Characters in The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

She just took one glance at the others: Lyman and Lia, who were five, and Aaron, who was two. Aaron sat naked in the dirt, happily chunking two stones together. He was the rare singleton, and how the women of the village envied her on account of him!

American reap-charms, in other words. You had to have at least two weeks’ continuous sobriety to get on this detail. Also-this is something Ward Huckman, Al McCowan, and Don Callahan have agreed to among themselves-no wet brains are allowed on Decoration Detail, no matter how long they’ve been sober.

He insisted to Roland that if anything could be done, Wayne Overholser, son of Alan, would be first in line to do it; he’d never shirked a chore in his life, but to go against the Wolves was madness.

“Oh my Lord,” Jake sighed from beside him, but he might have been a thousand miles away. Eddie saw great things and near misses. Albert Einstein as a child, not quite struck by a runaway milk-wagon as he crossed a street.

Eddie saw great things and near misses. Albert Einstein as a child, not quite struck by a runaway milk-wagon as he crossed a street. A teenage boy named Albert Schweitzer getting out of a bathtub and not quite stepping on the cake of soap lying beside the pulled plug.

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.

The youngest children were now hurrying back across the road, hand-in-hand, bug-eyed with fear and excitement. Cantab of the Manni and Ara, his wife, were leading them. She told them to walk straight down the middle of the rows and try not to even brush any of the skeletal plants.

Let the Wolves take their corpses into the east, should they desire.” “You’re insane,” Benito Cash said, indignant and at the same time almost laughing. “You and all your kind. We ain’t gonna kill our babbies!” “Would the ones that come back not be better off dead?” the Manni responded.

… together like birds on fencewire (Tian’s wife among them); and the cowboys, the hired men, the dayboys, even old Bernardo, the town tosspot. To Tian’s right, those who had carried the feather shuffled a bit uneasily. In ordinary circumstances, one set of twins was plenty to take the opopanax feather; …

When talking to Bishop Dugan in the Diocese office, he had used all the correct buzzwords of the time to express this unease: anomie, urban malaise, an increasing lack of empathy, a sense of disconnection from the life of the spirit.

Bucky Javier asked. Callahan thought they would want the thing that lay beneath the floorboards of his church. And that was good, because that thing had awakened. The Old Fella, who had once run from a town called Jerusalem’s Lot in another world, wanted to be rid of it.

“Roberta Javier, Bucky’s sissa, she’s lucky,“ he said. ”When the Wolves came last time, she and her twin brother were but a year old. So they were passed over.” “Bucky’s own twin brother was took the time before,” Slight-man said. “Bully’s dead now almost four year. Of the sickness.

That goes for George, for ‘Cimi Dretto, Tricks Postino... for your brother Claudio, too.” Andolini’s eyes widened at each name, then winced momentarily shut at the name of his brother. Eddie thought that maybe he’d made his point.

Not unless Arthur Eld had at some point stopped by Co-Op City, that was. Like maybe for a redhot and a piece of Dahlie Lundgren’s fried dough. Stupid to project such an idea from the ability to ride an obviously docile horse without lessons.

In that moment he had a clear and beautiful memory of David, his hawk, folding his wings in a blue summer sky and dropping at his prey like a stone with eyes. “Riza!” Her hands dropped and became a blur.

“Is that it?” “Nothing’s been decided,” Roland said stolidly. In a barely audible voice that held both shock and wonder, Deelie Estrada said: “But if that’d been a man, hear me, he’d be cutlets.” It was Gran-pere who had the final word, as perhaps gran-peres should: “Yer-bugger!”

Didn’t they? Whether they did or didn’t, the four had discovered a great number of stories that were common to both worlds. Roland knew a tale called “Diana’s Dream” that was eerily close to “The Lady or the Tiger,” which all three exiled New Yorkers had read in school.

