Cujo Read online

  He opened the last cupboard and took down a pink gravy boat. He put it on the counter. He picked up empty air and mimed pouring something into the gravy boat. Her arms suddenly broke out in gooseflesh as she realized where he was and what this dumbshow was all about. It was a routine he went through each day at home. He was feeding Cujo.

  She took an involuntary step toward him and then stopped. She didn't believe those wives' tales about what might happen if you woke a sleepwalker--that the soul would be forever shut out of the body, that madness might result, or sudden death--and she hadn't needed Dr. Gresham to reassure her on that score. She had gotten a book on special loan from the Portland City Library . . . but she hadn't really needed that, either. Her own good common sense told her that what happened when you woke up a sleepwalker was that they woke up--no more and no less than just that. There might be tears, even mild hysteria, but that sort of reaction would be provoked by simple disorientation.

  Still, she had never wakened Brett during one of his nightwalks, and she didn't dare to do so now. Good common sense was one thing. Her unreasoning fear was another, and she was suddenly very afraid, and unable to think why. What could be so dreadful in Brett's acted-out dream of feeding his dog? It was perfectly natural, as worried as he had been about Cujo.

  He was bent over now, holding the gravy boat out, the drawstring of his pajama trousers making a right-angled white line to the horizontal plane of the red and black linoleum floor. His face went through a slow-motion pantomime of sorrow. He spoke then, muttering the words as sleepers so often do, gutturally, rapidly, almost unintelligibly. And with no emotion in the words themselves, that was all inside, held in the cocoon of whatever dream had been vivid enough to make him nightwalk again, after two quiet years. There was nothing inherently melodramatic about the words, spoken all of a rush in a quick sleeping sigh, but Charity's hand went to her throat anyway. The flesh there was cold, cold.

  "Cujo's not hungry no more," Brett said, the words riding out on that sigh. He stood up again, now holding the gravy boat cradled to his chest. "Not no more, not no more."

  He stood immobile for a short time by the counter, and Charity did likewise by the kitchen door. A single tear had slipped down his face. He put the gravy boat on the counter and headed for the door. His eyes were open but they slipped indifferently and unseeingly over his mother. He stopped, looking back.

  "Look in the weeds," he said to someone who was not there.

  Then he began to walk toward her again. She stood aside, her hand still pressed against her throat. He passed her quickly and noiselessly on his bare feet and was gone up the hall toward the stairs.

  She turned to follow him and remembered the gravy boat. It stood by itself on the bare, ready-for-the-day counter like the focal point in a weird painting. She picked it up and it slipped through her fingers--she hadn't realized that her fingers were slick with sweat. She juggled it briefly, imagining the crash in the still, sleeping hours. Then she had it cradled safely in both hands. She put it back on the shelf and closed the cupboard door and could only stand there for a moment, listening to the heavy thud of her heart, feeling her strangeness in this kitchen. She was an intruder in this kitchen. Then she followed her son.

  She got to the doorway of his room just in time to see him climb into bed. He pulled the sheet up and rolled over on his left side, his usual sleeping position. Although she knew it was over now, Charity stood there yet awhile longer.

  Somebody down the hall coughed, reminding her again that this was someone else's house. She felt a strong wave of homesickness; for a few moments it was as if her stomach were full of some numbing gas, the kind of stuff dentists use. In this fine still morning light, her thoughts of divorce seemed as immature and without regard for the realities as the thoughts of a child. It was easy for her to think such things here. It wasn't her house, not her place.

  Why had his pantomime of feeding Cujo, and those rapid, sighing words, frightened her so much? Cujo's not hungry no more, not no more.

  She went back to her own room and lay there in bed as the sun came up and brightened the room. At breakfast, Brett seemed no different than ever. He did not mention Cujo, and he had apparently forgotten about calling home, at least for the time being. After some interior debate, Charity decided to let the matter rest there.

  It was hot.

  Donna uncranked her window a little farther--about a quarter of the way, as far as she dared--and then leaned across Tad's lap to unroll his too. That was when she noticed the creased yellow sheet of paper in his lap.

