Wolves of the Calla
Part Three The Wolves Chapter IV: The Pied Piper
ONE
"We are ka-tet," said the gunslinger. "We are one from many." He saw Callahan's doubtful look - it was impossible to miss - and nodded. "Yes, Pere, you're one of us. I don't know for how long, but I know it's so. And so do my friends."
Jake nodded. So did Eddie and Susannah. They were in the Pavilion today; after hearing Jake's story, Roland no longer wanted to meet at the rectory-house, not even in the back yard. He thought it all too likely that Slightman or Andy - maybe even some other as yet unsuspected friend of the Wolves - had placed listening devices as well as cameras there. Overhead the sky was gray, threatening rain, but the weather remained remarkably warm for so late in the season. Some civic-minded ladies or gents had raked away the fallen leaves in a wide circle around the stage where Roland and his friends had introduced themselves not so long ago, and the grass beneath was as green as summer. There were folken flying kites, couples promenading hand in hand, two or three outdoor tradesmen keeping one eye out for customers and the other on the low-bellied clouds overhead. On the bandstand, the group of musicians who had played them into Calla Bryn Sturgis with such brio were practicing a few new tunes. On two or three occasions, townsfolk had started toward Roland and his friends, wanting to pass a little time, and each time it happened, Roland shook his head in an unsmiling way that turned them around in a hurry. The time for so-good-to-meet-you politics had passed. They were almost down to what Susannah called the real nitty-gritty.
Roland said, "In four days comes the meeting, this time I think of the entire town, not just the men."
"Damn well told it ought to be the whole town," Susannah said. "If you're counting on the ladies to throw the dish and make up for all the guns we don't have, I don't think it's too much to let em into the damn hall."
"Won't be in the Gathering Hall, if it's everyone," Callahan said. "There won't be room enough. We'll light the torches and have it right out here."
"And if it rains?" Eddie asked.
"If it rains, people will get wet," Callahan said, and shrugged.
"Four days to the meeting and nine to the Wolves," Roland said. "This will very likely be our last chance to palaver as we are now - sitting down, with our heads clear - until this is over. We won't be here long, so let's make it count." He held out his hands. Jake took one, Susannah the other. In a moment all five were joined in a little circle, hand to hand. "Do we see each other?"
"See you very well," Jake said.
"Very well, Roland," said Eddie.
"Clear as day, sug," Susannah agreed, smiling.
Oy, who was sniffing in the grass nearby, said nothing, but he did look around and tip a wink.
"Pere?" Roland asked.
"I see and hear you very well," Callahan agreed with a small smile, "and I'm glad to be included. So far, at least."
TWO
Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had heard most of Jake's tale; Jake and Susannah had heard most of Roland's and Eddie's. Now Callahan got both - what he later called "the double feature." He listened with his eyes wide and his mouth frequently agape. He crossed himself when Jake told of hiding in the closet. To Eddie the Pere said, "You didn't mean it about killing the wives and children, of course? That was just a bluff?"
Eddie looked up at the heavy sky, considering this with a faint smile. Then he looked back at Callahan. "Roland tells me that for a guy who doesn't want to be called Father, you have taken some very Fatherly stands just lately."
"If you're speaking about the idea of terminating your wife's pregnancy - "
Eddie raised a hand. "Let's say I'm not speaking of any one thing in particular. It's just that we've got a job to do here, and we need you to help us do it. The last thing we need is to get sidetracked by a lot of your old Catholic blather. So let's just say yes, I was bluffing, and move on. Will that serve? Father ?"
Eddie's smile had grown strained and exasperated. There were bright smudges of color on his cheekbones. Callahan considered the look of him with great care, and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "You were bluffing. By all means let's leave it at that and move on."
"Good," Eddie said. He looked at Roland.
"The first question is for Susannah," Roland said. "It's a simple one: how are you feeling?"
"Just fine," she replied.
"Say true?"
She nodded. "Say true, say thankya."
"No headaches here?" Roland rubbed above his left temple.
"No. And the jittery feelings I used to get just after sunset, just before dawn - have quit. And look at me!" She ran a hand down the swell of her breasts, to her waist, to her right hip. "I've lost some of the fullness. Roland... I've read that sometimes animals in the wild - carnivores like wildcats, herbivores like deer and rabbits - reabsorb their babies if the conditions to have them are adverse. You don't suppose..." She trailed off, looking at him hopefully.
Roland wished he could have supported this charming idea, but he couldn't. And withholding the truth within the ka-tet was no longer an option. He shook his head. Susannah's face fell.
"She's been sleeping quietly, so far as I can tell," Eddie said. "No sign of Mia."
"Rosalita says the same," Callahan added.
"You got dat jane watchin me?" Susannah said in a suspiciously Detta-like tone. But she was smiling.
"Every now and then," Callahan admitted.
"Let's leave the subject of Susannah's chap, if we may," Roland said. "We need to speak of the Wolves. Them and little else."
"But Roland - " Eddie began.
Roland held up his hand. "I know how many other matters there are. I know how pressing they are. I also know that if we become distracted, we're apt to die here in Calla Bryn Sturgis, and dead gunslingers can help no one. Nor do they go their course. Do you agree?" His eyes swept them. No one replied. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of many children singing. The sound was high and gleeful and innocent. Something about commala.
"There is one other bit of business that we must address," Roland said. "It involves you, Pere. And what's now called the Doorway Cave. Will you go through that door, and back to your country?"
"Are you kidding?" Callahan's eyes were bright. "A chance to go back, even for a little while? You just say the word."
Roland nodded. "Later today, mayhap you and I will take a little pasear on up there, and I'll see you through the door. You know where the vacant lot is, don't you?"
"Sure. I must have been past it a thousand times, back in my other life."
"And you understand about the zip code?" Eddie asked.
"If Mr. Tower did as you requested, it'll be written at the end of the board fence, Forty-sixth Street side. That was brilliant, by the way."
"Get the number... and get the date, too," Roland said. "We have to keep track of the time over there if we can, Eddie's right about that. Get it and come back. Then, after the meeting in the Pavilion, we'll need you to go through the door again."
"This time to wherever Tower and Deepneau are in New England," Callahan guessed.
"Yes," Roland said.
"If you find them, you'll want to talk mostly to Mr. Deepneau," Jake said. He flushed when they all turned to him, but kept his eyes trained on Callahan's. "Mr. Tower might be stubborn - "
"That's the understatement of the century," Eddie said. "By the time you get there, he'll probably have found twelve used bookstores and God knows how many first editions of Indiana Jones's Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown.'"
" - but Mr. Deepneau will listen," Jake went on.
"Issen, Ake," Oy said, and rolled over onto his back. "Issen kiyet!"
Scratching Oy's belly, Jake said: "If anyone can convince Mr. Tower to do something, it'll be Mr. Deepneau."
"Okay," Callahan replied, nodding. "I hear you well."
The singing children were closer now. Susannah turned but couldn't see them yet; she assumed they were coming up River Street. If so, they'd be in view once they cleared the livery and turned down the high street at Took's General Store. Some of the folken on the porch over there were already getting up to look.
Roland, meanwhile, was studying Eddie with a small smile. "Once when I used the word assume , you told me a saying about it from your world. I'd hear it again, if you remember."
Eddie grinned. "Assume makes an ass out of u and me - is that the one you mean?"
Roland nodded. "It's a good saying. All the same, I'm going to make an assumption now - pound it like a nail - then hang all our hopes of coming out of this alive on it. I don't like it but see no choice. The assumption is that only Ben Slightman and Andy are working against us. That if we take care of them when the time comes, we can move in secrecy."
