Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower 6)

"Hey, pal!" cried the street preacher, and when the taxi driver looked, the preacher underhanded him the faded red fez. With this back on his head, the driver seemed more willing to be reasonable. More willing yet when Callahan pressed the ten into his hand.

The guy behind the cab was driving an elderly whale of a Lincoln. Now he laid on his horn again.

"You may be biting my crank, Mr. Monkeymeat!" the taxi driver yelled at him, and Callahan almost burst out laughing. He started toward the guy in the Lincoln. When the taxi driver tried to join him, Callahan put his hands on the man's shoulders and stopped him.

"Let me handle this. I'm a religious. Making the lion lie down with the lamb is my job. "

The street preacher joined them in time to hear this. Jake had retired to the background. He was standing beside the street preacher's van and checking Oy's legs to make sure he was uninjured.

"Brother!" the street preacher addressed Callahan. "May I ask your denomination? Your, I say hallelujah, yourview of theAlmighty ?"

"I'm a Catholic," Callahan said. "Therefore, I view the Almighty's a guy. "

The street preacher held out a large, gnarled hand. It produced exactly the sort of fervent, just-short-of-crushing grip Callahan had expected. The man's cadences, combined with his faint Southern accent, made Callahan think of Foghorn Leghorn in the Warner Bros. cartoons.

"I'm Earl Harrigan," the preacher said, continuing to wring Callahan's fingers. "Church of the Holy God-Bomb, Brooklyn and America. A pleasure to meet you, Father. "

"I'm sort of semi-retired," Callahan said. "If you have to call me something, make it Pere. Or just Don. Don Callahan. "

"Praise Jesus, Father Don!"

Callahan sighed and supposed Father Don would have to do. He went to the Lincoln. The cab driver, meanwhile, scooted away with his OFF DUTY light on.

Before Callahan could speak to the Lincoln's driver, that worthy got out on his own. It was Callahan's night for tall men. This one went about six-three and was carrying a large belly.

"It's all over," Callahan told him. "I suggest you get back in your car and drive out of here. "

"It ain't over until I say it's over," Mr. Lincoln demurred. "I got Abdul's medallion number; what I want from you, Sparky, is the name and address of that kid with the dog. I also want a closer look at the pistol he just - ow, ow! OWW! OWWWWW! Quit it!"

Reverend Earl Harrigan had seized one of Mr. Lincoln's hands and twisted it behind his back. Now he seemed to be doing something creative to the man's thumb. Callahan couldn't see exactly what it was. The angle was wrong.

"God loves you so much," Harrigan said, speaking quietly into Mr. Lincoln's ear. "And what He wants in return, you loudmouth shithead, is for you to give me hallelujah and then go on your way. Can you give me hallelujah?"

"OWW, OWWW, let go! Police! POLEECE!"

"Only policeman apt to be on this block around now would be Officer Benzyck, and he's already given me my nightly ticket and moved on. By now he'll be in Dennis's, having a pecan waffle and double bacon, praise God, so I want you to think about this. " There came a cracking sound from behind Mr. Lincoln's back that set Callahan's teeth on edge. He didn't like to think Mr. Lincoln's thumb had made that sound, but didn't know what else it could have been. Mr. Lincoln cocked his head skyward on his thick neck and let out a long exhalation of pure pain - Yaaaahhhhhhh!

"You want to give me hallelujah, brother," advised Rev. Harrigan, "or you'll be, praise God, carrying your thumb home in your breast pocket. "

"Hallelujah," whispered Mr. Lincoln. His complexion had gone an ocher shade. Callahan thought some of that might be attributable to the orangey streetlamps which at some point had replaced the fluorescents of his own time. Probably not all of it, though.

"Good! Now say amen. You'll feel better when you do. "

"A-Amen. "

"Praise God! Praise Jee-eee-eee-esus!"

"Let me go. . . let go of mythumb - !"

"Are you going to get out of here and stop blocking this intersection if I do?"

"Yes!"

"Without any more fiddle-de-dee or hidey-ho, praise Jesus?"

"Yes!"

Harrigan leaned yet closer to Mr. Lincoln, his lips stopping less than half an inch from a large plug of yellow-orange wax caught in the cup of Mr. Lincoln's ear. Callahan watched this with fascination and complete absorption, all other unresolved issues and unfulfilled goals for the time being forgotten. The Pere was more than halfway to believing that if Jesus had had Earl Harrigan on His team, it probably would have been old Pontius who ended up on the cross.

