Cujo Page 17

  There was a moment then. Some space of time. In it, Charity felt her heart fill with a joy so fierce and complete that she knew there could never be any real question about what this trip had or had not cost her. For now She was free, her son was free. This was her sister and those children were her kin, not pictures but real.

  Laughing and crying a little, the two women stepped toward each other, hesitantly at first, then quickly. They embraced. Brett stood where he was. The little girl, maybe scared, went to her mother and wrapped a hand firmly around the hem of her dress, perhaps to keep her mother and this strange lady from flying off together.

  The little boy stared at Brett, then advanced. He was wearing Tuffskin jeans and a T-shirt with the words HERE COMES TROUBLE printed on it.

  "You're my cousin Brett," the kid said.

  "Yeah."

  "My name's Jim. Just like my dad."

  "Yeah."

  "You're from Maine," Jim said. Behind him, Charity and Holly were talking rapidly, interrupting each other and laughing at their hurry to tell everything right here in this grimy bus station south of Milford and north of Bridgeport.

  "Yeah, I'm from Maine," Brett said.

  "You're ten."

  "Right."

  "I'm five."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah. But I can beat you up. Ka-whud!" He hit Brett in the belly, doubling him up.

  Brett uttered a large and surprised "Oof!" Both women gasped.

  "Jimmy!" Holly cried in a kind of resigned horror.

  Brett straightened up slowly and saw his mother watching him, her face in a kind of suspension.

  "Yeah, you can beat me up anytime," Brett said, and smiled.

  And it was all right. He saw from his mother's face that it was all right, and he was glad.

  By three thirty Donna had decided to leave Tad with a baby-sitter and try taking the Pinto up to Camber's. She had tried the number again and there had still been no response, but she had reasoned that even if Camber wasn't in his garage, he would be back soon, maybe even by the time she arrived there . . . always assuming she did arrive there. Vie told her last week that Camber would probably have some old junker to loan her if it looked like her Pinto was going to be an overnight job. That had really been the deciding factor. But she thought that taking Tad would be wrong. If the Pinto seized up on that back road and she had to take a hike, well, okay. But Tad shouldn't have to do it.

  Tad, however, had other ideas.

  Shortly after talking to his dad, he had gone up to his room and had stretched out on his bed with a stack of Little Golden Books. Fifteen minutes later he had dozed off, and a dream had come to him, a dream which seemed utterly ordinary but which had a strange, nearly terrifying power. In this dream he saw a big boy throwing a friction-taped baseball up and trying to hit it. He missed twice, three times, four. On the fifth swing he hit the ball . . . and the bat, which had also been taped, shattered at the handle. The boy held the handle for a moment (black tape flapped from it), then bent and picked up the fat of the bat. He looked at it for a moment, shook his head disgustedly, and tossed it into the high grass at the side of the driveway. Then he turned, and Tad saw with a sudden shock that was half dread, half delight, that the boy was himself at ten or eleven. Yes, it was him. He was sure of it.

  Then the boy was gone, and there was a grayness. In it he could hear two sounds: creaking swing chains . . . and the faint quacking of ducks. With these sounds and the grayness came a sudden scary feeling that he could not breathe, he was suffocating. And a man was walking out of the mist . . . a man who wore a black shiny raincoat and held a stop sign on a stick in one hand. He grinned, and his eyes were shiny silver coins. He raised one hand to point at Tad, and he saw with horror it wasn't a hand at all, it was bones, and the face inside the shiny vinyl hood of the raincoat wasn't a face at all. It was a skull. It was--

  He jerked awake, his body bathed in sweat that was only in part due to the room's explosive heat. He sat up, propped on his elbows, breathing in harsh gasps.

  Snick.

  The closet door was swinging open. And as it swung open he saw something inside, only for a second and then he was flying for the door which gave on the hall as fast as he could. He saw it only for a second, long enough to tell it wasn't the man in the shiny black raincoat, Frank Dodd, the man who had killed the ladies. Not him. Something else. Something with red eyes like bloody sunsets.

  But he could not speak of these things to his mother. So he concentrated on Debbie, the sitter, instead.

