Needful Things

1

Castle Rock’s newest port of commerce had been closed for nearly two hours when Alan Pangborn rolled slowly down Main Street toward the Municipal Building, which housed the Sheriff’s Office and Castle Rock Police Department. He was behind the wheel of the ultimate unmarked car: a 1986 Ford station wagon. The family car. He felt low and half-drunk. He’d only had three beers, but they had hit him hard.

He glanced at Needful Things as he drove past, approving of the dark-green canopy which jutted out over the street, just as Brian Rusk had done. He knew less about such things (having no relations who worked for the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris), but he thought it did lend a certain touch of class to Main Street, where most shopowners had added false fronts and called it good. He didn’t know yet what the new place sold-Polly would, if she had gone over this morning as she had planned-but it looked to Alan like one of those cozy French restaurants where you took the girl of your dreams before trying to sweet-talk her into bed.

The place slipped from his mind as soon as he passed it. He signalled right two blocks farther down, and turned up the narrow passage between the squat brick block of the Municipal Building and the white clapboard Water District building. This lane was marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY.

The Municipal Building was shaped like an upside-down L, and there was a small parking lot in the angle formed by the two wings.

Three of the slots were marked SHERIFF’s OFFICE. Norris Ridgewick’s bumbling old VW Beetle was parked in one of them.

Alan parked in another, cut the headlights and the motor, reached for the doorhandle.

The depression which had been circling him ever since he left The Blue Door in Portland, circling the way wolves often circled campfires in the adventure stories he had read as a boy, suddenly fell upon him.

He let go of the doorhandle and just sat behind the wheel of the station wagon, hoping it would pass.

He had spent the day in Portland’s District Court, testifying for the prosecution in four straight trials. The district encompassed four counties-York, Cumberland, Oxford, Castle-and of all the lawmen who served in those counties, Alan Pangborn had the farthest to travel.

The three District judges therefore tried as best they could to schedule his court cases in bunches, so he would have to make the trip only once or twice a month. This made it possible for him to actually spend some time in the county which he had sworn to protect, instead of on the roads between Castle Rock and Portland, but it also meant that, after one of his court days, he felt like a high school kid stumbling out of the auditorium where he has just taken the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. He should have known better than to drink on top of that, but Harry Cross and George Crompton had just been on their way down to The Blue Door, and they had insisted that Alan join them. There had been a good enough reason to do so: a string of clearly related burglaries which had occurred in all of their areas. But the real reason he’d gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now he sat behind the wheel of what had been the family car, reaping what he had sown of his own free will. His head ached gently.

He felt more than a touch of nausea. But the depression was the worst-it was back with a vengeance.

Hello! it cried merrily from its stronghold inside his head.

Here I am, Alan! Good to see you! Guess what? Here it is, end of a long hard day, and Annie and Todd are still dead! Remember the Saturday afternoon when Todd spilled his milkshake on the front seat?

Right under where Your briefcase is now, wasn’t it? And you shouted at him?

Wow! Didn’t forget that, did you? You did? Well, that’s okay, Alan, because I’m here to remind you! And remind you! And remind you!

He lifted his briefcase and looked fixedly at the seat. Yes, the stain was there, and yes, he had shouted at Todd. Todd, why do you always have to be so clumsy? Something like that, no big deal, but not the sort of thing you would ever say if you knew your kid had less than a month left to live.

It occurred to him that the beers weren’t the real problem; it was this car, which had never been properly cleaned out. He had spent the day riding with the ghosts of his wife and his younger son.

He leaned over and popped the glove compartment to get his citation book-carrying that, even when he was headed down to Portland to spend the day testifying in court, was an unbreakable habit-and reached inside. His hand struck some tubular object, and it fell out onto the floor of the station wagon with a little thump.

He put his citation book on top of his briefcase and then bent over to get whatever it was he had knocked out of the glove compartment. He held it up so it caught the glow of the arc-sodium light and stared at it a long time, feeling the old dreadful ache of loss and sorrow steal into him. Polly’s arthritis was in her hands; his, it seemed, was in his heart, and who could say which of them had gotten the worst of it?