"My friend, bombs will soon begin to fall: God-bombs. And you have to choose whether you want to be among those who are, praise Jesus, up in the skydropping those bombs, or those who are in the villages below, getting blown to smithereens. Now I sense this isn't the time or place for you to make a choice for Christ, but will you at least think about these things, sir?"

Mr. Lincoln's response must have been a tad slow for Rev. Harrigan, because that worthy did something else to the hand he had pinned behind Mr. Lincoln's back. Mr. Lincoln uttered another high, breathless scream.

"I said, will youthink about these things?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"Then get in your car and drive away and God bless you and keep you. "

Harrigan released Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln backed away from him, eyes wide, and got back into his car. A moment later he was driving down Second Avenue - fast.

Harrigan turned to Callahan and said, "Catholics are going to Hell, Father Don. Idolators, each and every one of them; they bow to the Cult of Mary. And the Pope! Don't get me started onhim! Yet I have known some fine Catholic folks, and have no doubt you're one of them. It may be I can pray you through to a change of faith. Lacking that, I may be able to pray you through the flames. " He looked back at the sidewalk in front of what now seemed to be called Hammarskj?ld Plaza. "I believe my congregation has dispersed. "

"Sorry about that," Callahan said.

Harrigan shrugged. "Folks don't come to Jesus in the summertime, anyway," he said matter-of-factly. "They do a little window-shopping and then go back to their sinning. Winter's the time for serious crusading. . . got to get you a little storefront where you can give em hot soup and hot scripture on a cold night. " He looked down at Callahan's feet and said, "You seem to have lost one of your sandals, my mackerel-snapping friend. " A new horn blared at them and a perfectly amazing taxi - to Callahan it looked like a newer version of the old VW Microbuses - went swerving past with a passenger yelling

something out at them. It probably wasn't happy birthday. "Also, if we don't get out of the street, faith may not be enough to protect us. "

Four

"He's all right," Jake said, setting Oy down on the sidewalk. "I flipped, didn't I? I'm sorry. "

"Perfectly understandable," the Rev. Harrigan assured him. "What an interesting dog! I've never seen one that looked quite like that, praise Jesus!" And he bent to Oy.

"He's a mixed breed," Jake said tightly, "and he doesn't like strangers. "

Oy showed how much he disliked and distrusted them by raising his head to Harrigan's hand and flattening his ears in order to improve the stroking surface. He grinned up at the preacher as if they were old, old pals. Callahan, meanwhile, was looking around. It was New York, and in New York people had a tendency to mind their business and let you mind yours, but still, Jake had drawn a gun. Callahan didn't know how many folks had seen it, but hedid know it would only take one to report it, perhaps to this Officer Benzyck Harrigan had mentioned, and put them in trouble when they could least afford it.

He looked at Oy and thought,Do me a favor and don't say anything, okay? Jake can maybe pass you off as some new kind of Corgi or Border Collie hybrid, but the minute you start talking, that goes out the window. So do me a favor and don't.

"Good boy," said Harrigan, and after Jake's friend miraculously didnot respond by saying "Oy!" the preacher straightened up. "I have something for you, Father Don. Just a minute. "

"Sir, we really have to - "

"I have something for you, too, son - praise Jesus, say dear Lord! But first. . . this won't take but a second. . . "

Harrigan ran to open the side door of his illegally parked old Dodge van, ducked inside, rummaged.

Callahan bore this for awhile, but the sense of passing seconds quickly became too much. "Sir, I'm sorry, but - "

"Herethey are!" Harrigan exclaimed and backed out of the van with the first two fingers of his right hand stuck into the heels of a pair of battered brown loafers. "If you're less than a size twelve, we can stuff em with newspaper. More, and I guess you're out of luck. "

"A twelve is exactly what I am," Callahan said, and ventured a praise-God as well as a thank-you. He was actually most comfortable in size eleven and a half shoes, but these were close enough, and he slipped them on with genuine gratitude. "And now we - "

Harrigan turned to the boy and said, "The woman you're after got into a cab right where we had our little dust-up, and no more than half an hour ago. " He grinned at Jake's rapidly changing expression - first astonishment, then delight. "She said the other one is in charge, that you'd know who the other one was, and where the other one is taking her. "

"Yeah, to the Dixie Pig," Jake said. "Lex and Sixty-first. Pere, we might still have time to catch her, but only if we go right now. She - "

"No," Harrigan said. "The woman who spoke to me - inside my head she spoke to me and clear as a bell, praise Jesus - said you were to go to the hotel first. "

"Which hotel?" Callahan asked.