Wolves of the Calla (31 page)

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 the 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 Chee-tos, 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 bootheel on a wooden floor. A fist on the lid of a coffin.

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.