Wolves of the Calla (51 page)

“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.

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 winning humility if his grandson had been the one to reprimand him.

“Let me help you to a little of that, Gran-pere,” Susannah said, taking the jam from Zalia. The old man watched her with moist, almost worshipful eyes.

“Ain’t seen a true brown woman in oh Ah’d have
to say forty year,” Gran-pere told her. “Uster be they’d come on the lake-mart boats, but nummore.” When Gran-pere said
boats,
it came out
butts
.

“I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock to find out we’re still around,” Susannah said, and gave him a smile. The old fellow responded with a goaty, toothless grin.

The steak was tough but tasty, the corn almost as good as that in the meal Andy had prepared near the edge of the woods. The bowl of taters, although almost the size of a washbasin, needed to be refilled twice, the gravy boat three times, but to Eddie the true revelation was the rice. Zalia served three different kinds, and as far as Eddie was concerned, each one was better than the last. The Jaffordses, however, ate it almost absentmindedly, the way people drink water in a restaurant. The meal ended with an apple cobbler, and then the children were sent off to play. Gran-pere put on the finishing touch with a ringing belch. “Say thankee,” he told Zalia, and tapped his throat three times. “Fine as ever was, Zee.”

“It does me good to see you eat so, Dad,” she said.

Tian grunted, then said, “Dad, these two would speak to you of the Wolves.”

“Just Eddie, if it do ya,” Susannah said with quick decisiveness. “I’ll help you clear the table and wash the dishes.”

“There’s no need,” Zalia said. Eddie thought the woman was sending Susannah a message with her eyes—
Stay, he likes you
—but Susannah either didn’t see it or elected to ignore it.

“Not at all,” she said, transferring herself to her
wheelchair with the ease of long experience. “You’ll talk to my man, won’t you, sai Jaffords?”

“All that ’us long ago and by the way,” the old man said, but he didn’t look unwilling. “Don’t know if Ah kin. My mind dun’t hold a tale like it uster.”

“But I’d hear what you do remember,” Eddie said. “Every word.”

Tia honked laughter as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Zal did likewise, then scooped the last bit of mashed potato out of the bowl with a hand nearly as big as a cutting board. Tian gave it a brisk smack. “Never do it, ye great galoot, how many times have’ee been told?”

“Arright,” Gran-pere said. “Ah’d talk a bit if ye’d listen, boy. What else kin Ah do ’ith meself these days ’cept clabber? Help me git back on the porch, fur them steps is a strake easier comin down than they is goin up. And if ye’d fatch my pipe, daughter-girl, that’d do me fine, for a pipe helps a man think, so it does.”

“Of course I will,” Zalia said, ignoring another sour look from her husband. “Right away.”

“This were all long ago, ye must ken,” Gran-pere said once Zalia Jaffords had him settled in his rocker with a pillow at the small of his back and his pipe drawing comfortably. “I canna say for a certain if the Wolves have come twice since or three times, for although I were nineteen reaps on earth then, I’ve lost count of the years between.”

In the northwest, the red line of sunset had gone a gorgeous ashes-of-roses shade. Tian was in the barn with the animals, aided by Heddon and Hedda. The younger twins were in the kitchen. The giants, Tia and Zalman, stood at the far edge of the dooryard, looking off toward the east, not speaking or moving. They might have been monoliths in a
National Geographic
photograph of Easter Island. Looking at them gave Eddie a moderate case of the creeps. Still, he counted his blessings. Gran-pere seemed relatively bright and aware, and although his accent was thick—almost a burlesque—he’d had no trouble following what the old man was saying, at least so far.

“I don’t think the years between matter that much, sir,” Eddie said.

Gran-pere’s eyebrows went up. He uttered his rusty laugh. “Sir, yet! Been long and long sin’ Ah heerd that! Ye must be from the northern folk!”

“I guess I am, at that,” Eddie said.

Gran-pere lapsed into a long silence, looking at the fading sunset. Then he looked around at Eddie again with some surprise. “Did we eat yet? Wittles n rations?”

Eddie’s heart sank. “Yes, sir. At the table on the other side of the house.”

“Ah ask because if Ah’m gonna shoot some dirt, Ah usually shoot it d’recly after the night meal. Don’t feel no urge, so Ah thought Ah’d ask.”

“No. We ate.”

“Ah. And what’s your name?”

“Eddie Dean.”

“Ah.” The old man drew on his pipe. Twin curls of smoke drifted from his nose. “And the brownie’s
yours?” Eddie was about to ask for clarification when Gran-pere gave it. “The woman.”

“Susannah. Yes, she’s my wife.”

“Ah.”

“Sir . . . Gran-pere . . . the Wolves?” But Eddie no longer believed he was going to get anything from the old guy. Maybe Suze could—

“As Ah recall, there was four of us,” Gran-pere said.

“Not five?”

“Nar, nar, although close enow so you could say a moit.” His voice had become dry, matter-of-fact. The accent dropped away a little. “We ’us young and wild, didn’t give a rat’s red ass if we lived or died, do ya kennit. Just pissed enow to take a stand whether the rest of ’un said yes, no, or maybe. There ’us me . . . Pokey Slidell . . . who ’us my best friend . . . and there ’us Eamon Doolin and his wife, that redheaded Molly. She was the very devil when it came to throwin the dish.”

“The dish?”

