Wolves of the Calla
Chapters - Stephen King
Section: The Final Argument
The Final Argument recaps the first four Dark Tower novels. Roland Deschain pursued and caught Walter, drew Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, and Jake Chambers from doors on the Western Sea beach, and the ka-tet travelled through Lud on Blaine the Mono. After defeating Blaine with illogic and traversing a version of Topeka, they encountered the Tick-Tock Man and Flagg in the Green Palace. Roland told the tale of Susan Delgado in Mejis, and the group returned to the Path of the Beam to continue their quest for the Dark Tower.
Mentioned: Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Cuthbert Allgood, Walter o'Dim
Prologue: Roont
Tian Jaffords is ploughing his difficult north field with his roont sister Tia when Andy the Messenger Robot arrives with dire news: the Wolves will come from Thunderclap in thirty days. Tian tells his wife Zalia, and they look at their roont siblings with fresh horror at what awaits their own children. Consumed by a new rage, Tian calls a Town Gathering. At the meeting, he argues for resistance while Overholser and Telford counsel submission, but Pere Father Callahan arrives and reveals that gunslingers are approaching along the Path of the Beam, offering the Calla its first real hope of fighting back.
POV: Tian Jaffords·On page: Andy, Zalia Jaffords, Wayne Overholser, Father Callahan, Ben Slightman, Gran-pere Jaffords, Henchick
Part 1: Todash
Chapter 1: The Face on the Water
Eddie Dean reflects on how time has grown soft and strange since the ka-tet returned to the Path of the Beam. Roland Deschain reveals he has known for two days that strangers are following them. Jake Chambers discovers muffin-balls in a clearing and reports that men are watching from the woods. That night, the muffin-balls induce a todash experience: Eddie and Jake find themselves on Second Avenue in 1977 New York, following the younger version of Jake to the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind bookstore, where Jake buys Charlie the Choo-Choo - but the author's name has changed to Claudia y Inez Bachman.
POV: Eddie Dean·On page: Roland Deschain, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy
Chapter 2: New York Groove
Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers, still todash in 1977 New York, follow Kid Seventy-seven to Calvin Tower's bookstore. They witness Enrico Balazar and his men - Jack Andolini and George Biondi - arrive to pressure Tower about selling his vacant lot. Eddie and Jake pass through the closed office door as ghosts and read a Memorandum of Agreement between Tower and the Sombra Corporation for Lot 298, Block 19, the vacant lot containing the rose. As the todash chimes grow overwhelming and darkness closes in, Eddie memorises key details before they are swept back to Mid-World.
POV: Jake Chambers·On page: Eddie Dean, Oy, Calvin Tower
Chapter 3: Mia
The chapter introduces Mia, a fourth personality inhabiting Susannah Dean's body, who exists to protect and feed the unborn chap. In her mind, Mia feasts in a grand castle banqueting hall, gorging on rich foods while talking in multiple voices. In reality, Roland Deschain follows Susannah into the swamps where she hunts naked, eating frogs, fish, and small animals raw. Roland has been tracking these nocturnal expeditions for some time, noting that Mia's pregnancy is advancing and her hunting grows more aggressive. He returns to camp to find Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers still flickering in and out of todash.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Susannah Dean, Mia, Eddie Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy
Chapter 4: Palaver
The ka-tet holds a morning palaver about the todash experience. Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers recount visiting Tower's bookstore and seeing Balazar's men. Susannah Dean proposes buying the lot themselves using her family fortune. They debate the logistics of needing doors to two different whens - 1964 to access Susannah's money and 1977 to buy the lot. Father Father Callahan emerges from the woods and introduces himself, revealing he is from their world, originally from Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. He tells Roland Deschain he possesses Black Thirteen, hidden beneath his church, which has been inducing their todash episodes and could serve as a doorway between worlds.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Father Callahan
Chapter 5: Overholser
Susannah Dean observes Roland Deschain's diplomatic handling of the Calla delegation. Overholser, Tian Jaffords, Zalia, Ben Slightman and his son Benny, and Father Callahan meet the ka-tet formally. Roland takes Overholser aside for a private word while Eddie Dean learns Overholser's middle name is Dale - Wayne Dale Overholser equals nineteen letters. They ride to the Calla party's camp where Andy the robot has prepared a feast. Jake Chambers and Benny Slightman quickly become friends, bonding over Oy's tricks. Susannah notes that Overholser, initially hostile, has begun warming to Roland despite himself.