"Don't kill him," Jake said in a voice almost too low to hear. He had drawn Oy close and was petting the top of his head and his long neck with a kind of compulsive, darting speed. Oy bore this patiently.
"Cry pardon, Jake," Susannah said, leaning forward and tipping a hand behind one ear. "I didn't - "
"Don't kill him!" This time his voice was hoarse and wavering and close to tears. "Don't kill Benny's Da'. Please ."
Eddie reached out and cupped the nape of the boy's neck gently. "Jake, Benny Slightman's Da' is willing to send a hundred kids off into Thunderclap with the Wolves, just to spare his own. And you know how they'd come back."
"Yeah, but in his eyes he doesn't have any choice because - "
"His choice could have been to stand with us," Roland said. His voice was dull and dreadful. Almost dead.
"But - "
But what? Jake didn't know. He had been over this and over this and he still didn't know. Sudden tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Callahan reached out to touch him. Jake pushed his hand away.
Roland sighed. "We'll do what we can to spare him. That much I promise you. I don't know if it will be a mercy or not - the Slightmans are going to be through in this town, if there's a town left after the end of next week - but perhaps they'll go north or south along the Crescent and start some sort of new life. And Jake, listen: there's no need for Ben Slightman to ever know you overheard Andy and his father last night."
Jake was looking at him with an expression that didn't quite dare to be hope. He didn't care a hill of beans about Slightman the Elder, but he didn't want Benny to know it was him. He supposed that made him a coward, but he didn't want Benny to know. "Really? For sure?"
"Nothing about this is for sure, but - "
Before he could finish, the singing children swept around the corner. Leading them, silver limbs and golden body gleaming mellowly in the day's subdued light, was Andy the Messenger Robot. He was walking backward. In one hand was a bah-bolt wrapped in banners of bright silk. To Susannah he looked like a parade-marshal on the Fourth of July. He waved his baton extravagantly from side to side, leading the children in their song while a reedy bagpipe accompaniment issued from the speakers in his chest and head.
"Holy shit," Eddie said. "It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin."
"Commala-come-one!
Mamma had a son!
Dass-a time 'at Daddy
Had d 'mos 'fun!"
Andy sang this part alone, then pointed his baton at the crowd of children. They joined in boisterously.
"Commala-come-come!
Daddy had one!
Dass-a time 'at Mommy
Had d 'mos' fun!"
Gleeful laughter. There weren't as many kids as Susannah would have thought, given the amount of noise they were putting out. Seeing Andy there at their head, after hearing Jake's story, chilled her heart. At the same time, she felt an angry pulse begin to beat in her throat and her left temple. That he should lead them down the street like this! Like the Pied Piper, Eddie was right - like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Now he pointed his makeshift baton at a pretty girl who looked thirteen or fourteen. Susannah thought she was one of the Anselm kids, from the smallhold just south of Tian Jaffords's place. She sang out the next verse bright and clear to that same heavily rhythmic beat, which was almost (but not quite) a skip-rope chant:
"Commala-come-two!
You know what to do!
Plant the rice commala,
Don't ye be... no . . . foo'!
Then, as the others joined in again, Susannah realized that the group of children was bigger than she'd thought when they came around the corner, quite a bit bigger. Her ears had told her truer than her eyes, and there was a perfectly good reason for that.
"Commala-come-two ! [they sang]
Daddy no foo'!
Mommy plant commala
cause she know jus' what to do!"
The group looked smaller at first glance because so many of the faces were the same - the face of the Anselm girl, for instance, was nearly the face of the boy next to her. Her twin brother. Almost all the kids in Andy's group were twins. Susannah suddenly realized how eerie this was, like all the strange doublings they'd encountered caught in a bottle. Her stomach turned over. And she felt the first twinge of pain above her left eye. Her hand began to rise toward the tender spot.
No , she told herself, I don't feel that . She made the hand go back down. There was no need to rub her brow. No need to rub what didn't hurt.
Andy pointed his baton at a strutting, pudgy little boy who couldn't have been more than eight. He sang the words out in a high and childish treble that made the other kids laugh.
"Commala-come-t'ree!
You know what't 'be
Plant d'rice commalaand d'rice'll make ya free!"
To which the chorus replied:
"Commala-come-t 'ree!
Rice'll make ya free!
When ya plant the rice commala
You know jus' what to be! "
Andy saw Roland's ka-tet and waved his baton cheerily. So did the children... half of whom would come back drooling and roont if the parade-marshal had his way. They would grow to the size of giants, screaming with pain, and then die early.
"Wave back," Roland said, and raised his hand. "Wave back, all of you, for the sake of your fathers."
Eddie flashed Andy a happy, toothy grin. "How you doing, you cheapshit Radio Shack dickweed?" he asked. The voice coming through his grin was low and savage. He gave Andy a double thumbs-up. "How you doing, you robot psycho? Say fine? Say thankya! Say bite my bag!"
Jake burst out laughing at that. They all continued waving and smiling. The children waved and smiled back. Andy also waved. He led his merry band down the high street, chanting Commala-come-four! River's at the door !
"They love him," Callahan said. There was a strange, sick expression of disgust on his face. "Generations of children have loved Andy."
"That," Roland remarked, "is about to change."
FOUR
"Further questions?" Roland asked when Andy and the children were gone. "Ask now if you will. It could be your last chance."
"What about Tian Jaffords?" Callahan asked. "In a very real sense it was Tian who started this. There ought to be a place for him at the finish."
Roland nodded. "I have a job for him. One he and Eddie will do together. Pere, that's a fine privy down below Rosalita's cottage. Tall. Strong."
Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Aye, say thankya. 'Twas Tian and his neighbor, Hugh Anselm, who built it."
"Could you put a lock on the outside of it in the next few days?"
"I could but - "
"If things go well no lock will be necessary, but one can never be sure."
"No," Callahan said. "I suppose one can't. But I can do as you ask."
"What's your plan, sugar?" Susannah asked. She spoke in a quiet, oddly gentle voice.
"There's precious little plan in it. Most times that's all to the good. The most important thing I can tell you is not to believe anything I say once we get up from here, dust off our bottoms, and rejoin the folken . Especially nothing I say when I stand up at the meeting with the feather in my hand. Most of it will be lies." He gave them a smile. Above it, his faded blue eyes were as hard as rocks. "My Da' and Cuthbert's Da' used to have a rule between em: first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."
"We're almost there, aren't we?" Susannah asked. "Almost to the shooting."
Roland nodded. "And the shooting will happen so fast and be over so quick that you'll wonder what all the planning and palaver was for, when in the end it always comes down to the same five minutes' worth of blood, pain, and stupidity." He paused, then said: "I always feel sick afterward. Like I did when Bert and I went to see the hanged man."
"I have a question," Jake said.
"Ask it," Roland told him.
"Will we win?"
Roland was quiet for such a long time that Susannah began to be afraid. Then he said: "We know more than they think we know, Far more. They've grown complacent. If Andy and Slightman are the only rats in the woodpile, and if there aren't too many in the Wolfpack - if we don't run out of plates and cartridges - then yes, Jake, son of Elmer. We'll win."
"How many is too many?"
Roland considered, his faded blue eyes looking east. "More than you'd believe," he said at last. "And, I hope, many more than they would."
FIVE
Late that afternoon, Donald Callahan stood in front of the unfound door, trying to concentrate on Second Avenue in the year 1977. What he fixed upon was Chew Chew Mama's, and how sometimes he and George and Lupe Delgado would go there for lunch.
