ONE
Eddie, a city boy to the core, was almost shocked by how much he liked the Jaffords place on the River Road. I could live in a place like this , he thought. That'd be okay. It'd do me fine .
It was a long log cabin, craftily built and chinked against the winter winds. Along one side there were large windows which gave a view down a long, gentle hill to the rice-fields and the river. On the other side was the barn and the dooryard, beaten dirt that had been prettied up with circular islands of grass and flowers and, to the left of the back porch, a rather exotic little vegetable garden. Half of it was filled with a yellow herb called madrigal, which Tian hoped to grow in quantity the following year.
Susannah asked Zalia how she kept the chickens out of the stuff, and the woman laughed ruefully, blowing hair back from her forehead. "With great effort, that's how," she said. "Yet the madrigal does grow, you see, and where things grow, there's always hope."
What Eddie liked was the way it all seemed to work together and produce a feeling of home. You couldn't exactly say what caused that feeling, because it was no one thing, but -
Yeah, there is one thing. And it doesn't have anything to do with the rustic log-cabin look of the place or the vegetable garden and the pecking chickens or the beds of flowers, either .
It was the kids. At first Eddie had been a little stunned by the number of them, produced for his and Suze's inspection like a platoon of soldiers for the eye of a visiting general. And by God, at first glance there looked like almost enough of them to fill a platoon... or a squad, at least.
"Them on the end're Heddon and Hedda," Zalia said, pointing to the pair of dark blonds. "They're ten. Make your manners, you two."
Heddon sketched a bow, at the same time tapping his grimy forehead with the side of an even grimier fist. Covering all the bases , Eddie thought. The girl curtsied.
"Long nights and pleasant days," said Heddon.
"That's pleasant days and long lives , dummikins," Hedda stage-whispered, then curtsied and repeated the sentiment in what she felt was the correct manner. Heddon was too overawed by the outworlders to glower at his know-it-all sister, or even really to notice her.
"The two young'uns is Lyman and Lia," Zalia said.
Lyman, who appeared all eyes and gaping mouth, bowed so violendy he nearly fell in the dirt. Lia actually did tumble over while making her curtsy. Eddie had to struggle to keep a straight face as Hedda picked her sister out of the dust, hissing.
"And this 'un," she said, kissing the large baby in her arms, "is Aaron, my little love."
"Your singleton," Susannah said.
"Aye, lady, so he is."
Aaron began to struggle, kicking and twisting. Zalia put him down. Aaron hitched up his diaper and trotted off toward the side of the house, yelling for his Da'.
"Heddon, go after him and mind him," Zalia said.
"Maw-Maw, no!" He sent her frantic eye-signals to the effect that he wanted to stay right here, listening to the strangers and eating them up with his eyes.
"Maw-Maw, yes ," Zalia said. "Garn and mind your brother, Heddon."
The boy might have argued further, but at that moment Tian Jaffords came around the corner of the cabin and swept the little boy up into his arms. Aaron crowed, knocked off his Da's straw hat, pulled at his Da's sweaty hair.
Eddie and Susannah barely noticed this. They had eyes only for the overall-clad giants following along in Jaffords's wake. Eddie and Susannah had seen maybe a dozen extremely large people on their tour of the smallhold farms along the River Road, but always at a distance. ("Most of em're shy of strangers, do ye ken," Eisenhart had said.) These two were less than ten feet away.
Man and woman or boy and girl? Both at the same time , Eddie thought. Because their ages don't matter .
The female, sweaty and laughing, had to be six-six, with breasts that looked twice as big as Eddie's head. Around her neck on a string was a wooden crucifix. The male had at least six inches on his sister-in-law. He looked at the newcomers shyly, then began sucking his thumb with one hand and squeezing his crotch with the other. To Eddie the most amazing thing about them wasn't their size but their eerie resemblance to Tian and Zalia. It was like looking at the clumsy first drafts of some ultimately successful work of art. They were so clearly idiots, the both of them, and so clearly, so closely , related to people who weren't. Eerie was the only word for them. ;
No , Eddie thought, the word is roont .
"This is my brother, Zalman," Zalia said, her tone oddly formal.
"And my sister, Tia," Tian added. "Make your manners, you two galoots."
Zalman just went ahead sucking one piece of himself and kneading the other. Tia, however, gave a huge (and somehow ducklike) curtsy. "Long days long nights long earth!" she cried. "WE GET TATERS AND GRAVY !"
"Good," Susannah said quietly. "Taters and gravy is good."
"TATERS AND GRAVY IS GOOD !" Tia wrinkled her nose, pulling her upper lip away from her teeth in a piglike sneer of good fellowship. "TATERS AND GRAVY! TATERS AND GRAVY! GOOD OL' TATERS AND GRAVY !"
Hedda touched Susannah's hand hesitantly. "She go on like that all day unless you tell her shush, missus-sai."
"Shush, Tia," Susannah said.
Tia gave a honk of laughter at the sky, crossed her arms over her prodigious bosom, and fell silent.
"Zal," Tian said. "You need to go pee-pee, don't you?"
Zalia's brother said nothing, only continued squeezing his crotch.
"Go pee-pee," Tian said. "You go on behind the barn. Water the sharproot, say thankya."
For a moment nothing happened. Then Zalman set off, moving in a wide, shambling gait.
"When they were young - " Susannah began. "Bright as polished agates, the both of em," Zalia said. "Now she's bad and my brother's even worse."
She abruptly put her hands over her face. Aaron gave a high laugh at this and covered his own face in imitation ("Peet-a-boo!" he called through his fingers), but both sets of twins looked grave. Alarmed, even.
