There was a knock at the door. Eisenhart called, "Come!"
It was Ben Slightman. "Stock's all put to bed, boss." He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt.
"And the boys're off with Benny's tent. Andy was stalkin em close, so that's well." Slightman looked at
Roland. "It's early for rock-cats, but if one were to come, Andy'd give my boy at least one shot at it with his
bah—he's been told so and comes back 'Order recorded.' If Benny were to miss, Andy'd get between the boys
and the cat. He's programmed strictly for defense and we've never been able to change that, but if the cat
were to keep coming—"
"Andy'd rip it to pieces," Eisenhart said. He spoke with a species of gloomy satisfaction.
"Fast, is he?" Roland asked.
"Yer-bugger," Slightman said. "Don't look it, do he, all tall and gangly like he is? But aye, he can move like
greased lightning when he wants to. Faster than any rock-cat. We believe he must run on ant-nomics."
"Very likely," Roland said absently.
"Never mind that," Eisenhart said, "but listen, Ben—why d'you suppose it is that Andy won't talk about the
Wolves?"
"His programming—"
"Aye, but it's as Roland pointed out to us just before'ee came in—and we should have seen it for ourselves
long before this—if the Old People set him a-going and then the Old People died out or moved on… long
before the Wolves showed themselves… do you see the problem?"
Slightman the Elder nodded, then put his glasses back on. "Must have been something like the Wolves in the
elden days, don't you think? Enough like em so Andy can't tell em apart. It's all I can figure."
Is it really ? Roland thought.
He produced the Tavery twins' map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It
wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla's old garnet mines. This
one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped. The place wasn't really much like
Eyebolt Canyon in Mejis (there was no thinny in the arroyo, for one thing), but there was one crucial
similarity: both were dead ends. And, Roland knew, a man will try to take service again from that which has
served him once. That he should pick this arroyo, this dead-end mineshaft, for his ambush of the Wolves
made perfect sense. To Eddie, to Susannah, to the Eisenharts, and now to the Eisenharts' foreman. It would
make sense to Sarey Adams and Rosalita Munoz. It would make sense to the Old Fella. He would disclose
this much of his plan to others, and it would make sense to them, as well.
And if things were left out? If some of what he said was a lie?
If the Wolves got wind of the lie and believed it?
That would be good, wouldn't it? Good if they lunged and snapped in the right direction, but at the wrong
thing?
Yes, but I'll need to trust someone with the whole truth eventually. Who? '
Not Susannah, because Susannah was now two again, and he didn't trust the other one.
Not Eddie, because Eddie might let something crucial slip to Susannah, and then Mia would know.
Not Jake, because Jake had become fast friends with Benny Slightman.
He was on his own again, and this condition had never felt more lonely to him.
"Look," he said, tapping the arroyo. "Here's a place you might think of, Slightman. Easy to get in, not so easy
to get back out. Suppose we were to take all the children of a certain age and tuck them away safe in this
little bit of a mine?"
He saw understanding begin to dawn in Slightman's eyes. Something else, too. Hope, maybe.
"If we hide the children, they know where," Eisenhart said. "It's as if they smell em, like ogres in a kid's
cradle-story."
"So I'm told," Roland said. "What I suggest is that we could use that."
"Make em bait, you mean. Gunslinger, that's hard."
Roland, who had no intention of putting the Calla's children in the abandoned garnet mine—or anywhere
near it—nodded his head. "Hard world sometimes, Eisenhart."
"Say thankya," Eisenhart replied, but his face was grim. He touched the map. "Could work. Aye, could
work… if ye could suck all the Wolves in."
Wherever the children wind up, I'll need help putting them there, Roland thought. There'll have to be people
who know where to go and what to do. A plan. But not yet. For now I can play the game I'm playing. It's like
Castles. Because someone's hiding.
Did he know that? He did not.
Did he smell it? Aye, he did.
Now it's twenty-four, Roland thought. Twenty-four days until the Wolves.
It would have to be enough.
