Needful Things

CHAPTER NINE

At quarter to ten on Sunday morning, Nettle Cobb drew on her coat and buttoned it swiftly. An expression of grim determination was stamped on her face. She was standing in her kitchen. Raider was sitting on the floor, looking up at her as if to ask if she really meant to go through with it this time.

“Yes, I really mean it,” she told him.

Raider thumped his tail against the floor, as if to say he knew she could do it.

“I’ve made a nice lasagna for Polly, and I’m going to take it to her. My lampshade is locked up in the armoire, and I know it’s locked, I don’t need to keep coming back to check because I know it in my head.

That crazy Polish woman isn’t going to keep me prisoner in my own house. If I see her on the street, I’ll give her what-for! I warned her!”

She had to go out. She had to, and she knew it. She hadn’t left the house in two days, and she had come to realize that the longer she put it off, the harder it would become. The longer she sat in the living room with the shades pulled down, the harder it would get to ever raise them again. She could feel the old confused terror creeping into her thoughts.

So she had gotten up early this morning-at five o’clock!-and had made a nice lasagna for Polly, just the way she liked it, with plenty of spinach and mushrooms. The mushrooms were canned, because she hadn’t dared go out to the market last night, but she thought it had turned out very well despite that. It was now sitting on the counter, the top of the pan covered with aluminum foil.

She picked it up and marched through the living room to the door.

“You be a good boy, Raider. I’ll be back in an hour. Unless Polly gives me coffee, and then it might be a little longer. But I’ll be fine. I don’t have a thing to worry about. I didn’t do anything to that crazy Polish woman’s sheets, and if she bothers me, I’ll give her the very dickens.”

Raider uttered a stern bark to show he understood and believed.

She opened the door, peeked out, saw nothing. Ford Street was as deserted as only a small-town street can be early on Sunday morning.

In the distance, one church-bell was calling Rev. Rose’s Baptists to worship and another was summoning Father Brigham’s Catholics.

Gathering all her courage, Nettle stepped out into the Sunday sunshine, set the pan of lasagna down on the step, pulled the door closed, and locked it. Then she took her housekey and scratched it up her forearm, leaving a thin red mark. As she stooped to pick up the pan again she thought, Now when you get halfway down the block-maybe even sooner-you’ll start thinking that you really didn’t lock the door after all. But you did. You set the lasagna down to do it.

And if you still can’t believe it, just look at your arm and remember that you made that scratch with your very own housekey… after you used it to lock the house. Remember that, Nettle, and you’ll be Just fine when the doubts start to creep in.

This was a wonderful thought, and using the key to scratch her arm had been a wonderful idea. The red mark was something concrete, and for the first time in the last two days (and mostly sleepless nights), Nettle really did feel better. She marched down to the sidewalk, her head high, her lips pressed together so tightly that they almost disappeared. When she reached the sidewalk, she looked both ways for the crazy Polish woman’s little yellow car. If she saw it, she intended to walk right up to it and tell the crazy Polish woman to leave her alone. There wasn’t a sign of it, though.

The only vehicle in sight was an old orange truck parked up the street, and it was empty.

Good.

Nettle set sail for Polly Chalmers’s house, and when the doubts assailed her, she remembered that the carnival glass lampshade was locked up, Raider was on guard, and the front door was locked.

Especially that last. The front door was locked, and she only had to look at the fading red mark on her arm to prove it to herself.

So Nettle marched on with her head high, and when she reached the corner, she turned it without looking back.

2

When the nutty woman was out of sight, Hugh Priest sat up behind the wheel of the orange town truck he had drawn from the deserted motor pool at seven that morning (he had lain down on the seat as soon as he saw Crazy Nettle come out the door). He put the gearshift in neutral, and let the truck roll slowly and soundlessly down the slight grade to Nettle Cobb’s house.

3

The doorbell woke Polly from a soupy state that wasn’t really sleep but a kind of dream-haunted drug-daze. She sat up in bed and realized she was wearing her housecoat. When had she put it on?

For a moment she couldn’t remember, and that frightened her.

Then it came. The pain she’d been expecting had arrived right on schedule, easily the worst arthritic pain of her entire life. It had awakened her at five. She had gone into the bathroom to urinate, then had discovered she couldn’t even get a swatch of toilet paper off the roll to blot herself with. So she had taken a pill, put on her housecoat, and sat in the chair by the bedroom window to wait until it worked. At some point she must have gotten sleepy and gone back to bed.

Her hands felt like crude ceramic figures baked until they were on the verge of cracking. The pain was both hot and cold, set deep in her flesh like complex networks of poisoned wires. She held her hands up despairingly, scarecrow hands, awful, deformed hands, and downstairs the doorbell chimed again. She uttered a distracted little cry.

She went out onto the landing with her hands held out in front of her like the paws of a dog sitting up to beg a sweet. “Who is it?” she called down. Her voice was hoarse, gummy with sleep.

Her tongue tasted like something which had been used to line a cat-box.

“It’s Nettle!” The voice drifted back up. “Are you okay, Polly?”

Nettle. Good God, what was Nettle doing here before the crack of dawn on Sunday morning?

“I’m fine!” she called back. “I have to put something on! Use your key, dear!”