"What's wrong 'it Maw-Maw?" Lyman asked, tugging at his father's pantsleg. Zalman, heedless of all, continued toward the barn, still with one hand in his mouth and the other in his crotch.
"Nothing, son. Your Maw-Maw's all right." Tian put the baby down, then ran his arm across his eyes. "Everything's fine. Ain't it, Zee?"
"Aye," she said, lowering her hands. The rims of her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. "And with the blessing, what ain't fine will be."
"From your lips to God's ear," Eddie said, watching the giant shamble toward the barn. "From your lips to God's ear."
TWO
"Is he having one of his bright days, your Gran-pere?" Eddie asked Tian a few minutes later. They had walked around to where Tian could show Eddie the field he called Son of a Bitch, leaving Zalia and Susannah with all children great and small.
"Not so's you'd notice," Tian said, his brow darkening. "He ain't half-addled these last few years, and won't have nobbut to do with me, anyway. Her , aye, because she'll hand-feed him, then wipe the drool off his chin for him and tell him thankya. Ain't enough I got two great roont galoots to feed, is it? I've got to have that bad-natured old man, as well. Head's gone as rusty as an old hinge. Half the time he don't even know where he is, say any small-small!"
They walked, high grass swishing against their pants. Twice Eddie almost tripped over rocks, and once Tian seized his arm and led him around what looked like a right leg-smasher of a hole. No wonder he calls it Son of a Bitch , Eddie thought. And yet there were signs of cultivation. Hard to believe anyone could pull a plow through this mess, but it looked as if Tian Jaffords had been trying.
"If your wife's right, I think I need to talk to him," Eddie said. "Need to hear his story."
"My Granda's got stories, all right. Half a thousand! Trouble is, most of em was lies from the start and now he gets em all mixed up together. His accent were always thick, and these last three years he's missing his last three teeth as well. Likely you won't be able to understand his nonsense to begin with. I wish you joy of him, Eddie of New York."
"What the hell did he do to you, Tian?"
" 'Twasn't what he did to me but what he did to my Da'. That's a long story and nothing to do with this business. Leave it"
"No, you leave it," Eddie said, coming to a stop.
Tian looked at him, startled. Eddie nodded, unsmiling: you heard me. He was twenty-five, already a year older than Cuthbert Allgood on his last day at Jericho Hill, but in this day's failing light he could have passed for a man of fifty. One of harsh certainty.
"If he's seen a dead Wolf, we need to debrief him."
"I don't kennit, Eddie."
"Yeah, but I think you ken my point just fine. Whatever you've got against him, put it aside. If we settle up with the Wolves, you have my permission to bump him into the fireplace or push him off the goddam roof. But for now, keep your sore ass to yourself. Okay?"
Tian nodded. He stood looking out across his troublesome north field, the one he called Son of a Bitch, with his hands in his pockets. When he studied it so, his expression was one of troubled greed.
"Do you think his story about killing a Wolf is so much hot air? If you really do, I won't waste my time."
Grudgingly, Tian said: "I'm more apt to believe that 'un than most of the others."
"Why?"
"Well, he were tellin it ever since I were old enough to listen, and that 'un never changes much. Also..." Tian's next words squeezed down, as if he were speaking them through gritted teeth. "My Gran-pere never had no shortage of thorn and bark. If anyone would have had guts enough to go out on the East Road and stand against the Wolves - not to mention enough trum to get others to go with him - I'd bet my money on Jamie Jaffords."
"Trum?"
Tian thought about how to explain it. "If'ee was to stick your head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd take courage, wouldn't it?"
It would take idiocy was what Eddie thought, but he nodded.
"If'ee was the sort of man could convince someone else to stick his head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd make you trum. Your dinh's trum, ain't he?"
Eddie remembered some of the stuff Roland had gotten him to do, and nodded. Roland was trum, all right. He was trum as hell. Eddie was sure the gunslinger's old mates would have said the same.
"Aye," Tian said, turning his gaze back to his field. "In any case, if ye'd get something halfway sensible out of the old man, I'd wait until after supper. He brightens a bit once he's had his rations and half a pint of graf. And make sure my wife's sitting right beside you, where he can get an eyeful. I 'magine he'd try to have a good deal more than his eye on her, were he a younger man." His face had darkened again.
Eddie clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, he's not younger. You are. So lighten up, all right?"
"Aye." Tian made a visible effort to do just that. "What do'ee think of my field, gunslinger? I'm going to plant it with madrigal next year. The yellow stuff ye saw out front."
What Eddie thought was that the field looked like a heart-break waiting to happen. He suspected that down deep Tian thought about the same; you didn't call your only unplanted field Son of a Bitch because you expected good things to happen there. But he knew the look on Tian's face. It was the one Henry used to get when the two of them were setting off to score. It was always going to be the best stuff this time, the best stuff ever. China White and never mind that Mexican Brown that made your head ache and your bowels run. They'd get high for a week, the best high ever, mellow , and then quit the junk for good. That was Henry's scripture, and it could have been Henry here beside him, telling Eddie what a fine cash crop madrigal was, and how the people who'd told him you couldn't grow it this far north would be laughing on the other side of their faces come next reap. 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.
Eddie nodded toward the field, which was hardly half-turned. "Looks like slow plowing, though. You must have to be damned careful with the mules."
Tian gave a short laugh. "I'd not risk a mule out here, Eddie."
"Then what - ?"
"I plow my sister."
Eddie's jaw dropped. "You're shitting me!"
"Not at all. I'd plow Zal, too - he's bigger, as ye saw, and even stronger - but not as bright. More trouble than it's worth. I've tried."
Eddie shook his head, feeling dazed. Their shadows ran out long over the lumpy earth, with its crop of weed and thistle. "But... man... she's your sister!"