  He didn't want to be left with Debbie, Debbie was mean to him, she always played the record player loud, et cetera, et cetera. When none of this had much effect on his mother, Tad suggested ominously that Debbie might shoot him. When Donna made the mistake of giggling helplessly at the thought of fifteen-year-old myopic Debbie Gehringer shooting anyone, Tad burst into miserable tears and ran into the living room. He needed to tell her that Debbie Gehringer might not be strong enough to keep the monster in his closet--that if dark fell and his mother was not back, it might come out. It might be the man in the black raincoat, or it might be the beast.

  Donna followed him, sorry for her laughter, wondering how she could have been so insensitive. The boy's father was gone, and that was upsetting enough. He didn't want to lose sight of his mother for even an hour. And--

  And isn't it possible he senses some of what's gone on between Vic and me? Perhaps even heard . . . ?

  No, she didn't think that She couldn't think that. It was just the upset of his routine.

  The door to the living room was shut. She reached for the knob, hesitated, then knocked softly instead. There was no answer. She knocked again and when there was still no answer, she went in quietly. Tad was lying face down on the couch with one of the back cushions pulled firmly down over his head. It was behavior reserved only for major upsets.

  "Tad?"

  No answer.

  "I'm sorry I laughed."

  His face looked out at her from beneath one edge of the puffy, dove-gray sofa cushion. There were fresh tears on his face. "Please can't I come?" he asked. "Don't make me stay here with Debbie, Mom." Great histrionics, she thought. Great histrionics and blatant coercion. She recognized it (or felt she did) and at the same time found it impossible to be tough . . . partly because her own tears were threatening again. Lately it seemed that there was always a cloudburst just over the horizon.

  "Honey, you know the way the Pinto was when we came back from town. It could break down in the middle of East Galoshes Corners and we'd have to walk to a house and use the telephone, maybe a long way--"

  "So? I'm a good walker!"

  "I know, but you might get scared."

  Thinking of the thing in the closet, Tad suddenly cried out with all his force, "I will not get scared!" His hand had gone automatically to the bulge in the hip pocket of his jeans, where the Monster Words were stowed away.

  "Don't raise your voice that way, please. It sounds ugly."

  He lowered his voice. "I won't get scared. I just want to go with you."

  She looked at him helplessly, knowing that she really ought to call Debbie Gehringer, feeling that she was being shamelessly manipulated by her four-year-old son. And if she gave in it would be for all the wrong reasons. She thought helplessly, It's like a chain reaction that doesn't stop anyplace and it's gumming up works I didn't even know existed. O God I wish I was in Tahiti.

  She opened her mouth to tell him, quite firmly and once and for all, that she was going to call Debbie and they could make popcorn together if he was good and that he would have to go to bed right after supper if he was bad and that was the end of it. Instead, what came out was, "All right, you can come. But our Pinto might not make it, and if it doesn't well have to walk to a house and have the Town Taxi come and pick us up. And if we do have to walk, I don't want to have to listen to you crabbing at me, Tad Trenton."

  "No, I won't--"

  "Let me finish. I don't want you crabbing at me
or asking me to carry you, because I won't do it. Do we have an understanding?"

  "Yeah! Yeah, sure!" Tad hopped off the sofa, all grief forgotten. "Are we going now?"

  "Yes, I guess so. Or . . . I know what. Why don't I make us a snack first? A snack and well put some milk in the Thermos bottles, too."

  "In case we have to camp out all night?" Tad looked suddenly doubtful again.

  "No, honey." She smiled and gave him a little hug. "But I still haven't been able to get Mr. Camber on the telephone. Your daddy says it's probably just because he doesn't have a phone in his garage so he doesn't know I'm calling. And his wife and little boy might be someplace, so--"

  "He should have a phone in his garage," Tad said. "That's dumb."

  "Just don't you tell him that," Donna said quickly, and Tad shook his head that he wouldn't. "Anyway, if nobody's there, I thought you and I could have a little snack in the car or maybe on his steps and wait for him."

  Ted clapped his hands. "Great! Great! Can I take my Snoopy lunchbox?"

  "Sure," Donna said, giving in completely.