When she heard Nettle’s key begin to rattle in the lock, Polly hurried back into her bedroom. She glanced at the clock on the table beside her bed and saw that dawn had cracked several hours before. Nor had she come back to put something on; her housecoat would do for Nettle just fine. But she needed a pill. She had never, never in her life, needed a pill as badly as she did now.

She didn’t know how bad her condition really was until she tried to take one. The pills-actually caplets-were in a small glass dish on the mantel of the room’s ornamental fireplace. She was able to get her hand into the dish all right, but found herself completely unable to grasp one of the caplets once it was there. Her fingers were like the pincers of some machine which had frozen solid for lack of oil.

She tried harder, concentrating all of her will on making her fingers close upon one of the gelatine capsules. She was rewarded with slight movement and a great burst of agony. That was all. She made a little muttering sound of pain and frustration.

“Polly?” From the foot of the stairs now, Nettle’s voice was concerned. People in Castle Rock might consider Nettle vague, Polly thought, but when it came to the vicissitudes of Polly’s infirmity, Nettle was not vague at all. She had been around the house too long to be fooled… and had loved her too well. “Polly, are you really all right?”

“Be right down, dear!” she called back, trying to sound bright and lively. And as she took her hand out of the glass dish and bent her head over it, she thought, Please, God. Don’t let her come up now.

Don’t let her see me doing this.

She lowered her face into the dish like a dog about to drink from its bowl and stuck out her tongue. Pain, shame, horror, and most of all a dark depression, all maroons and grays, enfolded her.

She pressed her tongue against one of the caplets until it stuck.

She drew it into her mouth, now not a dog but an anteater ingesting a tasty morsel, and swallowed.

As the pill traced its tiny hard trail down her throat, she thought again: I would give anything to be free of this. Anything.

Anything at all.

4

Hugh Priest rarely dreamed anymore; these days he did not go to sleep so much as fall unconscious. But he’d had a dream last night, a real lulu. The dream had told him everything he had to know, and everything he was supposed to do.

In it he had been sitting at his kitchen table, drinking a beer and watching a game-show called Sale of the Century. All the things they were giving away were things he had seen in that shop, Needful Things. And all of the contestants were bleeding from their ears and the corners of their eyes. They were laughing, but they looked terrified.

All at once a muffled voice began to call, “Hugh! Hugh! Let me out, Hugh!”

It was coming from the closet. He went over and opened it, ready to coldcock whoever was hiding inside. But there was no one; only the usual tangle of boots, scarves, coats, fishing tackle, and his two shotguns.

“Hugh!”

He looked up, because the voice was coming from the shelf.

It was the fox-tail. The fox-tail was talking. And Hugh recognized the voice at once. It was the voice of Leland Gaunt. He had taken the brush down, revelling again in its plushy softness, a texture that was a little like silk, a little like wool, and really like nothing at all but its own secret self.

“Thanks, Hugh,” the fox-tail said. “It’s really stuffy in here.

And you left an old pipe on the shelf. It really stinks. Whew!”

“Did you want to go to another place?” Hugh had asked. He felt a little stupid talking to a fox-tail, even in a dream.

“No-I’m getting used to it. But I have to talk to you. You have to do something, remember? You promised.

“Crazy Nettle,” he agreed. “I have to play a trick on Crazy Nettle.”

“That’s right,” said the fox-tail, “and you have to do it as soon as you wake up. So listen.”

Hugh had listened.

The fox-tail had told him no one would be home at Nettle’s but the dog, but now that Hugh was actually here, he decided it would be wise to knock. He did so. From inside he heard claws come clicking rapidly across a wooden floor, but nothing else. He knocked again, just to be safe. There was a single stern bark from the other side of the door.

“Raider?” Hugh asked. The fox-tail had told him that was the dog’s name. Hugh thought it was a pretty good name, even if the lady who thought it up was nuttier than a fruitcake.

The single bark came again, not quite so stern this time.

Hugh took a key-ring from the breast pocket of the plaid hunting jacket he wore and examined it. He’d had this ring for a long time, and could no longer even remember what some of the keys had gone to.

But four of them were skeleton keys, easily identified by their long barrels, and these were the ones he wanted.

Hugh glanced around once, saw the street was as deserted as it had been when he first arrived, and began to try the keys one by one.

5

When Nettle saw Polly’s white, puffy face and haggard eyes, her own fears, which had gnawed at her like sharp weasel’s teeth as she walked over, were forgotten. She didn’t even have to look at Polly’s hands, still held out at waist level (it hurt dreadfully to let them hang down when it was like this), to know how things were with her.

The lasagna was thrust unceremoniously on a table by the foot of the stairs. If it had gone tumbling to the floor, Nettle wouldn’t have given it a second glance. The nervous woman Castle Rock had grown used to seeing on its streets, the woman who looked as if she were skulking away from some nasty piece of mischief even if she was only on her way to the post office, was not here. This was a different Nettle; Polly Chalmers’s Nettle.

Come on,” she said briskly. “Into the living room. I’ll get the thermal gloves.”

