If there was ever a watershed moment in American life, that was it. Change that, change everything that came
after. Vietnam… the race riots… everything.'"
"Jesus," Eddie said respectfully. If nothing else, you had to respect the ambition of such an idea. It was right
up there with the peg-legged sea captain chasing the white whale. "But Pere… what if you did it and changed
things for the worse?"
"Jack Kennedy was not a bad man," Susannah said coldly. "Jack Kennedy was a good man. A great man."
"Maybe so. But do you know what? I think it takes a great man to make a great mistake. And besides,
someone who came after him might have been a really bad guy. Some Big Coffin Hunter who never got a
chance because of Lee Harvey Oswald, or whoever it was."
"But the ball doesn't allow such thoughts," Callahan said. "I believe it lures people on to acts of terrible evil
by whispering to them that they will do good. That they'll make things not just a little better but all better."
"Yes," Roland said. His voice was as dry as the snap of a twig in a fire.
"Do you think such traveling might actually be possible?" Callahan asked him. "Or was it only the thing's
persuasive lie? Its glammer?"
"I believe it's so," Roland said. "And I believe that when we leave the Calla, it will be by that door."
"Would that I could come with you!" Callahan said. He spoke with surprising vehemence.
"Mayhap you will," Roland said. "In any case, you finally put the box—and the ball within—inside your
church. To quiet it."
"Yes. And mostly it's worked. Mostly it sleeps."
"Yet you said it sent you todash twice."
Callahan nodded. The vehemence had flared like a pine-knot in a fireplace and disappeared just as quickly.
Now he only looked tired. And very old, indeed. "The first time was to Mexico. Do you remember way back
to the beginning of my story? The writer and the boy who believed?"
They nodded.
"One night the ball reached out to me when I slept and took me todash to Los Zapatos, Mexico. It was a
funeral. The writer's funeral."
"Ben Mears," Eddie said. "The Air Dance guy."
"Yes."
"Did folks see you?" Jake asked. "Because they didn't see us."
Callahan shook his head. "No. But they sensed me. When I walked toward them, they moved away. It was as
if I'd turned into a cold draft. In any case, the boy was there—Mark Petrie. Only he wasn't a boy any longer.
He was in his young manhood. From that, and from the way he spoke of Ben—'There was a time when I
would have called fifty-nine old' is how he began his eulogy—I'd guess that this might have been the mid1990s.
In any case, I didn't stay long… but long enough to decide that my young friend from all that long
time ago had turned out fine. Maybe I did something right in 'Salem's Lot, after all." He paused a moment
and then said, "In his eulogy, Mark referred to Ben as his father. That touched me very, very deeply."
"And the second time the ball sent you todash?" Roland asked. "The time it sent you to the Castle of the
King?"
"There were birds. Great fat black birds. And beyond that I'll not speak. Not in the middle of the night."
Callahan spoke in a dry voice that brooked no argument. He stood up again. "Another time, perhaps."
Roland bowed acceptance of this. "Say thankya."
"Will'ee not turn in, folks?"
"Soon," Roland said.
They thanked him for his story (even Oy added a single, sleepy bark) and bade him goodnight. They watched
him go and for several seconds after, they said nothing.
TWENTY
It was Jake who broke the silence. "That guy Walter was behind us, Roland! When we left the way station, he
was behind us! Pere Callahan, too!"
"Yes," Roland said. "As far back as that, Callahan was in our story. It makes my stomach flutter. As though
I'd lost gravity."
Eddie dabbed at the corner of his eye. "Whenever you show emotion like that, Roland," he said, "I get all
warm and squashy inside." Then, when Roland only looked at him, "Ah, come on, quit laughin. You know I
love it when you get the joke, but you're embarrassing me."
"Cry pardon," Roland said with a faint smile. "Such humor as I have turns in early."
"Mine stays up all night," Eddie said brightly. "Keeps me awake. Tells me jokes. Knock-knock, who's there,
icy, icy who, icy your underwear, yock-yock-yock!"