"Aye, and what else would she do all day? Sit outside the barn door and watch the chickens? Sleep more and more hours, and only get up for her taters and gravy? This is better, believe me. She don't mind it. It's tur'ble hard to get her to plow straight, even when there ain't a plow-buster of a rock or a hole every eight or ten steps, but she pulls like the devil and laughs like a loon."
What convinced Eddie was the man's earnestness. There was no defensiveness in it, not that he could detect.
"Sides, she'll likely be dead in another ten year, anyway. Let her help while she can, I say. And Zalia feels the same."
"Okay, but why don't you get Andy to do at least some of the plowing? I bet it'd go faster if you did. All you guys with the smallhold farms could share him, ever think of that? He could plow your fields, dig your wells, raise a barn roofbeam all by himself. And you'd save on taters and gravy." He clapped Tian on the shoulder again. "That's got to do ya fine."
Tian's mouth quirked. "It's a lovely dream, all right."
"Doesn't work, huh? Or rather, he doesn't work."
"Some things he'll do, but plowing fields and digging wells ain't among em. You ask him, and he'll ask you for your password. When you have no password to give him, he'll ask you if you'd like to retry. And then - "
"Then he tells you you're shit out of luck. Because of Directive Nineteen."
"If you knew, why did you ask?"
"I knew he was that way about the Wolves, because I asked him. I didn't know it extended to all this other stuff."
Tian nodded. "He's really not much help, and he can be tiresome - if'ee don't ken that now, ye will if'ee stay long - but he does tell us when the Wolves are on their way, and for that we all say thankya."
Eddie actually had to bite off the question that came to his lips. Why did they thank him when his news was good for nothing except making them miserable? Of course this time there might be more to it; this time Andy's news might actually lead to a change. Was that what Mr. You-Will-Meet-An-Interesting-Stranger had been angling for all along? Getting the folken to stand up on their hind legs and fight? Eddie recalled Andy's decidedly smarmy smile and found such altruism hard to swallow. It wasn't fair to judge people (or even robots, maybe) by the way they smiled or talked, and yet everybody did it.
Now that I think about it, what about his voice? What about that smug little I-know-and-you-don't thing he's got going on ? Or am I imagining that, too ?
The hell of it was, he didn't know.
THREE
The sound of Susannah's singing voice accompanied by the giggles of the children - all children great and small - drew Eddie and Tian back around to the other side of the house.
Zalman was holding one end of what looked like a stock-rope. Tia had the other. They were turning it in lazy loops with large, delighted grins on their faces while Susannah, sitting propped on the ground, recited a skip-rope rhyme Eddie vaguely remembered. Zalia and her four older children were jumping in unison, their hair rising and falling. 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!' Faster, Zalman! Faster, Tia! Come on, make em really jump to it!"
Tia spun her end of the rope faster at once, and a moment later Zalman caught up with her. This was apparently something he could do. Laughing, Susannah chanted faster.
" 'Pinky Pauper took her measure! That bad boy done took her treasure! Four-five-six, we're up to seven, that bad boy won't go to heaven!' Yow, Zalia, I see your knees, girl! Faster, you guys! Faster!"
The four twins jumped like shuttlecocks, Heddon tucking his fists into his armpits and doing a buck and wing. Now that they had gotten over the awe which had made them clumsy, the two younger kids jumped in limber spooky harmony. Even their hair seemed to fly up in the same clumps. Eddie found himself remembering the Tavery twins, whose very freckles had looked the same.
" 'Pinky... Pinky Pauper...' " Then she stopped. "Shoo-fly, Eddie! I can't remember any more!"
"Faster, you guys," Eddie said to the giants turning the skip-rope. They did as he said, Tia hee-hawing up at the fading sky. Eddie measured the spin of the rope with his eyes, moving backward and forward at the knees, timing it. He put his hand on the butt of Roland's gun to make sure it wouldn't fly free.
"Eddie Dean, you cain't never!" Susannah cried, laughing.
But the next time the rope flew up he did, jumping in between Hedda and Hedda's mother. He faced Zalia, whose face was flushed and sweating, jumping with her in perfect harmony, Eddie chanted the one verse that survived in his memory. To keep it in time, he had to go almost as fast as a county fair auctioneer. He didn't realize until later that he had changed the bad boy's name, giving it a twist that was pure Brooklyn.
" 'Piggy Pecker pick my pocket, took my baby's silver locket, caught im sleepin eightnineten, stole that locket back again!' Go , you guys! Spin it!"
They did, twirling the rope so fast it was almost a blur. In a world that now appeared to be going up and down on an invisible pogo-stick, he saw an old man with fly-away hair and grizzled sideburns come out on the porch like a hedgehog out of its hole, thumping along on an ironwood cane. Hello, Gran-pere , he thought, then dismissed the old man for the time being. All he wanted to do right now was keep his footing and not be the one who fucked the spin. As a little kid, he'd always loved jumping rope and always hated the idea that he had to give it over to the girls once he went to Roosevelt Elementary or be damned forever as a sissy. Later, in high school phys ed, he had briefly rediscovered the joys of jump-rope. But never had there been anything like this. It was as if he had discovered (or rediscovered) some practical magic that bound his and Susannah's New York lives to this other life in a way that required no magic doors or magic balls, no todash state. He laughed deliriously and began to scissor his feet back and forth. A moment later Zalia Jaffords was doing the same, mimicking him step for step. It was as good as the rice-dance. Maybe better, because they were all doing it in unison.
Certainly it was magic for Susannah, and of all the wonders ahead and behind, those few moments in the Jaffordses' door-yard always maintained their own unique luster. Not two of them jumping in tandem, not even four, but six of them, while the two great grinning idiots spun the rope as fast as their slab-like arms would allow.