“Nettle, I’m all right,” Polly said weakly. “I just took a pill, and I’m sure that in a few minutes-” But Nettle had an arm around her and was walking her into the living room. “What did you do? Did you sleep on them, do you think?”

“No-that would have woken me. It’s just. She laughed.

It was a weak, bewildered sound. “It’s just pain. I knew today was going to be bad, but I had no idea how bad. And the thermal gloves don’t help.”

“Sometimes they do. You know that sometimes they do. Now just sit there.”

Nettle’s tone brooked no refusal. She stood beside Polly until Polly sat in an overstuffed armchair. Then she went into the downstairs bathroom to get the thermal gloves. Polly had given up on them a year ago, but Nettle, it seemed, held for them a reverence that was almost superstitious. Nettle’s version of chicken soup, Alan had once called them, and they had both laughed.

Polly sat with her hands resting on the arms of the chair like lumps of cast-off driftwood and looked longingly across the room at the couch where she and Alan had made love Friday night. Her hands hadn’t hurt at all then, and that already seemed like a thousand years ago.

It occurred to her that pleasure, no matter how deep, was a ghostly, ephemeral thing. Love might make the world go round, but she was convinced it was the cries of the badly wounded and deeply afflicted which spun the universe on the great glass pole of its axis.

Oh you stupid couch, she thought. Oh you stupid empty couch, what good are you to me now?

Nettle came back with the thermal gloves. They looked like quilted oven mitts connected by an insulated electric wire. A plugin cord snaked out of the left glove’s back. Polly had seen an ad for the gloves in Good Housekeeping, of all places. She had placed a call to The National Arthritis Foundation’s 800 number and had ascertained that the gloves did indeed provide temporary relief in some cases. When she showed the ad to Dr. Van Allen, he added the coda which had been tiresomely familiar even two years ago: “Well, it can’t hurt.”

”Nettle, I’m sure that in a few minutes-” -you’ll feel better,”

Nettle finished. “Yes, of course you will.

And maybe these will help. Hold up your hands, Polly.”

Polly gave in and held up her hands. Nettle held the gloves by their ends, squeezed them open, and slipped them on with the delicacy of a bomb-squad expert covering packets of C-4 with a blast-blanket.

Her touch was gentle, expert, and compassionate.

Polly didn’t believe the thermal gloves would do a thing… but Nettle’s obvious concern had already had its effect.

Nettle took the plug, got down on her knees, and slipped it into the baseboard socket near the chair. The gloves began to hum faintly, and the first tendrils of dry warmth caressed the skin of Polly’s hands.

“You’re too good to me,” Polly said softly. “Do you know that?”

“I couldn’t be,” Nettle replied. “Not ever.” Her voice was a trifle husky, and there was a bright, liquid shine in her eyes.

“Polly, it’s not my place to tell you your business, but I just can’t keep quiet any longer. You have to do something about your poor hands.

You have to. Things just can’t go on this way.”

“I know, dear. I know.” Polly made a huge effort to climb over the wall of depression which had built itself up in her mind.

“Why did you come over, Nettle? Surely it wasn’t just to toast my hands.”

Nettle brightened. “I made you a lasagna!”

“Did you? Oh, Nettle, you shouldn’t have!”

“No? That’s not what I think. I think you won’t be up to cooking today, or tomorrow, either. I’ll just put it in the refrigerator.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I’m glad I did it. Doubly glad, now that I see you.” She reached the hall doorway and looked back. A bar of sun fell across her face, and in that moment Polly might have seen how drawn and tired Nettle looked, if her own pain had not been so large. “Don’t you move, now!”

Polly burst out laughing, surprising them both. “I can’t! I’m trapped!”

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opened and closed as Nettle put the lasagna away. Then she called, “Shall I put on the coffee?

Would you like a cup? I could help you with it.”

“Yes,” Polly said, “that would be nice.” The gloves were humming louder now; they were very warm. And either they were actually helping, or the pill was taking hold in a way the one at five o’clock hadn’t. More probably it was a combination of the two, she thought.

“But if you have to get back, Nettle-” Nettle appeared in the doorway.

She had taken her apron out of the pantry and put it on, and she held the old tin coffee pot in one hand. She wouldn’t use the new digital Toshiba coffee-maker… and Polly had to admit that what came out of Nettle’s tin pot was better.

“I’ve no place to go that’s better than this,” she said.

“Besides, the house is all locked up and Raider’s on guard.”

“I’m sure,” Polly said, smiling. She knew Raider very well. He weighed all of twenty pounds and rolled over to have his belly scratched when anyone-mailman, meter-reader, door-to-door salesman-came to the house.

“I think she’ll leave me alone anyway,” Nettle said. “I warned her. I haven’t seen her around or heard from her, so I guess it finally sank in on her that I meant business.”

“Warned who? About what?” Polly asked, but Nettle had already left the doorway, and Polly was indeed penned in her seat by the electric gloves. By the time Nettle reappeared with the coffee tray, the Percodan had begun to fog her in and she had forgotten all about Nettle’s odd remark… which was not surprising in any case, since Nettle made odd remarks quite often.

Nettle put cream and sugar in Polly’s coffee and held it up so she could sip from the cup. They chatted about one thing and another, and of course the conversation turned to the new shop before very long.