  "What's that, Tad?"

  He looked up at her. There were smudged brown circles under his eyes. "The Monster Words," he said.

  "Can I see?"

  He held them tightly for a moment and then let her take the paper. There was a watchful, almost proprietary expression on his face, and she felt an instant's jealousy. It was brief but very strong. So far she had managed to keep him alive and unhurt, but it was Vic's hocus-pocus he cared about. Then the feeling dissipated into bewilderment, sadness, and self-disgust. It was she who had put him in this situation in the first place. If she hadn't given in to him about the baby-sitter . . .

  "I put them in my pocket yesterday," he said, "before we went shopping. Mommy, is the monster going to eat us?"

  "It's not a monster, Tad, it's just a dog, and no, it isn't going to eat us!" She spoke more sharply than she had intended. "I told you, when the mailman comes, we can go home." And I told him the car would start in just a little while, and I told him someone would come, that the Cambers would be home soon--

  But what was the use in thinking that?

  "May I have my Monster Words back?" he asked.

  For a moment she felt a totally insane urge to tear the sweat-stained, creased sheet of yellow legal paper to bits and toss them out her window, so much fluttering confetti. Then she handed the paper back to Tad and ran both hands through his hair, ashamed and scared. What was happening to her, for Christ's sake? A sadistic thought like that. Why would she want to make it worse for him? Was it Vic? Herself? What?

  It was so hot--too hot to think. Sweat was streaming down her face and she could see it trickling down Tad's cheeks as well. His hair was plastered against his skull in unlovely chunks, and it looked two shades darker than its usual medium-blond. He needs his hair washed, she thought randomly, and that made her think of the bottle of Johnson's No More Tears again, sitting safely and sanely on the bathroom shelf, waiting for someone to take it down and pour a capful or two into one cupped palm.

  (don't lose control of yourself)

  No, of course not. She had no reason to lose control of herself. Everything was going to be all right, wasn't it? Of course it was. The dog wasn't even in sight, hadn't been for more than an hour. And the mailman. It was almost ten o'clock now. The mailman would be along soon, and then it wouldn't matter that it was so hot in the car. "The greenhouse effect," they called it. She had seen that on an SPCA handout somewhere, explaining why you shouldn't shut your dog up in your car for any length of time when it was hot like this. The greenhouse effect. The pamphlet had said that the temperature in a car that was parked in the sun could go as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit if the windows were rolled up, so it was cruel and dangerous to lock up a pet while you did your shopping or went to see a movie. Donna uttered a short, cracked-sounding chuckle. The shoe certainly was on the other foot here, wasn't it? It was the dog that had the people locked up.

  Well, the mailman was coming. The mailman was coming and that would end it. It wouldn't matter that they had only a quarter of a Thermos of milk left, or that early this morning she had to go to the bathroom and she had used Tad's small Thermos--or had tried to--and it had overflowed and now the Pinto smelled of urine, an unpleasant smell that only seemed to grow stronger with the heat. She had capped the Thermos and thrown it out the window. She had heard it shatter as it hit the gravel. Then she had cried.

  But none of it mattered. It was humiliating
and demeaning to have to try and pee into a Thermos bottle, sure it was, but it didn't matter because the mailman was coming--even now he would be loading his small blue-and-white truck at the ivy-covered brick post office on Carbine Street . . . or maybe he had already begun his route, working his way out Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road. Soon it would end. She would take Tad home, and they would go upstairs. They would strip and shower together, but before she got into the tub with him and under the shower, she would take that bottle of shampoo from the shelf and put the cap neatly on the edge of the sink, and she would wash first Tad's hair and then her own.

  Tad was reading the yellow paper again, his lips moving soundlessly. Not real reading, not the way he would be reading in a couple of years (if we get out of this, her traitorous mind insisted on adding senselessly but instantly), but the kind that came from rote memorization. The way driving schools prepared functional illiterates for the written part of the driver's exam. She had read that somewhere too, or maybe seen it on a TV news story, and wasn't it amazing, the amount of crud the human mind was capable of storing up? And wasn't it amazing how easily it all came spewing out when there was nothing else to engage it? Like a subconscious garbage disposal running in reverse.