The can had belonged to Todd, of course-Todd, who would have undoubtedly lived in the Auburn Novelty Shop if he had been allowed.

The boy had been entranced with the cheapjack arcana sold there: joy buzzers, sneezing powder, dribble glasses, soap that turned the user’s hands the color of volcanic ash, plastic dog turds.

This thing is still here. Nineteen months they’ve been dead, and it’s still here. How in the hell did I miss i’t? Christ.

Alan turned the round can over in his hands, remembering how the boy had pleaded to be allowed to buy this particular item with his allowance money, how Alan himself had demurred, quoting his own father’s proverb: the fool and his money soon parted. And how Annie had overruled him in her gentle way.

Listen to you, Mr. Amateur Magician, sounding like a Puritan. I love it! Where do you think he got this?” nsane love of gags and tricks in the first place? No one in my family ever kept a framed picture of Houdiny’ on the wall, believe me. Do you want to tell me you didn’t buy a dribble glass or two in the hot, wild days of your youth? That you wouldn’t have just about died to own the old snake-in-the-can-of-nuts trick if you’d come across one in a display case somewhere?

He, hemming and hawing, sounding more and more like a pompous stuffed-shirt windbag. Finally he’d had to raise a hand to his mouth to hide a grin of embarrassment. Annie had seen it, however. Annie always did. That had been her gift… and more than once it had been his salvation. Her sense of humor-and her sense of perspective as well-had always been better than his.

Sharper.

Let him have it, Alan-he’ll only be young once. And it is sort Of funny.

So he had. And@nd three weeks after that he spilled his milkshake on the seat and four weeks after that he was dead! They were both dead! Wow.’ Imagine that! Time surely does fly by, doesn’t it, Alan!

But don’t worry.’ Don’t worry, because I’ll keep reminding you! Yes, sir! I’ll keep reminding you, because that’s my J’Oh and I mean to do it!

The can was labeled TASTEE-MUNCH MIXED NUTS. Alan twisted off the top and five feet of compressed green snake leaped out, struck the windshield, and rebounded into his lap. Alan looked at it, heard his dead son’s laughter inside his head, and began to cry. His weeping was undramatic, silent and exhausted. It seemed that his tears had a lot in common with the possessions of his dead loved ones; you never got to the end of them. There were too many, and just when you started to relax and think that it was finally over, the joint was clean, you found one more. And one more. And one more.

Why had he let Todd buy the goddam thing? Why was it still in the goddam glove compartment? And why had he taken the goddam wagon in the first place?

He pulled his handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped the tears from his face. Then, slowly, he jammed the snake-just cheap green crepe-paper with a metal spring wound up inside itback into the bogus mixed-nuts can. He screwed on the top and bounced the can thoughtfully on his hand.

Throw the goddam thing away.

But he didn’t think he could do that. Not tonight, at least. He tossed the joke-the last one Todd had ever bought in what he considered the world’s finest store back into the glove compartment and slammed the hatch shut. Then he took hold of the doorhandle again, grabbed his briefcase, and got out.

He breathed deeply of the early-evening air, hoping it would help.

It didn’t. He could smell decomposed wood and chemicals, a charmless odor which drifted down regularly from the paper mills in Rumford, some thirty miles north. He would call Polly and ask her if he could come over, he decided-that would help a little.

A truer thought was never thunk! the voice of depression agreed energetically. And by the way, Alan, do you remember how happy that snake made him? He tried it on everyone! just about scared Norris Ridgewick into a heart attack, and you laughed until you almost wet your pants! Remember? Wasn’t he lively? Wasn’t he great?

And Annie remember how she laughed when you told her? She was lively and great, too, wasn’t she? Of course, she wasn’t quite as lively at the very end, not quite as great, either, but you didn,t really notice, did you? Because you had your own fish to fry. The business with Thad Beaumont, for instance-you really couldn’t get that off your mind, What happened at their house by the lake, and how, after it was all over, he used to get drunk and call you. And then his wife took the twins and left him… all of that added to the usual around-town stuff kept you pretty busy, didn’t it? Too busy to see what was happening right at home.

