Cujo Read online

  Cujo backed off again.

  Gary looked at the dog, his thin, hairless chest moving rapidly up and down. His face was ashy gray. The laceration on his shoulder welled blood that splattered on the peeling porch steps. "Come for me, you sonofawhore," he said. "Come on, come on, I don't give a shit." He screamed, "You hear me? I don't give a shit!"

  But Cujo backed off another pace.

  The words still had no meaning, but the smell of fear had left THE MAN. Cujo was no longer sure if he wanted to attack or not He hurt, he hurt so miserably, and the world was such a crazyquilt of sense and impression--

  Gary got shakily to his feet. He backed up the last two steps of the porch. He backed across the porch's width and felt behind him for the handle of the screen door. His shoulder felt as if raw gasoline had been poured under the skin. His mind raved at him, Rabies! I got the rabies!

  Never mind. One thing at a time. His shotgun was in the hall closet. Thank Christ Charity and Brett Camber were gone from up on the hill. That was God's mercy at work.

  He found the screen door's handle and pulled the door open. He kept his eyes locked on Cujo's until he had backed in and pulled the screen door shut behind him. Then a great relief swept through him. His legs went rubbery. For a moment the world swam away, and he pulled himself back by sticking his tongue out and biting down on it. This was no time to swoon like a girl. He could do that after the dog was dead, if he wanted. Christ, but it had been close out there; he had thought he was going to punch out for sure.

  He turned and headed down the darkened hallway to the closet, and that was when Cujo smashed through the lower half of the screen door, muzzle wrinkled back from his teeth in a kind of sneer, a dry volley of barking sounds coming from his chest.

  Gary screamed again and whirled just in time to catch Cujo in both arms as the dog leaped again, driving him back down the hall, bouncing from side to side and trying to keep his feet. For a moment they almost seemed to waltz. Then Gary, who was fifty pounds lighter, went down. He was dimly aware of Cujo's muzzle burrowing in under his chin, was dimly aware that Cujo's nose was almost sickeningly hot and dry. He tried getting his hands up and was thinking that he would have to go for Cujo's eyes with his thumbs when Cujo seized his throat and tore it open. Gary screamed and the dog savaged him again. Gary felt warm blood sheet across his face and thought, Dear God, that's mine! His hands beat weakly and ineffectually at Cujo's upper body, doing no damage. At last they fell away.

  Faintly, sick and cloying, he smelled honeysuckle.

  "What do you see out there?"

  Brett turned a little toward the sound of his mother's voice. Not all the way--he did not want to lose sight of the steadily unrolling view even for a little while. The bus had been on the road for almost an hour. They had crossed the Million Dollar Bridge into South Portland (Brett had stared with fascinated, wondering eyes at the two scum-caked, rustbucket freighters in the harbor), joined the Turnpike going south, and were now approaching the New Hampshire border.

  "Everything," Brett said. "What do you see, Mom?"

  She thought: Your reflection in the glass--very faint. That's what I see.

  Instead she answered. "Why, the world, I guess. I see the world unrolling in front of us."

  "Mom? I wish we could ride all the way to California on this bus. See everything there is in the geography books at school."

  She laughed and ruffled his hair. "You'd get damn tired of scenery, Brett."

  "No. No, I wouldn't."

  And he probably wouldn't, she thought. Suddenly she felt both sad and old. When she had called Holly Saturday morning to ask her if they could come, Holly had been delighted, and her delight had made Charity feel young. It was strange that her own son's delight, his almost palpable euphoria, would make her feel old. Nevertheless . . .

  What exactly is there going to be for him? she asked herself, studying his ghostlike face, which was superimposed over the moving scenery like a camera trick. He was bright, brighter than she was and much brighter than Joe. He ought to go to college, but she knew that when he got to high school Joe would press him to sign up for the shop and automotive maintenance courses so he could be more help around the place. Ten years ago he wouldn't have been able to get away with it, the guidance counselors wouldn't have allowed a bright boy like Brett to opt for all manual trades courses, but in these days of phase electives and do your own thing, she was terribly afraid it might happen.