Tian laughed and stomped his shor'boots and cried: "That beats the drum! Don't it just! Yer-buggerl" And from the porch, his grandfather gave out a laugh so rusty that Susannah had to wonder how long ago he had laid that sound away in mothballs.
For another five seconds or so, the magic held. The jump-rope spun so rapidly the eye lost it and it existed as nothing but a whirring sound like a wing. The half-dozen within that whirring - from Eddie, the tallest, at Zalman's end, to pudgy little Lyman, at Tia's - rose and fell like pistons in a machine.
Then the rope caught on someone's heel - Heddon's, it looked like to Susannah, although later all would take the blame so none had to feel bad - and they sprawled in the dust, gasping and laughing. Eddie, clutching his chest, caught Susannah's eye. "I'm havin a heart attack, sweetheart, you better call 911."
She hoisted herself over to where he lay and put her head down so she could kiss him. "No, you're not," she said, "but you're attacking my heart, Eddie Dean. I love you."
He gazed up at her seriously from the dust of the dooryard. He knew that however much she might love him, he would always love her more. And as always when he thought these things, the premonition came that ka was not their friend, that it would end badly between them.
If it's so, then your job is to make it as good as it can be for as long as it can be. Will you do your job, Eddie?
"With greatest pleasure," he said.
She raised her eyebrows. "Do ya?" she said, Calla-talk for Beg pardon ?
"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.
FOUR
All of them were hungry after their exercise, and with Susannah helping from her chair, Zalia Jaffords laid a huge meal on the long trestle table out behind the house. The view was a winner, in Eddie's opinion. At the foot of the hill was what he took to be some especially hardy type of rice, now grown to the height of a tall man's shoulder. Beyond it, the river glowed with sunset light.
"Set us on with a word, Zee, if'ee would," Tian said.
She looked pleased at that. Susannah told Eddie later that Tian hadn't thought much of his wife's religion, but that seemed to have changed since Pere Callahan's unexpected support of Tian at the Town Gadiering Hall.
"Bow your heads, children."
Four heads dropped - six, counting the big 'uns. Lyman and Lia had their eyes squinched so tightly shut that they looked like children suffering terrible headaches. They held their hands, clean and glowing pink from the pump's cold gush, out in front of them.
"Bless this food to our use, Lord, and make us grateful. Thank you for our company, may we do em fine and they us. Deliver us from the terror that flies at noonday and the one that creeps at night. We say thankee."
"Thankee !"'cried the children, Tia almost loudly enough to rattle the windows.
"Name of God the Father and His Son, the Man Jesus," she said.
"Man Jesus !" cried the children. Eddie was amused to see that Gran-pere, who sported a crucifix nearly as large as those worn by Zalman and Tia, sat with his eyes open, peacefully picking his nose during the prayers.
"Amen."
"Amen!"
"TATERS !" cried Tia.
FIVE
Tian sat at one end of the long table, Zalia at the other. The twins weren't shunted off to the ghetto of a "kiddie table" (as Susannah and her cousins always had been at family gatherings, and how she had hated that) but seated a-row on one side, with the older two flanking the younger pair. Heddon helped Lia; Hedda helped Lyman. Susannah and Eddie were seated side by side across from the kids, with one young giant to Susannah's left and the other to Eddie's right. The baby did fine first on his mother's lap and then, when he grew bored with that, on his father's. The old man sat next to Zalia, who served him, cut his meat small-small, and did indeed wipe his chin when the gravy ran down. Tian glowered at this in a sulky way which Eddie felt did him little credit, but he kept his mouth shut, except once to ask his grandfather if he wanted more bread.
"My arm still wuks if Ah do," the old man said, and snatched up the bread-basket to prove it. He did this smartly for a gent of advanced years, then spoiled the impression of briskness by overturning the jam-cruet. "Slaggit!" he cried.
The four children looked at each other with round eyes, then covered their mouths and giggled. Tia threw back her head and honked at the sky. One of her elbows caught Eddie in the ribs and almost knocked him off his chair.
"Wish'ee wouldn't speak so in front of the children," Zalia said, righting the cruet.
"Cry'er pardon," Gran-pere said. Eddie wondered if he would have managed such winning humility if his grandson had been the one to reprimand him.
"Let me help you to a little of that, Gran-pere," Susannah said, taking the jam from Zalia. The old man watched her with moist, almost worshipful eyes.
"Ain't seen a true brown woman in oh Ah'd have to say forty year," Gran-pere told her. "Uster be they'd come on the lake-mart boats, but nuramore." When Gran-pere said boats , it came out butts .
"I hope it doesn't come as too much of a shock to find out we're still around," Susannah said, and gave him a smile. The old fellow responded with a goaty, toothless grin.
The steak was tough but tasty, the corn almost as good as that in the meal Andy had prepared near the edge of the woods. The bowl of taters, although almost the size of a washbasin, needed to be refilled twice, the gravy boat three times, but to Eddie the true revelation was the rice. Zalia served three different kinds, and as far as Eddie was concerned, each one was better than the last. The Jaffordses, however, ate it almost absentmindedly, the way people drink water in a restaurant. The meal ended with an apple cobbler, and then the children were sent off to play. Gran-pere put on the finishing touch with a ringing belch. "Say thankee," he told Zalia, and tapped his throat three times. "Fine as ever was, Zee."
"It does me good to see you eat so, Dad," she said.
Tian grunted, then said, "Dad, these two would speak to you of the Wolves."
"Just Eddie, if it do ya," Susannah said with quick decisiveness. "I'll help you clear the table and wash the dishes."
"There's no need," Zalia said. Eddie thought the woman was sending Susannah a message with her eyes - Stay, he likes you - but Susannah either didn't see it or elected to ignore it.