  That made her think of something that had happened in her parents' house, back when it had still been her house too. Less than two hours before one of her mother's Famous Cocktail Parties (that was how Donna's father always referred to them, with a satirical tone that automatically conferred the capital letters--the same satirical tone that could sometimes drive Samantha into a frenzy), the disposal in the kitchen sink had somehow backed up into the bar sink, and when her mother turned the gadget on again in an effort to get rid of everything, green goo had exploded all over the ceiling. Donna had been about fourteen at the time, and she remembered that her mother's utter, hysterical rage had both frightened and sickened her. She had been sickened because her mother was throwing a tantrum in front of the people who loved and needed her most over the opinion of a group of casual acquaintances who were coming over to drink free booze and munch up a lot of free canapes. She had been frightened because she could see no logic in her mother's tantrum . . . and because of the expression she had seen in her father's eyes. It had been a kind of resigned disgust. That had been the first time she had really believed--believed in her gut--that she was going to grow up and become a woman, a woman with at least a fighting chance to be a better woman than her own mother, who could get into such a frightening state over what was really such a little thing. . . .

  She closed her eyes and tried to dismiss the whole train of thought, uneasy at the vivid emotions that memory called up. SPCA, greenhouse effect, garbage disposals, what next? How I Lost My Virginity? Six Well-Loved Vacations? The mailman, that was the thing to think about, the goddam mailman.

  "Mommy, maybe the car will start now."

  "Honey, I'm scared to try it because the battery is so low."

  "But we're just sitting here," he said, sounding petulant and tired and cross. "What does it matter if the battery's low or not if we're just sitting here? Try it!"

  "Don't you go giving me orders, kiddo, or I'll whack your ass for you!"

  He cringed away from her hoarse, angry voice and she cursed herself again. He was scratchy . . . so, who could blame him? Besides, he was right. That was what had really made her angry. But Tad didn't understand; the real reason she didn't want to try the engine again was because she was afraid it would bring the dog. She was afraid it would bring Cujo, and more than anything else she didn't want that.

  Grimly, she turned the key in the ignition. The Pinto's engine cranked very slowly now, with a draggy, protesting sound. It coughed twice but did not fire. She turned the key off and tapped the horn. It gave a foggy, low honk that probably didn't carry fifty yards, let alone to that house at the bottom of the hill.

  "There," she said briskly and cruelly. "Are you happy? Good."

  Tad began to cry. He began the way she always remembered it beginning when he was a baby: his mouth drawing into a trembling bow, the tears spilling down his cheeks even before the first sobs came. She pulled him to her then, saying she was sorry, saying she didn't mean to be mean, it was just that she was upset too, telling him that it would be over as soon as the mailman got there, that she would take him home and wash his hair. And thought: A fighting chance to be a better woman than your mother. Sure. Sure, kid. You're just like her. That's just the kind of thing she would have said in a situation like this. When you're feeling bad, what you do is spread the misery, share the wealth. Well, like mother like daughter, right? And maybe when Tad grows up, he'll feel the same way about you as you feel about--

  "Why is it so hot, Mommy?" Tad asked dully.

  "The greenhouse effect," she answered, without even thinking about it. She wasn't up to this, and she knew it now. If this was, in any sense, a final examination on motherhood--or on adulthood itself--then she was flagging the test. How long had they been stuck in this driveway? Fifteen hours at the very most. And she was cracking up, falling apart.

  "Can I have a Dr Pepper when we get home, Mommy?" The Monster Words, sweaty and wrinkled, lay limply on his lap.

  "All you can drink," she said, and hugged him tight. But the feel of his body was frighteningly wooden. I shouldn't have shouted at him, she thought distractedly. If only I hadn't shouted.

  But she would do better, she promised herself. Because the mailman would be along soon.

  "I think the muh--I think the doggy's going to eat us," Tad said.