  It made her afraid. Once the had been able to tell herself that school was far away, so very far away--high school, real school. Grammar school was nothing but play to a boy who slipped through his lessons as easily as Brett did. But in high school the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years.

  She gripped her elbows and shivered, not even kidding herself that it was because the Hound's air conditioning was turned up too high.

  For Brett, high school was now just four years away.

  She shivered again and suddenly found herself wishing viciously that she had never won the money, or that she had lost the ticket. They had only been away from Joe for an hour, but it was the first time she had really been separated from him since they had married in late 1966. She hadn't realized that perspective would be so sudden, so dizzying, and so bitter. Picture this: Woman and boy are let free from brooding castle keep . . . but there's a catch. Stapled to their backs are large hooks, and slipped over the ends of the hooks are heavy-duty invisible rubber bands. And before you can get too far, presto-whizzo! You're snapped back inside for another fourteen years!

  She made a little croaking sound in her throat.

  "Did you say something, Mom?"

  "No. Just clearing my throat."

  She shivered a third time, and this time her arms broke out in gooseflesh. She had recalled a line of poetry from one of her own high school English classes (she had wanted to take the college courses, but her father had been furious at the idea--did she think they were rich?--and her mother had laughed the idea to death gently and pityingly). It was from a poem by Dylan Thomas, and she couldn't remember the whole thing, but it had been something about moving through dooms of love.

  That line had seemed funny and perplexing to her then, but she thought she understood it now. What else did you call that heavy-duty invisible rubber band, if not love? Was she going to kid herself and say that she did not, even now, in some way love the man she had married? That she stayed with him only out of duty, or for the sake of the child (that was a bitter laugh; if she ever left him it would be for the sake of the child)? That he had never pleasured her in bed? That he could not, sometimes at the most unexpected moments (like the one back at the bus station), be tender?

  And yet . . . and yet . . .

  Brett was looking out the window, enrapt. Without turning from the view, he said, "You think Cujo's all right, Mom?"

  "I'm sure he's fine," she said absently.

  For the first time she found herself thinking about divorce in a concrete way--what she could do to support herself and her son, how they would get along in such an unthinkable (almost unthinkable) situation. If she and Brett didn't come home from this trip, would he come after them, as he had vaguely threatened back in Portland? Would he decide to let Charity go to the bad but try to get Brett back by fair means . . . or foul?

  She began to tick the various possibilities over in her mind, weighing them, suddenly thinking that maybe a little perspective wasn't such a bad thing after all. Painful, maybe. Maybe useful, too.

  The Greyhound slipped across the state line into New Hampshire and rolled on south.

  The Delta 727 rose steeply, buttonhooked over Castle Rock--Vic always looked for his house near Castle Lake and 117, always fruitlessly--and then headed back toward the coast. It was a twenty-minute run to Logan Airport.

  Donna was down there, some eighteen thousand feet below. And the Tadder. He felt a sudden depression mixed with
a black premonition that it wasn't going to work, that they were crazy to even think it might. When your house blew down, you had to build a new house. You couldn't put the old one back together again with Elmer's Glue.

  The stewardess came by. He and Roger were riding in first class ("Might as well enjoy it while we can, buddy," Roger had said last Wednesday when he made the reservations; "not everyone can go to the poorfarm in such impeccable style"), and there were only four or five other passengers, most of them reading the morning paper--as was Roger.

  "Can I get you anything?" she asked Roger with that professional twinkly smile that seemed to say she had been overjoyed to get up this morning at five thirty to make the upsy-downsy run from Bangor to Portland to Boston to New York to Atlanta.

  Roger shook his head absently, and she turned that unearthly smile on Vic. "Anything for you, air? Sweet roll? Orange juice?"

  "Could you rustle up a screwdriver?" Vic asked, and Roger's head came out of his paper with a snap.

  The stew's smile didn't falter; a request for a drink before nine in the morning was no news to her. "I can rustle one up," she said, "but you'll have to hustle to get it all down. It's really only a hop to Boston."