Diane Caverra, his wife... or do’ee not want couples?” No, a couple would be all right. Roland twirled his fingers, gesturing for the Pere to continue. “Cantab of the Manni, I sh’d say; the children follow him like he was the Pied Piper.” “I don’t understand.” “You don’t need to.

The owner, a long drink of water named Dicky Rudebacher, asks Callahan if he has any medical problems- “catching stuff,” he calls it- and nods simple acceptance when Callahan says he doesn’t. He doesn’t ask Callahan for any paperwork, not so much as a Social Security number.

There was laughter and a few cries of Hear you very well. Garrett sat back down, looking a little less tense, and put his head together with Vaughn Eisenhart. One of the other ranchers, Diego Adams, was listening in, his black eyes intent. Another smallholder rose-Buckyjavier.

He saw his mother’s face in a pile of broken bricks, her glimmering eyes recreated from the broken pieces of a soft-drink bottle. He saw her friend, Dora Bertollo (all the kids on the block called her Tits Bertollo because she had really big ones, big as fuckin watermelons).

Just pissed enow to take a stand whether the rest of ‘un said yes, no, or maybe. There ‘us me... Pokey Slidell... who ‘us my best friend... and there ‘us Eamon Doolin and his wife, that redheaded Molly. She was the very devil when it came to throwin the dish.”

The west branch of the Whye was almost all the way back to Mid-World... where, according to Andy, a great palace of green glass had lately appeared and even more lately disappeared again. Tian was about to respond himself when Eben Took, the storekeeper, did it for him.

Cash and Estrada. Strong and Echeverria. Winkler and Spalter (cousins of Overholser’s, they said). Freddy Rosario and Farren Posella... or was it Freddy Posella and Farren Rosario? Every ten or fifteen minutes the torches would change color again. From red to green, from green to orange, from orange to blue.

Magruder himself was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1980, when the East Side’s so-called “Street Angel” was named Manhattan’s Man of the Year by Mayor Ed Koch. A doctor familiar with the case rated Magruder’s chances of pulling through as “no higher than three in ten.”

Then, seeing Roland rise from the rocker next to her husband’s: “Nay, sit still, I beg you. I’ve been in a chair this last hour, peeling sharproot with Edna, yon’s auntie.” She nodded in Benny’s direction. “It’s good to be on my feet.”

The names of his companions come back to him in later years like names spoken in a haze of fever: Escobar... Estrada...Javier... Esteban... Rosario... Echeverria... Caverra. Are they all names he will later encounter in the Calla, or is that just a booze-hallucination?

The names of his companions come back to him in later years like names spoken in a haze of fever: Escobar... Estrada...Javier... Esteban... Rosario... Echeverria... Caverra. Are they all names he will later encounter in the Calla, or is that just a booze-hallucination?

They-“ “They always return them,” a hand named Farren Posella said timidly. “They return husks!” Tian cried, and there were a few cries of Hear him. Not enough, however, Tian judged. Not enough by far. Not yet. He lowered his voice again. He did not want to harangue them.

“Kids, this is absolutely terrific,” Eddie said, and for a moment he thought Francine Tavery might actually faint. “Aye,” Roland said. “You’ve done a great service. And now I’m going to do something that will probably look like blasphemy to you. You know the word?” “Yes,” Frank said. “We’re Christians.

“I was taking off my coat, heading for the kitchen... this fellow named Frank Spinelli collared me... wanted to know about a letter of recommendation I’d promised to write him... there was a woman, Lisa somebody, who wanted help with one of the AA steps, ‘Made a list of those …

Eddie said. “You actually had a sampler saying that.” “Frankie Foyle gave it to me,” Callahan said. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Back in seminary. And Danny Glick... I officiated at his funeral, I think I told you that. That was when everything seemed to change, somehow.

And that’s what the Wolves are doing to this little village of ours. What they’re doing to our Calla.” “Hear him!” cried Freddy Rosario from the next farm over. “Hear him very well!” Freddy had twins of his own, although they were still on the tit and so probably safe.