POV: Susannah Dean·On page: Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Father Callahan, Wayne Overholser, Tian Jaffords, Zalia Jaffords, Ben Slightman, Benny Slightman, Andy
Chapter 6: The Way of the Eld
Over a rancher's dinner, Eddie Dean learns about life in the borderland Callas from Tian and Zalia. Overholser and the others describe the Wolves in detail: masked riders on identical grey horses armed with light-sticks, guns, and flying razor-drones called sneetches. The children are taken to Thunderclap and returned roont - mentally destroyed, later growing to giant size before dying painfully young. Roland Deschain demonstrates the Way of the Eld by having Jake Chambers shoot four plates from the air with blinding speed, then catching the falling shards. He announces they will spend a week surveying the Calla before the town votes on whether to accept their aid.
POV: Eddie Dean·On page: Roland Deschain, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Father Callahan, Wayne Overholser, Tian Jaffords, Zalia Jaffords, Ben Slightman, Benny Slightman, Andy
Chapter 7: Todash
Roland Deschain dreams of the Battle of Jericho Hill, where Cuthbert died laughing beside him. The todash chimes pull him to 1977 New York, where he meets Susannah Dean - who has legs in this state because Mia is partially in control. They walk to the vacant lot but first visit the closed Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind. Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers join them, and together they visit the vacant lot where the rose grows. Roland is overwhelmed by the rose's beauty and power, understanding it is connected to the Dark Tower. They also discover a pink metallic bag from Mid-World Lanes bowling alley in the lot, which seems to muffle dark energies.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Mia·Mentioned: Cuthbert Allgood
Part 2: Telling Tales
Chapter 1: The Pavilion
The ka-tet rides into Calla Bryn Sturgis for the first time, seeing the farmland, rice paddies, and the darkness of Thunderclap beyond. At the evening Pavilion feast, the entire town turns out. Eddie Dean gives a speech, Susannah Dean plays the piano, and Roland Deschain dances the commala - the rice-dance - with stunning skill, winning the hearts of the folken. Jake Chambers departs with the Slightmans to stay at the Rocking B ranch, while the others settle in at Father Callahan's rectory. The evening marks the true beginning of the ka-tet's immersion in Calla life.
POV: Eddie Dean·On page: Roland Deschain, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Father Callahan, Wayne Overholser, Tian Jaffords, Zalia Jaffords, Ben Slightman, Benny Slightman, Andy
Chapter 2: Dry Twist
Roland Deschain wakes in pain from advancing arthritis - dry twist - which he hides from his friends. Rosalita Munoz, Father Callahan's housekeeper, treats him with a potent cat-oil liniment. Roland takes Eddie Dean berry-picking to privately reveal the truth about Mia: Susannah Dean is carrying something inhuman, conceived when she held the demon of the circle while they drew Jake Chambers. Eddie, not entirely surprised, accepts the news and agrees to keep the secret for now. They discuss the impossible situation: they need Susannah for the coming fight but cannot risk alerting Mia.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Father Callahan, Rosalita Munoz
Chapter 3: The Priest's Tale (New York)
Father Callahan begins telling his life story to Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, and Susannah Dean. He recounts his years as an alcoholic priest, moving from parish to parish, until arriving in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine in 1969. There he encountered a real vampire named Barlow who terrorised the town. Callahan confronted Barlow to save a boy named Mark Petrie, but when his faith wavered, his cross went dark. Barlow forced Callahan to drink his blood, marking him. Afterwards, the doors of his own church rejected him with a blast of fire that scarred his hand. Broken, he fled on a Greyhound bus.
POV: Father Callahan·On page: Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean
Chapter 4: The Priest's Tale Continued (Highways in Hiding)
Father Callahan continues his tale, describing five years spent wandering hidden highways that ran between countless slightly different versions of America. He worked odd jobs - short-order cook, carnival ESP performer billed as Menso, fruit-picker, gravedigger - while learning to kill Type Three vampires with a knife-thrust to the back of the neck and to dodge the low men in their loud cars. In the spring of 1981, in Sacramento, a newspaper item in the Sacramento Bee stopped him cold: Rowan Magruder, his old friend from the Home shelter, had been assaulted by the so-called Hitler Brothers, branded and blinded, and was in critical condition. Filled with shame at how much he had missed, Callahan resolved at once to go back east to New York.
