Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

"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.

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.

Behind the cottage of Rosalita Munoz was a tall privy painted sky-blue. Jutting from the wall to the left as the gunslinger entered, late on the morning after Pere Callahan had finished his story, was a plain iron band with a small disc of steel set eight inches or so beneath. Within this skeletal vase was a double sprig of saucy susan. Its lemony, faintly astringent smell was the privy's only aroma. On the wall above the seat of ease, in a frame and beneath glass, was a picture of the Man Jesus with his praying hands held just below his chin, his reddish locks spilling over his shoulders, and his eyes turned up to His Father. Roland had heard there were tribes of slow mutants who referred to the Father of Jesus as Big Sky Daddy.