"Not at all," she said, transferring herself to her wheelchair with the ease of long experience. "You'll talk to my man, won't you, sai Jaffords?"
"All that 'us long ago and by the way," the old man said, but he didn't look unwilling. "Don't know if Ah kin. My mind dun't hold a tale like it uster."
"But I'd hear what you do remember," Eddie said. "Every word."
Tia honked laughter as if this were the funniest thing she'd ever heard. Zal did likewise, then scooped the last bit of mashed potato out of the bowl with a hand nearly as big as a cutting board. Tian gave it a brisk smack. "Never do it, ye great galoot, how many times have'ee been told?"
"Arright," Gran-pere said. "Ah'd talk a bit if ye'd listen, boy. What else kin Ah do 'ith meself these days 'cept clabber? Help me git back on the porch, fur them steps is a strake easier comin down than they is goin up. And if ye'd fatch my pipe, daughter-girl, that'd do me fine, for a pipe helps a man think, so it does."
"Of course I will," Zalia said, ignoring another sour look from her husband. "Right away."
SIX
"This were all long ago, ye must ken," Gran-pere said once Zalia Jaffords had him settled in his rocker with a pillow at the small of his back and his pipe drawing comfortably. "I canna say for a certain if the Wolves have come twice since or three times, for although I were nineteen reaps on earth then, I've lost count of the years between."
In the northwest, the red line of sunset had gone a gorgeous ashes-of-roses shade. Tian was in the barn with the animals, aided by Heddon and Hedda. The younger twins were in the kitchen. The giants, Tia and Zalman, stood at the far edge of the dooryard, looking off toward the east, not speaking or moving. They might have been monoliths in a National Geographic photograph of Easter Island. Looking at them gave Eddie a moderate case of the creeps. Still, he counted his blessings. Gran-pere seemed relatively bright and aware, and although his accent was thick - almost a burlesque - he'd had no trouble following what the old man was saying, at least so far.
"I don't think the years between matter that much, sir," Eddie said.
Gran-pere's eyebrows went up. He uttered his rusty laugh. "Sir, yet! Been long and long sin' Ah heerd that! Ye must be from the northern folk!"
"I guess I am, at that," Eddie said.
Gran-pere lapsed into a long silence, looking at the fading sunset. Then he looked around at Eddie again with some surprise. "Did we eat yet? Wittles n rations?"
Eddie's heart sank. "Yes, sir. At the table on the other side of the house."
"Ah ask because if Ah'm gonna shoot some dirt, Ah usually shoot it d'recly after the night meal. Don't feel no urge, so Ah thought Ah'd ask."
"No. We ate."
"Ah. And what's your name?"
"Eddie Dean."
"Ah." The old man drew on his pipe. Twin curls of smoke drifted from his nose. "And the brownie's yours?" Eddie was about to ask for clarification when Gran-pere gave it. "The woman."
"Susannah. Yes, she's my wife."
"Ah."
"Sir... Gran-pere... the Wolves?" But Eddie no longer believed he was going to get anything from the old guy. Maybe Suze could -
"As Ah recall, there was four of us," Gran-pere said.
"Not five?"
"Nar, nar, although close enow so you could say a moit." His voice had become dry, matter-of-fact. The accent dropped away a little. "We 'us young and wild, didn't give a rat's red ass if we lived or died, do ya kennit. 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 dish?"
"Aye, the Sisters of Oriza throw it. Zee's one. Ah'll make her show'ee. They have plates sharpened all the way around except fer where the women hold on, do'ee ken. Nasty wittit, they are, aye! Make a man witta bah look right stupid. You ort to see."
Eddie made a mental note to tell Roland. He didn't know if there was anything to this dish-throwing or not, but he did know they were extremely short of weapons.
" 'Twas Molly killed the Wolf - "
"Not you?" Eddie was bemused, thinking of how truth and legend twisted together until there was no untangling them.
"Nar, nar, although" - Gran-pere's eyes gleamed - "Ah might have said 'twas me on one time or another, mayhap to loosen a young lady's knees when they'd otherwise have stuck together, d'ye ken?"
"I think so."
" 'Twas Red Molly did for it witter dish, that's the truth of it, but that's getting the cart out front of the horse. We seen their dust-cloud on the come. Then, mebbe six wheel outside of town, it split throg."
"What's that? I don't understand."
Gran-pere held up three warped fingers to show that the Wolves had gone three different ways.
"The biggest bunch - judgin by the dust, kennit - headed into town and went for Took's, which made sense because there were some'd thought to hide their babbies in the storage bin out behind. Tooky had a secret room way at the back where he kep' cash and gems and a few old guns and other outright tradeables he'd taken in; they don't call em Tooks for nothin, ye know!" Again the rusty, cackling chuckle. "It were a good cosy, not even the folk who worked fer the old buzzard knew it were there, yet when the time come the Wolves went right to it and took the babbies and kilt anyone tried to stand in their way or even speak a word o' beggary to em. And then they whopped at the store with their light-sticks when they rode out and set it to burn. Burnt flat, it did, and they was lucky not to've lost the whole town, young sai, for the flames started out of them sticks the Wolves carry ain't like other fire, that can be put out with enough water. T'row water on these 'uns, they feed on it! Grow higher! Higher and hotter! Yer-bugger!"
He spat over the rail for emphasis, then looked at Eddie shrewdly.
"All of which Ah'm sayin is this: no matter how many in these parts my grandson conwinces to stand up and fight, or you and yer brownie, Eben Took won't never be among em. Tooks has kep' that store since time was toothless, and they don't ever mean to see it burned flat again. Once 'us enough for them cowardy custards, do'ee foller?"
"Yes."
