Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [166]
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 chortled. 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 Gathering 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