  "I'll hustle," Vic promised solemnly, and she passed on her way back up to the galley, resplendent in her powder-blue slacks uniform and her smile.

  "What's with you?" Roger asked.

  "What do you mean, what's with me?"

  "You know what I mean. I never even saw you drink a beer before noon before. Usually not before five."

  "I'm launching the boat," Vic said.

  "What boat?"

  "The R.M.S. Titanic," Vic said.

  Roger frowned. "That's sort of poor taste, don't you think?"

  He did, as a matter of fact. Roger deserved something better, but this morning, with the depression still on him like a foul-smelling blanket, he just couldn't think of anything better. He managed a rather bleak smile instead. But Roger went on frowning at him.

  "Look," Vic said, "I've got an idea on this Zingers thing. It's going to be a bitch convincing old man Sharp and the kid, but it might work."

  Roger looked relieved. It was the way it had always worked with them; Vic was the raw idea man, Roger the shaper and implementer. They had always worked as a team when it came to translating the ideas into media, and in the matter of presentation.

  "What is it?"

  "Give me a little while, Vic said. "Until tonight, maybe. Then we'll run it up the flagpole--"

  "--and see who drops their pants," Roger finished with a grin. He shook his paper open to the financial page again. "Okay. As long as I get it by tonight. Sharp stock went up another eighth last week. Were you aware of that?"

  "Dandy," Vic murmured, and looked out the window again. No fog now; the day was as clear as a bell. The beaches at Kennebunk and Ogunquit and York formed a panoramic picture postcard--cobalt blue sea, khaki sand, and then the Maine landscape of low hills, open fields, and thick bands of fir stretching west and, out of sight. Beautiful. And it made his depression even worse.

  If I have to cry, I'm damn well going into the crapper to do it, he thought grimly. Six sentences on a sheet of cheap paper had done this to him. It was a goddam fragile world, as fragile as one of those Easter eggs that were all pretty colors on the outside but hollow on the inside. Only last week he had been thinking of just taking Tad and moving out. Now he wondered if Tad and Donna would still be there when he and Roger got back. Was it possible that Donna might just take the kid and decamp, maybe to her mother's place in the Poconos?

  Sure it was possible. She might decide that ten days apart wasn't enough, not for him, not for her. Maybe a six months' separation would be better. And she had Tad now. Possession was nine points of the law, wasn't it?

  And maybe, a crawling, insinuating voice inside spoke up, maybe she knows where Kemp is. Maybe she'll decide to go to him. Try it with him for a while. They can search for their happy pasts together. Now there's a nice crazy Monday-morning thought, he told himself uneasily.

  But the thought wouldn't go away. Almost, but not quite.

  He managed to finish every drop of his screwdriver before the plane touched down at Logan. It gave him acid indigestion that he knew would last all morning long--like the thought of Donna and Steve Kemp together, it would come creeping back even if he gobbled a whole roll of Turns--but the depression lifted a little and so maybe it was worth it.

  Maybe.

  Joe Camber looked at the patch of garage floor below his big vise clamp with something like wonder. He pushed his green felt hat back on his forehead, stared at what was there awhile longer, then put his fingers between his teeth and whistled piercingly.

  "Cujo! Hey, boy! Come, Cujo!"

  He whistled again and then leaned over, hands on his knees. The dog would come, he had no doubt of that. Cujo never went far. But how was he going to handle this?

  The dog had shat on the garage floor. He had never known Cujo to do such a thing, not even as a pup. He had piddled around a few times, as puppies will, and he had torn the be-jesus out of a chair cushion or two, but there had never been anything like this. He wondered briefly if maybe some other dog had done it, and then dismissed the thought. Cujo was the biggest dog in Castle Rock, so far as he knew. Big dogs ate big, and big dogs crapped big. No poodle or beagle or Heinz Fifty-seven Varieties had done this mess. Joe wondered if the dog could have sensed that Charity and Brett were going away for a spell. If so, maybe this was his way of showing just how that idea set with him. Joe had heard of such things.

