Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [145]
AWARD-WINNING “STREET ANGEL” CRITICAL
NEW YORK (AP) Rowan R. Magruder, owner and Chief Supervisor of what may be America’s most highly regarded shelter for the homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted, is in critical condition after being assaulted by the so-called Hitler Brothers. The Hitler Brothers have been operating in the five boroughs of New York for at least eight years. According to police, they are believed responsible for over three dozen assaults and the deaths of two men. Unlike their other victims, Magruder is neither black nor Jewish, but he was found in a doorway not far from Home, the shelter he founded in 1968, with the Hitler Brothers’ trademark swastika cut into his forehead. Magruder had also suffered multiple stab-wounds.
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.
A doctor familiar with the case rated Magruder’s chances of pulling through as “no higher than three in ten.” He said that, as well as being branded, Magruder was blinded by his assailants. “I think of myself as a merciful man,” the doctor said, “but in my opinion, the men who did this should be beheaded.”
Callahan reads the article again, wondering if this is “his” Rowan Magruder or another one—a Rowan Magruder from a world where a guy named Chadbourne is on some of the greenbacks, say. He’s somehow sure that it’s his, and that he was meant to see this particular item. Certainly he is in what he thinks of as the “real world” now, and it’s not just the thin sheaf of currency in his wallet that tells him so. It’s a feeling, a kind of tone. A truth. If so (and it is so, he knows it), how much he has missed out here on the hidden highways. Mother Teresa came to visit! Helped to ladle out soup! Hell, for all Callahan knows, maybe she cooked up a big old mess of Toads n Dumplins! Could’ve; the recipe was right there, Scotch-taped to the wall beside the stove. And an award! The cover of Newsweek ! He’s pissed he didn’t see that, but you don’t see the news magazines very regularly when you’re traveling with the carnival and fixing the Krazy Kups or mucking out the bull-stalls behind the rodeo in Enid, Oklahoma.
He is so deeply ashamed that he doesn’t even know he’s ashamed. 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.”
“Where joo goan?” Juan persists. “Lunch break’s almost over, man.”
“I have to leave,” Callahan says. “I have to go back east.”
“You take off, they ain goan pay joo.”
“I know,” Callahan says. “It’s okay.”
And what a lie that is. Because nothing’s okay.
Nothing.
Six
“I had a couple of hundred dollars sewn into the bottom of my backpack,” Callahan said. They were now sitting on the steps of the church in the bright sunshine. “I bought an airplane ticket back to New York. Speed was of the essence—of course—but that really wasn’t the only reason. I had to get off those highways in hiding.” He gave Eddie a small nod. “The todash turnpikes. They’re as addictive as the booze—”
“More,” Roland said. He saw three figures coming toward them: Rosalita, shepherding the Tavery twins, Frank and Francine. The girl had a large sheet of paper in her hands and was carrying it out in front of her with an air of reverence that was almost comic. “Wandering’s the most addictive drug there is, I think, and every hidden road leads