  She found a box of Keebler figbars and a couple of Slim Jims (Donna thought they were hideous things, but they were Tad's all-time favorite snack). She wrapped some green olives and cucumber slices in foil. She filled Tad's Thermos with milk and half-filled Vic's big Thermos, the one he took on camping trips.

  For some reason, looking at the food made her uneasy. She looked at the phone and thought about trying Joe Camber's number again. Then she decided there was no sense in it, since they would be going out there either way. Then she thought of asking Tad again if he wouldn't rather she called Debbie Gehringer, and then wondered what was wrong with her--Tad had made himself perfectly clear on that point.

  It was just that suddenly she didn't feel good. Not good at all. It was nothing she could put her finger on. She looked around the kitchen as if expecting the source of her unease to announce itself. It didn't.

  "We going, Mom?"

  "Yes," she said absently. There was a noteminder on the wall by the fridge, and on this she scrawled: Tad & I have gone out to J. Camber's garage w/Pinto. Back soon.

  "Ready, Tad?"

  "Sure." He grinned. "Who's the note for, Mom?"

  "Oh, Joanie might drop by with those raspberries," she said vaguely. "Or maybe Alison MacKenzie. She was going to show me some Amway and Avon stuff."

  "Oh."

  Donna ruffled his hair and they went out together. The heat hit them like a hammer wrapped in pillows. Buggardly car probably won't even start, she thought.

  But it did.

  It was 3:45 P.M.

  They drove southeast along Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road, which was about five miles out of town. The Pinto behaved in exemplary fashion, and if it hadn't been for the bout of snaps and jerks coming from the shopping trip, Donna would have wondered what she had bothered making such a fuss about. But there had been that bout of the shakes, and so she drove sitting bolt upright again, going no faster than forty, pulling as far to the right as she could when a car came up behind her. And there was a lot of traffic on the road. The summer influx of tourists and vacationers had begun. The Pinto had no air conditioning, so they rode with both windows open.

  A Continental with New York plates towing a gigantic trailer with two mopeds on the back swung around them on a blind curve, the driver bleating his horn. The driver's wife, a fat woman wearing mirror sunglasses, looked at Donna and Tad with imperious contempt.

  "Get stuffed!" Donna yelled, and popped her middle finger up at the fat lady. The fat lady turned away quickly. Tad was looking at his mother just a little nervously, and Donna smiled at him. "No hassle, big guy. We're going good. Just out-of-state fools."

  "Oh," Tad said cautiously.

  Listen to me, she thought. The big Yankee. Vie would be proud.

  She had to grin at herself, because everyone in Maine understood that if you moved here from another place, you would be an out-of-stater until you were sent down in your grave. And on your tombstone they would write something like HARRY JONES, CASTLE CORNERS, MAINE (Originally from Omaha, Nebraska).

  Most of the tourists were headed toward 302, where they would turn east to Naples or west toward Bridgton, Fryeburg, and North Conway, New Hampshire, with its alpine slides, cut-rate amusement parks, and tax-free restaurants. Donna and Tad were not going up to the 302 junction.

  Although their home overlooked downtown Castle Rock and its picturebook Town Common, woods had closed in on both sides of the road before they were five miles from their own front door. These woods drew back occasionally--a little--to show a lot with a house or a trailer in it, and as they went farther out, the houses were more often of the type that her father had called "shanty Irish." The sun still shone brightly down and there was a good four hours of daylight left, but the emptiness made her feel uneasy again. It was not so bad here, on 117, but once they left the main road--

  Their turnoff was marked with a sign saying MAPLE SUGAR ROAD in faded, almost unreadable letters. It had been splintered considerably by kids banging away with .22s and bird-shot. This road was two-lane blacktop, bumpy and frost-heaved. It wound past two or three nice houses, two or three not-so-nice houses, and one old and shabby RoadKing trailer sitting on a crumbling concrete foundation. There was a yardful of weeds in front of the trailer. Donna could see cheap-looking plastic toys in the weeds. A sign nailed askew to a tree at the head of the driveway read FREE KITTEN'S. A potbellied kid of maybe two stood in the driveway, his sopping Pamper hanging below his tiny penis. His mouth hung open and he was picking his nose with one finger and his navel with another. Looking at him, Donna felt a helpless chill of gooseflesh.

  Stop it! For Christ's sake, what's wrong with you?