Contents -Prev / Next
Chapter VI: Gran-pere's Tale
ONE
Eddie, a city boy to the core, was almost shocked by how much he liked the Jaffords place on the River
Road. I could live in a place like this, he thought. That'd be okay. It'd do me fine.
It was a long log cabin, craftily built and chinked against the winter winds. Along one side there were large
windows which gave a view down a long, gentle hill to the rice-fields and the river. On the other side was the
barn and the dooryard, beaten dirt that had been prettied up with circular islands of grass and flowers and, to
the left of the back porch, a rather exotic little vegetable garden. Half of it was filled with a yellow herb
called madrigal, which Tian hoped to grow in quantity the following year.
Susannah asked Zalia how she kept the chickens out of the stuff, and the woman laughed ruefully, blowing
hair back from her forehead. "With great effort, that's how," she said. "Yet the madrigal does grow, you see,
and where things grow, there's always hope."
What Eddie liked was the way it all seemed to work together and produce a feeling of home. You couldn't
exactly say what caused that feeling, because it was no one thing, but—
Yeah, there is one thing. And it doesn't have anything to do with the rustic log-cabin look of the place or the
vegetable garden and the pecking chickens or the beds of flowers, either.
It was the kids. At first Eddie had been a little stunned by the number of them, produced for his and Suze's
inspection like a platoon of soldiers for the eye of a visiting general. And by God, at first glance there looked
like almost enough of them to fill a platoon… or a squad, at least.
"Them on the end're Heddon and Hedda," Zalia said, pointing to the pair of dark blonds. "They're ten. Make
your manners, you two."
Heddon sketched a bow, at the same time tapping his grimy forehead with the side of an even grimier fist.
Covering all the bases, Eddie thought. The girl curtsied.
"Long nights and pleasant days," said Heddon.
"That's pleasant days and long lives, dummikins," Hedda stage-whispered, then curtsied and repeated the
sentiment in what she felt was the correct manner. Heddon was too overawed by the outworlders to glower at
his know-it-all sister, or even really to notice her.
"The two young'uns is Lyman and Lia," Zalia said.
Lyman, who appeared all eyes and gaping mouth, bowed so violendy he nearly fell in the dirt. Lia actually
did tumble over while making her curtsy. Eddie had to struggle to keep a straight face as Hedda picked her
sister out of the dust, hissing.
"And this 'un," she said, kissing the large baby in her arms, "is Aaron, my little love."
"Your singleton," Susannah said.
"Aye, lady, so he is."
Aaron began to struggle, kicking and twisting. Zalia put him down. Aaron hitched up his diaper and trotted
off toward the side of the house, yelling for his Da'.
"Heddon, go after him and mind him," Zalia said.
"Maw-Maw, no!" He sent her frantic eye-signals to the effect that he wanted to stay right here, listening to
the strangers and eating them up with his eyes.
"Maw-Maw, yes," Zalia said. "Garn and mind your brother, Heddon."
The boy might have argued further, but at that moment Tian Jaffords came around the corner of the cabin and
swept the little boy up into his arms. Aaron crowed, knocked off his Da's straw hat, pulled at his Da's sweaty
hair.
Eddie and Susannah barely noticed this. They had eyes only for the overall-clad giants following along in
Jaffords's wake. Eddie and Susannah had seen maybe a dozen extremely large people on their tour of the
smallhold farms along the River Road, but always at a distance. ("Most of em're shy of strangers, do ye ken,"
Eisenhart had said.) These two were less than ten feet away.
Man and woman or boy and girl? Both at the same time, Eddie thought. Because their ages don't matter.
The female, sweaty and laughing, had to be six-six, with breasts that looked twice as big as Eddie's head.
Around her neck on a string was a wooden crucifix. The male had at least six inches on his sister-in-law. He
looked at the newcomers shyly, then began sucking his thumb with one hand and squeezing his crotch with
the other. To Eddie the most amazing thing about them wasn't their size but their eerie resemblance to Tian
and Zalia. It was like looking at the clumsy first drafts of some ultimately successful work of art. They were
so clearly idiots, the both of them, and so clearly, so closely, related to people who weren't. Eerie was the
only word for them. ;
No, Eddie thought, the word is roont.