"I ate the beef brisket whenever I could get it," Callahan said, and tried to ignore the shrieking voice of his mother, rising from the cave's dark belly. When he'd first come in with Roland, his eyes had been drawn to the books Calvin Tower had sent through. So many books! Callahan's mostly generous heart grew greedy (and a bit smaller) at the sight of them. His interest didn't last, however - just long enough to pull one at random and see it was The Virginian , by Owen Wister. It was hard to browse when your dead friends and loved ones were shrieking at you and calling you names.
His mother was currendy asking him why he had allowed a vampire, a filthy bloodsucker, to break the cross she had given him. "You was always weak in faith," she said dolorously. "Weak in the faith and strong for the drink. I bet you'd like one right now, wouldn't you?"
Dear God, would he ever. Whiskey. Ancient Age. Callahan felt sweat break on his forehead. His heart was beating double-time. No, triple-time .
"The brisket," he muttered. "With some of that brown mustard splashed on top of it." He could even see the plastic squeeze-botde the mustard came in, and remember the brand name. Plochman's.
"What?" Roland asked from behind him.
"I said I'm ready," Callahan said. "If you're going to do it, for God's love do it now."
Roland cracked open the box. The chimes at once bolted through Callahan's ears, making him remember the low men in their loud cars. His stomach shriveled inside his belly and outraged tears burst from his eyes.
But the door clicked open, and a wedge of bright sunshine slanted through, dispelling the gloom of the cave's mouth.
Callahan took a deep breath and thought, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee . And stepped into the summer of '77.
SIX
It was noon, of course. Lunch time. And of course he was standing in front of Chew Chew Mama's. No one seemed to notice his arrival. The chalked specials on the easel just outside the restaurant door read:
HEY YOU, WELCOME TO CHEW-CHEW!
SPECIALS FOR JUNE 24
Beef stroganoff
Beef Brisket (W/Cabbage)
Rancho Grande Tacos
Chicken Soup
TRY OUR DUTCH APPLE PIE!
All right, one question was answered. It was the day after Eddie had come here. As for the next one...
Callahan put Forty-sixth Street at his back for the time being, and walked up Second Avenue. Once he looked behind him and saw the doorway to the cave following him as faithfully as the billy-bumbler followed the boy. He could see Roland sitting there, putting something in his ears to block the maddening tinkle of the chimes.
He got exactly two blocks before stopping, his eyes growing wide with shock, his mouth dropping open. They had said to expect this, both Roland and Eddie, but in his heart Callahan hadn't believed it. He'd thought he would find The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind perfecdy intact on this perfect summer's day, which was so different from the overcast Calla autumn he'd left. Oh, there might be a sign in the window reading gone on vacation, closed until august - something like that - but it would be there. Oh yes.
It wasn't, though. At least not much of it. The storefront was a burnt-out husk surrounded by yellow tape reading police investigation. When he stepped a little closer, he could smell charred lumber, burnt paper, and... very faint... the odor of gasoline.
An elderly shoeshine-boy had set up shop in front of Station Shoes & Boots, nearby. Now he said to Callahan, "Shame, ain't it? Thank God the place was empty."
"Aye, say thankya. When did it happen?"
"Middle of the night, when else? You think them goombars is gonna come 'trow their Molly Coh'tails in broad daylight? They ain't geniuses, but they're smarter than that."
"Couldn't it have been faulty wiring? Or maybe spontaneous combustion?"
The elderly shine-boy gave Callahan a cynical look. Oh, please , it said. He cocked a polish-smeared thumb at the smoldering ruin. "You see that yella tape? You think they put yella tape says perlice investigation around a place that spontaneously combust-you-lated? No way, my friend. No way Jose. Cal Tower was in hock to the bad boys. Up to his eyebrows. Everybody on the block knew it." The shine-boy waggled his own eyebrows, which were lush and white and tangled. "I hate to think about his loss. He had some very vallable books in the back, there. Ver-ry vallable."
Callahan thanked the shine-boy for his insights, then turned and started back down Second Avenue. He kept touching himself furtively, trying to convince himself that this was really happening. He kept taking deep breaths of the city air with its tang of hydrocarbons, and relished every city sound, from the snore of the buses (there were ads for Charlie's Angels on some of them) to the pounding of the jackhammers and the incessant honking of horns. As he approached Tower of Power Records, he paused for a moment, transfixed by the music pouring from the speakers over the doors. It was an oldie he hadn't heard in years, one that had been popular way back in his Lowell days. Something about following the Pied Piper.
"Crispin St. Peters," he murmured. "That was his name. Good God, say Man Jesus, I'm really here. I'm really in New York !"
As if to confirm this, a harried-sounding woman said, "Maybe some people can stand around all day, but some of us are walking here. Think yez could move it along, or at least get over to the side?"
Callahan spoke an apology which he doubted was heard (or appreciated if it was), and moved along. That sense of being in a dream - an extraordinarily vivid dream - persisted until he neared Forty-sixth Street. Then he began to hear the rose, and everything in his life changed.
SEVEN
At first it was little more than a murmur, but as he drew closer, he thought he could hear many voices, angelic voices, singing. Raising their confident, joyful psalms to God. He had never heard anything so sweet, and he began to run. He came to the fence and laid his hands against it. He began to weep, couldn't help it. He supposed people were looking at him, but he didn't care. He suddenly understood a great deal about Roland and his friends, and for the first time felt a part of them. No wonder they were trying so hard to survive, and to go on! No wonder, when this was at stake! There was something on the other side of this fence with its tattered overlay of posters... something so utterly and completely wonderful ...
A young man with his long hair held back in a rubber band and wearing a tipped-back cowboy hat stopped and clapped him briefly on the shoulder. "It's nice here, isn't it?" the hippie cowboy said. "I don't know just why, but it really is. I come once a day. You want to know something?"
Callahan turned toward the young man, wiping at his streaming eyes. "Yes, I guess so."
The young man brushed a hand across his brow, then his cheek. "I used to have the world's worst acne. I mean, pizza-face wasn't even in it, I was roadkill-face . Then I started coming here in late March or early April, and... everything cleared up." The young man laughed. "The dermo guy my Dad sent me to says it's the zinc oxide, but I think it's this place. Something about this place. Do you hear it?"
Although Callahan's voice was ringing with sweetly singing voices - it was like being in Notre Dame cathedral, and surrounded by choirs - he shook his head. Doing so was nothing more than instinct.
"Nah," said the hippie in the cowboy hat, "me neither. But sometimes I think I do." He raised his right hand to Callahan, the first two fingers extended in a V. "Peace, brother."
"Peace," Callahan said, and returned the sign.
When the hippie cowboy was gone, Callahan ran his hand across the splintery boards of the fence, and a tattered poster advertising War of the Zombies . What he wanted more than anything was to climb over and see the rose... possibly to fall on his knees and adore it. But the sidewalks were packed with people, and already he had attracted too many curious looks, some no doubt from people who, like the hippie cowboy, knew a bit about the power of this place. He would best serve the great and singing force behind this fence (was it a rose? could it be no more than that?) by protecting it. And that meant protecting Calvin Tower from whoever had burned down his store.
Still trailing his hand along the rough boards, he turned onto Forty-sixth Street. Down at the end on this side was the glassy-green bulk of the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Calla, Callahan , he thought, and then: Calla, Callahan, Calvin . And then: Calla-come-four, there's a rose behind the door, Calla-come-Callahan, Calvin's one more !
