Needful Things Read online

  There was a pair of dancing jester-puppets. There was a music box, old and ornately carved--Mr. Gaunt said he was sure it played something unusual when it was opened, but he couldn't remember just what, and it was locked shut. He reckoned a buyer would have to find someone to make a key for it; there were still a few old-timers around, he said, who had such skills. He was asked a few times if the music box could be returned if the buyer did get the lid to open and discovered that the tune was not to his or her taste. Mr. Gaunt smiled and pointed to a new sign on the wall. It read:

  I DO NOT ISSUE REFUNDS OR MAKE EXCHANGES CAVEAT EMPTOR!

  "What does that mean?" Lucille Dunham asked. Lucille was a waitress at Nan's who had stopped in with her friend Rose Ellen Myers on her coffee break.

  "It means that if you buy a pig in a poke, you keep the pig and he keeps your poke," Rose Ellen said. She saw that Mr. Gaunt had overheard her (and she could have sworn she'd seen him on the other side of the shop only a moment before), and she blushed bright red.

  Mr. Gaunt, however, only laughed. "That's right," he told her. "That's exactly what it means!"

  An old long-barreled revolver in one case with a card in front of it which read NED BUNTLINE SPECIAL ; a boy puppet with wooden red hair, freckles, and a fixed friendly grin (HOWDY DOODY PROTOTYPE, read the card); boxes of stationery, very nice but not remarkable; a selection of antique post-cards; pen-and-pencil sets; linen handkerchiefs; stuffed animals. There was, it seemed, an item for every taste and--even though there was not a single price-tag in the entire store--for every budget.

  Mr. Gaunt did a fine business that day. Most of the items he sold were nice but in no way unique. He did, however, make a number of "special" deals, and all of these sales took place during those lulls when there was only a single customer in the store.

  "When things get slow, I get restless," he told Sally Ratcliffe, Brian Rusk's speech teacher, with his friendly grin, "and when I get restless, I sometimes get reckless. Bad for the seller but awfully good for the buyer."

  Miss Ratcliffe was a devout member of Rev. Rose's Baptist flock, had met her fiance Lester Pratt there, and in addition to her No Casino Nite button, she wore one which said I'M ONE OF THE SAVED! HOW 'BOUT YOU? The splinter labelled PETRIFIED WOOD FROM THE HOLY LAND caught her attention at once, and she did not object when Mr. Gaunt took it from its case and dropped it into her hand. She bought it for seventeen dollars and a promise to play a harmless little prank on Frank Jewett, the principal at Castle Rock Middle School. She left the shop five minutes after she had entered, looking dreamy and abstracted. Mr. Gaunt had offered to wrap her purchase for her, but Miss Ratcliffe refused, saying she wanted to hold it. Looking at her as she went out the door, you would have been hard-put to tell if her feet were on the floor or drifting just above it.

  2

  The silver bell jingled.

  Cora Rusk came in, determined to buy the picture of The King, and was extremely upset when Mr. Gaunt told her it had been sold. Cora wanted to know who had bought it. "I'm sorry," Mr. Gaunt said, "but the lady was from out of state. There was an Oklahoma plate on the car she was driving."

  "Well, I'll be butched!" Cora cried in tones of anger and real distress. She hadn't realized just how badly she wanted that picture until Mr. Gaunt informed her that it was gone.

  Henry Gendron and his wife, Yvette, were in the shop at that time, and Mr. Gaunt asked Cora to wait a minute while he saw to them. He believed he had something else, he told her, which she would find of equal or perhaps even greater interest. After he had sold the Gendrons a stuffed teddy bear--a present for their daughter--and seen them out, he asked Cora if she could wait a moment longer while he looked for something in the back room. Cora waited, but not with any real interest or expectation. A deep gray depression had settled over her. She had seen hundreds of pictures of The King, maybe thousands, and owned half a dozen herself, but this one had seemed ... special, somehow. She hated the woman from Oklahoma.

  Then Mr. Gaunt came back with a small lizard-skin spectacles case. He opened it and showed Cora a pair of aviator glasses with lenses of a deep smoky gray. Her breath caught in her throat; her right hand rose to her quivering neck.

  "Are those--" she began, and could say no more.

