boombox between his feet. I don't remember what it was playing, so it probably wasn't 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight' Five minutes went by. I was about to start snapping my fingers under his nose or maybe patting his cheeks, when he blinked, staggered, shook his head, and came around. He saw me standing there in front of him and the first thing he did was grab his boombox. He held it to his chest, like it was a baby. Then he said, 'What joo want, man?' I said I didn't want anything, not a single thing, no harm and no foul, but I was curious about those clothes lying beside him. The kid looked, then knelt down and started going through the pockets. I thought he'd find enough to keep him occupied-more than enough-and so I just walked away. And that was the second one. The third one was easier. The fourth one, easier still. By the end of August, I'd gotten half a dozen. The sixth was the woman I'd seen in the Marine Midland Bank. Small world, isn't it?"

"Quite often I'd go down to First and Forty-seventh and stand across from Home. Sometimes I'd find myself there in the late afternoon, watching the drunks and the homeless people showing up for dinner. Sometimes Rowan would come out and talk to them. He didn't smoke, but he always kept cigarettes in his pockets, a couple of packs, and he'd pass them out until they were gone. I never made any particular effort to hide from him, but if he ever pegged me, I never saw any sign of it."

"You'd probably changed by then," Eddie said.

Callahan nodded. "Hair down to my shoulders, and coming in gray. A beard. And of course I no longer took any pains about my clothes. Half of what I was wearing by then came from the vampires I'd killed. One of them was a bicycle messenger guy, and he had a great pair of motorcycle boots. Not Bally loafers, but almost new, and my size. Those things last forever. I've still got them." He nodded toward the house. "But I don't think any of that was why he didn't recognize me. In Rowan Magruder's business, dealing with drunks and hypes and homeless people who've got one foot in reality and the other in the Twilight Zone, you get used to seeing big changes in people, and usually not changes for the better. You teach yourself to see who's under the new bruises and the fresh coats of dirt. I think it was more like I'd become one of what you call the vagrant dead, Roland. Invisible to the world. But I think those people- those former people-must be tied to New York-"

"They never go far," Roland agreed. His cigarette was done; the dry paper and crumbles of tobacco had disappeared up to his fingernails in two puffs. "Ghosts always haunt the same house."

"Of course they do, poor things. And I wanted to leave. Every day the sun would set a little earlier, and every day I'd feel the call of those roads, those highways in hiding, a little more strongly. Some of it might have been the fabled geographic cure, to which I believe I have already alluded. It's a wholly illogical but nonetheless powerful belief that things will change for the better in a new place; that the urge to self-destruct will magically disappear. Some of it was undoubtedly the hope that in another place, a wider place, there would be no more vampires or walking dead people to cope with. But mostly it was other things. Well… one very big thing." Callahan smiled, but it was no more than a stretch of the lips exposing the gums. "Someone had begun hunting me."

"The vampires," Eddie said.

"Ye-ess…" Callahan bit at his lip, then repeated it with a little more conviction. "Yes. But not just the vampires. Even when that had to be the most logical idea, it didn't seem entirely right. I knew it wasn't the dead, at least; they could see me, but didn't care about me one way or another, except maybe for the hope that I might be able to fix them or put them out of their misery. But the Type Threes couldn't see me, as I've told you-not as the thing hunting them, anyway. And their attention spans are short, as if they're infected to some degree by the same amnesia they pass on to their victims.

"I first became aware that I was in trouble one night in Washington Square Park, not long after I killed the woman from the bank. That park had become a regular haunt of mine, almough God knows I wasn't the only one. In the summer it was a regular open-air dormitory. I even had my own favorite bench, although I didn't get it every night… didn't even go there every night.

"On this particular evening-thundery and sultry and close-I got there around eight o'clock. I had a bottle in a brown bag and a book of Ezra Pound's Cantos. I approached the bench, and there, spray-painted across the back of another bench near mine, I saw a graffito that said HE COMES HERE. HE HAS A BURNED HAND."

"Oh my Lord God," Susannah said, and put a hand to her throat.

"I left the park at once and slept in an alley twenty blocks away. There was no doubt in my mind that I was the subject of that graffito. Two nights later I saw one on the sidewalk outside a bar on Lex where I liked to drink and sometimes have a sandwich if I was, as they say, in funds. It had been done in chalk and the foot-traffic had rubbed it to a ghost, but I could still read it. It said the same thing: he comes here, he has a burned hand. There were comets and stars around the message, as if whoever wrote it had actually tried to dress it up. A block down, spray-painted on a No Parking sign: his hair is mostly white now. The next morning, on the side of a cross-town bus: his name might be collingwood. Two or three days after that, I started to see lost-pet posters around a lot of the places that had come to be my places-Needle Park, the Central Park West side of The Ramble, the City Lights bar on Lex, a couple of folk music and poetry clubs down in the Village."

"Pet posters," Eddie mused. "You know, in a way that's brilliant."

"They were all the same," Callahan said, "HAVE YOU SEEN OUR IRISH SETTER? HE IS A STUPID OLD THING BUT WE LOVE HIM. BURNED RIGHT FOREPAW. ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF KELLY, COLLINS, OR COLLINGWOOD. WE WILL PAY A VERY LARGE REWARD. And then a row of dollar signs."

"Who would posters like that be aimed at?" Susannah asked.

Callahan shrugged. "Don't know, exacdy. The vampires, perhaps."

Eddie was rubbing his face wearily. "All right, let's see. We've got the Type Three vampires… and the vagrant dead… and now this third group. The ones that went around putting up lost-pet posters that weren't about pets and writing stuff on buildings and sidewalks. Who were they?"

"The low men," Callahan said. "They call themselves that, sometimes, although there are women among them. Sometimes they call themselves regulators. A lot of them wear long yellow coats… but not all. A lot of them have blue coffins tattooed on their hands… but not all."

"Big Coffin Hunters, Roland," Eddie murmured.

Roland nodded but never took his eyes from Callahan. "Let the man talk, Eddie."

"What they are-what they really are-is soldiers of the Crimson King," Callahan said. And he crossed himself.

TWELVE

Eddie started. Susannah's hand went back to her belly and began to rub. Roland found himself remembering their walk through Gage Park after they had finally escaped Blaine. The dead animals in the zoo. The run-to-riot rose garden. The carousel and the toy train. Then the metal road leading up to the even larger metal road which Eddie, Susannah, and Jake called a turnpike. There, on one sign, someone had slashed WATCH FOR THE WALKIN DUDE. And on another sign, decorated with the crude drawing of an eye, this message: ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING!

"You've heard of the gentleman, I see," Callahan said dryly.

"Let's say he's left his mark where we could see it, too," Susannah said.

Callahan nodded his head in the direction of Thunderclap. "If your quest takes you there," he said, "you're going to see a hell of a lot more than a few signs spray-painted on a few walls."

"What about you?" Eddie asked. "What did you do?"

"First, I sat down and considered the situation. And decided that, no matter how fantastic or paranoid it might sound to an outsider, I really was being stalked, and not necessarily by Type Three vampires. Although of course I did realize that the people leaving the graffiti around and putting up the lost-pet posters wouldn't scruple to use the vampires against me.

"At this point, remember, I had no idea who this mysterious group could be. Back in Jerusalem's Lot, Barlow moved into a house that had seen terrible violence and was reputed to be haunted. The writer, Mears, said that an evil house had drawn an evil man. My best thinking in New York took me back to that idea. I began to think I'd drawn another king vampire, another Type One, the way the Marsten House had drawn Barlow. Right idea or wrong one (it turned out to be wrong), I found it comforting to know my brain, booze-soaked or not, was still capable of some logic.

"The first thing I had to decide was whether to stay in New York or run away. I knew if I didn't run, they'd catch up to me, and probably sooner rather than later. They had a description, with this as an especially good marker." Callahan raised his burned hand. "They almost had my name; would have it for sure in another week or two. They'd stake out all my regular stops, places where my scent had collected. They'd find people I'd talked to, hung out with, played checkers and cribbage with. People I'd worked with on my ManPower and Brawny Man jobs, too."

"This led me to a place I should have gotten to much sooner, even after a month of binge drinking. I realized they'd find Rowan Magruder and Home and all sorts of other people who knew me there. Part-time workers, volunteers, dozens of clients. Hell, after nine months, hundreds of clients.

"On top of that, there was the lure of those roads." Callahan looked at Eddie and Susannah. "Do you know there's a footbridge over the Hudson River to New Jersey? It's practically in the shadow of the GWB, a plank footbridge that still has a few wooden drinking troughs for cows and horses along one side."

Eddie laughed the way a man will when he realizes one of his lower appendages is being shaken briskly. "Sorry, Father, but that's impossible. I've been over the George Washington Bridge maybe five hundred times in my life. Henry and I used to go to Palisades Park all the time. There's no plank bridge."

"There is, though," Callahan said calmly. "It goes back to the early nineteenth century, I should say, although it's been repaired quite a few times since then. In fact, there's a sign halfway across that says BICENTENNIAL REPAIRS COMPLETED 1975 BY LAMERK INDUSTRIES. I recalled that name the first time I saw Andy the robot. According to the plate on his chest, that's the company that made him."

"We've seen the name before, too," Eddie said. "In the city of Lud. Only there it said LaMerk Foundry."

"Different divisions of the same company, probably," Susannah said.

Roland said nothing, only made that impatient twirling gesture with the remaining two fingers of his right hand: hurry up, hurry up.

"It's there, but it's hard to see," Callahan said. "It's in hiding. And it's only the first of the secret ways. From New York they radiate out like a spider's web."

"Todash turnpikes," Eddie murmured. "Dig the concept."

"I don't know if that's right or not," Callahan said. "I only know I saw extraordinary things in my wanderings over the next few years, and I also met a lot of good people. It seems almost an insult to call them normal people, or ordinary people, but they were both. And certainly they give such words as normal and ordinary a feel of nobility for me.

"I didn't want to leave New York without seeing Rowan Magruder again. I wanted him to know that maybe I had pissed in Lupe's dead face-I'd gotten drunk, surely enough-but I hadn't dropped my pants all the way down and done the other thing. Which is my too-clumsy way of saying I hadn't given up entirely. And that I'd decided not just to cower like a rabbit in a flashlight beam."

Callahan had begun to weep again. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt. "Also, I suppose I wanted to say goodbye to someone, and have someone say goodbye to me. The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we're still alive, after all. I wanted to give him a hug, and pass along the kiss Lupe had given me. Plus the same message: You're too valuable to lose. I-"

He saw Rosalita hurrying down the lawn with her skirt twitched up slightly at the ankle, and broke off. She handed him a flat piece of slate upon which something had been chalked.

For a wild moment Eddie imagined a message flanked by stars and moons:

"It's from Eisenhart," Callahan said, looking up. "If Overholser's the big farmer in these parts, and Eben Took's the big businessman, then you'd have to call Vaughn Eisenhart the big rancher. He says that he, Slightman Elder and Younger, and your Jake would meet us at Our Lady falls noon, if it do ya fine. It's hard to make out his shorthand, but I think he'd have you visit farms, smallholds, and ranches on your way back out to the Rocking B, where you'd spend the night. Does it do ya?"

"Not quite," Roland said. "I'd much like to have my map before I set off."

Callahan considered this, then looked at Rosalita. Eddie decided the woman was probably a lot more than just a housekeeper. She had withdrawn out of earshot, but not all the way back to the house. Like a good executive secretary, he thought. The Old Fella didn't need to beckon her; she came forward at his glance. They spoke, and then Rosalita set off.

"I think we'll take our lunch on the church lawn," Callahan said. "There's a pleasant old ironwood there that'll shade us. By the time we're done, I'm sure the Tavery twins will have something for you."

Roland nodded, satisfied.

Callahan stood up with a wince, put his hands in the small of his back, and stretched. "And I have something to show you now," he said.

"You haven't finished your story," Susannah said.

"No," Callahan agreed, "but time has grown short. I can walk and talk at the same time, if you fellows can walk and listen."

"We can do that," Roland said, getting up himself. There was pain, but not a great deal of it. Rosalita's cat-oil was something to write home about. "Just tell me two things before we go."

"If I can, gunslinger, and do'ee fine."

"They of the signs: did you see them in your travels?"

Callahan nodded slowly. "Aye, gunslinger, so I did." He looked at Eddie and Susannah. "Have you ever seen a color photo of people-one taken with a flash-where everyone's eyes are red?"

"Yeah," Eddie said.

"Their eyes are like that. Crimson eyes. And your second question, Roland?"

"Are they the Wolves, Pere? These low men? These soldiers of the Crimson King? Are they the Wolves?"

Callahan hesitated a long time before replying. "I can't say for sure," he said at last. "Not a hundred per cent, kennit. But I don't think so. Yet certainly they're kidnappers, although it's not just children they take." He thought over what he'd said. "Wolves of a kind, perhaps." He hesitated, thought it over some more, then said it again: "Aye, Wolves of a kind."

ONE

The walk from the back yard of the rectory to the front door of Our Lady of Serenity was a short one, taking no more than five minutes. That was surely not enough time for the Old Fella to tell them about the years he had spent on the bum before seeing a news story in the Sacramento Bee which had brought him back to New York in 1981, and yet the three gunslingers heard the entire tale, nevertheless. Roland suspected that Eddie and Susannah knew what this meant as well as he did: when they moved on from Calla Bryn Sturgis-always assuming they didn't die here-there was every likelihood that Donald Callahan would be moving on with them. This was not just storytelling but khef, the sharing of water. And, leaving the touch, which was a different matter, to one side, khef could only be shared by those whom destiny had welded together for good or for ill. By those who were ka-tet.

Callahan said, "Do you know how folks say, 'We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto?'"

"The phrase has some vague resonance for us, sugar, yes," Susannah said dryly.

"Does it? Yes, I see just looking at you that it does. Perhaps you'll tell me your own story someday. I have an idea it would put mine to shame. In any case, I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore as I approached the far end of the footbridge. And it seemed that I wasn't entering New Jersey, either. At least not the one I'd always expected to find on the other side of the Hudson. There was a newspaper crumpled against the"

TWO

footrail of the bridge -which seems completely deserted except for him, although vehicle traffic on the big suspension bridge to his left is heavy and constant -and Callahan bends to pick it up. The cool wind blowing along the river ruffles his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair.

There's only one folded sheet, but the top of it's the front page of the Leabrook Register. Callahan has never heard of Leabrook. No reason he should have, he's no New Jersey scholar, hasn't even been over there since arriving in Manhattan the previous year, but he always thought the town on the other side of the GWB was Fort Lee.

Then his mind is taken over by the headlines. The one across the top seems right enough; RACIAL TENSIONS IN MIAMI EASE, it reads. The New York papers have been full of these troubles over the last few days. But what to make of WAR OF KITES CONTINUES IN TEANECK, HACKENSACK, complete with a picture of a burning building'? There's a photo of firemen arriving on a pumper, but they are all laughing! What to make of PRESIDENT AGNEW SUPPORTS NASA TERRAFORM DREAM? What to make of the item at the bottom, written in Cyrillic?

What has happened to me? Callahan asks himself. All through the business of the vampires and the walking dead -even through the appearance of lost-pet posters which clearly refer to him -he has never questioned his sanity. Now, standing on the New Jersey end of this humble (and most remarkable!) footbridge across the Hudson -this footbridge which is being utilized by no one except himself -he finally does. The idea of Spiro Agnew as President is enough all by itself, he thinks, to make anyone with a speck of political sense doubt his sanity. The man resigned in disgrace years ago, even before his boss did.

What has happened to me? he wonders, but if he's a raving lunatic imagining all of this, he really doesn't want to know.

"Bombs away," he says, and tosses the four-page remnant of the Leabrook Register over the railing of the bridge. The breeze catches it and carries it away toward the George Washington. That's reality, he thinks, right over there. Those cars, those trucks, those Peter Pan charter buses. But then, among them, he sees a red vehicle that appears to be speeding along on a number of circular treads. Above the vehicle's body -it's about as long as a medium-sized schoolbus -a crimson cylinder is turning. BANDY, it says on one side. BROOKS, it says on the other. BANDY BROOKS. Or BANDYBROOKS. What the hell's Bandy Brooks? He has no idea. Nor has he ever seen such a vehicle in his life, and would not have believed such a thing -look at the treads, for heaven's sake -would have been allowed on a public highway.

So the George Washington Bridge isn't the safe world, either. Or not anymore.

Callahan grabs the railing of the footbridge and squeezes down tightly as a wave of dizziness courses through him, making him feel unsteady on his feet and unsure of his balance. The railing feels real enough, wood warmed by the sun and engraved with thousands of interlocking initials and messages. He sees DK L MB in a heart. He sees FREDDY amp; HELENA = TRU LUV. He sees KILL ALL SPIX and NIGERS, the message flanked by swastikas, and wonders at verbal depletion so complete the sufferer cannot even spell his favorite epithets. Messages of hate, messages of love, and all of them as real as the rapid beating of his heart or the weight of the few coins and bills in the right front pocket of his jeans. He takes a deep breath of the breeze, and that's real, too, right down to the tang of diesel fuel.

This is happening to me, I know it is, he thinks. I am not in some psychiatric hospital's Ward 9. I am me, I am here, and I'm even sober-at least for the time being-and New York is at my back. So is the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, with its uneasy dead. Before me is the weight of America, with all its possibilities.

This thought lifts him, and is followed by one that lifts him even higher: not just one America, perhaps, but a dozen… or a thousand… or a million. If that's Leabrook over there instead of Fort Lee, maybe there's another version of New Jersey where the town on the other side of the Hudson is Leeman or Leighman or Lee Bluffs or Lee Palisades or Leghorn Village. Maybe instead of forty-two continental United States on the other side of the Hudson, there are forty-two hundred, or forty-two thousand, all of them stacked in vertical geographies of chance.

And he understands instinctively that this is almost certainly true. He has stumbled upon a great, possibly endless, confluence of worlds.

They are all America, but they are all different. There are highways which lead through them, and he can see them.

He walks rapidly to the Leabrook end of the footbridge, then pauses again. Suppose I can't find my way back? he thinks. Suppose I get lost and wander and never find my way back to the America where Fort Lee is on the west side of the George Washington Bridge and Gerald Ford (of all people!) is the President of the United States?

And then he thinks: So what if I do? So fucking what?

When he steps off on the Jersey side of the footbridge he's grinning, truly lighthearted for this first time since the day he presided over Danny Glick's grave in the town of Jerusalem's Lot. A couple of boys with fishing poles are walking toward him. "Would one of you young fellows care to welcome me to New Jersey? " Callahan asks, grinning more widely than ever.

"Welcome to En Jay, man," one of them says, willingly enough, but both of them give Callahan a wide berth and a careful look. He doesn't blame them, but it doesn't cut into his splendid mood in the slightest. He feels like a man who has been let out of a gray and cheerless prison on a sunny day. He begins to walk faster, not turning around to give the skyline of Manhattan a single goodbye glance. Why would he? Manhattan is the past. The multiple Americas which lie ahead of him, those are the future.

He is in Leabrook. There are no chimes. Later there will be chimes and vampires; later there will be more messages chalked on sidewalks and sprayed on brick walls (not all about him, either). Later he will see the low men in their outrageous red Cadillacs and green Lincolns and purple Mercedes-Benz sedans, low men with red flashgun eyes, but not today. Today there is sunshine in a new America on the west side of a restored footbridge across the Hudson.

On Main Street he stops in front of the Leabrook Homestyle Diner and there is a sign in the window reading SHORT-ORDER COOK WANTED. Don Callahan short-ordered through most of his time at seminary and did more than his share of the same at Home on the East Side of Manhattan. He thinks he might fit right in here at the Leabrook Homestyle. Turns out he's right, although it takes three shifts before the ability to crack a pair of eggs one-handed onto the grill comes swimming back to him. The owner, a long drink of water named Dicky Rudebacher, asks Callahan if he has any medical problems - "catching stuff," he calls it - and nods simple acceptance when Callahan says he doesn't. He doesn't ask Callahan for any paperwork, not so much as a Social Security number. He wants to pay his new short-order off the books, if that 'snot a problem. Callahan assures him it is not.

"One more thing," says Dicky Rudebacher, and Callahan waits for the shoe to drop. Nothing would surprise him, but all Rudebacher says is: "You look like a drinking man."

Callahan allows as how he has been known to take a drink.

"So have I," Rudebacher says. "In this business it's the way you protect your gahdam sanity. I ain't gonna smell your breath when you come in… if you come in on time. Miss coming in on time twice, though, and you're on your way to wherever. I ain't going to tell you that again."

Callahan short-orders at the Leabrook Homestyle Diner for three weeks, and stays two blocks down at the Sunset Motel. Only it's not always the Homestyle, and it's not always the Sunset. On his fourth day in town, he wakes up in the Sunrise Motel, and the Leabrook Homestyle Diner is the Fort Lee Homestyle Diner. The Leabook Register which people have been leaving behind on the counter becomes the Fort Lee Register-American. He is not exactly relieved to discover Gerald Ford has reassumed the Presidency.

When Rudebacher pays him at the end of his first week -in Fort Lee -Grant is on the fifties, Jackson is on the twenties, and Alexander Hamilton is on the single ten in the envelope the boss hands him. At the end of the second week -in Leabrook -Abraham Lincoln is on the fifties and someone named Chadbourne is on the ten. It's still Andrew Jackson on the twenties, which is something of a relief. In Callahan's motel room, the bedcover is pink in Leabrook and orange in Fort Lee. This is handy. He always knows which version of New Jersey he's in as soon as he wakes up.

Twice he gets drunk. The second time, after closing, Dicky Rudebacher joins him and matches him drink for drink. "This used to be a great country," the Leabrook version of Rudebacher mourns, and Callahan thinks how great it is that some things don't change; the fundamental bitch-and-moans apply as time goes by.

But his shadow starts getting longer earlier each day, he has seen his first Type Three vampire waiting in line to buy a ticket at the Leabrook Twin Cinema, and one day he gives notice.

"Thought you told me you didn't have anything, " Rudebacher says to Callahan.

"Beg your pardon?"

"You've got a bad case of itchy-foot, my friend. It often goes with the other thing." Rudebacher makes a bottle-tipping gesture with one dishwater-reddened hand. "When a man catches itchy-foot late in life, it's often incurable. Tell you what, if I didn't have a wife that's still a pretty good lay and two kids in college, I might just pack me a bindle and join you. "

"Yeah?" Callahan asks, fascinated.

"September and October are always the worst," Rudebacher says dreamily. "You just hear it calling. The birds hear it, too, and go."

"It?"

Rudebacher gives him a look that says don't be stupid. "With them it's the sky. Guys like us, it's the road. Call of the open fuckin road. Guys like me, kids in school and a wife that still likes it more than just on Saturday night, they turn up the radio a little louder and drown it out. You're not gonna do that." He pauses, looks at Callahan shrewdly. "Stay another week? I'll bump you twenty-five bucks. You make a gahdam fine Monte Cristo."

Callahan considers, then shakes his head. If Rudebacher was right, if it was only one road, maybe he would stay another week… and another… and another. But it's not just one. It's all of them, all those highways in hiding, and he remembers the name of his third-grade reader and bursts out laughing. It was called Roads to Everywhere.

"What's so funny?" Rudebacher asks sourly.

"Nothing, " Callahan says. "Everything." He claps his boss on the shoulder. "You're a good man, Dicky. If I get back this way, I'll stop in."

"You won't get back this way," Dicky Rudebacher says, and of course he is right.

THREE

"I was five years on the road, give or take," Callahan said as they approached his church, and in a way that was all he said on the subject. Yet they heard more. Nor were they surprised later to find that Jake, on his way into town with Eisenhart and the Slightmans, had heard some of it, too. It was Jake, after all, who was strongest in the touch.

Five years on the road, no more than that.

And all the rest, do ya ken: a thousand lost worlds of the rose.

FOUR

He's five years on the road, give or take, only there's a lot more than one road and maybe, under the right circumstances, five years can be forever.

There is Route 71 through Delaware and apples to pick. There's a little boy named Lars with a broken radio. Callahan fixes it and Lars's mother packs him a great and wonderful lunch to go on with, a lunch that seems to last for days. There is Route 317 through rural Kentucky, and a job digging graves with a fellow named Pete Petacki who won't shut up. A girl comes to watch them, a pretty girl of seventeen or so, sitting on a rock wall with yellow leaves raining down all around her, and Pete Petacki speculates on what it would be like to have those long thighs stripped of the corduroys they're wearing and wrapped around his neck, what it would be like to be tongue-deep in jailbait. Pete Petacki doesn't see the blue light around her, and he certainly doesn't see the way her clothes drift to the ground like feathers later on, when Callahan sits beside her, then draws her close as she slips a hand up his leg and her mouth onto his throat, then thrusts his knife unerringly into the bulge of bone and nerve and gristle at the back of her neck. This is a shot he's getting very good at.

There is Route 19 through West Virginia, and a little road-dusty carnival that's looking for a man who can fix the rides and feed the animals. "Or the other way around," says Greg Chumm, the carny's greasy-haired owner. "You know, feed the rides and fix the animals. Whatever floats ya boat." And for awhile, when a strep infection leaves the carny shorthanded (they are swinging down south by now, trying to stay ahead of winter), he finds himself also playing Menso the ESP Wonder, and with surprising success. It is also as Menso that he first sees them, not vampires and not bewildered dead people but tall men with pale, watchful faces that are usually hidden under old-fashioned hats with brims or new-fashioned baseball hats with extra-long bills. In the shadows thrown by these hats, their eyes flare a dusky red, like the eyes of coons or polecats when you catch them in the beam of a flashlight, lurking around your trash barrels. Do they see him? The vampires (the Type Threes, at least) do not. The dead people do. And these men, with their hands stuffed into the pockets of their long yellow coats and their hard-case faces peering out from beneath their hats? Do they see? Callahan doesn't know for sure but decides to take no chances. Three days later, in the town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, he hangs up his black Menso tophat, leaves his greasy coverall on the floor of a pickup truck's camper cap, and blows Chumm's Traveling Wonder Show, not bothering with the formality of his final paycheck. On his way out of town, he sees a number of those pet posters nailed to telephone poles. A typical one reads:

Who is Ruta? Callahan doesn't know. All he knows is that she is NOISY but FULL OF FUN. Will she still be noisy when the low men catch up to her? Will she still be full of fun?

Callahan doubts it.

But he has his own problems and all he can do is pray to the God in whom he no longer strictly believes that the men in the yellow coats won't catch up to her.

Later that day, thumbing on the side of Route 3 in Issaquena County under a hot gunmetal sky that knows nothing of December and approaching Christmas, the chimes come again. They fill his head, threatening to pop his eardrums and blow pinprick hemorrhages across the entire surface of his brain. As they fade, a terrible certainty grips him: they are coming. The men with the red eyes and big hats and long yellow coats are on their way.

Callahan bolts from the side of the road like a chaingang runaway, clearing the pond-scummy ditch like Superman: at a single bound. Beyond is an old stake fence overgrown with drifts of kudzu and what might be poison sumac. He doesn't care if it's poison sumac or not. He dives over the fence, rolls over in high grass and burdocks, and peers out at the highway through a hole in the foliage.

For a moment or two there's nothing. Then a white-over-red Cadillac comes pounding down Highway 3 from the direction of Yazoo City. It's doing seventy easy, and Callahan's peephole is small, but he still sees them with supernatural clarity: three men, two in what appear to be yellow dusters, the third in what might be a flight-jacket. All three are smoking; the Cadillac's closed cabin fumes with it.

They'll see me they'll hear me they'll sense me, Callahan's mind yammers, and he forces it away from its own panicky wretched certainty, yanks it away. He forces himself to think of that Elton John song - "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my li-iife tonight…" and it seems to work. There is one terrible, heart-stopping moment when he thinks the Caddy is slowing -long enough for him to imagine them chasing him through this weedy, forgotten field, chasing him down, dragging him into an abandoned shed or barn -and then the Caddy roars over the next hill, headed for Natchez, maybe. Or Copiah. Callahan waits another ten minutes. "Got to make sure they're not trickin on you, man," Lupe might have said. But even as he waits, he knows this is only a formality. They're not trickin on him; they flat missed him. How? Why?

The answer dawns on him slowly -an answer, at least, and he's damned if it doesn't feel like the right one. They missed him because he was able to slip into a different version of America as he lay behind the tangle of kudzu and sumac, peering out at Route 3. Maybe different in only a few small details -Lincoln on the one and Washington on the five instead of the other way around, let us say -but enough, just enough. And that's good, because these guys aren't brain-blasted, like the dead folks, or blind to him, like the bloodsucking folks. These people, whoever they are, are the most dangerous of all.

Finally, Callahan goes back out to the road. Eventually a black man in a straw hat and overalls comes driving along in an old beat-up Ford. He looks so much like a Negro farmer from a thirties movie that Callahan almost expects him to laugh and slap his knee and give out occasional cries of "Yassuh, boss! Ain't dat de troof!" Instead, the black man engages him in a discussion about politics prompted by an item on National Public Radio, to which he is listening. And when Callahan leaves him, in Shady Grove, the black man gives him five dollars and a spare baseball cap.

"I have money, " Callahan says, trying to give back the five.

"A man on the run never has enough," says the black man. "And please don't tell me you're not on the run. Don't insult my intelligence."

"I thank you," Callahan says.

"De nada," says the black man. "Where are you going! Roughly speaking?"

"I don't have a clue," Callahan replies, then smiles. "Roughly speaking."

FIVE

Picking oranges in Florida. Pushing a broom in New Orleans. Mucking out horse-stalls in Lufkin, Texas. Handing out real estate brochures on street corners in Phoenix, Arizona. Working jobs that pay cash. Observing the ever-changing faces on the bills. Noting the different names in the papers, Jimmy Carter is elected President, but so are Ernest "Fritz" Hollings and Ronald Reagan. George Bush is also elected President. Gerald Ford decides to run again and he is elected President. The names in the papers (those of the celebrities change the most frequently, and there are many he has never heard of) don't matter. The faces on the currency don't matter. What matters is the sight of a weathervane against a violent pink sunset, the sound of his heels on an empty road in Utah, the sound of the wind in the New Mexico desert, the sight of a child skipping rope beside a junked-out Chevrolet Caprice in Fossil, Oregon. What matters is the whine of the powerlines beside Highway 50 west of Elko, Nevada, and a dead crow in a ditch outside Rainbarrel Springs. Sometimes he's sober and sometimes he gets drunk. Once he lays up in an abandoned shed -this is just over the California state line from Nevada -and drinks for four days straight. It ends with seven hours of off-and-on vomiting. For the first hour or so, the puking is so constant and so violent he is convinced it will kill him. Later on, he can only wish it would. And when it's over, he swears to himself that he's done, no more booze for him, hes finally learned his lesson, and a week later lies drunk again and staring up at the strange stars behind the restaurant where he has hired on as a dishwasher. He is an animal in a trap and he doesn't care. Sometimes there are vampires and sometimes he kills them. Mostly he lets them live, because he's afraid of drawing attention to himself- -the attention of the low men. Sometimes he asks himself what he thinks he's doing, where the hell he's going, and such questions are apt to send him in search of the next bottle in a hurry. Because he's really not going anywhere. He's just following the highways in hiding and dragging his trap along behind him, he's just listening to the call of those roads and going from one to the next. Trapped or not, sometimes he is happy; sometimes he sings in his chains like the sea. He wants to see the next weathervane standing against the next pink sunset. He wants to see the next silo crumbling at the end of some disappeared farmer's long-abandoned north field and see the next droning truck with TONOPAH GRAVEL or ASPLUNDH HEAVY CONSTRUCTION written on the side. He's in hobo heaven, lost in the split personalities of America. He wants to hear the wind in canyons and know that he's the only one who hears it. He wants to scream and hear the echoes run away. When the taste of Barlow's blood is too strong in his mouth, he wants to drink. And, of course, when he sees the lost-pet posters or the messages chalked on the sidewalks, he wants to move on. Out west he sees fewer of them, and neither his name nor his description is on any of them. From time to time he sees vampires cruising -give us this day our daily blood -but he leaves them be. They're mosquitoes, after all, no more than that.

In the spring of 1981 he finds himself rolling into the city of Sacramento in the back of what may be the oldest International-Harvester stake-bed truck still on the road in California. He's crammed in with roughly three dozen Mexican illegals, there is mescal and tequila and pot and several bottles of wine, they're all drunk and done up and Callahan is perhaps the drunkest of them all. The names of his companions come back to him in later years like names spoken in a haze of fever: Escobar… Estrada…Javier… Esteban… Rosario… Echeverria… Caverra. Are they all names he will later encounter in the Calla, or is that just a booze-hallucination? For that matter, what is he to make of his own name, which is so close to that of the place where he finishes up? Calla, Callahan. Calla, Callahan. Sometimes, when he's long getting to sleep in his pleasant rectory bed, the two names chase each other in his head like the tigers in Little Black Sambo.

Sometimes a line of poetry comes to him, a paraphrase from (he thinks) Archibald MacLeish's "Epistle to Be Left in Earth. " It was not the voice of God but only the thunder. That's not right, but it's how he remembers it. Not God but the thunder. Or is that only what he wants to believe? How many times has God been denied just that way?

In any case, all of that comes later. When he rolls into Sacramento he's drunk and he's happy. There are no questions in his mind. He's even halfway happy the next day, hangover and all. He finds a job easily; jobs are everywhere, it seems, lying around like apples after a windstorm has gone through the orchard. As long as you don't mind getting your hands dirty, that is, or scalded by hot water or sometimes blistered by the handle of an ax or a shovel; in his years on the road no one has ever offered him a stockbroker's job.

The work he gets in Sacramento is unloading trucks at a block-long bed-and-mattress store called Sleepy John's. Sleepy John is preparing for his once-yearly Mattre$$ Ma$$acre, and all morning long Callahan and a crew of five other men haul in the kings and queens and doubles. Compared to some of the day-labor he's done over the last years, this job is a tit.

At lunch, Callahan and the rest of the men sit in the shade of the loading dock. So far as he can tell, there's no one in this crew from the International-Harvester, but he wouldn't swear to it; he was awfully drunk. All he knows for sure is that he's once again the only guy present with a white skin. All of them are eating enchiladas from Crazy Mary's down the road. There's a dirty old boombox sitting on a pile of crates, playing salsa. Two young men tango together while the others -Callahan included -put aside their lunches so they can clap along.

A young woman in a skirt and blouse comes out, watches the men dance disapprovingly, then looks at Callahan. "You're anglo, right?" she says.

"Anglo as the day is long," Callahan agrees.

"Then maybe you'd like this. Certainly no good to the rest of them." She hands him the newspaper -the Sacramento Bee-then looks at the dancing Mexicans. "Beaners," she says, and the subtext is in the tone: What can you do?

Callahan considers rising to his feet and kicking her narrow can't-dance anglo ass for her, but it's noon, too late in the day to get another job if he loses this one. And even if he doesn't wind up in the calabozo for assault, he won't get paid. He settles for giving her turned back the finger, and laughs when several of the men applaud. The young woman wheels, looks at them suspiciously, then goes back inside. Still grinning, Callahan shakes open the paper. The grin lasts until he gets to the page marked national briefs, then fades in a hurry. Between a story about a train derailment in Vermont and a bank robbery in Missouri, he finds this:

NEW YORK (AP) Rowan R. Magruder, owner and Chief Supervisor of what may be America's most highly regarded shelter for the homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted, is in critical condition after being assaulted by the so-called Hitler Brothers. The Hitler Brothers have been operating in the five boroughs of New York for at least eight years. According to police, they are believed responsible for over three dozen assaults and the deaths of two men. Unlike their other victims, Magruder is neither black nor Jewish, but he was found in a doorway not far from Home, the shelter he founded in 1968, with the Hitler Brothers' trademark swastika cut into his forehead. Magruder had also suffered multiple stab-wounds.

Home gained nationwide notice in 1977, when Mother Teresa visited, helped to serve dinner, and prayed with the clients. Magruder himself was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1980, when the East Side's so-called "Street Angel" was named Manhattan's Man of the Year by Mayor Ed Koch.

A doctor familiar with the case rated Magruder's chances of pulling through as "no higher than three in ten." He said that, as well as being branded, Magruder was blinded by his assailants. "I think of myself as a merciful man," the doctor said, "but in my opinion, the men who did this should be beheaded."

Callahan reads the article again, wondering if this is "his" Rowan Magruder or another one -a Rowan Magruder from a world where a guy named Chadbourne is on some of the greenbacks, say. He's somehow sure that it's his, and that he was meant to see this particular item. Certainly he is in what he thinks of as the "real world" now, and it's not just the thin sheaf of currency in his wallet that tells him so. It's a feeling, a kind of tone. A truth. If so (and it is so, he knows it), how much he has missed out here on the hidden highways. Mother Teresa came to visit! Helped to ladle out soup! Hell, for all Callahan knows, maybe she cooked up a big old mess of Toads n Dumplins! Could've; the recipe was right there, Scotch-taped to the wall beside the stove. And an award! The cover of Newsweek.' He's pissed he didn't see that, but you don't see the news magazines very regularly when you're traveling with the carnival and fixing the Krazy Kups or mucking out the bull-stalls behind the rodeo in Enid, Oklahoma.

He is so deeply ashamed that he doesn't even know he's ashamed. Not even when Juan Castillo says, "Why joo crine, Donnie?"

"Am I?" he asks, and wipes underneath his eyes, and yeah, he is. He is crying. But he doesn't know it's for shame, not then. He assumes it's shock, and probably part of it is. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Where joo goan?" Juan persists. "Lunch break's almost over, man."

"I have to leave," Callahan says. "I have to go back east."

"You take off, they ain goan pay joo. "

"Iknow, " Callahan says. "It's okay. "

And what a lie that is. Because nothing's okay.

Nothing.