He reached the end of the fence. At first he saw nothing, and his heart sank. Then he looked down, and there it was, at knee height: five numbers written in black. Callahan reached into his pocket for the stub of pencil he always kept there, then pulled off a corner of a poster for an off-Broadway play called Dungeon Plunger, A Revue . On this he scribbled five numbers.
He didn't want to leave, but knew he had to; clear thinking this close to the rose was impossible.
I'll be back , he told it, and to his delighted amazement, a thought came back, clear and true: Yes, Father, anytime. Come-commala .
On the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, he looked behind him. The door to the cave was still there, the bottom floating about three inches off the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple, tourists judging by the guide-books in their hands, came walking up from the direction of the hotel. Chatting to each other, they reached the door and swerved around it. They don't see it, but they feel it , Callahan thought. And if the sidewalk had been crowded and swerving had been impossible? He thought in that case they would have walked right through the place where it hung and shimmered, perhaps feeling nothing but a momentary coldness and sense of vertigo. Perhaps hearing, faintly, the sour tang of chimes and catching a whiff of something like burnt onions or seared meat. And that night, perhaps, they'd have transient dreams of places far stranger than Fun City.
He could step back through, probably should; he'd gotten what he'd come for. But a brisk walk would take him to the New York Public Library. There, behind the stone lions, even a man with no money in his pocket could get a little information. The location of a certain zip code, for instance. And - tell the truth and shame the devil - he didn't want to leave just yet.
He waved his hands in front of him until the gunslinger noticed what he was doing. Ignoring the looks of the passersby, Callahan raised his fingers in the air once, twice, three times, not sure the gunslinger would get it. Roland seemed to. He gave an exaggerated nod, then thumbs-up for good measure.
Callahan set off, walking so fast he was nearly jogging. It wouldn't do to linger, no matter how pleasant a change New York made. It couldn't be pleasant where Roland was waiting. And, according to Eddie, it might be dangerous, as well.
EIGHT
The gunslinger had no problem understanding Callahan's message. Thirty fingers, thirty minutes. The Pere wanted another half an hour on the other side. Roland surmised he had thought of a way to turn the number written on the fence into an actual place. If he could do that, it would be all to the good.
Information was power. And sometimes, when time was tight, it was speed.
The bullets in his ears blocked the voices completely. The chimes got in, but even they were dulled. A good thing, because the sound of them was far worse than the warble of the thinny. A couple of days listening to that sound and he reckoned he'd be ready for the lunatic asylum, but for thirty minutes he'd be all right. If worse came to worst, he might be able to pitch something through the door, attract the Pere's attention, and get him to come back early.
For a little while Roland watched the street unroll before Callahan. The doors on the beach had been like looking through the eyes of his three: Eddie, Odetta, Jack Mort. This one was a little different. He could always see Callahan's back in it, or his face if he turned around to look, as he often did.
To pass the time, Roland got up to look at a few of the books which had meant so much to Calvin Tower that he'd made their safety a condition for his cooperation. The first one Roland pulled out had the silhouette of a man's head on it. The man was smoking a pipe and wearing a sort of gamekeeper's hat. Cort had had one like it, and as a boy, Roland had thought it much more stylish than his father's old dayrider with its sweat-stains and frayed tugstring. The words on the book were of the New York world. Roland was sure he could have read them easily if he'd been on that side, but he wasn't. As it was, he could read some, and the result was almost as maddening as the chimes.
"Sir-lock Hones," he read aloud. "No, Holmes . Like Odetta's fathername. Four... short... movels. Movels?" No, this one was anN. "four short novels by Sirlock Holmes." He opened the book, running a respectful hand over the title page and then smelling it: the spicy, faintly sweet aroma of good old paper. He could make out the name of one of the four short novels - The Sign of the Four . Other than the words Hound and Study , the titles of the others were gibberish to him.
"A sign is a sigul," he said. When he found himself counting the number of letters in the title, he had to laugh at himself.
Besides, there were only sixteen. He put the book back and took up another, this one with a drawing of a soldier on the front. He could make out one word of the title: Dead . He looked at another. A man and woman kissing on the cover. Yes, there were always men and women kissing in stories; folks liked that. He put it back and looked up to check on Callahan's progress. His eyes widened slightly as he saw the Pere walking into a great room filled with books and what Eddie called Magda-seens... although Roland was still unsure what Magda had seen, or why there should be so much written about it.
He pulled out another book, and smiled at the picture on the cover. There was a church, with the sun going down red behind it. The church looked a bit like Our Lady of Serenity. He opened it and thumbed through it. A delah of words, but he could only make out one in every three, if that. No pictures. He was about to put it back when something caught his eye. Leaped at his eye. Roland stopped breathing for a moment.
He stood back, no longer hearing the todash chimes, no longer caring about the great room of books Callahan had entered. He began reading the book with the church on the front. Or trying to. The words swam maddeningly in front of his eyes, and he couldn't be sure. Not quite. But, gods! If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing -
Intuition told him that this was a key. But to what door?
He didn't know, couldn't read enough of the words to know. But the book in his hands seemed almost to thrum. Roland thought that perhaps this book was like the rose...
... but there were black roses, too.
NINE
"Roland, I found it! It's a little town in central Maine called East Stoneham, about forty miles north of Portland and..." He stopped, getting a good look at the gunslinger. "What's wrong?"
"The chiming sound," Roland said quickly. "Even with my ears stopped up, it got through." The door was shut and the chimes were gone, but there were still the voices. Callahan's father was currently asking if Donnie thought those magazines he'd found under his son's bed were anything a Christian boy would want to have, what if his mother had found them? And when Roland suggested they leave the cave, Callahan was more than willing to go. He remembered that conversation with his old man far too clearly. They had ended up praying together at the foot of his bed, and the three Playboys had gone into the incinerator out back.
Roland returned the carved box to the pink bag and once more stowed it carefully behind Tower's case of valuable books. He had already replaced the book with the church on it, turning it with the title down so he could find it again quickly.
They went out and stood side by side, taking deep breaths of the fresh air. "Are you sure the chimes is all it was?" Callahan asked. "Man, you looked as though you'd seen a ghost."
"The todash chimes are worse than ghosts," Roland said. That might or might not be true, but it seemed to satisfy Callahan. As they started down the path, Roland remembered the promise he had made to the others, and, more important, to himself: no more secrets within the tet. How quickly he found himself ready to break that promise! But he felt he was right to do so. He knew at least some of the names in that book. The others would know them, too. Later they would need to know, if the book was as important as he thought it might be. But now it would only distract them from the approaching business of the Wolves. If they could win that battle, then perhaps...
"Roland, are you quite sure you're okay?"
"Yes." He clapped Callahan on the shoulder. The others would be able to read the book, and by reading might discover what it meant. Perhaps the story in the book was just a story... but how could it be, when...
"Pere?"
"Yes, Roland."
"A novel is a story, isn't it? A made-up story?"
"Yes, a long one."
"But make-believe."
"Yes, that's what fiction means. Make-believe."
Roland pondered this. Charlie the Choo-Choo had also been make-believe, only in many ways, many vital ways, it hadn't been. And the author's name had changed. There were many different worlds, all held together by the Tower. Maybe...
No, not now. He mustn't think about these things now.
"Tell me about the town where Tower and his friend went," Roland said.
"I can't, really. I found it in one of the Maine telephone books, that's all. Also a simplified zip code map that showed about where it is."
"Good. That's very good."
"Roland, are you sure you're all right?"
Calla , Roland thought. Callahan . He made himself smile. Made himself clap Callahan on the shoulder again.
"I'm fine," he said. "Now let's get back to town."