POV: Father Callahan·On page: Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean
Chapter 5: The Tale of Gray Dick
Roland Deschain visits the Rocking B ranch to meet Vaughn Eisenhart, accompanied by Jake Chambers. He inspects Eisenhart's guns - an old rifle and two barrel-shooter pistols - finding only the rifle serviceable. Margaret Eisenhart reveals a secret: the Sisters of Oriza, women who throw sharpened plates called Orizas with lethal accuracy, a tradition preserved from an ancient tale. She demonstrates by cutting the head off a stuffy-guy at fifty yards. Roland realises these women could be formidable allies against the Wolves and begins forming his battle plan around their skill.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Jake Chambers, Oy, Vaughn Eisenhart, Margaret Eisenhart, Benny Slightman, Andy
Chapter 6: Gran-Pere's Tale
Eddie and Susannah visit the Jaffords farm, meeting the family and the roont giants Tia and Zalman, and join the children in a joyful skip-rope game. After supper, Eddie persuades the reluctant Tian to let him speak with old Gran-pere Jaffords, who tells how, as a wild young man of nineteen, he was one of four who stood on the East Road against the Wolves. He recounts how Eamon Doolin and Pokey Slidell were killed, and how Eamon's red-haired wife Molly Doolin struck a Wolf with a thrown Oriza plate and brought it down. Gran-pere then leans close and whispers to Eddie what he saw when he pulled the dead Wolf's mask off - nineteen words the reader does not hear, but which leave Eddie certain the Wolves' true nature explains the grey horses, grey clothing, and green cloaks.
POV: Eddie Dean·On page: Susannah Dean, Tian Jaffords, Zalia Jaffords, Gran-pere Jaffords
Chapter 7: Nocturne, Hunger
Mia's castle banqueting hall has gone dark and empty; the food is rotted and gone. Desperately hungry, she finds a single roasted pig in the kitchen ovens and devours it after killing a rat feeding on it. Jake Chambers, dreaming, witnesses all of this in Mia's mental landscape. Mia discovers she is wearing a t-shirt from The Dixie Pig, a restaurant on Lexington and 61st Street in New York. The chapter reveals Mia's growing desperation to find a specific food her chap needs to complete its becoming, and her awareness that the fantasy castle is failing to sustain the illusion.
POV: Mia·On page: Jake Chambers, Susannah Dean
Chapter 8: Took's Store; the Unfound Door
Riding toward the smallholds, Jake asks to speak dan-dinh and opens his heart to Roland's command. He confesses his dreams of Mia in her deteriorating castle but deliberately keeps back the river-meeting between Slightman and Andy. Roland and Jake argue painfully over whether Susannah should be told about Mia and the chap; Roland finally promises that the three of them - he, Eddie, and Jake - will tell her everything before the Wolves come, and asks Jake to touch Susannah's mind once a day to watch for changes. Joining Eddie and Susannah at the Jaffords farm, they part ways: Roland rides off to meet Henchick at the Manni village while the others go to Took's General Store, where they shop, trade barbs with the prickly Eben Took, and then sit on the porch to meet the curious townsfolk.
POV: Jake Chambers·On page: Roland Deschain, Oy, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Benny Slightman·Mentioned: Ben Slightman, Andy
Chapter 9: The Priest's Tale Concluded (Unfound)
Over dinner at the rectory, Father Callahan finishes his life story. He tells how, after visiting the dying Rowan Magruder in hospital, he was seized by the Hitler Brothers and dragged into an abandoned laundrymat to be tortured and killed - only to be rescued at the last moment by two men, later guessed to be Calvin Tower and Aaron Deepneau. He describes hitting bottom in a Topeka jail cell, getting sober, and finding work at a Detroit shelter, until the Sombra Corporation lured him to a meeting and revealed itself as a trap of vampires and low men led by Sayre. To escape, Callahan threw himself through a high window and woke in a Mid-World way station, where the man in black, Walter, forced Black Thirteen upon him and sent him through the unfound door to Calla Bryn Sturgis. After the ka-tet thanks him and Callahan retires, Susannah, who has said little all evening, quietly confesses she believes she may be pregnant.
POV: Roland Deschain·On page: Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, Oy, Father Callahan, Rosalita Munoz·Mentioned: Richard Sayre, Walter o'Dim