  "The King's sunglasses," Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely. "One of sixty pairs. But I'm told these were his favorites."

  Cora bought the sunglasses for nineteen dollars and fifty cents.

  "I'd like a little information, as well." Mr. Gaunt looked at Cora with twinkling eyes. "Let's call it a surcharge, shall we?"

  "Information?" Cora asked doubtfully. "What sort of information?"

  "Look out the window, Cora."

  Cora did as she was asked, but her hands never left the sunglasses. Across the street, Castle Rock's Unit 1 was parked in front of The Clip Joint. Alan Pangborn stood on the sidewalk, talking to Bill Fullerton.

  "Do you see that fellow?" Gaunt asked.

  "Who? Bill Ful--"

  "No, you dummy," Gaunt said. "The other one."

  "Sheriff Pangborn?"

  "Right."

  "Yes, I see him." Cora felt dull and dazed. Gaunt's voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. She could not stop thinking about her purchase--the wonderful sunglasses. She wanted to get home and try them on right away .... but of course she couldn't leave until she was allowed to leave, because the dealing wasn't done until Mr. Gaunt said the dealing was done.

  "He looks like what folks in my line of work call a tough sell," Mr. Gaunt said. "What do you think about him, Cora?"

  "He's smart," Cora said. "He'll never be the Sheriff old George Bannerman was--that's what my husband says--but he's smart as a whip."

  "Is he?" Mr. Gaunt's voice had taken on that nagging, tired edge again. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and they never left Alan Pangborn. "Well, do you want to know a secret, Cora? I don't much care for smart people, and I hate a tough sell. In fact, I loathe a tough sell. I don't trust people who always want to turn things over and look for cracks before they buy-them, do you?"

  Cora said nothing. She only stood with The King's sunglasses case in her left hand and stared blankly out the window.

  "If I wanted someone to keep an eye on smart old Sheriff Pangborn, Cora, who would be a good choice?"

  "Polly Chalmers," Cora said in her drugged voice. "She's awful sweet on him."

  Gaunt shook his head at once. His eyes never left the Sheriff as Alan walked to his cruiser, glanced briefly across the street at Needful Things, then got in and drove away. "Won't do."

  "Sheila Brigham?" Cora asked doubtfully. "She's the dispatcher down at the Sheriff's Office."

  "A good idea, but she won't do, either. Another tough sell. There are a few in every town, Cora--unfortunate, but true."

  Cora thought it over in her dim, distant way. "Eddie Warburton?" she asked at last. "He's the head custodian at the Municipal Building."

  Gaunt's face lit up. "The janitor!" he said. "Yes! Excellent! Fifth Business! Really excellent!" He leaned over the counter and planted a kiss on Cora's cheek.

  She drew away, grimacing and rubbing frantically at the spot. A brief gagging noise came from her throat, but Gaunt appeared not to notice. His face was wreathed in a large, shining smile.

  Cora left (still rubbing her cheek with the heel of her hand) as Stephanie Bonsaint and Cyndi Rose Martin of the Ash Street Bridge Club came in. Cora almost bowled Sterne Bonsaint over in her hurry; she felt a deep desire to get home as fast as she could. To get home and actually try those glasses on. But before she did, she wanted to wash her face and rid herself of that loathsome kiss. She could feel it burning in her skin like a low fever.

  Over the door, the silver bell tinkled.

  3

  While Steffie stood by the window, absorbed in the shifting patterns of the old-fashioned kaleidoscope she had found, Cyndi Rose approached Mr. Gaunt and reminded him of what he had told her on Wednesday: that he might have a Lalique vase to match the one sh
e had already bought.

  "Well," Mr. Gaunt said, smiling at her in a can-you-keep-a-secret sort of way, "I just might. Can you get rid of your friend for a minute or two?"

  Cyndi Rose asked Steffie to go on ahead to Nan's and order coffee for her; she would be right along, she said. Steffie went, but with a puzzled look on her face.

  Mr. Gaunt went into the back room and came out with a Lalique vase. It did not just match the other; it was an identical twin.

  "How much?" Cyndi Rose asked, and caressed the sweet curve of the vase with a finger which was not quite steady. She remembered her satisfaction at the bargain she had struck on Wednesday with some rue. He had only been planting the hook, it seemed. Now he would reel her in. This vase would be no thirty-one-dollar bargain; this time he would really sock it to her. But she wanted it to balance off the other on the mantelpiece in the living room; she wanted it very badly.