  She started to reply and then didn't. Cujo still wasn't around. The sound of the Pinto's engine turning over hadn't brought him. Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he had had a convulsion and died. That would be wonderful . . . especially if it had been a slow convulsion. A painful one. She looked at the back door again. It was so temptingly near. It was locked. She was sure of that now. When people went away, they locked up. It would be foolhardy to try for the door, especially with the mailman due so soon. Play it as though it were real, Vic sometimes said. She would have to, because it was real. Better to assume the dog was still alive, and lying just inside those half-open garage doors. Lying in the shade.

  The thought of shade made her mouth water.

  It was almost eleven o'clock then. It was about forty-five minutes later when she spotted something in the grass beyond the edge of the driveway on Tad's side of the car. Another fifteen minutes of examination convinced her that it was an old baseball bat with a friction-taped handle, half obscured by witch grass and timothy.

  A few minutes after that, just before noon, Cujo stumbled out of the barn, blinking his red, rheumy eyes stupidly in the hot sun.

  When they come to take you down,

  When they bring that wagon 'round,

  When they come to call on you

  And drag your poor body down . . .

  Jerry Garcia's voice, easy but somehow weary, came floating down the hall, magnified and distorted by someone's transistor radio until it sounded as if the vocal were floating down a long steel tube. Closer by, someone was moaning. That morning, when he went down to the smelly industrial bathroom to shave and shower, there had been a puddle of vomit in one of the urinals and a large quantity of dried blood in one of the washbasins.

  "Shake it, shake it, Sugaree," Jerry Garcia sang, "just don't tell'em you know me."

  Steve Kemp stood at the window of his room on the fifth floor of the Portland YMCA, looking down at Spring Street, feeling bad and not knowing why. His head was bad. He kept thinking about Donna Trenton and how he had fucked her over--fucked her over and then hung around. Hung around for what? What the fuck had happened?

  He wished he were in Idaho. Idaho had been much on his mind lately. So why didn't he stop honking his donk and just go? He didn't know. He didn't like not knowing. He didn't like all these questions screwing up his head. Questions were counterproductive to a state of serenity, and serenity was necessary to the development of the artist
. He had looked at himself this morning in one of the toothpaste-spotted mirrors and had thought he looked old. Really old. When he came back to his room he had seen a cockroach zigzagging busily across the floor. The omens were bad.

  She didn't give me the brush because I'm old, he thought. I'm not old. She did it because her itch was scratched, because she's a bitch, and because I gave her a spoonful of her own medicine. How did Handsome Hubby like his little love note, Donna? Did Handsome Hubby dig it?

  Did hubby get his little love note?

  Steve crushed his cigarette out in the jar top that served the room as an ashtray. That was really the central question, wasn't it? With that one answered, the answers to the other questions would drop into place. The hateful hold she had gotten over him by telling him to get lost before he was ready to end the affair (she had humiliated him, goddammit), for one thing--for one very big thing.

  Suddenly he knew what to do, and his heart began to thud heavily with anticipation. He put a hand into his pocket and jingled the change there. He went out. It was just past noon, and in Castle Rock, the mailman for whom Donna hoped had begun that part of his rounds which covered the Maple Sugar Road and Town Road No. 3.

  Vic, Roger, and Rob Martin spent Tuesday morning at Image-Eye and then went out for beers and burgers. A few burgers and a great many beers later, Vic suddenly realized that he was drunker than he had ever been at a business luncheon in his life. Usually he had a single cocktail or a glass of white wine; he had seen too many good New York admen drown themselves slowly in those dark places just off Madison Avenue, talking to their friends about campaigns they would never mount . . . or, if they became drunk enough, to the barmen in those places about novels which they would assuredly never write.

  It was a strange occasion, half victory celebration, half wake. Rob had greeted their idea of a final Sharp Cereal Professor ad with tempered enthusiasm, saying that he could knock it a mile . . . always assuming he was given the chance. That was the wake half. Without the approval of old man Sharp and his fabled kid, the greatest spot in the world would do them no good. They would all be out on their asses.