“Aye, the Sisters of Oriza throw it. Zee’s one. Ah’ll make her show’ee. They have plates sharpened all the way around except fer where the women hold on, do’ee ken. Nasty wittit, they are, aye! Make a man witta bah look right stupid. You ort to see.”

Eddie made a mental note to tell Roland. He didn’t know if there was anything to this dish-throwing or not, but he
did
know they were extremely short of weapons.

“ ’Twas Molly killed the Wolf—”

“Not you?” Eddie was bemused, thinking of how truth and legend twisted together until there was no untangling them.

“Nar, nar, although”—Gran-pere’s eyes gleamed—“Ah might have said ’twas me on one time or another, mayhap to loosen a young lady’s knees when they’d otherwise have stuck together, d’ye ken?”

“I think so.”

“ ’Twas Red Molly did for it witter dish, that’s the truth of it, but that’s getting the cart out front of the horse. We seen their dust-cloud on the come. Then, mebbe six wheel outside of town, it split throg.”

“What’s that? I don’t understand.”

Gran-pere held up three warped fingers to show that the Wolves had gone three different ways.

“The biggest bunch—judgin by the dust, kennit—headed into town and went for Took’s, which made sense because there were some’d thought to hide their babbies in the storage bin out behind. Tooky had a secret room way at the back where he kep’ cash and gems and a few old guns and other outright tradeables he’d taken in; they don’t call em Tooks for nothin, ye know!” Again the rusty, cackling chuckle. “It were a good cosy, not even the folk who worked fer the old buzzard knew it were there, yet when the time come the Wolves went right to it and took the babbies and kilt anyone tried to stand in their way or even speak a word o’ beggary to em. And then they whopped at the store with their light-sticks when they rode out and set it to burn. Burnt flat, it did, and they was lucky not to’ve lost the whole town, young sai, for the flames started out of them sticks the Wolves carry ain’t like other fire, that can be put out with enough water. T’row water on these ’uns, they feed on it! Grow higher! Higher and hotter! Yer-bugger!”

He spat over the rail for emphasis, then looked at Eddie shrewdly.

“All of which Ah’m sayin is this: no matter how many in these parts my grandson conwinces to stand up and fight, or you and yer brownie, Eben Took won’t never be among em. Tooks has kep’ that store since time was toothless, and they don’t ever mean to see it burned flat again. Once ’us enough for them cowardy custards, do’ee foller?”

“Yes.”

“The other two dust-clouds, the biggest of em hied sout’ for the ranches. The littlest come down East Rud toward the smallholds, which was where we were, and where we made our stand.”

The old man’s face gleamed, memory-bound. Eddie did not glimpse the young man who had been (Gran-pere was too old for that), but in his rheumy eyes he saw the mixture of excitement and determination and sick fear which must have filled him that day. Must have filled them all. Eddie felt himself reaching out for it the way a hungry man will reach for food, and the old man must have seen some of this on his face, for he seemed to swell and gain vigor. Certainly this wasn’t a reaction the old man had ever gotten from his grandson; Tian did not lack for bravery, say thankya, but he was a sodbuster for all that.
This
man, however, this Eddie of New York . . . he might live a short life and die with his face in the dirt, but he was no sodbuster, by ’Riza.

“Go on,” Eddie said.

“Aye. So Ah will. Some of those comin toward us split off on River Rud, toward the little rice-manors that’re there—you c’d see the dust—and a few
more split off on Peaberry Road. Ah ’member Pokey Slidell turned to me, had this kind of sick smile on his face, and he stuck out his hand (the one didn’t have his bah in it), and he said . . . ”

What Pokey Slidell says under a burning autumn sky with the sound of the season’s last crickets rising from the high white grass on either side of them is “It’s been good to know ya, Jamie Jaffords, say true.” He’s got a smile on his face like none Jamie has ever seen before, but being only nineteen and living way out here on what some call the Rim and others call the Crescent, there’s plenty he’s never seen before. Or will ever see, way it looks now. It’s a sick smile, but there’s no cowardice in it. Jamie guesses he’s wearing one just like it. Here they are under the sun of their fathers, and the darkness will soon have them. They’ve come to their dying hour.

Nonetheless, his grip is strong when he seizes Pokey’s hand. “You ain’t done knowin me yet, Pokey,” he says.

“Hope you’re right.”

The dust-cloud moils toward them. In a minute, maybe less, they will be able to see the riders throwing it. And, more important, the riders throwing it will be able to see them.

Eamon Doolin says, “You know, I believe we ort to get in that ditch”
—
he points to the right side of the road
—
“an’ snay down small-small. Then, soon’s they go by, we can jump out and have at em.”

Molly Doolin is wearing tight black silk pants and a white silk blouse open at the throat to show a tiny silver reap charm: Oriza with her fist raised. In her own right hand, Molly holds a sharpened dish, cool blue titanium
steel painted over with a delicate lacework of green spring rice. Slung over her shoulder is a reed pouch lined with silk. In it are five more plates, two of her own and three of her mother’s. Her hair is so bright in the bright light that it looks as if her head is on fire. Soon enough it
will
be burning, say true.

“You can do what you like, Eamon Doolin,” she tells him. “As for me, I’m going to stand right here where they can see me and shout my twin sister’s name so they’ll hear it plain. They may ride me down but I’ll kill one of ’un or cut the legs out from under one of their damn horses before they do, of that much I’ll be bound.”