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 die 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 Cheetos, done up on heroin, and watching Yogi Bear.