Nettle told her about the purchase of the carnival glass lampshade again, but hardly in the breathless detail Polly would have expected, given the extraordinary nature of such an event in Nettle’s life. But it kicked off something else in her mind: the note Mr. Gaunt had put in the cake container.

“I almost forgot-Mr. Gaunt asked me to stop by this afternoon.

He said he might have an item I’d be interested in.”

“You’re not going, are you? With your hands like they are?”

“I might. They feel better-I think the gloves really did work this time, at least a little. And I have to do something.” She looked at Nettle a trifle pleadingly.

“Well… I suppose.” A sudden idea struck Nettle. “You know, I could walk by there on the way home, and ask him if he could come to your house!”

“Oh no, Nettle-that’s out of your way!”

“Only a block or two.” Nettle cast an endearingly sly side-glance Polly’s way. “Besides, he might have another piece of carnival glass.

I don’t have enough money for another one, but he doesn’t know that, and it doesn’t cost anything to look, does it?”

“But to ask him to come here-” “I’ll explain how it is with you,”

Nettle said decisively, and began putting things back onto the tray.

“Why, businessmen often have home demonstrations-if they have something worth selling, that is.”

Polly looked at her with amusement and love. “You know, you’re different when you’re here, Nettle.”

Nettle looked at her, surprised. “I am?”

“Yes. ” “How?”

”In a good way. Never mind. Unless I have a relapse, I think I will want to go out this afternoon. But if you do happen to go by Needful Things-” “I will.” A look of ill-concealed eagerness shone in Nettle’s eyes. Now that the idea had occurred to her, it took hold with all the force of a compulsion. Doing for Polly had been a tonic for her nerves, and no mistake. -and if he does happen to be in, give him my home number and ask him to give me a call if the item he wanted me to see came in. Could you do that?”

“You betcha!” Nettle said. She rose with the coffee-tray and took it into the kitchen. She replaced her apron on its hook in the pantry and came back into the living room to remove the thermal gloves.

Her coat was already on. Polly thanked her again-and not just for the lasagna. Her hands still hurt badly, but the pain was manageable now.

And she could move her fingers again.

“You’re more than welcome,” Nettle said. “And you know what? You do look better. Your color’s coming back. It scared me to look at you when I first came in. Can I do anything else for you before I go?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She reached out and clumsily grasped one of Nettle’s hands in her own, which were still flushed and very warm from the gloves. “I’m awfully glad you came over, dear.”

On the rare occasions when Nettle smiled, she did it with her whole face; it was like watching the sun break through the clouds on an overcast morning. “I love you, Polly.”

Touched, Polly replied: “Why, I love you, too, Nettle.”

Nettle left. It was the last time Polly ever saw her alive.

6

The lock on Nettle Cobb’s front door was about as complex as the lid of a candy-box; the first skeleton key Hugh tried worked after a little jiggling and joggling. He opened the door.

A small dog, yellow with a white bib, sat on the hall floor. He uttered his single stern bark as morning sunlight fell around him and Hugh’s large shadow fell on him.

“You must be Raider,” Hugh said softly, reaching into his pocket.

The dog barked again and promptly rolled over on his back, all four paws splayed out limply.

“Say, that’s cute!” Hugh said. Raider’s stub of a tail thumped against the wooden floor, presumably in agreement. Hugh shut the door and squatted beside the dog. With one hand he scratched the right side of the dog’s chest in that magic place that is somehow connected to the right rear paw, making it flail rapidly at the air.

With his other he drew a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket.

“Aw, ain’t you a good fella?” Hugh crooned. “Ain’t you a one?”

He left off scratching and took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. Written on it in his labored schoolboy script was the message the fox-tail had given him-Hugh had sat down at his kitchen table and written it even before he got dressed, so he wouldn’t forget a single word.

He pulled out the corkscrew hidden in one of the fat knife’s slots and stuck the note on it. Then he turned the body of the knife sideways and closed his fist over it so the corkscrew protruded between the second and third fingers of his powerful right hand.

He went back to scratching Raider, who had been lying on his back through all of this, eyeing Hugh cheerfully. He was cute as a bug, Hugh thought.

“Yes! Ain’t you just the best old fella? Ain’t you just the best old one?” Hugh asked, scratching. Now both rear legs were flailing.

Raider looked like a dog pedaling an invisible bike. “Yes you are!

Yes you are! And do you know what I’ve got? I’ve got a fox-tail!

Yes I do!”

Hugh held the corkscrew with the note pinned to it over the white bib on Raider’s breast.

“And do you know what else? I’m gonna keep it!”

He brought his right hand down hard. The left, which had been scratching Raider, now pinned the dog as he gave the corkscrew three hard twists. Warm blood jetted up, dousing both of his hands.

The dog rattled briefly on the floor and then lay still. He would utter his stern and harmless bark no more.

Hugh stood up, his heart thumping heavily. He suddenly felt very bad about what he had done-almost ill. Maybe she was crazy, maybe not, but she was alone in the world, and he had killed what was probably her only goddam friend.

He wiped his bloody hand across his shirt. The stain hardly showed at all on the dark wool. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog.