Too bad you didn’t see it. If you had, why, they might still be alive!

That’s something you shouldn’t forget, either, and so I’ll just keep reminding You… and reminding you… and reminding you. Okay?

Okay!

There was a foot-long scratch along the side of the wagon, just above the gasoline port. Had that happened since Anne and Todd died?

He couldn’t really remember, and it didn’t matter much, anyway. He traced his fingers along it and reminded himself again to take the car to Sonny’s Sunoco and get it fixed. On the other hand, why bother?

Why not just take the damned thing down to Harrie Ford in Oxford and trade it in on something smaller? The mileage on it was still relatively low; he could probably get a decent trade-inBut Todd spilled his milkshake on the front seat! the voice in his head piped up Indignantly. He did that when he was ALIVE, Alan old buddy! And Anni’e"Oh, shut up,” he said.

He reached the building, then paused. Parked close by, so close that the office door would have dented in its side if pulled all the way open, was a large red Cadillac Seville. He didn’t need to look at the license plates to know what they were: KEETON 1. He ran a hand thoughtfully over the car’s smooth hide, then went in.

2

Sheila Brigham was sitting in the glass-walled dispatcher’s cubicle, reading People magazine and drinking a Yoo-Hoo. The combined Sheriff’s Office/Castle Rock Police Department was otherwise deserted except for Norris Ridgewick.

Norris sat behind an old IBM electric typewriter, working on a report with the agonized, breathless concentration only Norris could bring to paperwork. He would stare fixedly at the machine, then abruptly lean forward like a man who has been punched in the belly, and hit the keys in a rattling burst. He remained in his hunched position long enough to read what he had written, then groaned softly. There was the click-rap! click-rap! click-rap! sound of Norris using the IBM’s CorrecTape to back over some error (he used one CorrecTape per week, on the average), and then Norris would straighten up. There would be a pregnant pause, and then the cycle would repeat itself After an hour or so of this, Norris would drop the finished report into Sheila’s IN basket. Once or twice a week these reports were even intelligible.

Norris looked up and smiled as Alan crossed the small bullpen area. “Hi, boss, how’s it going?”

“Well, Portland’s out of the way for another two or three weeks.

Anything happen here?”

“Nah, just the usual. You know, Alan, your eyes are red as hell.

Have you been smoking that wacky tobaccy again?”

“Ha ha,” Alan said sourly. “I stopped for a couple of drinks with a couple of cops, then stared at people’s high beams for thirty miles.

Have you got your aspirin handy?”

“Always,” Norris said. “You know that.” Norris’s bottom desk drawer contained his own private pharmacy. He opened it, rummaged, produced a giant-sized bottle of strawberry-flavored Kaopectate, stared at the label for a moment, shook his head, dropped it back into the drawer, and rummaged some more. At last he produced a bottle of generic aspirin.

“I’ve got a little job for you,” Alan said, taking the bottle and shaking two aspirins into his hand. A lot of white dust fell out with the pills, and he found himself wondering why generic aspirin always produced more dust than brand-name aspirin. He wondered further if he might be losing his mind.

“Aw, Alan, I’ve got two more of these E-9 boogers to do, and-”

“Cool your Jets.” Alan went to the water-cooler and pulled a paper cup from the cylinder screwed to the wall. Blub-blub-blub went the water-cooler as he filled the cup. “All you’ve got to do is cross the room and open the door I just came through. So simple even a child could do it, right?”

“What-”

“Only don’t forget to take your citation book,” Alan said, and gulped the aspirin down.

Norris Ridgewick immediately looked wary. “Yours is right there on the desk, next to your briefcase.”

“I know. And that’s where it’s going to stay, at least for tonight.”

Norris looked at him for a long time. Finally he asked.

“Buster?”

Alan nodded. “Buster. He’s parked in the crip space again. I told him last time I was through warning him about it.”