“Aye, so they might,” one of the smallhold farmers rumbled-his name was Jorge Estrada. “And so they might not. Manni-sai, would you really kill a whole town’s children for what might be?” A strong rumble of agreement ran through the crowd. Another smallholder, Garrett Strong, rose to his feet.

This is what I say, Tian Jaffords, son of Luke! If we don’t stand and fight soon, we’ll be roont ourselves!” Loud cries of Hear him!. Exuberant stomping of shor’boots. Even some applause. George Telford, another rancher, whispered briefly to Eisenhart and Overholser. They listened, then nodded. Telford rose.

She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost. The dinner-plate wasn’t just weighted; its rim had been sharpened.

This is a shot he’s getting very good at. There is Route 19 through West Virginia, and a little road-dusty carnival that’s looking for a man who can fix the rides and feed the animals. “Or the other way around,“ says Greg Chumm, the carny’s greasy-haired owner.

Below them is a long sloping field filled with great gray-black stone faces, eroded statues left by people who are long gone, and Grissom’s men advance relentlessly among them as Roland and his final few companions withdraw ever upward, shooting as they go.

Hedda whined. She had that whine down to a science. One of these days she would draw it out a little too long and her mother would clout her right down dead. “Because ye’re the oldest,” she said. “But-” “Shut your mouth, Hedda Jaffords.” “We’ll watch em, Ma,” Heddon said.

Eddie was so deep in a cluster of admiring men and women that Roland didn’t think he would have seen him, but for the child riding on his shoulders; it was Heddon Jaffords, an enormous grin on his face. “Are you sure you want to disturb him?” Rosa asked timidly.

And then he’d buy Hugh Anselm’s field over on the far side of yon ridge... hire a couple of extra men come reap, for the land’d be gold for as far as you could see... why, he might even quit the rice altogether and become a madrigal monarch.

“I do,” he said, grinning. “Believe me, I do.” He put an arm around her neck, pulled her down, kissed her brow, her nose, and finally her lips. The twins laughed and clapped. The baby chorded. And on the porch, old Jamie Jaffords did the same.

Rowena Magruder Rowlings asks him. “Hmmm? Where are all the people he cured, all the newspaper feature reporters who called him a genius? Where’s Jane Pauley? She interviewed him on the Today show, you know. Twice! Where’s that fucking Mother Teresa?

Some of them were scary, like one night just before dinner when one guy says to this other one, ‘Stop picking your nose, Jeffy, it’s making me sick’ and Jeffy goes ‘Why don’t you pick this, homeboy,’ and he pulls out this giant spring-blade knife and before any of us …

“But the door was open when you found the priest?” he asked Henchick. They had spoken of this the previous night, but Roland wanted to hear more. “Aye. ‘Twas I and Jemmin who found him. Thee knows we elder Manni seek the other worlds? Not for treasure but for enlightenment?”

Two false pregnancies, and in both cases that woman had looked ready to bust out twins. Triplets, even. But of course Jessica Beasley’s periods had stopped, and that made it all too easy for a woman to believe she was with child.

“Aye, so they might,” one of the smallhold farmers rumbled-his name was Jorge Estrada. “And so they might not. Manni-sai, would you really kill a whole town’s children for what might be?” A strong rumble of agreement ran through the crowd. Another smallholder, Garrett Strong, rose to his feet.

Not even when Juan Castillo says, “Why joo crine, Donnie?” “Am I?” he asks, and wipes underneath his eyes, and yeah, he is. He is crying. But he doesn’t know it’s for shame, not then. He assumes it’s shock, and probably part of it is. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Without giving them a chance to ask questions, Roland buried his fingers in the corners of his mouth again and whistled. Vaughn Eisenhart, Krella Anselm, and Wayne Overholser joined the others in the ditch and began bellowing for the little ‘uns to turn around and start back toward the road.

