Wolves of the Calla

"Good gods," he said.

Eddie and Susa

But the yellow letters across the bottom, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans, were gone. There was no credit line there at all.

Jake turned the book and looked at the spine. It said Charlie the Choo-Choo and McCauley House, Publishers. Nothing else.

South of them now, the sound of voices. Callahan and his friends, approaching. Callahan from the Calla. Callahan of the Lot, he had also called himself.

"Title page, sugar," Susa

Jake did. Once again there was only the title of the story and the publisher's name, this time with a colophon.

"Look at the copyright page," Eddie said.

Jake turned the page. Here, on the verso of the title page and beside the recto where the story began, was the copyright information. Except there was no information, not really.

Copyright 1936, it said. Numbers which added up to nineteen. The rest was blank.

Chapter V:

Overholser

ONE

Susa

Just before Callahan and his party drew within earshot, Roland murmured to her, "Stay close to me, and not a word from you unless I prompt it. If they take you for my sh'veen, let it be so."

Under other circumstances, she might have had something pert to say about the idea of being Roland's quiet little side-wife, his nudge in the night, but there was no time this morning, and in any case, it was far from a joking matter; the seriousness in his face made that clear. Also, the part of the faithful, quiet second appealed to her. In truth, any part appealed to her. Even as a child, she had rarely been so happy as when pretending to be someone else.

Which probably explains all there is about you worth knowing, sugar, she thought.

"Susa

"Hear you well," she told him. "Don't you worry about me."

"If it goes as I want, they'll see you little and you'll see them much."

As a woman who'd grown up black in mid-twentieth-century America (Odetta had laughed and applauded her way through Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, often rocking back and forth in her seat like one who has been visited by a revelation), Susa

TWO

Watching Roland make the introductions (Susa

Of course she knew what all this was about; it didn't take a rocket scientist, as Eddie sometimes said. The crazy, scrambled dreams she couldn't recall, the weakness and nausea in the mornings, the transient headaches, the strangely fierce gas attacks and occasional cramps all came down to the same thing: she wanted his baby. More than anything else in the world, she wanted Eddie Dean's chap growing in her belly.

What she didn't want was to puff up in a humiliating false pregnancy.

Never mind all that now, she thought as Callahan approached with the others. Right now you've got to watch. Got to see what Roland and Eddie and Jake don't see. That way nothing gets dropped. And she felt she could do that job very well.

Really, she had never felt finer in her life.

THREE

Callahan came first. Behind him were two men, one who looked about thirty and another who looked to Susa

But not by us, Susa

Just behind these two-specifically behind the younger of the two-there came a tall, handsome woman, probably not black but nonetheless nearly as dark-ski

Boy may be older than Jake in years, she thought, but he's got a soft bok about him, all the same. True, but not necessarily a bad thing. Jake had seen far too much for a boy not yet in his teens. Done too much, as well.

Overholser looked at their guns (Roland and Eddie each wore one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips; the.44 Ruger from New York City hung under Jake's arm in what Roland called a docker's clutch), then at Roland. He made a perfunctory salute, his half-closed fist skimming somewhere at least close to his forehead. There was no bow. If Roland was offended by this, it didn't show on his face. Nothing showed on his face but polite interest.