Needful Things Read online

  He filled the jelly-glass again, sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with its tubular steel legs, and lit a cigarette. And as he sat there, drinking and tapping curls of ash into one of the frozen dinner trays, he forgot about the fox-tail and started thinking about Nettie Cobb. Crazy Nettie. He was going to play a trick on Crazy Nettie. Maybe next week, maybe the week after that... but this week seemed most likely. Mr. Gaunt had told him he was a man who didn't like to waste time, and Hugh was willing to take his word for it.

  He looked forward to it.

  It would break up the monotony.

  He drank, he smoked, and when he finally passed out on the filthy sheets of the narrow bed in the other room at quarter of ten, he did it with a smile on his face.

  3

  Wilma Jerzyck's shift at Hemphill's Market ended when the store closed at seven. She pulled into her own driveway at seven-fifteen. Soft light spilled out through the drawn drapes across the living-room window. She went in and sniffed. She could smell macaroni and cheese. Good enough ... at least, so far.

  Pete was sprawled on the couch with his shoes off, watching Wheel of Fortune. The Portland Press-Herald was in his lap.

  "I read your note," he said, sitting up quickly and putting the paper aside. "I put in the casserole. It'll be ready by seven-thirty." He looked at her with earnest and slightly anxious brown eyes. Like a dog with a strong urge to please, Pete Jerzyck had been house-trained early and quite well. He had his lapses, but it had been a long time since she'd come in and found him lying on the couch with his shoes on, a longer one since he'd dared to light up his pipe in the house, and it would be a snowy day in August when he took a piss without remembering to put the ring back down after he was through.

  "Did you bring in the wash?"

  An expression of mingled guilt and surprise troubled his round, open face. "Jeez! I was reading the newspaper and forgot. I'll go right out." He was already fumbling for his shoes.

  "Never mind," she said, starting for the kitchen.

  "Wilma, I'll get it!"

  "Don't bother," she said sweetly. "I wouldn't want you to leave your paper or Vanna White just because I've been on my feet behind a cash register for the last six hours. Sit right there, Peter. Enjoy yourself."

  She didn't have to look around and check his reaction; after seven years of marriage, she honestly believed Peter Michael Jerzyck held no more surprises for her. His expression would be a mixture of hurt and weak chagrin: He would stand there for a few moments after she had gone out, looking like a man who just came out of the crapper and can't quite remember if he's wiped himself, and then he would go to work setting the table and dishing up the casserole. He would ask her many questions about her shift at the market, listen attentively to her answers, and not interrupt once with the details of his own day at Williams-Brown, the large real-estate agency in Oxford where he worked. Which was just as fine as paint with Wilma, since she found real estate the world's most boring subject. After dinner, he would clear up without being asked, and she would read the paper. All of these services would be performed by him because he had forgotten one minor chore. She didn't mind taking in the wash at all--in fact, she was fond of the feel and smell of clothes which had spent a happy afternoon drying in the sun--but she had no intention of letting Pete in on that. It was her little secret.

  She had many such secrets, and kept them all for the same reason: in a war, you held onto every advantage. Some nights she would come home and there might be an hour or even two hours of skirmishing before she was finally able to prod Peter into a full-scale retreat, replacing his white pins on her interior battle-map with her red ones. Tonight the engagement had been won less than two minutes after she stepped inside the door, and that was just fine with Wilma.

  She believed in her heart that marriage was a lifetime adventure in aggression, and in such a long campaign, where ultimately no prisoners could be taken, no quarter given, no patch of marital landscape left unscorched, such easy victories might eventually lose their savor. But that time had not yet come, and so she went out to the clotheslines with the basket under her left arm and her heart light beneath the swell of her bosom.

  She was halfway across the yard before coming to a puzzled stop. Where in the hell were the sheets?

  She should have seen them easily, big rectangular white shapes floating in the dark, but they weren't there. Had they blown away? Ridiculous! There had been a breeze that afternoon, but hardly a gale. Had someone stolen them?

