Song of Susannah Read Free Page A

mind could be so cruel. He kept seeing her in the gutter somewhere down in Alphabet City, with a swastika carved on her forehead, and a placard reading GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN OXFORD TOWN hung around her neck.
    Behind him the door from the rectory’s kitchen opened. There was the soft padding sound of bare feet (his ears were sharp now, trained like the rest of his killer’s equipment), and the click of toenails. Jake and Oy.
    The kid sat down next to him in Callahan’s rocking chair. He was dressed and wearing his docker’s clutch. In it was the Ruger Jake had stolen from his father on the day he had run away from home. Today it had drawn . . . well, not blood. Not yet. Oil? Eddie smiled a little. There was no humor in it.
    “Can’t sleep, Jake?”
    “Ake,” Oy agreed, and collapsed at Jake’s feet, muzzle resting on the boards between his paws.
    “No,” Jake said. “I keep thinking about Susannah.” He paused, then added: “And Benny.”
    Eddie knew that was natural, the boy had seen his friend blown apart before his very eyes, of course he’d be thinking about him, but Eddie still felt a bitter spurt of jealousy, as if all of Jake’s regard should have been saved for Eddie Dean’s wife.
    “That Tavery kid,” Jake said. “It’s his fault. Panicked. Got running. Broke his ankle. If not for him, Benny’d still be alive.” And very softly—it would have chilled the heart of the boy in question had heheard it, Eddie had no doubt of that—Jake said: “Frank . . . fucking . . . Tavery.”
    Eddie reached out a hand that did not want to comfort and made it touch the kid’s head. His hair was long. Needed a wash. Hell, needed a cut. Needed a mother to make sure the boy under it took care of it. No mother now, though, not for Jake. And a little miracle: giving comfort made Eddie feel better. Not a lot, but a little.
    “Let it go,” he said. “Done is done.”
    “Ka,” Jake said bitterly.
    “Ki-yet, ka,” Oy said without raising his muzzle.
    “Amen,” Jake said, and laughed. It was disturbing in its coldness. Jake took the Ruger from its make-shift holster and looked at it. “This one will go through, because it came from the other side. That’s what Roland says. The others may, too, because we won’t be going todash. If they don’t, Henchick will cache them in the cave and maybe we can come back for them.”
    “If we wind up in New York,” Eddie said, “there’ll be plenty of guns. And we’ll find them.”
    “Not like Roland’s. I hope like hell they go through. There aren’t any guns left in any of the worlds like his. That’s what I think.”
    It was what Eddie thought, too, but he didn’t bother saying so. From town there came a rattle of firecrackers, then silence. It was winding down there. Winding down at last. Tomorrow there would undoubtedly be an all-day party on the common, a continuation of today’s celebration but a little less drunk and a little more coherent. Roland and his ka-tet would be expected as guests ofhonor, but if the gods of creation were good and the door opened, they would be gone. Hunting Susannah. Finding her. Never mind hunting. Finding.
    As if reading his thoughts (and he could do that, he was strong in the touch), Jake said: “She’s still alive.”
    “How can you know that?”
    “We would have felt it if she was gone.”
    “Jake, can you touch her?”
    “No, but—”
    Before he could finish, a deep rumbling came from the earth. The porch suddenly began to rise and fall like a boat on a heavy sea. They could hear the boards groaning. From the kitchen came the sound of rattling china like chattering teeth. Oy raised his head and whined. His foxy little face was comically startled, his ears laid back along his skull. In Callahan’s parlor, something fell over and shattered.
    Eddie’s first thought, illogical but strong, was that Jake had killed Suze simply by declaring her still alive.
    For a moment the shaking intensified. A window