He had done that. Yes, he had done it and he knew it, but he could hardly believe it. It was as if he had been in a trance, or something.

The inner voice, the one that sometimes talked to him about the A-A. meetings, spoke up suddenly. Yes-and I suppose you’ll even be able to make yourself believe it, given time. But you weren’t in any fucking trance; you knew just what you were doing.

And why, Panic began to race through him. He had to get out of here.

He backed slowly down the hall, then uttered a hoarse cry as he ran into the closed front door. He fumbled behind him for the knob, and at last found it. He turned it, opened the door, and slid out of Crazy Nettle’s house. He looked around wildly, somehow expecting to see half the town gathered here, watching him with solemn, judicial eyes. He saw no one but a kid pedaling up the street. There was a Playmate picnic cooler propped at an odd angle in the basket of the kid’s bike. The kid spared Hugh Priest not so much as a glance as he went by, and when he was gone there were only the church-bells… this time they were calling the Methodists.

Hugh hurried down the walk. He told himself not to run, but he was trotting by the time he reached his truck, just the same. He fumbled the door open, slid in behind the wheel, and stabbed the ignition key at the slot. He did this three or four times, and the fucking key kept going astray. He had to steady his right hand with his left before he could finally get it to go where it belonged. His brow was dotted with fine beads of sweat. He had suffered through many hangovers, but he had never felt like this-this was like coming down with malaria, or something.

The truck started with a roar and a belch of blue smoke. Hugh’s foot slipped off the clutch. The truck took two large, snapping jerks away from the curb and stalled. Breathing harshly through his mouth, Hugh got it started again and drove away fast.

By the time he got to the motor pool (it was still as deserted as the mountains of the moon) and exchanged the town truck for his old dented Buick, he had forgotten all about Raider and the horrible thing he had done with the corkscrew. He had something else, something much more important, to think about. During the drive back to the motor pool he had been gripped with a feverish certainty: someone had been in his house while he was gone, and that someone had stolen his fox-tail.

Hugh drove home at better than sixty, came to a stop four inches from his rickety porch in a squash of gravel and a cloud of dust, and ran up the steps two at a time. He burst in, ran to the closet, and yanked the door open. He stood on his toes and began to explore the high shelf with his panicky, fluttering hands.

At first they felt nothing but bare wood, and Hugh sobbed in fright and rage. Then his left hand sank deep into that rough plush that was neither silk nor wool, and a great sense of peace and fulfillment slipped over him. It was like food to the starving, rest to the weary… quinine to the malarial. The staccato drumroll in his chest finally began to ease. He drew the fox-tail down from its hiding place and sat at the kitchen table. He spread it across his fleshy thighs and began to stroke it with both hands.

Hugh sat like that for better than three hours.

7

The boy Hugh saw but failed to recognize, the one on the bike, was Brian Rusk. Brian had had his own dream last night, and had his own errand to run this morning in consequence.

In his dream, the seventh game of the World Series was about to start-some ancient Elvis-era World Series, featuring the old apocalyptic rivalry, that baseball avatar, the Dodgers versus the Yankees. Sandy Koufax was in the bullpen, warming up for Da Burns. He was also speaking to Brian Rusk, who stood beside him, between pitches.

Sandy Koufax told Brian exactly what he was supposed to do. He was very clear about it; he dotted every I and crossed every t. No problem there.

The problem was this: Brian didn’t want to do it.

He felt like a creep, arguing with a baseball legend like Sandy Koufax, but he had tried, just the same. “You don’t understand, Mr.

Koufax,” he said. “I was supposed to play a trick on Wilma jerzyck, and I did. I already did.”

“So what?” Sandy Koufax said. “What’s your point, bush?”

“Well, that was the deal. Eighty-five cents and one trick.”

“You sure of that, bush? One trick? Are you sure? Did he say something like’not more than one trick’? Something legal like that?”

Brian couldn’t quite remember, but the feeling that he’d been had was growing steadily stronger inside him. No… not just had.

Trapped. Like a mouse with a morsel of cheese.

“Let me tell you something, bush. The deal-” He broke off and uttered a little unhh! as he threw a hard overhand fastball. It popped into the catcher’s mitt with a rifleshot crack. Dust drifted up from the mitt, and Brian realized with dawning dismay that he knew the stormy blue eyes looking at them from behind the catcher’s mask. Those eyes belonged to Mr. Gaunt.

Sandy Koufax caught Mr. Gaunt’s return toss, then glanced at Brian with flat eyes like brown glass. “The deal is whatever I say the deal is, bush.”

Sandy Koufax’s eyes weren’t brown at all, Brian had realized in his dream; they were also blue, which made perfect sense, since Sandy Koufax was also Mr. Gaunt.

“But-” Koufax/Gaunt raised his gloved hand. “Let me tell you something, bush: I hate that word. Of all the words in the English language, it is easily the worst. I think it’s the worst word in any language. You know what a butt is, bush? It’s the place shit comes out of.”

The man in the old-fashioned Brooklyn Dodgers uniform hid the baseball in his glove and turned to face Brian fully. It was Mr.

