Cujo Read online

  In the kitchen he yanked the bottom drawer of the stove out to its stop and threw pots and pans everywhere. They made a dreadful clatter, but there was no satisfaction in mere clatter. A rank of cupboards ran around three of the room's four sides. He pulled them open one after the other. He grabbed plates by the double handful and threw them on the floor. Crockery jingled musically. He swept the glasses out and grunted as they broke. Among them was a set of eight delicate long-stemmed wine glasses that Donna had had since she was twelve years old. She had read about "hope chests" in some magazine or other and had determined to have such a chest of her own. As it turned out, the wine glasses were the only thing she had actually put in hers before losing interest (her original grand intention had been to lay by enough to completely furnish her bridal house or flat), but she had had them for more than half her life, and they were treasured.

  The gravy boat went. The big serving platter. The Sears radio /tape player went on the floor with a heavy crunch. Steve Kemp danced on it; he boogied on it. His penis, hard as stone, throbbed inside his pants. The vein in the center of his forehead throbbed in counterpoint. He discovered booze under the small chromium sink in the corner. He yanked out half-and three-quarters-full bottles by the armload and then flung them at the closed door of the kitchen closet one by one, throwing them overhand as hard as he could; the next day his right arm would be so stiff and sore he would barely be able to lift it to shoulder level. Soon the blue closet door was running with Gilbey's gin, Jack Daniel's, J & B whisky, sticky green creme de menthe, the amaretto that had been a Christmas present from Roger and Althea Breakstone. Glass twinkled benignly in the hot afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows over the sink.

  Steve tore into the laundry room, where he found boxes of bleach, Spic 'n Span, Downy fabric softener in a large blue plastic bottle, Lestoil, Top Job, and three kinds of powdered detergent. He ran back and forth through the kitchen like a lunatic New Year's Eve celebrant, pouring these cleaning potions everywhere.

  He had just emptied the last carton--an economy-size box of Tide that had been almost full--when he saw the message scrawled on the noteminder in Donna's unmistakable spiky handwriting: Tad & I have gone out to J. Camber's garage w/Pinto. Back soon.

  That brought him back to the realities of the situation with a bang. He had already been here half an hour at least, maybe longer. The time had passed in a red blur, and it was hard to peg it any more closely than that. How long had she been gone when he came in? Who had the note been left for? Anybody who might pop in, or someone specific? He had to get out of here . . . but there was one other thing he had to do first.

  He erased the message on the noteminder with one swipe of his sleeve and wrote in large block letters:

  I LEFT SOMETHING UPSTAIRS FOR YOU, BABY.

  He took the stairs two by two and came into their bedroom, which was to the left of the second-floor landing. He felt terribly pressed now, almost positive that the doorbell was going to ring or someone--another happy housewife, most likely--would poke her head in the back door and call (as he had), "Hi! Anybody home?"

  But, perversely, that added the final spice of excitement to this happening. He unbuckled his belt, jerked his fly down, and let his jeans drop down around his knees. He wasn't wearing underpants; he rarely did. His cock stood out stiffly from a mass of reddish-gold pubic hair. It didn't take long; he was too excited. Two or three quick jerks through his closed fist and orgasm came, immediate and savage. He spat semen onto the bedspread in a convulsion.

  He yanked his jeans back up, raked the zipper closed (almost catching the head of his penis in the zipper's small gold teeth--that would have been a laugh, all right) , and ran for the door, buckling his belt again. He would meet someone as he was going out. Yes. He felt positive of it, as if it were preordained. Some happy housewife who would take one look at his flushed face, his bulging eyes, his tented jeans, and scream her head off.

  He tried to prepare himself for it as he opened the back door and went out In retrospect it seemed that he had made enough noise to wake the dead . . . those pans! Why had he thrown those fucking pans around? What had he been thinking of? Everyone in the neighborhood must have heard.