“Ye danced the rice-dance,” he said, “so ye know Lady Oriza.” Roland nodded. The Lady of the Rice, in some places considered a goddess, in others a heroine, in some, both. “And ye know how she did away with Gray Dick, who killed her father?” Roland nodded again.

There is Route 71 through Delaware and apples to pick. There’s a little boy named Lars with a broken radio. Callahan fixes it and Lars’s mother packs him a great and wonderful lunch to go on with, a lunch that seems to last for days.

Pere Callahan stepped out of the field with Lia Jaffords cradled in his arms. In spite of the noise, the little girl was asleep. Callahan looked at the heaps of dead Wolves, took one hand from beneath the little girl’s bottom, and drew a slow, trembling cross in the air.

“I was taking off my coat, heading for the kitchen... this fellow named Frank Spinelli collared me... wanted to know about a letter of recommendation I’d promised to write him... there was a woman, Lisa somebody, who wanted help with one of the AA steps, ‘Made a list of those …

“The seminon often reaches the Whye and then turns back,” Callahan said. “According to the old folks, Lord Seminon begs Lady Oriza to make him welcome when he reaches the water and she often bars his passage out of jealousy. You see-“ “Seminon married her sissa,” Jake said.

Callahan looked into his face, and what he saw there seemed to reassure him a little. When he continued, he seemed calmer. “Loretta Coogan was one of the town spinsters. I must have frightened her, because she said I’d have to wait for the bus outside. I went out.

asked a smallhold farmer whose place was just west of Tian’s, near the edge of the Calla. His name was Louis Haycox, and he spoke in a musing, bitter tone of voice. Below his mustache, his lips curved in a smile that didn’t have much humor in it.

Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery’s voice.

Although he was almost wild with impatience, Eddie thought it best to let the old guy unwind it in his own way. “What was that, Gran-pere?” “Ah seen Luke didn’t entirely believe me. Thought his own Da’ might just be a-storyin, tellin a wild tale about bein a Wolf-killer’t'look tall.

Lupe Delgado was thirty-two, an alcoholic almost five one-day-at-a-time years from his last drink, and had been working at Home since 1974. Magruder had founded the place, but it was Lupe Delgado who invested it with real life and purpose.

She just took one glance at the others: Lyman and Lia, who were five, and Aaron, who was two. Aaron sat naked in the dirt, happily chunking two stones together. He was the rare singleton, and how the women of the village envied her on account of him!

His haughty heart will undo him, Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful adventures of her own). The Lady was right. I’ve killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies, Gray Dick told himself.

He’d once had a pretty nice high school class ring, but that he’d lost in the sand at Coney Island during the summer he turned seventeen, the summer of Mary Jean Sobieski.

Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle. Sentences diagrammed on the blackboard: beware the misplaced modifier. Petra Jesserling, who always wore A-line jumpers and had a crush on him (or so Mike Yanko claimed). The drone of Ms. Avery’s voice.

Home gained nationwide notice in 1977, when Mother Teresa visited, helped to serve dinner, and prayed with the clients. Magruder himself was the subject of a Newsweek cover story in 1980, when the East Side’s so-called “Street Angel” was named Manhattan’s Man of the Year by Mayor Ed Koch.

Early evenings are often a very busy time for me... people are much more prone to browse once the workday’s over... and Mr. Brice is coming in to look at a first of The Troubled Air, Irwin Shaw’s novel about radio and the McCarthy era... I’ll have to at least …

Mr. Flip.” Callahan’s face was now so pale he might have been a vampire’s victim himself. “I never told anyone about Mr. Flip, not even my mother. That can’t be in that book. It just can’t be.” “It is,” Jake said simply. “Let’s get this straight,” Eddie said.

But there was one thing he could add- “Have you got a piece of rawhide?” he asked Roland. From deep in the cave, the voice of Mr. Tubther, his fifth-grade teacher, cried out with lugubrious intensity. “You had potential!

