Stephen King - Wolves of the Calla

Roland gestured with an open palm to show it was all right.

"You make me nervous, hear me I beg."

"You don't need to beg us nothing, sugar," Susannah said.

Callahan smiled. "It's only the way we speak. In the Calla, when you meet someone, you may say, 'How from head to feet, do ya, I beg?' And the answer, 'I do fine, no rust, tell the gods thankee-sai.' You haven't heard this?"

They shook their heads. Although some of the words were familiar, the overall expressions only underlined the fact that they had come to somewhere else, a place where talk was strange and customs perhaps stranger.

"What matters," Callahan said, "is that the borderlands are terrified of creatures called the Wolves, who come out of Thunderclap once a generation and steal the children. There's more to it, but that's the crux. Tian Jaffords, who stands to lose not just one child this time but two, says no more, the time has come to stand and fight. Others-men like Overholser-say doing that would be disaster. I think Overholser and those like him would have carried the day, but your coming has changed things." He leaned forward earnestly. "Wayne Overholser isn't a bad man, just a frightened man. He's the biggest farmer in the Calla, and so he has more to lose than some of the rest. But if he could be convinced that we might drive the Wolves off… that we could actually win against them… I believe he might also stand and fight."

"I told you-" Roland began.

"You don't convince," Callahan broke in. "Yes, I understand. I do. But if they see you, hear you speak, and then convince themselves…?"

Roland shrugged. "There'll be water if God wills it, we say."

Callahan nodded. "They say it in the Calla, too. May I move on to another, related matter?"

Roland raised his hands slightly-as if, Eddie thought, to tell Callahan it was his nickel.

For a moment the man with the scar on his brow said nothing. When he did speak, his voice had dropped. Eddie had to lean forward to hear him. "I have something. Something you want. That you may need. It has reached out to you already, I think."

"Why do you say so?" Roland asked.

Callahan wet his lips and then spoke a single word: "Todash."

"What about it?" Roland asked. "What about todash?"

"Haven't you gone?" Callahan looked momentarily unsure of himself. "Haven't any of you gone?"

"Say we have," Roland said. "What's that to you, and to your problem in this place you call the Calla?"

Callahan sighed. Although it was still early in the day, he looked tired. "This is harder than I thought it would be," he said, "and by quite a lot. You are considerably more-what's the word?-trig, I suppose. More trig than I expected."

"You expected to find nothing but saddle-tramps with fast hands and empty heads, isn't that about the size of it?" Susannah asked. She sounded angry. "Well, joke's on you, honeybunch. Anyway, we may be tramps, but we got no saddles. No need for saddles with no horses."

"We've brought you horses," Callahan said, and that was enough. Roland didn't understand everything, but he thought he now had enough to clarify the situation quite a bit. Callahan had known they were coming, known how many they were, known they were walking instead of riding. Some of those things could have been passed on by spies, but not all. And todash… knowing that some or all of them had gone todash…

"As for empty heads, we may not be the brightest four on the planet, but-" She broke off suddenly, wincing. Her hands went to her stomach.

"Suze?" Eddie asked, instantly concerned. "Suze, what is it? You okay?"

"Just gas," she said, and gave him a smile. To Roland that smile didn't look quite real. And he thought he saw tiny lines of strain around the corners of her eyes. "Too many muffin-balls last night." And before Eddie could ask her any more questions, Susannah turned her attention back to Callahan. "You got something else to say, then say it, sugar."

"All right," Callahan said. "I have an object of great power. Although you are still many wheels from my church in the Calla, where this object is hidden, I think it's already reached out to you. Inducing the todash state is only one of the things it does." He took a deep breath and let it out. "If you will render us-for the Calla is my town now, too, ye ken, where I hope to finish my days and then be buried-the service I beg, I will give you this… this thing."

"For the last time, I'd ask you to speak no more so," Roland said. His tone was so harsh that Jake looked around at him with dismay. "It dishonors me and my ka-tet. We're bound to do as you ask, if we judge your Calla in the White and those you call Wolves as agents of the outer dark: Beam-breakers, if you ken. We may take no reward for our services, and you must not offer. If one of your own mates were to speak so-the one you call Tian or the one you call Overholster-"

(Eddie thought to correct the gunslinger's pronunciation and then decided to keep his mouth shut-when Roland was angry, it was usually best to stay silent.)

"-that would be different. They know nothing but legends, mayhap. But you, sai, have at least one book which should have taught you better. I told you we deal in lead, and so we do. But that doesn't make us hired guns."

"All right, all right-"

"As for what you have," Roland said, his voice rising and overriding Callahan's, "you'd be rid of it, would you not? It terrifies you, does it not? Even if we decide to ride on past your town, you'd beg us to take it with us, would you not? Would you not ?"

" Yes ," Callahan said miserably. "You speak true and I say thankee. But… it's just that I heard a bit of your palaver… enough to know you want to go back… to pass over, as the Manni say… and not just to one place but two… or maybe more… and time… I heard you speak of aiming time like a gun…''

Jake's face filled with understanding and horrified wonder. "Which one is it?" he asked. "It can't be the pink one from Mejis, because Roland went inside it, it never sent him todash. So which one?"

A tear spilled down Callahan's right cheek, then another. He wiped them away absently. "I've never dared handle it, but I've seen it. Felt its power. Christ the Man Jesus help me, I have Black Thirteen under the floorboards of my church. And it's come alive. Do you understand me?" He looked at them with his wet eyes. " It's come alive ."

Callahan put his face in his hands, hiding it from them.

When the holy man with the scar on his forehead left to get his trailmates, the gunslinger stood watching him go without moving. Roland's thumbs were hooked into the waistband of his old patched jeans, and he looked as if he could stand that way well into the next age. The moment Callahan was out of sight, however, he turned to his own mates and made an urgent, almost bearish, clutching gesture at the air: Come to me . As they did, Roland squatted on his hunkers. Eddie and Jake did the same (and to Susannah, hunkers were almost a way of life). The gunslinger spoke almost curtly.

"Time is short, so tell me, each of you, and don't shillyshally: honest or not?"

"Honest," Susannah said at once, then gave another little wince and rubbed beneath her left breast.

"Honest," said Jake.

"Onnes," said Oy, although he had not been asked.

"Honest," Eddie agreed, "but look." He took an unburned twig from the edge of the campfire, brushed away a patch of pine-duff, and wrote in the black earth underneath:

Calla Callahan

"Live or Memorex?" Eddie said. Then, seeing Susannah's confusion: "Is it a coincidence, or does it mean something?"

"Who knows?" Jake asked. They were all speaking in low tones, heads together over the writing in the dirt. "It's like nineteen."