Castle Rock’s Head Selectman, Danforth Keeton III, was referred to as Buster by all who knew him… but municipal employees who wanted to hold onto their jobs made sure to call him Dan or Mr. Keeton when he was around. Only Alan, who was an elected official, dared call him Buster to his face, and he had done it only twice, both times when he was very angry. He supposed he would do it again, however. Dan “Buster” Keeton was a man Alan Pangborn found it very easy to get angry at.

“Come on!” Norris said. “You do it, Alan, okay?”

“Can’t. I’ve got that appropriations meeting with the selectmen next week.”

“He hates me already,” Norris said morbidly. “I know he does.”

“Buster hates everyone except his wife and his mother,” Alan said, “and I’m not so sure about his wife. But the fact remains that I have warned him at least half a dozen times in the last month about parking in our one and only handicapped space, and now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.”

“No, I’m going to put my J’Oh where your mouth is. This is really mean, Alan. I’m sincere.” Norris Ridgewick looked like an ad for When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

“Relax,” Alan said. “You put a five-dollar parking ticket on his windshield. He comes to me, and first he tells me to fire you.”

Norris moaned.

“I refuse. Then he tells me to tear up the ticket. I refuse that, too. Then, tomorrow noon, after he’s had a chance to froth at the mouth about it for awhile, I relent. And when I go into the next appropriations meeting, he owes me a favor.”

“Yeah, but what does he owe me?”

“Norris, do you want a new pulse radar gun or not?”

“Well-”

“And what about a fax machine? We’ve been talking about a fax machine for at least two years.”

Yes! the falsely cheerful voice in his mind cried. You started talking about it when Annie and Todd were still alive, Alan! Remember that? Remember when they were alive?

“I guess,” Norris said. He reached for his citation book with sadness and resignation writ large upon his face.

“Good man,” Alan said with a heartiness he didn’t feel. “I’ll be in my office for awhile.”

3

He closed the door and dialled Polly’s number.

“Hello?” she asked, and he knew immediately that he would not tell her about the depression which had come over him with such smooth completeness. Polly had her own problems tonight.

It had taken only that single word to tell him how it was with her.

The 1-sounds in hello were lightly slurred. That only happened when she had taken a Percodan@r perhaps more than one-and she took a Percodan only when the pain was very bad. Although she had never come right out and said so, Alan had an idea she lived in terror of the day when the Percs would stop working.

“How are you, pretty lady?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and putting a hand over his eyes. The aspirin didn’t seem to be doing much for his head. Maybe I should ask her for a Perc, he thought.

“I’m all right.” He heard the careful way she was speaking, going from one word to the next like a woman using stepping-stones to cross a small stream. “How about you? You sound tired.”

“Lawyers do that to me every time.” He shelved the idea of going over to see her. She would say, Of course, Alan, and she would be glad to see him-almost as glad as he would be to see her-but it would put more strain on her than she needed this evening. “I think I’ll go home and turn in early. Do you mind if I don’t come by?”

“No, honey. It might be a little better if you didn’t, actually.”

“Is it bad tonight?”

“It’s been worse,” she said carefully.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Not too bad, no.”

Your own voice says you’re a liar, my dear, he thought.

“Good. What’s the deal on that ultrasonic therapy you told me about? Find anything out?”

“Well, it would be great if I could afford a month and a half in the Mayo Clinic-on spec-but I can’t. And don’t tell me you can, Alan, because I’m feeling a little too tired to call you a liar.”

“I thought you said Boston Hospital-”

“Next year,” Polly said.

“They’re going to run a clinic using ultrasound therapy next year.

Maybe.”

There was a moment of silence and he was about to say goodbye when she spoke again. This time her tone was a little brighter. “I dropped by the new shop this morning. I had Nettle make a cake and took that.

Pure orneriness, of course-ladies don’t take baked goods to openings.

It’s practically graven in stone.”

“What’s it like? What does he sell?”

“A little bit of everything. If you put a gun to my head, I’d say it’s a curios-and-collectibles shop, but it really defies description.