  Then a gust of wind kicked through the air and she heard a large, lazy flapping sound. Okay, they were there ... somewhere. When you were the oldest daughter in a sprawling Catholic clan of thirteen children, you knew what a sheet sounded like when it flapped on the line. But it still wasn't right, that sound. It was too heavy.

  Wilma took another step forward. Her face, which always wore the faintly shadowed look of a woman who expects trouble, grew darker. Now she could see the sheets ... or shapes that should have been the sheets. But they were dark.

  She took another, smaller step forward, and the breeze whisked through the yard again. The shapes flapped toward her this time, belling out, and before she could get her hand up, something heavy and slimy struck her. Something gooey splattered her cheeks; something thick and soggy pressed against her. It was almost as if a cold, sticky hand were trying to grasp her.

  She was not a woman who cried out easily or often, but she cried out now, and dropped the laundry-basket. That sloppy flapping sound came again and she tried to twist away from the shape looming before her. Her left ankle struck the wicker laundry-basket and she stumbled to one knee, missing a full-length tumble only by a combination of luck and quick reflexes.

  A heavy, wet thing slobbered its way up her back; thick wetness drooled down the sides of her neck. Wilma cried out again and crawled away from the lines on her hands and knees. Some of her hair had escaped the kerchief she wore and hung against her cheeks, tickling. She hated that feeling ... but she hated that drooling, clammy caress from the dark shape hung on her clothesline even more.

  The kitchen door banged open, and Pete's alarmed voice carried across the yard: "Wilma? Wilma, are you all right?"

  Flapping from behind her--a nasty sound, like a chuckle from vocal cords clotted with dirt. In the next yard the Haverhills' mutt began to bellow hysterically in its high, unpleasant voice--yark! yark! yark!--and this did nothing to improve Wilma's state of mind.

  She got to her feet and saw Pete cautiously descending the back steps. "Wilma? Did you fall down? Are you okay?"

  "Yes!" she shouted furiously. "Yes, I fell down! Yes, I'm okay! Turn on the goddam light!"

  "Did you hurt yourse--"

  "Just turn on the goddam LIGHT!" she screamed at him, and rubbed a hand across the front of her coat. It came away covered with cold goo. She was now so angry she could see her own pulse as bright points of light before her eyes ... and angriest of all at herself, for being scared. Even for a second.

  Yark! Yark! Yark!

  The goddam mutt in the next yard was going ape. Christ, she hated dogs, especially the mouthy ones.

  Pete's shape retreated to the top of the kitchen steps. The door opened, his hand snaked inside, and then the floodlight came on, bathing the rear yard with bright light.

  Wilma looked down at herself and saw a wide swath of dark brown across the front of her new fall coat. She wiped furiously at her face, held out her hand, and saw it had also turned brown. She could feel a slow, syrupy trickle running down the middle of her back.

  "Mud!" She was stupefied with disbelief--so much so that she was unaware she had spoken aloud. Who could have done this to her? Who would have dared?

  "What did you say, honey?" Pete asked. He had been coming toward her; now he stopped a prudent distance away. Wilma's face was working in a way Pete Jerzyck found extremely alarming: it was as if a nest of baby snakes had hatched just beneath her skin.

  "Mud!" she screamed, holding her hands out toward him
... at him. Flecks of brown flew from her fingertips. "Mud, I say! Mud!"

  Pete looked past her, finally understanding. His mouth dropped open. Wilma whirled in the direction of his gaze. The floodlight mounted above the kitchen door lit the clotheslines and the garden with merciless clarity, revealing everything that needed to be revealed. The sheets which she had hung out clean were now drooping from their pins in dispirited, soggy clots. They were not just spattered with mud; they were coated with it, plated with it.

  Wilma looked at the garden and saw deep divots where the mud had been scooped out. She saw a beaten track in the grass where the mudslinger had gone back and forth, first loading up, then walking to the lines, then throwing, then going back to reload.

  "God damn it!" she screamed.

  "Wilma ... come on in the house, honey, and I'll ..." Pete groped, then looked relieved as an idea actually dawned. "I'll make us some tea."

  "Fuck the tea!" Wilma howled at the top, the very tippy-top, of her vocal range, and from next door the Haverhills' mutt went for broke, yarkyarkyark, oh she hated dogs, it was going to drive her crazy, fucking loudmouth dog!

