“Did they have red eyes, Nort?”
Nort’s own eyes flicker again, but the barrel of the gun remains pointed at Callahan’s midsection, steady as a rock.
” Did they drive big fancy cars? They did, didn’t they? And how much do you think your life and this little shitpoke’s life will be worth, once— ”
Lennie grabs his balls again, squeezes them, twists them, pulls them down like windowshades. Callahan screams and the world goes gray. The strength runs out of his legs and his knees come totally unbuckled.
“Annnd hee’s DOWN!” Lennie cries gleefully. “Mo-Hammerhead A-Lee is DOWN! THE GREAT WHITE
HOPE HAS PULLED THE TRIGGAH ON THAT LOUDMOUTH NIG-GAH AND PUT ‘IM ON THE
CANVAS! I DON’T BE-LEEEEVE IT!” It’s a Howard Cosell imitation, and so good that even in his agony Callahan feels like laughing. He hears another wild purring sound and now it’s his ankles that are being taped together.
George/Nort brings a knapsack over from the corner. He opens it and rummages out a Polaroid One-Shot.
He bends over Callahan and suddenly the world goes dazzle-bright. In the immediate aftermath, Callahan can see nothing but phantom shapes behind a hanging blue ball at the center of his vision. From it comes George/Nort’s voice.
“Remind me to get another one, after. They wanted both.”
“Yeah, Nort, yeah!” The little one sounds almost rabid with excitement now, and Callahan knows the real hurting’s about to start. He remembers an old Dylan song called “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and thinks, It fits. Better than “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” that’s for sure.
He’s enveloped by a fog of garlic and tomatoes. Someone had Italian for dinner, possibly while Callahan was getting his face slapped in the hospital. A shape looms out of the dazzle. The big guy. “Doesn’t matter to you who hired us,” says George/Nort. “Thing is, we were hired, and as far as anyone’s ever gonna be concerned, Faddah, you’re just another niggah-lovvah like that guy Magruder and the Hitler Brothers done cleaned your clock. Mostly we’re dedicated, but we will work for a dollar, like any good American.” He pauses, and then comes the ultimate, existential absurdity: “We’re popular in Queens, you know.”
“Fuck yourself, ” Callahan says, and then the entire right side of his face explodes in agony. Lennie has kicked him with a steel-toed work-boot, breaking his jaw in what will turn out to be a total of four places.
” Nice talk,” he hears Lennie say dimly from the insane universe where God has clearly died and lies stinking on the floor of a pillaged heaven. “Nice talk for a Faddah.” Then his voice goes up, becomes the excited, begging whine of a child: “Let me, Nort! C’mon, let me! I wanna do it!”
“No way,” George/Nort says. “I do the forehead swastikas, you always fuck them up. You can do the ones on his hands, okay?”
” He’s tied up! His hands re covered in thatfuckin— ”
” After he’s dead, ” George/Nort explains with a terrible patience. “We’ll unwrap his hands after he’s dead and you can— ”
” Nort, please/ I’ll do that thing you like. And listen!” Lennie’s voice brightens. “Tell you what! If I start to fuck up, you tell me and I’ll stop! Please, Nort ? Please?”
” Well…” Callahan has heard this tone before, too. The indulgent father who can’t deny a favorite, if mentally challenged, child. “Well, okay.”
His vision is clearing. He wishes to God it wasn’t. He sees Lennie remove a flashlight from the backpack.
George has pulled a folded scalpel from his fanny-pack. They exchange tools. George trains the flashlight on Callahan’s rapidly swelling face. Callahan winces and slits his eyes. He has just enough vision to see Lennie swing the scalpel out with his tiny yet dexterous fingers.
” Ain’t this gonna be good/” Lennie cries. He is rapturous with excitement. “Ain’t this gonna be so good /”
“Just don’t fuck it up,” George says.
Callahan thinks, If this was a movie, the cavalry would come just about now. Or the cops. Or fucking Sherlock Holmes in H. G. Wells’s time machine.
But Lennie kneels in front of him, the hardon in his pants all too visible, and the cavalry doesn’t come. He leans forward with the scalpel outstretched, and the cops don’t come. Callahan can smell not garlic and tomatoes on this one but sweat and cigarettes.