  But there was no one in the yard or in the driveway. The peace of the afternoon was undisturbed. Across the street, a lawn sprinkler twirled unconcernedly. A kid went by on roller skates. Straight ahead was a high hedge which separated the Trentons' house lot from the next one over. Looking to the left from the back stoop was a view of the town nestled at the bottom of the hill. Steve could see the intersection of Route 117 and High Street quite clearly, the Town Common nestled in one of the angles made by the crossing of the two roads. He stood there on the stoop, trying to get his shit back together. His breath slowed a little at a time back into a more normal inhale-exhale pattern. He found a pleasant afternoon face and put it on. All this happened in the length of time it took for the traffic light on the corner to cycle from red to amber to green and back to red again.

  What if she pulls into the driveway right now?

  That got him going again. He'd left his calling card; he didn't need any hassle from her on top of it. There was no way she could do a thing anyway, unless she called the cops, and he didn't think she'd do that. There were too many things he could tell: The Sex Life of the Great American Happy Housewife in Its Natural Habitat. It had been a crazy scene, though. Best to put miles between himself and Castle Rock. Maybe later he would give her a call. Ask her how she had liked his work. That might be sort of fun.

  He walked down the driveway, turned left, and went back to his van. He wasn't stopped. Nobody took any undue notice of him. A kid on roller skates zipped past him and shouted "Hi!" Steve hi'd him right back.

  He got in the van and started it up. He drove up 117 to 302 and followed that road to its intersection with Interstate 95 in Portland. He took an Interstate time-and-toll ticket and rolled south. He had begun having uneasy thoughts about what he had done--the red rage of destruction he had gone into when he saw that no one was home. Had the retribution been too heavy for the offense? So she didn't want to make it with him any more, so what? He had trashed most of the goddam house: Did that, maybe, say something unpleasant about where his head was at?

  He began to work on these questions a little at a time, the way most people do, running an objective set of facts through a bath of various chemicals which, when taken together, make up the complex human perceptual mechanism known as subjectivity. Like a schoolchild who works carefully first with the pencil, then with the eraser, then with the pencil again, he tore down what had happened and then carefully rebuilt it--redrew it in his mind--until both the facts and his perception of the facts jibed in a way he could live with.

  When he reached Route 495, he turned west toward New York and the country that sprawled beyond, all the way to the silent reaches of Idaho, the place that Papa Hemingway had gone to when he was old and mortally hurt. He felt the familiar lift in his feelings that came with cutting old ties and moving on--that magical thing that Huck had called "lighting out for the territory." At such times he felt almost newborn, felt strongly that he was in possession of the greatest freedom of all, the freedom to recreate himself. He would have been unable to understand the significance if someone had pointed out the fact that, whether in Maine or in Idaho, he would still be apt to throw his racket down in angry frustration if he lost a game of tennis; that he would refuse to shake the hand of his opponent over the net, as he always had when he lost. He only shook over the net when he won.

  He stopped for the night in a small town called Twickenham. His sleep was easy. He had convinced himself that trashing the Trentons' house had not been an act of half-mad jealous pique but a piece of revolutionary anarchy--offing a couple of fat middle-class pigs, the sort who made it easy for the fascist overlords to remain in power by blindly paying their taxes and their telephone bills. It had been an act of courage and of clean, justified fury. It was his way of saying "pow
er to the people," an idea he tried to incorporate in all his poems.

  Still, he mused, as he turned toward sleep in the narrow motel bed, he wondered what Donna had thought of it when she and the kid got home. That sent him to sleep with a slight smile on his lips.

  By three thirty that Tuesday afternoon, Donna had given up on the mailman.

  She sat with one arm lightly around Tad, who was in a dazed half sleep, his lips cruelly puffed from the heat, his face hectic and flushed. There was a tiny bit of the milk left, and soon she would give it to him. During the last three and a half hours--since what would have been lunchtime at home--the sun had been monstrous and unremitting. Even with her window and Tad's window open a quarter of the way, the temperature inside must have reached 100 degrees, maybe more. It was the way your car got when you left it in the sun, that was all. Except, under normal circumstances, what you did when your car got like that was you unrolled all the windows, pulled the knobs that opened the air-ducts, and got rolling. Let's get rolling--what a sweet sound those words had!

  She licked her lips.