Gaunt, all right, and Brian felt a freezing, dismal terror grip his heart. “I did say I wanted you to play a trick on Wilma, Brian, that’s true, but I never said it was the one and only trick I wanted you to play on her. You just assumed, bush. Do you believe me, or would you like to hear the tape of our conversation?”

“I believe you,” Brian said. He was perilously close to blubbering now. “I believe you, but-” “What did I just tell you about that word, bush?”

Brian dropped his head and swallowed hard.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about dickering,” Koufax/Gaunt said.

“You and everyone else in Castle Rock. But that’s one of the reasons I came-to conduct a seminar in the fine art of dickering.

There was one fellow in town, a gent named Merrill, who knew a little something about it, but he’s long gone and hard to find.” He grinned, revealing Leland Gaunt’s large, uneven teeth in Sandy Koufax’s narrow, brooding face. “And the word ‘bargain,’ BrianI have some tall teaching to do on that subject, as well.”

“But-” The word was out of Brian’s mouth before he could call it back.

“No buts about it,” Koufax/Gaunt said. He leaned forward. His face stared solemnly at Brian from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. “Mr. Gaunt knows best. Can you say that, Brian?”

Brian’s throat worked, but no sound came out. He felt hot, loose tears behind his eyes.

A large, cold hand descended upon Brian’s shoulder. And gripped.

“Say it!”

“Mr. Gaunt. Brian had to swallow again to make room for the words. “Mr. Gaunt knows best.”

“That’s right, bush. That’s exactly right. And what that means is you’re going to do what I say… or else.”

Brian summoned all his will and made one final effort.

“What if I say no, anyway? What if I say no because I didn’t understand the whatdoyoucallems… the terms?”

Koufax/Gaunt picked the baseball out of his glove and closed his hand over it. Small drops of blood began to sweat out of the stitches.

“You really can’t say no, Brian,” he said softly. “Not anymore.

Why, this is the seventh game of the World Series. All the chickens have come home to roost, and it’s time to shit or git. Take a look around you. Go on and take a good look.”

Brian looked around and was horrified to see that Ebbets Field was so full they were standing in the aisles… and he knew them all. He saw his Ma and Pa sitting with his little brother, Sean, in the Commissioner’s Box behind home plate. His speech therapy class, flanked by Miss Ratcliffe on one end and her big dumb boyfriend, Lester Pratt, on the other, was ranged along the first-base line, drinking Royal Crown Cola and munching hotdogs. The entire Castle Rock Sheriff’s Office was seated in the bleachers, drinking beer from paper cups with pictures of this year’s Miss Rheingold contestants on them.

He saw his Sunday School class, the town selectmen, Myra and Chuck Evans, his aunts, his uncles, his cousins.

There, sitting behind third base, was Sonny jackett, and when Koufax/Gaunt threw the bleeding ball and it made that rifleshot crack in the catcher’s glove again, Brian saw that the face behind the mask now belonged to Hugh Priest.

“Run you down, little buddy,” Hugh said as he threw the ball back.

“Make you squeak.”

“You see, bush, it’s not just a question of the baseball card anymore,” Koufax/Gaunt said from beside him. “You know that, don’t you? When you slung that mud at Wilma jerzyck’s sheets, you started something. Like a guy who starts an avalanche just by shouting too loud on a warm winter day. Now your choice is simple.

You can keep going… or you can stay where you are and get buried.”

In his dream, Brian finally began to cry. He saw, all right. He saw)just fine, now that it was too late to make any difference.

Gaunt squeezed the baseball. More blood poured out, and his fingertips sank deep into its white, fleshy surface. “If you don’t want everybody In Castle Rock to know you were the one who started the avalanche, Brian, you had better do what I tell you.”

Brian wept harder.

“When you deal with me,” Gaunt said, winding up to throw, you want to remember two things: Mr. Gaunt knows best… and the dealing isn’t done until Mr. Gaunt sys the dealing’s done.”

He threw with that sinuous all-of-a-sudden delivery which had made Sandy Koufax so hard to hit (that was, at least, the humble opinion of Brian’s father), and when the ball hit Hugh Priest’s glove this time, it exploded. Blood and hair and stringy gobbets of flesh flew up in the bright autumn sun. And Brian had awakened, weeping into his pillow.

8

Now he was off to do what Mr. Gaunt had told him he must do. it had been simple enough to get away; he simply told his mother and father he didn’t want to go to church that morning because he felt sick to his stomach (nor was this a lie. Once they were gone, he made his preparations.

It was hard to pedal his bike and even harder to keep it balanced, because of the Playmate picnic cooler in the bike basket. It was very heavy, and he was sweating and out of breath by the time he reached the jerzyck house. There was no hesitation this time, no ringing the doorbell, no preplanned story. No one was here. Sandy Koufax/Leland Gaunt had told him in the dream that the jerzycks would be staying late after the eleven o’clock Mass to discuss the upcoming Casino Nite festivities and would then be going to visit friends. Brian believed him. All he wanted now was to finish with this awful business just as fast as he could. And when it was done, he would go home, park his bike, and spend the rest of the day in bed.