He found himself thinking (with a mild sense of wonder) of Ms. Avery’s English class. The hanging yellow globes with ghostly dead flies lying in their bellies. Lucas Hanson, who always tried to trip him when he was going up the aisle.

His eyes were hot, his lips a thin white line. “I don’t mean it’s right,” Neil said. He had begun to spin his sombrero in a way that made Tian feel a litde dizzy. “But we have to face the realities, don’t we? Aye. And they don’t take em all.

Jake’s face pinked a little, but his voice remained steady. He had awakened with this idea, as if the dreamgod Roland called Nis had brought it to him in his sleep. “I’ll put it at the bottom of my bedroll and wrap it in my extra shirt.

Nevertheless, the cops ID’d both of them: Norton Randolph and William Garton, both of Brooklyn. There were photos. Mug shots; both of them had long records. They were my guys, all right. George and Lennie.” “You think the low men got them, don’t you? ”Jake asked. “Yes. Payback’s a bitch.”

“Also, how do you know when they’re coming?” Clicks from inside Andy. A lot of them this time, maybe a full minute’s worth. When Andy spoke again, its voice was different. It made Eddie think about Officer Bosconi, back in the neighborhood. Brooklyn Avenue, that was Bosco Bob’s beat.

Callahan fixes it and Lars’s mother packs him a great and wonderful lunch to go on with, a lunch that seems to last for days. There is Route 317 through rural Kentucky, and a job digging graves with a fellow named Pete Petacki who won’t shut up.

Baby Aaron stood by, his diaper now sagging almost to his knees. On his face was a huge, delighted grin. He made rope-twirling motions with one chubby fist. ” ‘Pinky Pauper came a-calling! Into sin that boy be falling! I caught him creeping, one-two-three, he’s as wicked as can be!’

Just pissed enow to take a stand whether the rest of ‘un said yes, no, or maybe. There ‘us me... Pokey Slidell... who ‘us my best friend... and there ‘us Eamon Doolin and his wife, that redheaded Molly. She was the very devil when it came to throwin the dish.”

The gunslinger’s blue eyes were sharp, almost blazing. His horse clearly felt some change, for it stopped. So did Jake’s. Here they were on East Road, less than a mile from where Red Molly Doolin had once killed a Wolf out of Thunderclap. Here they were, facing each other.

There are no records, ye ken, just one mouth to another. I know I was well-breeched, so it’s longer than twenty years-“ “It’s twenty-four,” said a voice in the back of the room. “Nay, twenty-three,” said a voice closer to the front. Reuben Caverra stood up.

“He ain’t the biggest of em, but only because he gave away half of what he had to his young sister when she married.” Overholser leaned toward Roland, his face alight with a bit of town history about to be passed on. “Roberta Javier, Bucky’s sissa, she’s lucky,“ he said.

“ ‘Ware he ain’t your Da’,” Garrett Strong’s only farmhand- Rossiter, his name was-called out, and there was general laughter. Even Overholser smiled at this jest. “Son, if ye truly hate to speak agin me, don’t ye do it,” Overholser said.

You could get a shot if you needed one, and if you promised to be quiet. Plus a sedative chaser. This isn’t recommended medical procedure-I’m not even sure it was legal, since neither Lupe nor Rowan Magruder were doctors-but it seemed to work.

Because, you see, I thought...” SIX He puts out his hand because he has made the assumption that she wants to shake with him. The pleasant voice has fooled him. He doesn’t realize that what Rowena Magruder Rawlings is actually doing is raising her hand, not putting it out.

“They took Ruth, my sissa, hear me, I beg.” A murmur-really no more than a vocalized sigh of agreement-came from the men sitting crammed together on the benches. They could have spread out, but had chosen shoulder-to-shoulder instead. Sometimes there was comfort in discomfort, Tian reckoned.

“Any?” “Zalia Jaffords,” she said at once. “Say true?” She nodded emphatically. “Zalia could have cut that tater in two ten-for-ten, at twenty paces farther back.” “Others?” “Sarey Adams, wife of Diego. And Rosalita Munoz.” Roland raised his eyebrows at that. “Aye,” she said. “Other than Zalia, Rosie’s best.”