"Is it out of your system?" Roland asked when he had finished.
"For the time being, yeah. But don't worry, Roland, it always comes back. Can I ask you something?"
"Is it foolish?"
"I don't think so. I hope not.
"Then ask."
"Those two men who saved Callahan's bacon in the laundrymat on the East Side—were they who I think they
were?"
"Who do you think they were?"
Eddie looked at Jake. "What about you, O son of Elmer? Got any ideas?"
"Sure," Jake said. "It was Calvin Tower and the other guy from the bookshop, his friend. The one who told
me the Samson riddle and the river riddle." He snapped his fingers once, then twice, then grinned. "Aaron
Deepneau."
"What about the ring Callahan mentioned?" Eddie asked him. "The one with Ex Libris on it? I didn't see
either of them wearing a ring like that."
"Were you looking?" Jake asked him.
"No, not really. But—"
"And remember that we saw him in 1977," Jake said. "Those guys saved Pere's life in 1981. Maybe someone
gave Mr. Tower the ring during the four years between. As a present. Or maybe he bought it himself."
"You're just guessing," Eddie said.
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "But Tower owns a bookshop, so him having a ring with Ex Libris on it fits. Can you
tell me it doesn't feel right?"
"No. I'd have to put it in the ninetieth percentile, at least. But how could they know that Callahan…" Eddie
trailed off, considered, then shook his head decisively. "Nah, I'm not even gonna get into it tonight. Next
thing we'll be discussing the Kennedy assassination, and I'm tired."
"We're all tired," Roland said, "and we have much to do in the days ahead. Yet the Pere's story has left me in
a strangely disturbed frame of mind. I can't tell if it answers more questions than it raises, or if it's the other
way around."
None of them responded to düs.
"We are ka-tet, and now we sit together an-tet," Roland said. "In council. Late as it is, is there anything else
we need to discuss before we part from one another? If so, you must say." When there was no response,
Roland pushed back his chair. "All right, then I wish you all—"
"Wait."
It was Susannah. It had been so long since she'd spoken that they had nearly forgotten her. And she spoke in a
small voice not much like her usual one. Certainly it didn't seem to belong to the woman who had told Eben
Took that if he called her brownie again, she'd pull the tongue out of his head and wipe his ass with it.
"There might be something."
That same small voice.
"Something else."
And smaller still.
She looked at them, each in turn, and when she came to the gunslinger he saw sorrow in those eyes, and
reproach, and weariness. He saw no anger. If she'd been angry, he thought later, I might not have felt quite so
ashamed.
"I think I might have a little problem," she said. "I don't see how it can be… how it can possibly be… but
boys, I think I might be a little bit in the family way."
Having said that, Susannah Dean/Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker/Mia daughter of none put her hands over her
face and began to cry.
Part Three
The Wolves
Contents -Prev / Next
Part Three: The Wolves --Chapter I: Secrets
ONE
Behind the cottage of Rosalita Munoz was a tall privy painted sky-blue. Jutting from the wall to the left as
the gunslinger entered, late on the morning after Pere Callahan had finished his story, was a plain iron band
with a small disc of steel set eight inches or so beneath. Within this skeletal vase was a double sprig of saucy
susan. Its lemony, faintly astringent smell was the privy's only aroma. On the wall above the seat of ease, in a
frame and beneath glass, was a picture of the Man Jesus with his praying hands held just below his chin, his
reddish locks spilling over his shoulders, and his eyes turned up to His Father. Roland had heard there were
tribes of slow mutants who referred to the Father of Jesus as Big Sky Daddy.
The image of the Man Jesus was in profile, and Roland was glad. Had He been facing him full on, the
gunslinger wasn't sure he could have done his morning business without closing his eyes, full though his
bladder was. Strange place to put a picture of God's Son, he thought, and then realized it wasn't strange at all.
In the ordinary course of things, only Rosalita used this privy, and the Man Jesus would have nothing to look
at but her prim back.