You’ll have to see for yourself.”

“Did you meet the owner “Mr. Leland Gaunt, from Akron, Ohio,” Polly said, and now Alan could actually hear the hint of a smile in her voice. “He’s going to be quite the heartthrob in Castle Rock’s smart set this year-that’s my prediction, anyway.”

“What did you make of him?”

When she spoke again, the smile in her voice came through even more clearly. “Well, Alan, let me be honest-you’re my darling, and I hope I’m yours, but-”

“You are,” he said. His headache was lifting a little. He doubted if it was Norris Ridgewick’s aspirin working this small miracle.

“-but he made my heart go pitty-pat, too. And you should have seen Rosalie and Nettle when they came back…”

“Nettle?” He took his feet off the desk and sat up. “Nettle’s scared of her own shadow!”

“Yes. But since Rosalie persuaded her to go down with her-you know the poor old dear won’t go anywhere alone-I asked Nettle what she thought of Mr. Gaunt after I got home this afternoon. Alan, her poor old muddy eyes just lit up. ’He’s got carnival glass!’ she said.

’Beautiful carnival glass! He even invited me to come back tomorrow and look at some more!’ I think it’s the most she’s said to me all at once in about four years. So I said, ’Wasn’t that kind of him, Nettle?’ And she said, ’Yes, and do you know what?’ I asked her what, of course, and Nettle said, ’And I just might go!’ “Alan laughed loud and heartily. “If Nettle’s willing to go see him without a duenna, I

ought to check him out. The guy must really be a charmer.”

“Well, it’s funny-he’s not handsome, at least not in a moviestar way, but he’s got the most gorgeous hazel eyes. They light up his whole face.”

“Watch it, lady,” Alan growled. “My jealous muscle is starting to twitch.”

She laughed a little. “I don’t think you have to worry. There’s one other thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Rosalie said Wilma Jersyck came in while Nettle was there.”

“Did anything happen? Were words passed?”

“No. Nettle glared at the jerzyck woman, and she kind of curled her lip at Nettle-that’s how Rosalie put it-and then Nettle scurried out. Has Wilma jerzyck called you about Nettle’s dog lately “No,” Alan said. “No reason to. I’ve cruised past Nettle’s house after ten half a dozen nights over the last six weeks or so. The dog doesn’t bark anymore. It was just the kind of thing puppies do, Polly. It’s grown up a little, and it has a good mistress. Nettle may be short a little furniture on the top floor, but she’s done her duty by that dog-what does she call it?”

“Raider.”

“Well, Wilma jerzyck will just have to find something else to bitch about, because Raider is squared away. She will, though. Ladies like Wilma always do. It was never the dog, anyway, not really; Wilma was the only person in the whole neighborhood who complained. It was Nettle. People like Wilma have noses for weakness.

And there’s a lot to smell on Nettle Cobb.”

“Yes.” Polly sounded sad and thoughtful. “You know that Wilma jerzyck called her up one night and told her that if Nettle didn’t shut the dog up, she’d come over and cut his throat?”

“Well,” Alan said evenly, “I know that Nettle told you so. But I also know that Wilma frightened Nettle very badly, and that Nettle has had… problems. I’m not saying Wilma jerzyck isn’t capable of making a call like that, because she is. But it might have only been in Nettle’s mind.”

That Nettle had had problems was understating by quite a little bit, but there was no need to say more; they both knew what they were talking about. After years of hell, married to a brute who abused her in every way a man can abuse a woman, Nettle Cobb had put a meat-fork in her husband’s throat as he slept. She had spent five years in juniper Hill, a mental institution near Augusta.

She had come to work for Polly as part of a work-release program.

As far as Alan was concerned, she could not possibly have fallen in with better company, and Nettle’s steadily improving state of mind confirmed his opinion. Two years ago, Nettle had moved into her own little place on Ford Street, six blocks from downtown.

“Nettle’s got problems, all right,” Polly said, “but her reaction to Mr. Gaunt was nothing short of amazing. It really was awfully sweet.”