"We are ka-tet," said the gunslinger. "We are one from many." He saw Callahan's doubtful look - it was impossible to miss - and nodded. "Yes, Pere, you're one of us. I don't know for how long, but I know it's so. And so do my friends."
Jake nodded. So did Eddie and Susannah. They were in the Pavilion today; after hearing Jake's story, Roland no longer wanted to meet at the rectory-house, not even in the back yard. He thought it all too likely that Slightman or Andy - maybe even some other as yet unsuspected friend of the Wolves - had placed listening devices as well as cameras there. Overhead the sky was gray, threatening rain, but the weather remained remarkably warm for so late in the season. Some civic-minded ladies or gents had raked away the fallen leaves in a wide circle around the stage where Roland and his friends had introduced themselves not so long ago, and the grass beneath was as green as summer. There were folken flying kites, couples promenading hand in hand, two or three outdoor tradesmen keeping one eye out for customers and the other on the low-bellied clouds overhead. On the bandstand, the group of musicians who had played them into Calla Bryn Sturgis with such brio were practicing a few new tunes. On two or three occasions, townsfolk had started toward Roland and his friends, wanting to pass a little time, and each time it happened, Roland shook his head in an unsmiling way that turned them around in a hurry. The time for so-good-to-meet-you politics had passed. They were almost down to what Susannah called the real nitty-gritty.
Roland said, "In four days comes the meeting, this time I think of the entire town, not just the men."
"Damn well told it ought to be the whole town," Susannah said. "If you're counting on the ladies to throw the dish and make up for all the guns we don't have, I don't think it's too much to let em into the damn hall."
"Won't be in the Gathering Hall, if it's everyone," Callahan said. "There won't be room enough. We'll light the torches and have it right out here."
"And if it rains?" Eddie asked.
"If it rains, people will get wet," Callahan said, and shrugged.
"Four days to the meeting and nine to the Wolves," Roland said. "This will very likely be our last chance to palaver as we are now - sitting down, with our heads clear - until this is over. We won't be here long, so let's make it count." He held out his hands. Jake took one, Susannah the other. In a moment all five were joined in a little circle, hand to hand. "Do we see each other?"
"See you very well," Jake said.
"Very well, Roland," said Eddie.
"Clear as day, sug," Susannah agreed, smiling.
Oy, who was sniffing in the grass nearby, said nothing, but he did look around and tip a wink.
"Pere?" Roland asked.
"I see and hear you very well," Callahan agreed with a small smile, "and I'm glad to be included. So far, at least."
TWO
Roland, Eddie, and Susannah had heard most of Jake's tale; Jake and Susannah had heard most of Roland's and Eddie's. Now Callahan got both - what he later called "the double feature." He listened with his eyes wide and his mouth frequently agape. He crossed himself when Jake told of hiding in the closet. To Eddie the Pere said, "You didn't mean it about killing the wives and children, of course? That was just a bluff?"
Eddie looked up at the heavy sky, considering this with a faint smile. Then he looked back at Callahan. "Roland tells me that for a guy who doesn't want to be called Father, you have taken some very Fatherly stands just lately."
"If you're speaking about the idea of terminating your wife's pregnancy - "
Eddie raised a hand. "Let's say I'm not speaking of any one thing in particular. It's just that we've got a job to do here, and we need you to help us do it. The last thing we need is to get sidetracked by a lot of your old Catholic blather. So let's just say yes, I was bluffing, and move on. Will that serve? Father ?"
Eddie's smile had grown strained and exasperated. There were bright smudges of color on his cheekbones. Callahan considered the look of him with great care, and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "You were bluffing. By all means let's leave it at that and move on."
"Good," Eddie said. He looked at Roland.
"The first question is for Susannah," Roland said. "It's a simple one: how are you feeling?"
"Just fine," she replied.
"Say true?"
She nodded. "Say true, say thankya."
"No headaches here?" Roland rubbed above his left temple.
"No. And the jittery feelings I used to get just after sunset, just before dawn - have quit. And look at me!" She ran a hand down the swell of her breasts, to her waist, to her right hip. "I've lost some of the fullness. Roland... I've read that sometimes animals in the wild - carnivores like wildcats, herbivores like deer and rabbits - reabsorb their babies if the conditions to have them are adverse. You don't suppose..." She trailed off, looking at him hopefully.
Roland wished he could have supported this charming idea, but he couldn't. And withholding the truth within the ka-tet was no longer an option. He shook his head. Susannah's face fell.
"She's been sleeping quietly, so far as I can tell," Eddie said. "No sign of Mia."
"Rosalita says the same," Callahan added.
"You got dat jane watchin me?" Susannah said in a suspiciously Detta-like tone. But she was smiling.
"Every now and then," Callahan admitted.
"Let's leave the subject of Susannah's chap, if we may," Roland said. "We need to speak of the Wolves. Them and little else."
"But Roland - " Eddie began.
Roland held up his hand. "I know how many other matters there are. I know how pressing they are. I also know that if we become distracted, we're apt to die here in Calla Bryn Sturgis, and dead gunslingers can help no one. Nor do they go their course. Do you agree?" His eyes swept them. No one replied. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of many children singing. The sound was high and gleeful and innocent. Something about commala.
"There is one other bit of business that we must address," Roland said. "It involves you, Pere. And what's now called the Doorway Cave. Will you go through that door, and back to your country?"
"Are you kidding?" Callahan's eyes were bright. "A chance to go back, even for a little while? You just say the word."
Roland nodded. "Later today, mayhap you and I will take a little pasear on up there, and I'll see you through the door. You know where the vacant lot is, don't you?"
"Sure. I must have been past it a thousand times, back in my other life."
"And you understand about the zip code?" Eddie asked.
"If Mr. Tower did as you requested, it'll be written at the end of the board fence, Forty-sixth Street side. That was brilliant, by the way."
"Get the number... and get the date, too," Roland said. "We have to keep track of the time over there if we can, Eddie's right about that. Get it and come back. Then, after the meeting in the Pavilion, we'll need you to go through the door again."
"This time to wherever Tower and Deepneau are in New England," Callahan guessed.
"Yes," Roland said.
"If you find them, you'll want to talk mostly to Mr. Deepneau," Jake said. He flushed when they all turned to him, but kept his eyes trained on Callahan's. "Mr. Tower might be stubborn - "
"That's the understatement of the century," Eddie said. "By the time you get there, he'll probably have found twelve used bookstores and God knows how many first editions of Indiana Jones's Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown.'"
" - but Mr. Deepneau will listen," Jake went on.
"Issen, Ake," Oy said, and rolled over onto his back. "Issen kiyet!"
Scratching Oy's belly, Jake said: "If anyone can convince Mr. Tower to do something, it'll be Mr. Deepneau."
"Okay," Callahan replied, nodding. "I hear you well."
The singing children were closer now. Susannah turned but couldn't see them yet; she assumed they were coming up River Street. If so, they'd be in view once they cleared the livery and turned down the high street at Took's General Store. Some of the folken on the porch over there were already getting up to look.
Roland, meanwhile, was studying Eddie with a small smile. "Once when I used the word assume , you told me a saying about it from your world. I'd hear it again, if you remember."
Eddie grinned. "Assume makes an ass out of u and me - is that the one you mean?"
Roland nodded. "It's a good saying. All the same, I'm going to make an assumption now - pound it like a nail - then hang all our hopes of coming out of this alive on it. I don't like it but see no choice. The assumption is that only Ben Slightman and Andy are working against us. That if we take care of them when the time comes, we can move in secrecy."