SIX

"I had a couple of hundred dollars sewn into the bottom of my backpack," Callahan said. They were now sitting on the steps of the church in the bright sunshine. "I bought an airplane ticket back to New York. Speed was of the essence-of course-but that really wasn't the only reason. I had to get off those highways in hiding." He gave Eddie a small nod. "The todash turnpikes. They're as addictive as the booze-"

"More," Roland said. He saw three figures coming toward them: Rosalita, shepherding the Tavery twins, Frank and Francine. The girl had a large sheet of paper in her hands and was carrying it out in front of her with an air of reverence that was almost comic. "Wandering's the most addictive drug there is, I think, and every hidden road leads on to a dozen more."

"You say true, I say thankya," Callahan replied. He looked gloomy and sad and, Roland thought, a little lost.

"Pere, we'd hear the rest of your tale, but I'd have you save it until evening. Or tomorrow evening, if we don't get back until tьen. Our young friend Jake will be here shortly-"

"You know that, do you?" Callahan asked, interested but not disbelieving.

"Aye," Susannah said.

"I'd see what you have in there before he comes," Roland said. "The story of how you came by it is part of your story, I think-"

"Yes," Callahan said. "It is. The point of my story, I think."

"-and must wait its place. As for now, things are stacking up."

"They have a way of doing that," Callahan said. "For months-sometimes even years, as I tried to explain to you- time hardly seems to exist. Then everything comes in a gasp."

"You say true," Roland said. "Step over with me to see the twins, Eddie. I believe the young lady has her eye on you."

"She can look as much as she wants," Susannah said good-humoredly. "Lookin's free. I might just sit here in the sun on these steps, Roland, if it's all the same to you. Been a long time since I rode, and I don't mind telling you that I'm saddle-sore. Not having any lower pins seems to put everything else out of whack."

"Do ya either way," Roland said, but he didn't mean it and Eddie knew he didn't. The gunslinger wanted Susannah to stay right where she was, for the time being. He could only hope Susannah wasn't catching the same vibe.

As they walked toward the children and Rosalita, Roland spoke to Eddie, low and quick. "I'm going into the church with him by myself. Just know that it's not the both of you I want to keep away from whatever's in there. If it is Black Thirteen- and I believe it must be-it's best she not go near it."

"Given her delicate condition, you mean. Roland, I would have thought Suze having a miscarriage would almost be something you'd want."

Roland said: "It's not a miscarriage that concerns me. I'm worried about Black Thirteen making the thing inside her even stronger." He paused again. "Both things, mayhap. The baby and the baby's keeper."

"Mia."

"Yes, her." Then he smiled at the Tavery twins. Francine gave him a perfunctory smile in return, saving full wattage for Eddie.

"Let me see what you've made, if you would," Roland said.

Frank Tavery said, "We hope it's all right. Might not be. We were afraid, do ya. It's such a wonderful piece of paper the missus gave us, we were afraid."

"We drew on the ground first," Francine said. "Then in lightest char. 'Twas Frank did the final; my hands were all a-shake."

"No fear," Roland said. Eddie drew close and looked over his shoulder. The map was a marvel of detail, with the Town Gathering Hall and the common at the center and the Big River/Devar-Tete running along the left side of the paper, which looked to Eddie like an ordinary mimeo sheet. The kind available by the ream at any office supply store in America.

"Kids, this is absolutely terrific," Eddie said, and for a moment he thought Francine Tavery might actually faint.

"Aye," Roland said. "You've done a great service. And now I'm going to do something that will probably look like blasphemy to you. You know the word?"

"Yes," Frank said. "We're Christians. 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God or His Son, the Man Jesus, in vain.' But blasphemy is also to commit a rude act upon a thing of beauty."

His tone was deeply serious, but he looked interested to see what blasphemy the outworlder meant to commit. His sister did, too.

Roland folded the paper-which they had almost dared not touch, in spite of their obvious skill-in half. The children gasped. So did Rosalita Munoz, although not quite as loudly.

"It's not blasphemy to treat it so because it's no longer just paper," Roland said. "It has become a tool, and tools must be protected. D'ye ken?"

"Yes," they said, but doubtfully. Their confidence was at least partly restored by the care with which Roland stowed the folded map in his purse.

"Thankya big-big," Roland said. He took Francine's hand in his left, Frank's in his diminished right. "You may have saved lives with your hands and eyes."

Francine burst into tears. Frank held his own back until he grinned. Then they overspilled and ran down his freckled cheeks.

SEVEN

Walking back to the church steps, Eddie said: "Good kids. Talented kids."

Roland nodded.

"Can you see one of them coming back from Thunderclap a drooling idiot?"

Roland, who could see it all too well, made no reply.

EIGHT

Susannah accepted Roland's decision that she and Eddie should stay outside the church with no argument, and the gunslinger found himself remembering her reluctance to enter the vacant lot. He wondered if part of her was afraid of the same thing he was. If that was the case, the battle-her battle-had already begun.

"How long before I come in and drag you out?" Eddie asked.

"Before we come in and drag you out?" Susannah corrected him.

Roland considered. It was a good question. He looked at Callahan, who stood on the top step in blue jeans and a plaid shirt rolled to the elbows. His hands were clasped in front of him. Roland saw good muscle on those forearms.

The Old Fella shrugged. "It sleeps. There should be no problem. But-" He unlocked one of his gnarled hands and pointed at the gun on Roland's hip. "I sh'd ditch that. Mayhap it sleeps with one eye open."

Roland unbuckled the gunbelt and handed it to Eddie, who was wearing the other one. Then he unslung his purse and handed it to Susannah. "Five minutes," he said. "If there's trouble, I might be able to call." Or I might not, he didn't add.

"Jake should be here by then," Eddie said.

"If they come, hold them out here," Roland told him.

"Eisenhart and the Slightmans won't try to come in," Callahan said. "What worship they have is for Oriza. Lady Rice." He grimaced to show what he thought of Lady Rice and the rest of the Calla's second-rate gods.

"Let's go, then," Roland said.

NINE

It had been a long time since Roland Deschain had been afraid in the deeply superstitious way that goes with a believed religion. Since his childhood, perhaps. But fear fell upon him as soon as Pere Callahan opened the door of his modest wooden church and held it, gesturing for Roland to precede him inside. There was a foyer with a faded rug on the floor. On the other side of the foyer, two doors stood open. Beyond them was a largish room with pews on each side and kneelers on the floor. At the room's far end was a raised platform and what Roland thought of as a lectern flanked by pots of white flowers. Their mild scent pervaded the still air. There were narrow windows of clear glass. Behind the lectern, on the far wall, was an ironwood cross.

He could hear the Old Fella's secret treasure, not with his ears but with his bones. A steady low hum. Like the rose, that hum conveyed a sense of power, but it was like the rose in no other way. This hum spoke of colossal emptiness. A void like the one they had all sensed behind the surface reality of todash New York. A void that could become a voice.

Yes, this is what took us, he thought. It took us to New York -one New York of many, according to Callahan's story -but it could take us anywhere or anywhen. It could take us… or it could fling us.

He remembered the conclusion of his long palaver with Walter, in the place of the bones. He had gone todash then, too; he understood that now. And there had been a sense of growing, of swelling, until he had been bigger than the earth, the stars, the very universe itself. That power was here, in this room, and he was afraid of it.

Gods grant it sleep, he thought, but the thought was followed by an even more dismaying one: sooner or later they would have to wake it up. Sooner or later they would have to use it to get back to the New York whens they needed to visit.

There was a bowl of water on a stand beside the door. Callahan dipped his fingers, then crossed himself. "You can do that now?" Roland murmured in what was little more than a whisper.

"Aye," Callahan said. "God has taken me back, gunslinger. Although I think only on what might be called 'a trial basis.' Do you ken?"

Roland nodded. He followed Callahan into the church without dipping his fingers in the font.

Callahan led him down the center aisle, and although he moved swiftly and surely, Roland sensed the man was as frightened as Roland was himself, perhaps more. The religious wanted to be rid of the thing, of course, there was that, but Roland still gave him high marks for courage.

On the far right side of the preacher's cove was a little flight of three steps. Callahan mounted them. "No need for you to come up, Roland; you can see well enough from where you are. You'd not have it this minute, I ken?"

"Not at all," Roland said. Now they were whispering.

"Good." Callahan dropped to one knee. There was an audible pop as the joint flexed, and they both started at the sound. "I'd not even touch the box it's in, if I don't have to. I haven't since I put it here. The hidey-hole I made myself, asking God's pardon for using a saw in His house."

"Take it up," Roland said. He was on complete alert, every sense drawn fine, feeling and listening for any slightest change in that endless void hum. He missed the weight of the gun on his hip. Did the people who came here to worship not sense the terrible thing the Old Fella had hidden here? He supposed they must not, or they'd stay away. And he supposed there was really no better place for such a thing; the simple faith of the parishioners might neutralize it to some degree. Might even soothe it and thus deepen its doze.

But it could wake up, Roland thought. Wake up and send them all to the nineteen points of nowhere in the blink of an eye. This was an especially terrible thought, and he turned his mind from it. Certainly the idea of using it to secure protection for the rose seemed more and more like a bitter joke. He had faced both men and monsters in his time, but had never been close to anything like this. The sense of its evil was terrible, almost unmanning. The sense of its malevolent emptiness was far, far worse.

Callahan pressed his thumb into the groove between two boards. There was a faint click and a section of the preacher's cove popped out of place. Callahan pulled the boards free, revealing a square hole roughly fifteen inches long and wide. He rocked back on his haunches, holding the boards across his chest. The hum was much louder now. Roland had a brief image of a gigantic hive with bees the size of waggons crawling sluggishly over it. He bent forward and looked into the Old Fella's hidey-hole.

The thing inside was wrapped in white cloth, fine linen from the look of it.

"An altar boy's surplice," Callahan said. Then, seeing Roland didn't know the word: "A thing to wear." He shrugged. "My heart said to wrap it up, and so I did."

"Your heart surely said true," Roland whispered. He was thinking of the bag Jake had brought out of the vacant lot, the one with nothing but strikes at mid-world lanes on the side. They would need it, aye and aye, but he didn't like to think of the transfer.

Then he put thought aside-fear as well-and folded back the cloth. Beneath the surplice, wrapped in it, was a wooden box.

Despite his fear, Roland reached out to touch that dark, heavy wood. It will be like touching some lightly oiled metal, he thought, and it was. He felt an erotic shiver shake itself deep inside him; it kissed his fear like an old lover and then was gone.

"This is black ironwood," Roland whispered. "I have heard of it. but never seen it."

"In my Tales of Arthur, it's called ghostwood," Callahan whispered back.

"Aye? Is it so?"

Certainly the box had a ghostly air to it, as of something derelict which had come to rest, however temporarily, after long wandering. The gunslinger very much would have liked to give it a second caress-the dark, dense wood begged his hand-but he had heard the vast hum of the thing inside rise a notch before falling back to its former drone. The wise man doesn't poke a sleeping bear with a stick, he told himself. It was true, but it didn't change what he wanted. He did touch the wood once more, lightly, with just the tips of his fingers, then smelled them. There was an aroma of camphor and fire and-he would have sworn it-the flowers of the far north country, the ones that bloom in the snow.

Three objects had been carved on top of the box: a rose, a stone, and a door. Beneath the door was this:

Roland reached out again. Callahan made a move forward, as if to stop him, and then subsided. Roland touched the carving beneath the image of the door. Again the hum beneath it rose-the hum of the black ball hidden inside the box.

"Un…?" he whispered, and ran the ball of his thumb across the raised symbols again. "Un… found?" Not what he read but what his fingertips heard.

"Yes, I'm sure that's what it says," Callahan whispered back. He looked pleased, but still grasped Roland's wrist and pushed it, wanting the gunslinger's hand away from the box. A fine sweat had broken on his brow and forearms. "It makes sense, in a way. A leaf, a stone, an unfound door. They're symbols in a book from my side. Look Homeward, Angel, it's called."

A leaf, a stone, a door, Roland thought. Only substitute rose for leaf. Yes. That feels right.

"Will you take it?" Callahan asked. Only his voice rose slightly now, out of its whisper, and the gunslinger realized he was begging.

"You've actually seen it, Pere, have you?"

"Aye. Once. It's horrible beyond telling. Like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God's shadow. Will you take it, gunslinger?"

"Yes."

"When?"

Faintly, Roland heard the chime of bells-a sound so beautifully hideous it made you want to grind your teeth against it. For a moment the walls of Pere Callahan's church wavered. It was as if the thing in the box had spoken to them: Do you see how little it all matters? How quickly and easily I can take it all away, should I choose to do so? Beware, gunslinger!Beware, shaman! The abyss is all around you. You float or fall into it at my whim.

Then thekammen were gone.

"When?" Callahan reached over the box in its hole and grasped Roland's shirt. "When?"

"Soon," Roland said.

Too soon, his heart replied.

ONE

Now it's twenty-three, Roland thought that evening as he sat behind Eisenhart's Rocking B, listening to the boys shout and Oy bark. Back in Gilead, this sort of porch behind the main house, facing the barns and the fields, would have been called the work-stoop. Twenty-three days until the Wolves. And how many until Susannah foals?

A terrible idea concerning that had begun to form in his head. Suppose Mia, the new she inside Susannah's skin, were to give birth to her monstrosity on the very day the Wolves appeared? One wouldn't think that likely, but according to Eddie, coincidence had been cancelled. Roland thought he was probably right about that. Certainly there was no way to gauge the thing's period of gestation. Even if it had been a human child, nine months might no longer be nine months. Time had grown soft.

"Boys!" Eisenhart bawled. "What in the name of the Man Jesus am I going to tell my wife if you kill yer sad selfs jumpin out of that barn?"

"We're okay!" Benny Slightman called. "Andy won't let us get hurt!" The boy, dressed in bib overalls and barefooted, was standing in the open bay of the barn, just above the carved letters which said Rocking B. "Unless… do you really want us to stop, sai?"

Eisenhart glanced toward Roland, who saw Jake standing just behind Benny, impatiently waiting his chance to risk his bones. Jake was also dressed in bib overalls-a pair of his new friend's, no doubt-and the look of them made Roland smile.

Jake wasn't the sort of boy you imagined in such clothes, somehow.

"It's nil to me, one way or the other, if that's what you want to know," Roland said.

"Garn, then!" the rancher called. Then he turned his attention to the bits and pieces of hardware spread out on the boards. "What do'ee think? Will any of em shoot?"

Eisenhart had produced all three of his guns for Roland's inspection. The best was the rifle the rancher had brought to town on the night Tian Jaffords had called the meeting. The other two were pistols of the sort Roland and his friends had called "barrel-shooters" as children, because of the oversized cylinders which had to be revolved with the side of the hand after each shot. Roland had disassembled Eisenhart's shooting irons with no initial comment. Once again he had set out gun-oil, this time in a bowl instead of a saucer.

"I said-"

"I heard you, sai," Roland said. "Your rifle is as good as I've seen this side of the great city. The barrel-shooters…" He shook his head. "That one with the nickel plating might fire. The other you might as well stick in the ground. Maybe it'll grow something better."

"Hate to hear you speak so," Eisenhart said. "These were from my Da' and his Da' before him and on back at least this many." He raised seven fingers and one thumb. "That's back to before the Wolves, ye ken. They was always kept together and passed to the likeliest son by dead-letter. When I got em instead of my elder brother, I was some pleased."

"Did you have a twin?" Roland asked.

"Aye, Verna," Eisenhart said. He smiled easily and often and did so now beneath his great graying bush of a mustache, but it was painful-the smile of a man who doesn't want you to know he's bleeding somewhere inside his clothes. "She was lovely as dawn, so she was. Passed on these ten year or more. Went painful early, as the roont ones often do."

"I'm sorry."

"Say thankya."

The sun was going down red in the southwest, turning the yard the color of blood. There was a line of rockers on the porch. Eisenhart was settled in one of them. Roland sat cross-legged on the boards, housekeeping Eisenhart's inheritance. That the pistols would probably never fire meant nothing to the gunslinger's hands, which had been trained to this work long ago and still found it soothing.

Now, with a speed that made the rancher blink, Roland put the weapons back together in a rapid series of clicks and clacks. He set them aside on a square of sheepskin, wiped his fingers on a rag, and sat in the rocker next to Eisenhart's. He guessed that on more ordinary evenings, Eisenhart and his wife sat out here side by side, watching the sun abandon the day.

Roland rummaged through his purse for his tobacco pouch, found it, and built himself a cigarette with Callahan's fresh, sweet tobacco. Rosalita had added her own present, a little stack of delicate cornshuck wraps she called "pulls." Roland thought they wrapped as good as any cigarette paper, and he paused a moment to admire the finished product before tipping the end into the match Eisenhart had popped alight with one horny thumbnail. The gunslinger dragged deep and exhaled a long plume that rose but slowly in the evening air, which was still and surprisingly muggy for summer's end. "Good," he said, and nodded.

"Aye? May it do ya fine. I never got the taste for it myself."

The barn was far bigger than the ranchhouse, at least fifty yards long and fifty feet high. The front was festooned with reapcharms in honor of the season; stuffy-guys with huge sharproot heads stood guard. From above the open bay over the main doors, the butt of the head-beam jutted. A rope had been fastened around this. Below, in the yard, the boys had built a good-sized stack of hay. Oy stood on one side of it, Andy on the other. They were both looking up as Benny Slightman grabbed the rope, gave it a tug, then retreated back into the loft and out of sight. Oy began to bark in anticipation. A moment later Benny came pelting forward with the rope wrapped in his fists and his hair flying out behind him.

"Gilead and the Eld! " he cried, and leaped from the bay. He swung into the red sunset air with his shadow trailing behind him.

"Ben-Ben! "Oy barked. "Ben-Ben-Ben!"

The boy let go, flew into the haystack, disappeared, then popped up laughing. Andy offered him a metal hand but Benny ignored it, flopping out onto the hardpacked earth. Oy ran around him, barking.

"Do they always call so at play?" Roland asked.

Eisenhart snorted laughter. "Not at all! Usually it's a cry of Oriza, or Man Jesus, or 'hail the Calla,' or all three. Your boy's been filling Slightman's boy full of tales, thinks I."

Roland ignored the slightly disapproving note in this and watched Jake reel in the rope. Benny lay on the ground, playing dead, until Oy licked his face. Then he sat up, giggling. Roland had no doubt that if the boy had gone off-course, Andy would have snagged him.

To one side of the barn was a remuda of work-horses, perhaps twenty in all. A trio of cowpokes in chaps and battered shor'boots were leading the last half-dozen mounts toward it. On the other side of the yard was a slaughter-pen filled with steers. In the following weeks they would be butchered and sent downriver on the trading boats.

Jake retreated into the loft, then came pelting forward. "New York!" he shouted. "Times Square! Empire State Building! Twin Towers! Statue of Liberty!" And he launched himself into space along the arc of the rope. They watched him disappear, laughing, into the pile of hay.

"Any particular reason you wanted your other two to stay with the Jaffordses?" Eisenhart asked. He spoke idly, but Roland thought this was a question that interested him more than a little.

"Best we spread ourselves around. Let as many as possible get a good look at us. Time is short. Decisions must be made." All of which was true, but there was more, and Eisenhart probably knew it. He was shrewder than Overholser. He was also dead set against standing up to the Wolves-at least so far. This didn't keep Roland from liking the man, who was big and honest and possessed of an earthy countryman's sense of humor. Roland thought he might come around, if he could be shown they had a chance to win.

On their way out to the Rocking B, they had visited half a dozen smallhold farms along the river, where rice was the main crop. Eisenhart had performed the introductions good-naturedly enough. At each stop Roland had asked the two questions he had asked the previous night, at the Pavilion: Will you open to us, if we open to you? Do you see us for what we are, and accept us for what we do? All of them had answered yes. Eisenhart had also answered yes. But Roland knew better than to ask the third question of any. There was no need to, not yet. They still had over three weeks.

"We bide, gunslinger," Eisenhart said. "Even in the face of the Wolves, we bide. Once there was Gilead and now there's Gilead nummore-none knows better'n you-but still we bide. If we stand against the Wolves, all that may change. To you and yours, what happens along the Crescent might not mean's'much as a fart in a high wind one way or't'other. If ye win and survive, you'll move along. If ye lose and die, we have nowhere to go."

"But-"

Eisenhart raised his hand. "Hear me, I beg. Would'ee hear me?"

Roland nodded, resigned to it. And for him to speak was probably for the best. Beyond them, the boys were running back into the barn for another leap. Soon the coming dark would put an end to their game. The gunslinger wondered how Eddie and Susannah were making out. Had they spoken to Tian's Gran-pere yet? And if so, had he told them anything of value?

"Suppose they send fifty or even sixty, as they have before, many and many-a? And suppose we wipe them out? And then, suppose that a week or a month later, after you're gone, they send five hundred against us?"

Roland considered the question. As he was doing so, Margaret Eisenhart joined them. She was a slim woman, fortyish, small-breasted, dressed in jeans and a shirt of gray silk. Her hair, pulled back in a bun against her neck, was black threaded with white. One hand hid beneath her apron.

"That's a fair question," she said, "but this might not be a fair time to ask it. Give him and his friends a week, why don't you, to peek about and see what they may see."

Eisenhart gave his sai a look that was half humorous and half irritated. "Do I tell'ee how to run your kitchen, woman? When to cook and when to wash?"

"Only four times a week," said she. Then, seeing Roland rise from the rocker next to her husband's: "Nay, sit still, I beg you. I've been in a chair this last hour, peeling sharproot with Edna, yon's auntie." She nodded in Benny's direction. "It's good to be on my feet." She watched, smiling, as the boys swung out into the pile of hay and landed, laughing, while Oy danced and barked. "Vaughn and I have never had to face the full horror of it before, Roland. We had six, all twins, but all grown in the time between. So we may not have all the understanding needed to make such a decision as you ask."

"Being lucky doesn't make a man stupid," Eisenhart said. "Quite the contrary, is what I think. Cool eyes see clear."

"Perhaps," she said, watching the boys run back into the barn. They were bumping shoulders and laughing, each trying to get to the ladder first. "Perhaps, aye. But the heart must call for its rights, too, and a man or woman who doesn't listen is a fool. Sometimes 'tis best to swing on the rope, even if it's too dark to see if the hay's there or not."

Roland reached out and touched her hand. "I couldn't have said better myself."

She gave him a small, distracted smile. It was only a moment before she returned her attention to the boys, but it was long enough for Roland to see that she was frightened. Terrified, in fact.

"Ben, Jake!" she called. "Enough! Time to wash and then come in! There's pie for those can eat it, and cream to go on top!"

Benny came to the open bay. "My Da' says we can sleep in my tent over on the bluff, sai, if it's all right with you."

Margaret Eisenhart looked at her husband. Eisenhart nodded. "All right," she said, "tent it is and give you joy of it, but come in now if you'd have pie. Last warning! And wash first, mind'ee! Hands and faces!"

"Aye, say thankya," Benny said. "Can Oy have pie?"

Margaret Eisenhart thudded the pad of her left hand against her brow, as if she had a headache. The right, Roland was interested to note, stayed beneath her apron. "Aye," she said, "pie for the bumbler, too, as I'm sure he's Arthur Eld in disguise and will reward me with jewels and gold and the healing touch."

"Thankee-sai,"Jake called. "Could we have one more swing first? It's the quickest way down."

"I'll catch them if they fly wrong, Margaret-sai," Andy said. His eyes flashed blue, then dimmed. He appeared to be smiling. To Roland, the robot seemed to have two personalities, one old-maidish, the other harmlessly cozening. The gunslinger liked neither, and understood why perfectly. He'd come to mistrust machinery of all kinds, and especially the kind that walked and talked.

"Well," Eisenhart said, "the broken leg usually hides in the last caper, but have on, if ye must."

They had on, and there were no broken legs. Both boys hit the haypile squarely, popped up laughing and looking at each other, then footraced for the kitchen with Oy running behind them. Appearing to herd them.

"It's wonderful how quickly children can become friends," Margaret Eisenhart said, but she didn't look like one contemplating something wonderful. She looked sad.

"Yes," Roland said. "Wonderful it is." He laid his purse across his lap, seemed on the verge of pulling the knot that anchored the laces, then didn't. "Which are your men good with?" he asked Eisenhart. "Bow or bah? For I know it's surely not the rifle or revolver."

"We favor the bah," Eisenhart said. "Fit the bolt, wind it, aim it, fire it, 'tis done."

Roland nodded. It was as he had expected. Not good, because the bah was rarely accurate at a distance greater than twenty-five yards, and that only on a still day. On one when a strong breeze was kicking up… or, gods help us, a gale…

But Eisenhart was looking at his wife. Looking at her with a kind of reluctant admiration. She stood with her eyebrows raised, looking back at her man. Looking him back a question. What was this? It surely had to do with the hand under the apron.

"Garn, tell im," Eisenhart said. Then he pointed an almost-angry finger at Roland, like the barrel of a pistol. "It changes nothing, though. Nothing! Say thankya!" This last with the lips drawn back in a kind of savage grin. Roland was more puzzled than ever, but he felt a faint stirring of hope. It might be false hope, probably would be, but anything was better than the worries and confusions-and the aches-that had beset him lately.

"Nay," Margaret said with maddening modesty. " 'Tis not my place to tell. To show, perhaps, but not to tell."

Eisenhart sighed, considered, then turned to Roland. "Ye danced the rice-dance," he said, "so ye know Lady Oriza."

Roland nodded. The Lady of the Rice, in some places considered a goddess, in others a heroine, in some, both.

"And ye know how she did away with Gray Dick, who killed her father?"

Roland nodded again.

TWO

According to the story-a good one that he must remember to tell Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, when (and if) there was once more time for storytelling-Lady Oriza invited Gray Dick, a famous outlaw prince, to a vast dinner party in Waydon, her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him for the murder of her father, she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings.

Ye'll get me there and kill me, be I stupid enough to come, said Gray Dick.

Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it. All weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee, at the other.

You'll conceal a dagger in your sleeve or a bola beneath your dress, said Gray Dick. And if you don't, I will.

Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked.

At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting hard at the sight of her bare breasts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her maiden's eye. And he thought he understood why she would make such a proposal. His haughty heart will undo him, Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful adventures of her own).

The Lady was right. I've killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies, Gray Dick told himself. And who is left to avenge him but one weak daughter"? (Oh, but she was fair.) So she sues for peace. And maybe even for marriage, if she has audacity and imagnation as well as beauty.

So he accepted her offer. His men searched the banquet hall downstairs before he arrived and found no weapons-not on the table, not under the table, not behind the tapestries. What none of them could know was that for weeks before the banquet, Lady Oriza had practiced throwing a specially weighted dinner-plate. She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost.

The dinner-plate wasn't just weighted; its rim had been sharpened. Dick's men overlooked this, as she and Marian had been sure they would. And so they banqueted, and what a strange banquet that must have been, with the laughing, handsome outlaw naked at one end of the table and the demurely smiling but exquisitely beautiful maiden thirty feet from him at the other end, equally naked. They toasted each other with Lord Grenfall's finest rough red. It infuriated the Lady to the point of madness to watch him slurp that exquisite country wine down as though it were water, scarlet drops rolling off his chin and splashing to his hairy chest, but she gave no sign; simply smiled coquettishly and sipped from her own glass. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her breasts. It was like having unpleasant bugs lumbering to and fro on her skin.

How long did this charade go on? Some tale-tellers had her putting an end to Gray Dick after the second toast. (His: May your beauty ever increase. Hers: May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest.) Others-the sort of spinners who enjoyed drawing out the suspense-recounted a meal of a dozen courses before Lady Oriza gripped the special plate, looking Gray Dick in the eyes and smiling at him while she turned it, feeling for the dull place on the rim where it would be safe to grip.

No matter how long the tale, it always ended the same way, with Lady Oriza flinging the plate. Little fluted channels had been carved on its underside, beneath the sharpened rim, to help it fly true. As it did, humming weirdly as it went, casting its fleeting shadow on the roast pork and turkey, the heaping bowls of vegetables, the fresh fruit piled on crystal serving dishes.

A moment after she flung the plate on its slightly rising course-her arm was still outstretched, her first finger and cocked thumb pointing at her father's assassin-Gray Dick's head flew out through the open door and into the foyer behind him. For a moment longer Gray Dick's body stood there with its penis pointing at her like an accusing finger. Then the dick shriveled and the Dick behind it crashed forward onto a huge roast of beef and a mountain of herbed rice.

Lady Oriza, whom Roland would hear referred to as the Lady of the Plate in some of his wanderings, raised her glass of wine and toasted the body. She said

THREE

"May your first day in hell last ten thousand years," Roland murmured.

Margaret nodded. "Aye, and let that one be the shortest. A terrible toast, but one I'd gladly give each of the Wolves. Each and every one!" Her visible hand clenched. In the fading red light she looked feverish and ill. "We had six, do ya. An even half-dozen. Has he told you why none of them are here, to help with the Reaptide slaughtering and penning? Has he told you that, gunslinger?"

"Margaret, there's no need," Eisenhart said. He shifted uncomfortably in his rocker.

"Ah, but mayhap there is. It goes back to what we were saying before. Mayhap ye pay a price for leaping, but sometimes ye pay a higher one for looking. Our children grew up free and clear, with no Wolves to worry about. I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before they came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod. The youngest be only fifteen, do ya not see it."

"Margaret-"

She ignored him. "But they'd not be's'lucky with their own children, and they knew it. And so they're gone. Some far north along the Arc, some far south. Looking for a place where the Wolves don't come."

She turned to Eisenhart, and although she spoke to Roland, it was her husband she looked at as she had her final word.

"One of every two; that's the Wolves' bounty. That's what they take every twenty-some, for many and many-a. Except for us. They took all of our children. Every… single… one." She leaned forward and tapped Roland's leg just above the knee with great emphasis. "Do ya not see it."

Silence fell on the back porch. The condemned steers in the slaughter-pen mooed moronically. From the kitchen came the sound of boy-laughter following some comment of Andy's.

Eisenhart had dropped his head. Roland could see nothing but the extravagant bush of his mustache, but he didn't need to see the man's face to know that he was either weeping or struggling very hard not to.

"I'd not make'ee feel bad for all the rice of the Arc," she said, and stroked her husband's shoulder with infinite tenderness.

"And they come back betimes, aye, which is more than the dead do, except in our dreams. They're not so old that they don't miss their mother, or have how-do-ye-do-it questions for their Da'. But they're gone, nevertheless. And that's the price of safety, as ye must ken." She looked down at Eisenhart for a moment, one hand on his shoulder and the other still beneath her apron. "Now tell how angry with me you are," she said, "for I'd know."

Eisenhart shook his head. "Not angry," he said in a muffled voice.

"And have'ee changed your mind?"

Eisenhart shook his head again.

"Stubborn old thing," she said, but she spoke with good-humored affection. "Stubborn as a stick, aye, and we all say thankya."

"I'm thinking about it," he said, still not looking up. "Still thinking, which is more than I expected at this late date- usually I make up my mind and there's the end of it.

"Roland, I understand young Jake showed Overholser and the rest of em some shooting out in the woods. Might be we could show you something right here that'd raise your eyebrows. Maggie, go in and get your Oriza."

"No need," she said, at last taking her hand from beneath her apron, "for I brought it out with me, and here 'tis."

FOUR

It was a plate both Detta and Mia would have recognized, a blue plate with a delicate webbed pattern. A forspecial plate. After a moment Roland recognized the webbing for what it was: young oriza, the seedling rice plant. When sai Eisenhart tapped her knuckles on the plate, it gave out a peculiar high ringing. It looked like china, but wasn't. Glass, then? Some sort of glass? He held his hand out for it with the solemn, respectful mien of one who knows and respects weapons. She hesitated, biting the corner of her lip. Roland reached into his holster, which he'd strapped back on before the noon meal outside the church, and pulled his revolver. He held it out to her, butt first.

"Nay," she said, letting the word out on a long breath of sigh. "No need to offer me your shooter as a hostage, Roland. I reckon if Vaughn trusts you at the house, I c'n trust you with my Oriza. But mind how you touch, or you'll lose another finger, and I think you could ill afford that, for I see you're already two shy on your right hand."

A single look at the blue plate-the sai's Oriza-made it clear how wise that warning was. At the same time, Roland felt a bright spark of excitement and appreciation. It had been long years since he'd seen a new weapon of worth, and never one like this.

The plate was metal, not glass-some light, strong alloy. It was the size of an ordinary dinner-plate, a foot (and a bit more) in diameter. Three quarters of the edge had been sharpened to suicidal keenness.

"There's never a question of where to grip, even if ye're in a hurry," Margaret said. "For, do'ee see-"

"Yes," Roland said in a tone of deepest admiration. Two of the rice-stalks crossed in what could have been the Great Letter Zn, which by itself means both zi (eternity) and now. At the point where these stalks crossed (only a sharp eye would pick them out of the bigger pattern to begin with), the rim of the plate was not only dull but slightly thicker. Good to grip.

Roland turned the plate over. Beneath, in the center, was a small metal pod. To Jake, it might have looked like the plastic pencil-sharpener he'd taken to school in his pocket as a first-grader. To Roland, who had never seen a pencil-sharpener, it looked a little like the abandoned egg-case of some insect.

"That makes the whistling noise when the plate flies, do ya ken," she said. She had seen Roland's honest admiration and was reacting to it, her color high and her eye bright. Roland had heard that tone of eager explanation many times before, but not for a long time now.

"It has no other purpose?"

"None," she said. "But it must whistle, for it's part of the story, isn't it?"

Roland nodded. Of course it was.

The Sisters of Oriza, Margaret Eisenhart said, was a group of women who liked to help others-

"And gossip amongst theirselves," Eisenhart growled, but he sounded good-humored.

"Aye, that too," she allowed.

They cooked for funerals and festivals (it was the Sisters who had put on the previous night's banquet at the Pavilion). They sometimes held sewing circles and quilting bees after a family had lost its belongings to fire or when one of the river-floods came every six or eight years and drowned the smallholders closest to Devar-Tete Whye. It was the Sisters who kept the Pavilion well-tended and the Town Gathering Hall well swept on the inside and well-kept on the outside. They put on dances for the young people, and chaperoned them. They were sometimes hired by the richer folk ("Such as the Tooks and their kin, do ya," she said) to cater wedding celebrations, and such affairs were always fine, the talk of the Calla for months afterward, sure. Among themselves they did gossip, aye, she'd not deny it; they also played cards, and Points, and Castles.

"And you throw the plate," Roland said.

"Aye," said she, "but ye must understand we only do it for the fun of the thing. Hunting's men's work, and they do fine with the bah." She was stroking her husband's shoulder again, this time a bit nervously, Roland thought. He also thought that if the men really did do fine with the bah, she never would have come out with that pretty, deadly thing held under her apron in the first place. Nor would Eisenhart have encouraged her.

Roland opened his tobacco-pouch, took out one of Rosalita's cornshuck pulls, and drifted it toward the plate's sharp edge. The square of cornshuck fluttered to the porch a moment later, cut neatly in two. Only for the fun of the thing, Roland thought, and almost smiled.

"What metal?" he asked. "Does thee know?"

She raised her eyebrows slightly at this form of address but didn't comment on it. "Titanium is what Andy calls it. It comes from a great old factory building, far north, in Calla Sen Chre.

There are many ruins there. I've never been, but I've heard the tales. It sounds spooky."

Roland nodded. "And the plates-how are they made? Does Andy do it?"

She shook her head. "He can't or won't, I know not which. It's the ladies of Calla Sen Chre who make them, and send them to the Callas all round about. Although Divine is as far south as that sort of trading reaches, I think."

"The ladies make these," Roland mused. "The ladies."

"Somewhere there's a machine that still makes em, that's all it is," Eisenhart said. Roland was amused at his tone of stiff defensiveness. "Comes down to no more than pushing a button, I 'magine."

Margaret, looking at him with a woman's smile, said nothing to this, either for or against. Perhaps she didn't know, but she certainly knew the politics that keep a marriage sweet.

"So there are Sisters north and south of here along the Arc," Roland said. "And all of them throw the plate."

"Aye-from Calla Sen Chre to Calla Divine south of us. Farther south or north, I don't know. We like to help and we like to talk. We throw our plates once a month, in memory of how Lady Oriza did for Gray Dick, but few of us are any good at it."

"Are you good at it, sai?"

She was silent, biting at the corner of her lip again.

"Show him," Eisenhart growled. "Show him and be done."

FIVE

They walked down the steps, the rancher's wife leading the way, Eisenhart behind her, Roland third. Behind them the kitchen door opened and banged shut.

"Gods-a-glory, missus Eisenhart's gonna throw the dish!" Benny Slightman cried gleefully. "Jake! You won't believe it!"

"Send em back in, Vaughn," she said. "They don't need to see this."

"Nar, let em look," Eisenhart said. "Don't hurt a boy to see a woman do well."

"Send them back, Roland, aye?" She looked at him, flushed and flustered and very pretty. To Roland she looked ten years younger than when she'd come out on the porch, but he wondered how she'd fling in such a state. It was something he much wanted to see, because ambushing was brutal work, quick and emotional.

"I agree with your husband," he said. "I'd let them stay."

"Have it as you like," she said. Roland saw she was actually pleased, that she wanted an audience, and his hope grew. He thought it increasingly likely that this pretty middle-aged wife with her small breasts and salt-and-pepper hair had a hunter's heart. Not a gunslinger's heart, but at this point he would settle for a few hunters-a few killers -male or female.

She marched toward the barn. When they were fifty yards from the stuffy-guys flanking the barn door, Roland touched her shoulder and made her stop.

"Nay," she said, "this is too far."

"I've seen you fling as far and half again," her husband said, and stood firm in the face of her angry look. "So I have."

"Not with a gunslinger from the Line of Eld standing by my right elbow, you haven't," she said, but she stood where she was.

Roland went to the barn door and took the grinning sharp-root head from the stuffy on the left side. He went into the barn. Here was a stall filled with freshly picked sharproot, and beside it one of potatoes. He took one of the potatoes and set it atop the stuffy-guy's shoulders, where the sharproot had been. It was a good-sized spud, but the contrast was still comic; the stuffy-guy now looked like Mr. Tinyhead in a carnival show or street-fair.