  The woods closed in around them again. An old '68 Ford Fairlane with a lot of rustred primer paint on the hood and around the headlights passed them going the other way. A young kid with a lot of hair was slouched nonchalantly behind the wheel. He wasn't wearing a shirt. The Fairlane was doing maybe eighty. Donna winced. It was the only traffic they saw.

  The Maple Sugar Road climbed steadily, and when they passed the occasional field or large garden they were afforded a stunning view of western Maine toward Bridgton and Fryeburg. Long Lake glittered in the farthest distance like the sapphire pendant of a fabulously rich woman.

  They were climbing another long slope up one of these eroded hills (as advertised, the sides of the road were now lined with dusty, heat-drooping maples) when the Pinto began to buck and jolt again. Donna's breath clogged in her throat and she thought, Oh come on, oh come on, come on, you cruddy little car, come on!

  Tad shifted uneasily in the passenger bucket and held onto his Snoopy lunchbox a little tighter.

  She began to tap the accelerator lightly, her mind repeating the same words over and over like an inarticulate prayer: come on, come on, come on.

  "Mommy? Is it--"

  "Hush, Tad."

  The jerking grew worse. She pressed the gas pedal harder in frustration--and the Pinto squirted ahead, the engine smoothing out once more.

  "Yay!" Tad said, so suddenly and loudly that she jumped.

  "We're not there yet, Tadder."

  A mile farther along they came to an intersection marked with another wooden sign, this one reading TOWN ROAD NO. 3. Donna turned in, feeling triumphant. As well as she remembered, Camber's place was less than a mile and a half from here. If the Pinto gave up the ghost now, she and Tad could ankle it.

  They passed a ramshackle house with a station wagon and a big old rusty white car in the driveway. In her rearview mirror, Donna noticed that the honeysuckle had really gone crazy on the side of the house that would catch most of the sun. A field opened up on their left after they passed the house, and the Pinto began to climb a long, steep hill.

  Halfway up, the little car began to labor again. This time it was jerking harder than it ever had before.

  "Will it get up, Mommy?"

  "Yes
," she said grimly.

  The Pinto's speedometer needle dropped from forty to thirty. She dropped the transmission selector lever from drive into the lower range, thinking vaguely that it might help compression or something. Instead, the Pinto began to buck worse than ever. A fusillade of backfires roared through the exhaust pipe, making Tad cry out. Now they were down to fast running speed, but she could see the Camber house and the red barn that served as his garage.

  Flooring the accelerator had helped before. She tried it again, and for a moment the engine smoothed out. The speedometer needle crept up from fifteen to twenty. Then it began to shake and shudder once more. Donna tried flooring the gas yet again, but this time, instead of smoothing out, the engine began to fail. The AMP idiot light on the dashboard began to flicker dully, signaling the fact that the Pinto was now on the edge of a stall.

  But it didn't matter because the Pinto was now laboring past the Camber mailbox. They were here. There was a package hung over the mailbox lid, and she saw the return address clearly as they passed it: J. C. Whitney & Co.

  The information went directly to the back of her mind without stopping. Her immediate attention was focused on getting the car into the driveway. Let it stall then, she thought. He'll have to fix it before he can get in or out.

  The driveway was a little beyond the house. If it had been an uphill driveway all the way, as the Trentons' own was, the Pinto would not have made it. But after a small initial rise, the Cambers' driveway ran either dead level or slightly downhill toward the big converted barn.

  Donna shifted into neutral and let what was left of the Pinto's forward motion carry them toward the big barn doors, which stood half open on their tracks. As soon as her foot left the accelerator pedal to tap the brake and stop them, the motor began to hitch again . . . but feebly this time. The AMP light pulsed like a slow heartbeat, then brightened. The Pinto stalled.

  Tad looked at Donna.

  She grinned at him. "Tad, ole buddy," she said, "we have arrived."

  "Yeah," he said. "But is anybody home?"

  There was a dark green pickup truck parked beside the barn. That was Camber's truck, all right, not someone else's waiting to be fixed. She remembered it from last time. But the lights were off inside. She craned her neck to the left and saw they were off in the house too. And there had been a package hung over the mailbox lid.