  For short periods she had unrolled the windows all the way, creating a mild draft, but she was afraid to leave them that way. She might doze off. The heat scared her--it scared her for herself and even more for Tad, what it might be taking out of him--but it didn't scare her as badly as the face of the dog, slavering foam and staring at her with its sullen red eyes.

  The last time she had unrolled the windows all the way was when Cujo had disappeared into the shadows of the barn-garage. But now Cujo was back.

  He sat in the lengthening shadow of the big barn, his head lowered, staring at the blue Pinto. The ground between his front paws was muddy from his slaver. Every now and then he would growl and snap at empty air, as if he might be hallucinating.

  How long? How long before he dies?

  She was a rational woman. She did not believe in monsters from closets; she believed in things she could see and touch. There was nothing supernatural about the slobbering wreck of a Saint Bernard sitting in the shade of a barn; he was merely a sick animal that had been bitten by a rabid fox or skunk or something. He wasn't out to get her personally. He wasn't the Reverend Dimmesdale or Moby Dog. He was not four-footed Fate.

  But . . . she had just about decided to make a run for the back door of the enclosed Camber porch when Cujo had come rolling and staggering out of the darkness inside the barn.

  Tad. Tad was the thing. She had to get him out of this. No more fucking around. He wasn't answering very coherently any more. He seemed to be in touch only with the peaks of reality. The glazed way his eyes rolled toward her when she spoke to him, like the eyes of a fighter who has been struck and struck and struck, a fighter who has lost his coherence along with his mouthguard and is waiting only for the final flurry of punches to drop him insensible to the canvas--those things terrified her and roused all her motherhood. Tad was the thing. If she had been alone, she would have gone for that door long ago. It was Tad who had held her back, because her mind kept circling back to the thought of the dog pulling her down, and of Tad in the car alone.

  Still, until Cujo had returned fifteen minutes ago, she had been preparing herself to go for the door. She played it over and over in her mind like a home movie, did it until it seemed to one part of her mind as if it had already happened. She would shake Tad fully awake, slap him awake if she had to. Tell him he was not to leave the car and follow her--under no circumstances, no matter what happens. She would run from the car to the porch door. Try the knob. If it was unlocked, well and fine. But she was prepared for the very real possibility that it was locked. She had taken off her shirt and now sat behind the wheel in her white cotton bra, the shirt in her lap. When she went, she would go with the shirt wrapped around her hand. Far from perfect protection, but better than none at all. She would smash in the pane of glass nearest the doorknob, reach through, and let herself onto the little back porch. And if the inner door was locked, she would cope with that too. Somehow.

  But Cujo had come back out, and that took away her edge.

  Never mind. He'll go back in. He has before.

  But will he? her mind chattered. It's all too perfect, isn't it? The Cambers are gone, and they remembered to shut off their mail like good citizens; Vic is gone, and the chances are slim that he'll call before tomorrow night, because we just can't afford long distance every night. And if he does call, he'll call early. When he doesn't get any answer he'll assume we went out to catch some chow at Mario's or maybe a couple of ice creams at the Tastee Freeze. And he won't call later because he'll think we're asleep. He'll call tomorrow instead. Considerate Vic. Yes, it's all just too perfect. Wasn't there a dog in the front of the boat in that story about the boatman on the River Charon? The boatman's dog. Just call me Cujo. All out for the Valley of Death.

  Go in, she silently willed the dog. Go back in the barn, damn you.

  Cujo didn't move.

  She licked her lips, which felt almost as puffy as Tad's looked.

  She brushed his hair off his forehead and said softly, "How you goin, Tadder?"

  "Shhh," Tad muttered distractedly. "The ducks . . ."

  She gave him a shake. "Tad? Honey? You okay? Talk to me!"

  His eyes opened a little at a time. He looked around, a small boy who was puzzled and hot and dreadfully tired. "Mommy? Can't we go home? I'm so hot . . ."

  "We'll go home," she soothed.

  "When, Mom? When?" He began to cry helplessly.