"Oh, Roland, no!" she cried, sounding genuinely shocked. "I could never!"

"I don't believe you," he said, and stood aside. "Throw."

For a moment he diought she wouldn't. She looked around for her husband. If Eisenhart had still been standing beside her, Roland thought, she would have thrust the plate into his hands and run for the house and never mind if he cut himself on it, either. But Vaughn Eisenhart had withdrawn to the foot of the steps. The boys stood above him, Benny Slightman watching with mere interest, Jake with closer attention, his brows drawn together and the smile now gone from his face.

"Roland, I-"

"None of it, missus, I beg. Your talk of leaping was all very fine, but now I'd see you do it. Throw."

She recoiled a little, eyes widening, as if she had been slapped. Then she turned to face the barn door and drew her right hand above her left shoulder. The plate glimmered in the late light, which was now more pink than red. Her lips had thinned to a white line. For a moment all the world held still.

"Riza!" she cried in a shrill, furious voice, and cast her arm forward. Her hand opened, the index finger pointing precisely along the path the plate would take. Of all of them in the yard (the cowpokes had also stopped to watch), only Roland's eyes were sharp enough to follow the flight of the dish.

True! he exulted. True as ever was!

The plate gave a kind of moaning howl as it bolted above the dirt yard. Less than two seconds after it had left her hand, the potato lay in two pieces, one by the stuffy-guy's gloved right hand and the other by its left. The plate itself stuck in the side of the barn door, quivering.

The boys raised a cheer. Benny hoisted his hand as his new friend had taught him, and Jake slapped him a high five.

"Great going, sai Eisenhart!" Jake called.

"Good hit! Say thankya!" Benny added.

Roland observed the way the woman's lips drew back from her teeth at this hapless, well-meant praise-she looked like a horse that has seen a snake. "Boys," he said, "I'd go inside now, were I you."

Benny was bewildered. Jake, however, took another look at Margaret Eisenhart and understood. You did what you had to… and then the reaction set in. "Come on, Ben," he said.

"But-"

"Come on." Jake took his new friend by the shirt and tugged him back toward the kitchen door.

Roland let the woman stay where she was for a moment, head down, trembling with reaction. Strong color still blazed in her cheeks, but everywhere else her skin had gone as pale as milk. He thought she was struggling not to vomit.

He went to the barn door, grasped the plate at the grasping-place, and pulled. He was astounded at how much effort it took before the plate first wiggled and then pulled loose. He brought it back to her, held it out. "Thy tool."

For a moment she didn't take it, only looked at him with a species of bright hate. "Why do you mock me, Roland? How do'ee know Vaughn took me from the Manni Clan? Tell us that, I beg."

It was the rose, of course-an intuition left by the touch of the rose-and it was also the tale of her face, which was a womanly version of the old Henchick's. But how he knew what he knew was no part of this woman's business, and he only shook his head. "Nay. But I do not mock thee."

Margaret Eisenhart abruptly seized Roland by the neck. Her grip was dry and so hot her skin felt feverish. She pulled his ear to her uneasy, twitching mouth. He thought he could smell every bad dream she must have had since deciding to leave her people for Calla Bryn Sturgis's big rancher.

"I saw thee speak to Henchick last night," she said. "Will'ee speak to him more? Ye will, won't you?"

Roland nodded, transfixed by her grip. The strength of it. The little puffs of air against his ear. Did a lunatic hide deep down inside everyone, even such a woman as this? He didn't know.

"Good. Say thankya. Tell him Margaret of the Redpath Clan does fine with her heathen man, aye, fine still." Her grip tightened. "Tell him she regrets nothing!. Will'ee do that for me?"

"Aye, lady, if you like."

She snatched the plate from him, fearless of its lethal edge. Having it seemed to steady her. She looked at him from eyes in which tears swam, unshed. "Is it the cave ye spoke of with my Da'? The Doorway Cave?"

Roland nodded.

"What would ye visit on us, ye chary gunstruck man?"

Eisenhart joined them. He looked uncertainly at his wife, who had endured exile from her people for his sake. For a moment she looked at him as though she didn't know him.

"I only do as ka wills," Roland said.

"Ka!" she cried, and her lip lifted. A sneer transformed her good looks to an ugliness that was almost starding. It would have frightened the boys. "Every troublemaker's excuse! Put it up your bum with the rest of the dirt!"

"I do as ka wills and so will you," Roland said.

She looked at him, seeming not to comprehend. Roland took the hot hand that had gripped him and squeezed it, not quite to the point of pain.

"And so will you."

She met his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes. "Aye," she muttered. "Oh aye, so do we all." She ventured to look at him again. "Will ye give Henchick my message?"

"Aye, lady, as I said."

The darkening dooryard was silent except for the distant call of a rustic The cowpokes still leaned at the remuda fence. Roland ambled over to them.

"Evening, gents."

"Hope ya do well," one said, and touched his forehead.

"May you do better," Roland said. "Missus threw the plate, and she threw it well, say aye?"

"Say thankya," another of them agreed. "No rust on the missus."

"No rust," Roland agreed. "And will I tell you something now, gents? A word to tuck beneath your hats, as we do say?"

They looked at him warily.

Roland looked up, smiled at the sky. Then looked back at them. "Set my watch and warrant on't. You might want to speak of it. Tell what you saw."

They watched him cautiously, not liking to admit to this.

"Speak of it and I'll kill every one of you," Roland said. "Do you understand me?"

Eisenhart touched his shoulder. "Roland, surely-"

The gunslinger shrugged his hand off without looking at him. "Do you understand me?"

They nodded.

"And believe me?"

They nodded again. They looked frightened. Roland was glad to see it. They were right to be afraid. "Say thankya."

"Say thanks," one of them repeated. He had broken a sweat.

"Aye," said the second.

"Thankya big-big," said the third, and shot a nervous stream of tobacco to one side.

Eisenhart tried again. "Roland, hear me, I beg-"

But Roland didn't. His mind was alight with ideas. All at once he saw thieir course with perfect clarity. Their course on this side, at least. "Where's the robot?" he asked the rancher.

"Andy? Went in the kitchen with the boys, I think."

"Good. Do you have a stockline office in there?" He nodded toward the barn.

"Aye."

"Let's go there, then. You, me, and your missus."

"I'd like to take her into the house a bit," Eisenhart said. I'd like to take her anywhere that's away from you, Roland read in his eyes.

"Our palaver won't be long," Roland said, and with perfect honesty. He'd already seen everything he needed.

SIX

The stockline office only had a single chair, the one behind the desk. Margaret took it. Eisenhart sat on a footstool. Roland squatted on his hunkers with his back to the wall and his purse open before him. He had shown them the twins' map. Eisenhart hadn't immediately grasped what Roland had pointed out (might not grasp it even now), but the woman did. Roland thought it no wonder she hadn't been able to stay witь the Manni. The Manni were peaceful. Margaret Eisenhart was not. Not once you got below her surface, at any rate.

"You'll keep this to yourselves," he said.

"Or thee'll kill us, like our cowpokes?" she asked.

Roland gave her a patient look, and she colored beneath it.

"I'm sorry, Roland. I'm upset. It comes of throwing the plate in hot blood."

Eisenhart put an arm around her. This time she accepted it gladly, and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Who else in your group can throw as well as that?" Roland asked. "Any?"

"Zalia Jaffords," she said at once.

"Say true?"

She nodded emphatically. "Zalia could have cut that tater in two ten-for-ten, at twenty paces farther back."

"Others?"

"Sarey Adams, wife of Diego. And Rosalita Munoz."

Roland raised his eyebrows at that.

"Aye," she said. "Other than Zalia, Rosie's best." A brief pause. "And me, I suppose."

Roland felt as if a huge weight had rolled off his back. He'd been convinced they'd somehow have to bring back weapons from New York or find them on the east side of the river. Now it looked as if that might not be necessary. Good. They had other business in New York-business involving Calvin Tower. He didn't want to mix the two unless he absolutely had to.

"I'd see you four women at the Old Fella's rectory-house. And just you four." His eyes flicked briefly to Eisenhart, then back to Eisenhart's sai. "No husbands."

"Now wait just a damn minute," Eisenhart said.

Roland held up his hand. "Nothing's been decided yet."

"It's the way it's not been decided I don't care for," Eisenhart said.

"Hush a minute," Margaret said. "When would you see us?"

Roland calculated. Twenty-four days left, perhaps only twenty-three, and still much left to see. And there was the thing hidden in the Old Fella's church, that to deal with, too. And the old Manni, Henchick…

Yet in the end, he knew, the day would come and things would play out with shocking suddenness. They always did. Five minutes, ten at most, and all would be finished, for good or ill.

The trick was to be ready when those few minutes came around.

"Ten days from now," he said. "In the evening. I'd see the four of you in competition, turn and turn about."

"All right," she said. "That much we can do. But Roland… I'll not throw so much as a single plate or raise a single finger against the Wolves if my husband still says no."

"I understand," Roland said, knowing she would do as he said, like it or not. When the time came they all would.

There was one small window in the office wall, dirty and festooned with cobwebs but clear enough for them to be able to see Andy marching across the yard, his electric eyes flashing on and off in the deepening twilight. He was humming to himself.

"Eddie says robots are programmed to do certain tasks," he said. "Andy does the tasks you bid him?"

"Mostly, yes," Eisenhart said. "Not always. And he's not always around, ye ken."

"Hard to believe he was built to do no more than sing foolish songs and tell horoscopes," Roland mused.

"Perhaps the Old People gave him hobbies," Margaret Eisenhart said, "and now that his main tasks are gone-lost in time, do ya ken-he concentrates on the hobbies."

"You think the Old People made him."

"Who else?" Vaughn Eisenhart asked. Andy was gone now, and the back yard was empty.

"Aye, who else," Roland said, still musing. "Who else would have the wit and the tools? But the Old People were gone two thousand years before the Wolves began raiding into the Calla. Two thousand or more. So what I'd like to know is who or what programmed Andy not to talk about them, except to tell you folks when they're coming. And here's another question, not as interesting as that but still curious: why does he tell you that much if he cannot-or will not-tell you anything else?"

Eisenhart and his wife were looking at each other, thunderstruck. They'd not gotten past the first part of what Roland had said. The gunslinger wasn't surprised, but he was a little disappointed in them. Really, there was much here that was obvious. If, that was, one set one's wits to work. In fairness to the Eisenharts, Jaffordses, and Overholsers of the Calla, he supposed, straight thinking wasn't so easy when your babbies were at stake.

There was a knock at the door. Eisenhart called, "Come!"

It was Ben Slightman. "Stock's all put to bed, boss." He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. "And the boys're off with Benny's tent. Andy was stalkin em close, so that's well." Slightman looked at Roland. "It's early for rock-cats, but if one were to come, Andy'd give my boy at least one shot at it with his bah-he's been told so and comes back 'Order recorded.' If Benny were to miss, Andy'd get between the boys and the cat. He's programmed strictly for defense and we've never been able to change that, but if the cat were to keep coming-"

"Andy'd rip it to pieces," Eisenhart said. He spoke with a species of gloomy satisfaction.

"Fast, is he?" Roland asked.

"Yer-bugger," Slightman said. "Don't look it, do he, all tall and gangly like he is? But aye, he can move like greased lightning when he wants to. Faster than any rock-cat. We believe he must run on ant-nomics."

"Very likely," Roland said absently.

"Never mind that," Eisenhart said, "but listen, Ben-why d'you suppose it is that Andy won't talk about the Wolves?"

"His programming-"

"Aye, but it's as Roland pointed out to us just before'ee came in-and we should have seen it for ourselves long before this-if the Old People set him a-going and then the Old People died out or moved on… long before the Wolves showed themselves… do you see the problem?"

Slightman the Elder nodded, then put his glasses back on. "Must have been something like the Wolves in the elden days, don't you think? Enough like em so Andy can't tell em apart. It's all I can figure."

Is it really? Roland thought.

He produced the Tavery twins' map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla's old garnet mines. This one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped. The place wasn't really much like Eyebolt Canyon in Mejis (there was no thinny in the arroyo, for one thing), but there was one crucial similarity: both were dead ends. And, Roland knew, a man will try to take service again from that which has served him once. That he should pick this arroyo, this dead-end mineshaft, for his ambush of the Wolves made perfect sense. To Eddie, to Susannah, to the Eisenharts, and now to the Eisenharts' foreman. It would make sense to Sarey Adams and Rosalita Munoz. It would make sense to the Old Fella. He would disclose this much of his plan to others, and it would make sense to them, as well.

And if things were left out? If some of what he said was a lie?

If the Wolves got wind of the lie and believed it?

That would be good, wouldn't it? Good if they lunged and snapped in the right direction, but at the wrong thing?

Yes, but I'll need to trust someone with the whole truth eventually. Who? '

Not Susannah, because Susannah was now two again, and he didn't trust the other one.

Not Eddie, because Eddie might let something crucial slip to Susannah, and then Mia would know.

Not Jake, because Jake had become fast friends with Benny Slightman.

He was on his own again, and this condition had never felt more lonely to him.

"Look," he said, tapping the arroyo. "Here's a place you might think of, Slightman. Easy to get in, not so easy to get back out. Suppose we were to take all the children of a certain age and tuck them away safe in this little bit of a mine?"

He saw understanding begin to dawn in Slightman's eyes. Something else, too. Hope, maybe.

"If we hide the children, they know where," Eisenhart said. "It's as if they smell em, like ogres in a kid's cradle-story."

"So I'm told," Roland said. "What I suggest is that we could use that."

"Make em bait, you mean. Gunslinger, that's hard."

Roland, who had no intention of putting the Calla's children in the abandoned garnet mine-or anywhere near it-nodded his head. "Hard world sometimes, Eisenhart."

"Say thankya," Eisenhart replied, but his face was grim. He touched the map. "Could work. Aye, could work… if ye could suck all the Wolves in."

Wherever the children wind up, I'll need help putting them there, Roland thought. There'll have to be people who know where to go and what to do. A plan. But not yet. For now I can play the game I'm playing. It's like Castles. Because someone's hiding.

Did he know that? He did not.

Did he smell it? Aye, he did.

Now it's twenty-four, Roland thought. Twenty-four days until the Wolves.

It would have to be enough.

ONE

Eddie, a city boy to the core, was almost shocked by how much he liked the Jaffords place on the River Road. I could live in a place like this, he thought. That'd be okay. It'd do me fine.

It was a long log cabin, craftily built and chinked against the winter winds. Along one side there were large windows which gave a view down a long, gentle hill to the rice-fields and the river. On the other side was the barn and the dooryard, beaten dirt that had been prettied up with circular islands of grass and flowers and, to the left of the back porch, a rather exotic little vegetable garden. Half of it was filled with a yellow herb called madrigal, which Tian hoped to grow in quantity the following year.

Susannah asked Zalia how she kept the chickens out of the stuff, and the woman laughed ruefully, blowing hair back from her forehead. "With great effort, that's how," she said. "Yet the madrigal does grow, you see, and where things grow, there's always hope."

What Eddie liked was the way it all seemed to work together and produce a feeling of home. You couldn't exactly say what caused that feeling, because it was no one thing, but-

Yeah, there is one thing. And it doesn't have anything to do with the rustic log-cabin look of the place or the vegetable garden and the pecking chickens or the beds of flowers, either.

It was the kids. At first Eddie had been a little stunned by the number of them, produced for his and Suze's inspection like a platoon of soldiers for the eye of a visiting general. And by God, at first glance there looked like almost enough of them to fill a platoon… or a squad, at least.

"Them on the end're Heddon and Hedda," Zalia said, pointing to the pair of dark blonds. "They're ten. Make your manners, you two."

Heddon sketched a bow, at the same time tapping his grimy forehead with the side of an even grimier fist. Covering all the bases, Eddie thought. The girl curtsied.

"Long nights and pleasant days," said Heddon.

"That's pleasant days and long lives, dummikins," Hedda stage-whispered, then curtsied and repeated the sentiment in what she felt was the correct manner. Heddon was too overawed by the outworlders to glower at his know-it-all sister, or even really to notice her.

"The two young'uns is Lyman and Lia," Zalia said.

Lyman, who appeared all eyes and gaping mouth, bowed so violendy he nearly fell in the dirt. Lia actually did tumble over while making her curtsy. Eddie had to struggle to keep a straight face as Hedda picked her sister out of the dust, hissing.

"And this 'un," she said, kissing the large baby in her arms, "is Aaron, my little love."

"Your singleton," Susannah said.

"Aye, lady, so he is."

Aaron began to struggle, kicking and twisting. Zalia put him down. Aaron hitched up his diaper and trotted off toward the side of the house, yelling for his Da'.

"Heddon, go after him and mind him," Zalia said.

"Maw-Maw, no!" He sent her frantic eye-signals to the effect that he wanted to stay right here, listening to the strangers and eating them up with his eyes.

"Maw-Maw, yes," Zalia said. "Garn and mind your brother, Heddon."

The boy might have argued further, but at that moment Tian Jaffords came around the corner of the cabin and swept the little boy up into his arms. Aaron crowed, knocked off his Da's straw hat, pulled at his Da's sweaty hair.

Eddie and Susannah barely noticed this. They had eyes only for the overall-clad giants following along in Jaffords's wake. Eddie and Susannah had seen maybe a dozen extremely large people on their tour of the smallhold farms along the River Road, but always at a distance. ("Most of em're shy of strangers, do ye ken," Eisenhart had said.) These two were less than ten feet away.

Man and woman or boy and girl? Both at the same time, Eddie thought. Because their ages don't matter.

The female, sweaty and laughing, had to be six-six, with breasts that looked twice as big as Eddie's head. Around her neck on a string was a wooden crucifix. The male had at least six inches on his sister-in-law. He looked at the newcomers shyly, then began sucking his thumb with one hand and squeezing his crotch with the other. To Eddie the most amazing thing about them wasn't their size but their eerie resemblance to Tian and Zalia. It was like looking at the clumsy first drafts of some ultimately successful work of art. They were so clearly idiots, the both of them, and so clearly, so closely, related to people who weren't. Eerie was the only word for them.;

No, Eddie thought, the word is roont.

"This is my brother, Zalman," Zalia said, her tone oddly formal.

"And my sister, Tia," Tian added. "Make your manners, you two galoots."

Zalman just went ahead sucking one piece of himself and kneading the other. Tia, however, gave a huge (and somehow ducklike) curtsy. "Long days long nights long earth!" she cried. "WE GET TATERS AND GRAVY!"

"Good," Susannah said quietly. "Taters and gravy is good."

"TATERS AND GRAVY IS GOOD!" Tia wrinkled her nose, pulling her upper lip away from her teeth in a piglike sneer of good fellowship. "TATERS AND GRAVY! TATERS AND GRAVY! GOOD OL' TATERS AND GRAVY!"

Hedda touched Susannah's hand hesitantly. "She go on like that all day unless you tell her shush, missus-sai."

"Shush, Tia," Susannah said.

Tia gave a honk of laughter at the sky, crossed her arms over her prodigious bosom, and fell silent.

"Zal," Tian said. "You need to go pee-pee, don't you?"

Zalia's brother said nothing, only continued squeezing his crotch.

"Go pee-pee," Tian said. "You go on behind the barn. Water the sharproot, say thankya."

For a moment nothing happened. Then Zalman set off, moving in a wide, shambling gait.

"When they were young-" Susannah began. "Bright as polished agates, the both of em," Zalia said. "Now she's bad and my brother's even worse."

She abruptly put her hands over her face. Aaron gave a high laugh at this and covered his own face in imitation ("Peet-a-boo!" he called through his fingers), but both sets of twins looked grave. Alarmed, even.

"What's wrong 'it Maw-Maw?" Lyman asked, tugging at his father's pantsleg. Zalman, heedless of all, continued toward the barn, still with one hand in his mouth and the other in his crotch.

"Nothing, son. Your Maw-Maw's all right." Tian put the baby down, then ran his arm across his eyes. "Everything's fine. Ain't it, Zee?"

"Aye," she said, lowering her hands. The rims of her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. "And with the blessing, what ain't fine will be."

"From your lips to God's ear," Eddie said, watching the giant shamble toward the barn. "From your lips to God's ear."

TWO

"Is he having one of his bright days, your Gran-pere?" Eddie asked Tian a few minutes later. They had walked around to where Tian could show Eddie the field he called Son of a Bitch, leaving Zalia and Susannah with all children great and small.

"Not so's you'd notice," Tian said, his brow darkening. "He ain't half-addled these last few years, and won't have nobbut to do with me, anyway. Her, aye, because she'll hand-feed him, then wipe the drool off his chin for him and tell him thankya. Ain't enough I got two great roont galoots to feed, is it? I've got to have that bad-natured old man, as well. Head's gone as rusty as an old hinge. Half the time he don't even know where he is, say any small-small!"

They walked, high grass swishing against their pants. Twice Eddie almost tripped over rocks, and once Tian seized his arm and led him around what looked like a right leg-smasher of a hole. No wonder he calls it Son of a Bitch, Eddie thought. And yet there were signs of cultivation. Hard to believe anyone could pull a plow through this mess, but it looked as if Tian Jaffords had been trying.

"If your wife's right, I think I need to talk to him," Eddie said. "Need to hear his story."

"My Granda's got stories, all right. Half a thousand! Trouble is, most of em was lies from the start and now he gets em all mixed up together. His accent were always thick, and these last three years he's missing his last three teeth as well. Likely you won't be able to understand his nonsense to begin with. I wish you joy of him, Eddie of New York."

"What the hell did he do to you, Tian?"

" 'Twasn't what he did to me but what he did to my Da'. That's a long story and nothing to do with this business. Leave it"

"No, you leave it," Eddie said, coming to a stop.

Tian looked at him, startled. Eddie nodded, unsmiling: you heard me. He was twenty-five, already a year older than Cuthbert Allgood on his last day at Jericho Hill, but in this day's failing light he could have passed for a man of fifty. One of harsh certainty.

"If he's seen a dead Wolf, we need to debrief him."

"I don't kennit, Eddie."

"Yeah, but I think you ken my point just fine. Whatever you've got against him, put it aside. If we settle up with the Wolves, you have my permission to bump him into the fireplace or push him off the goddam roof. But for now, keep your sore ass to yourself. Okay?"

Tian nodded. He stood looking out across his troublesome north field, the one he called Son of a Bitch, with his hands in his pockets. When he studied it so, his expression was one of troubled greed.

"Do you think his story about killing a Wolf is so much hot air? If you really do, I won't waste my time."

Grudgingly, Tian said: "I'm more apt to believe that 'un than most of the others."

"Why?"

"Well, he were tellin it ever since I were old enough to listen, and that 'un never changes much. Also…" Tian's next words squeezed down, as if he were speaking them through gritted teeth. "My Gran-pere never had no shortage of thorn and bark. If anyone would have had guts enough to go out on the East Road and stand against the Wolves-not to mention enough trum to get others to go with him-I'd bet my money on Jamie Jaffords."

"Trum?"

Tian thought about how to explain it. "If'ee was to stick your head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd take courage, wouldn't it?"

It would take idiocy was what Eddie thought, but he nodded.

"If'ee was the sort of man could convince someone else to stick his head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd make you trum. Your dinh's trum, ain't he?"

Eddie remembered some of the stuff Roland had gotten him to do, and nodded. Roland was trum, all right. He was trum as hell. Eddie was sure the gunslinger's old mates would have said the same.

"Aye," Tian said, turning his gaze back to his field. "In any case, if ye'd get something halfway sensible out of the old man, I'd wait until after supper. He brightens a bit once he's had his rations and half a pint of graf. And make sure my wife's sitting right beside you, where he can get an eyeful. I 'magine he'd try to have a good deal more than his eye on her, were he a younger man." His face had darkened again.

Eddie clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, he's not younger. You are. So lighten up, all right?"

"Aye." Tian made a visible effort to do just that. "What do'ee think of my field, gunslinger? I'm going to plant it with madrigal next year. The yellow stuff ye saw out front."

What Eddie thought was that the field looked like a heart-break waiting to happen. He suspected that down deep Tian thought about the same; you didn't call your only unplanted field Son of a Bitch because you expected good things to happen there. But he knew the look on Tian's face. It was the one Henry used to get when the two of them were setting off to score. It was always going to be the best stuff this time, the best stuff ever. China White and never mind that Mexican Brown that made your head ache and your bowels run. They'd get high for a week, the best high ever, mellow, and then quit the junk for good. That was Henry's scripture, and it could have been Henry here beside him, telling Eddie what a fine cash crop madrigal was, and how the people who'd told him you couldn't grow it this far north would be laughing on the other side of their faces come next reap. And then he'd buy Hugh Anselm's field over on the far side of yon ridge… hire a couple of extra men come reap, for the land'd be gold for as far as you could see… why, he might even quit the rice altogether and become a madrigal monarch.

Eddie nodded toward the field, which was hardly half-turned. "Looks like slow plowing, though. You must have to be damned careful with the mules."

Tian gave a short laugh. "I'd not risk a mule out here, Eddie."

"Then what-?"

"I plow my sister."

Eddie's jaw dropped. "You're shitting me!"

"Not at all. I'd plow Zal, too-he's bigger, as ye saw, and even stronger-but not as bright. More trouble than it's worth. I've tried."

Eddie shook his head, feeling dazed. Their shadows ran out long over the lumpy earth, with its crop of weed and thistle. "But… man… she's your sister!"

"Aye, and what else would she do all day? Sit outside the barn door and watch the chickens? Sleep more and more hours, and only get up for her taters and gravy? This is better, believe me. She don't mind it. It's tur'ble hard to get her to plow straight, even when there ain't a plow-buster of a rock or a hole every eight or ten steps, but she pulls like the devil and laughs like a loon."

What convinced Eddie was the man's earnestness. There was no defensiveness in it, not that he could detect.

"Sides, she'll likely be dead in another ten year, anyway. Let her help while she can, I say. And Zalia feels the same."

"Okay, but why don't you get Andy to do at least some of the plowing? I bet it'd go faster if you did. All you guys with the smallhold farms could share him, ever think of that? He could plow your fields, dig your wells, raise a barn roofbeam all by himself. And you'd save on taters and gravy." He clapped Tian on the shoulder again. "That's got to do ya fine."

Tian's mouth quirked. "It's a lovely dream, all right."

"Doesn't work, huh? Or rather, he doesn't work."

"Some things he'll do, but plowing fields and digging wells ain't among em. You ask him, and he'll ask you for your password. When you have no password to give him, he'll ask you if you'd like to retry. And then-"

"Then he tells you you're shit out of luck. Because of Directive Nineteen."

"If you knew, why did you ask?"

"I knew he was that way about the Wolves, because I asked him. I didn't know it extended to all this other stuff."

Tian nodded. "He's really not much help, and he can be tiresome-if'ee don't ken that now, ye will if'ee stay long-but he does tell us when the Wolves are on their way, and for that we all say thankya."

Eddie actually had to bite off the question that came to his lips. Why did they thank him when his news was good for nothing except making them miserable? Of course this time there might be more to it; this time Andy's news might actually lead to a change. Was that what Mr. You-Will-Meet-An-Interesting-Stranger had been angling for all along? Getting the folken to stand up on their hind legs and fight? Eddie recalled Andy's decidedly smarmy smile and found such altruism hard to swallow. It wasn't fair to judge people (or even robots, maybe) by the way they smiled or talked, and yet everybody did it.

Now that I think about it, what about his voice? What about that smug little I-know-and-you-don't thing he's got going on? Or am I imagining that, too?

The hell of it was, he didn't know.

THREE

The sound of Susannah's singing voice accompanied by the giggles of the children-all children great and small-drew Eddie and Tian back around to the other side of the house.

Zalman was holding one end of what looked like a stock-rope. Tia had the other. They were turning it in lazy loops with large, delighted grins on their faces while Susannah, sitting propped on the ground, recited a skip-rope rhyme Eddie vaguely remembered. Zalia and her four older children were jumping in unison, their hair rising and falling. Baby Aaron stood by, his diaper now sagging almost to his knees. On his face was a huge, delighted grin. He made rope-twirling motions with one chubby fist.

" 'Pinky Pauper came a-calling! Into sin that boy be falling! I caught him creeping, one-two-three, he's as wicked as can be!' Faster, Zalman! Faster, Tia! Come on, make em really jump to it!"

Tia spun her end of the rope faster at once, and a moment later Zalman caught up with her. This was apparently something he could do. Laughing, Susannah chanted faster.

" 'Pinky Pauper took her measure! That bad boy done took her treasure! Four-five-six, we're up to seven, that bad boy won't go to heaven!' Yow, Zalia, I see your knees, girl! Faster, you guys! Faster!"

The four twins jumped like shuttlecocks, Heddon tucking his fists into his armpits and doing a buck and wing. Now that they had gotten over the awe which had made them clumsy, the two younger kids jumped in limber spooky harmony. Even their hair seemed to fly up in the same clumps. Eddie found himself remembering the Tavery twins, whose very freckles had looked the same.

" 'Pinky… Pinky Pauper…' " Then she stopped. "Shoo-fly, Eddie! I can't remember any more!"

"Faster, you guys," Eddie said to the giants turning the skip-rope. They did as he said, Tia hee-hawing up at the fading sky. Eddie measured the spin of the rope with his eyes, moving backward and forward at the knees, timing it. He put his hand on the butt of Roland's gun to make sure it wouldn't fly free.

"Eddie Dean, you cain't never!" Susannah cried, laughing.

But the next time the rope flew up he did, jumping in between Hedda and Hedda's mother. He faced Zalia, whose face was flushed and sweating, jumping with her in perfect harmony, Eddie chanted the one verse that survived in his memory. To keep it in time, he had to go almost as fast as a county fair auctioneer. He didn't realize until later that he had changed the bad boy's name, giving it a twist that was pure Brooklyn.

" 'Piggy Pecker pick my pocket, took my baby's silver locket, caught im sleepin eightnineten, stole that locket back again!' Go, you guys! Spin it!"

They did, twirling the rope so fast it was almost a blur. In a world that now appeared to be going up and down on an invisible pogo-stick, he saw an old man with fly-away hair and grizzled sideburns come out on the porch like a hedgehog out of its hole, thumping along on an ironwood cane. Hello, Gran-pere, he thought, then dismissed the old man for the time being. All he wanted to do right now was keep his footing and not be the one who fucked the spin. As a little kid, he'd always loved jumping rope and always hated the idea that he had to give it over to the girls once he went to Roosevelt Elementary or be damned forever as a sissy. Later, in high school phys ed, he had briefly rediscovered the joys of jump-rope. But never had there been anything like this. It was as if he had discovered (or rediscovered) some practical magic that bound his and Susannah's New York lives to this other life in a way that required no magic doors or magic balls, no todash state. He laughed deliriously and began to scissor his feet back and forth. A moment later Zalia Jaffords was doing the same, mimicking him step for step. It was as good as the rice-dance. Maybe better, because they were all doing it in unison.

Certainly it was magic for Susannah, and of all the wonders ahead and behind, those few moments in the Jaffordses' door-yard always maintained their own unique luster. Not two of them jumping in tandem, not even four, but six of them, while the two great grinning idiots spun the rope as fast as their slab-like arms would allow.

Tian laughed and stomped his shor'boots and cried: "That beats the drum! Don't it just! Yer-buggerl" And from the porch, his grandfather gave out a laugh so rusty that Susannah had to wonder how long ago he had laid that sound away in mothballs.

For another five seconds or so, the magic held. The jump-rope spun so rapidly the eye lost it and it existed as nothing but a whirring sound like a wing. The half-dozen within that whirring-from Eddie, the tallest, at Zalman's end, to pudgy little Lyman, at Tia's-rose and fell like pistons in a machine.

Then the rope caught on someone's heel-Heddon's, it looked like to Susannah, although later all would take the blame so none had to feel bad-and they sprawled in the dust, gasping and laughing. Eddie, clutching his chest, caught Susannah's eye. "I'm havin a heart attack, sweetheart, you better call 911."

She hoisted herself over to where he lay and put her head down so she could kiss him. "No, you're not," she said, "but you're attacking my heart, Eddie Dean. I love you."

He gazed up at her seriously from the dust of the dooryard. He knew that however much she might love him, he would always love her more. And as always when he thought these things, the premonition came that ka was not their friend, that it would end badly between them.

If it's so, then your job is to make it as good as it can be for as long as it can be. Will you do your job, Eddie?

"With greatest pleasure," he said.

She raised her eyebrows. "Do ya?" she said, Calla-talk for Beg pardon?

"I do," he said, grinning. "Believe me, I do." He put an arm around her neck, pulled her down, kissed her brow, her nose, and finally her lips. The twins laughed and clapped. The baby chorded. And on the porch, old Jamie Jaffords did the same.

FOUR

All of them were hungry after their exercise, and with Susannah helping from her chair, Zalia Jaffords laid a huge meal on the long trestle table out behind the house. The view was a winner, in Eddie's opinion. At the foot of the hill was what he took to be some especially hardy type of rice, now grown to the height of a tall man's shoulder. Beyond it, the river glowed with sunset light.

"Set us on with a word, Zee, if'ee would," Tian said.

She looked pleased at that. Susannah told Eddie later that Tian hadn't thought much of his wife's religion, but that seemed to have changed since Pere Callahan's unexpected support of Tian at the Town Gadiering Hall.

"Bow your heads, children."

Four heads dropped-six, counting the big 'uns. Lyman and Lia had their eyes squinched so tightly shut that they looked like children suffering terrible headaches. They held their hands, clean and glowing pink from the pump's cold gush, out in front of them.

"Bless this food to our use, Lord, and make us grateful. Thank you for our company, may we do em fine and they us. Deliver us from the terror that flies at noonday and the one that creeps at night. We say thankee."

"Thankee!"'cried the children, Tia almost loudly enough to rattle the windows.

"Name of God the Father and His Son, the Man Jesus," she said.

"Man Jesus!" cried the children. Eddie was amused to see that Gran-pere, who sported a crucifix nearly as large as those worn by Zalman and Tia, sat with his eyes open, peacefully picking his nose during the prayers.

"Amen."

"Amen!"

"TATERS!" cried Tia.

FIVE

Tian sat at one end of the long table, Zalia at the other. The twins weren't shunted off to the ghetto of a "kiddie table" (as Susannah and her cousins always had been at family gatherings, and how she had hated that) but seated a-row on one side, with the older two flanking the younger pair. Heddon helped Lia; Hedda helped Lyman. Susannah and Eddie were seated side by side across from the kids, with one young giant to Susannah's left and the other to Eddie's right. The baby did fine first on his mother's lap and then, when he grew bored with that, on his father's. The old man sat next to Zalia, who served him, cut his meat small-small, and did indeed wipe his chin when the gravy ran down. Tian glowered at this in a sulky way which Eddie felt did him little credit, but he kept his mouth shut, except once to ask his grandfather if he wanted more bread.

"My arm still wuks if Ah do," the old man said, and snatched up the bread-basket to prove it. He did this smartly for a gent of advanced years, then spoiled the impression of briskness by overturning the jam-cruet. "Slaggit!" he cried.

The four children looked at each other with round eyes, then covered their mouths and giggled. Tia threw back her head and honked at the sky. One of her elbows caught Eddie in the ribs and almost knocked him off his chair.

"Wish'ee wouldn't speak so in front of the children," Zalia said, righting the cruet.

"Cry'er pardon," Gran-pere said. Eddie wondered if he would have managed such winning humility if his grandson had been the one to reprimand him.

"Let me help you to a little of that, Gran-pere," Susannah said, taking the jam from Zalia. The old man watched her with moist, almost worshipful eyes.

"Ain't seen a true brown woman in oh Ah'd have to say forty year," Gran-pere told her. "Uster be they'd come on the lake-mart boats, but nuramore." When Gran-pere said boats, it came out butts.

"I hope it doesn't come as too much of a shock to find out we're still around," Susannah said, and gave him a smile. The old fellow responded with a goaty, toothless grin.

The steak was tough but tasty, the corn almost as good as that in the meal Andy had prepared near the edge of the woods. The bowl of taters, although almost the size of a washbasin, needed to be refilled twice, the gravy boat three times, but to Eddie the true revelation was the rice. Zalia served three different kinds, and as far as Eddie was concerned, each one was better than the last. The Jaffordses, however, ate it almost absentmindedly, the way people drink water in a restaurant. The meal ended with an apple cobbler, and then the children were sent off to play. Gran-pere put on the finishing touch with a ringing belch. "Say thankee," he told Zalia, and tapped his throat three times. "Fine as ever was, Zee."

"It does me good to see you eat so, Dad," she said.

Tian grunted, then said, "Dad, these two would speak to you of the Wolves."

"Just Eddie, if it do ya," Susannah said with quick decisiveness. "I'll help you clear the table and wash the dishes."

"There's no need," Zalia said. Eddie thought the woman was sending Susannah a message with her eyes-Stay, he likes you -but Susannah either didn't see it or elected to ignore it.

"Not at all," she said, transferring herself to her wheelchair with the ease of long experience. "You'll talk to my man, won't you, sai Jaffords?"

"All that 'us long ago and by the way," the old man said, but he didn't look unwilling. "Don't know if Ah kin. My mind dun't hold a tale like it uster."

"But I'd hear what you do remember," Eddie said. "Every word."

Tia honked laughter as if this were the funniest thing she'd ever heard. Zal did likewise, then scooped the last bit of mashed potato out of the bowl with a hand nearly as big as a cutting board. Tian gave it a brisk smack. "Never do it, ye great galoot, how many times have'ee been told?"

"Arright," Gran-pere said. "Ah'd talk a bit if ye'd listen, boy. What else kin Ah do 'ith meself these days 'cept clabber? Help me git back on the porch, fur them steps is a strake easier comin down than they is goin up. And if ye'd fatch my pipe, daughter-girl, that'd do me fine, for a pipe helps a man think, so it does."