"This is my brother, Zalman," Zalia said, her tone oddly formal.
"And my sister, Tia," Tian added. "Make your manners, you two galoots."
Zalman just went ahead sucking one piece of himself and kneading the other. Tia, however, gave a huge (and
somehow ducklike) curtsy. "Long days long nights long earth!" she cried. "WE GET TATERS AND GRAVY!"
"Good," Susannah said quietly. "Taters and gravy is good."
"TATERS AND GRAVY IS GOOD!" Tia wrinkled her nose, pulling her upper lip away from her teeth in a
piglike sneer of good fellowship. "TATERS AND GRAVY! TATERS AND GRAVY! GOOD OL' TATERS AND
GRAVY!"
Hedda touched Susannah's hand hesitantly. "She go on like that all day unless you tell her shush, missus-sai."
"Shush, Tia," Susannah said.
Tia gave a honk of laughter at the sky, crossed her arms over her prodigious bosom, and fell silent.
"Zal," Tian said. "You need to go pee-pee, don't you?"
Zalia's brother said nothing, only continued squeezing his crotch.
"Go pee-pee," Tian said. "You go on behind the barn. Water the sharproot, say thankya."
For a moment nothing happened. Then Zalman set off, moving in a wide, shambling gait.
"When they were young—" Susannah began. "Bright as polished agates, the both of em," Zalia said. "Now
she's bad and my brother's even worse."
She abruptly put her hands over her face. Aaron gave a high laugh at this and covered his own face in
imitation ("Peet-a-boo!" he called through his fingers), but both sets of twins looked grave. Alarmed, even.
"What's wrong 'it Maw-Maw?" Lyman asked, tugging at his father's pantsleg. Zalman, heedless of all,
continued toward the barn, still with one hand in his mouth and the other in his crotch.
"Nothing, son. Your Maw-Maw's all right." Tian put the baby down, then ran his arm across his eyes.
"Everything's fine. Ain't it, Zee?"
"Aye," she said, lowering her hands. The rims of her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. "And with the
blessing, what ain't fine will be."
"From your lips to God's ear," Eddie said, watching the giant shamble toward the barn. "From your lips to
God's ear."
TWO
"Is he having one of his bright days, your Gran-pere?" Eddie asked Tian a few minutes later. They had
walked around to where Tian could show Eddie the field he called Son of a Bitch, leaving Zalia and
Susannah with all children great and small.
"Not so's you'd notice," Tian said, his brow darkening. "He ain't half-addled these last few years, and won't
have nobbut to do with me, anyway. Her, aye, because she'll hand-feed him, then wipe the drool off his chin
for him and tell him thankya. Ain't enough I got two great roont galoots to feed, is it? I've got to have that
bad-natured old man, as well. Head's gone as rusty as an old hinge. Half the time he don't even know where
he is, say any small-small!"
They walked, high grass swishing against their pants. Twice Eddie almost tripped over rocks, and once Tian
seized his arm and led him around what looked like a right leg-smasher of a hole. No wonder he calls it Son
of a Bitch, Eddie thought. And yet there were signs of cultivation. Hard to believe anyone could pull a plow
through this mess, but it looked as if Tian Jaffords had been trying.
"If your wife's right, I think I need to talk to him," Eddie said. "Need to hear his story."
"My Granda's got stories, all right. Half a thousand! Trouble is, most of em was lies from the start and now
he gets em all mixed up together. His accent were always thick, and these last three years he's missing his last
three teeth as well. Likely you won't be able to understand his nonsense to begin with. I wish you joy of him,
Eddie of New York."
"What the hell did he do to you, Tian?"
" 'Twasn't what he did to me but what he did to my Da'. That's a long story and nothing to do with this
business. Leave it"
"No, you leave it," Eddie said, coming to a stop.
Tian looked at him, startled. Eddie nodded, unsmiling: you heard me. He was twenty-five, already a year