"Don't kill him," Jake said in a voice almost too low to hear. He had drawn Oy close and was petting the top of his head and his long neck with a kind of compulsive, darting speed. Oy bore this patiently.
"Cry pardon, Jake," Susannah said, leaning forward and tipping a hand behind one ear. "I didn't - "
"Don't kill him!" This time his voice was hoarse and wavering and close to tears. "Don't kill Benny's Da'. Please ."
Eddie reached out and cupped the nape of the boy's neck gently. "Jake, Benny Slightman's Da' is willing to send a hundred kids off into Thunderclap with the Wolves, just to spare his own. And you know how they'd come back."
"Yeah, but in his eyes he doesn't have any choice because - "
"His choice could have been to stand with us," Roland said. His voice was dull and dreadful. Almost dead.
"But - "
But what? Jake didn't know. He had been over this and over this and he still didn't know. Sudden tears spilled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Callahan reached out to touch him. Jake pushed his hand away.
Roland sighed. "We'll do what we can to spare him. That much I promise you. I don't know if it will be a mercy or not - the Slightmans are going to be through in this town, if there's a town left after the end of next week - but perhaps they'll go north or south along the Crescent and start some sort of new life. And Jake, listen: there's no need for Ben Slightman to ever know you overheard Andy and his father last night."
Jake was looking at him with an expression that didn't quite dare to be hope. He didn't care a hill of beans about Slightman the Elder, but he didn't want Benny to know it was him. He supposed that made him a coward, but he didn't want Benny to know. "Really? For sure?"
"Nothing about this is for sure, but - "
Before he could finish, the singing children swept around the corner. Leading them, silver limbs and golden body gleaming mellowly in the day's subdued light, was Andy the Messenger Robot. He was walking backward. In one hand was a bah-bolt wrapped in banners of bright silk. To Susannah he looked like a parade-marshal on the Fourth of July. He waved his baton extravagantly from side to side, leading the children in their song while a reedy bagpipe accompaniment issued from the speakers in his chest and head.
"Holy shit," Eddie said. "It's the Pied Piper of Hamelin."
"Commala-come-one!
Mamma had a son!
Dass-a time 'at Daddy
Had d 'mos 'fun!"
Andy sang this part alone, then pointed his baton at the crowd of children. They joined in boisterously.
"Commala-come-come!
Daddy had one!
Dass-a time 'at Mommy
Had d 'mos' fun!"
Gleeful laughter. There weren't as many kids as Susannah would have thought, given the amount of noise they were putting out. Seeing Andy there at their head, after hearing Jake's story, chilled her heart. At the same time, she felt an angry pulse begin to beat in her throat and her left temple. That he should lead them down the street like this! Like the Pied Piper, Eddie was right - like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Now he pointed his makeshift baton at a pretty girl who looked thirteen or fourteen. Susannah thought she was one of the Anselm kids, from the smallhold just south of Tian Jaffords's place. She sang out the next verse bright and clear to that same heavily rhythmic beat, which was almost (but not quite) a skip-rope chant:
"Commala-come-two!
You know what to do!
Plant the rice commala,
Don't ye be... no . . . foo'!
Then, as the others joined in again, Susannah realized that the group of children was bigger than she'd thought when they came around the corner, quite a bit bigger. Her ears had told her truer than her eyes, and there was a perfectly good reason for that.
"Commala-come-two ! [they sang]
Daddy no foo'!
Mommy plant commala
cause she know jus' what to do!"
The group looked smaller at first glance because so many of the faces were the same - the face of the Anselm girl, for instance, was nearly the face of the boy next to her. Her twin brother. Almost all the kids in Andy's group were twins. Susannah suddenly realized how eerie this was, like all the strange doublings they'd encountered caught in a bottle. Her stomach turned over. And she felt the first twinge of pain above her left eye. Her hand began to rise toward the tender spot.
No , she told herself, I don't feel that . She made the hand go back down. There was no need to rub her brow. No need to rub what didn't hurt.
Andy pointed his baton at a strutting, pudgy little boy who couldn't have been more than eight. He sang the words out in a high and childish treble that made the other kids laugh.
"Commala-come-t'ree!
You know what't 'be
Plant d'rice commalaand d'rice'll make ya free!"
To which the chorus replied:
"Commala-come-t 'ree!
Rice'll make ya free!
When ya plant the rice commala
You know jus' what to be! "
Andy saw Roland's ka-tet and waved his baton cheerily. So did the children... half of whom would come back drooling and roont if the parade-marshal had his way. They would grow to the size of giants, screaming with pain, and then die early.
"Wave back," Roland said, and raised his hand. "Wave back, all of you, for the sake of your fathers."
Eddie flashed Andy a happy, toothy grin. "How you doing, you cheapshit Radio Shack dickweed?" he asked. The voice coming through his grin was low and savage. He gave Andy a double thumbs-up. "How you doing, you robot psycho? Say fine? Say thankya! Say bite my bag!"
Jake burst out laughing at that. They all continued waving and smiling. The children waved and smiled back. Andy also waved. He led his merry band down the high street, chanting Commala-come-four! River's at the door !
"They love him," Callahan said. There was a strange, sick expression of disgust on his face. "Generations of children have loved Andy."
"That," Roland remarked, "is about to change."
FOUR
"Further questions?" Roland asked when Andy and the children were gone. "Ask now if you will. It could be your last chance."
"What about Tian Jaffords?" Callahan asked. "In a very real sense it was Tian who started this. There ought to be a place for him at the finish."
Roland nodded. "I have a job for him. One he and Eddie will do together. Pere, that's a fine privy down below Rosalita's cottage. Tall. Strong."
Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Aye, say thankya. 'Twas Tian and his neighbor, Hugh Anselm, who built it."
"Could you put a lock on the outside of it in the next few days?"
"I could but - "
"If things go well no lock will be necessary, but one can never be sure."
"No," Callahan said. "I suppose one can't. But I can do as you ask."
"What's your plan, sugar?" Susannah asked. She spoke in a quiet, oddly gentle voice.
"There's precious little plan in it. Most times that's all to the good. The most important thing I can tell you is not to believe anything I say once we get up from here, dust off our bottoms, and rejoin the folken . Especially nothing I say when I stand up at the meeting with the feather in my hand. Most of it will be lies." He gave them a smile. Above it, his faded blue eyes were as hard as rocks. "My Da' and Cuthbert's Da' used to have a rule between em: first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire."
"We're almost there, aren't we?" Susannah asked. "Almost to the shooting."
Roland nodded. "And the shooting will happen so fast and be over so quick that you'll wonder what all the planning and palaver was for, when in the end it always comes down to the same five minutes' worth of blood, pain, and stupidity." He paused, then said: "I always feel sick afterward. Like I did when Bert and I went to see the hanged man."
"I have a question," Jake said.
"Ask it," Roland told him.
"Will we win?"
Roland was quiet for such a long time that Susannah began to be afraid. Then he said: "We know more than they think we know, Far more. They've grown complacent. If Andy and Slightman are the only rats in the woodpile, and if there aren't too many in the Wolfpack - if we don't run out of plates and cartridges - then yes, Jake, son of Elmer. We'll win."
"How many is too many?"
Roland considered, his faded blue eyes looking east. "More than you'd believe," he said at last. "And, I hope, many more than they would."
FIVE
Late that afternoon, Donald Callahan stood in front of the unfound door, trying to concentrate on Second Avenue in the year 1977. What he fixed upon was Chew Chew Mama's, and how sometimes he and George and Lupe Delgado would go there for lunch.