"Of course I will," Zalia said, ignoring another sour look from her husband. "Right away."

SIX

"This were all long ago, ye must ken," Gran-pere said once Zalia Jaffords had him settled in his rocker with a pillow at the small of his back and his pipe drawing comfortably. "I canna say for a certain if the Wolves have come twice since or three times, for although I were nineteen reaps on earth then, I've lost count of the years between."

In the northwest, the red line of sunset had gone a gorgeous ashes-of-roses shade. Tian was in the barn with the animals, aided by Heddon and Hedda. The younger twins were in the kitchen. The giants, Tia and Zalman, stood at the far edge of the dooryard, looking off toward the east, not speaking or moving. They might have been monoliths in a National Geographic photograph of Easter Island. Looking at them gave Eddie a moderate case of the creeps. Still, he counted his blessings. Gran-pere seemed relatively bright and aware, and although his accent was thick-almost a burlesque-he'd had no trouble following what the old man was saying, at least so far.

"I don't think the years between matter that much, sir," Eddie said.

Gran-pere's eyebrows went up. He uttered his rusty laugh. "Sir, yet! Been long and long sin' Ah heerd that! Ye must be from the northern folk!"

"I guess I am, at that," Eddie said.

Gran-pere lapsed into a long silence, looking at the fading sunset. Then he looked around at Eddie again with some surprise. "Did we eat yet? Wittles n rations?"

Eddie's heart sank. "Yes, sir. At the table on the other side of the house."

"Ah ask because if Ah'm gonna shoot some dirt, Ah usually shoot it d'recly after the night meal. Don't feel no urge, so Ah thought Ah'd ask."

"No. We ate."

"Ah. And what's your name?"

"Eddie Dean."

"Ah." The old man drew on his pipe. Twin curls of smoke drifted from his nose. "And the brownie's yours?" Eddie was about to ask for clarification when Gran-pere gave it. "The woman."

"Susannah. Yes, she's my wife."

"Ah."

"Sir… Gran-pere… the Wolves?" But Eddie no longer believed he was going to get anything from the old guy. Maybe Suze could-

"As Ah recall, there was four of us," Gran-pere said.

"Not five?"

"Nar, nar, although close enow so you could say a moit." His voice had become dry, matter-of-fact. The accent dropped away a little. "We 'us young and wild, didn't give a rat's red ass if we lived or died, do ya kennit. Just pissed enow to take a stand whether the rest of 'un said yes, no, or maybe. There 'us me… Pokey Slidell… who 'us my best friend… and there 'us Eamon Doolin and his wife, that redheaded Molly. She was the very devil when it came to throwin the dish."

"The dish?"

"Aye, the Sisters of Oriza throw it. Zee's one. Ah'll make her show'ee. They have plates sharpened all the way around except fer where the women hold on, do'ee ken. Nasty wittit, they are, aye! Make a man witta bah look right stupid. You ort to see."

Eddie made a mental note to tell Roland. He didn't know if there was anything to this dish-throwing or not, but he did know they were extremely short of weapons.

" 'Twas Molly killed the Wolf-"

"Not you?" Eddie was bemused, thinking of how truth and legend twisted together until there was no untangling them.

"Nar, nar, although"-Gran-pere's eyes gleamed-"Ah might have said 'twas me on one time or another, mayhap to loosen a young lady's knees when they'd otherwise have stuck together, d'ye ken?"

"I think so."

" 'Twas Red Molly did for it witter dish, that's the truth of it, but that's getting the cart out front of the horse. We seen their dust-cloud on the come. Then, mebbe six wheel outside of town, it split throg."

"What's that? I don't understand."

Gran-pere held up three warped fingers to show that the Wolves had gone three different ways.

"The biggest bunch-judgin by the dust, kennit-headed into town and went for Took's, which made sense because there were some'd thought to hide their babbies in the storage bin out behind. Tooky had a secret room way at the back where he kep' cash and gems and a few old guns and other outright tradeables he'd taken in; they don't call em Tooks for nothin, ye know!" Again the rusty, cackling chuckle. "It were a good cosy, not even the folk who worked fer the old buzzard knew it were there, yet when the time come the Wolves went right to it and took the babbies and kilt anyone tried to stand in their way or even speak a word o' beggary to em. And then they whopped at the store with their light-sticks when they rode out and set it to burn. Burnt flat, it did, and they was lucky not to've lost the whole town, young sai, for the flames started out of them sticks the Wolves carry ain't like other fire, that can be put out with enough water. T'row water on these 'uns, they feed on it! Grow higher! Higher and hotter! Yer-bugger!"

He spat over the rail for emphasis, then looked at Eddie shrewdly.

"All of which Ah'm sayin is this: no matter how many in these parts my grandson conwinces to stand up and fight, or you and yer brownie, Eben Took won't never be among em. Tooks has kep' that store since time was toothless, and they don't ever mean to see it burned flat again. Once 'us enough for them cowardy custards, do'ee foller?"

"Yes."

"The other two dust-clouds, the biggest of em hied sout' for the ranches. The littlest come down East Rud toward the smallholds, which was where we were, and where we made our stand."

The old man's face gleamed, memory-bound. Eddie did not glimpse the young man who had been (Gran-pere was too old for that), but in his rheumy eyes he saw the mixture of excitement and determination and sick fear which must have filled him that day. Must have filled them all. Eddie felt himself reaching out for it the way a hungry man will reach for food, and the old man must have seen some of this on his face, for he seemed to swell and gain vigor. Certainly this wasn't a reaction the old man had ever gotten from his grandson; Tian did not lack for bravery, say thankya, but he was a sodbuster for all that. This man, however, this Eddie of New York… he might live a short life and die with his face in the dirt, but he was no sodbuster, by 'Riza.

"Go on," Eddie said.

"Aye. So Ah will. Some of those comin toward us split off on River Rud, toward the little rice-manors that're there-you c'd see the dust-and a few more split off on Peaberry Road. Ah 'member Pokey Slidell turned to me, had this kind of sick smile on his face, and he stuck out his hand (the one didn't have his bah in it), and he said…"

SEVEN

What Pokey Slidell says under a burning autumn sky with the sound of the season's last crickets rising from the high white grass on either side of them is "It's been good to know ya, Jamie Jaffords, say true." He's got a smile on his face like none Jamie has ever seen before, but being only nineteen and living way out here on what some call the Rim and others call the Crescent, there's plenty he's never seen before. Or will ever see, way it looks now. It's a sick smile, but there's no cowardice in it. Jamie guesses he's wearing one just like it. Here they are under the sun of their fathers, and the darkness will soon have them. They've come to their dying hour.

Nonetheless, his grip is strong when he seizes Pokey's hand. "You ain't done knowin me yet, Pokey," he says.

"Hope you're right. "

The dust-cloud moils toward them. In a minute, maybe less, they will be able to see the riders throwing it. And, more important, the riders throwing it will be able to see them.

Eamon Doolin says, "You know, I believe we ort to get in that ditch " -he points to the right side of the road - "an' snay down small-small. Then, soon's they go by, we can jump out and have at em."

Molly Doolin is wearing tight black silk pants and a white silk blouse open at the throat to show a tiny silver reap charm: Oriza with her fist raised. In her own right hand, Molly holds a sharpened dish, cool blue titanium steel painted over with a delicate lacework of green spring rice. Slung over her shoulder is a reed pouch lined with silk. In it are five more plates, two of her own and three of her mother's. Her hair is so bright in the bright light that it looks as if her head is on fire. Soon enough it will be burning, say true.

"You can do what you like, Eamon Doolin, " she tells him. "As for me, I'm going to stand right here where they can see me and shout my twin sister's name so they'll hear it plain. They may ride me down but I'll kill one of 'un or cut the legs out from under one of their damn horses before they do, of that much I'll be bound. "

There's no time for more. The Wolves come out of the dip that marks the entrance to Arra's little smallhold patch, and the four Calla- folken can see them at last and there is no more talk of hiding. Jamie almost expected Eamon Doolin, who is mild-mannered and already losing his hair at twenty-three, to drop his bah and go pelting into the high grass with his hands raised to show his surrender. Instead, he moves into place next to his wife and nocks a bolt. There is a low whirring sound as he winds the cord tight-tight.

They stand across the road with their boots in the floury dust. They stand blocking the road. And what fills Jamie like a blessing is a sense of grace. This is the right thing to do. They're going to die here, but that's all right. Better to die than stand by while they take more children. Each one of them has lost a twin, and Pokey -who is by far the oldest of them -has lost both a brother and a young son to the Wolves. This is right. They understand that the Wolves may exact a toll of vengeance on the rest for this stand they're making, but it doesn't matter. This is right.

"Come on!" Jamie shouts, and winds his own bah -once and twice, then click. "Come on, 'ee buzzards! 'Ee cowardy custards, come on and have some! Say Calla! Say Calla Bryn Sturgis!"

There is a moment in the heat of the day when the Wolves seem to draw no closer but only to shimmer in place. Then the sound of their horses ' hooves, previously dull and muffled, grows sharp. And the Wolves seem to leap forward through the swarming air. Their pants are as gray as the hides of their horses. Dark-green cloaks flow out behind them. Green hoods surround masks (they must be masks) that turn the heads of the four remaining riders into the heads of snarling, hungry wolves.

"Four agin' four!"Jamie screams. "Four agin' four, even up, stand yer ground, cullies! Never run a step!"

The four Wolves sweep toward them on their gray horses. The men raise their bahs. Molly -sometimes called Red Molly, for her famous temper even more than her hair -raises her dish over her left shoulder. She looks not angry now but cool and calm.

The two Wolves on the end have light-sticks. They raise them. The two in the middle draw back their fists, which are clad in green gloves, to throw something. Sneetches, Jamie thinks coldly. That's what them are.

"Hold, boys… "Pokey says. "Hold… hold… now! "

He lets fly with a twang, and Jamie sees Pokey's bah-bolt pass just over the head of the Wolf second to the right. Eamon's strikes the neck of the horse on the far left. The beast gives a crazy whinnying cry and staggers just as the Wolves begin to close the final forty yards of distance. It crashes into its neighbor horse just as that second horse's rider throws the thing in his hand. It is indeed one of the sneetches, but it sails far off course and none of its guidance systems can lock onto anything.

Jamie's bolt strikes the chest of the third rider. Jamie begins a scream of triumph that dies in dismay before it ever gets out of his throat. The bolt bounces off the thing's chest just as it would have bounced off Andy's, or a stone in the Son of a Bitch field.

Wearing armor, oh you buggardly thing, you're wearing armor under that twice-damned-

The other sneetch flies true, striking Eamon Doolin square in the face. His head explodes in a spray of blood and bone and mealy gray stuff. The sneetch flies on maybe thirty grop, then whirls and comes back. Jamie ducks and hears it flash over his head, giving off a low, hard hum as it flies.

Molly has never moved, not even when she is showered with her husband's blood and brains. Now she screams, "THIS IS FOR MINNIE, YOU SONS OF WHORES!" and throws her plate. The distance is very short by now -hardly any distance at all -but she throws it hard and the plate rises as soon as it leaves her hand.

Too hard, dear, Jamie thinks as he ducks the swipe of a light-stick (the light-stick is also giving off that hard, savage buzz). Too hard, yer-bugger.

But the Wolf at which Molly has aimed actually rides into the rising dish. It strikes at just the point where the thing's green hood crosses the wolf-mask it wears. There is an odd, muffled sound -chump!- and the thing falls backward off its horse with its green-gauntleted hands flying up.

Pokey and Jamie raise a wild cheer, but Molly just reaches coolly into her pouch for another dish, all of them nestled neatly in there with the blunt gripping arcs pointed up. She is pulling it out when one of the light-sticks cuts the arm off her body. She staggers, teeth peeling back from her lips in a snarl, and goes to one knee as her blouse bursts into flame. Jamie is amazed to see that she is reaching for the plate in her severed hand as it lies in the dust of the road.

The three remaining Wolves are past them. The one Molly caught with her dish lies in the dust, jerking crazily, those gauntleted hands flying up and down into the sky as if it's trying to say, "What can you do? What can you do with these damned sodbusters?"

The other three wheel their mounts as neatly as a drill-team of cavalry soldiers and race bach toward them. Molly pries the dish from her own dead fingers, then falls backward, engulfed in fire.

"Stand, Pokey!"Jamie cries hysterically as their death rushes toward them under the burning steel sky, "Stand, gods damn you!" And still that feeling of grace as he smells the charring flesh of the Doolins. This is what they should have done all along, aye, all of them, for the Wolves can be brought down, although they'll probably not live to tell and these will take their dead compadre with them so none will know.

There's a twang as Pokey fires another bolt and then a sneetch strikes him dead center and he explodes inside his clothes, belching blood and torn flesh from his sleeves, his cuffs, from the busted buttons of his fly. Again Jamie is drenched, this time by the hot stew that was his friend. He fires his own bah, and sees it groove the side of a gray horse. He knows it's useless to duck but he ducks anyway and something whirs over his head. One of the horses strikes him hard as it passes, knocking him into the ditch where Eamon proposed they hide. His bah flies from his hand. He lies there, open-eyed, not moving, knowing as they wheel their horses around again that there is nothing for it now but to play dead and hope they pass him by. They won't, of course they won't but it's the only thing to do and so he does it, trying to give his eyes the glaze of death. In another few seconds, he knows, he won't have to pretend. He smells dust, he hears the crickets in the grass, and he holds onto these things, knowing they are the last things he will ever smell and hear, that the last thing he sees will be the Wolves, bearing down on him with their frozen snarls.

They come pounding back.

One of them turns in its saddle and throws a sneetch from its gloved hand as it passes. But as it throws, the rider's horse leaps the body of the downed Wolf, which still lies twitching in the road, although now its hands barely rise. The sneetch flies above Jamie, just a little too high. He can almost feel it hesitate, searching for prey. Then it soars on, out over the field.

The Wolves ride east, pulling dust behind them. The sneetch doubles back and flies over Jamie again, this time higher and slower. The gray horses sweep around a curve in the road fifty yards east and are lost to view. The last he sees of them are three green cloaks, pulled out almost straight and fluttering.

Jamie stands up in the ditch on legs that threaten to buckle beneath him. The sneetch makes another loop and comes back, this time directly toward him, but now it is moving slowly, as if whatever powers it is almost exhausted. Jamie scrambles back into the road, falls to his knees next to the burning remains of Pokey's body, and seizes his bah. This time he holds it by the end, as one might hold a Points mallet. The sneetch cruises toward him. Jamie draws the bah to his shoulder, and when the thing comes at him, he bats it out of the air as if it were a giant bug. It falls into the dust beside one of Pokey's torn-off shor'boots and lies there buzzing malevolently, trying to rise.

"There, you bastard!" Jamie screams, and begins to scoop dust over the thing. He is weeping. "There, you bastard! There! There!" At last it's gone, buried under a heap of white dust that buzzes and shakes and at last becomes still.

Without rising -he doesn't have the strength to find his feet again, not yet, can still hardly believe he is alive -Jamie Jaffords knee-walks toward the monster Molly has killed… and it is dead now, or at least lying still. He wants to pull off its mask, see it plain. First he kicks at it with both feet, like a child doing a tantrum. The Wolfs body rocks from side to side, then lies still again. A pungent, reeky smell is coming from it. A rotten-smelling smoke is rising from the mask, which appears to be melting.

Dead, thinks the boy who will eventually become Gran-fere, the oldest living human in the Calla. Dead, aye, never doubt it. So gam, ye gutless! Garn and unmask it!

He does. Under the burning autumn sun he takes hold of the rotting mask, which feels like some sort of metal mesh, and he pulls it off, and he sees…

EIGHT

For a moment Eddie wasn't even aware that the old guy had stopped talking. He was still lost in the story, mesmerized. He saw everything so clearly it could have been him out there on the East Road, kneeling in the dust with the bah cocked to his shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to knock the oncoming sneetch out of the air.

Then Susannah rolled past the porch toward the barn with a bowl of chickenfeed in her lap. She gave them a curious look on her way by. Eddie woke up. He hadn't come here to be entertained. He supposed the fact that he could be entertained by such a story said something about him.

"And?" Eddie asked the old man when Susannah had gone into the barn. "What did you see?"

"Eh?" Gran-pere gave him a look of such perfect vacuity that Eddie despaired.

"What did you see! When you took off the mask?"

For a moment that look of emptiness-the lights are on but no one's home-held. And then (by pure force of will, it seemed to Eddie) the old man came back. He looked behind him, at the house. He looked toward the black maw of the barn, and the lick of phosphor-light deep inside. He looked around the yard itself.

Frightened, Eddie thought. Scared to death.

Eddie tried to tell himself this was only an old man's paranoia, but he felt a chill, all the same.

"Lean close," Gran-pere muttered, and when Eddie did: "The only one Ah ever told was my boy Luke… Tian's Da', do'ee ken. Years and years later, this was. He told me never to speak of it to anyone else. Ah said, 'But Lukey, what if it could help? What if it could help't'next time they come?' "

Gran-pere's lips barely moved, but his thick accent had almost entirely departed, and Eddie could understand him perfectly.

"And he said to me, 'Da', if'ee really b'lieved knowin c'd help, why have'ee not told afore now?' And Ah couldn't answer him, young fella, cos 'twas nothing but intuition kep' my gob shut. Besides, what good could it do? What do it change?"

"I don't know," Eddie said. Their faces were close. Eddie could smell beef and gravy on old Jamie's breath. "How can I, when you haven't told me what you saw?"

" 'The Red King always finds 'is henchmen,' my boy said. 'It'd be good if no one ever knew ye were out there, better still if no one ever heard what ye saw out there, lest it get back to em, aye, even in Thunderclap.' And Ah seen a sad thing, young fella."

Although he was almost wild with impatience, Eddie thought it best to let the old guy unwind it in his own way. "What was that, Gran-pere?"

"Ah seen Luke didn't entirely believe me. Thought his own Da' might just be a-storyin, tellin a wild tale about bein a Wolf-killer't'look tall. Although ye'd think even a halfwit would see that if Ah was goingter make a tale, Ah'd make it me that killed the Wolf, and not Eamon Doolin's wife."

That made sense, Eddie thought, and then remembered Gran-pere at least hinting that he had taken credit more than once-upon-a, as Roland sometimes said. He smiled in spite of himself.

"Lukey were afraid someone else might hear my story and believe it. That it'd get on to the Wolves and Ah might end up dead fer no more than tellin a make-believe story. Not that it were." His rheumy old eyes begged at Eddie's face in the growing dark. "You believe me, don'tya?"

Eddie nodded. "I know you say true, Gran-pere. But who…" Eddie paused. Who would rat you out? was how the question came to mind, but Gran-pere might not understand. "But who would tell? Who did you suspect?"

Gran-pere looked around the darkening yard, seemed about to speak, then said nothing.

"Tell me," Eddie said. "Tell me what you-"

A large dry hand, a-tremor with age but still amazingly strong, gripped his neck and pulled him close. Bristly whiskers rasped against the shell of Eddie's ear, making him shudder all over and break out in gooseflesh.

Gran-pere whispered nineteen words as the last light died out of the day and night came to the Calla.

Eddie Dean's eyes widened. His first thought was that he now understood about the horses-all the gray horses. His second was Of course. It makes perfect sense. We should have known.

The nineteenth word was spoken and Gran-pere's whisper ceased. The hand gripping Eddie's neck dropped back into Gran-pere's lap. Eddie turned to face him. "Say true?"

"Aye, gunslinger," said the old man. "True as ever was. Ah canna' say for all of em, for many sim'lar masks may cover many dif'runt faces, but-"

"No," Eddie said, thinking of gray horses. Not to mention all those sets of gray pants. All those green cloaks. It made perfect sense. What was that old song his mother used to sing? You're in the army now, you're not behind the plow. You'll never get rich, you son of a bitch, you're in the army now.

"I'll have to tell this story to my dinh," Eddie said.

Gran-pere nodded slowly. "Aye," he said, "as ye will. Ah dun't git along well witta boy, ye kennit. Lukey tried to put't'well where Tian pointed wit''t' drotta stick, y'ken."

Eddie nodded as if he understood this. Later, Susannah translated it for him: I don't get along well with the boy, you understand. Lukey tried to put the well where Tian pointed with the dowsing stick, you see.

"A dowser?" Susannah asked from out of the darkness. She had returned quietly and now gestured with her hands, as if holding a wishbone.

The old man looked at her, surprised, then nodded. "The drotta, yar. Any ro', I argued agin' it, but after the Wolves came and tuk his sister, Tia, Lukey done whatever the boy wanted. Can'ee imagine, lettin a boy nummore'n seventeen site the well, drotta or no? But Lukey put it there and there were water, Ah'll give'ee that, we all seen it gleam and smelt it before the clay sides give down and buried my boy alive. We dug him out but he were gone to the clearing, thrut and lungs all full of clay and muck."

Slowly, slowly, the old man took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes with it.

"The boy and I en't had a civil word between us since; that well's dug between us, do ya not see it. But he's right about wan-tin't'stand agin the Wolves, and if you tell him anything for me, tell him his Gran-pere salutes him damn proud, salutes him big-big, yer-bugger! He got the sand o'Jaffords in his craw, aye! We stood our stand all those years agone, and now the blood shows true." He nodded, this time even more slowly. "Garn and tell yer dinh, aye! Every word! And if it seeps out… if the Wolves were to come out of Thunderclap early fer one dried-up old turd like me…"

He bared his few remaining teeth in a smile Eddie found extraordinarily gruesome.

"Ah can still wind a bah," he said, "and sumpin tells me yer brownie could be taught to throw a dish, shor' legs or no."

The old man looked off into the darkness.

"Let 'un come," he said softly. "Last time pays fer all, yer-bugger. Last time pays fer all."

ONE

Mia was in the castle again, but this time was different. This time she did not move slowly, toying with her hunger, knowing that soon it would be fed and fed completely, that both she and her chap would be satisfied. This time what she felt inside was ravenous desperation, as if some wild animal had been caged up inside her belly. She understood that what she had felt on all those previous expeditions hadn't been hunger at all, not true hunger, but only healthy appetite. This was different.

His time is coming, she thought. He needs to eat more, in order to get his strength. And so do I.

Yet she was afraid-she was terrified -that it wasn't just a matter of needing to eat more. There was something she needed to eat, something forspecial. The chap needed it in order to… well, to…

To finish the becoming.

Yes! Yes, that was it, the becoming! And surely she would find it in the banquet hall, because everything was in the banquet hall-a thousand dishes, each more succulent than the last. She would graze the table, and when she found the right thing-the right vegetable or spice or meat or fish-roe-her guts and nerves would cry out for it and she would eat… oh she would gobble...

She began to hurry along faster yet, and then to run. She was vaguely aware that her legs were swishing together because she was wearing pants. Denim pants, like a cowboy. And instead of slippers she was wearing boots.

Shor'boots, her mind whispered to her mind. Shor'boots, may they do yafine.

But none of this mattered. What mattered was eating, gorging (oh she was so hungry), and finding the right thing for the chap. Finding the thing that would both make him strong and bring on her labor.

She pelted down the broad staircase, into the steady beating murmur of the slo-trans engines. Wonderful smells should have overwhelmed her by now-roasted meats, barbecued poultry, herbed fish-but she couldn't smell food at all.

Maybe I have a cold, she thought as her shor'boots stut-tut-tuttered on the stairs. That must be it, I must have a cold. My sinuses are all swollen and I can't smell anything -

But she could. She could smell the dust and age of this place. She could smell damp seepage, and the faint tang of engine oil, and the mildew eating relentlessly into tapestries and curtains hung in the rooms of ruin.

Those things, but no food.

She dashed along the black marble floor toward the double doors, unaware that she was again being followed-not by the gunslinger this time but by a wide-eyed, tousle-haired boy in a cotton shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. Mia crossed the foyer with its red and black marble squares and the statue of smoothly entwined marble and steel. She didn't stop to curtsy, or even nod her head. That she should be so hungry was bearable. But not her chap. Never her chap.

What halted her (and only for a space of seconds) was her own reflection, milky and irresolute, in the statue's chrome steel. Above her jeans was a plain white shirt (You call this kind a tee-shirt, her mind whispered) with some writing on it, and a picture.

The picture appeared to be of a pig.

Never mind what's on your shirt, woman. The chap's what matters. You must feed the chap!

She burst into the dining hall and stopped with a gasp of dismay. The room was full of shadows now. A few of the electric torches still glowed, but most had gone out. As she looked, the only one still burning at the far end of the room stuttered, buzzed, and fell dark. The white forspecial plates had been replaced with blue ones decorated with green tendrils of rice. The rice plants formed the Great Letter Zn, which, she knew, meant eternity and now and also come, as in come-commala. But plates didn't matter. Decorations didn't matter. What mattered was that the plates and beautiful crystal glassware were empty and dull with dust.

No, not everything was empty; in one goblet she saw a dead black widow spider lying with its many legs curled against the red hourglass on its midsection.

She saw the neck of a wine-bottle poking from a silver pail and her stomach gave an imperative cry. She snatched it up, barely registering the fact that there was no water in the bucket, let alone ice; it was entirely dry. At least the bottle had weight, and enough liquid inside to slosh-

But before Mia could close her lips over the neck of the bottle, the smell of vinegar smote her so strongly that her eyes filled with water.

"Mutha-fuck!" she screamed, and threw the bottle down. "You mutha-fuckah!"

The bottle shattered on the stone floor. Things ran in squeaking surprise beneath the table.

"Yeah, you bettahrun!" she screamed. "Get ye gone, whatever y'are! Here's Mia, daughter of none, and not in a good mood! Yet I will be fed! Yes! Yes I will!"

This was bold talk, but at first she saw nothing on the table that she could eat. There was bread, but the one piece she bothered to pick up had turned to stone. There was what appeared to be the remains of a fish, but it had putrefied and lay in a greenish-white simmer of maggots.

Her stomach growled, undeterred by this mess. Worse, something below her stomach turned restlessly, and kicked, and cried out to be fed. It did this not with its voice but by turning certain switches inside her, back in the most primitive sections of her nervous system. Her throat grew dry; her mouth puckered as if she had drunk the turned wine; her vision sharpened as her eyes widened and bulged outward in their sockets. Every thought, every sense, and every instinct tuned to the same simple idea: food.

Beyond the far end of the table was a screen showing Arthur Eld, sword held high, riding through a swamp with three of his knight-gunslingers behind him. Around his neck was Saita, the great snake, which presumably he had just slain. Another successful quest! Do ya fine! Men and their quests! Bah! What was slaying a magical snake to her? She had a chap in her belly, and the chap was hungry.

Hongry, she thought in a voice that wasn't her own. It's be hongry.

Behind the screen were double doors. She shoved through them, still unaware of the boy Jake standing at the far end of the dining hall in his underwear, looking at her, afraid.

The kitchen was likewise empty, likewise dusty. The counters were tattooed with critter-tracks. Pots and pans and cooking-racks were jumbled across the floor. Beyond this litter were four sinks, one filled with stagnant water that had grown a scum of algae. The room was lit by fluorescent tubes. Only a few still glowed steadily. Most of them flickered on and off, giving these shambles a surreal and nightmarish aspect.

She worked her way across the kitchen, kicking aside the pots and pans that were in her way. Here stood four huge ovens all a-row. The door of the third was ajar. From it came a faint shimmer of heat, as one might feel coming from a hearth six or eight hours after the last embers have burned out, and a smell that set her stomach clamoring all over again. It was the smell of freshly roasted meat.

Mia opened the door. Inside was indeed some sort of roast. Feeding on it was a rat the size of a tomcat. It turned its head at the clunk of the opening oven door and looked at her with black, fearless eyes. Its whiskers, bleary with grease, twitched. Then it turned back to the roast. She could hear the muttering smack of its lips and the sound of tearing flesh.

Nay, Mr. Rat. It wasn't left for you. It was left for me and my chap.

"One chance, my friend!" she sang as she turned toward the counters and storage cabinets beneath them. "Better go while you can! Fair warning!" Not that it would. Mr. Rat be hongry, too.

She opened a drawer and found nothing but breadboards and a rolling pin. She considered the rolling pin briefly, but had no wish to baste her dinner with more rat-blood than she absolutely had to. She opened the cabinet beneath and found tins for muffins and molds for fancy desserts. She moved to her left, opened another drawer, and here was what she was looking for.

Mia considered the knives, took one of the meat-forks instead. It had two six-inch steel tines. She took it back to the row of ovens, hesitated, and checked the other three. They were empty, as she had known they would be. Something-some fate some providence some ka-had left fresh meat, but only enough for one. Mr. Rat thought it was his. Mr. Rat had made a mistake. She did not think he would make another. Not this side of the clearing, anyway.

She bent and once again the smell of freshly cooked pork filled her nose. Her lips spread and drool ran from the corners of her smile. This time Mr. Rat didn't look around. Mr. Rat had decided she was no threat. That was all right. She bent further forward, drew a breath, and impaled it on the meat-fork. Rat-kebab! She drew it out and held it up in front of her face. It squealed furiously, its legs spinning in the air, its head lashing back and forth, blood running down the meat-fork's handle to pool around her fist. She carried it, still writhing, to the sinkful of stagnant water and flipped it off the fork. It splashed into the murk and disappeared. For a moment the tip of its twitching tale stuck up, and then that was gone, too.

She went down the line of sinks, trying the faucets, and from the last one got a feeble trickle of water. She rinsed her bloody hand under it until the trickle subsided. Then she walked back to the oven, wiping her hand dry on the seat of her britches. She did not see Jake, now standing just inside the kitchen doors and watching her, although he made no attempt to hide; she was totally fixated on the smell of the meat. It wasn't enough, and not precisely what her chap needed, but it would do for the time being.

She reached in, grasped the sides of the roasting pan, then pulled back with a gasp, shaking her fingers and grinning. It was a grin of pain, yet not entirely devoid of humor. Mr. Rat had either been a trifle more immune to the heat than she was, or maybe hongrier. Although it was hard to believe anyone or anything could be hongrier than she was right now.

"I'se hongry!" she yelled, laughing, as she went down the line of drawers, opening and closing them swiftly. "Mia's one hongry lady, yessir! Didn't go to Morehouse, didn't go to no house, but I'se hongryl And my chap's hongry, too!"

In the last drawer (wasn't that always the way), she found the hotpads she'd been looking for. She hurried back to the oven with them in her hands, bent down, and pulled the roast out. Her laughter died in a sudden shocked gasp… and then burst out again, louder and stronger than ever. What a goose she was! What a damned silly-billy! For one instant she'd thought the roast, which had been done to a skin-crackling turn and only gnawed by Mr. Rat in one place, was the body of a child. And yes, she supposed that a roasted pig did look a little bit like a child… a baby… someone's chap… but now that it was out and she could see the closed eyes and the charred ears and the baked apple in the open mouth, there was no question about what it was.

As she set it on the counter, she thought again about the reflection she'd seen in the foyer. But never mind that now. Her gut was a roar of famishment. She plucked a butcher's knife out of the drawer from which she had taken the meat-fork and cut off the place where Mr. Rat had been eating the way you'd cut a wormhole out of an apple. She tossed this piece back over her shoulder, then picked up the roast entire and buried her face in it.

From the door, Jake watched her.

When the keenest edge had been taken off her hunger, Mia looked around the kitchen with an expression that wavered between calculation and despair. What was she supposed to do when the roast was gone? What was she supposed to eat the next time this sort of hunger came? And where was she supposed to find what her chap really wanted, really needed? She'd do anything to locate that stuff and secure a good supply of it, that special food or drink or vitamin or whatever it was. The pork was close (close enough to put him to sleep again, thank all the gods and the Man Jesus), but not close enough.

She banged sai Piggy back into the roasting pan for the nonce, pulled the shirt she was wearing off over her head, and turned it so she could look at the front. There was a cartoon pig, roasted bright red but seeming not to mind; it was smiling blissfully. Above it, in rustic letters made to look like barn-board, was this: THE DIXIE PIG, LEX AND 61st. Below it:

The Dixie Pig, she thought. The Dixie Pig. Where have I heard that before"?

She didn't know, but she believed she could find Lex if she had to. "It be right there between Third and Park," she said. "That's right, ain't it?"

The boy, who had slipped back out but left the door ajar, heard this and nodded miserably. That was where it was, all right.

Well-a-well, Mia thought. It all does fine for now, good as it can do, anyway, and like that woman in the book said, tomorrow's another day. Worry about it then. Right?

Right. She picked up the roast again and began to eat. The smacking sounds she made were really not much different from those made by the rat. Really not much different at all.

TWO

Tian and Zalia had tried to give Eddie and Susannah their bedroom. Convincing them that their guests really didn't want their bedroom-that sleeping there would actually make them uncomfortable-hadn't been easy. It was Susannah who finally turned the trick, telling the Jaffordses in a hesitant, confiding voice that something awful had happened to them in the city of Lud, something so traumatic that neither of them could sleep easily in a house anymore. A barn, where you could see the door open to the outside world any time you wanted to take a look, was much better.

It was a good tale, and well told. Tian and Zalia listened with a sympathetic credulity that made Eddie feel guilty. A lot of bad things had happened to them in Lud, that much was true, but nothing which made either of them nervous about sleeping indoors. At least he guessed not; since leaving their own world, the two of them had only spent a single night (the previous) under the actual roof of an actual house.

Now he sat cross-legged on one of the blankets Zalia had given them to spread on the hay, the other two cast aside. He was looking out into the yard, past the porch where Gran-pere had told his tale, and toward the river. The moon flitted in and out of the clouds, first brightening the scene to silver, then darkening it. Eddie hardly saw what he was looking at. His ears were trained on the floor of the barn below him, where the stalls and pens were. She was down there somewhere, he was sure she was, but God, she was so quiet.

And by the way, who is she? Mia, Roland says, but that's just a name. Who is she really?

But it wasn't just a name. It means mother in the High Speech, the gunslinger had said.

It means mother.

Yeah. But she's not the mother of my kid. The chap is not my son.

A soft clunk from below him, followed by the creak of a board. Eddie stiffened. She was down there, all right. He'd begun to have his doubts, but she was.

He had awakened after perhaps six hours of deep and dreamless sleep to discover she was gone. He went to the barn's bay door, which they'd left open, and looked out. There she was. Even by moonlight he'd known that wasn't really Susannah down there in the wheelchair; not his Suze, not Odetta Holmes or Detta Walker, either. Yet she wasn't entirely unfamiliar. She-

You saw her in New York, only then she had legs and she knew how to use them. She had legs and she didn't want to go too close to the rose.

She had her reasons for that, and they were good reasons, but you know what I think the real reason was? I think she was afraid it would hurt whatever it is she's carrying in her belly.

Yet he felt sorry for the woman below. No matter who she was or what she was carrying, she'd gotten herself into this situation while saving Jake Chambers. She'd held off the demon of the circle, trapping it inside her just long enough for Eddie to finish whittling the key he'd made.

If you'd finished it earlier -if you hadn't been such a damned little chickenshit -she might not even be in this mess, did you ever think of that?

Eddie had pushed the thought away. There was some truth to it, of course-he had lost his confidence while whittling the key, which was why it hadn't been finished when the time of Jake's drawing came-but he was done with that kind of thinking. It was good for nothing but creating a truly excellent array of selfinflicted wounds.

Whoever she was, his heart had gone out to the woman he saw below him. In the sleeping silence of the night, through the alternating shutters of moonlight and dark, she pushed Susannah's wheelchair first across the yard… then back… then across again… then left… then right. She reminded him a little of the old robots in Shardik's clearing, the ones Roland had made him shoot. And was that so surprising? He'd drifted off to sleep thinking of those robots, and what Roland had said of them: They are creatures of great sadness, I think, in their own way. Eddie is going to put them out of their misery. And so he had, after some persuasion: the one that looked like a many-jointed snake, the one that looked like the Tonka tractor he'd once gotten as a birthday present, the ill-tempered stainless-steel rat. He'd shot them all except for the last, some sort of mechanical flying thing. Roland had gotten that one.

Like the old robots, the woman in the yard below wanted to go someplace, but didn't know where. She wanted to get something, but didn't know what. The question was, what was he supposed to do?

Just watch and wait. Use the time to think up some other bullshit story in case one of them wakes up and sees her in the dooryard, pacing around in her wheelchair. More post-traumatic stress syndrome from Lud, maybe.

"Hey, it works for me," he murmured, but just then Susannah had turned and wheeled back toward the barn, now moving with a purpose. Eddie had lain down, prepared to feign sleep, but instead of hearing her coming upstairs, he'd heard a faint cling, a grunt of effort, then the creak of boards going away toward the rear of the barn. In his mind's eye he saw her getting out of her chair and heading back there at her usual speedy crawl… for what?

Five minutes of silence. He was just beginning to get really nervous when there was a single squeal, short and sharp. It was so much like the cry of an infant that his balls pulled up tight and his skin broke out in gooseflesh. He looked toward the ladder leading down to the barn floor and made himself wait some more.

That was a pig. One of the young ones. Just a shoot, that's all.

Maybe, but what he kept picturing was the younger set of twins. Especially the girl. Lia, rhymes with Mia. No more than babies, and it was crazy to think of Susannah cutting a child's throat, totally insane, but…

But that's not Susannah down there, and if you start thinking it is, you're apt to get hurt, the way you almost got hurt before.

Hurt, hell. Almost killed was what he'd been. Almost gotten his face chewed off by the lobstrosities.

It was Detta who threw me to the creepy-crawlies. This one isn't her.

Yes, and he had an idea-only an intuition, really-that this one might be a hell of a lot nicer than Detta, but he'd be a fool to bet his life on it.

Or the lives of the children? Tian and Zalia's children?

He sat there sweating, not knowing what to do.

Now, after what seemed an interminable wait, there were more squeaks and creaks. The last came from directly beneath the ladder leading to the loft. Eddie lay back again and closed his eyes. Not quite all the way, though. Peering through his lashes, he saw her head appear above the loft floor. At that moment the moon sailed out from behind a cloud and flooded the loft with light. He saw blood at the corners of her mouth, as dark as chocolate, and reminded himself to wipe it off her in the morning. He didn't want any of the Jafford clan seeing it.

