Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [102]
Callahan stepped forward. “Perhaps we could set them on a bit better than we have, my friends—give them a proper Calla Bryn Sturgis welcome.”
He began to applaud. The gathered folken joined in immediately this time. The applause was long and lusty. There were cheers, whistles, stamping feet (the foot-stamping a little less than satisfying without a wood floor to amplify the sound). The musical combo played not just one flourish but a whole series of them. Susannah grasped one of Eddie’s hands. Jake grasped the other. The four of them bowed like some rock group at the end of a particularly good set, and the applause redoubled.
At last Callahan quieted it by raising his hands. “Serious work ahead, folks,” he said. “Serious things to think about, serious things to do. But for now, let’s eat. Later, let’s dance and sing and be merry!” They began to applaud again and Callahan quieted them again. “Enough!” he cried, laughing. “And you Manni at the back, I know you haul your own rations, but there’s no reason on earth for you not to eat and drink what you have with us. Join us, do ya! May it do ya fine!”
May it do us all fine, Eddie thought, and still that sense of foreboding wouldn’t leave him. It was like a guest standing on the outskirts of the party, just beyond the glow of the torches. And it was like a sound. A bootheel on a wooden floor. A fist on the lid of a coffin.
Seven
Although there were benches and long trestle tables, only the old folks ate their dinners sitting down. And a famous dinner it was, with literally two hundred dishes to choose among, most of them homely and delicious. The doings began with a toast to the Calla. It was proposed by Vaughn Eisenhart, who stood with a bumper in one hand and the feather in the other. Eddie thought this was probably the Crescent’s version of the National Anthem.
“May she always do fine!” the rancher cried, and tossed off his cup of graf in one long swallow. Eddie admired the man’s throat, if nothing else; Calla Bryn Sturgis graf was so hard that just smelling it made his eyes water.
“DO YA!” the folken responded, and cheered, and drank.
At that moment the torches ringing the Pavilion went the deep crimson of the recently departed sun. The crowd oohed and aahed and applauded. As technology went, Eddie didn’t think it was such of a much—certainly not compared to Blaine the Mono, or the dipolar computers that ran Lud—but it cast a pretty light over the crowd and seemed to be non-toxic. He applauded with the rest. So did Susannah. Andy had brought her wheelchair and unfolded it for her with a compliment (he also offered to tell her about the handsome stranger she would soon meet). Now she wheeled her way amongst the little knots of people with a plate of food on her lap, chatting here, moving on, chatting there and moving on again. Eddie guessed she’d been to her share of cocktail parties not much different from this, and was a little jealous of her aplomb.
Eddie began to notice children in the crowd. Apparently the folken had decided their visitors weren’t going to just haul out their shooting irons and start a massacre. The oldest kids were allowed to wander about on their own. They traveled in the protective packs Eddie recalled from his own childhood, scoring massive amounts of food from the tables (although not even the appetites of voracious teenagers could make much of a dent in that bounty). They watched the outlanders, but none quite dared approach.
The youngest children stayed close to their parents. Those of the painful ’tween age clustered around the slide, swings, and elaborate monkey-bar construction at the very far end of the Pavilion. A few used the stuff, but most of them only watched the party with the puzzled eyes of those who are somehow caught just wrongways. Eddie’s heart went out to them. He could see how many pairs there were—it was eerie—and guessed that it was these puzzled children, just a little too old to use the playground equipment unselfconsciously, who would give up the greatest number to the