He lifted the picnic cooler out of the bike basket, using both hands, and set it down on the grass. He was behind the hedge, where no one could see him. What he was about to do would be noisy, but Koufax/Gaunt had told him not to worry about that. He said most of the people on Willow Street were Catholics, and almost all of those not attending eleven o’clock Mass would have gone at eight and then left on their various Sunday day-trips. Brian didn’t know if that was true or not. He only knew two things for sure: Mr. Gaunt knew best, and the deal wasn’t done until Mr. Gaunt said the deal was done.

And this was the deal.

Brian opened the Playmate cooler. There were about a dozen good-sized rocks inside. Wrapped around each and held with a rubber band or two was a sheet of paper from Brian’s school notebook. Printed on each sheet in large letters was this simple message:

I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE.

THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING

Brian took one of these and walked up the lawn until he was less than ten feet from the jerzycks’ big living-room window-what had been called a “picture window” back in the early sixties, when this house had been built. He wound up, hesitated for only a moment, and then let fly like Sandy Koufax facing the lead-off batter in the seventh game of the World Series. There was a huge and unmusical crash, followed by a thud as the rock hit the living-room carpet and rolled across the floor.

The sound had an odd effect on Brian. His fear left him, and his distaste for this further task-which could by no stretch of the imagination be dismissed as something so inconsequential as a Prank-also evaporated. The sound of breaking glass excited him… made him feel, in fact, the way he felt when he had his daydreams about Miss Ratcliffe. Those had been foolish, and he knew that now, but there was nothing foolish about this. This was fear Besides, he found that he now wanted the Sandy Koufax card more than ever. He had discovered another large fact about possessions and the Peculiar Psychological state they induce: the more one has to go through because of something one owns, the more one wants to keep that thing.

Brian took two more rocks and walked over to the broken Picture window. He looked inside and saw the rock he had thrown.

It was lying in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

It looked very improbable there-like seeing a rubber boot on a church altar or a rose lying on the engine block of a tractor. One of the rubber bands holding the note to the rock had snapped, but the other was still okay. Brian’s gaze shifted to the left and he found himself regarding the Jerzycks’ Sony TV.

Brian wound up and threw. The rock hit the Sony dead-on.

There was a hollow bang, a flash of light, and glass showered the carpet. The TV tottered on its stand but did not quite fall over.

“Stee-rike two!” Brian muttered, then gave voice to a strange, strangled laugh.

He threw the other rock at a bunch of ceramic knickknacks standing on a table by the sofa, but missed. It hit the wall with a thump and gouged out a chunk of plaster.

Brian laid hold of the Playmate’s handle and lugged it around to the side of the house. He broke two bedroom windows. In back, he pegged a loaf-sized rock through the window in the top half of the kitchen door, then threw several more through the hole. One of these shattered the Cuisinart standing on the counter. Another blasted through the glass front of the RadarRange and landed right inside the microwave. “Stee-rike three! Siddown, bush!” Brian cried, and then laughed so hard he almost wet his pants.

When the throe had passed, he finished his circuit of the house.

The Playmate was lighter now; he found he could carry it with one hand. He used his last three rocks to break the basement windows which showed among Wilma’s fall flowers, then ripped up a few handfuls of the blooms for good measure. With that done, he closed the cooler, returned to his bicycle, put the Playmate into the basket, and mounted up for the ride home.

The Mislaburskis lived next door to the jerzycks. As Brian pedaled out of the jerzyck driveway, Mrs. Mislaburski opened her front door and came out on the stoop. She was dressed in a bright green wrapper. Her hair was bound up in a red doo-rag. She looked like an advertisement for Christmas in hell.

“What’s going on over there, boy?” she asked sharply.

“I don’t know, exactly. I think Mr. and Mrs. jerzyck must be having an argument,” Brian said, not stopping. “I just came over to ask if they needed anyone to shovel their driveway this winter, but I decided to come back another time.”

Mrs. Mislaburski directed a brief, baleful glance at the Jerzyck house. Because of the hedges, only the second story was visible from where she stood. “If I were you, I wouldn’t come back at all,” she said. “That woman reminds me of those little fish they have down in South America. The ones that eat the cows whole.”

“Piranha-fish,” Brian said.

“That’s right. Those.”

Brian kept on pedaling. He was now drawing away from the woman in the green wrapper and red doo-rag. His heart was hustling right along, but it wasn’t hammering or racing or anything like that.

Part of him felt quite sure he was still dreaming. He didn’t feel like himself at all-not like the Brian Rusk who got all A’s and B’s, the Brian Rusk who was a member of the Student Council and the Middle School Good Citizens’ League, the Brian Rusk who got nothing but I’s in deportment.

“She’ll kill somebody one of these days!” Mrs. Mislaburski called indignantly after Brian. “You just mark my words!”

Under his breath Brian whispered: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

He did indeed spend the rest of the day in bed. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have concerned Cora, perhaps enough to take Brian over to the Doc in the Box in Norway. Today, however, she hardly noticed that her son wasn’t feeling well. This was because of the wonderful sunglasses Mr. Gaunt had sold her-she was absolutely entranced with them.

Brian got up around six o’clock, about fifteen minutes before his Pa came in from a day spent fishing on the lake with two friends.

He got himself a Pepsi from the fridge and stood by the stove, drinking it. He felt quite a bit better.