"The other two dust-clouds, the biggest of em hied sout' for the ranches. The littlest come down East Rud toward the smallholds, which was where we were, and where we made our stand."
The old man's face gleamed, memory-bound. Eddie did not glimpse the young man who had been (Gran-pere was too old for that), but in his rheumy eyes he saw the mixture of excitement and determination and sick fear which must have filled him that day. Must have filled them all. Eddie felt himself reaching out for it the way a hungry man will reach for food, and the old man must have seen some of this on his face, for he seemed to swell and gain vigor. Certainly this wasn't a reaction the old man had ever gotten from his grandson; Tian did not lack for bravery, say thankya, but he was a sodbuster for all that. This man, however, this Eddie of New York... he might live a short life and die with his face in the dirt, but he was no sodbuster, by 'Riza.
"Go on," Eddie said.
"Aye. So Ah will. Some of those comin toward us split off on River Rud, toward the little rice-manors that're there - you c'd see the dust - and a few more split off on Peaberry Road. Ah 'member Pokey Slidell turned to me, had this kind of sick smile on his face, and he stuck out his hand (the one didn't have his bah in it), and he said..."
SEVEN
What Pokey Slidell says under a burning autumn sky with the sound of the season's last crickets rising from the high white grass on either side of them is "It's been good to know ya, Jamie Jaffords, say true." He's got a smile on his face like none Jamie has ever seen before, but being only nineteen and living way out here on what some call the Rim and others call the Crescent, there's plenty he's never seen before. Or will ever see, way it looks now. It's a sick smile, but there's no cowardice in it. Jamie guesses he's wearing one just like it. Here they are under the sun of their fathers, and the darkness will soon have them. They've come to their dying hour.
Nonetheless, his grip is strong when he seizes Pokey's hand. "You ain't done knowin me yet, Pokey," he says.
"Hope you're right. "
The dust-cloud moils toward them. In a minute, maybe less, they will be able to see the riders throwing it. And, more important, the riders throwing it will be able to see them.
Eamon Doolin says, "You know, I believe we ort to get in that ditch " - he points to the right side of the road - "an' snay down small-small. Then, soon's they go by, we can jump out and have at em ."
Molly Doolin is wearing tight black silk pants and a white silk blouse open at the throat to show a tiny silver reap charm: Oriza with her fist raised. In her own right hand, Molly holds a sharpened dish, cool blue titanium steel painted over with a delicate lacework of green spring rice. Slung over her shoulder is a reed pouch lined with silk. In it are five more plates, two of her own and three of her mother's. Her hair is so bright in the bright light that it looks as if her head is on fire. Soon enough it will be burning, say true .
"You can do what you like, Eamon Doolin, " she tells him. "As for me, I'm going to stand right here where they can see me and shout my twin sister's name so they'll hear it plain. They may ride me down but I'll kill one of 'un or cut the legs out from under one of their damn horses before they do, of that much I'll be bound . "
There's no time for more. The Wolves come out of the dip that marks the entrance to Arra's little smallhold patch, and the four Calla- folken can see them at last and there is no more talk of hiding. Jamie almost expected Eamon Doolin, who is mild-mannered and already losing his hair at twenty-three, to drop his bah and go pelting into the high grass with his hands raised to show his surrender. Instead, he moves into place next to his wife and nocks a bolt. There is a low whirring sound as he winds the cord tight-tight .
They stand across the road with their boots in the floury dust. They stand blocking the road. And what fills Jamie like a blessing is a sense of grace. This is the right thing to do. They're going to die here, but that's all right. Better to die than stand by while they take more children. Each one of them has lost a twin, and Pokey - who is by far the oldest of them - has lost both a brother and a young son to the Wolves. This is right. They understand that the Wolves may exact a toll of vengeance on the rest for this stand they're making, but it doesn't matter. This is right .
"Come on!" Jamie shouts, and winds his own bah - once and twice, then click. "Come on, 'ee buzzards! 'Ee cowardy custards, come on and have some! Say Calla! Say Calla Bryn Sturgis !"
There is a moment in the heat of the day when the Wolves seem to draw no closer but only to shimmer in place. Then the sound of their horses ' hooves, previously dull and muffled, grows sharp. And the Wolves seem to leap forward through the swarming air. Their pants are as gray as the hides of their horses. Dark-green cloaks flow out behind them. Green hoods surround masks (they must be masks) that turn the heads of the four remaining riders into the heads of snarling, hungry wolves .
"Four agin' four!"Jamie screams. "Four agin' four, even up, stand yer ground, cullies! Never run a step!"
The four Wolves sweep toward them on their gray horses. The men raise their bahs. Molly - sometimes called Red Molly, for her famous temper even more than her hair - raises her dish over her left shoulder. She looks not angry now but cool and calm .
The two Wolves on the end have light-sticks. They raise them. The two in the middle draw back their fists, which are clad in green gloves, to throw something . Sneetches, Jamie thinks coldly . That's what them are.
"Hold, boys... "Pokey says. "Hold... hold ... now! "
He lets fly with a twang, and Jamie sees Pokey's bah-bolt pass just over the head of the Wolf second to the right. Eamon's strikes the neck of the horse on the far left. The beast gives a crazy whinnying cry and staggers just as the Wolves begin to close the final forty yards of distance. It crashes into its neighbor horse just as that second horse's rider throws the thing in his hand. It is indeed one of the sneetches, but it sails far off course and none of its guidance systems can lock onto anything.
Jamie's bolt strikes the chest of the third rider. Jamie begins a scream of triumph that dies in dismay before it ever gets out of his throat. The bolt bounces off the thing's chest just as it would have bounced off Andy's, or a stone in the Son of a Bitch field.