What I want to see is the twins, Eddie thought. Both sets, all four, alive and well. Especially Lia. What else do I want?For Tian to come out of the barn with a frown on his face. For him to ask us if we heard anything in the night, maybe a fox or even one of those rock-cats they talk about. Because, see, one of the shoats has gone missing. Hope you hid whatever was left of it, Mia or whoever you are. Hope you hid it well.

She came to him, lay down, turned over once and fell asleep-he could tell by the sound of her breathing. Eddie turned his head and looked toward the sleeping Jaffords home place.

She didn't go anywhere near the house.

No, not unless she'd wheeled her chair all the way through the barn and right out the back, that was. Gone around that way… slipped in a window… taken one of the younger twins… taken the little girl… taken her back to the barn… and…

She didn't do that. Didn't have the time, for one thing.

Maybe not, but he'd feel a lot better in the morning, just the same. When he saw all the kids at breakfast. Including Aaron, the little boy with the chubby legs and the little sticking-out belly. He thought of what his mother sometimes said when she saw a mother wheeling a little one like that along the street: So cute! Looks good enough to eat!

Quit it. Go to sleep!

But it was a long time before Eddie got back to sleep.

THREE

Jake awoke from his nightmare with a gasp, not sure where he was. He sat up, shivering, arms wrapped around himself. He was wearing nothing but a plain cotton shirt-too big for him-and flimsy cotton shorts, sort of like gym shorts, that were also too big for him. What…?

There was a grunt, followed by a muffled fart. Jake looked toward these sounds, saw Benny Slightman buried up to the eyes under two blankets, and everything fell into place. He was wearing one of Benny's undershirts and a pair of Benny's undershorts. They were in Benny's tent. They were on the bluff overlooking the river. The riverbanks out here were stony, Benny had said, no good for rice but plenty good for fishing. If they were just a little bit lucky, they'd be able to catch their own breakfast out of the Devar-Tete Whye. And although Benny knew Jake and Oy would have to return to the Old Fella's house to be with their dinh and their ka-mates for a day or two, maybe longer, perhaps Jake could come back later on. There was good fishing here, good swimming a little way upstream, and caves where the walls glowed in die dark and the lizards glowed, too. Jake had gone to sleep well satisfied by the prospect of these wonders. He wasn't crazy about being out here without a gun (he had seen too much and done too much to ever feel entirely comfortable without a gun these days), but he was pretty sure Andy was keeping an eye on them, and he'd allowed himself to sleep deep.

Then the dream. The horrible dream. Susannah in the huge, dirty kitchen of an abandoned castle. Susannah holding up a squirming rat impaled on a meat-fork. Holding it up and laughing while blood ran down the fork's wooden handle and pooled around her hand.

That was no dream and you know it. You have to tell Roland.

The thought which followed this was somehow even more disturbing: Roland already knows. So does Eddie.

Jake sat with his knees against his chest and his arms linked around his shins, feeling more miserable than at any time since getting a good look at his Final Essay in Ms. Avery's English Comp class. My Understanding of the Truth, it had been called, and although he understood it a lot better now-understood how much of it must have been called forth by what Roland called the touch-his first reaction had been pure horror. What he felt now wasn't so much horror as it was… well…

Sadness, he thought.

Yes. They were supposed to be ka-tet, one from many, but now their unity had been lost. Susannah had become another person and Roland didn't want her to know, not with Wolves on the way both here and in the other world.

Wolves of the Calla, Wolves of New York.

He wanted to be angry, but there seemed no one to be angry at. Susannah had gotten pregnant helping him, after all, and if Roland and Eddie weren't telling her stuff, it was because they wanted to protect her.

Yeah, right, a resentful voice spoke up. They also want to make sure she's able to help out when the Wolves come riding out of Thunderclap. It'd be one less gun if she was busy having a miscarriage or a nervous breakdown or something.

He knew that wasn't fair, but the dream had shaken him badly. The rat was what he kept coming back to; that rat writhing on the meat-fork. Her holding it up. And grinning. Don't want to forget that. Grinning. He'd touched the thought in her mind at that moment, and the thought had been rat-kebab.

"Christ," he whispered.

He guessed he understood why Roland wasn't telling Susannah about Mia-and about the baby, what Mia called the chap-but didn't the gunslinger understand that something far more important had been lost, and was getting more lost every day this was allowed to go on?

They know better than you, they're grown-ups.

Jake thought that was bullshit. If being a grown-up really meant knowing better, why did his father go on smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and snorting cocaine until his nose bled? If being a grown-up gave you some sort of special knowledge of the right things to do, how come his mother was sleeping with her masseuse, who had huge biceps and no brains? Why had neither of them noticed, as the spring of 1977 marched toward summer, that their kid (who had a nickname- 'Bama-known only to the housekeeper) was losing his fucking mind?

This isn't the same thing.

But what if it was? What if Roland and Eddie were so close to the problem they couldn't see the truth?

What is the truth? What is your understanding of the truth?

That they were no longer ka-tet, that was his understanding of the truth.

What was it Roland had said to Callahan, at that first palaver? We are round, and roll as we do. That had been true then, but Jake didn't think it was true now. He remembered an old joke people told when they got a blowout: Well, it's only flat on the bottom. That was them now, flat on the bottom. No longer truly ka-tet- how could they be, when they were keeping secrets? And was Mia and the child growing in Susannah's stomach the only secret? Jake thought not. There was something else, as well. Something Roland was keeping back not just from Susannah but from all of them.

We can beat the Wolves if we're together, he thought. If we're ka-tet. But not the way we are now. Not over here, not in New York, either. I just don't believe it.

Another thought came on the heels of that, one so terrible he first tried to push it away. Only he couldn't do that, he realized. Little as he wanted to, this was an idea that had to be considered.

I could take matters into my own hands. I could tell her myself.

And then what? What would he tell Roland? How would he explain?

I couldn't. There'd be no explanation I could make or that he'd listen to. The only thing I could do -

He remembered Roland's story of the day he'd stood against Cort. The battered old squireen with his stick, the untried boy with his hawk. If he, Jake, were to go against Roland's decision and tell Susannah what had so far been held back from her, it would lead directly to his own manhood test.

And I'm not ready. Maybe Roland was -barely -but I'm not him. Nobody is. He'd best me and I'd be sent east into Thunderclap alone. Oy would try to come with me, but I couldn't let him. Because it's death over there. Maybe for our whole ka-tet, surely for a kid all by himself.

And yet still, the secrets Roland was keeping, that was wrong. And so? They'd be together again, all of them, to hear the rest of Callahan's story and-maybe-to deal with the thing in Callahan's church. What should he do then?

Talk to him. Try to persuade him he's doing the wrong thing.

All right. He could do that. It would be hard, but he could do it. Should he talk to Eddie as well? Jake thought not. Adding Eddie would complicate things even more. Let Roland decide what to tell Eddie. Roland, after all, was the dinh.

The flap of the tent shivered and Jake's hand went to his side, where the Ruger would have hung if he had been wearing the docker's clutch. Not there, of course, but this time that was all right. It was only Oy, poking his snout under the flap and tossing it up so he could get his head into the tent.

Jake reached out to pat the bumbler's head. Oy seized his hand gently in his teeth and tugged. Jake went with him willingly enough; he felt as if sleep were a thousand miles away.

Outside the tent, the world was a study in severe blacks and whites. A rock-studded slope led down to the river, which was broad and shallow at this point. The moon burned in it like a lamp. Jake saw two figures down there on the rocky strand and froze. As he did, the moon went behind a cloud and the world darkened. Oy's jaws closed on his hand again and pulled him forward. Jake went with him, found a four-foot drop, and eased himself down. Oy now stood above and just behind him, panting into his ear like a little engine.

The moon came out from behind its cloud. The world brightened again. Jake saw Oy had led him to a large chunk of granite that came jutting out of the earth like the prow of a buried ship. It was a good hiding place. He peered around it and down at the river.

There was no doubt about one of them; its height and the moonlight gleaming on metal were enough to identify Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions). The other one, though… who was the other one? Jake squinted but at first couldn't tell. It was at least two hundred yards from his hiding place to the riverbank below, and although the moonlight was brilliant, it was also tricky. The man's face was raised so he could look at Andy, and the moonlight fell squarely on him, but the features seemed to swim. Only the hat the guy was wearing… he knew the hat…

You could be wrong.

Then the man turned his head slightly, the moonlight sent twin glints back from his face, and Jake knew for sure. There might be lots of cowpokes in the Calla who wore round-crowned hats like the one yonder, but Jake had only seen a single guy so far who wore spectacles.

Okay, it's Benny's Da'. What of it? Not all parents are like mine, some of them get worried about their kids, especially if they've already lost one the way Mr. Slightman lost Benny's twin sister. To hot-lung, Benny said, which probably means pneumonia. Six years ago. So we come out here camping, and Mr. Slightman sends Andy to keep an eye on us, only then he wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to check on us for himself Maybe he had his own bad dream.

Maybe so, but that didn't explain why Andy and Mr. Slightman were having their palaver way down there by the river, did it?

Well, maybe he was afraid of waking us up. Maybe he'll come up to check on the tent now -in which case I better get back inside it -or maybe he'll take Andy's word that we're all right and head back to the Rocking B.

The moon went behind another cloud, and Jake thought it best to stay where he was until it came back out. When it did, what he saw filled him with the same sort of dismay he'd felt in his dream, following Mia through that deserted castle. For a moment he clutched at the possibility that this was a dream, that he'd simply gone from one to another, but the feel of the pebbles biting into his feet and the sound of Oy panting in his ear were completely undreamlike. This was happening, all right.

Mr. Slightman wasn't coming up toward where the boys had pitched their tent, and he wasn't heading back toward the Rocking B, either (although Andy was, in long strides along the bank). No, Benny's father was wading across the river. He was heading dead east.

He could have a reason for going over there. He could have a perfectly good reason.

Really? What might that perfectly good reason be? It wasn't the Calla anymore over there, Jake knew that much. Over there was nothing but waste ground and desert, a buffer between the borderlands and the kingdom of the dead that was Thunderclap.

First something wrong with Susannah-his friend Susannah. Now, it seemed, something wrong with the father of his new friend. Jake realized he had begun to gnaw at his nails, a habit he'd picked up in his final weeks at Piper School, and made himself stop.

"This isn't fair, you know," he said to Oy. "This isn't fair at all."

Oy licked his ear. Jake turned, put his arms around the bumbler, and pressed his face against his friend's lush coat. The bumbler stood patiently, allowing this. After a little while, Jake pulled himself back up to the more level ground where Oy stood. He felt a little better, a little comforted.

The moon went behind another cloud and the world darkened. Jake stood where he was. Oy whined softly. "Just a minute," Jake murmured.

The moon came out again. Jake looked hard at the place where Andy and Ben Slightman had palavered, marking it in his memory. There was a large round rock with a shiny surface. A dead log had washed up against it. Jake was pretty sure he could find this spot again, even if Benny's tent was gone.

Are you going to tell Roland?

"I don't know," he muttered.

"Know," Oy said from beside his ankle, making Jake jump a litde. Or was it no? Was that what the bumbler had actually said?

Are you crazy?

He wasn't. There was a time when he'd thought he was crazy-crazy or going there in one hell of a hurry-but he didn't think that anymore. And sometimes Oy did read his mind, he knew it.

Jake slipped back into the tent. Benny was still fast asleep. Jake looked at the other boy-older in years but younger in a lot of the ways that mattered-for several seconds, biting his lip. He didn't want to get Benny's father in trouble. Not unless he had to.

Jake lay down and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He had never in his life felt so undecided about so many things, and he wanted to cry. The day had begun to grow light before he was able to get back to sleep.

ONE

For the first half hour after leaving the Rocking B, Roland and Jake rode east toward the smallholds in silence, their horses ambling side by side in perfect good fellowship. Roland knew Jake had something serious on his mind; that was clear from his troubled face. Yet the gunslinger was still astounded when Jake curled his fist, placed it against the left side of his chest, and said: "Roland, before Eddie and Susannah join up with us, may I speak to you dan-dinh?"

May I open my heart to your command. But the subtext was more complicated than that, and ancient-pre-dating Arthur Eld by centuries, or so Vannay had claimed. It meant to turn some insoluble emotional problem, usually having to do with a love affair, over to one's dinh. When one did this, he or she agreed to do exactly as the dinh suggested, immediately and without question. But surely Jake Chambers didn't have love problems-not unless he'd fallen for the gorgeous Francine Tavery, that was-and how had he known such a phrase in the first place?

Meanwhile Jake was looking at him with a wide-eyed, pale-cheeked solemnity that Roland didn't much like.

"Dan-dinh-where did you hear that, Jake?"

"Never did. Picked it up from your mind, I think." Jake added hastily: "I don't go snooping in there, or anything like that, but sometimes stuff just comes. Most of it isn't very important, I don't think, but sometimes there are phrases."

"You pick them up like a crow or a rustie picks up the bright things that catch its eye from the wing."

"I guess so, yeah."

"What others? Tell me a few."

Jake looked embarrassed. "I can't remember many. Dan-dinh, that means I open my heart to you and agree to do what you say."

It was more complicated than that, but the boy had caught the essence. Roland nodded. The sun felt good on his face as they clopped along. Margaret Eisenhart's exhibition with the plate had soothed him, he'd had a good meeting with the lady-sai's father later on, and he had slept quite well for the first time in many nights. "Yes."

"Let's see. There's tell-a-me, which means-I think-to gossip about someone you shouldn't gossip about. It stuck in my head, because that's what gossip sounds like: tell-a-me." Jake cupped a hand to his ear.

Roland smiled. It was actually telamei, but Jake had of course picked it up phonetically. This was really quite amazing. He reminded himself to guard his deep thoughts carefully in the future. There were ways that could be done, thank the gods.

"There's dash-dinh, which means some sort of religious leader. You're thinking about that this morning, I think, because of… is it because of the old Manni guy? Is he a dash-dinh?"

Roland nodded. "Very much so. And his name, Jake?" The gunslinger concentrated on it. "Can you see his name in my mind?"

"Sure, Henchick," Jake said at once, and almost offhandedly. "You talked to him… when? Late last night?"

"Yes." That he hadn't been concentrating on, and he would have felt better had Jake not known of it. But the boy was strong in the touch, and Roland believed him when he said he hadn't been snooping. At least not on purpose.

"Mrs. Eisenhart thinks she hates him, but you think she's only afraid of him."

"Yes," Roland said. "You're strong in the touch. Much more so than Alain ever was, and much more than you were. It's because of the rose, isn't it?"

Jake nodded. The rose, yes. They rode in silence a little longer, their horses' hooves raising a thin dust. In spite of the sun the day was chilly, promising real fall.

"All right, Jake. Speak to me dan-dinh if you would, and I say thanks for your trust in such wisdom as I have."

But for the space of almost two minutes Jake said nothing. Roland pried at him, trying to get inside the boy's head as the boy had gotten inside his (and with such ease), but there was nothing. Nothing at a-

But there was. There was a rat… squirming, impaled on something…

"Where is the castle she goes to?" Jake asked. "Do you know?"

Roland was unable to conceal his surprise. His astonishment, really. And he supposed there was an element of guilt there, as well. Suddenly he understood… well, not everything, but much.

"There is no castle and never was," he told Jake. "It's a place she goes to in her mind, probably made up of the stories she's read and the ones I've told by the campfire, as well. She goes there so she won't have to see what she's really eating. What her baby needs."

"I saw her eating a roasted pig," Jake said. "Only before she came, a rat was eating it. She stabbed it with a meat-fork."

"Where did you see this?"

"In the castle." He paused. "In her dream. I was in her dream."

"Did she see you there?" The gunslinger's blue eyes were sharp, almost blazing. His horse clearly felt some change, for it stopped. So did Jake's. Here they were on East Road, less than a mile from where Red Molly Doolin had once killed a Wolf out of Thunderclap. Here they were, facing each other.

"No," Jake said. "She didn't see me."

Roland was thinking of the night he had followed her into the swamp. He had known she was someplace else in her mind, had sensed that much, but not quite where. Whatever visions he'd taken from her mind had been murky. Now he knew. He knew something else as well: Jake was troubled by his dinh's decision to let Susannah go on this way. And perhaps he was right to be troubled. But-

"It's not Susannah you saw, Jake."

"I know. It's the one who still has her legs. She calls herself Mia. She's pregnant and she's scared to death."

Roland said, "If you would speak to me dan-dinh, tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking. Then I'll give you the wisdom of my heart, such wisdom as I have."

"You won't… Roland, you won't scold me?"

This time Roland was unable to conceal his astonishment. "No, Jake. Far from it. Perhaps I should ask you not to scold me."

The boy smiled wanly. The horses began to amble again, this time a little faster, as if they knew there had almost been trouble and wanted to leave the place of it behind.

TWO

Jake wasn't entirely sure how much of what was on his mind was going to come out until he actually began to talk. He had awakened undecided all over again concerning what to tell Roland about Andy and Slightman the Elder. In the end he took his cue from what Roland had just said-Tell me everything you saw in your dream and everything that troubled you about it upon waking -and left out the meeting by the river entirely. In truth, that part seemed far less important to him this morning.

He told Roland about the way Mia had run down the stairs, and about her fear when she'd seen there was no food left in the dining room or banqueting hall or whatever it was. Then the kitchen. Finding the roast with the rat battened on it. Killing the competition. Gorging on the prize. Then him, waking with the shivers and trying not to scream.

He hesitated and glanced at Roland. Roland made his impatient twirling gesture-go on, hurry up, finish.

Well, he thought, he promised not to scold and he keeps his word.

That was true, but Jake was still unable to tell Roland he'd actually considered spilling the beans to Susannah himself.

He did articulate his principal fear, however: that with three of them knowing and one of them not, their ka-tet was broken just when it needed to be the most solid. He even told Roland the old joke, guy with a blowout saying It's only flat on the bottom. He didn't expect Roland to laugh, and his expectations were met admirably in this regard. But he sensed Roland was to some degree ashamed, and Jake found this frightening. He had an idea shame was pretty much reserved for people who didn't know what they were doing.

"And until last night it was even worse than three in and one out," Jake said. "Because you were trying to keep me out, as well. Weren't you?"

"No," Roland said.

"No?"

"I simply let things be as they were. I told Eddie because I was afraid that, once they were sharing a room together, he'd discover her wanderings and try to wake her up. I was afraid of what might happen to both of them if he did."

"Why not just tell her?"

Roland sighed. "Listen to me, Jake. Cort saw to our physical training when we were boys. Vannay saw to our mental training. Both of them tried to teach us what they knew of ethics. But in Gilead, our fathers were responsible for teaching us about ka. And because each child's father was different, each of us emerged from our childhood with a slightly different idea of what ka is and what it does. Do you understand?"

I understand that you're avoiding a very simple question, Jake thought, but nodded.

"My father told me a good deal on the subject, and most of it has left my mind, but one thing remains very clear. He said that when you are unsure, you must let ka alone to work itself out."

"So it's ka." Jake sounded disappointed. "Roland, that isn't very helpful."

Roland heard worry in the boy's voice, but it was the disappointment that stung him. He turned in the saddle, opened his mouth, realized that some hollow justification was about to come spilling out, and closed it again. Instead of justifying, he told the truth.

"I don't know what to do. Would you like to tell me?"

The boy's face flushed an alarming shade of red, and Roland realized Jake thought he was being sarcastic, for the gods' sake. That he was angry. Such lack of understanding was frightening. He's right, the gunslinger thought. We axe broken. Gods help us.

"Be not so," Roland said. "Hear me, I beg-listen well. In Calla Bryn Sturgis, the Wolves are coming. In New York, Balazar and his 'gentlemen' are coming. Both are bound to arrive soon. Will Susannah's baby wait until these matters have been resolved, one way or the other? I don't know."

"She doesn't even look pregnant," Jake said faintly. Some of the red had gone out of his cheeks, but he still kept his head down.

"No," Roland said, "she doesn't. Her breasts are a trifle fuller-perhaps her hips, as well-but those are the only signs. And so I have some reason to hope. I must hope, and so must you. For, on top of the Wolves and the business of the rose in your world, there's the question of Black Thirteen and how to deal with it. I think I know-I hope I know-but I must speak to Henchick again. And we must hear the rest of Pere Callahan's story. Have you thought of saying something to Susannah on your own?"

"I…"Jake bit his lip and fell silent.

"I see you have. Put the thought out of your mind. If anything other than death could break our fellowship for good, to tell without my sanction would do it, Jake. I am your dinh."

"I know it!" Jake nearly shouted. "Don't you think I know it?"

"And do you think I like it?" Roland asked, almost as heatedly. "Do you not see how much easier all this was before…" He trailed off, appalled by what he had nearly said.

"Before we came," Jake said. His voice was flat. "Well guess what? We didn't ask to come, none of us." And I didn't ask you to drop me into the dark, either. To kill me.

"Jake…" The gunslinger sighed, raised his hands, dropped them back to his thighs. Up ahead was the turning which would take them to the Jaffords smallhold, where Eddie and Susannah would be waiting for them. "All I can do is say again what I've said already: when one isn't sure about ka, it's best to let ka work itself out. If one meddles, one almost always does the wrong thing."

"That sounds like what folks in the Kingdom of New York call a copout, Roland. An answer that isn't an answer, just a way to get people to go along with what you want."

Roland considered. His lips firmed. "You asked me to command your heart."

Jake nodded warily.

"Then here are the two things I say to you dan-dinh. First, I say that the three of us-you, me, Eddie-will speak an-tet to Susannah before the Wolves come, and tell her everything we know. That she's pregnant, that her baby is almost surely a demon's child, and that she's created a woman named Mia to mother that child. Second, I say that we discuss this no more until the time to tell her has come."

Jake considered these things. As he did, his face gradually brightened with relief. "Do you mean it?"

"Yes." Roland tried not to show how much this question hurt and angered him. He understood, after all, why the boy would ask. "I promise and swear to my promise. Does it do ya?"

"Yes! It does me fine!"

Roland nodded. "I'm not doing this because I'm convinced it's the right thing but because you are, Jake. I-"

"Wait a second, whoa, wait," Jake said. His smile was fading. "Don't try to put all this on me. I never-"

"Spare me such nonsense." Roland used a dry and distant tone Jake had seldom heard. "You ask part of a man's decision. I allow it-must allow it-because ka has decreed you take a man's part in great matters. You opened this door when you questioned my judgment. Do you deny that?"

Jake had gone from pale to flushed to pale once more. He looked badly frightened, and shook his head without speaking a single word. Ah, gods, Roland thought, I hate every part of this. It stinks like a dying man's shit.

In a quieter tone he said, "No, you didn't ask to be brought here. Nor did I wish to rob you of your childhood. Yet here we are, and ka stands to one side and laughs. We must do as it wills or pay the price."

Jake lowered his head and spoke two words in a trembling whisper: "I know."

"You believe Susannah should be told. I, on the other hand, don't know what to do-in this matter I've lost my compass. When one knows and one does not, the one who does not must bow his head and the one who does must take responsibility. Do you understand me, Jake?"

"Yes," Jake whispered, and touched his curled hand to his brow.

"Good. We'll leave that part and say thankya. You're strong in the touch."

"I wish I wasn't!" Jake burst out.

"Nevertheless. Can you touch her?"

"Yes. I don't pry-not into her or any of you-but sometimes I do touch her. I get little snatches of songs she's thinking of, or thoughts of her apartment in New York. She misses it. Once she thought, 'I wish I'd gotten a chance to read that new Allen Drury novel that came from the book club.' I think Allen Drury must be a famous writer from her when."

"Surface things, in other words."

"Yes."

"But you could go deeper."

"I could probably watch her undress, too," Jake said glumly, "but it wouldn't be right."

"Under these circumstances, it is right, Jake. Think of her as a well where you must go every day and draw a single dipperful to make sure the water's still sweet. I want to know if she changes. In particular I want to know if she's planning alleyo."

Jake looked at him, round-eyed. "To run away? Run away where?"

Roland shook his head. "I don't know. Where does a cat go to drop her litter? In a closet? Under the barn?"

"What if we tell her and the other one gets the upper hand?

What if Mia goes alleyo, Roland, and drags Susannah along with her?"

Roland didn't reply. This, of course, was exactly what he was afraid of, and Jake was smart enough to know it.

Jake was looking at him with a certain understandable resentment… but also with acceptance. "Once a day. No more than that."

"More if you sense a change."

"All right," Jake said. "I hate it, but I asked you dan-dinh. Guess you got me."

"It's not an arm-wrestle, Jake. Nor a game."

"I know." Jake shook his head. "It feels like you turned it around on me somehow, but okay."

I did turn it around on you, Roland thought. He supposed it was good none of them knew how lost he was just now, how absent the intuition that had carried him through so many difficult situations. I did… but only because I had to.

"We keep quiet now, but we tell her before the Wolves come," Jake said. "Before we have to fight. That's the deal?"

Roland nodded.

"If we have to fight Balazar first-in the other world-we still have to tell her before we do. Okay?"

"Yes," Roland said. "All right."

"I hate this," Jake said morosely.

Roland said, "So do I."

THREE

Eddie was sittin and whittlin on the Jaffordses' porch, listening to some confused story of Gran-pere's and nodding in what he hoped were the right places, when Roland and Jake rode up. Eddie put away his knife and sauntered down the steps to meet them, calling back over his shoulder for Suze.

He felt extraordinarily good this morning. His fears of the night before had blown away, as our most extravagant night-fears often do; like the Pere's Type One and Type Two vampires, those fears seemed especially allergic to daylight. For one thing, all the Jaffords children had been present and accounted for at breakfast. For another, there was indeed a shoat missing from the barn. Tian had asked Eddie and Susannah if they'd heard anything in the night, and nodded with gloomy satisfaction when both of them shook their heads.

"Aye. The mutie strains've mostly run out in our part of the world, but not in the north. There are packs of wild dogs that come down every fall. Two weeks ago they was likely in Calla Amity; next week we'll be shed of em and they'll be Calla Lockwood's problem. Silent, they are. It's not quiet I mean, but mute. Nothin in here." Tian patted a hand against his throat. "Sides, it ain't like they didn't do me at least some good. I found a hell of a big barn-rat out there. Dead as a roek. One of em tore its head almost clean off."

"Nasty," Hedda had said, pushing her bowl away with a theatrical grimace.

"You eat that porridge, miss," Zalia said. "It'll warm'ee while you're hanging out the clothes."

"Maw-Maw, why-y-yy?"

Eddie had caught Susannah's eye and tipped her a wink. She winked back, and everything was all right. Okay, so she'd done a little wandering in the night. Had a little midnight snack. Buried the leavings. And yes, this business of her being pregnant had to be addressed. Of course it did. But it would come out all right, Eddie felt sure of it. And by daylight, the idea that Susannah could ever hurt a child seemed flat-out ridiculous.

"Hile, Roland. Jake." Eddie turned to where Zalia had come out onto the porch. She dropped a curtsy. Roland took off his hat, held it out to her, and then put it back on.

"Sai," he asked her, "you stand with your husband in the matter of fighting the Wolves, aye?"

She sighed, but her gaze was steady enough. "I do, gunslinger."

"Do you ask aid and succor?"

The question was spoken without ostentation-almost conversationally, in fact-but Eddie felt his heart gave a lurch, and when Susannah's hand crept into his, he squeezed it. Here was the third question, the key question, and it hadn't been asked of the Calla's big farmer, big rancher, or big businessman. It had been asked of a sodbuster's wife with her mousy brown hair pulled back in a bun, a smallhold farmer's wife whose skin, although naturally dark, had even so cracked and coarsened from too much sun, whose housedress had been faded by many washings. And it was right that it should be so, perfectly right. Because the soul of Calla Bryn Sturgis was in four dozen smallhold farms just like this, Eddie reckoned. Let Zalia Jaffords speak for all of them. Why the hell not?

"I seek it and say thankya," she told him simply. "Lord God and Man Jesus bless you and yours."

Roland nodded as if he'd been doing no more than passing the time of day. "Margaret Eisenhart showed me something."

"Did she?" Zalia asked, and smiled slightly. Tian came plodding around the corner, looking tired and sweaty, although it was only nine in the morning. Over one shoulder was a busted piece of harness. He wished Roland and Jake a good day, then stood by his wife, a hand around her waist and resting on her hip.

"Aye, and told us the tale of Lady Oriza and Gray Dick."

" Tis a fine tale," she said.

"It is," Roland said. "I'll not fence, lady-sai. Will'ee come out on the line with your dish when the time comes?"

Tian's eyes widened. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He looked at his wife like a man who has suddenly been visited by a great revelation.

"Aye," Zalia said.

Tian dropped the harness and hugged her. She hugged him back, briefly and hard, then turned to Roland and his friends once more.

Roland was smiling. Eddie was visited by a faint sense of unreality, as he always was when he observed this phenomenon. "Good. And will you show Susannah how to throw it?"

Zalia looked thoughtfully at Susannah. "Would she learn?"

"I don't know," Susannah said. "Is it something I'm supposed to learn, Roland?"

"Yes."

"When, gunslinger?" Zalia asked.

Roland calculated. "Three or four days from now, if all goes well. If she shows no aptitude, send her back to me and we'll try Jake."

Jake started visibly.

"I think she'll do fine, though. I never knew a gunslinger who didn't take to new weapons like birds to a new pond. And I must have at least one who can either throw the dish or shoot the bah, for we are four with only three guns we can rely on. And I like the dish. Like it very well."

"I'll show what I can, sure," Zalia said, and gave Susannah a shy look.

"Then, in nine days' time, you and Margaret and Rosalita and Sarey Adams will come to the Old Fella's house and we'll see what we'll see."

"You have a plan?" Tian asked. His eyes were hot with hope.

"I will by then," Roland said.

FOUR

They rode toward town four abreast at that same ambling gait, but where the East Road crossed another, this one going north and south, Roland pulled up. "Here I leave you for a little while," he told them. He pointed north, toward the hills. "Two hours from here is what some of the Seeking Folk call Manni Calla and others call Manni Redpath. It's their place by either name, a little town within the larger one. I'll meet with Henchick there."

"Their dinh," Eddie said.

Roland nodded. "Beyond the Manni village, another hour or less, are a few played-out mines and a lot of caves."

"The place you pointed out on the Tavery twins' map?" Susannah asked.

"No, but close by. The cave I'm interested in is the one they call Doorway Cave. We'll hear of it from Callahan tonight when he finishes his story."

"Do you know that for a fact, or is it intuition?" Susannah asked.

"I know it from Henchick. He spoke of it last night. He also spoke of the Pere. I could tell you, but it's best we hear it from Callahan himself, I think. In any case, that cave will be important to us."

"It's the way back, isn't it?" Jake said. "You think it's the way back to New York."

"More," the gunslinger said. "With Black Thirteen, I think it might be the way to everywhere and everywhen."

"Including the Dark Tower?" Eddie asked. His voice was husky, barely more than a whisper.

"I can't say," Roland replied, "but I believe Henchick will show me the cave, and I may know more then. Meanwhile, you three have business in Took's, the general store."

"Do we?" Jake asked.

"You do." Roland balanced his purse on his lap, opened it, and dug deep. At last he came out with a leather drawstring bag none of them had seen before.

"My father gave me this," he said absently. "It's the only thing I have now, other than the ruins of my younger face, that I had when I rode into Mejis with my ka-mates all those years ago."

They looked at it with awe, sharing the same thought: if what the gunslinger said was true, the little leather bag had to be hundreds of years old. Roland opened it, looked in, nodded. "Susannah, hold out your hands."

She did. Into her cupped palms he poured perhaps ten pieces of silver, emptying the bag.

"Eddie, hold out yours."

"Uh, Roland, I think the cupboard's bare."

"Hold out your hands."

Eddie shrugged and did so. Roland tipped the bag over them and poured out a dozen gold pieces, emptying the bag.

"Jake?"

Jake held out his hands. From the pocket in the front of the poncho, Oy looked on with interest. This time the bag disgorged half a dozen bright gemstones before it was empty. Susannah gasped.

"They're but garnets," Roland said, almost apologetically. "A fair medium of exchange out here, from what they say. They won't buy much, but they will buy a boy's needs, I think."

"Cool!" Jake was grinning broadly. "Say thankya! Big-big!"

They looked at the empty sack with silent wonder, and Roland smiled. "Most of the magic I once knew or had access to is gone, but you see a little lingers. Like soaked leaves in the bottom of a teapot."

"Is there even more stuff inside? "Jake asked.

"No. In time, there might be. It's a grow-bag." Roland returned the ancient leather sack to his purse, came out with the fresh supply of tobacco Callahan had given him, and rolled a smoke. "Go in the store. Buy what you fancy. A few shirts, perhaps-and one for me, if it does ya; I could use one. Then you'll go out on the porch and take your ease, as town folk do. Sai Took won't care much for it, there's nothing he'd like to see so well as our backs going east toward Thunderclap, but he'll not shoo you off."

"Like to see him try," Eddie grunted, and touched the butt of Roland's gun.

"You won't need that," Roland said. "Custom alone will keep him behind his counter, minding his till. That, and the temper of the town."

"It's going our way, isn't it?" Susannah said.

"Yes, Susannah. If you asked them straight on, as I asked sai Jaffords, they'd not answer, so it's best not to ask, not yet. But yes. They mean to fight. Or to let us fight for them. Which can't be held against them. Fighting for those who can't fight for themselves is our job."

Eddie opened his mouth to tell Roland what Gran-pere had told him, then closed it again. Roland hadn't asked him, although that had been the reason he had sent them to the Jaffordses'. Nor, he realized, had Susannah asked him. She hadn't mentioned his conversation with old Jamie at all.

"Will you ask Henchick what you asked Mrs. Jaffords?" Jake asked.

"Yes," Roland said. "Him I'll ask."

'Because you know what he'll say."

Roland nodded and smiled again. This was not a smile that held any comfort; it was as cold as sunlight on snow. "A gunslinger never asks that question until he knows what the answer will be," he said. "We meet at the Pere's house for the evening meal. If all goes well, I'll be there just when the sun comes a-horizon. Are you all well? Eddie? Jake?" A slight pause. "Susannah?"

They all nodded. Oy nodded, too.

"Then until evening. Do ya fine, and may the sun never fall in your eyes."

He gigged his horse and turned off on the neglected little road leading north. They watched him go until he was out of sight, and as always when he was gone and they were on their own, the three of them shared a complex feeling that was part fear, part loneliness, and part nervous pride.

They rode on toward town with their horses a little closer together.

FIVE

"Nayyup, nayyup, don'tchee bring that dairty bumble-beast in 'ere, don'tchee never!" Eben Took cried from his place behind the counter. He had a high, almost womanish voice; it scratched the dozy quiet of the mercantile like splinters of glass. He was pointing at Oy, who was peering from the front pocket of Jake's poncho. A dozen desultory shoppers, most of them women dressed in homespun, turned to look.

Two farm workers, dressed in plain brown shirts, dirty white pants, and zoris, had been standing at the counter. They backed away in a hurry, as if expecting the two outworlders carrying guns to immediately slap leather and blow sai Took all the way to Calla Boot Hill.

"Yessir," Jake said mildly. "Sorry." He lifted Oy from the pocket of the poncho and set him down on the sunny porch, just outside the door. "Stay, boy."

"Oy stay," the bumbler said, and curled his clockspring of a tail around his haunches.

Jake rejoined his friends and they made their way into the store. To Susannah, it smelled like ones she'd been in during her time in Mississippi: a mingled aroma of salted meat, leather, spice, coffee, mothballs, and aged cozenry. Beside the counter was a large wooden barrel with the top slid partway aside and a pair of tongs hanging on a nail nearby. From the keg came the strong and tearful smell of pickles in brine.

"No credit!" Took cried in that same shrill, annoying voice. "Ah en't ever give credit to no one from away and Ah never will! Say true! Say thankya!"

Susannah grasped Eddie's hand and gave it a warning squeeze. Eddie shook it off impatiently, but when he spoke, his voice was as mild as Jake's had been. "Say thankya, sai Took, we'd not ask it." And recalled something he'd heard from Pere Callahan: "Never in life."

There was a murmur of approval from some of those in the store. None of them was any longer making even the slightest pretense of shopping. Took flushed. Susannah took Eddie's hand again and this time gave him a smile to go with the squeeze.

At first they shopped in silence, but before they finished, several people-all of whom had been at the Pavilion two nights before-said hello and asked (timidly) how they did. All three said they did fine. They got shirts, including two for Roland, denim pants, underwear singlets, and three sets of shor'boots which looked ugly but serviceable. Jake got a bag of candy, picking it out by pointing while Took put it in a bag of woven grass with grudging and disagreeable slowness. When he tried to buy a sack of tobacco and some rolling papers for Roland, Took refused him with all too evident pleasure. "Nayyup, nayyup, Ah'll not sell smokeweed to a boy. Never have done."

"Good idea, too," Eddie said. "One step below devil grass, and the Surgeon General says thankya. But you'll sell it to me, won't you, sai? Our dinh enjoys a smoke in the evening, while he's planning out new ways to help folks in need."

There were a few titters at this. The store had begun to fill up quite amazingly. They were playing to a real audience now, and Eddie didn't mind a bit. Took was coming off as a shithead, which wasn't surprising. Took clearly was a shithead.

"Never seen no one dance a better commala than he did!" a man called from one of the aisles, and there were murmurs of assent.

"Say thankya," Eddie said. "I'll pass it on."

"And your lady sings well," said another.

Susannah dropped a skirtless curtsy. She finished her own shopping by pushing the lid a little further off the pickle barrel and dipping out an enormous specimen with the tongs. Eddie leaned close and said, "I might have gotten something that green from my nose once, but I can't really remember."

"Don't be grotesque, dear one," Susannah replied, smiling sweetly all the while.

