"Uh-huh," Eddie said, and drew one in the grass with the toe of his boot. The grass sprang up almost immediately, but not before Roland saw that yes, the mark on Callahan's forehead could have been meant to be one of those. If it had been finished.
"On that day in late October of 1975," Callahan said, "the Hitler Brothers were just a headline I slept under. I spent most of that second day in New York walking around and fighting the urge to score a bottle. There was part of me that wanted to fight instead of drink. To try and atone. At the same time, I could feel Barlow's blood working into me, getting in deeper and deeper. The world smelled different, and not better. Things looked different, and not better. And the taste of him came creeping back into my mouth, a taste like dead fish or rotten wine.
"I had no hope of salvation. Never think it. But atonement isn't about salvation, anyway. Not about heaven. It's about clearing your conscience here on earth. And you can't do it drunk. I didn't think of myself as an alcoholic, not even then, but I did wonder if he'd turned me into a vampire. If the sun would start to burn my skin, and I'd start looking at ladies' necks." He shrugged, laughed. "Or maybe gentlemen's. You know what they say about the priesthood; we're just a bunch of closet queers running around and shaking the cross in people's faces."
"But you weren't a vampire," Eddie said.
"Not even a Type Three. Nothing but unclean. On the outside of everything. Cast away. Always smelling his stink and always seeing the world the way things like him must see it, in shades of gray and red. Red was the only bright color I was allowed to see for years. Everything else was just a whisper.
"I guess I was looking for a ManPower office - you know, the day-labor company? I was still pretty rugged in those days, and of course I was a lot younger, as well.
"I didn't find ManPower. What I did find was a place called Home. This was on First Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, not far from the U.N."
Roland, Eddie, and Susannah exchanged a look. Whatever Home was, it had existed only two blocks from the vacant lot. Only it wouldn't have been vacant back then , Eddie thought. Not back in 1975. In '75 it would still have been Tom and Jerry's Artistic Deli, Party Platters Our Specialty . He suddenly wished Jake were here. Eddie thought that by now the kid would have been jumping up and down with excitement.
"What kind of shop was Home?" Roland asked.
"Not a shop at all. A shelter. A wet shelter. I can't say for sure that it was the only one in Manhattan, but I bet it was one of the very few. I didn't know much about shelters then - just a little bit from my first parish - but as time went by, I learned a great deal. I saw the system from both sides. There were times when I was the guy who ladled out the soup at six p.m. and passed out the blankets at nine; at other times I was the guy who drank the soup and slept under the blankets. After a head-check for lice, of course.
"There are shelters that won't let you in if they smell booze on your breath. And there are ones where they'll let you in if you claim you're at least two hours downstream from your last drink. There are places - a few - that'll let you in pissyassed drunk, as long as they can search you at the door and get rid of all your hooch. Once that's taken care of, they put you in a special locked room with the rest of the low-bottom guys. You can't slip out to get another drink if you change your mind, and you can't scare the folks who are less soaked than you are if you get the dt's and start seeing bugs come out of the walls. No women allowed in the lockup; they're too apt to get raped. It's just one of the reasons more homeless women die in the streets than homeless men. That's what Lupe used to say."
"Lupe?" Eddie asked.