Wearing armor, oh you buggardly thing, you're wearing armor under that twice-damned -
The other sneetch flies true, striking Eamon Doolin square in the face. His head explodes in a spray of blood and bone and mealy gray stuff. The sneetch flies on maybe thirty grop, then whirls and comes back. Jamie ducks and hears it flash over his head, giving off a low, hard hum as it flies.
Molly has never moved, not even when she is showered with her husband's blood and brains. Now she screams, "THIS IS FOR MINNIE, YOU SONS OF WHORES!" and throws her plate. The distance is very short by now - hardly any distance at all - but she throws it hard and the plate rises as soon as it leaves her hand .
Too hard, dear, Jamie thinks as he ducks the swipe of a light-stick (the light-stick is also giving off that hard, savage buzz) . Too hard, yer-bugger.
But the Wolf at which Molly has aimed actually rides into the rising dish. It strikes at just the point where the thing's green hood crosses the wolf-mask it wears. There is an odd, muffled sound - chump! - and the thing falls backward off its horse with its green-gauntleted hands flying up .
Pokey and Jamie raise a wild cheer, but Molly just reaches coolly into her pouch for another dish, all of them nestled neatly in there with the blunt gripping arcs pointed up. She is pulling it out when one of the light-sticks cuts the arm off her body. She staggers, teeth peeling back from her lips in a snarl, and goes to one knee as her blouse bursts into flame. Jamie is amazed to see that she is reaching for the plate in her severed hand as it lies in the dust of the road.
The three remaining Wolves are past them. The one Molly caught with her dish lies in the dust, jerking crazily, those gauntleted hands flying up and down into the sky as if it's trying to say, "What can you do ? What can you do with these damned sodbusters?"
The other three wheel their mounts as neatly as a drill-team of cavalry soldiers and race bach toward them. Molly pries the dish from her own dead fingers, then falls backward, engulfed in fire.
"Stand, Pokey!"Jamie cries hysterically as their death rushes toward them under the burning steel sky, "Stand, gods damn you!" And still that feeling of grace as he smells the charring flesh of the Doolins. This is what they should have done all along, aye, all of them, for the Wolves can be brought down, although they'll probably not live to tell and these will take their dead compadre with them so none will know .
There's a twang as Pokey fires another bolt and then a sneetch strikes him dead center and he explodes inside his clothes, belching blood and torn flesh from his sleeves, his cuffs, from the busted buttons of his fly. Again Jamie is drenched, this time by the hot stew that was his friend. He fires his own bah, and sees it groove the side of a gray horse. He knows it's useless to duck but he ducks anyway and something whirs over his head. One of the horses strikes him hard as it passes, knocking him into the ditch where Eamon proposed they hide. His bah flies from his hand. He lies there, open-eyed, not moving, knowing as they wheel their horses around again that there is nothing for it now but to play dead and hope they pass him by. They won't, of course they won't but it's the only thing to do and so he does it, trying to give his eyes the glaze of death. In another few seconds, he knows, he won't have to pretend. He smells dust, he hears the crickets in the grass, and he holds onto these things, knowing they are the last things he will ever smell and hear, that the last thing he sees will be the Wolves, bearing down on him with their frozen snarls.
They come pounding back.
One of them turns in its saddle and throws a sneetch from its gloved hand as it passes. But as it throws, the rider's horse leaps the body of the downed Wolf, which still lies twitching in the road, although now its hands barely rise. The sneetch flies above Jamie, just a little too high. He can almost feel it hesitate, searching for prey. Then it soars on, out over the field.
The Wolves ride east, pulling dust behind them. The sneetch doubles back and flies over Jamie again, this time higher and slower. The gray horses sweep around a curve in the road fifty yards east and are lost to view. The last he sees of them are three green cloaks, pulled out almost straight and fluttering.
Jamie stands up in the ditch on legs that threaten to buckle beneath him. The sneetch makes another loop and comes back, this time directly toward him, but now it is moving slowly, as if whatever powers it is almost exhausted. Jamie scrambles back into the road, falls to his knees next to the burning remains of Pokey's body, and seizes his bah. This time he holds it by the end, as one might hold a Points mallet. The sneetch cruises toward him. Jamie draws the bah to his shoulder, and when the thing comes at him, he bats it out of the air as if it were a giant bug. It falls into the dust beside one of Pokey's torn-off shor'boots and lies there buzzing malevolently, trying to rise.
"There, you bastard!" Jamie screams, and begins to scoop dust over the thing. He is weeping. "There, you bastard! There! There!" At last it's gone, buried under a heap of white dust that buzzes and shakes and at last becomes still.
Without rising - he doesn't have the strength to find his feet again, not yet, can still hardly believe he is alive - Jamie Jaffords knee-walks toward the monster Molly has killed... and it is dead now, or at least lying still. He wants to pull off its mask, see it plain. First he kicks at it with both feet, like a child doing a tantrum. The Wolfs body rocks from side to side, then lies still again. A pungent, reeky smell is coming from it. A rotten-smelling smoke is rising from the mask, which appears to be melting .
Dead, thinks the boy who will eventually become Gran-fere, the oldest living human in the Calla . Dead, aye, never doubt it. So gam, ye gutless! Garn and unmask it!
He does. Under the burning autumn sun he takes hold of the rotting mask, which feels like some sort of metal mesh, and he pulls it off, and he sees ...
EIGHT
For a moment Eddie wasn't even aware that the old guy had stopped talking. He was still lost in the story, mesmerized. He saw everything so clearly it could have been him out there on the East Road, kneeling in the dust with the bah cocked to his shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to knock the oncoming sneetch out of the air.