“I have to see this guy for myself,” Alan said.

“Tell me what you think. And check out those hazel eyes.”

“I doubt if they’ll cause the same reaction in me they seem to have caused in you,” Alan said dryly.

She laughed again, but this time he thought it sounded slightly forced.

“Try to get some sleep,” he said.

“I will. Thanks for calling, Alan.”

“Welcome.” He paused. “I love you, pretty lady.”

“Thank you, Alan-I love you, too. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

He racked the telephone, twisted the gooseneck of the desk lamp so it threw a spot of light on the wall, put his feet up on his desk, and brought his hands together in front of his chest, as if praying. He extended his index fingers. On the wall, a shadowrabbit poked up its ears. Alan slipped his thumbs between his extended fingers, and the shadow-rabbit wiggled its nose. Alan made the rabbit hop across the makeshift spotlight. What lumbered back was an elephant, wagging its trunk. Alan’s hands moved with a dextrous, eerie ease. He barely noticed the animals he was creating; this was an old habit with him, his way of looking at the tip of his nose and saying “Om.”

He was thinking about Polly; Polly and her poor hands. What to do about Polly?

If it had been just a matter of money, he would have had her checked into a room at the Mayo Clinic by tomorrow afternoonsigned, sealed, and delivered. He would have done it even if it meant wrapping her in a straitjacket and shooting her full of sedative But it wasn’t just a matter of money. Ultrasound as a treatment for degenerative arthritis was in its infancy. It might eventually turn out to be as effective as the Salk vaccine, or as bogus as the science of phrenology. Either way, it didn’t make sense right now. The chances were a thousand to one that it was a dry hole. It was not the loss of money he dreaded, but Polly’s dashed hopes.

A crow-as limber and lifelike as a crow in a Disney animated cartoon-flapped slowly across his framed Albany Police Academy graduation certificate. Its wings lengthened and it became a prehistoric pterodactyl, triangular head cocked as it cruised toward the filing cabinets in the corner and out of the spotlight.

The door opened. The doleful basset-hound face of Norris Ridgewick poked through. “I did it, Alan,” he said, sounding like a man confessing to the murder of several small children.

“Good, Norris,” Alan said. “You’re not going to get hit with the shit on this, either. I promise.”

Norris looked at him for a moment longer with his moist eyes, then nodded doubtfully. He glanced at the wall. “Do Buster, Alan.”

Alan grinned, shook his head, and reached for the lamp.

“Come on,” Norris coaxed. “I ticketed his damn car-I deserve it.

Do Buster, Alan. Please. That wipes me out.”

Alan glanced over Norris’s shoulder, saw no one, and curled one hand against the other. On the wall, a stout shadow-man stalked across the spotlight, belly swinging. He paused once to hitch up his to get her out there. shadow-pants in the back and then stalked on, head turning truculently from side to side.

Norris’s laughter was high and happy-the laughter of a child.

For one moment Alan was reminded forcibly of Todd, and then he shoved that away. There had been enough of that for one night, please God.

“Jeer, that slays me,” Norris said, still laughing. “You were born too late, Alan-you coulda had a career on The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“Go on,” Alan said. “Get out of here.”

Still laughing, Norris pulled the door closed.

Alan made Norris-skinny and a little self-important-walk across the wall, then snapped off the lamp and took a battered notebook from his back pocket. He thumbed through it until he found a blank page, and wrote Needful Things. Below that he jotted: Leland Gaunt, Cleveland, Ohio. Was that right? No. He scratched out Cleveland and wrote Akron. Maybe I really am losing my mind, he thought. On a third line he printed: Check it out.

He put his notebook back in his pocket, thought about going home, and turned on the lamp again instead. Soon the shadowparade was marching across the wall once more: lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

Like Sandburg’s fog, the depression crept back on small feline feet.

The voice began speaking about Annie and Todd again. After awhile, Alan Pangborn began to listen to it. He, did it against his will… but with growing absorption.

