Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [162]
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