Eddie and Jake were content to let her assume responsibility for the dickering, which Susannah did with relish. Took tried his very best to overcharge her for their gunna, but Eddie had an idea this wasn't aimed at them specifically but was just part of what Eben Took saw as his job (or perhaps his sacred calling). Certainly he was smart enough to gauge the temperature of his clientele, for he had pretty much laid off nagging them by the time the trading was finished. This did not keep him from ringing their coins on a special square of metal which seemed reserved for that sole purpose, and holding Jake's garnets up to the light and rejecting one of them (which looked like all the others, so far as Eddie,Jake, and Susannah could see).

"How long'll 'ee be here, folks?" he asked in a marginally cordial voice when the dickering was done. Yet his eyes were shrewd, and Eddie had no doubt that whatever they said would reach the ears of Eisenhart, Overholser, and anyone else who mattered before the day was done.

"Ah, well, that depends on what we see," Eddie said. "And what we see depends on what folks show us, wouldn't you say?"

"Aye," Took agreed, but he looked mystified. There were now perhaps fifty people in the roomy mercantile-and-grocery, most of them simply gawking. There was a powdery sort of excitement in the air. Eddie liked it. He didn't know if that was right or wrong, but yes, he liked it very well.

"Also depends on what folks want," Susannah amplified.

"Ah'll tell you what they 'unt, brownie!" Took said in his shrill shards-of-glass voice. "They 'unt peace, same as ever! They 'unt't'town't'still be here arter you four-"

Susannah seized the man's thumb and bent it back. It was dextrously done. Jake doubted if more than two or three folken, those closest to the counter, saw it, but Took's face went a dirty white and his eyes bulged from their sockets.

"I'll take that word from an old man who's lost most of his sense," she said, "but I won't take it from you. Call me brownie again, fatso, and I'll pull your tongue out of your head and wipe your ass with it."

"Cry pardon!" Took gasped. Now sweat broke on his cheeks in large and rather disgusting drops. "Cry'er pardon, so Ah do!"

"Fine," Susannah said, and let him go. "Now we might just go out and sit on your porch for a bit, for shopping's tiring work."

SIX

Took's General Store featured no Guardians of the Beam such as Roland had told of in Mejis, but rockers were lined up the long length of the porch, as many as two dozen of them. And all three sets of steps were flanked by stuffy-guys in honor of the season. When Roland's ka-mates came out, they took three rockers in the middle of the porch. Oy lay down contentedly between Jake's feet and appeared to go to sleep with his nose on his paws.

Eddie cocked a thumb back over his shoulder in Eben Took's general direction. "Too bad Detta Walker wasn't here to shoplift a few things from the son of a bitch."

"Don't think I wasn't tempted on her behalf," Susannah said.

"Folks coming," Jake said. "I think they want to talk to us."

"Sure they do," Eddie said. "It's what we're here for." He smiled, his handsome face growing handsomer still. Under his breath he said, "Meet the gunslingers, folks. Come-come-commala, shootin's gonna folia."

"Hesh up that bad mouth of yours, son," Susannah said, but she was laughing.

They're crazy, Jake thought. But if he was the exception, why was he laughing, too?

SEVEN

Henchick of the Manni and Roland of Gilead nooned in the shadow of a massive rock outcrop, eating cold chicken and rice wrapped in tortillas and drinking sof cider from a jug which they passed back and forth between them. Henchick set them on with a word to what he called both The Force and The Over, then fell silent. That was fine with Roland. The old man had answered aye to the one question the gunslinger had needed to ask.

By the time they'd finished their meal, the sun had gone behind the high cliffs and escarpments. Thus they walked in shadow, making their way up a path that was strewn with rubble and far too narrow for their horses, which had been left in a grove of yellow-leaf quaking aspen below. Scores of tiny lizards ran before them, sometimes darting into cracks in the rocks.

Shady or not, it was hotter than the hinges of hell out here. After a mile of steady climbing, Roland began to breathe hard and use his bandanna to wipe the sweat from his cheeks and throat. Henchick, who appeared to be somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty, walked ahead of him with steady serenity. He breathed with the ease of a man strolling in a park. He'd left his cloak below, laid over the branch of a tree, but Roland could see no patches of sweat spreading on his black shirt.

They reached a bend in the path, and for a moment the world to the north and west opened out below them in gauzy splendor. Roland could see the huge taupe rectangles of graze-land, and tiny toy cattle. To the south and east, the fields grew greener as they marched toward the river lowlands. He could see the Calla village, and even-in the dreaming western distance-the edge of great forest through which they had come to get here. The breeze that struck them on this stretch of the path was so cold it made Roland gasp. Yet he raised his face into it gratefully, eyes mostly closed, smelling all the things that were the Calla: steers, horses, grain, river water, and rice rice rice.

Henchick had doffed his broad-brimmed, flat-crowned hat and also stood with his head raised and his eyes mostly closed, a study in silent thanksgiving. The wind blew back his long hair and playfully divided his waist-length beard into forks. They stood so for perhaps three minutes, letting the breeze cool them. Then Henchick clapped his hat back on his head. He looked at Roland. "Do'ee say the world will end in fire or in ice, gunslinger?"

Roland considered this. "Neither," he said at last. "I think in darkness."

"Do'ee say so?"

"Aye."

Henchick considered a moment, then turned to continue on up the path. Roland was impatient to get to where they were going, but he touched the Manni's shoulder, nevertheless. A promise was a promise. Especially one made to a lady.

"I stayed with one of the forgetful last night," Roland said. "Isn't that what you call those who choose to leave thy ka-tet?"

"We speak of the forgetful, aye," Henchick said, watching him closely, "but not of ka-tet. We know that word, but it is not our word, gunslinger."

"In any case, I-"

"In any case, thee slept at the Rocking B with Vaughn Eisenhart and our daughter, Margaret. And she threw the dish for'ee. I didn't speak of these things when we talked last night, for I knew them as well as you did. Any ro', we had other matters to discuss, did we not? Caves, and such."

"We did." Roland tried not to show his surprise. He must have failed, because Henchick nodded slightly, the lips just visible within his beard curving in a slight smile.

"The Manni have ways of knowing, gunslinger; always have."

"Will you not call me Roland?"

"Nay."

"She said to tell thee that Margaret of the Redpath Clan does fine with her heathen man, fine still."

Henchick nodded. If he felt pain at this, it didn't show. Not even in his eyes. "She's damned," he said. His tone was that of a man saying Looks like it might come off sunny by afternoon.

"Are you asking me to tell her that?" Roland asked. He was amused and aghast at the same time.

Henchick's blue eyes had faded and grown watery with age, but there was no mistaking the surprise that came into them at this question. His bushy eyebrows went up. "Why would I bother?" he asked. "She knows. She'll have time to repent her heathen man at leisure in the depths of Na'ar. She knows that, too. Come, gunslinger. Another quarter-wheel and we're there. But it's upsy."

EIGHT

Upsy it was, very upsy indeed. Half an hour later, they came to a place where a fallen boulder blocked most of the path. Henchick eased his way around it, dark pants rippling in the wind, beard blowing out sideways, long-nailed fingers clutching for purchase. Roland followed. The boulder was warm from the sun, but the wind was now so cold he was shivering. He sensed the heels of his worn boots sticking out over a blue drop of perhaps two thousand feet. If the old man decided to push him, all would end in a hurry. And in decidedly undramatic fashion.

But it wouldn't he thought. Eddie would carry on in my place, and the other two would follow until they fell.

On the far side of the boulder, the path ended in a ragged, dark hole nine feet high and five wide. A draft blew out of it into Roland's face. Unlike the breeze that had played with them as they climbed the path, this air was smelly and unpleasant. Coming with it, carried upon it, were cries Roland couldn't make out. But they were the cries of human voices.

"Is it the cries of folks in Na'ar we're hearing?" he asked Henchick.

No smile touched the old man's mostly hidden lips now. "Speak not in jest," he said. "Not here. For you are in the presence of the infinite."

Roland could believe it. He moved forward cautiously, boots gritting on the rubbly scree, his hand dropping to the butt of his gun-he always wore the left one now, when he wore any; below the hand that was whole.

The stench breathing from the cave's open mouth grew stronger yet. Noxious if not outright toxic. Roland held his bandanna against his mouth and nose with his diminished right hand. Something inside the cave, there in the shadows. Bones, yes, the bones of lizards and other small animals, but something else as well, a shape he knew-

"Be careful, gunslinger," Henchick said, but stood aside to let Roland enter the cave if he so desired.

My desires don't matter, Roland thought. This is just something I have to do. Probably that makes it simpler.

The shape in the shadows grew clearer. He wasn't surprised to see it was a door exactly like those he'd come to on the beach; why else would this have been called Doorway Cave? It was made of ironwood (or perhaps ghostwood), and stood about twenty feet inside the entrance to the cave. It was six and a half feet high, as the doors on the beach had been. And, like those, it stood freely in the shadows, with hinges that seemed fastened to nothing.

Yet it would turn on those hinges easily, he thought. Will turn. When the time comes.

There was no keyhole. The knob appeared to be crystal. Etched upon it was a rose. On the beach of the Western Sea, the three doors had been marked with the High Speech: the prisoner on one, the lady of the shadows on another, the pusher on the third. Here were the hieroglyphs he had seen on the box hidden in Callahan's church:

"It means 'unfound,' " Roland said.

Henchick nodded, but when Roland moved to walk around the door, the old man took a step forward and held out a hand. "Be careful, or'ee may be able to discover who those voices belong to for yourself."

Roland saw what he meant. Eight or nine feet beyond the door, the floor of the cave sloped down at an angle of fifty or even sixty degrees. There was nothing to hold onto, and the rock looked smooth as glass. Thirty feet down, this slippery-slide disappeared into a chasm. Moaning, intertwined voices rose from it. And then one came clear. It was that of Gabrielle Deschain.

"Roland, don't!"'his dead mother shrieked up from the darkness. "Don't shoot, it's me! It's your m - " But before she could finish, the overlapping crash of pistol shots silenced her. Pain shot up into Roland's head. He was pressing the bandanna against his face almost hard enough to break his own nose. He tried to ease the muscles in his arm and at first was unable to do so.

Next from that reeking darkness came the voice of his father.

"I've known since you toddled that you were no genius," Steven Deschain said in a tired voice, "but I never believed until yestereve that you were an idiot. To let him drive you like a cow in a chute! Gods!"

Never mind. These are not even ghosts. I think they're only echoes, somehow taken from deep inside my own head and projected.

When he stepped around the door (minding the drop now to his right), the door was gone. There was only the silhouette of Henchick, a severe man-shape cut from black paper standing in the cave's mouth.

The door's still there, but you can only see it from one side. And in that way it's like the other doors, too.

"A trifle upsetting, isn't it?" tittered the voice of Walter from deep in the Doorway Cave's gullet. "Give it over, Roland! Better to give it over and die than to discover the room at the top of the Dark Tower is empty."

Then came the urgent blare of Eld's Horn, raising goose-flesh on Roland's arms and hackles on the back of his neck: Cuthbert Allgood's final battle-cry as he ran down Jericho Hill toward his death at the hands of the barbarians with the blue faces.

Roland lowered the bandanna from his own face and began walking again. One pace; two; three. Bones crunched beneath his bootheels. At the third pace the door reappeared, at first side-to, with its latch seeming to bite into thin air, like the hinges on its other side. He stopped for a moment, gazing at this thickness, relishing the strangeness of the door just as he had relished the strangeness of the ones he'd encountered on the beach. And on the beach he had been sick almost to the point of death. If he moved his head forward slightly, the door disappeared. If he pulled it back again, it was there. The door never wavered, never shimmered. It was always a case of either/or, there/not there.

He stepped all the way back, put his splayed palms on the ironwood, leaned on them. He could feel a faint but perceptible vibration, like the feel of powerful machinery. From the dark gullet of the cave, Rhea of the Coos screamed up at him, calling him a brat who'd never seen his true father's face, telling him his bit o' tail burst her throat with her screams as she burned. Roland ignored it and grasped the crystal doorknob.

"Nay, gunslinger, ye dare not!" Henchick cried in alarm.

"I dare," Roland said. And he did, but the knob wouldn't turn in either direction. He stepped back from it.

"But the door was open when you found the priest?" he asked Henchick. They had spoken of this the previous night, but Roland wanted to hear more.

"Aye. 'Twas I and Jemmin who found him. Thee knows we elder Manni seek the other worlds? Not for treasure but for enlightenment?"

Roland nodded. He also knew that some had come back from their travels insane. Others never came back at all.

"These hills are magnetic, and riddled with many ways into many worlds. We'd gone out to a cave near the old garnet mines and there we found a message."

"What kind of message?"

" 'Twas a machine set in the cave's mouth," Henchick said. "Push a button and a voice came out of it. The voice told us to come here."

"You knew of this cave before?"

"Aye, but before the Pere came, it were called the Cave of Voices. For which reason thee now knows."

Roland nodded and motioned for Henchick to go on.

"The voice from the machine spoke in accents like those of your ka-mates, gunslinger. It said that we should come here, Jemmin and I, and we'd find a door and a man and a wonder. So we did."

"Someone left you instructions," Roland mused. It was Walter he was thinking of. The man in black, who had also left them the cookies Eddie called Keeblers. Walter was Flagg and Flagg was Marten and Marten… was he Maerlyn, the old rogue wizard of legend? On that subject Roland remained unsure. "And spoke to you by name?"

"Nay, he did not know's'much. Only called us the Manni-folk."

"How did this someone know where to leave the voice machine, do you think?"

Henchick's lips thinned. "Why must thee think it was a person? Why not a god speaking in a man's voice? Why not some agent of The Over?"

Roland said, "Gods leave siguls. Men leave machines." He paused. "In my own experience, of course, Pa."

Henchick made a curt gesture, as if to tell Roland to spare him the flattery.

"Was it general knowledge that thee and thy friend were exploring the cave where you found the speaking machine?"

Henchick shrugged rather sullenly. "People see us, I suppose. Some mayhap watch over the miles with their spyglasses and binoculars. Also, there's the mechanical man. He sees much and prattles everlastingly to all who will listen."

Roland took this for a yes. He thought someone had known Pere Callahan was coming. And that he would need help when he arrived on the outskirts of the Calla.

"How far open was the door?" Roland asked.

"These are questions for Callahan," Henchick said. "I promised to show thee this place. I have. Surely that's enough for ye."

"Was he conscious when you found him?"

There was a reluctant pause. Then: "Nay. Only muttering, as one does in his sleep if he dreams badly."

"Then he can't tell me, can he? Not this part. Henchick, you seek aid and succor. This thee told me on behalf of all your clans. Help me, then! Help me to help you!"

"I do na' see how this helps."

And it might not help, not in the matter of the Wolves which so concerned this old man and the rest of Calla Bryn Sturgis, but Roland had other worries and other needs; other fish to fry, as Susannah sometimes said. He stood looking at Henchick, one hand still on the crystal doorknob.

"It were open a bit," Henchick said finally. "So were the box. Both just a bit The one they call the Old Fella, he lay facedown, there." He pointed to the rubble-and bone-littered floor where Roland's boots were now planted. "The box were by his right hand, open about this much." Henchick held his thumb and forefinger perhaps two inches apart. "Coming from it was the sound of the kammen. I've heard em before, but never's'strong. They made my very eyes ache and gush water. Jemmin cried out and begun walking toward the door. The Old Fella's hands were spread out on the ground and Jemmin treaded on one of em and never noticed.

"The door were only ajar, like the box, but a terrible light was coming through it. I've traveled much, gunslinger, to many wheres and many whens, I've seen other doors and I've seen todash tahken, the holes in reality, but never any light like that It were black, like all the emptiness that ever was, but there were something red in it."

"The Eye," Roland said.

Henchick looked at him. "An eye? Do'ee say so?"

"I think so," Roland said. "The blackness you saw is cast by Black Thirteen. The red might have been the Eye of the Crimson King."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know," Roland said. "Only that he bides far east of here, in Thunderclap or beyond it. I believe he may be a Guardian of the Dark Tower. He may even think he owns it."

At Roland's mention of the Tower, the old man covered his eyes with both hands, a gesture of deep religious dread.

"What happened next, Henchick? Tell me, I beg."

"I began to reach for Jemmin, then recalled how he stepped on the man's hand with his bootheel, and thought better of it. Thought, 'Henchick, if thee does that, he'll drag you through with him.' " The old man's eyes fastened on Roland's. "Traveling is what we do, I know ye ken as much, and rarely are we afraid, for we trust The Over. Yet I were afraid of that light and the sound of those chimes." He paused. "Terrified of them. I've never spoken of that day."

"Not even to Pere Callahan?"

Henchick shook his head.

"Did he not speak to you when he woke up?"

"He asked if he were dead. I told him that if he were so, so were we all."

"What about Jemmin?"

"Died two years later." Henchick tapped the front of his black shirt. "Heart."

"How many years since you found Callahan here?"

Henchick shook his head slowly back and forth in wide arcs, a Manni gesture so common it might have been genetic. "Gunslinger, I know not. For time is-"

"Yes, in drift," Roland said impatiently. "How long would you say?"

"More than five years, for he has his church and superstitious fools to fill it, ye ken."

"What did you do? How did thee save Jemmin?"

"Fell on my knees and closed the box," Henchick said. "'Twas all I could think to do. If I'd hesitated even a single second I do believe I would ha' been lost, for the same black light were coming out of it. It made me feel weak and… and dim."

"I'll bet it did," Roland said grimly.

"But I moved fast, and when the lid of the box clicked down, the door swung shut. Jemmin banged his fists against it and screamed and begged to be let through. Then he fell down in a faint. I dragged him out of the cave. I dragged them both out. After a little while in the fresh air, both came to." Henchick raised his hands, then lowered them again, as if to say There you are.

Roland gave the doorknob a final try. It moved in neither direction. But with the ball-

"Let's go back," he said. "I'd like to be at the Pere's house by dinnertime. That means a fast walk back down to the horses and an even faster ride once we get there."

Henchick nodded. His bearded face was good at hiding expression, but Roland thought the old man was relieved to be going. Roland was a little relieved, himself. Who would enjoy listening to the accusing screams of one's dead mother and father rising out of the dark? Not to mention the cries of one's dead friends?

"What happened to the speaking device?" Roland asked as they started back down.

Henchick shrugged. "Do ye ken bayderies?"

Batteries. Roland nodded.

"While they worked, the machine played the same message over and over, the one telling us that we should go to the Cave of Voices and find a man, a door, and a wonder. There was also a song. We played it once for the Pere, and he wept. You must ask him about it, for that truly is his part of the tale."

Roland nodded again.

"Then the bayderies died." Henchick's shrug showed a certain contempt for machines, the gone world, or perhaps both. "We took them out. They were Duracell. Does thee ken Duracell, gunslinger?"

Roland shook his head.

"We took them to Andy and asked if he could recharge them, mayhap. He took them into himself, but when they came out again they were as useless as before. Andy said sorry. We said thankya." Henchick rolled his shoulders in that same contemptuous shrug. "We opened the machine-another button did that-and the tongue came out. It were this long." Henchick held his hands four or five inches apart. "Two holes in it. Shiny brown stuff inside, like string. The Pere called it a 'cassette tape.' "

Roland nodded. "I want to thank you for taking me up to the cave, Henchick, and for telling me all thee knows."

"I did what I had to," Henchick said. "And you'll do as'ee promise. Wont'chee?"

Roland of Gilead nodded. "Let God pick a winner."

"Aye, so we do say. Ye speak as if ye knew us, once upon a season." He paused, eyeing Roland with a certain sour shrewdness. "Or is it just makin up to me that ye does? For anyone who's ever read the Good Book can thee and thou till the crows fly home."

"Does thee ask if I play the toady, up here where there's no one to hear us but them?" Roland nodded toward the babbling darkness. "Thou knows better, I hope, for if thee doesn't, thee's a fool." ;

The old man considered, then put out his gnarled, long-fingered hand. "Do'ee well, Roland. 'Tis a good name, and a fair."

Roland put out his right hand. And when the old man took it and squeezed it, he felt the first deep twinge of pain where he wanted to feel it least.

No, not yet. Where I'd feel it least is in the other one. The one that's still whole.

"Mayhap this time the Wolves'll kill us all," said Henchick.

"Perhaps so."

"Yet still, perhaps we're well-met."

"Perhaps we are," the gunslinger replied.

ONE

"Beds're ready," Rosalita Munoz said when they got back.

Eddie was so tired that he believed she'd said something else entirely-Time to weed the garden, perhaps, or There's fifty or sixty more people'd like 't'meet ye waitin up to the church. After all, who spoke of beds at three in the afternoon?

"Huh?" Susannah asked blearily. "What-say, hon? Didn't quite catch it."

"Beds're ready," the Pere's woman of work repeated. "You two'll go where ye slept night before last; young soh's to have the Pere's bed. And the bumbler can go in with ye, Jake, if ye'd like; Pere said for me to tell'ee so. He'd be here to tell you himself, but it's his afternoon for sick-rounds. He takes the Communion to em." She said this last with unmistakable pride.

"Beds," Eddie said. He couldn't quite get the sense of this. He looked around, as if to confirm that it was still midafternoon, the sun still shining brightly. "Beds?"

"Pere saw'ee at the store," Rosalita amplified, "and thought ye'd want naps after talking to all those people."

Eddie understood at last. He supposed that at some point in his life he must have felt more grateful for a kindness, but he honestly couldn't remember when or what that kindness might have been. At first those approaching them as they sat in the rockers on the porch of Took's had come slowly, in hesitant little clusters. But when no one turned to stone or took a bullet in the head-when there was, in fact, animated conversation and actual laughter-more and more came. As the trickle became a flood, Eddie at last discovered what it was to be a public person. He was astounded by how difficult it was, how draining. They wanted simple answers to a thousand difficult questions-where the gunslingers came from and where they were going were only the first two. Some of their questions could be answered honestly, but more and more Eddie heard himself giving weaselly politicians' answers, and heard his two friends doing the same. These weren't lies, exactly, but little propaganda capsules that sounded like answers. And everyone wanted a look straight in the face and a Do ya fine that sounded straight from the heart. Even Oy came in for his share of the work; he was petted over and over again, and made to speak until Jake got up, went into the store, and begged a bowl of water from Eben Took. That gentleman gave him a tin cup instead, and told him he could fill it at the trough out front. Jake was surrounded by townsfolk who questioned him steadily even as he did this simple chore. Oy lapped the cup dry, then faced his own gaggle of curious questioners while Jake went back to the trough to fill the cup again.

All in all, they had been five of the longest hours Eddie had ever put in, and he thought he would never regard celebrity in quite the same way again. On the plus side, before finally leaving the porch and heading back to the Old Fella's residence, Eddie reckoned they must have talked to everyone who lived in town and a good number of farmers, ranchers, cowpokes, and hired hands who lived beyond it. Word traveled fast: the outworlders were sitting on the porch of the General Store, and if you wanted to talk to them, they would talk to you.

And now, by God, this woman-this angel -was speaking of beds.

"How long have we got?" he asked Rosalita.

"Pere should be back by four," she said, "but we won't eat until six, and that's only if your dinh gets back in time. Why don't I wake you at five-thirty? That'll give ye time to wash. Does it do ya?"

"Yeah," Jake said, and gave her a smile. "I didn't know just talking to folks could make you so tired. And thirsty."

She nodded. "There's a jug of cool water in the pantry."

"I ought to help you get the meal ready," Susannah said, and then her mouth opened in a wide yawn.

"Sarey Adams is coming in to help," Rosalita said, "and it's nobbut a cold meal, in any case. Go on, now. Take your rest. You're all in, and it shows."

TWO

In the pantry, Jake drank long and deep, then poured water into a bowl for Oy and carried it into Pere Callahan's bedroom. He felt guilty about being in here (and about having a billy-bumbler in here with him), but the bedcovers on Callahan's narrow bed had been turned down, the pillow had been plumped up, and both beckoned him. He put down the bowl and Oy quiety began to lap water. Jake undressed down to his new underwear, then lay back and closed his eyes.

Probably won't be able to actually sleep, he thought, I wasn't ever any good at taking naps, even back when Mrs. Shaw used to call me 'Bama.

Less than a minute later he was snoring lightly, with one arm slung over his eyes. Oy slept on the floor beside him with his nose on one paw.

THREE

Eddie and Susannah sat side by side on the bed in the guest room. Eddie could still hardly believe this: not only a nap, but a nap in an actual bed. Luxury piled on luxury. He wanted nothing more than to lie down, take Suze in his arms, and sleep that way, but one matter needed to be addressed first. It had been nagging him all day, even during the heaviest of their impromptu politicking.

"Suze, about Tian's Gran-pere-"

"I don't want to hear it," she said at once.

He raised his eyebrows, surprised. Although he supposed he'd known.

"We could get into this," she said, "but I'm tired. I want to go to sleep. Tell Roland what the old guy told you, and tell Jake if you want to, but don't tell me. Not yet." She sat next to him, her brown thigh touching his white one, her brown eyes looking steadily into his hazel ones. "Do you hear me?"

"Hear you very well."

"Say thankya big-big."

He laughed, took her in his arms, kissed her.

And shortly they were also asleep with their arms around each other and their foreheads touching. A rectangle of light moved steadily up their bodies as the sun sank. It had moved back into the true west, at least for the time being. Roland saw this for himself as he rode slowly down the drive to the Old Fella's rectory-house with his aching legs kicked free of the stirrups.

FOUR

Rosalita came out to greet him. "Hile, Roland-long days and pleasant nights."

He nodded. "May you have twice the number."

"I ken ye might ask some of us to throw the dish against the Wolves, when they come."

"Who told you so?"

"Oh… some little bird whispered it in my ear."

"Ah. And would you? If asked?"

She showed her teeth in a grin. "Nothing in this life would give me more pleasure." The teeth disappeared and the grin softened into a true smile. "Although perhaps the two of us together could discover some pleasure that comes close. Would'ee see my little cottage, Roland?"

"Aye. And would you rub me with that magic oil of yours again?"

"Is it rubbed ye'd be?"

"Aye."

"Rubbed hard, or rubbed soft?"

"I've heard a little of both best eases an aching joint."

She considered this, then burst into laughter and took his hand. "Come. While the sun shines and this little corner of the world sleeps."

He came with her willingly, and went where she took him. She kept a secret spring surrounded by sweet moss, and there he was refreshed.

FIVE

Callahan finally returned around five-thirty, just as Eddie, Susannah, and Jake were turning out. At six, Rosalita and Sarey Adams served out a dinner of greens and cold chicken on the screened-in porch behind the rectory. Roland and his friends ate hungrily, the gunslinger taking not just seconds but thirds. Callahan, on the other hand, did little but move his food from place to place on his plate. The tan on his face gave him a certain look of health, but didn't hide the dark circles under his eyes. When Sarey-a cheery, jolly woman, fat but light on her feet-brought out a spice cake, Callahan only shook his head.

When there was nothing left on the table but cups and the coffee pot, Roland brought out his tobacco and raised his eyebrows.

"Do ya," Callahan said, then raised his voice. "Rosie, bring this guy something to tap into!"

"Big man, I could listen to you all day," Eddie said.

"So could I," Jake agreed.

Callahan smiled. "I feel the same way about you boys, at least a little." He poured himself half a cup of coffee. Rosalita brought Roland a pottery cup for his ashes. When she had gone, the Old Fella said, "I should have finished this story yesterday. I spent most of last night tossing and turning, thinking about how to tell the rest."

"Would it help if I told you I already know some of it?" Roland asked.

"Probably not. You went up to the Doorway Cave with Henchick, didn't you?"

"Yes. He said there was a song on the speaking machine that sent them up there to find you, and that you wept when you heard it. Was it the one you spoke of?"

" 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' yes. And I can't tell you how strange it was to be sitting in a Manni cabin in Calla Bryn Sturgis, looking toward the darkness of Thunderclap and listening to Elton John."

"Whoa, whoa," Susannah said. "You're way ahead of us, Pere. Last we knew, you were in Sacramento, it was 1981, and you'd just found out your friend got cut up by these so-called Hitler Brothers." She looked sternly from Callahan to Jake and finally to Eddie. "I have to say, gendemen, that you don't seem to have made much progress in the matter of peaceful living since the days when I left America."

"Don't blame it on me," Jake said. "I was in school."

"And I was stoned," Eddie said.

"All right, I'll take the blame," Callahan said, and they all laughed.

"Finish your story," Roland said. "Maybe you'll sleep better tonight."

"Maybe I will," Callahan said. He thought for a minute, then said: "What I remember about the hospital-what I guess everyone remembers-is the smell of the disinfectant and the sound of the machines. Mostly the machines. The way they beep. The only other stuff that sounds like that is the equipment in airplane cockpits. I asked a pilot once, and he said the navigational gear makes that sound. I remember thinking that night that there must be a hell of a lot of navigating going on in hospital ICUs.

"Rowan Magruder wasn't married when I worked at Home, but I guessed that must have changed, because there was a woman sitting in the chair by his bed, reading a paperback. Well-dressed, nice green suit, hose, low-heeled shoes. At least I felt okay about facing her; I'd cleaned up and combed up as well as I could, and I hadn't had a drink since Sacramento. But once we were actually face-to-face, I wasn't okay at all. She was sitting with her back to the door, you see. I knocked on the jamb, she turned toward me, and my so-called self-possession took a hike. I took a step back and crossed myself. First time since the night Rowan and I visited Lupe in that same joint. Can you guess why?"

"Of course," Susannah said. "Because the pieces fit together. The pieces always fit together. We've seen it again and again and again. We just don't know what the picture is."

"Or can't grasp it," Eddie said.

Callahan nodded. "It was like looking at Rowan, only with long blond hair and breasts. His twin sister. And she laughed. She asked me if I thought I'd seen a ghost. I felt… surreal. As if I'd slipped into another of those other worlds, like the real one-if there is such a thing-but not quite the same. I felt this mad urge to drag out my wallet and see who was on the bills. It wasn't just the resemblance; it was her laughing. Sitting there beside a man who had her face, assuming he had any face left at all under the bandages, and laughing."

"Welcome to Room 19 of the Todash Hospital," Eddie said.

"Beg pardon?"

"I only meant I know the feeling, Don. We all do. Go on."

"I introduced myself and asked if I could come in. And when I asked it, I was thinking back to Barlow, the vampire. Thinking, You have to invite them in the first time. After that, they can come and go as they please. She told me of course I could come in. She said she'd come from Chicago to be with him in what she called 'his closing hours.' Then, in that same pleasant voice, she said, 'I knew who you were right away. It's the scar on your hand. In his letters, Rowan said he was quite sure you were a religious man in your other life. He used to talk about people's other lives all the time, meaning before they started drinking or taking drugs or went insane or all three. This one was a carpenter in his other life. That one was a model in her other life. Was he right about you?' All in that pleasant voice. Like a woman making conversation at a cocktail party. And Rowan lying there with his head covered in bandages. If he'd been wearing sunglasses, he would have looked like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

"I came in. I said I'd once been a religious man, yes, but that was all in the past. She put out her hand. I put out mine. Because, you see, I thought…"

SIX

He puts out his hand because he has made the assumption that she wants to shake with him. The pleasant voice has fooled him. He doesn't realize that what Rowena Magruder Rawlings is actually doing is raising her hand, not putting it out. At first he doesn't even realize he has been slapped, and hard enough to make his left ear ring and his left eye water; he has a confused idea that the sudden warmth rising in his left cheek must be some sort of cockamamie allergy thing, perhaps a stress reaction. Then she is advancing on him with tears streaming down her weirdly Rowan-like face.

"Go on and look at him," she says. "Because guess what? This is my brother's other life! The only one he has left! Get right up close and get a good look at it. They poked out his eyes, they took off one of his cheeks -you can see the teeth in there, peekaboo! The police showed me photographs. They didn't want to, but I made them. They poked a hole in his heart, but I guess the doctors plugged that. It's his liver that's killing him. They poked a hole in that, too, and it's dying."

"Miss Magruder, I - "

"It's Mrs. Rawlings," she tells him, "not that it's anything to you, one way or the other. Go on. Get a good look. See what you've done to him."

"I was in California… I saw it in the paper…"

"Oh, I'm sure," she says. "I'm sure. But you're the only one I can get hold of, don't you see! The only one who was close to him. His other pal died of the Queer's Disease, and the rest aren't here. They're eating free food down at his flophouse, I suppose, or talking about what happened at their meetings. How it makes them feel. Well, Reverend Callahan -or is it Father? I saw you cross yourself -let me tell you how this makes me feel. It… makes… me… FURIOUS. " She is still speaking in the pleasant voice, but when he opens his mouth to speak again she puts a finger across his lips and there is so much force pressing back against his teeth in that single finger that he gives up. Let her talk, why not? It's been years since he's heard a confession, but some things are like riding a bicycle.

"He graduated from NYU cum laude," she says. "Did you know that? He took second in the Beloit Poetry Prize Competition in 1949, did you know that ? As an undergraduate! He wrote a novel… a beautiful novel… and it's in my attic, gathering dust."

Callahan can feel soft warm dew settling on his face. It is coming from her mouth.

"I asked him -no, begged him -to go on with his writing and he laughed at me, said he was no good. 'Leave that to the Mailers and 0'Haras and Irwin Shaws,' he said, 'people who can really do it. I'll wind up in some ivory-tower office, puffing on a meerschaum pipe and looking like Mr. Chips.'

"And that would have been all right, too, " she says, "but then he got involved in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, and from there it was an easy jump to running the flophouse. And hanging with his friends. Friends like you. "

Callahan is amazed. He has never heard the word friends invested with such contempt.

"But where are they now that he's down and going out?" Rowena Magruder Rowlings asks him. "Hmmm? Where are all the people he cured, all the newspaper feature reporters who called him a genius? Where's Jane Pauley? She interviewed him on the Today show, you know. Twice! Where's that fucking Mother Teresa? He said in one of his letters they were calling her the little saint when she came to Home, well he could use a saint now, my brother could use a saint right now, some laying-on of hands, so where the hell is she?"

Tears rolling down her cheeks. Her bosom rising and falling. She is beautiful and terrible. Callahan thinks of a picture he saw once of Shiva, the Hindu destroyer-god. Not enough arms, he thinks, and has to fight a crazy, suicidal urge to laugh.

"They're not here. There's just you and me, right? And him. He could have won a Nobel Prize for literature. Or he could have taught four hundred students a year for thirty years. Could have touched twelve thousand minds with his. Instead, he's lying here in a hospital bed with his face cut off, and they'll have to take up a subscription from his fucking flophouse to pay for his last illness -if you call getting cut to pieces an illness -and his coffin, and his burial."

She looks at him, face naked and smiling, her cheeks gleaming with moisture and runners of snot hanging from her nose.

"In his previous other life, Father Callahan, he was the Street Angel. But this is his final other life. Glamorous, isn't it? I'm going down the hall to the canteen for coffee and a danish. I'll be therefor ten minutes or so. Plenty of time for you to have your little visit. Do me a favor and be gone when I get back. You and all the rest of his do-gooders make me sick."

She leaves. Her sensible low heels go clicking away along the hall. It's not until they've faded completely and left him with the steady beeping of the machines that he realizes he's trembling all over. He doesn't think it's the onset of the dt's, but by God that's what it feels like.

When Rowan speaks from beneath his stiff veil of bandages, Callahan nearly screams. What his old friend says is pretty mushy, but Callahan has no trouble figuring it out.

"She's given that little sermon at least eight times today, and she never bothers to tell anyone that the year I took second in the Beloit, only four other people entered. I guess the war knocked a lot of the poetry out of folks. How you doing, Don?"

The diction is bad, the voice driving it little more than a rasp, but it's Rowan, all right. Callahan goes to him and takes the hands that lie on the counterpane. They curl over his with surprising firmness.

"As far as the novel goes… man, it was third-rate James Jones, and that's bad."

"How you doing, Rowan?" Callahan asks. Now he's crying himself. The goddam room will be floating soon.

"Oh, well, pretty sucky," says the man under the bandages. Then: "Thanks for coming."

"Not a problem, " Callahan says. "What do you need from me, Rowan? What can I do?"

"You can stay away from Home," Rowan says. His voice is fading, but his hands still clasp Callahan's. "They didn't want me. It was you they were after. Do you understand me, Don? They were looking for you. They kept asking me where you were, and by the end I would have told them if I'd known, believe me. But of course I didn't. "

One of the machines is beeping faster, the beeps running toward a merge that will trip an alarm. Callahan has no way of knowing this but knows it anyway. Somehow.

"Rowan -did they have red eyes? Were they wearing… I don't know… long coats? Like trenchcoats? Did they come in big fancy cars?"

"Nothing like that," Rowan whispers. "They were probably in their thirties but dressed like teenagers. They looked like teenagers, too. These guys'll look like teenagers for another twenty years -if they live that long -and then one day they'll just be old. "

Callahan thinks, Just a couple of punks. Is that what he's saying? It is, it almost certainly is, but that doesn't mean the Hitler Brothers weren't hired by the low men for this particular job. It makes sense. Even the newspaper article, brief as it was, pointed out that Rowan Magruder wasn't much like the Brothers' usual type of victim.

"Stay away from Home," Rowan whispers, but before Callahan can promise, the alarm does indeed go off. For a moment the hands holding his tighten, and Callahan feels a ghost of this man's old energy, that wild fierce energy that somehow kept Home's doors open in spite of all the times the bank account went absolutely flat-line, the energy that attracted men who could do all the things Rowan Magruder himself couldn't.

