“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 sleeping in a real bed with a roof over my head, and I’m anxious to get to it, but otherwise I’m fine, too.”

“Things go wrong, you won’t have to worry about the accommodations.”

“That’s true,” Eddie said, “but I don’t think they’re going to go wrong. Do you?”

Before she could answer, a gust of wind shook the house and whistled beneath the eaves. The seminon saying good day to ya, Eddie guessed.

“I don’t like that wind,” she said. “It’s a wild-card.”

Eddie opened his mouth.

“And if you say anything about ka, I’ll punch you in the nose.”