"I ate the beef brisket whenever I could get it," Callahan said, and tried to ignore the shrieking voice of his mother, rising from the cave's dark belly. When he'd first come in with Roland, his eyes had been drawn to the books Calvin Tower had sent through. So many books! Callahan's mostly generous heart grew greedy (and a bit smaller) at the sight of them. His interest didn't last, however - just long enough to pull one at random and see it was The Virginian , by Owen Wister. It was hard to browse when your dead friends and loved ones were shrieking at you and calling you names.
His mother was currendy asking him why he had allowed a vampire, a filthy bloodsucker, to break the cross she had given him. "You was always weak in faith," she said dolorously. "Weak in the faith and strong for the drink. I bet you'd like one right now, wouldn't you?"
Dear God, would he ever. Whiskey. Ancient Age. Callahan felt sweat break on his forehead. His heart was beating double-time. No, triple-time .
"The brisket," he muttered. "With some of that brown mustard splashed on top of it." He could even see the plastic squeeze-botde the mustard came in, and remember the brand name. Plochman's.
"What?" Roland asked from behind him.
"I said I'm ready," Callahan said. "If you're going to do it, for God's love do it now."
Roland cracked open the box. The chimes at once bolted through Callahan's ears, making him remember the low men in their loud cars. His stomach shriveled inside his belly and outraged tears burst from his eyes.
But the door clicked open, and a wedge of bright sunshine slanted through, dispelling the gloom of the cave's mouth.
Callahan took a deep breath and thought, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee . And stepped into the summer of '77.
SIX
It was noon, of course. Lunch time. And of course he was standing in front of Chew Chew Mama's. No one seemed to notice his arrival. The chalked specials on the easel just outside the restaurant door read:
HEY YOU, WELCOME TO CHEW-CHEW!
SPECIALS FOR JUNE 24
Beef stroganoff
Beef Brisket (W/Cabbage)
Rancho Grande Tacos
Chicken Soup
TRY OUR DUTCH APPLE PIE!
All right, one question was answered. It was the day after Eddie had come here. As for the next one...
Callahan put Forty-sixth Street at his back for the time being, and walked up Second Avenue. Once he looked behind him and saw the doorway to the cave following him as faithfully as the billy-bumbler followed the boy. He could see Roland sitting there, putting something in his ears to block the maddening tinkle of the chimes.
He got exactly two blocks before stopping, his eyes growing wide with shock, his mouth dropping open. They had said to expect this, both Roland and Eddie, but in his heart Callahan hadn't believed it. He'd thought he would find The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind perfecdy intact on this perfect summer's day, which was so different from the overcast Calla autumn he'd left. Oh, there might be a sign in the window reading gone on vacation, closed until august - something like that - but it would be there. Oh yes.
It wasn't, though. At least not much of it. The storefront was a burnt-out husk surrounded by yellow tape reading police investigation. When he stepped a little closer, he could smell charred lumber, burnt paper, and... very faint... the odor of gasoline.
An elderly shoeshine-boy had set up shop in front of Station Shoes & Boots, nearby. Now he said to Callahan, "Shame, ain't it? Thank God the place was empty."
"Aye, say thankya. When did it happen?"
"Middle of the night, when else? You think them goombars is gonna come 'trow their Molly Coh'tails in broad daylight? They ain't geniuses, but they're smarter than that."
"Couldn't it have been faulty wiring? Or maybe spontaneous combustion?"
The elderly shine-boy gave Callahan a cynical look. Oh, please , it said. He cocked a polish-smeared thumb at the smoldering ruin. "You see that yella tape? You think they put yella tape says perlice investigation around a place that spontaneously combust-you-lated? No way, my friend. No way Jose. Cal Tower was in hock to the bad boys. Up to his eyebrows. Everybody on the block knew it." The shine-boy waggled his own eyebrows, which were lush and white and tangled. "I hate to think about his loss. He had some very vallable books in the back, there. Ver-ry vallable."
Callahan thanked the shine-boy for his insights, then turned and started back down Second Avenue. He kept touching himself furtively, trying to convince himself that this was really happening. He kept taking deep breaths of the city air with its tang of hydrocarbons, and relished every city sound, from the snore of the buses (there were ads for Charlie's Angels on some of them) to the pounding of the jackhammers and the incessant honking of horns. As he approached Tower of Power Records, he paused for a moment, transfixed by the music pouring from the speakers over the doors. It was an oldie he hadn't heard in years, one that had been popular way back in his Lowell days. Something about following the Pied Piper.
"Crispin St. Peters," he murmured. "That was his name. Good God, say Man Jesus, I'm really here. I'm really in New York !"
As if to confirm this, a harried-sounding woman said, "Maybe some people can stand around all day, but some of us are walking here. Think yez could move it along, or at least get over to the side?"
Callahan spoke an apology which he doubted was heard (or appreciated if it was), and moved along. That sense of being in a dream - an extraordinarily vivid dream - persisted until he neared Forty-sixth Street. Then he began to hear the rose, and everything in his life changed.
SEVEN
At first it was little more than a murmur, but as he drew closer, he thought he could hear many voices, angelic voices, singing. Raising their confident, joyful psalms to God. He had never heard anything so sweet, and he began to run. He came to the fence and laid his hands against it. He began to weep, couldn't help it. He supposed people were looking at him, but he didn't care. He suddenly understood a great deal about Roland and his friends, and for the first time felt a part of them. No wonder they were trying so hard to survive, and to go on! No wonder, when this was at stake! There was something on the other side of this fence with its tattered overlay of posters... something so utterly and completely wonderful ...
A young man with his long hair held back in a rubber band and wearing a tipped-back cowboy hat stopped and clapped him briefly on the shoulder. "It's nice here, isn't it?" the hippie cowboy said. "I don't know just why, but it really is. I come once a day. You want to know something?"
Callahan turned toward the young man, wiping at his streaming eyes. "Yes, I guess so."
The young man brushed a hand across his brow, then his cheek. "I used to have the world's worst acne. I mean, pizza-face wasn't even in it, I was roadkill-face . Then I started coming here in late March or early April, and... everything cleared up." The young man laughed. "The dermo guy my Dad sent me to says it's the zinc oxide, but I think it's this place. Something about this place. Do you hear it?"
Although Callahan's voice was ringing with sweetly singing voices - it was like being in Notre Dame cathedral, and surrounded by choirs - he shook his head. Doing so was nothing more than instinct.
"Nah," said the hippie in the cowboy hat, "me neither. But sometimes I think I do." He raised his right hand to Callahan, the first two fingers extended in a V. "Peace, brother."
"Peace," Callahan said, and returned the sign.
When the hippie cowboy was gone, Callahan ran his hand across the splintery boards of the fence, and a tattered poster advertising War of the Zombies . What he wanted more than anything was to climb over and see the rose... possibly to fall on his knees and adore it. But the sidewalks were packed with people, and already he had attracted too many curious looks, some no doubt from people who, like the hippie cowboy, knew a bit about the power of this place. He would best serve the great and singing force behind this fence (was it a rose? could it be no more than that?) by protecting it. And that meant protecting Calvin Tower from whoever had burned down his store.
Still trailing his hand along the rough boards, he turned onto Forty-sixth Street. Down at the end on this side was the glassy-green bulk of the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Calla, Callahan , he thought, and then: Calla, Callahan, Calvin . And then: Calla-come-four, there's a rose behind the door, Calla-come-Callahan, Calvin's one more !
