of off-and-on vomiting. For the first hour or so, the puking is so constant and so violent he is convinced it
will kill him. Later on, he can only wish it would. And when it's over, he swears to himself that he's done, no
more booze for him, hes finally learned his lesson, and a week later lies drunk again and staring up at the
strange stars behind the restaurant where he has hired on as a dishwasher. He is an animal in a trap and he
doesn't care. Sometimes there are vampires and sometimes he kills them. Mostly he lets them live, because
he's afraid of drawing attention to himself-—the attention of the low men. Sometimes he asks himself what he
thinks he's doing, where the hell he's going, and such questions are apt to send him in search of the next
bottle in a hurry. Because he's really not going anywhere. He's just following the highways in hiding and
dragging his trap along behind him, he's just listening to the call of those roads and going from one to the
next. Trapped or not, sometimes he is happy; sometimes he sings in his chains like the sea. He wants to see
the next weathervane standing against the next pink sunset. He wants to see the next silo crumbling at the
end of some disappeared farmer's long-abandoned north field and see the next droning truck with TONOPAH
GRAVEL or ASPLUNDH HEAVY CONSTRUCTION written on the side. He's in hobo heaven, lost in the split
personalities of America. He wants to hear the wind in canyons and know that he's the only one who hears it.
He wants to scream and hear the echoes run away. When the taste of Barlow's blood is too strong in his
mouth, he wants to drink. And, of course, when he sees the lost-pet posters or the messages chalked on the
sidewalks, he wants to move on. Out west he sees fewer of them, and neither his name nor his description is
on any of them. From time to time he sees vampires cruising—give us this day our daily blood—but he
leaves them be. They're mosquitoes, after all, no more than that.
In the spring of 1981 he finds himself rolling into the city of Sacramento in the back of what may be the
oldest International-Harvester stake-bed truck still on the road in California. He's crammed in with roughly
three dozen Mexican illegals, there is mescal and tequila and pot and several bottles of wine, they're all
drunk and done up and Callahan is perhaps the drunkest of them all. The names of his companions come
back to him in later years like names spoken in a haze of fever: Escobar… Estrada…Javier… Esteban…
Rosario… Echeverria… Caverra. Are they all names he will later encounter in the Calla, or is that just a
booze-hallucination? For that matter, what is he to make of his own name, which is so close to that of the
place where he finishes up? Calla, Callahan. Calla, Callahan. Sometimes, when he's long getting to sleep in
his pleasant rectory bed, the two names chase each other in his head like the tigers in Little Black Sambo.
Sometimes a line of poetry comes to him, a paraphrase from (he thinks) Archibald MacLeish's "Epistle to Be
Left in Earth. " It was not the voice of God but only the thunder. That's not right, but it's how he remembers
it. Not God but the thunder. Or is that only what he wants to believe? How many times has God been denied
just that way ?
In any case, all of that comes later. When he rolls into Sacramento he's drunk and he's happy. There are no
questions in his mind. He's even halfway happy the next day, hangover and all. He finds a job easily; jobs are
everywhere, it seems, lying around like apples after a windstorm has gone through the orchard. As long as
you don't mind getting your hands dirty, that is, or scalded by hot water or sometimes blistered by the handle
of an ax or a shovel; in his years on the road no one has ever offered him a stockbroker's job.
The work he gets in Sacramento is unloading trucks at a block-long bed-and-mattress store called Sleepy
John's. Sleepy John is preparing for his once-yearly Mattre$$ Ma$$acre, and all morning long Callahan and
a crew of five other men haul in the kings and queens and doubles. Compared to some of the day-labor he's
done over the last years, this job is a tit.
At lunch, Callahan and the rest of the men sit in the shade of the loading dock. So far as he can tell, there's
no one in this crew from the International-Harvester, but he wouldn't swear to it; he was awfully drunk. All
he knows for sure is that he's once again the only guy present with a white skin. All of them are eating
enchiladas from Crazy Mary's down the road. There's a dirty old boombox sitting on a pile of crates, playing
salsa. Two young men tango together while the others—Callahan included—put aside their lunches so they
can clap along.