“Wait a second, Bill,” George/Nort says, “I got an idea, let me draw it on for you first. I got a pen in my pocket. ”
“Fuck that,” Lennie/Bill breathes. He stretches out the scalpel. Callahan can see the razor-sharp blade trembling as the little man’s excitement is communicated to it, and then it passes from his field of vision.
Something cold traces his brow, then turns hot, and Sherlock Holmes doesn’t come. Blood pours into his eyes, dousing his vision, and neither does James Bond Perry Mason Travis McGee Hercule Poirot Miss Fucking Marple.
The long white face of Barlow rises in his mind. The vampire’s hair floats around his head. Barlow reaches out. “Come, false priest, “he’s saying “learn of a true religion.” There are two dry snapping sounds as the vampire’s fingers break off the arms of the cross his mother gave him.
” Oh you fuckin nutball,” George/Nort groans, “that ain’t a swastika, that’s a fuckin cross/ Gimme that!”
“Stop it, Nort, gimme a chance, I ain’t done!”
Squabbling over him like a couple of kids while his balls ache and his broken jaw throbs and his sight drowns in blood. All those seventies-era arguments about whether or not God was dead, and Christ, look at him! Just look at him! How could there be any doubt?
And that is when the cavalry arrives.
NINE
“What exactly do you mean?” Roland asked. “I would hear this part very well, Pere.”
They were still sitting at the table on the porch, but the meal was finished, the sun was down, and Rosalita had brought ‘seners. Callahan had broken his story long enough to ask her to sit with them and so she had.
Beyond the screens, in the rectory’s dark yard, bugs hummed, thirsty for the light.
Jake touched what was in the gunslinger’s mind. And, suddenly impatient with all this secrecy, he put the question himself: “Were we the cavalry, Pere?”
Roland looked shocked, then actually amused. Callahan only looked surprised.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t see them, did you?” Roland asked. “You never actually saw the people who rescued you.”
“I told you the Hitler Brothers had a flashlight,” Callahan said. “Say true. But these other guys, the cavalry…”
TEN
Whoever they are, they have a searchlight. It fills the abandoned Washateria with a glare brighter than the flash of the cheapie Polaroid, and unlike the Polaroid, it’s constant. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill cover their eyes. Callahan would cover his, if his arms weren’t duct-taped behind him.
” Nort, drop the gun! Bill, drop the scalpel!” The voice coming from the huge light is scary because it’s scared. It’s the voice of someone who might do damn near anything. “I’m gonna count to five and then I’m gonna shoot the both of yez, which is what’chez deserve. “And then the voice behind the light begins to count not slowly and portentously but with alarming speed. “Onetwothreefour—” It’s as if the owner of the voice
wants to shoot, wants to hurry tip and get the bullshit formality over with. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill have no time to consider their options. They throw down the pistol and the scalpel and the pistol goes off when it hits the dusty lino, a loud BANG like a kid’s toy pistol that’s been loaded with double caps. Callahan has no idea where the bullet goes. Maybe even into him. Would he even feel it if it did? Doubtful.
” Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” Lennie/Bill shrieks. “We ain’t, we ain’t we ain’t— ” Ain’t what? Lennie/Bill doesn’t seem to know.
“Hands up!” It’s a different voice, but also coming from behind the sun-gun dazzle of the light. “Reach for the sky! Right now, you momzers!”
Their hands shoot up.
” Nah, belay that,” says the first one. They may be great guys, Callahan’s certainly willing to put them on his Christmas card list, but it’s clear they’ve never done anything like this before. “Shoes off! Pants off! Now!
Right now! ”
” What the fuck— ” George/Nort begins. “Are you guys the cops ? If you’re the cops, you gotta give us our rights, ourfuckin Miranda— ”
From behind the glaring light, a gun goes off. Callahan sees an orange flash of fire. Its probably a pistol, but it is to the Hitler Brothers’ modest barroom .32 as a hawk is to a hummingbird. The crash is gigantic, immediately followed by a crunch of plaster and a puff of stale dust. George/Nort and Lennie/Bill both scream. Callahan thinks one of his rescuers— probably the one who didn’t shoot— also screams.