Then the room begins filling up with nurses, there's a doctor with an arrogant face yelling for the patient's chart, and pretty soon Rowan's twin sister will be back, this time possibly breathing fire. Callahan decides it's time to blow this pop-shop, and the greater pop-shop that is New York City. The low men are still interested in him, it seems, very interested indeed, and if they have a base of operations, it's probably right here in Fun City, USA. Consequently, a return to the West Coast would probably be an excellent idea. He can't afford another plane ticket, but he has enough cash to ride the Big Gray Dog. Won't be for the first time, either. Another trip west, why not? He can see himself with absolute clarity, the man in Seat 29-C: a fresh, unopened package of cigarettes in his shirt pocket; afresh, unopened bottle of Early Times in a paper bag; the new Jfohn D. MacDonald novel, also fresh and unopened, lying on his lap. Maybe he'll be on the far side of the Hudson and riding through Fort Lee, deep into Chapter One and nipping his second drink before they finally turn off all the machines in Room 577 and his old friend goes out into the darkness and toward whatever waits for us there.

SEVEN

"577," Eddie said.

"Nineteen," Jake said.

"Beg pardon?" Callahan asked again.

"Five, seven, and seven," Susannah said. "Add them, you get nineteen."

"Does that mean something?"

"Put them all together, they spell mother, a word that means the world to me," Eddie said with a sentimental smile.

Susannah ignored him. "We don't know," she said. "You didn't leave New York, did you? If you had, you'd have never gotten that." She pointed to the scar on his forehead.

"Oh, I left," Callahan said. "Just not quite as soon as I intended. My intention when I left the hospital really was to go back down to Port Authority and buy a ticket on the Forty bus."

"What's that?" Jake asked.

"Hobo-speak for the farthest you can go. If you buy a ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska, you're riding on the Forty bus."

"Over here, it'd be Bus Nineteen," Eddie said.

"As I was walking, I got thinking about all the old times. Some of them were funny, like when a bunch of the guys at Home put on a circus show. Some of them were scary, like one night just before dinner when one guy says to this other one, 'Stop picking your nose, Jeffy, it's making me sick' and Jeffy goes 'Why don't you pick this, homeboy,' and he pulls out this giant spring-blade knife and before any of us can move or even figure out what's happening, Jeffy cuts the other guy's throat. Lupe's screaming and I'm yelling Jesus! Holy Jesus!' and the blood is spraying everywhere because he got the guy's carotid-or maybe it was the jugular-and then Rowan comes running out of the bathroom holding his pants up with one hand and a roll of toilet paper in the other, and do you know what he did?"

"Used the paper," Susannah said.

Callahan grinned. It made him a younger man. "Yer-bugger, he did. Slapped the whole roll right against the place where the blood was spurting and yelled for Lupe to call 211, which got you an ambulance in those days. And I'm standing there, watching that white toilet paper turn red, working its way in toward the cardboard core. Rowan said 'Just think of it as the world's biggest shaving cut' and we started laughing. We laughed until the tears came out of our eyes.

"I was running through a lot of old times, do ya. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I remember-vaguely-stopping in at a Smiler's Market and getting a couple of cans of Bud in a paper sack. I drank one of them and kept on walking. I wasn't thinking about where I was going-not in my conscious mind, at least-but my feet must have had a mind of their own, because all at once I looked around and I was in front of this place where we used to go to supper sometimes if we were-as they say-in funds. It was on Second and Fifty-second."

"Chew Chew Mama's," Jake said.

Callahan stared at him with real amazement, then looked at Roland. "Gunslinger, you boys are starting to scare me a little."

Roland only twirled his fingers in his old gesture: Keep going, partner.

"I decided to go in and get a hamburger for old times' sake," Callahan said. "And while I was eating the burger, I decided I didn't want to leave New York without at least looking into Home through the front window. I could stand across the street, like the times when I swung by there after Lupe died. Why not? I'd never been bothered there before. Not by the vampires, not by the low men, either." He looked at them. "I can't tell you if I really believed that, or if it was some kind of elaborate, suicidal mind-game. I can recapture a lot of what I felt that night, what I said and how I thought, but not that.

"In any case, I never got to Home. I paid up and I went walking down Second Avenue. Home was at First and Forty-seventh, but I didn't want to walk directly in front of it So I decided to go down to First and Forty-sixth and cross over there."

"Why not Forty-eighth?" Eddie asked him quietly. "You could have turned down Forty-eighth, that would have been quicker. Saved you doubling back a block."

Callahan considered the question, then shook his head. "If there was a reason, I don't remember."

"There was a reason," Susannah said. "You wanted to walk past the vacant lot."

"Why would I-"

"For the same reason people want to walk past a bakery when the doughnuts are coming out of the oven," Eddie said. "Some things are just nice, that's all."

Callahan received this doubtfully, then shrugged. "If you say so."

"I do, sai."

"In any case, I was walking along, sipping my other beer. I was almost at Second and Forty-sixth when-"

"What was there?" Jake asked eagerly. "What was on that corner in 1981?"

"I don't…" Callahan began, and then he stopped. "A fence," he said. "Quite a high one. Ten, maybe twelve feet."

"Not the one we climbed over," Eddie said to Roland. "Not unless it grew five feet on its own."

"There was a picture on it," Callahan said. "I do remember that. Some sort of street mural, but I couldn't see what it was, because the street-lights on the corner were out. And all at once it hit me that wasn't right. All at once an alarm started going off in my head. Sounded a lot like the one that brought all the people into Rowan's room at the hospital, if you want to know the truth. All at once I couldn't believe I was where I was. It was nuts. But at the same time I'm thinking…"

EIGHT

At the same time he's thinking lt's all right, just a few lights out is all it is, if there were vampires you'd see them and if there were low men you'd hear the chimes and smell rancid onions and hot metal. All the same he decides to vacate this area, and immediately. Chimes or no chimes, every nerve in his body is suddenly out on his skin, sparking and sizzling.

He turns and there are two men right behind him. There is a space of seconds when they are so surprised by his abrupt change of direction that he probably could have darted between them like an aging running back and gone sprinting back up Second Avenue. But he is surprised, too, and for a further space of seconds the three of them only stand there, staring.

There's a big Hitler Brother and a little Hitler Brother. The little one is no more than five-two. He's wearing a loose chambray shirt over black slacks. On his head is a baseball cap turned around backwards. His eyes are as black as drops of tar and his complexion is bad. Callahan immediately thinks of him as Lennie. The big one is maybe six-feet-six, wearing a Yankees sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. He's got a sandy mustache. He's wearing a fanny-pack, only around in front so it's actually a belly-pack. Callahan names this one George.

Callahan turns around, planning to flee down Second Avenue if he's got the light or if it looks like he can beat the traffic. If that's impossible, he'll go down Forty-sixth to the U.N. Plaza Hotel and duck into their lob -

The big one, George, grabs him by the shirt and yanks him back by his collar. The collar rips, but unfortunately not enough to set him free.

"No you don't doc, " the little one says. "No you don't. " Then bustles forward, quick as an insect, and before Callahan's clear on what's happening, Lennie has reached between his legs, seized his testicles, and squeezed them violently together. The pain is immediate and enormous, a swelling sickness like liquid lead.

"Like-at, niggah-lovvah?" Lennie asks him in a tone that seems to convey genuine concern, that seems to say "We want this to mean as much to you as it does to us." Then he yanks Callahan's testicles forward and the pain trebles. Enormous rusty saw-teeth sink into Callahan's belly and he thinks, He'll rip them off, he's already turned them to jelly and now he's going to rip them right off, there's nothing holding them on but a little loose skin and he's going to-

He begins to scream and George clamps a hand over his mouth. "Quit it!" he snarls at his partner. "We're on the fucking street, did you forget that?"

Even while the pain is eating him alive, Callahan is mulling the situation's queerly inverted quality: George is the Hitler Brother in charge, not Lennie. George is the smart Hitler Brother. It's certainly not the way Steinbeck would have written it.

Then, from his right, a humming sound arises. At first he thinks it's the chimes, but the humming is sweet. It's strong, as well. George and Lennie feel it. And they don't like it.

"Whazzat? " Lennie asks. "Did you hear sumpun?"

"I don't know. Let's get him back to the place. And keep your hands off his balls. Later you can yank em all you want, but for now just help me."

One on either side of him, and all at once he is being propelled back up Second Avenue. The high board fence runs past on their right. That sweet, powerful humming sound is coming from behind it. If I could get over that fence, I'd be all right, Callahan thinks. There's something in there, something powerful and good. They wouldn't dare go near it.

Perhaps this is so, but he doubts he could scramble over a board fence ten feet high even if his balls weren't blasting out enormous bursts of their own painful Morse Code, even if he couldn't feel them swelling in his underwear. All at once his head lolls forward and he vomits a hot load of half-digested food down the front of his shirt and pants. He can feel it soaking through to his skin, warm as piss.

Two young couples, obviously together, are headed the other way. The young men are big, they could probably mop up the street with Lennie and perhaps even give George a run for his money if they ganged up on him, but right now they are looking disgusted and clearly want nothing more than to get their dates out of Callahan's general vicinity as quickly as they possibly can.

"He just had a little too much to drink," George says, smiling sympathetically, "and then whoopsy-daisy. Happens to the best of us from time to time."

They're the Hitler Brothers! Callahan tries to scream. These guys are the Hitler Brothers! They killed my friend and now they're going to kill me! Get the police! But of course nothing comes out, in nightmares like this it never does, and soon the couples are headed the other way. George and Lennie continue to move Callahan briskly along the block of Second Avenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh. His feet are barely touching the concrete. His Chew Chew Mama Swissburger is now steaming on his shirt. Oh boy, he can even smell the mustard he put on it.

"Lemme see his hand, " George says as they near the next intersection, and when Lennie grabs Callahan's left hand, Rowan says, "No, dipstick, the other one."

Lennie holds out Callahan's right hand. Callahan couldn't stop him if he tried. His lower belly has been filled with hot, wet cement. His stomach, meanwhile, seems to be quivering at the back of his throat like a small, frightened animal.

George looks at the scar on Callahan's right hand and nods. "Yuh, it's him, all right. Never hurts to be sure. Come on, let's go, Faddah. Double-time, hup-hup!"

When they get to Forty-seventh, Callahan is swept off the main thoroughfare. Down the hill on the left is a pool of bright white light: Home. He can even see a few slope-shouldered silhouettes, men standing on the corner, talking Program and smoking. I might even know some of them, he thinks confusedly. Hell, probably do.

But they don't go that far. Less than a quarter of the way down the block between Second Avenue and First, George drags Callahan into the doorway of a deserted storefront with a FOR SALE OR LEASE sign in both of its soaped-over windows. Lennie just kind of circles them, like a yapping terrier around a couple of slow-moving cows.

"Gonna fuck you up, niggah-lovvah!" he's chanting. "We done a thousand just like you, gonna do a million before we're through, we can cut down any niggah, even when the niggah's biggah, that's from a song I'm writin, it's a song called 'Kill All Niggah-Lovin Fags,' I'm gonna send it to Merle Haggard when I'm done, he's the best, he's the one told all those hippies to squat n shit in their hats, fuckin Merle's for America, I got a Mustang 380 and I got Hermann Goering's Luger, you know that, niggah-lovvah?"

"Shut up, ya little punkass, " George says, but he speaks with fond absentmindedness, reserving his real attention for finding the key he wants on a fat ring of them and then opening the door of the empty storefront. Callahan thinks, To him Lennie's like the radio that's always playing in an auto repair shop or the kitchen of a fast-food restaurant, he doesn't even hear him anymore, he's just part of the background noise.

"Yeah, Nort," Lennie says, and then goes right on. "Fuckin Goering's fuckin Luger, that's right, and I might blow your fuckin balls off with it, because we know the truth about what niggah-lovvahs like you are doin to this country, right, Nort?"

"Told you, no names," George/Nort says, but he speaks indulgently and Callahan knows why: he'll never be able to give any names to the police, not if things go the way these douchebags plan.

"Sorry Nort but you niggah-lovvahs you fuckin Jewboy intellectuals are the ones fuckin this country up, so I want you to think about that when I pull your fuckin balls right off your fuckin scrote - "

"The balls are the scrote, numbwit," George/Nort says in a weirdly scholarly voice, and then: "Bingo!"

The door opens. George/Nort shoves Callahan through it. The storefront is nothing but a dusty shadowbox smelling of bleach, soap, and starch. Thick wires and pipes stick out of two walls. He can see cleaner squares on the walls where coin-op washing machines and dryers once stood. On the floor is a sign he can just barely read in the dimness: TURTLE BAY WASHATERIA U WASH OR WE WASH EITHER WAY IT ALL COMES KLEEN!

All comes kleen, right, Callahan thinks. He turns toward them and isn't very surprised to see George/Nort pointing a gun at him. It's not Hermann Goering's Luger, looks more to Callahan like the sort of cheap.32 you'd buy for sixty dollars in a bar uptown, but he's sure it would do the job. George/Nort unzips his belly-pack without taking his eyes from Callahan -he's done this before, both of them have, they are old hands, old wolves who have had a good long run for themselves - and pulls out a roll of duct tape. Callahan remembers Lupe's once saying America would collapse in a week without duct tape. "The secret weapon," he called it. George/Nort hands the roll to Lennie, who takes it and scurries forward to Callahan with that same insectile speed.

"Putcha hands behind ya, niggah-reebop, " Lennie says.

Callahan doesn't.

George/Nort waggles the pistol at him. "Do it or I put one in your gut, Faddah. You ain't never felt pain like that, I promise you."

Callahan does it. He has no choice. Lennie darts behind him.

"Put em togetha, niggah-reebop, " Lennie says. "Don 'tchoo know how this is done? Ain'tchoo ever been to the movies'?" He laughs like a loon.

Callahan puts his wrists together. There comes a low snarling sound as Lennie pulls duct-tape off the roll and begins taping Callahan's arms behind his back. He stands taking deep breaths of dust and bleach and the comforting, somehow childlike perfume of fabric softener.

"Who hired you? " he asks George/Nort. "Was it the low men?"

George/Nort doesn't answer, but Callahan thinks he sees his eyes flicker. Outside, traffic passes in bursts. A few pedestrians stroll by. What would happen if he screamed? Well, he supposes he knows the-answer to that, doesn't he? The Bible says the priest and the Levite passed by the wounded man, and heard not his cries, "but a certain Samaritan... had compassion on him." Callahan needs a good Samaritan, but in New York they are in short supply.

"Did they have red eyes, Nort?"

Nort's own eyes flicker again, but the barrel of the gun remains pointed at Callahan's midsection, steady as a rock.

"Did they drive big fancy cars? They did, didn't they? And how much do you think your life and this little shitpoke's life will be worth, once - "

Lennie grabs his balls again, squeezes them, twists them, pulls them down like windowshades. Callahan screams and the world goes gray. The strength runs out of his legs and his knees come totally unbuckled.

"Annnd hee's DOWN!" Lennie cries gleefully. "Mo-Hammerhead A-Lee is DOWN! THE GREAT WHITE HOPE HAS PULLED THE TRIGGAH ON THAT LOUDMOUTH NIG-GAH AND PUT 'IM ON THE CANVAS! I DON'T BE-LEEEEVE IT!" It's a Howard Cosell imitation, and so good that even in his agony Callahan feels like laughing. He hears another wild purring sound and now it's his ankles that are being taped together.

George/Nort brings a knapsack over from the corner. He opens it and rummages out a Polaroid One-Shot. He bends over Callahan and suddenly the world goes dazzle-bright. In the immediate aftermath, Callahan can see nothing but phantom shapes behind a hanging blue ball at the center of his vision. From it comes George/Nort's voice.

"Remind me to get another one, after. They wanted both."

"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

Whoever they are, they have a searchlight. It fills the abandoned Washateria with a glare brighter than the flash of the cheapie Polaroid, and unlike the Polaroid, it's constant. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill cover their eyes. Callahan would cover his, if his arms weren't duct-taped behind him.

"Nort, drop the gun! Bill, drop the scalpel!" The voice coming from the huge light is scary because it's scared. It's the voice of someone who might do damn near anything. "I'm gonna count to five and then I'm gonna shoot the both of yez, which is what'chez deserve. "And then the voice behind the light begins to count not slowly and portentously but with alarming speed. "Onetwothreefour -"It's as if the owner of the voice wants to shoot, wants to hurry tip and get the bullshit formality over with. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill have no time to consider their options. They throw down the pistol and the scalpel and the pistol goes off when it hits the dusty lino, a loud BANG like a kid's toy pistol that's been loaded with double caps. Callahan has no idea where the bullet goes. Maybe even into him. Would he even feel it if it did? Doubtful.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" Lennie/Bill shrieks. "We ain't, we ain't we ain't - "Ain't what? Lennie/Bill doesn't seem to know.

"Hands up!" It's a different voice, but also coming from behind the sun-gun dazzle of the light. "Reach for the sky! Right now, you momzers!"

Their hands shoot up.

"Nah, belay that," says the first one. They may be great guys, Callahan's certainly willing to put them on his Christmas card list, but it's clear they've never done anything like this before. "Shoes off! Pants off! Now! Right now! "

"What the fuck - " George/Nort begins. "Are you guys the cops? If you're the cops, you gotta give us our rights, ourfuckin Miranda - "

From behind the glaring light, a gun goes off. Callahan sees an orange flash of fire. Its probably a pistol, but it is to the Hitler Brothers' modest barroom.32 as a hawk is to a hummingbird. The crash is gigantic, immediately followed by a crunch of plaster and a puff of stale dust. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill both scream. Callahan thinks one of his rescuers -probably the one who didn't shoot -also screams.

"Shoes off and pants off! Now! Now! You better have em off before I get to thirty, or you're dead. Onetwothreefourfi -"

Again, the speed of the count leaves no time for consideration, let alone remonstrance. George/Nort starts to sit down and Voice Number Two says: "Sit down and we'll kill you. "

And so the Hitler Brothers stagger around the knapsack, the Polaroid, the gun, and the flashlight like spastic cranes, pulling off their footgear while Voice Number One runs his suicidally rapid count. The shoes come off and the pants go down. George is a boxers guy while Lennie favors briefs of the pee-stained variety. There is no sign of Lennie's hardon; Lennie's hardon has decided to take the rest of the night off.

"Now get out," Voice Number One says.

George faces into the light. His Yankees sweatshirt hangs down over his underwear shorts, which billow almost to his knees. He's still wearing his fanny-pack. His calves are heavily muscled, but they are trembling. And George's face is long with sudden dismayed realization.

"Listen, you guys, " he says, "if we go out of here without finishing this guy, they'll kill us. These are very bad - "

"If you schmucks aren't out of here by the time I get to ten, " says Voice Number One, "I'll kill you myself."

To which Voice Number Two adds, with a kind of hysterical contempt: "Gai cocknif en yom, you cowardly motherfuckers! Stay, get shot, who cares?"

Later, after repeating this phrase to a dozen Jews who only shake their heads in bewilderment, Callahan will happen on an elderly fellow in Topeka who translates gai cocknif en yom for him. It means go shit in the ocean.

Voice Number One starts reeling them off again: "Onetwothree-four-"

George/Nort and Lennie/Bill exchange a cartoon look of indecision, then bolt for the door in their underwear. The big searchlight turns to follow them. They are out; they are gone.

"Follow, " Voice Number One says gruffly to his partner. "If they get the idea to turn back - "

"Yeahyeah, " says Voice Number Two, and he's gone.

The brilliant light clicks off. "Turn over on your stomach," says Voice Number One.

Callahan tries to tell him he doesn't think he can, that his balls now feel roughly the size of teapots, but all that comes from his mouth is mush, because of his broken jaw. He compromises by rolling over on his left side as far as he can.

"Hold still," says Voice Number One. "I don't want to cut you." It's not the voice of a man who does stuff like this for a living. Even in his current state, Callahan can tell that. The guy's breathing in rapid wheezes that sometimes catch in an alarming way and then start up again. Callahan wants to thank him. It's one thing to save a stranger if you're a cop or a fireman or a lifeguard, he supposes. Quite another when you're just an ordinary member of the greater public. And that's what his rescuer is, he thinks, both his rescuers, although how they came so well prepared he doesn't know. How could they know the Hitler Brothers ' names? And exactly where were they waiting? Did they come in from the street, or were they in the abandoned laundrymat the whole time? Other stuff Callahan doesn't know. And doesn't really care. Because someone saved, someone saved, someone saved his life tonight, and that's the big thing, the only thing that matters. George and Lennie almost had their hooks in him, din't they, dear, but the cavalry came at the last minute, just like in a John Wayne movie.

What Callahan wants to do is thank this guy. Where Callahan wants to be is safe in an ambulance and on his way to the hospital before the punks blindside the owner of Voice Number Two outside, or the owner of Voice Number One has an excitement-induced heart attack. He tries and more mush comes out of his mouth. Drunkspeak, what Rowan used to call gubbish. It sounds like fann-ou.

His hands are cut free, then his feet. The guy doesn't have a heart attack. Callahan rolls over onto his back again, and sees a pudgy white hand holding the scalpel. On the third finger is a signet ring. It shows an open book. Below it are the words Ex Libris. Then the searchlight goes on again and Callahan raises an arm over his eyes. "Christ, man, why areyou doing that?"It comes out Cry-mah, I-oo oonnat, but the owner of Voice Number One seems to understand.

"I should think that would be obvious, my wounded friend, " he says. "Should we meet again, I'd like it to be for the first time. If we pass on the street, I would as soon go unrecognized. Safer that way. "

Gritting footsteps. The light is backing away.

"We're going to call an ambulance from the pay phone across the street-"

"No! Don't do that! What if they come back?" In his quite genuine terror, these words come out with perfect clarity.

"We'll be watching," says Voice Number One. The wheeze is fading now. The guy's getting himself back under control. Good for him. "I think it is possible that they'll come back, the big one was really quite distressed, but if the Chinese are correct, I'm now responsible for your life. It's a responsibility I intend to live up to. Should they reappear, I'll throw a bullet at them. Not over their heads, either. " The shape pauses. He looks like a fairly big man himself. Got a gut on him, that much is for sure. "Those were the Hitler Brothers, my friend. Do you know who I'm talking about?"

"Yes, " Callahan whispers. "And you won't tell me who you are? "

"Better you not know," says Mr. Ex Libris.

"Do you know who I am?"

A pause. Gritting steps. Mr. Ex Libris is now standing in the doorway of the abandoned laundrymat. "No, " he says. Then, "A priest. It doesn't matter."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Wait for the ambulance," says Voice Number One. "Don't try to move on your own. You've lost a lot of blood, and you may have internal injuries."

Then he's gone. Callahan lies on the floor, smelling bleach and detergent and sweet departed fabric softener. U wash or we wash, he thinks, either way it all comes kleen. His testicles throb and swell. His jaw throbs and there's swelling there, too. He can feel his whole face tightening as the flesh puffs up. He lies there and waits for the ambulance and life or the return of the Hitler Brothers and death. For the lady or the tiger. For Diana's treasure or the deadly biter-snake. And some interminable, uncountable time later, red pulses of light wash across the dusty floor and he knows this time it's the lady. This time it's the treasure.

This time it's life.

ELEVEN

"And that," Callahan said, "is how I ended up in Room 577 of that same hospital that same night."

Susannah looked at him, wide-eyed. "Are you serious?"

"Serious as a heart attack," he said. "Rowan Magruder died, I got the living shit beaten out of me, and they slammed me back into the same bed. They must have had just about enough time to re-make it, and until the lady came with the morphine-cart and put me out, I lay there wondering if maybe Magruder's sister might not come back and finish what the Hitler Brothers had started. But why should such things surprise you? There are dozens of these odd crossings in both our stories, do ya. Have you not thought about the coincidence of Calla Bryn Sturgis and my own last name, for instance?"

"Sure we have," Eddie said.

"What happened next?" Roland asked.

Callahan grinned, and when he did, the gunslinger realized the two sides of the man's face didn't quite line up. He'd been jaw-broke, all right. "The storyteller's favorite question, Roland, but I think what I need to do now is speed my tale up a bit, or we'll be here all night. The important thing, the part you really want to hear, is the end part, anyway."

Well, you may think so, Roland mused, and wouldn't have been surprised to know all three of his friends were harboring versions of the same thought.

"I was in the hospital for a week. When they let me out, they sent me to a welfare rehab in Queens. The first place they offered me was in Manhattan and a lot closer, but it was associated with Home-we sent people there sometimes. I was afraid that if I went there, I might get another visit from the Hitler Brothers."

"And did you?" Susannah asked.

"No. The day I visited Rowan in Room 577 of Riverside Hospital and then ended up there myself was May 19th, 1981," Callahan said. "I went out to Queens in the back of a van with three or four other walking-wounded guys on May 25th. I'm going to say it was about six days after that, just before I checked out and hit the road again, that I saw the story in the Post. It was in the front of the paper, but not on the front page, TWO MEN FOUND SHOT TO DEATH IN CONEY ISLAND, the headline said. COPS SAY 'IT LOOKS LIKE A MOB JOB.' That was because the faces and hands had been burned with acid. Nevertheless, the cops ID'd both of them: Norton Randolph and William Garton, both of Brooklyn. There were photos. Mug shots; both of them had long records. They were my guys, all right. George and Lennie."

"You think the low men got them, don't you? "Jake asked.

"Yes. Payback's a bitch."

"Did the papers ever ID them as the Hitler Brothers?" Eddie asked. "Because, man, we were still scarin each other with those guys when I came along."

"There was some speculation about that possibility in the tabloids," Callahan said, "and I'll bet that in their hearts the reporters who covered the Hitler Brothers murders and mutilations knew it was Randolph and Garton-there was nothing afterward but a few halfhearted copycat cuttings-but no one in the tabloid press wants to kill the bogeyman, because the bogeyman sells papers."

"Man," Eddie said. "You have been to the wars."

"You haven't heard the last act yet," Callahan said. "It's a dilly."

Roland made the twirling go-on gesture, but it didn't look urgent. He'd rolled himself a smoke and looked about as content as his three companions had ever seen him. Only Oy, sleeping at Jake's feet, looked more at peace with himself.

"I looked for my footbridge when I left New York for the second time, riding across the GWB with my paperback and my bottle," Callahan said, "but my footbridge was gone. Over the next couple of months I saw occasional flashes of the highways in hiding-and I remember getting a ten-dollar bill with Chadbourne on it a couple of times-but mostly they were gone. I saw a lot of Type Three Vampires and remember thinking that they were spreading. But I did nothing about them. I seemed to have lost the urge, the way Thomas Hardy lost the urge to write novels and Thomas Hart Benton lost the urge to paint his murals. 'Just mosquitoes,' I'd think. 'Let them go.' My job was getting into some town, finding the nearest Brawny Man or ManPower or Job Guy, and also finding a bar where I felt comfortable. I favored places that looked like the Americano or the Blarney Stone in New York."

"You liked a little steam-table with your booze, in other words," Eddie said.

"That's right," Callahan said, looking at Eddie as one does at a kindred spirit. "Do ya! And I'd protect those places until it was time to move on. By which I mean I'd get tipsy in my favorite neighborhood bar, then finish up the evening-the crawling, screaming, puking-down-the-front-of-your-shirt part-somewhere else. Alfresco, usually."

Jake began, "What-"

"Means he got drunk outdoors, sug," Susannah told him. She ruffled his hair, then winced and put the hand on her own midsection, instead.

"All right, sai?" Rosalita asked.

"Yes, but if you had somethin with bubbles in it, I surely would drink it."

Rosalita rose, tapping Callahan on the shoulder as she did so. "Go on, Pere, or it'll be two in the morning and the cats tuning up in the badlands before you're done."

"All right," he said. "I drank, that's what it comes down to. I drank every night and raved to anyone who'd listen about Lupe and Rowan and Rowena and the black man who picked me up in Issaquena County and Ruta, who really might have been full of fun but. who sure wasn't a Siamese cat. And finally I'd pass out.

"This went on until I got to Topeka. Late winter of 1982. That was where I hit my bottom. Do you folks know what that means, to hit a bottom?"

There was a long pause, and then they nodded. Jake was thinking of Ms. Avery's English class, and his Final Essay. Susannah was recalling Oxford Mississippi, Eddie the beach by the Western Sea, leaning over the man who had become his dinh, meaning to cut his throat because Roland wouldn't let him go through one of those magic doors and score a little H.

"For me, the bottom came in a jail cell," Callahan said. "It was early morning, and I was actually relatively sober. Also, it was no drunk tank but a cell with a blanket on the cot and an actual seat on the toilet. Compared to some of the places I'd been in, I was farting through satin. The only bothersome things were the name guy… and that song."

TWELVE

The light falling through the cell's small chickenwire-reinforced window is gray, which consequently makes his skin gray. Also his hands are dirty and covered with scratches. The crud under some of his nails is black (dirt) and under some it's maroon (dried blood). He vaguely remembers tussling with someone who kept calling him sir, so he guesses that he might be here on the ever-popular Penal Code 48, Assaulting an Officer. All he wanted -Callahan has a slightly clearer memory of this - was to try on the kid's cap, which was very spiffy. He remembers trying to tell the young cop (from the look of this one, pretty soon they'll be hiring kids who aren't even toilet-trained as police officers, at least in Topeka) that he's always on the lookout for funky new lids, he always wears a cap because he's got the Mark of Cain on his forehead. "Looksh like a crossh," he remembers saying (or trying to say), "but it'sh rilly the Marga-Gain. " Which, in his cups, is about as close as he can come to saying Mark of Cain.

Was really drunk last night, but he doesn't feel so bad as he sits here on the bunk, rubbing a hand through his crazy hair. Mouth doesn't taste so good -sort of like Ruta the Siamese Cat took a dump in it, if you wanted the truth -but his head isn't aching too badly. If only the voices would shut up!Down the hall someone's droning out a seemingly endless list of names in alphabetical order. Closer by, someone is singing his least favorite song: "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my li-ife tonight…"

"Nailor!… Naughton!… O'Connor!… O'Shaugnessy!… Oskowski!… Osmer!"

He is just beginning to realize that he is the one singing when the trembling begins in his calves. It works its way up to his knees, then to his thighs, deepening and strengthening as it comes. He can see the big muscles in his legs popping up and down like pistons. What is happening to him?

"Palmer!… Palmgren!"

The trembling hits his crotch and lower belly. His underwear shorts darken as he sprays them with piss. At the same time his feet start snapping out into the air, as if he's trying to punt invisible footballs with both of them at the same time. I'm seizing, he thinks. This is probably it. I'm probably going out. Bye-bye blackbird. He tries to call for help and nothing conies out of his mouth but a low chugging sound. His arms begin to fly up and down. Now he's punting invisible footballs with his feet while his arms shout hallelujah, and the guy down the hall is going to go on until the end of the century, maybe until the next Ice Age.

"Peschier!… Peters!… Pike!… Polovik!… Ranee!… Rancourt!"

Callahan's upper body begins to snap back and forth. Each time it snaps forward he comes closer to losing his balance and falling on the floor. His hands fly up. His feet fly out. There is a sudden spreading pancake of warmth on his ass and he realizes he has just shot the chocolate.

"Ricupero!… Robillard!… Rossi!"

He snaps backward, all the way to the whitewashed concrete wall where someone has scrawled BANGO SKANK and Just had my 19th Nervous Breakdown! Then forward, this time with the full-body enthusiasm of a Muslim at morning prayers. For a moment he's staring at the concrete floor from between his naked knees and then he overbalances and goes down on his face. His jaw, which has somehow healed in spite of the nightly binges, rebreaks in three of the original four places. But, just to bring things back into perfect balance -four's the magic number -this time his nose breaks, too. He lies jerking on the floor like a hooked fish, his body fingerpaintingin the blood, shit, and piss.Yeah, I'm going out, he thinks.

"Ryan!… Sannelli!… Scher!"

But gradually the extravagant grand mal jerks of his body moderate to petit mal, and then to little more than twitches. He thinks someone must come, but no one does, not at first. The twitches fade away and now he's just Donald Frank Callahan, lying on the floor of a jail cell in Topeka, Kansas, where somewhere farther down the hall a man continues working his way through the alphabet.

"Seavey!… Sharrow!… Shatzer!"

Suddenly, for the first time in months, he thinks of how the cavalry came when the Hitler Brothers were getting ready to carve him up there in that deserted laundrymat on East Forty-seventh. And they were really going to do it -the next day or the day after, someone would have found one Donald Frank Callahan, dead as the fabled mackerel and probably wearing his balls for earrings. But then the cavalry came and -

That was no cavalry, he thinks as he lies on the floor, his face swelling up again, meet the new face, same as the old face. That was Voice Number One and Voice Number Two. Only that isn't right, either. That was two men, middle-aged at the least, probably getting a little on the old side. That was Mr. Ex Libris and Mr. Gai Cock-nifEn Yom, whatever that means. Both of them scared to death. And right to be scared. The Hitler Brothers might not have done a thousand as Lennie had boasted, but they had done plenty and killed some of them, they were a couple of human copperheads, and yes, Mr. Ex Libris and Mr. Gai Cocknif were absolutely right to be scared. It had turned out all right for them, but it might not have done. And if George and Lennie had turned the tables, what then? Why, instead of finding one dead man in the Turtle Bay Washateria, whoever happened in there first would have found three. That would have made the frontpage of the Post for sure! So those guys had risked their lives, and here was what they'd risked it for, six or eight months on down the line: a dirty emaciated busted up asshole drunk, his underwear drenched with piss on one side and full of shit on the other. A daily drinker and a nightly drunk.

And that is when it happens. Down the hall, the steady slow-chanting voice has reached Sprang, Steward, and Sudby; in this cell up the hall, a man lying on a dirty floor in the long light of dawn finally reaches his bottom, which is, by definition, that point from which you can descend no lower unless you find a shovel and actually start to dig.

Lying as he is, staring directly along the floor, the dust-bunnies look like ghostly groves of trees and the lumps of dirt look like the hills in some sterile mining country. He thinks: What is it, February? February of 1982? Something like that. Well, I tell you what. I'll give myself one year to try and clean up my act. One year to do something-anything-to justify the risk those two guys took. If I can do something, I'll go on. But if I'm still drinking in February of 1983, I'll kill myself.

Down the corridor, the chanting voice has finally reached Targenfield.

THIRTEEN

Callahan was silent for a moment. He sipped at his coffee, grimaced, and poured himself a knock of sweet cider, instead.

"I knew how the climb back starts," he said. "I'd taken enough low-bottom drunks to enough AA meetings on the East Side, God knows. So when they let me out, I found AA in Topeka and started going every day. I never looked ahead, never looked behind. 'The past is history, the future's a mystery,' they say. Only this time, instead of sitting in the back of the room and saying nothing, I forced myself to go right down front, and during the introductions I'd say, 'I'm Don C. and I don't want to drink anymore.' I did want to, every day I wanted to, but in AA they have sayings for everything, and one of them is 'Fake it till you make it.' And little by little, I did make it. I woke up one day in the fall of 1982 and realized I really didn't want to drink anymore. The compulsion, as they say, had been lifted.

"I moved on. You're not supposed to make any big changes in the first year of sobriety, but one day when I was in Gage Park-the Reinisch Rose Garden, actually…" He trailed off, looking at them. "What? Do you know it? Don't tell me you know the Reinisch!"

"We've been there," Susannah said quietly. "Seen the toy train."

"That," Callahan said, "is amazing."

"It's nineteen o'clock and all the birds are singing," Eddie said. He wasn't smiling.

"Anyway, the Rose Garden was where I spotted the first poster. HAVE YOU SEEN CALLAHAN, OUR IRISH SETTER. SCAR ON PAW, SCAR ON FOREHEAD. GENEROUS REWARD. Et cetera, et cetera. They'd finally gotten the name right. I decided it was time to move on while I still could. So I went to Detroit, and there I found a place called The Lighthouse Shelter. It was a wet shelter. It was, in fact, Home without Rowan Magruder. They were doing good work there, but they were barely staggering along. I signed on. And that's where I was in December of 1983, when it happened."

"When what happened?" Susannah asked.

It was Jake Chambers who answered. He knew, was perhaps the only one of them who could know. It had happened to him, too, after all.

"That was when you died," Jake said.

"Yes, that's right," Callahan said. He showed no surprise at all. They might have been discussing rice, or the possibility that Andy ran on ant-nomics. "That's when I died. Roland, I wonder if you'd roll me a cigarette? I seem to need something a little stronger than apple cider."

FOURTEEN

There's an old tradition at Lighthouse, one that goes back… jeez, must be all of four years (The Lighthouse Shelter has only been in existence for five). It's Thanksgiving in the gym of Holy Name High School on West Congress Street. A bunch of the drunks decorate the place with orange and brown crepe paper, cardboard turkeys, plastic fruit and vegetables. American reap-charms, in other words. You had to have at least two weeks' continuous sobriety to get on this detail. Also -this is something Ward Huckman, Al McCowan, and Don Callahan have agreed to among themselves -no wet brains are allowed on Decoration Detail, no matter how long they've been sober.

On Turkey Day, nearly a hundred of Detroit's finest alkies, hypes, and half-crazed homeless gather at Holy Name for a wonderful dinner of turkey, taters, and all the trimmings. They are seated at a dozen long tables in the center of the basketball court (the legs of the tables are protected by swags of felt, and the diners eat in their stocking feet). Before they dig in -this is part of the custom -they go swiftly around the tables ("Take more than ten seconds, boys, and I'm cutting you off, " Al has warned) and everyone says one thing they're grateful for. Because it's Thanksgiving, yes, but also because one of the principal tenets of the AA program is that a grateful alcoholic doesn't get drunk and a grateful addict doesn't get stoned.

It goes fast, and because Callahan is just sitting there, not thinking of anything in particular, when it's his turn he almost blurts out something that could have caused him trouble. At the very least, he would have been tabbed as a guy with a bizarre sense of humor.

"I'm grateful I haven't…" he begins, then realizes what he's about to say, and bites it back. They're looking at him expectantly, stubble-faced men and pale, doughy women with limp hair, all carrying about them the dirty-breeze subway station aroma that's the smell of the streets. Some already call him Faddah, and how do they know? How could they know? And how would they feel if they knew what a chill it gives him to hear that? How it makes him remember the Hitler Brothers and the sweet, childish smell of fabric softener? But they're looking at him. "The clients. " Ward and Al are looking at him, too.