  He had taken the dog in payment for a job he had done in 1975. The customer had been a one-eyed fellow named Ray Crowell from up Fryeburg way. This Crowell spent most of his time working in the woods, although it was acknowledged that he had a fine touch with dogs--he was good at breeding them and good at training them. He could have made a decent living doing what New England countrypeople sometimes called "dog farming," but his temper was not good, and he drove many customers away with his sullenness.

  "I need a new engine in my truck," Crowell had told Joe that spring.

  "Ayuh," Joe had said.

  "I got the motor, but I can't pay you nothing. I'm tapped out."

  They had been standing just inside Joe's garage, chewing on stems of grass. Brett, then five, had been goofing around in the dooryard while Charity hung out clothes.

  "Well, that's too bad, Ray," Joe said, "but I don't work for free. This ain't no charitable organization."

  "Mrs. Beasley just had herself a litter," Ray said. Mrs. Beasley was a prime bitch Saint Bernard. "Purebreds. You do the work and I'll give you the pick of the litter. What do you say? You'd be coming out ahead, but I can't cut no pulp if I don't have a truck to haul it in. to

  "Don't need a dog," Joe said. "Especially a big one like that Goddam Saint Bernards ain't nothing but eatin machines. "

  "You don't need a dog," Ray said, casting an eye out at Brett, who was now just sitting on the grass and watching his mother, "but your boy might appreciate one."

  Joe opened his mouth and then closed it again. He and Charity didn't use any protection, but there had been no more kids since Brett, and Brett himself had been a long while coming. Sometimes, looking at him, a vague question would form itself in Joe's head: Was the boy lonely? Perhaps he was. And perhaps Ray Crowell was right. Brett's birthday was coming up. He could give him the pup then.

  "I'll think about it," he said.

  "Well, don't think too long," Ray said, bridling. "I can go see Vin Callahan over in North Conway. He's just as handy as you are, Camber. Handier, maybe."

  "Maybe," Joe said, unperturbed. Ray Crowell's temper did not scare him in the least.

  Later that week, the manager of the Shop 'n Save drove his Thunderbird up to Joe's to get the transmission looked at It was a minor problem, but the manager, whose name was Donovan, fussed around the car like a worried mother while Joe drained the transmission fluid well, refilled it, and tightened the ban
ds. The car was a piece of work, all right, a 1960 T-Bird in cherry condition. And as he finished the job, listening to Donovan talk about how his wife wanted him to sell the car, Joe had had an idea.

  "I'm thinking about getting my boy a dog," he told this Donovan as he let the T-Bird down off the jacks.

  "Oh, yes?" Donovan asked politely.

  "Ayuh. Saint Bernard. It's just a pup now, but it's gonna eat big when it grows. Now I was just thinking that we might make a little deal, you and me. If you was to guarantee me a discount on that dry dog food, Gaines Meal, Ralston-Purina, whatever you sell, I'd guarantee you to work on your Bird here every once in a while. No labor charges."

  Donovan had been delighted and the two of them had shaken on it Joe had called Ray Crowell and said he'd decided to take the pup if Crowell was still agreeable. Crowell was, and when his son's birthday rolled around that year, Joe had astounded both Brett and Charity by putting the squirming, wriggling puppy into the boy's arms.

  "Thank you, Daddy, thank you, thank you!" Brett had cried, hugging his father and covering his cheeks with kisses.

  "Sure," Joe said. "But you take care of him, Brett. He's your dog, not mine. I guess if he does any piddling or crapping around, I'll take him out in back of the barn and shoot him for a stranger."

  "I will, Daddy . . . I promise!"

  He had kept his promise, pretty much, and on the few occasions he forgot, either Charity or Joe himself had cleaned up after the dog with no comment. And Joe had discovered it was impossible to stand aloof from Cujo; as he grew (and he grew damned fast, developing into exactly the sort of eating machine Joe had foreseen), he simply took his place in the Camber family. He was one of your bona fide good dogs.

  He had house-trained quickly and completely . . . and now this. Joe turned around, hands stuffed in his pockets, frowning. No sign of Cuje anywhere.