  She could hardly believe her ears at Leland Gaunt's reply. "Because this is my first week, why don't we call it two for the price of one? Here you are, my dear--enjoy it."

  Her shock was so great that she almost dropped the vase on the floor when he put it in her hand.

  "What ... I thought you said ..."

  "You heard me correctly," he said, and she suddenly found she could not take her eyes away from his. Francie was wrong about them, she thought in a distant, preoccupied sort of way. They're not green at all. They're gray. Dark gray. "There is one other thing, though."

  "Is there?"

  "Yes--do you know a Sheriff's Deputy named Norris Ridgewick?"

  The little silver bell tinkled.

  Everett Frankel, the Physician's Assistant who worked with Dr. Van Allen, bought the pipe Brian Rusk had noticed on his advance visit to Needful Things for twelve dollars and a prank to be played on Sally Ratcliffe. Poor old Slopey Dodd, the stutterer who attended speech therapy on Tuesday afternoons with Brian, bought a pewter teapot for his mom's birthday. It cost him seventy-one cents ... and a promise, freely given, that he would play a funny trick on Sally's boyfriend, Lester Pratt. Mr. Gaunt told Slopey he would supply him the few items he would need to play this trick when the time came, and Slopey said that would be ruh-ruh-real g-g-g-good. June Gavineaux, wife of the town's most prosperous dairy farmer, bought a cloisonne vase for ninety-seven dollars and a promise to play a funny trick on Father Brigham of Our Lady of Serene Waters. Not long after she left, Mr. Gaunt arranged for a somewhat similar trick to be played on the Reverend Willie.

  It was a busy, fruitful day, and when Gaunt finally hung the CLOSED sign in the window and pulled the shade, he was tired but pleased. Business had been great, and he had even taken a step toward assuring himself he would not be interrupted by Sheriff Pangborn. That was good. Opening was always the most delightful part of his operation, but it was always stressful and could sometimes be risky, as well. He might be wrong about Pangborn, of course, but Gaunt had learned to trust his feelings in such matters, and Pangborn felt like a man he would do well to steer clear of ... at least until he was ready to deal with the Sheriff on his own terms. Mr. Gaunt reckoned it was going to be an extremely full week, and there would be fireworks before it was over.

  Lots of them.

  4

  It was quarter past six on Friday evening when Alan turned into Polly's driveway and cut the motor. She was standing at the door, waiting for him, and kissed him warmly. He saw she had donned her gloves for even this brief foray into the cold and frowned.

  "Now stop," she said. "They're a little better tonight. Did you bring the chicken?"

  He held up the white grease-spotted bags. "Your servant, dear lady."

  She dropped him a little curtsey. "And yours."

  She took the bags from him and led him into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out from the table, swung it around, and sat on it backwards to watch her as she pulled off her gloves and arranged the chicken on a glass plate. He had gotten it from Cluck-Cluck Tonite. The name was country-horrible, but the chicken was just fine (according to Norris, the clams were a different story). The only problem with take-out when you lived twenty miles away was the cooling factor ... and that, he thought, was what microwave ovens had been made for. In fact, he believed the only three valid purposes microwaves served were reheating coffee, making popcorn, and putting a buzz under take-out from places like. Cluck-Cluck Tonite.

  "Are they better?" he asked as she popped the chicken into the oven and pressed the appropriate buttons. There was no need to be more specific; both of them knew what they were talking about.

  "Only a little," she admitted, "but I'm pretty sure they're going to be a lot better soon. I'm starting to feel tingles of heat in the palms, and that's the way the improvement usually starts."

  She held them up. She had been painfully embarrassed by her twisted, misshapen hands at first, and the embarrassment was still there, but she had come a long way toward accepting his interest as a part of his love. He still thought her hands looked stiff and awkward, as if she were wearing invisible gloves--gloves sewn by a crude and uncaring maker who had pulled them on her and then stapled them to her wrists forever.

  "Have you had to take any pills today?"

  "Only one. This morning."