"I'm grateful I haven't had a drink or a drug today," he says, falling back on the old faithful, there's always that to be grateful for. They murmur their approval, the man next to Callahan says he's grateful his sister's going to let him come for Christmas, and no one knows how close Callahan has come to saying "I'm grateful I haven't seen any Type Three vampires or lost-pet posters lately."

He thinks it's because God has taken him back, at least on a trial basis, and the power of Barlow's bite has finally been cancelled. He thinks he's lost the cursed gift of seeing, in other words. He doesn't test this by trying to go into a church, however -the gym of Holy Name High is close enough for him, thanks. It never occurs to him -at least in his conscious mind -that they want to make sure the net's all the way around him this time. They may be slow learners, Callahan will eventually come to realize, but they're not no learners.

Then, in early December, Ward Huckman receives a dream letter. "Christmas done come early, Don! Wait'll you see this, Al!" Waving the letter triumphantly. "Play our cards right, and boys, our worries about next year are over!"

Al McCowan takes the letter, and as he reads it his expression of conscious, careful reserve begins to melt. By the time he hands the letter to Don, he's grinning from ear to ear.

The letter is from a corporation with offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It's on rag bond so luxurious you want to cut it into a shirt and wear it next to your skin. It says that the corporation is planning to give away twenty million dollars to twenty charitable organizations across the United States, a million each. It says that the corporation must do this before the end of the calendar year 1983. Potential recipients include food pantries, homeless shelters, two clinics for the indigent, and a prototype AIDS testing program in Spokane. One of the shelters is Lighthouse. The signature is Richard P. Sayre, Executive Vice President, Detroit. It all looks on the up-and-up, and the fact that all three of them have been invited to the corporation's Detroit offices to discuss this gift also seems on the up-and-up. The date of the meeting -what will be the date of Donald Callahan's death -is December 19th, 1983. A Monday.

The name on the letterhead is THE SOBRA CORPORATION.

FIFTEEN

"You went," Roland said.

"We all went," Callahan said. "If the invitation had been for me alone, I never would've. But, since they were asking for all three of us… and wanted to give us a million dollars… do you have any idea what a million bucks would have meant to a fly-by-night outfit like Home or Lighthouse? Especially during the Reagan years?"

Susannah gave a start at this. Eddie shot her a nakedly triumphant look. Callahan clearly wanted to ask the reason for this byplay, but Roland was twirling his finger in that hurry-up gesture again, and now it really was getting late. Pressing on for midnight. Not that any of Roland's ka-tet looked sleepy; they were tightly focused on the Pere, marking every word.

"Here is what I've come to believe," Callahan said, leaning forward. "There is a loose league of association between the vampires and the low men. I think if you traced it back, you'd find the roots of their association in the dark land. In Thunderclap."

"I've no doubt," Roland said. His blue eyes flashed out of his pale and tired face.

"The vampires-those who aren't Type Ones-are stupid. The low men are smarter, but not by a whole lot. Otherwise I never would have been able to escape them for as long as I did. But then-finally-someone else took an interest. An agent of the Crimson King, I should think, whoever or whatever he is. The low men were drawn away from me. So were the vampires. There were no posters during those last months, not that I saw; no chalked messages on the sidewalks of West Fort Street or Jefferson Avenue, either. Someone giving the orders, that's what I think. Someone a good deal smarter. And a million dollars!" He shook his head. A small and bitter smile touched his face. "In the end, that was what blinded me. Nothing but money. 'Oh yes, but it's to do good!' I told myself… and we told each other, of course. 'It'll keep us independent for at least five years! No more going to the Detroit City Council, begging with our hats in our hands!' All true. It didn't occur to me until later that there's another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed."

"What happened?" Eddie asked.

"Why, we kept our appointment," the Pere said. His face wore a rather ghastly smile. "The Tishman Building, 982 Michigan Avenue, one of the finest business addresses in the D. December 19th, 4:20 p.m."

"Odd time for an appointment," Susannah said.

"We thought so, too, but who questions such minor matters with a million dollars at stake? After some discussion, we agreed with Al-or rather Al's mother. According to her, one should show up for important appointments five minutes early, no more and no less. So we walked into the lobby of the Tishman Building at 4:10 p.m., dressed in our best, found Sombra Corporation on the directory board, and went on up to the thirty-third floor."

"Had you checked this corporation out?" Eddie asked.

Callahan looked at him as if to say duh. "According to what we could find in the library, Sombra was a closed corporation-no public stock issue, in other words-that mostly bought other companies. They specialized in high-tech stuff, real estate, and construction. That seemed to be all anyone knew. Assets were a closely guarded secret."

"Incorporated in the U.S.?" Susannah asked.

"No. Nassau, the Bahamas."

Eddie started, remembering his days as a cocaine mule and the sallow thing from whom he had bought his last load of dope. "Been there, done that," he said. "Didn't see anyone from the Sombra Corporation, though."

But did he know that was true? Suppose the sallow thing with the British accent worked for Sombra? Was it so hard to believe that they were involved in the dope trade, along with whatever else they were into? Eddie supposed not. If nothing else, it suggested a tie to Enrico Balazar.

"Anyway, they were there in all the right reference books and yearlies," Callahan said. "Obscure, but there. And rich. I don't know exactly what Sombra is, and I'm at least half-convinced that most of the people we saw in their offices on the thirty-third floor were nothing but extras… stage-dressing… but there probably is an actual Sombra Corporation.

"We took the elevator up there. Beautiful reception area- French Impressionist paintings on the walls, what else?-and a beautiful receptionist to go with it. The kind of woman-say pardon, Susannah-if you're a man, you can almost believe that if you were allowed to touch her breast, you'd live forever."

Eddie burst out laughing, looked sideways at Susannah, and stopped in a hurry.

"It was 4:17. We were invited to sit down. Which we did, feeling nervous as hell. People came and went. Every now and then a door to our left would open and we'd see a floor filled with desks and cubicles. Phones ringing, secretaries flitting hither and yon with files, the sound of a big copier. If it was a setup-and I think it was-it was as elaborate as a Hollywood movie. I was nervous about our appointment with Mr. Sayre, but no more than that. Extraordinary, really. I'd been on the run more or less constantly since leaving 'Salem's Lot eight years previous, and I'd developed a pretty good early-warning system, but it never so much as chirruped that day. I suppose if you could reach him via the Ouija board, John Dillinger would say much the same about his night at the movies with Anna Sage.

"At 4:19, a young man in a striped shirt and tie that looked just oh so Hugo Boss came out and got us. We were whisked down a corridor past some very upscale offices-with an upscale executive beavering away in every one, so far as I could see- and to double doors at the end of the hall. This was marked conference room. Our escort opened the doors. He said, 'God luck, gentlemen.' I remember that very clearly. Not good luck, but god luck. That was when my perimeter alarms started to go off, and by then it was far too late. It happened fast, you see. They didn't…"

SIXTEEN

It happens fast. They have been after Callahanfor a long time now, but they waste little time gloating. The doors slam shut behind them, much too loudly and hard enough to shiver in their frames. Executive assistants who drag down eighteen thousand a year to start with close doors a certain way -with respect for money and power -and this isn't it. This is the way angry drunks and addicts on the jones close doors. Also crazy people, of course. Crazy people are ace doorslammers.

Callahan's alarm systems are fully engaged now, not pinging but howling, and when he looks around the executive conference room, dominated at the far end by a large window giving a terrific view of Lake Michigan, he sees there's good reason for this and has time to think Dear Christ-Mary, mother of God-how could I have been so foolish? He can see thirteen people in the room. Three are low men, and this is his first good look at their heavy, unhealthy-looking faces, red-glinting eyes, and full, womanish lips. All three are smoking. Nine are Type Three vampires. The thirteenth person in the conference room is wearing a loud shirt and clashing tie, low-men attire for certain, but his face has a lean and foxy look, full of intelligence and dark humor. On his brow is a red circle of blood that seems neither to ooze nor to clot.

There is a bitter crackling sound. Callahan wheels and sees Al and Ward drop to the floor. Standing to either side of the door through which they entered are numbers fourteen and fifteen, a low man and a low woman, both of them holding electrical stunners.

"Your friends will be all right, Father Callahan. "

He whirls around again. It's the man with the blood-spot on his forehead. He looks about sixty, but it's hard to tell. He's wearing a garish yellow shirt and a red tie. When his thin lips part in a smile, they reveal teeth that come to points. It's Sayre, Callahan thinks. Sayre, or whoever signed that letter. Whoever thought this little sting up.

"You, however, won't, " he continues.

The low men look at him with a kind of dull avidity: here he is, finally, their lost pooch with the burned paw and the scarred forehead. The vampires are more interested. They almost thrum within their blue auras. And all at once Callahan can hear the chimes. They're faint, somehow damped down, but they're there. Calling him.

Sayre -if that's his name -turns to the vampires. "He's the one," he says in a matter-of-fact tone. "He's killed hundreds of you in a dozen versions of America. My friends" -he gestures to the low men -"were unable to track him down, but of course they seek other, less suspecting prey in the ordinary course of things. In any case, he's here now. Go on, have at him. But don't kill him!"

He turns to Callahan. The hole in his forehead fills and gleams but never drips. It's an eye, Callahan thinks, a bloody eye. What is looking out of it? What is watching, and from where?

Sayre says, "These particular friends of the King all carry the AIDS virus. You surely know what I mean, don't you? We'll let that kill you. It will take you out of the game forever, in this world and all the others. This is no game for a fellow like you, anyway. A false priest like you."

Callahan doesn't hesitate. If he hesitates, he will be lost. It's not AIDS he's afraid of, but of letting them put their filthy lips on him in the first place, to kiss him as the one was kissing Lupe Delgado in the alley. They don't get to win. After all the way he's come, after all the jobs, all the jail cells, after finally getting sober in Kansas, they don't get to win.

He doesn't try to reason with them. There is no palaver. He just sprints down the right side of the conference room's extravagant mahogany table. The man in the yellow shirt, suddenly alarmed, shouts "Get him! Get him!" Hands slap at his jacket -specially bought at Grand River Menswear for this auspicious occasion -but slip off. He has time to think The window won't break, it's made of some tough glass, anti-suicide glass, and it won't break… and he has just time enough to call on God for the first time since Barlow forced him to take of his poisoned blood.

"Help me! Please help me!" Father Callahan cries, and runs shoulder-first into the window. One more hand slaps at his head, tries to tangle itself in his hair, and then it is gone. The window shatters all around him and suddenly he is standing in cold air, surrounded by flurries of snow. He looks down between black shoes which were also specially purchased for this auspicious occasion, and he sees Michigan Avenue, with cars like toys and people like ants.

He has a sense of them -Sayre and the low men and the vampires who were supposed to infect him and take him out of the game forever - clustered at the broken window, staring with disbelief.

He thinks, This does take me out of it forever… doesn't it?

And he thinks, with the wonder of a child: This is the last thought I'll ever have. This is goodbye.

Then he is falling.

SEVENTEEN

Callahan stopped and looked at Jake, almost shyly. "Do you remember it?" He asked. "The actual…" He cleared his throat. "The dying?"

Jake nodded gravely. "You don't?"

"I remember looking at Michigan Avenue from between my new shoes. I remember the sensation of standing there-seeming to, anyway-in the middle of a snow flurry. I remember Sayre behind me, yelling in some other language. Cursing. Words that guttural just about had to be curses. And I remember thinking, He's frightened. That was actually my last thought, that Sayre was frightened. Then there was an interval of darkness. I floated. I could hear the chimes, but they were distant. Then they came closer. As if they were mounted on some engine that was rushing toward me at terrible speed.

"There was light. I saw light in the darkness. I thought I was having the Kubler-Ross death experience, and I went toward it. I didn't care where I came out, as long as it wasn't on Michigan Avenue, all smashed and bleeding, with a crowd standing around me. But I didn't see how that could happen. You don't fall thirty-three stories, then regain consciousness.

"And I wanted to get away from the chimes. They kept getting louder. My eyes started to water. My ears hurt. I was glad I still had eyes and ears, but the chimes made any gratitude I might have felt pretty academic.

"I thought, I have to get into the light, and I lunged for it. I…"

EIGHTEEN

He opens his eyes, but even before he does, he is aware of a smell. It's the smell of hay, but very faint, almost exhausted. A ghost of its former self, you might say. And he? Is he a ghost?

He sits up and looks around. If this is the afterlife, then all the holy books of the world, including the one from which he himself used to preach, are wrong. Because he's not in heaven or hell; he's in a stable. There are white wisps of ancient straw on the floor. There are cracks in the board walls through which brilliant light streams. It's the light he followed out of the darkness, he thinks. And he thinks, It's desert light. Is there any concrete reason to think so? Perhaps. The air is dry when he pulls it into his nostrils. It's like drawing the air of a different planet.

Maybe it is, he thinks. Maybe this is the Planet Afterlife.

The chimes are still there, both sweet and horrible, but now fading… fading… and gone. He hears the faint snuffle of hot wind. Some of it finds its way through the gaps between the boards, and a few bits of straw lift off from the floor, do a tired little dance, then settle back.

Now there is another noise. An arrhythmic thudding noise. Some machine, and not in the best of shape, from the sound. He stands up. It's hot in here, and sweat breaks immediately on his face and hands. He looks down at himself and sees his fine new Grand River Menswear clothes are gone. He is now wearing jeans and a blue chambray shirt, faded thin from many washings. On his feet is a pair of battered boots with rundown heels. They look like they have walked many a thirsty mile. He bends and feels his legs for breaks. There appear to be none. Then his arms. None. He tries snapping his fingers. They do the job easily, making little dry sounds like breaking twigs.

He thinks: Was my whole life a dream? Is this the reality? If so, who am I and what am I doing here?

And from the deeper shadows behind him comes that weary cycling sound: thud-THUD-thud-THUD-thud-THUD.

He turns in that direction, and gasps at what he sees. Standing behind him in the middle of the abandoned stable is a door. It's set into no wall, only stands free. It has hinges, but as far as he can see they connect the door to nothing but air. Hieroglyphs are etched upon it halfway up. He cannot read them. He steps closer, as if that would aid understanding. And in a way it does. Because he sees that the doorknob is made of crystal, and etched upon it is a rose. He has read his Thomas Wolfe: a stone, a rose, an unfound door; a stone, a rose, a door. There's no stone, but perhaps that is the meaning of the hieroglyph.

No, he thinks. No, the word is unfound. Maybe I'm the stone.

He reaches out and touches the crystal knob. As though it were a signal

(a sigul, he thinks)

the thudding machinery ceases. Very faint, very distant -far and wee -he hears the chimes. He tries the knob. It moves in neither direction. There's not even the slightest give. It might as well be set in concrete. When he takes his hand away, the sound of the chimes ceases.

He walks around the door and the door is gone. Walks the rest of the way around and it's back. He makes three slow circles, noting the exact point at which the thickness of the door disappears on one side and reappears on the other. He reverses his course, now going widder-shins. Same deal. What the hell?

He looks at the door for several moments, pondering, then walks deeper into the stable, curious about the machine he heard. There's no pain when he walks, if he just took a long fall his body hasn't yet got the news, but Kee-rist is it ever hot in here!

There are horse stalls, long abandoned. There's a pile of ancient hay, and beside it a neatly folded blanket and what looks like a breadboard. On the board is a single scrap of dried meat. He picks it up, sniffs it, smells salt. Jerky, he thinks, and pops it into his mouth. He's not very worried about being poisoned. How can you poison a man who's already dead?

Chewing, he continues his explorations. At the rear of the stable is a small room like an afterthought. There are a few chinks in the walls of this room, too, enough for him to see a machine squatting on a concrete pad. Everything in the stable whispers of long years and abandonment, but this gadget, which looks sort of like a milking machine, appears brand new. No rust, no dust. He goes closer. There's a chrome pipe jutting from one side. Beneath it is a drain. The steel collar around it looks damp. On top of the machine is a small metal plate. Next to the plate is a red button. Stamped on the plate is this:

The red button is stamped with the word ON. Callahan pushes it. The weary thudding sound resumes, and after a moment water gushes from the chrome pipe. He puts his hands under it. The water is numbingly cold, shocking his overheated skin. He drinks. The water is neither sweet nor sour and he thinks, Such things as taste must be forgotten at great depths. This-

"Hello, Faddah."

Callahan screams in surprise. His hands fly up and for a moment jewels of water sparkle in a dusty sunray falling between two shrunken boards. He wheels around on the eroded heels of his boots. Standing just outside the door of the pump-room is a man in a hooded robe.

Sayre, he thinks. It's Sayre, he's followed me, he came through that damn door-

"Calm down," says the man in the robe. " 'Cool your jets,' as the gunslinger's new friend might say." Confidingly: "His name is Jake, but the housekeeper calls him 'Bama. "And then, in the bright tone of one just struck by a fine idea, he says, "I would show him to you! Both of them! Perhaps it's not too late! Come!" He holds out a hand. The fingers emerging from the robe's sleeve are long and white, somehow unpleasant. Like wax. When Callahan makes no move to come forward, the man in the robe speaks reasonably. "Come. You can't stay here, you know. This is only a way station, and nobody stays here for long. Come. "

"Who are you?"

The man in the robe makes an impatient tsking sound. "No time for all that, Faddah. Name, name, what's in a name, as someone or other said. Shakespeare? Virginia Woolf? Who can remember? Come, and I'll show you a wonder. And I won't touch you; I'll walk ahead of you. See?"

He turns. His robe swirls like the skirt of an evening dress. He walks back into the stable, and after a moment Callahan follows. The pump-room is no good to him, after all; the pump-room is a dead end. Outside the stable, he might be able to run.

Run where?

Well, that's to see, isn't it?

The man in the robe raps on the free-standing door as he passes it. "Knock on wood, Donnie be good!" he says merrily, and as he steps into the brilliant rectangle of light falling through the stable door, Callahan sees he's carrying something in his left hand. It's a box, perhaps a foot long and wide and deep. It looks like it might be made of the same wood as the door. Or perhaps it's a heavier version of that wood. Certainly it's darker, and even closer-grained.

Watching the robed man carefully, meaning to stop if he stops, Callahan follows into the sun. The heat is even stronger once he's in the light, the sort of heat he's felt in Death Valley. And yes, as they step out of the stable he sees that they are in a desert. Off to one side is a ramshackle building that rises from a foundation of crumbling sandstone blocks. It might once have been an inn, he supposes. Or an abandoned set from a Western movie. On the other side is a corral where most of the posts and rails have fallen. Beyond it he sees miles of rocky, stony sand. Nothing else but -

Yes! Yes, there is something! Two somethings! Two tiny moving dots at the far horizon!

"You see them! How excellent your eyes must be, Faddah!"

The man in the robe -it's black, his face within the hood nothing but a pallid suggestion -stands about twenty paces from him. He titters. Callahan cares for the sound no more than for the waxy look of his fingers. It's like the sound of mice scampering over bones. That makes no actual sense, but -

"Who are they?" Callahan asks in a dry voice. "Who are you? Where is this place?"

The man in black sighs theatrically. "So much backstory, so little time," he says. "Call me Walter, if you like. As for this place, it's a way station, just as I told you. A little rest stop between the hoot of your world and the holler of the next. Oh, you thought you were quite the far wanderer, didn't you? Following all those hidden highways of yours? But now, Faddah, you're on a real journey. "

"Stop calling me that!" Callahan shouts. His throat is already dry. The sunny heat seems to be accumulating on top of his head like actual weight.

"Faddah, Faddah, Faddah!" the man in black says. He sounds petulant, but Callahan knows he's laughing inside. He has an idea this man -if he is a man -spends a great deal of time laughing on the inside. "Oh well, no need to be pissy about it, I suppose. I'll callyouDon. Do you like that better?"

The black specks in the distance are wavering now; the rising thermals cause them to levitate, disappear, then reappear again. Soon they'll be gone for good.

"Who are they? " he asks the man in black.

"Folks you'll almost certainly never meet, " the man in black says dreamily. The hood shifts; for a moment Callahan can see the waxy blade of a nose and the curve of an eye, a small cup filled with dark fluid. "They'll die under the mountains. If they don't die under the mountains, there are things in the Western Sea that will eat them alive. Dod-a-chock! "He laughs again. But -

But all at once you don't sound completely sure of yourself, my friend, Callahan thinks.

"If all else fails, " Walter says, "this will kill them." He raises the box. Again, faintly, Callahan hears the unpleasant ripple of the chimes. "And who will bring it to them"? Ka, of course, yet even ka needs a friend, a kai-mai. That would be you."

"I don't understand."

"No," the man in black agrees sadly, "and I don't have time to explain. Like the White Rabbit in Alice, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. They're following me, you see, but I needed to double back and talk to you. Busy-busy-busy! Now I must get ahead of them again -how else will I draw them on? You and I, Don, must be done with our palaver, regrettably short though it has been. Back into the stable with you, amigo. Quick as a bunny!"

"What if I don't want to?" Only there's really no what-if about it. He's never wanted to go anyplace less. Suppose he asks this fellow to let him go and try to catch up with those wavering specks? What if he tells the man in black, "That's where I'm supposed to be, where what you call ka wants me to be "? He guesses he knows. Might as well spit in the ocean.

As if to confirm this, Walter says, "What you want hardly matters. You'll go where the King decrees, and there you will wait. If yon two die on their course -as they almost certainly must -you will live a life of rural serenity in the place to which I send you, and there you too will die, full of years and possibly with a false but undoubtedly pleasing sense of redemption. You'll live on your level of the Tower long after I'm bone-dust on mine. This I promise you, faddah, for I have seen it in the glass, say true! And if they keep coming? If they reach you in the place to which you are going? Why, in that unlikely case you'll aid them in every way you can and kill them by doing so. It's a mind-blower, isn't it? Wouldn't you say it's a mind-blower?"

He begins to walk toward Callahan. Callahan backs toward the stable where the unfound door awaits. He doesn't want to go there, but there's nowhere else. "Get away from me, " he says.

"Nope," says Walter, the man in black. "I can't go for that, no can do." He holds the box out toward Callahan. At the same time he reaches over the top of it and grasps the lid.

"Don't!" Callahan says sharply. Because the man in the black robe mustn't open the box. There's something terrible inside the box, something that would terrify even Barlow, the wily vampire who forced Callahan to drink his blood and then sent him on his way into the prisms of America like a fractious child whose company has become tiresome.

"Keep moving and perhaps I won't have to, " Walter teases.

Callahan backs into the stable's scant shadow. Soon he'll be inside again. No help for it. And he can feel that strange only-there-on-one-side door waiting like a weight. "You're cruel! " he bursts out.

Walter's eyes widen, and for a moment he looks deeply hurt. This may be absurd, but Callahan is looking into the man's deep eyes and feels sure the emotion is nonetheless genuine. And the surety robs him of any last hope that all this might be a dream, or a final brilliant interval before true death. In dreams -his, at least -the bad guys, the scary guys, never have complex emotions.

"I am what ka and the King and the Tower have made me. We all are. We're caught."

Callahan remembers the dream-west through which he traveled: the forgotten silos, the neglected sunsets and long shadows, his own bitter joy as he dragged his trap behind him, singing until the jingle of the very chains that held him became sweet music.

"Iknow, " he says.

"Yes, I see you do. Keep moving. "

Callahan's back in the stable now. Once again he can smell the faint, almost exhausted aroma of old hay. Detroit seems impossible, a hallucination. So do all his memories of America.

"Don't open that thing, " Callahan says, "and I will."

"What an excellent Faddah you are, Faddah. "

"You promised not to call me that."

"Promises are made to be broken, Faddah."

"I don't think you'll be able to kill him," Callahan said.

Walter grimaces. "That's ka's business, not mine."

"Maybe not ka, either. Suppose he's above ka?"

Walter recoils, as if struck. I've blasphemed, Callahan thinks. And with this guy, I've an idea that's no mean feat.

No one's above ka, false priest, " the man in black spits at him. "And the room at the top of the Tower is empty, I know it is."

Although Callahan is not entirely sure what the man is talking about, his response is quick and sure. "You're wrong. There is a God. He waits and sees all from His high place. He - "

Then a great many things happen at exactly the same time. The water pump in the alcove goes on, starting its weary thudding cycle. And Callahan's ass bumps into the heavy, smooth wood of the door. And the man in black thrusts the box forward, opening it as he does so. And his hood falls back, revealing the pallid, snarling face of a human weasel. (It's not Sayre, but upon Walter's forehead like a Hindu caste-mark is the same welling red circle, an open wound that never clots or flows.) And Callahan sees what's inside the box: he sees Black Thirteen crouched on its red velvet like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God's shadow. And Callahan begins to shriek at the sight of it, for he senses its endless power: it may fling him anywhere or to the farthest blind alley of nowhere. And the door clicks open. And even in his panic -or perhaps below his panic -Callahan is able to think Opening the box has opened the door. And he is stumbling backward into some other place. He can hear shrieking voices. One of them is Lupe's, asking Callahan why Callahan let him die. Another belongs to Rowena Magruder and she is telling him this is his other life, this is it, and how does he like it? And his hands come up to cover his ears even as one ancient boot trips over the other and he begins to fall backward, thinking it's Hell the man in black has pushed him into, actual Hell. And when his hands come up, the weasel-faced man thrusts the open box with its terrible glass ball into them. And the ball moves. It rolls like an actual eye in an invisible socket. And Callahan thinks, It's alive, it's the stolen eye of some awful monster from beyond the world, and oh God, oh dear God, it is seeing me.

But he takes the box. It's the last thing in life he wants to do, but he is powerless to stop himself. Close it, you have to close it, he thinks, but he is falling, he has tripped himself (or the robed man's ka has tripped him) and he's falling, twisting around as he goes down. From somewhere below him all the voices of his past are calling to him, reproaching him (his mother wants to know why he allowed that filthy Barlow to break the cross she brought him all the way from Ireland), and incredibly, the man in black cries "Bon voyage, Faddah!" merrily after him.

Callahan strikes a stone floor. It's littered with the bones of small animals. The lid of the box closes and he feels a moment of sublime relief… but then it opens again, very slowly, disclosing the eye.

"No, " Callahan whispers. "Please, no. "

But he's not able to close the box -all his strength seems to have deserted him -and it will not close itself. Deep down in the black eye, a red speck forms, glows… grows. Callahan's horror swells, filling his throat, threatening to stop his heart with its chill. It's the King, he thinks. It's the Eye of the Crimson King as he looks down from his place in the Dark Tower. And he is seeing me.

"NO!" Callahan shrieks as he lies on the floor of a cave in the northern arroyo country of Calla Bryn Sturgis, a place he will eventually come to love. "NO! NO! DON'T LOOK AT ME! OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T LOOK AT ME!"

But the Eye does look, and Callahan cannot bear its insane regard. That is when he passes out. It will be three days before he opens his own eyes again, and when he does he'll be with the Manni.

NINETEEN

Callahan looked at them wearily. Midnight had come and gone, we all say thankya, and now it was twenty-two days until the Wolves would come for their bounty of children. He drank off the final two inches of cider in his glass, grimaced as if it had been corn whiskey, then set the empty tumbler down. "And all the rest, as they say, you know. It was Henchick and Jemmin who found me. Henchick closed the box, and when he did, the door closed. And now what was the Cave of the Voices is Doorway Cave."

"And you, Pere?" Susannah asked. "What did they do with you?"

"Took me to Henchick's cabin-his kra. That's where I was when I opened my eyes. During my unconsciousness, his wives and daughters fed me water and chicken broth, squeezing drops from a rag, one by one."

"Just out of curiosity, how many wives does he have?" Eddie asked.

"Three, but he may have relations with only one at a time," Callahan said absently. "It depends on the stars, or something. They nursed me well. I began to walk around the town; in those days they called me the Walking Old Fella. I couldn't quite get the sense of where I was, but in a way my previous wanderings had prepared me for what had happened. Had toughened me mentally. I had days, God knows, when I thought all of this was happening in the second or two it would take me to fall from the window I'd broken through down to Michigan Avenue-that the mind prepares itself for death by offering some wonderful final hallucination, the actual semblance of an entire life. And I had days when I decided that I had finally become what we all dreaded most at both Home and Lighthouse: a wet brain. I thought maybe I'd been socked away in a moldy institution somewhere, and was imagining the whole thing. But mostly, I just accepted it. And was glad to have finished up in a good place, real or imagined.

"When I got my strength back, I reverted to making a living the way I had during my years on the road. There was no ManPower or Brawny Man office in Calla Bryn Sturgis, but those were good years and there was plenty of work for a man who wanted to work-they were big-rice years, as they do say, although stock-line and the rest of the crops also did fine. Eventually I began to preach again. There was no conscious decision to do so-it wasn't anything I prayed over, God knows-and when I did, I discovered these people knew all about the Man Jesus." He laughed. "Along with The Over, and Oriza, and Buffalo Star… do you know Buffalo Star, Roland?"

"Oh yes," the gunslinger said, remembering a preacher of the Buff whom he had once been forced to kill.

"But they listened," Callahan said. "A lot did, anyway, and when they offered to build me a church, I said thankya. And that's the Old Fella's story. As you see, you were in it… two of you, anyway. Jake, was that after you died?"

Jake lowered his head. Oy, sensing his distress, whined uneasily. But when Jake answered, his voice was steady enough. "After the first death. Before the second."

Callahan looked visibly startled, and he crossed himself. "You mean it can happen more than once? Mary save us!"

Rosalita had left them. Now she came back, holding a 'sener high. Those which had been placed on the table had almost burned down, and the porch was cast in a dim and failing glow that was both eerie and a little sinister.

"Beds is ready," she said. "Tonight the boy sleeps with Pere. Eddie and Susannah, as you were night before last."

"And Roland?" asked Callahan, his bushy brows raising.

"I have a cosy for him," she said stolidly. "I showed it to him earlier."

"Did you," Callahan said. "Did you, now. Well, then, that's settled." He stood. "I can't remember the last time I was so tired."

"We'll stay another few minutes, if it does ya," Roland said. "Just we four."

"As you will," Callahan said.

Susannah took his hand and impulsively kissed it. "Thank you for your story, Pere."

"It's good to have finally told it, sai."

Roland asked, "The box stayed in the cave until the church was built? Your church?"

"Aye. I can't say how long. Maybe eight years; maybe less. Tis hard to tell with certainty. But there came a time when it began to call to me. As much as I hated and feared that Eye, part of me wanted to see it again."

Roland nodded. "All the pieces of the Wizard's Rainbow are full of glammer, but Black Thirteen was ever told to be the worst. Now I think I understand why that is. It's this Crimson King's actual watching Eye."

"Whatever it is, I felt it calling me back to the cave… and further. Whispering that I should resume my wanderings, and make them endless. I knew I could open the door by opening the box. The door would take me anywhere I wanted to go. And anywhen! All I had to do was concentrate." Callahan considered, then sat down again. He leaned forward, looking at them in turn over the gnarled carving of his clasped hands. "Hear me, I beg. We had a President, Kennedy was his name. He was assassinated some thirteen years before my time in ' Salem's Lot… assassinated in the West-"

"Yes," Susannah said. "Jack Kennedy. God love him." She turned to Roland. "He was a gunslinger."

Roland's eyebrows rose. "Do you say so?"

"Aye. And I say true."

"In any case," Callahan said, "there's always been a question as to whether the man who killed him acted alone, or whether he was part of a larger conspiracy. And sometimes I'd wake in the middle of the night and think, 'Why don't you go and see? Why don't you stand in front of that door with the box in your arms and think, "Dallas, November 22nd, 1963"? Because if you do that the door will open and you can go there, just like the man in Mr. Wells's story of the time machine. And perhaps you could change what happened that day. If there was ever a watershed moment in American life, that was it. Change that, change everything that came after. Vietnam… the race riots… everything.'"

"Jesus," Eddie said respectfully. If nothing else, you had to respect the ambition of such an idea. It was right up there with the peg-legged sea captain chasing the white whale. "But Pere… what if you did it and changed things for the worse?"

"Jack Kennedy was not a bad man," Susannah said coldly. "Jack Kennedy was a good man. A great man."

"Maybe so. But do you know what? I think it takes a great man to make a great mistake. And besides, someone who came after him might have been a really bad guy. Some Big Coffin Hunter who never got a chance because of Lee Harvey Oswald, or whoever it was."

"But the ball doesn't allow such thoughts," Callahan said. "I believe it lures people on to acts of terrible evil by whispering to them that they will do good. That they'll make things not just a little better but all better."

"Yes," Roland said. His voice was as dry as the snap of a twig in a fire.

"Do you think such traveling might actually be possible?" Callahan asked him. "Or was it only the thing's persuasive lie? Its glammer?"

"I believe it's so," Roland said. "And I believe that when we leave the Calla, it will be by that door."

"Would that I could come with you!" Callahan said. He spoke with surprising vehemence.

"Mayhap you will," Roland said. "In any case, you finally put the box-and the ball within-inside your church. To quiet it."

"Yes. And mostly it's worked. Mostly it sleeps."

"Yet you said it sent you todash twice."

Callahan nodded. The vehemence had flared like a pine-knot in a fireplace and disappeared just as quickly. Now he only looked tired. And very old, indeed. "The first time was to Mexico. Do you remember way back to the beginning of my story? The writer and the boy who believed?"

They nodded.

"One night the ball reached out to me when I slept and took me todash to Los Zapatos, Mexico. It was a funeral. The writer's funeral."

"Ben Mears," Eddie said. "The Air Dance guy."

"Yes."

"Did folks see you?" Jake asked. "Because they didn't see us."

Callahan shook his head. "No. But they sensed me. When I walked toward them, they moved away. It was as if I'd turned into a cold draft. In any case, the boy was there-Mark Petrie. Only he wasn't a boy any longer. He was in his young manhood. From that, and from the way he spoke of Ben-'There was a time when I would have called fifty-nine old' is how he began his eulogy-I'd guess that this might have been the mid-1990s. In any case, I didn't stay long… but long enough to decide that my young friend from all that long time ago had turned out fine. Maybe I did something right in 'Salem's Lot, after all." He paused a moment and then said, "In his eulogy, Mark referred to Ben as his father. That touched me very, very deeply."

"And the second time the ball sent you todash?" Roland asked. "The time it sent you to the Castle of the King?"

"There were birds. Great fat black birds. And beyond that I'll not speak. Not in the middle of the night." Callahan spoke in a dry voice that brooked no argument. He stood up again. "Another time, perhaps."

Roland bowed acceptance of this. "Say thankya."

"Will'ee not turn in, folks?"

"Soon," Roland said.

They thanked him for his story (even Oy added a single, sleepy bark) and bade him goodnight. They watched him go and for several seconds after, they said nothing.

TWENTY

It was Jake who broke the silence. "That guy Walter was behind us, Roland! When we left the way station, he was behind us! Pere Callahan, too!"

"Yes," Roland said. "As far back as that, Callahan was in our story. It makes my stomach flutter. As though I'd lost gravity."

Eddie dabbed at the corner of his eye. "Whenever you show emotion like that, Roland," he said, "I get all warm and squashy inside." Then, when Roland only looked at him, "Ah, come on, quit laughin. You know I love it when you get the joke, but you're embarrassing me."

"Cry pardon," Roland said with a faint smile. "Such humor as I have turns in early."

"Mine stays up all night," Eddie said brightly. "Keeps me awake. Tells me jokes. Knock-knock, who's there, icy, icy who, icy your underwear, yock-yock-yock!"

"Is it out of your system?" Roland asked when he had finished.

"For the time being, yeah. But don't worry, Roland, it always comes back. Can I ask you something?"

"Is it foolish?"

"I don't think so. I hope not.

"Then ask."

"Those two men who saved Callahan's bacon in the laundrymat on the East Side-were they who I think they were?"

"Who do you think they were?"

Eddie looked at Jake. "What about you, O son of Elmer? Got any ideas?"

"Sure," Jake said. "It was Calvin Tower and the other guy from the bookshop, his friend. The one who told me the Samson riddle and the river riddle." He snapped his fingers once, then twice, then grinned. "Aaron Deepneau."

"What about the ring Callahan mentioned?" Eddie asked him. "The one with Ex Libris on it? I didn't see either of them wearing a ring like that."

"Were you looking?" Jake asked him.

"No, not really. But-"

"And remember that we saw him in 1977," Jake said. "Those guys saved Pere's life in 1981. Maybe someone gave Mr. Tower the ring during the four years between. As a present. Or maybe he bought it himself."

"You're just guessing," Eddie said.

"Yeah," Jake agreed. "But Tower owns a bookshop, so him having a ring with Ex Libris on it fits. Can you tell me it doesn't feel right?"

"No. I'd have to put it in the ninetieth percentile, at least. But how could they know that Callahan…" Eddie trailed off, considered, then shook his head decisively. "Nah, I'm not even gonna get into it tonight. Next thing we'll be discussing the Kennedy assassination, and I'm tired."

"We're all tired," Roland said, "and we have much to do in the days ahead. Yet the Pere's story has left me in a strangely disturbed frame of mind. I can't tell if it answers more questions than it raises, or if it's the other way around."

None of them responded to dьs.

"We are ka-tet, and now we sit together an-tet," Roland said. "In council. Late as it is, is there anything else we need to discuss before we part from one another? If so, you must say." When there was no response, Roland pushed back his chair. "All right, then I wish you all-"

"Wait."

It was Susannah. It had been so long since she'd spoken that they had nearly forgotten her. And she spoke in a small voice not much like her usual one. Certainly it didn't seem to belong to the woman who had told Eben Took that if he called her brownie again, she'd pull the tongue out of his head and wipe his ass with it.

"There might be something."

That same small voice.

"Something else."

And smaller still.

She looked at them, each in turn, and when she came to the gunslinger he saw sorrow in those eyes, and reproach, and weariness. He saw no anger. If she'd been angry, he thought later, I might not have felt quite so ashamed.

"I think I might have a little problem," she said. "I don't see how it can be… how it can possibly be… but boys, I think I might be a little bit in the family way."

Having said that, Susannah Dean/Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker/Mia daughter of none put her hands over her face and began to cry.