“No,” Tower said. “Well, there’s Sergio; he’s the shop cat. I imagine he’s back here somew-“ “This ain’t no shop,” Biondi said, “it’s a hole you pour money into. One of those chi-chi designers’d have trouble making enough to cover the overhead on a joint this big, and a bookstore?

The work he gets in Sacramento is unloading trucks at a block-long bed-and-mattress store called Sleepy John’s. Sleepy John is preparing for his once-yearly Mattre$$ Ma$$acre, and all morning long Callahan and a crew of five other men haul in the kings and queens and doubles.

Another showed Our Lady of Serenity Church, and one showed the living room of the rectory... inside the rectory! Jake could actually see the Pere’s cat, Snugglebutt, lying asleep on the hearth. The other two showed angles of what Jake assumed was the Manni village (he had not been there).

Cash and Estrada. Strong and Echeverria. Winkler and Spalter (cousins of Overholser’s, they said). Freddy Rosario and Farren Posella... or was it Freddy Posella and Farren Rosario? Every ten or fifteen minutes the torches would change color again. From red to green, from green to orange, from orange to blue.

I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before they came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod. The youngest be only fifteen, do ya not see it.” “Margaret-” She ignored him.

Muscles that had been prodigious (as Tia Jaffords’s and Zalman Hoonik’s were now) went slack and wasted away. Sometimes they died peacefully, in their sleep. More often, their endings weren’t peaceful at all. The sores came, sometimes out on the skin but more often in the stomach or the head.

(Tian Jaffords doubted if the bullets were any good, or that the ancient rifle would fire even if some of them were.) A delegation of the Manni-folk came crammed into a bucka drawn by a pair of mutie geldings-one with three eyes, the other with a pylon of raw pink …

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. “The Spider-Man books,” Eddie said. “When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of those things.” “I didn’t buy em myself,” Jake said, “but Timmy Mucci down at Mid-Town Lanes used to have a terrible jones for the Marvel mags.

Our children grew up free and clear, with no Wolves to worry about. I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before they came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod.

“Don’t you?” “Sometimes I dream about it,” Tower said. “I haven’t actually been in there since Tommy Graham’s deli went bust and I paid to have it knocked down. And to have the fence put up, of course, which was almost as expensive as the men with the wrecking ball.

When I got em instead of my elder brother, I was some pleased.” “Did you have a twin?” Roland asked. “Aye, Verna,” Eisenhart said.

FIVE Roland and his mates had learned about todash (what there was to learn) from Vannay, the tutor of court in the long-ago when they had been young. They had been a quintet to begin with: Roland, Alain, Cuthbert, Jamie, and Wallace, Vannay’s son.

It never occurs to him-at least in his conscious mind-that they want to make sure the net’s all the way around him this time. They may be slow learners, Callahan will eventually come to realize, but they’re not no learners. Then, in early December, Ward Huckman receives a dream letter.

Nevertheless, the cops ID’d both of them: Norton Randolph and William Garton, both of Brooklyn. There were photos. Mug shots; both of them had long records. They were my guys, all right. George and Lennie.” “You think the low men got them, don’t you? ”Jake asked. “Yes. Payback’s a bitch.”

Cash and Estrada. Strong and Echeverria. Winkler and Spalter (cousins of Overholser’s, they said). Freddy Rosario and Farren Posella... or was it Freddy Posella and Farren Rosario? Every ten or fifteen minutes the torches would change color again. From red to green, from green to orange, from orange to blue.

Muscles that had been prodigious (as Tia Jaffords’s and Zalman Hoonik’s were now) went slack and wasted away. Sometimes they died peacefully, in their sleep. More often, their endings weren’t peaceful at all. The sores came, sometimes out on the skin but more often in the stomach or the head.