  Oh Tad, save your moisture, she thought. You may need it. Crazy thing to have to be thinking. But the entire situation was ridiculous to the point of lunacy, wasn't it? The idea of a small boy dying of dehydration

  (stop it he is NOT dying)

  less than seven miles from the nearest good-sized town was crazy.

  But the situation is what it is, she reminded herself roughly. And don't you think anything else, sister. It's like a war on a miniaturized scale, so everything that looked small before looks big now. The smallest puff of air through the quarter-open windows was a zephyr. The distance to the back porch was half a mile across no-man's-land. And if you want to believe the dog is Fate, or the Ghost of Sins Remembered, or even the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, then believe it. In this curiously scaled-down situation--this life-or-death situation--even having to go to the bathroom became a skirmish.

  We're going to get out of it. No dog is going to do this to my son.

  "When, Mommy?" He looked up to her, his eyes wet, his face as pale as cheese.

  "Soon," she said grimly. "Very soon." She brushed his hair back and held him against her. She looked out Tad's window and again her eyes fixed on that thing lying in the high grass, that old friction-taped baseball bat.

  I'd like to bash your head in with it.

  Inside the house, the phone began to ring.

  She jerked her head around, suddenly wild with hope.

  "Is it for us, Mommy? Is the phone for us?"

  She didn't answer him. She didn't know who it was for. But if they were lucky--and their luck was due to change soon, wasn't it?--it would be from someone with cause to be suspicious that no one was answering the phone at the Cambers'. Someone who would come out and check around.

  Cujo's head had come up. His head cocked to one side, and for a moment he bore an insane resemblance to Nipper, the RCA dog with his ear to the gramophone horn. He got shakily to his feet and started toward the house and the sound of the ringing telephone.

  "Maybe the doggy's going to answer the telephone," Tad said. "Maybe--"

  With a speed and agility that was terrifying, the big dog changed direction and came at the car. The awkward stagger was gone now, as if it had been nothing but a sly act all along. It was roaring and bellowing rather than barking. Its red eyes burned. It struck the car with a hard, dull crunch and rebounded--with stunned eyes, Donna saw that the side of her door was actually bowed in a bit. It must be dead, she thought hysterically, bashed its sick brains in spinal
fusion deep concussion must have must have MUST HAVE--

  Cujo got back up. His muzzle was bloody. His eyes seemed wandering, vacuous again. Inside the house the phone rang on and on. The dog made as if to walk away, suddenly snapped viciously at its own flank as if stung, whirled, and sprang at Donna's window. It struck right in front of Donna's face with another tremendous dull thud. Blood sprayed across the glass, and a long silver crack appeared. Tad shrieked and clapped his hands to his face, pulling his cheeks down, harrowing them with his fingernails.

  The dog leaped again. Ropes of foam runnered back from his bleeding muzzle. She could see his teeth, heavy as old yellow ivory. His claws clicked on the glass. A cut between his eyes was streaming blood. His eyes were fixed on hers; dumb, dull eyes, but not without--she would have sworn it--not without some knowledge. Some malign knowledge.

  "Get out of here!" she screamed at it.

  Cujo threw himself against the side of the car below her window again. And again. And again. Now her door was badly dented inward. Each time the dog's two-hundred-pound bulk struck the Pinto, it rocked on its springs. Each time she heard that heavy, toneless thud, she felt sure it must have killed itself, at least knocked itself unconscious. And each time it trotted back toward the house, whirled, and charged the car again. Cujo's face was a mask of blood and matted fur from which his eyes, once a kind, mild brown, peered with stupid fury.

  She looked at Tad and saw that he had gone into a shock reaction, curling himself up into a tight, fetal ball in his bucket seat, his hands laced together at the nape of his neck, his chest hitching.

  Maybe that's best. Maybe--

  Inside the house the phone stopped ringing. Cujo, in the act of whirling around for another charge, paused. He cocked his head again in that curious, evocative gesture. Donna held her breath. The silence seemed very big. Cujo sat down, raised his horribly mangled nose toward the sky, and howled once--such a dark and lonesome sound that she shivered, no longer hot but as cold as a crypt. In that instant she knew--she did not feel or just think--she knew that the dog was something more than just a dog.