A young woman in a skirt and blouse comes out, watches the men dance disapprovingly, then looks at
Callahan. "You're anglo, right?" she says.
"Anglo as the day is long," Callahan agrees.
"Then maybe you'd like this. Certainly no good to the rest of them." She hands him the newspaper—the
Sacramento Bee—then looks at the dancing Mexicans. "Beaners," she says, and the subtext is in the tone:
What can you do ?
Callahan considers rising to his feet and kicking her narrow can't-dance anglo ass for her, but it's noon, too
late in the day to get another job if he loses this one. And even if he doesn't wind up in the calabozo for
assault, he won't get paid. He settles for giving her turned back the finger, and laughs when several of the
men applaud. The young woman wheels, looks at them suspiciously, then goes back inside. Still grinning,
Callahan shakes open the paper. The grin lasts until he gets to the page marked national briefs, then fades in
a hurry. Between a story about a train derailment in Vermont and a bank robbery in Missouri, he finds this:
AWARD-WINNING "STREET ANGEL" CRITICAL
NEW YORK (AP) Rowan R. Magruder, owner and Chief Supervisor of what may be America's most highly
regarded shelter for the homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted, is in critical condition after being assaulted
by the so-called Hitler Brothers. The Hitler Brothers have been operating in the five boroughs of New York
for at least eight years. According to police, they are believed responsible for over three dozen assaults and
the deaths of two men. Unlike their other victims, Magruder is neither black nor Jewish, but he was found in
a doorway not far from Home, the shelter he founded in 1968, with the Hitler Brothers' trademark swastika
cut into his forehead. Magruder had also suffered multiple stab-wounds.
Home gained nationwide notice in 1977, when Mother Teresa visited, helped to serve dinner, and prayed with
the clients. Magruder himself was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1980, when the East Side's so-
called "Street Angel" was named Manhattan's Man of the Year by Mayor Ed Koch.
A doctor familiar with the case rated Magruder's chances of pulling through as "no higher than three in ten."
He said that, as well as being branded, Magruder was blinded by his assailants. "I think of myself as a
merciful man," the doctor said, "but in my opinion, the men who did this should be beheaded."
Callahan reads the article again, wondering if this is "his" Rowan Magruder or another one—a Rowan
Magruder from a world where a guy named Chadbourne is on some of the greenbacks, say. He's somehow
sure that it's his, and that he was meant to see this particular item. Certainly he is in what he thinks of as the
"real world" now, and it's not just the thin sheaf of currency in his wallet that tells him so. It's a feeling, a
kind of tone. A truth. If so (and it is so, he knows it), how much he has missed out here on the hidden
highways. Mother Teresa came to visit! Helped to ladle out soup! Hell, for all Callahan knows, maybe she
cooked up a big old mess of Toads n Dumplins! Could've; the recipe was right there, Scotch-taped to the wall
beside the stove. And an award! The cover of Newsweek.' He's pissed he didn't see that, but you don't see the
news magazines very regularly when you're traveling with the carnival and fixing the Krazy Kups or mucking
out the bull-stalls behind the rodeo in Enid, Oklahoma.
He is so deeply ashamed that he doesn't even know he's ashamed. Not even when Juan Castillo says, "Why
joo crine, Donnie?"
"Am I?" he asks, and wipes underneath his eyes, and yeah, he is. He is crying. But he doesn't know it's for
shame, not then. He assumes it's shock, and probably part of it is. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Where joo goan?" Juan persists. "Lunch break's almost over, man."
"I have to leave," Callahan says. "I have to go back east."
"You take off, they ain goan pay joo. "
"I know, " Callahan says. "It's okay. "
And what a lie that is. Because nothing's okay.
Nothing.