He reached the end of the fence. At first he saw nothing, and his heart sank. Then he looked down, and there it was, at knee height: five numbers written in black. Callahan reached into his pocket for the stub of pencil he always kept there, then pulled off a corner of a poster for an off-Broadway play called Dungeon Plunger, A Revue . On this he scribbled five numbers.
He didn't want to leave, but knew he had to; clear thinking this close to the rose was impossible.
I'll be back , he told it, and to his delighted amazement, a thought came back, clear and true: Yes, Father, anytime. Come-commala .
On the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, he looked behind him. The door to the cave was still there, the bottom floating about three inches off the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple, tourists judging by the guide-books in their hands, came walking up from the direction of the hotel. Chatting to each other, they reached the door and swerved around it. They don't see it, but they feel it , Callahan thought. And if the sidewalk had been crowded and swerving had been impossible? He thought in that case they would have walked right through the place where it hung and shimmered, perhaps feeling nothing but a momentary coldness and sense of vertigo. Perhaps hearing, faintly, the sour tang of chimes and catching a whiff of something like burnt onions or seared meat. And that night, perhaps, they'd have transient dreams of places far stranger than Fun City.
He could step back through, probably should; he'd gotten what he'd come for. But a brisk walk would take him to the New York Public Library. There, behind the stone lions, even a man with no money in his pocket could get a little information. The location of a certain zip code, for instance. And - tell the truth and shame the devil - he didn't want to leave just yet.
He waved his hands in front of him until the gunslinger noticed what he was doing. Ignoring the looks of the passersby, Callahan raised his fingers in the air once, twice, three times, not sure the gunslinger would get it. Roland seemed to. He gave an exaggerated nod, then thumbs-up for good measure.
Callahan set off, walking so fast he was nearly jogging. It wouldn't do to linger, no matter how pleasant a change New York made. It couldn't be pleasant where Roland was waiting. And, according to Eddie, it might be dangerous, as well.
EIGHT
The gunslinger had no problem understanding Callahan's message. Thirty fingers, thirty minutes. The Pere wanted another half an hour on the other side. Roland surmised he had thought of a way to turn the number written on the fence into an actual place. If he could do that, it would be all to the good.
Information was power. And sometimes, when time was tight, it was speed.
The bullets in his ears blocked the voices completely. The chimes got in, but even they were dulled. A good thing, because the sound of them was far worse than the warble of the thinny. A couple of days listening to that sound and he reckoned he'd be ready for the lunatic asylum, but for thirty minutes he'd be all right. If worse came to worst, he might be able to pitch something through the door, attract the Pere's attention, and get him to come back early.
For a little while Roland watched the street unroll before Callahan. The doors on the beach had been like looking through the eyes of his three: Eddie, Odetta, Jack Mort. This one was a little different. He could always see Callahan's back in it, or his face if he turned around to look, as he often did.
To pass the time, Roland got up to look at a few of the books which had meant so much to Calvin Tower that he'd made their safety a condition for his cooperation. The first one Roland pulled out had the silhouette of a man's head on it. The man was smoking a pipe and wearing a sort of gamekeeper's hat. Cort had had one like it, and as a boy, Roland had thought it much more stylish than his father's old dayrider with its sweat-stains and frayed tugstring. The words on the book were of the New York world. Roland was sure he could have read them easily if he'd been on that side, but he wasn't. As it was, he could read some, and the result was almost as maddening as the chimes.
"Sir-lock Hones," he read aloud. "No, Holmes . Like Odetta's fathername. Four... short... movels. Movels?" No, this one was anN. "four short novels by Sirlock Holmes." He opened the book, running a respectful hand over the title page and then smelling it: the spicy, faintly sweet aroma of good old paper. He could make out the name of one of the four short novels - The Sign of the Four . Other than the words Hound and Study , the titles of the others were gibberish to him.
"A sign is a sigul," he said. When he found himself counting the number of letters in the title, he had to laugh at himself.
Besides, there were only sixteen. He put the book back and took up another, this one with a drawing of a soldier on the front. He could make out one word of the title: Dead . He looked at another. A man and woman kissing on the cover. Yes, there were always men and women kissing in stories; folks liked that. He put it back and looked up to check on Callahan's progress. His eyes widened slightly as he saw the Pere walking into a great room filled with books and what Eddie called Magda-seens... although Roland was still unsure what Magda had seen, or why there should be so much written about it.
He pulled out another book, and smiled at the picture on the cover. There was a church, with the sun going down red behind it. The church looked a bit like Our Lady of Serenity. He opened it and thumbed through it. A delah of words, but he could only make out one in every three, if that. No pictures. He was about to put it back when something caught his eye. Leaped at his eye. Roland stopped breathing for a moment.
He stood back, no longer hearing the todash chimes, no longer caring about the great room of books Callahan had entered. He began reading the book with the church on the front. Or trying to. The words swam maddeningly in front of his eyes, and he couldn't be sure. Not quite. But, gods! If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing -
Intuition told him that this was a key. But to what door?
He didn't know, couldn't read enough of the words to know. But the book in his hands seemed almost to thrum. Roland thought that perhaps this book was like the rose...
... but there were black roses, too.
NINE
"Roland, I found it! It's a little town in central Maine called East Stoneham, about forty miles north of Portland and..." He stopped, getting a good look at the gunslinger. "What's wrong?"
"The chiming sound," Roland said quickly. "Even with my ears stopped up, it got through." The door was shut and the chimes were gone, but there were still the voices. Callahan's father was currently asking if Donnie thought those magazines he'd found under his son's bed were anything a Christian boy would want to have, what if his mother had found them? And when Roland suggested they leave the cave, Callahan was more than willing to go. He remembered that conversation with his old man far too clearly. They had ended up praying together at the foot of his bed, and the three Playboys had gone into the incinerator out back.
Roland returned the carved box to the pink bag and once more stowed it carefully behind Tower's case of valuable books. He had already replaced the book with the church on it, turning it with the title down so he could find it again quickly.
They went out and stood side by side, taking deep breaths of the fresh air. "Are you sure the chimes is all it was?" Callahan asked. "Man, you looked as though you'd seen a ghost."
"The todash chimes are worse than ghosts," Roland said. That might or might not be true, but it seemed to satisfy Callahan. As they started down the path, Roland remembered the promise he had made to the others, and, more important, to himself: no more secrets within the tet. How quickly he found himself ready to break that promise! But he felt he was right to do so. He knew at least some of the names in that book. The others would know them, too. Later they would need to know, if the book was as important as he thought it might be. But now it would only distract them from the approaching business of the Wolves. If they could win that battle, then perhaps...
"Roland, are you quite sure you're okay?"
"Yes." He clapped Callahan on the shoulder. The others would be able to read the book, and by reading might discover what it meant. Perhaps the story in the book was just a story... but how could it be, when...
"Pere?"
"Yes, Roland."
"A novel is a story, isn't it? A made-up story?"
"Yes, a long one."
"But make-believe."
"Yes, that's what fiction means. Make-believe."
Roland pondered this. Charlie the Choo-Choo had also been make-believe, only in many ways, many vital ways, it hadn't been. And the author's name had changed. There were many different worlds, all held together by the Tower. Maybe...
No, not now. He mustn't think about these things now.
"Tell me about the town where Tower and his friend went," Roland said.
"I can't, really. I found it in one of the Maine telephone books, that's all. Also a simplified zip code map that showed about where it is."
"Good. That's very good."
"Roland, are you sure you're all right?"
Calla , Roland thought. Callahan . He made himself smile. Made himself clap Callahan on the shoulder again.
"I'm fine," he said. "Now let's get back to town."
