Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [298]
“I bet you get twenty!” Benny said. “Boy, I wish I could be with you! We’d fight side by side! Pow! Pow! Pow! Then we’d reload!”
Jake sat up and looked at Benny with real curiosity. “Would you?” he asked. “If you could?”
Benny thought about it. His face changed, was suddenly older and wiser. He shook his head. “Nah. I’d be scared. Aren’t you really scared? Say true?”
“Scared to death,” Jake said simply.
“Of dying?”
“Yeah, but I’m even more scared of fucking up.”
“You won’t.”
Easy for you to say, Jake thought.
“If I have to go with the little kids, at least I’m glad my father’s going, too,” Benny said. “He’s taking his bah. You ever seen him shoot?”
“No.”
“Well, he’s good with it. If any of the Wolves get past you guys, he’ll take care of them. He’ll find that gill-place on their chests, and pow!”
What if Benny knew the gill-place was a lie? Jake wondered. False information this boy’s father would hopefully pass on? What if he knew—
Eddie spoke up in his head, Eddie with his wise-ass Brooklyn accent in full flower. Yeah, and if fish had bicycles, every fuckin river’d be the Tour de France.
“Benny, I really have to try to get some sleep.”
Benny lay back down. Jake did the same, and resumed looking up at the ceiling. All at once he hated it that Oy was on Benny’s bed, that Oy had taken so naturally to the other boy. All at once he hated everything about everything. The hours until morning, when he could pack, mount his borrowed pony, and ride back to town, seemed to stretch out into infinity.
“Jake?”
“What, Benny, what?”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to say I’m glad you came here. We had some fun, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, and thought: No one would believe he’s older than me. He sounds about…I don’t know…five, or something. That was mean, but Jake had an idea that if he wasn’t mean, he might actually start to cry. He hated Roland for sentencing him to this last night at the Rocking B. “Yeah, fun big-big.”
“I’m gonna miss you. But I’ll bet they put up a statue of you guys in the Pavilion, or something.” Guys was a word Benny had picked up from Jake, and he used it every chance he got.
“I’ll miss you, too,” Jake said.
“You’re lucky, getting to follow the Beam and travel places. I’ll probably be here in this shitty town the rest of my life.”
No, you won’t. You and your Da’ are going to do plenty of wandering…if you’re lucky and they let you out of town, that is. What you’re going to do, I think, is spend the rest of your life dreaming about this shitty little town. About a place that was home. And it’s my doing. I saw…and I told. But what else could I do?
“Jake?”
He could stand no more. It would drive him mad. “Go to sleep, Benny. And let me go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
Benny rolled over to face the wall. In a little while his breathing slowed. A little while after that, he began snoring. Jake lay awake until nearly midnight, and then he went to sleep, too. And had a dream. In it Roland was down on his knees in the dust of East Road, facing a great horde of oncoming Wolves that stretched from the bluffs to the river. He was trying to reload, but both of his hands were stiff and one was short two fingers. The bullets fell uselessly in front of him. He was still trying to load his great revolver when the Wolves rode him down.
Thirteen
Dawn of Wolf’s Eve. Eddie and Susannah stood at the window of the Pere’s guest room, looking down the slope of lawn to Rosa’s cottage.
“He’s found something with her,” Susannah said. “I’m glad for him.”
Eddie nodded. “How you feeling?”
She smiled up at him. “I’m fine,” she said, and meant it. “What about you, sugar?”
“I’ll miss