SIX
"I had a couple of hundred dollars sewn into the bottom of my backpack," Callahan said. They were now
sitting on the steps of the church in the bright sunshine. "I bought an airplane ticket back to New York. Speed
was of the essence—of course—but that really wasn't the only reason. I had to get off those highways in
hiding." He gave Eddie a small nod. "The todash turnpikes. They're as addictive as the booze—"
"More," Roland said. He saw three figures coming toward them: Rosalita, shepherding the Tavery twins,
Frank and Francine. The girl had a large sheet of paper in her hands and was carrying it out in front of her
with an air of reverence that was almost comic. "Wandering's the most addictive drug there is, I think, and
every hidden road leads on to a dozen more."
"You say true, I say thankya," Callahan replied. He looked gloomy and sad and, Roland thought, a little lost.
"Pere, we'd hear the rest of your tale, but I'd have you save it until evening. Or tomorrow evening, if we don't
get back until tüen. Our young friend Jake will be here shortly—"
"You know that, do you?" Callahan asked, interested but not disbelieving.
"Aye," Susannah said.
"I'd see what you have in there before he comes," Roland said. "The story of how you came by it is part of
your story, I think—"
"Yes," Callahan said. "It is. The point of my story, I think."
"—and must wait its place. As for now, things are stacking up."
"They have a way of doing that," Callahan said. "For months—sometimes even years, as I tried to explain to
you— time hardly seems to exist. Then everything comes in a gasp."
"You say true," Roland said. "Step over with me to see the twins, Eddie. I believe the young lady has her eye
on you."
"She can look as much as she wants," Susannah said good-humoredly. "Lookin's free. I might just sit here in
the sun on these steps, Roland, if it's all the same to you. Been a long time since I rode, and I don't mind
telling you that I'm saddle-sore. Not having any lower pins seems to put everything else out of whack."
"Do ya either way," Roland said, but he didn't mean it and Eddie knew he didn't. The gunslinger wanted
Susannah to stay right where she was, for the time being. He could only hope Susannah wasn't catching the
same vibe.
As they walked toward the children and Rosalita, Roland spoke to Eddie, low and quick. "I'm going into the
church with him by myself. Just know that it's not the both of you I want to keep away from whatever's in
there. If it is Black Thirteen— and I believe it must be—it's best she not go near it."
"Given her delicate condition, you mean. Roland, I would have thought Suze having a miscarriage would
almost be something you'd want."
Roland said: "It's not a miscarriage that concerns me. I'm worried about Black Thirteen making the thing
inside her even stronger." He paused again. "Both things, mayhap. The baby and the baby's keeper."
"Mia."
"Yes, her." Then he smiled at the Tavery twins. Francine gave him a perfunctory smile in return, saving full
wattage for Eddie.
"Let me see what you've made, if you would," Roland said.
Frank Tavery said, "We hope it's all right. Might not be. We were afraid, do ya. It's such a wonderful piece of
paper the missus gave us, we were afraid."
"We drew on the ground first," Francine said. "Then in lightest char. 'Twas Frank did the final; my hands
were all a-shake."
"No fear," Roland said. Eddie drew close and looked over his shoulder. The map was a marvel of detail, with
the Town Gathering Hall and the common at the center and the Big River/Devar-Tete running along the left
side of the paper, which looked to Eddie like an ordinary mimeo sheet. The kind available by the ream at any
office supply store in America.
"Kids, this is absolutely terrific," Eddie said, and for a moment he thought Francine Tavery might actually
faint.
"Aye," Roland said. "You've done a great service. And now I'm going to do something that will probably look
like blasphemy to you. You know the word?"
"Yes," Frank said. "We're Christians. 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God or His Son, the Man
Jesus, in vain.' But blasphemy is also to commit a rude act upon a thing of beauty."
His tone was deeply serious, but he looked interested to see what blasphemy the outworlder meant to
commit. His sister did, too.
Roland folded the paper—which they had almost dared not touch, in spite of their obvious skill—in half. The
children gasped. So did Rosalita Munoz, although not quite as loudly.
"It's not blasphemy to treat it so because it's no longer just paper," Roland said. "It has become a tool, and