  Her rage overflowed and she charged the sheets, clawed at them, began pulling them down. Her fingers caught over the first line and it snapped like a guitar string. The sheets hung from it dropped in a sodden, meaty swoop. Fists clenched, eyes squinched like a child doing a tantrum, Wilma took a single large, froggy leap and landed on top of one. It made a weary flooosh sound and billowed up, splattering gobbets of mud on her nylons. It was the final touch. She opened her mouth and shrieked her rage. Oh, she would find who had done this. Yes-indeedy-doodad. You better believe it. And when she did--

  "Is everything all right over there, Mrs. Jerzyck?" It was Mrs. Haverhill's voice, wavering with alarm.

  "Yes goddammit, we're drinking Sterno and watching Lawrence Welk, can't you shut that mutt of yours up?" Wilma screamed.

  She backed off the muddy sheet, panting, her hair hanging all around her flushed face. She swiped at it savagely. Fucking dog was going to drive her crazy. Fucking loudmouth do--

  Her thoughts broke off with an almost audible snap.

  Dogs.

  Fucking loudmouth dogs.

  Who lived almost right around the comer from here, on Ford Street?

  Correction: What crazy lady with a fucking loudmouth dog named Raider lived right around the corner from here?

  Why, Nettie Cobb, that was who.

  The dog had barked all spring, those high-pitched puppy yaps that really got under your skin, and finally Wilma had called Nettie and told her that if she couldn't get her dog to shut up, she ought to get rid of it. A week later, when there had still been no improvement (at least none that Wilma was willing to admit), she had called Nettie again and told her that if she couldn't keep the dog quiet, she, Wilma, would have to call the police. The next night, when the goddamned mutt started up its yarking and barking once more, she had.

  A week or so after that, Nettie had shown up at the market (unlike Wilma, Nettie seemed to be the sort of person who had to turn things over in her mind for a while--brood on them, even--before she was able to act). She stood in line at Wilma's register, although she didn't have a single solitary item. When her turn came, she had said in a squeaky, breathless little voice: "You stop making trouble for me and my Raider, Wilma Jerzyck. He's a good little doggy, and you just better stop making trouble."

  Wilma, always ready for a fight, had not been in the least disconcerted at being confronted in the workplace. In fact, she rather liked it. "Lady, you don't know what trouble is. But if you can't get your damn dog to shut up, you will."

  The Cobb woman had been as pale as milk, but she drew herself up, clutching her purse so tightly that the tendons on her scrawny forearms showed all the way from her wrists to her elbows. She said: "I'm warning you," then hurried out.

  "Oh-oh, I think I just peed my panties!" Wilma had called boisterously after her (a taste of battle always put her in good spirits), but Nettie never turned--only hurried on her way a little faster.

  After that, the dog had quieted down. This had rather disappointed Wilma, because it had been a boring spring. Pete was showing no signs of rebellion, and Wilma had been feeling an end-of-winter dullness that the new green in the trees and grass couldn't seem to touch. What she really needed to add color and spice to her life was a good feud. For a while it had seemed that crazy Nettie Cobb would fill the bill admirably, but with the dog minding its manners, it seemed to Wilma that she would have to look elsewhere for diversion.

  Then one night in May the dog had started barking again. The mutt had only gone on for a while, but Wilma hurried to the telephone and called Nettie anyway--she had marked the number in the book just in case such an occasion offered.

  She did not waste time on the niceties but got right to the point. "This is Wilma Jerzyck, dear. I called to tell you that if you don't shut that dog up, I'll shut him up myself."

  "He's already stopped!" Nettie had cried. "I brought him in as soon as I got home and heard him! You just leave me and Raider alone! I warned you! If you don't, you'll be sorry!"

  "Just remember what I said," Wilma told her. "I've had enough. The next time he starts up that ruckus, I won't bother complaining to the cops. I'll come over and cut his goddam throat."

  She had hung up before Nettie could reply. The cardinal rule governing engagements with the enemy (relatives, neighbors, spouses) was that the aggressor must have the last word.