  She had actually taken three--two in the morning, one in the early afternoon--and the pain was not much better today than it had been yesterday. She was afraid that the tingle of which she had spoken was mostly a figment of her own wistful imagination. She didn't like lying to Alan; she believed that lies and love rarely went together, and never for long. But she had been on her own for a long time, and a part of her was still terrified by his relentless concern. She trusted him, but was afraid to let him know too much.

  He had grown steadily more insistent about the Mayo Clinic, and she knew that, if he really understood how bad the pain was this time, he would grow more insistent still. She did not want her goddamned hands to become the most important component of their love ... and she was also afraid of what a consultation at a place like the Mayo might show. She could live with pain; she was not sure if she could live without hope.

  "Will you take the potatoes out of the oven?" she asked. "I want to call Nettie before we eat."

  "What's with Nettie?"

  "Upset turn. She didn't come in today. I want to make sure it's not intestinal flu. Rosalie says there's a lot of it going around, and Nettie's terrified of doctors."

  And Alan, who knew more of how and what Polly Chalmers thought than Polly ever would have guessed, thought, Look who's talking, love, as she went to the telephone. He was a cop, and he could not put away his habits of observation when he was off duty; they were automatic. He no longer even tried. If he had been a little more observant during the last few months of Annie's life, she and Todd might still be alive.

  He had noted the gloves when Polly came to the door. He had noted the fact that she had pulled them off with her teeth rather than simply stripping them off hand-for-hand. He had watched her arrange the chicken on the plate, and noted the slight grimace which tightened her mouth when she lifted the plate and put it in the microwave. These were bad signs. He walked to the door between the kitchen and the living room, wanting to watch how confidently or tentatively she would use the telephone. It was one of the most important ways he had of measuring her pain. And here, at last, he was able to note a good sign--or what he took for one.

  She punched Nettie's telephone number quickly and confidently, and because she was on the far side of the room, he was unable to see that this phone--and all the others--had been changed earlier that day to the type with the oversized fingerpads. He went back into the kitchen, keeping one ear cocked toward the living room as he did so.

  "Hello, Nettie? ... I was about to give up. Did I wake you? ... Yes ... Uh-huh ... Well, how is it? ... Oh, good. I've been thinking of you ... No, I'm fine for supper, Alan brought fried chicken from that Cluck-Cluck place in Oxford ... Yes, it was, wasn't it?"

  Alan got a platter from one of the cab
inets above the kitchen counter and thought: She is lying about her hands. It doesn't matter how well she handles the phone--they're as bad as they've been in the last year, and maybe worse.

  The idea that she had lied to him did not much dismay him; his view of truth-bending was a good deal more lenient than Polly's. Take the child, for instance. She had borne it in early 1971, seven months or so after leaving Castle Rock on a Greyhound bus. She had told Alan the baby--a boy she'd named Kelton--had died in Denver, at the age of three months. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome--SIDS, the young mother's worst nightmare. It was a perfectly plausible story, and Alan had no doubt whatever that Kelton Chalmers was indeed dead. There was only one problem with Polly's version: it wasn't true. Alan was a cop, and he knew a lie when he heard one.

  (except when it was Annie doing it)

  Yeah, he thought. Except when it was Annie doing it. Your exception is duly noted for the record.

  What had told him Polly was lying? The rapid flicker of her eyelids over her too-wide, too-direct gaze? The way her left hand kept rising to tug at her left earlobe? The crossing and uncrossing of her legs, that child's game signal which meant I'm fibbing?

  All of those things and none of them. Mostly it was just a buzzer that had gone off inside, the way a buzzer in an airport metal-detector goes off when a guy with a steel plate in his skull steps through.

  The lie neither angered nor worried him. There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them ... and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth. He thought that Polly's lie about Kelton was of this last kind, and he was content to wait. In time, she would decide to show him her secrets. There was no hurry.

  No hurry: the thought itself seemed a luxury.

  Her voice--rich and calm and somehow just right as it drifted out of the living room--also seemed a luxury. He was not yet over the guilt of just being here and knowing where all the dishes and utensils were stored, of knowing which bedroom drawer she kept her nylon hose in, or exactly where her summer tan-lines stopped, but none of it mattered when he heard her voice. There was really only one fact that applied here, one simple fact which ruled all others: the sound of her voice was becoming the sound of home.