Roland Deschain burst out laughing, and when he did, his water began to flow.
TWO
Rosalita had been gone when he awoke, and not recently: her side of the bed had been cold. Now, standing
outside her tall blue oblong of a privy and buttoning his flies, Roland looked up at the sun and judged the
time as not long before noon. Judging such things without a clock, glass, or pendulum had become tricky in
these latter days, but it was still possible if you were careful in your calculations and willing to allow for
some error in your result. Cort, he thought, would be aghast if he saw one of his pupils—one of his
graduated pupils, a gunslinger—beginning such a business as this by sleeping almost until midday. And this
was the beginning. All the rest had been ritual and preparation, necessary but not terribly helpful. A kind of
dancing the rice-song. Now that part was over. And as for sleeping late…
"No one ever deserved a late lying-in more," he said, and walked down the slope. Here a fence marked the
rear of Callahan's patch (or perhaps the Pere thought of it as God's patch). Beyond it was a small stream,
babbling as excitedly as a little girl telling secrets to her best friend. The banks were thick with saucy susan,
so there was another mystery (a minor one) solved. Roland breathed deeply of the scent.
He found himself thinking of ka, which he rarely did. (Eddie, who believed Roland thought of little else,
would have been astounded.) Its only true rule was Stand aside and let me work. Why in God's name was it
so hard to learn such a simple thing? Why always this stupid need to meddle? Every one of them had done it;
every one of them had known Susannah Dean was pregnant. Roland himself had known almost since the
time of her kindling, when Jake had come through from the house in Dutch Hill. Susannah herself had
known, in spite of the bloody rags she had buried at the side of the trail. So why had it taken them so long to
have the palaver they'd had last night? Why had they made such a business of it? And how much might have
suffered because of it?
Nothing, Roland hoped. But it was hard to tell, wasn't it?
Perhaps it was best to let it go. This morning that seemed like good advice, because he felt very well.
Physically, at least. Hardly an ache or a—
"I thought'ee meant to turn in not long after I left ye, gunslinger, but Rosalita said you never came in until
almost the dawn."
Roland turned from the fence and his thoughts. Callahan was today dressed in dark pants, dark shoes, and a
dark shirt with a notched collar. His cross lay upon his bosom and his crazy white hair had been partially
tamed, probably with some sort of grease. He bore the gunslinger's regard for a little while and then said,
"Yesterday I gave the Holy Communion to those of the smallholds who take it. And heard their confessions.
Today's my day to go out to the ranches and do the same. There's a goodish number of cowboys who hold to
what they mostly call the Crossway. Rosalita drives me in the buckboard, so when it comes to lunch and
dinner, you must shift for yourselves."
"We can do that," Roland said, "but do you have a few minutes to talk to me?"
"Of course," Callahan said. "A man who can't stay a bit shouldn't approach in the first place. Good advice, I
think, and not just for priests."
"Would you hear my confession?"
Callahan raised his eyebrows. "Do'ee hold to the Man Jesus, then?"
Roland shook his head. "Not a bit. Will you hear it anyway, I beg? And keep it to yourself?"
Callahan shrugged. "As to keeping what you say to myself, that's easy. It's what we do. Just don't mistake
discretion for absolution." He favored Roland with a wintry smile. "We Catholics save that for ourselves,
may it do ya."
The thought of absolution had never crossed Roland's mind, and he found the idea that he might need it (or
that this man could give it) almost comic. He rolled a cigarette, doing it slowly, thinking of how to begin and
how much to say. Callahan waited, respectfully quiet.
At last Roland said, "There was a prophecy that I should draw three and that we should become ka-tet. Never
mind who made it; never mind anything that came before. I won't worry that old knot, never again if I can
help it. There were three doors. Behind the second was the woman who became Eddie's wife, although she
did not at that time call herself Susannah…"
THREE
So Roland told Callahan the part of their story which bore directly upon Susannah and the women who had