  The dog hadn't popped off since then. Well, maybe it had, but Wilma hadn't noticed it if so; it had never been that bothersome in the first place, not really, and besides, Wilma had inaugurated a more productive wrangle with the woman who ran the beauty parlor in Castle View. Wilma had almost forgotten Nettie and Raider.

  But maybe Nettie hadn't forgotten her. Wilma had seen Nettie just yesterday, in the new shop. And if looks could kill, Wilma thought, I would have been laid out dead on the floor right there.

  Standing here now by her muddied, ruined sheets, she remembered the look of fear and defiance that had come over the nutty bitch's face, the way her lip had curled back, showing her teeth for a second. Wilma was very familiar with the look of hate, and she had seen it on Nettie Cobb's face yesterday.

  I warned you ... you'll be sorry.

  "Wilma, come on inside," Pete said. He put a tentative hand on her shoulder.

  She shrugged it off briskly. "Leave me alone."

  Pete withdrew a step. He looked like he wanted to wring his hands but didn't quite dare.

  Maybe she forgot, too, Wilma thought. At least until she saw me yesterday, in that new store. Or maybe she's been planning something (I warned you)

  all along in that half-stewed head of hers, and seeing me finally set her off.

  Somewhere in the last few moments she had become sure that Nettie was the one--who else had she crossed glances with in the last couple of days who might hold a grudge? There were other people in town who didn't like her, but this kind of trick--this kind of sneaking, cowardly trick--went with the way Nettie had looked at her yesterday. That sneer of mingled fear (you'll be sorry)

  and hate. She had looked like a dog herself, one brave enough to bite only when its victim's back is turned.

  Yes, it had been Nettie Cobb, all right. The more Wilma thought about it, the surer she became. And the act was unforgivable. Not because the sheets were ruined. Not because it was a cowardly trick. Not even because it was the act of someone with a cracked brain.

  It was unforgivable because Wilma had been frightened.

  Only for a second, true, that second when the slimy brown thing had flapped out of the darkness and into her face, caressing her coldly like some monster's hand ... but even one single second of fear was a second too much.

  "Wilma?" Pete asked as she turned her flat face toward him. He did not like the expression the porch light showed him, all shiny white surfaces and black, dimpled shadows. He did not like that flat look in her ey
es. "Honey? Are you all right?"

  She strode past him, taking no notice of him at all. Pete scurried after her as she headed for the house ... and the telephone.

  4

  Nettie was sitting in her living room with Raider at her feet and her new carnival glass lampshade on her lap when the telephone rang. It was twenty minutes of eight. She jumped and clutched the lampshade tighter, looking at the telephone with fear and distrust. She had a momentary certainty--silly, of course, but she couldn't seem to rid herself of such feelings--that it would be Some Person in Authority, calling to tell her she must give the beautiful lampshade back, that it belonged to someone else, that such a lovely object could not possibly have accrued to Nettie's little store of possessions in any case, the very idea was ridiculous.

  Raider looked up at her briefly, as if to ask if she was going to answer that or not, then put his muzzle back down on his paws.

  Nettie set the lampshade carefully aside and picked up the telephone. It was probably just Polly, calling to ask if she'd pick up something for dinner at Hemphill's Market before she came to work tomorrow morning.

  "Hello, Cobb residence," she said crisply. All her life she had been terrified of Some Person in Authority, and she had discovered that the best way to handle such a fear was to sound like a person in authority yourself. It didn't make the fear go away, but at least it held the fear in check.

  "I know what you did, you crazy bitch!" a voice spat at her. It was as sudden and as gruesome as the stab of an icepick.

  Nettie's breath caught as if on a thorn; an expression of trapped horror froze her face and her heart tried to cram its way up into her throat. Raider looked up at her again, questioningly.

  "Who ... who ..."

  "You know goddam well who," the voice said, and of course Nettie did. It was Wilma Jerzyck. It was that evil, evil woman.

  "He hasn't been barking!" Nettie's voice was high and thin and screamy, the voice of someone who has just inhaled the entire contents of a helium balloon. "He's all grown up and he's not barking! He's right here at my feet!"