Then Susannah rolled past the porch toward the barn with a bowl of chickenfeed in her lap. She gave them a curious look on her way by. Eddie woke up. He hadn't come here to be entertained. He supposed the fact that he could be entertained by such a story said something about him.
"And?" Eddie asked the old man when Susannah had gone into the barn. "What did you see?"
"Eh?" Gran-pere gave him a look of such perfect vacuity that Eddie despaired.
"What did you see! When you took off the mask?"
For a moment that look of emptiness - the lights are on but no one's home - held. And then (by pure force of will, it seemed to Eddie) the old man came back. He looked behind him, at the house. He looked toward the black maw of the barn, and the lick of phosphor-light deep inside. He looked around the yard itself.
Frightened , Eddie thought. Scared to death .
Eddie tried to tell himself this was only an old man's paranoia, but he felt a chill, all the same.
"Lean close," Gran-pere muttered, and when Eddie did: "The only one Ah ever told was my boy Luke... Tian's Da', do'ee ken. Years and years later, this was. He told me never to speak of it to anyone else. Ah said, 'But Lukey, what if it could help? What if it could help't'next time they come?' "
Gran-pere's lips barely moved, but his thick accent had almost entirely departed, and Eddie could understand him perfectly.
"And he said to me, 'Da', if'ee really b'lieved knowin c'd help, why have'ee not told afore now?' And Ah couldn't answer him, young fella, cos 'twas nothing but intuition kep' my gob shut. Besides, what good could it do? What do it change?"
"I don't know," Eddie said. Their faces were close. Eddie could smell beef and gravy on old Jamie's breath. "How can I, when you haven't told me what you saw?"
" 'The Red King always finds 'is henchmen,' my boy said. 'It'd be good if no one ever knew ye were out there, better still if no one ever heard what ye saw out there, lest it get back to em, aye, even in Thunderclap.' And Ah seen a sad thing, young fella."
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. Although ye'd think even a halfwit would see that if Ah was goingter make a tale, Ah'd make it me that killed the Wolf, and not Eamon Doolin's wife."
That made sense, Eddie thought, and then remembered Gran-pere at least hinting that he had taken credit more than once-upon-a, as Roland sometimes said. He smiled in spite of himself.
"Lukey were afraid someone else might hear my story and believe it. That it'd get on to the Wolves and Ah might end up dead fer no more than tellin a make-believe story. Not that it were." His rheumy old eyes begged at Eddie's face in the growing dark. "You believe me, don'tya?"
Eddie nodded. "I know you say true, Gran-pere. But who..." Eddie paused. Who would rat you out? was how the question came to mind, but Gran-pere might not understand. "But who would tell? Who did you suspect?"
Gran-pere looked around the darkening yard, seemed about to speak, then said nothing.
"Tell me," Eddie said. "Tell me what you - "
A large dry hand, a-tremor with age but still amazingly strong, gripped his neck and pulled him close. Bristly whiskers rasped against the shell of Eddie's ear, making him shudder all over and break out in gooseflesh.
Gran-pere whispered nineteen words as the last light died out of the day and night came to the Calla.
Eddie Dean's eyes widened. His first thought was that he now understood about the horses - all the gray horses. His second was Of course. It makes perfect sense. We should have known .
The nineteenth word was spoken and Gran-pere's whisper ceased. The hand gripping Eddie's neck dropped back into Gran-pere's lap. Eddie turned to face him. "Say true?"
"Aye, gunslinger," said the old man. "True as ever was. Ah canna' say for all of em, for many sim'lar masks may cover many dif'runt faces, but - "
"No," Eddie said, thinking of gray horses. Not to mention all those sets of gray pants. All those green cloaks. It made perfect sense. What was that old song his mother used to sing? You're in the army now, you're not behind the plow. You'll never get rich, you son of a bitch, you're in the army now .
"I'll have to tell this story to my dinh," Eddie said.
Gran-pere nodded slowly. "Aye," he said, "as ye will. Ah dun't git along well witta boy, ye kennit. Lukey tried to put't'well where Tian pointed wit''t' drotta stick, y'ken."
Eddie nodded as if he understood this. Later, Susannah translated it for him: I don't get along well with the boy, you understand. Lukey tried to put the well where Tian pointed with the dowsing stick, you see .
"A dowser?" Susannah asked from out of the darkness. She had returned quietly and now gestured with her hands, as if holding a wishbone.
The old man looked at her, surprised, then nodded. "The drotta, yar. Any ro', I argued agin' it, but after the Wolves came and tuk his sister, Tia, Lukey done whatever the boy wanted. Can'ee imagine, lettin a boy nummore'n seventeen site the well, drotta or no? But Lukey put it there and there were water, Ah'll give'ee that, we all seen it gleam and smelt it before the clay sides give down and buried my boy alive. We dug him out but he were gone to the clearing, thrut and lungs all full of clay and muck."
Slowly, slowly, the old man took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes with it.
"The boy and I en't had a civil word between us since; that well's dug between us, do ya not see it. But he's right about wan-tin't'stand agin the Wolves, and if you tell him anything for me, tell him his Gran-pere salutes him damn proud, salutes him big-big, yer-bugger! He got the sand o'Jaffords in his craw, aye! We stood our stand all those years agone, and now the blood shows true." He nodded, this time even more slowly. "Garn and tell yer dinh, aye! Every word! And if it seeps out... if the Wolves were to come out of Thunderclap early fer one dried-up old turd like me..."
He bared his few remaining teeth in a smile Eddie found extraordinarily gruesome.
"Ah can still wind a bah," he said, "and sumpin tells me yer brownie could be taught to throw a dish, shor' legs or no."
The old man looked off into the darkness.
"Let 'un come," he said softly. "Last time pays fer all, yer-bugger. Last time pays fer all."