Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [221]
“Oh yes,” the gunslinger said, remembering a preacher of the Buff whom he had once been forced to kill.
“But they listened,” Callahan said. “A lot did, anyway, and when they offered to build me a church, I said thankya. And that’s the Old Fella’s story. As you see, you were in it…two of you, anyway. Jake, was that after you died?”
Jake lowered his head. Oy, sensing his distress, whined uneasily. But when Jake answered, his voice was steady enough. “After the first death. Before the second.”
Callahan looked visibly startled, and he crossed himself. “You mean it can happen more than once? Mary save us!”
Rosalita had left them. Now she came back, holding a ’sener high. Those which had been placed on the table had almost burned down, and the porch was cast in a dim and failing glow that was both eerie and a little sinister.
“Beds is ready,” she said. “Tonight the boy sleeps with Pere. Eddie and Susannah, as you were night before last.”
“And Roland?” asked Callahan, his bushy brows raising.
“I have a cosy for him,” she said stolidly. “I showed it to him earlier.”
“Did you,” Callahan said. “Did you, now. Well, then, that’s settled.” He stood. “I can’t remember the last time I was so tired.”
“We’ll stay another few minutes, if it does ya,” Roland said. “Just we four.”
“As you will,” Callahan said.
Susannah took his hand and impulsively kissed it. “Thank you for your story, Pere.”
“It’s good to have finally told it, sai.”
Roland asked, “The box stayed in the cave until the church was built? Your church?”
“Aye. I can’t say how long. Maybe eight years; maybe less. ’Tis hard to tell with certainty. But there came a time when it began to call to me. As much as I hated and feared that Eye, part of me wanted to see it again.”
Roland nodded. “All the pieces of the Wizard’s Rainbow are full of glammer, but Black Thirteen was ever told to be the worst. Now I think I understand why that is. It’s this Crimson King’s actual watching Eye.”
“Whatever it is, I felt it calling me back to the cave…and further. Whispering that I should resume my wanderings, and make them endless. I knew I could open the door by opening the box. The door would take me anywhere I wanted to go. And any when! All I had to do was concentrate.” Callahan considered, then sat down again. He leaned forward, looking at them in turn over the gnarled carving of his clasped hands. “Hear me, I beg. We had a President, Kennedy was his name. He was assassinated some thirteen years before my time in ’Salem’s Lot…assassinated in the West—”
“Yes,” Susannah said. “Jack Kennedy. God love him.” She turned to Roland. “He was a gunslinger.”
Roland’s eyebrows rose. “Do you say so?”
“Aye. And I say true.”
“In any case,” Callahan said, “there’s always been a question as to whether the man who killed him acted alone, or whether he was part of a larger conspiracy. And sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and think, ‘Why don’t you go and see? Why don’t you stand in front of that door with the box in your arms and think, “Dallas, November 22nd, 1963”? Because if you do that the door will open and you can go there, just like the man in Mr. Wells’s story of the time machine. And perhaps you could change what happened that day. If there was ever a watershed moment in American life, that was it. Change that, change everything that came after. Vietnam…the race riots…everything.’ ”
“Jesus,” Eddie said respectfully. If nothing else, you had to respect the ambition of such an idea. It was right up there with the peg-legged sea captain chasing the white whale. “But Pere…what if you did it and changed things for the worse?”
“Jack Kennedy was not a bad man,” Susannah said coldly. “Jack Kennedy was a good man. A great man.”
“Maybe so. But do you know what? I think it takes a great man to make a great mistake. And besides, someone who came after him might have been a really