He felt as if he might have finally fulfilled his part of the deal he had made with Mr. Gaunt.

He had also decided that Mr. Gaunt did indeed know best.

9

Nettle Cobb, without the slightest premonition of the unpleasant surprise awaiting her at home, was in high good spirits as she walked down Main Street toward Needful Things. She had a strong intuition that, Sunday morning or not, the shop would be open, and she was not disappointed.

“Mrs. Cobb!” Leland Gaunt said as she came in. “How very nice to see you!”

“It’s nice to see you, too, Mr. Gaunt,” she said… and it was.

Mr. Gaunt came over, his hand out, but Nettle shrank from his touch. It was dreadful behavior, so impolite, but she simply couldn’t help herself. And Mr. Gaunt seemed to understand, God bless him.

He smiled and changed course, closing the door behind her instead.

He flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED with the speed of a professional gambler palming an ace.

“Sit down, Mrs. Cobb! Please! Sit down just came to t “Well, all right… but I tell you that Polly…

Polly is…” She felt strange, somehow. Not bad, exactly, but strange. Swimmy in the head. She sat down rather gracelessly in one of the plush chairs. Then Mr. Gaunt was standing before her, his eyes fixed on hers, and the world seemed to center upon him and grow still again.

“Polly isn’t feeling so well, is she?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

“That’s it,” Nettle agreed gratefully. “It’s her hands, you know.

She has…”

“Arthritis, yes, terrible, such a shame, shit happens, life’s a bitch and then you die, tough titty said the kitty. I know, Nettle.”

Mr.

Gaunt’s eyes were growing again. “But there’s no need for me to call her… or call on her, for that matter. Her hands are feeling better now.”

“Are they?” Nettle asked distantly.

“You betcha! They still hurt, of course, which is good, but they don’t hurt badly enough to keep her away, and that’s better stilldon’t you agree, Nettle?”

“Yes,” Nettle said faintly, but she had no idea of what she was agreeing to.

“You,” Mr. Gaunt said in his softest, most cheerful voice, “have got a big day ahead of you, Nettle.”

“I do?” It was news to her; she had been planning to spend the afternoon in her favorite living-room chair, knitting and watching TV with Raider at her feet.

” Yes. A very big day. So I want you to just sit there and rest for a moment while I go get something. Will you do that?”

“Yes…”

“Good. And close your eyes, why don’t you? Have a really good rest, Nettle!”

Nettle obediently closed her eyes. An unknown length of time later, Mr. Gaunt told her to open them again. She did, and felt a pang of disappointment. When people told you to close your eyes, sometimes they wanted to give you something nice. A present. She had hoped that, when she opened her eyes again, Mr. Gaunt might be holding another carnival glass lampshade, but all he had was a pad of paper.

The sheets were small and pink. Each one was headed with the words

TRAFFIC VIOLATION WARNING.

I I glass.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought it might be cam’va “I don’t think you’ll be needing any more carnival glass, Nettle.”

“No?” The pang of disappointment returned. It was stronger this time.

“No. Sad, but true. Still, I imagine you remember promising you’d do something for me.” Mr. Gaunt sat down next to her. “You do remember that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “You want me to play a trick on Buster. You want me to put some papers in his house.”

“That’s right, Nettle-very good. Do you still have the key I gave you?”

Slowly, like a woman in an underwater ballet, Nettle brought the key from the right-hand pocket of her coat. She held it up so Mr.

Gaunt could see it.

“That’s very good!” he told her warmly. “Now put it back, Nettle. Put it back where it’s safe.”

She did.

“Now. Here are the papers.” He put the pink pad in one of her hands. into the other he placed a Scotch-tape dispenser. Alarm bells were going off somewhere inside her now, but they were far away, hardly audible.

“I hope this won’t take long. I ought to go home soon. I have to feed Raider. He’s my little dog.”

“I know all about Raider,” said Mr. Gaunt, and offered Nettle a wide smile. “But I have a feeling that he doesn’t have much appetite today. I don’t think you need to worry about him pooping on the kitchen floor, either.”

“But-” He touched her lips with one of his long fingers, and she felt suddenly sick to her stomach.

“Don’t,” she whined, pressing back into her chair. “Don’t, it’s awful. ” “So they tell me,” Mr. Gaunt agreed. “So if you don’t want me to be awful to you, Nettle, you mustn’t ever say that awful little word to me.”

“What word?”

“But. I disapprove of that word. In fact, I think it’s fair to say I hate that word. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no need for such a puling little word. I want you to say something else for me, Nettle-I want you to say some words that I love.

Words that I absolutely adore.”

“What words?”

“Mr. Gaunt knows best. Say that.”

“mr. Gaunt knows best,” she repeated, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth she understood how absolutely and completely true they were.

“Mr. Gaunt always knows best.”

“mr. Gaunt always knows best.”

“Right! just like Father,” Mr. Gaunt said, and then laughed hideously. It was a sound like plates of rock moving deep in the earth, and the color of his eyes shifted rapidly from b!ue to green to brown to black when he did it. “Now, Nettle listen carefully.

You have this one little errand to do for me and then you can go home. Do you understand?”

Nettle understood.

And she listened very carefully.