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SUBNUCLEAR CELLS AND MEMORY CIRCUITS ARE IN SHUTDOWN PHASE! SHUTDOWN IS 19 PER
CENT COMPLETE! I AM ANDY—”
“You were Andy,” Eddie said softly. He turned to Tian and Rosa, and had to smile at their scared-children’s faces. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s over. He’ll go on blaring like that for awhile, and then he’ll be done. You can turn him into a… I don’t know… a planter, or something.”
“I think we’ll tear up the floor and bury him right there,” Rosa said, nodding at the privy.
Eddie’s smile widened and became a grin. He liked the idea of burying Andy in shit. He liked that idea very well.
SEVENTEEN
As dusk ended and night deepened, Roland sat on the edge of the bandstand and watched the Calla- folken tuck into their great dinner. Every one of them knew it might be the last meal they’d ever eat together, that tomorrow night at ths time their nice little town might lie in smoking ruins all about them, but still they were cheerful. And not, Roland thought, entirely for the sake of the children. There was great relief in finally deciding to do the right tiling. Even when folk knew the price was apt to be high, that relief came. A kind of giddiness. Most of these people would sleep on the Green tonight with their children and grandchildren in the tent nearby, and here they would stay, their faces turned to the northeast of town, waiting for the outcome of the battle. There would be gunshots, they reckoned (it was a sound many of them had never heard), and then the dust-cloud that marked the Wolves would either dissipate, turn back the way it had come, or roll on toward town. If the last, the folken would scatter and wait for the burning to commence.
When it was over, they would be refugees in their own place. Would they rebuild, if that was how the cards fell? Roland doubted it. With no children to build for—because the Wolves would take them all this time if they won, the gunslinger did not doubt it—there would be no reason. At the end of the next cycle, this place would be a ghost town.
“Cry your pardon, sai.”
Roland looked around. There stood Wayne Overholser, with his hat in his hands. Standing thus, he looked more like a wandering saddle-tramp down on his luck than the Calla’s big farmer. His eyes were large and somehow mournful.
“No need to cry my pardon when I’m still wearing the dayrider hat you gave me,” Roland said mildly.
“Yar, but…” Overholser trailed off, thought of how he wanted to go on, and then seemed to decide to fly straight at it. “Reuben Caverra was one of the fellas you meant to take to guard the children during the fight, wasn’t he?”
“Aye?”
“His gut busted this morning.” Overholser touched his own swelling belly about where his appendix might have been. “He lays home feverish and raving. He’ll likely die of the bloodmuck. Some get better, aye, but not many.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Roland said, trying to think who would be best to replace Caverra, a hulk of a man who had impressed Roland as not knowing much about fear and probably nothing at all about cowardice.
“Take me instea’, would ye?”
Roland eyed him.
“Please, gunslinger. I can’t stand aside. I thought I could— that I must—but I can’t. It’s making me sick.” And yes, Roland thought, he did look sick.
“Does your wife know, Wayne?”
“Aye.”
“And says aye?”
“She does.”
Roland nodded. “Be here half an hour before dawn.”
A look of intense, almost painful gratitude filled Overholser’s face and made him look weirdly young.
“Thankee, Roland! Say thankee! Big-big!”
“Glad to have you. Now listen to me a minute.”
“Aye?”
“Things won’t be just the way I told them at the big meeting.”
“Because of Andy, y’mean.”
“Yes, partly that.”
“What else? You don’t mean to say there’s another traitor, do’ee? You don’t mean to say that?”
“All I mean to say is that if you want to come with us, you have to roll with us. Do you ken?”
“Yes, Roland, Very well.”
Overholser thanked him again for the chance to die north of town and then hurried off with his hat still in his hands. Before Roland could change his mind, perhaps.
Eddie came over. “Overholser’s coming to the dance?”
“Looks like it. How much trouble did you have with Andy?”
“It went all right,” Eddie said, not wanting to admit that he, Tian, and Rosalita had probably all come within a second of being toast. In the distance, they could still hear him bellowing. But probably not for much longer; the amplified voice was claiming shutdown was seventy-nine per cent complete.
“I think you did very well.”
A compliment from Roland always made Eddie feel like king of the world, but he tried not to show it. “As long as we do well tomorrow.”
“Susannah?”
“Seems fine.”
“No… ?” Roland rubbed above his left eyebrow.
“No, not that I’ve seen.”
“And no talking short and sharp?”
“No, she’s good for it. Practiced with her plates all the time you guys were digging.” Eddie tipped his chin toward Jake, who was sitting by himself on a swing with Oy at his feet. “That’s the one I’m worried about. I’ll be glad to get him out of here. This has been hard for him.”
“It’ll be harder on the other boy,” Roland said, and stood up. “I’m going back to Pere’s. Going to get some sleep.”
“Can you sleep?”
“Oh, yes,” Roland said. “With the help of Rosa’s cat-oil, I’ll sleep like a rock. You and Susannah and Jake should also try.”
“Okay.”
Roland nodded somberly. “I’ll wake you tomorrow morning. We’ll ride down here together.”
“And we’ll fight.”
“Yes,” Roland said. He looked at Eddie. His blue eyes gleamed in the glow of the torches. “We’ll fight. Until they’re dead, or we are.”
Chapter VII: The Wolves
ONE
See this now, see it very well:
Here is a road as wide and as well-maintained as any secondary road in America, but of the smooth packed dirt the Calla-folk call oggan. Ditches for runoff border both sides; here and there neat and well-maintained wooden culverts run beneath the oggan. In the faint, unearthly light that comes before dawn, a dozen bucka waggons—they are the kind driven by the Manni, with rounded canvas tops—roll along the road. The canvas is bright clean white, to reflect the sun and keep the interiors cool on hot summer days, and they look like strange, low-floating clouds. The cumulus kind, may it do ya. Each waggon is drawn by a team of six mules or four horses. On the seat of each, driving, are either a pair of fighters or of designated child-minders.
Overholser is driving the lead waggon, with Margaret Eisenhart beside him. Next in line comes Roland of Gilead, mated with Ben Slightman. Fifth is Tian and Zalia Jaffords. Seventh is Eddie and Susannah Dean.
Susannah’s wheelchair is folded up in the waggon behind her. Bucky and Annabelle Javier are in charge of the tenth. On the peak-seat of the last waggon are Father Donald Callahan and Rosalita Munoz.
Inside the buckas are ninety-nine children. The left-over twin—the one that makes for an odd number—is Benny Slightman, of course. He is riding in the last waggon. (He felt uncomfortable about going with his father.) The children don’t speak. Some of the younger ones have gone back to sleep; they will have to be awakened shortly, when the waggons reach their destination. Ahead, now less than a mile, is the place where the path into the arroyo country splits off to the left. On the right, the land runs down a mild slope to the river. All the drivers keep looking to the east, toward the constant darkness that is Thunderclap. They are watching for an approaching dust-cloud. There is none. Not yet. Even the seminon winds have fallen still.
Callahan’s prayers seem to have been answered, at least in that regard.
TWO
Ben Slightman, sitting next to Roland on the bucka’s peak-seat, spoke in a voice so low the gunslinger could barely hear him. “What will’ee do to me, then?”
If asked, when the waggons set out from Calla Bryn Sturgis, to give odds on Slightman’s surviving this day, Roland might have put them at five in a hundred. Surely no better. There were two crucial questions that needed to be asked and then answered correctly. The first had to come from Slightman himself. Roland hadn’t really expected the man to ask it, but here it was, out of his mouth. Roland turned his head and looked at him.