4

Polly was lying on her bed, and when she finished talking with Alan, she turned over on her left side to hang up the telephone. It fell out of her hand and crashed to the floor instead. The Princess phone’s base slid slowly across the nighttable, obviously meaning to join its other half She reached for it and her hand struck the edge of the table instead. A monstrous bolt of pain broke through the thin web the painkiller had stretched over her nerves and raced all the way up to her shoulder. She had to bite down on her lips to stifle a cry.

The telephone base fell off the edge of the table and crashed with a single cling! of the bell inside. She could hear the steady idiot buzz of the open line drifting up. It sounded like a hive of insects being broadcast via shortwave.

She thought of picking the telephone up with the claws which were now cradled on her chest, having to do it not by graspingtonight her fingers would not bend at all-but by pressing, like a woman playing the accordion, and suddenly it was too much, even something as simple as picking up a telephone which had fallen on the floor was too much, and she began to cry.

The pain was fully awake again, awake and raving, turning her hands-especially the one she had bumped-into fever-pits. She lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling through her blurry eyes, and wept.

Oh I would give anything to be free of this, she thought. I would give anything, anything, anything at all,

5

By ten o’clock on an autumn weeknight, Castle Rock’s Main Street was as tightly locked up as a Chubb safe. The streetlamps threw circles of white light on the sidewalk and the fronts of the business buildings in diminishing perspective, making downtown look like a deserted stage-set. Soon, you might think, a lone figure dressed in tails and a top-hat-Fred Astaire, or maybe Gene Kelly-would appear and dance his way from one of those spots to the next, singing about how lonely a fellow could be when his best girl had given him the air and all the bars were closed. Then, from the other end of Main Street, another figure would appear-Ginger Rogers or maybe Cyd Charisse-dressed in an evening gown. She would dance toward Fred (or Gene), singing about how lonely a gal could be when her best guy had stood her up.

They would see each other, pause artistically, and then dance together in front of the bank or maybe You Sew and Sew.

Instead, Hugh Priest hove into view.

He did not look like either Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, there was no girl at the far end of Main Street advancing toward a romantic chance meeting with him, and he most definitely did not dance. He did drink, however, and he had been drinking steadily in The Mellow Tiger since four that afternoon. At this point in the festivities just walking was a trick, and never mind any fancy dance-steps.

He walked slowly, passing through one pool of light after another, his shadow running tall across the fronts of the barber shop, the Western Auto, the video-rental shop. He was weaving slightly, his reddish eyes fixed stolidly in front of him, his large belly pushing out his sweaty blue tee-shirt (on the front was a drawing of a huge mosquito above the words MAINE STATE BIRD) in a long, sloping curve.

The Castle Rock Public Works pick-up truck he had been driving was still sitting at the rear of the Tiger’s dirt parking lot. Hugh Priest was the not-so-proud possessor of several D.U.I driving violations, and following the last one-which had resulted in a sixmonth suspension of his privilege to driv@that bastard Keeton, his co-bastards Fullerton and Samuels, and their co-bitch Williams had made it clear that they had reached the end of their patience with him. The next D.U.I would probably result in the permanent loss of his license, and would certainly result in the loss of his job.

This did not cause Hugh to stop drinking-no power on earth could do that-but it did cause him to form a firm resolution: no more drinking and driving. He was fifty-one years old, and that was a little late in life to be changing jobs, especially with a long drunkdriving rap-sheet following him around like a tin can tied to a dog’s tail.

That was why he was walking home tonight, and one fuck of a long walk it was, and there was a certain Public Works employee named Bobby Dugas who was going to have some tall explaining to do tomorrow, unless he wanted to go home with a few less teeth than he had come to work with.

As Hugh passed Nan’s Luncheonette, a light drizzle began to mist down. This did not improve his temper.

He had asked Bobby, who had to drive right past Hugh’s place on his way home every night, if he was going to drop down to the Tiger that evening for a few brewskis. Bobby Dugas had said, Why shore, Hubert-Bobby always called him Hubert, which was not his fucking name, and you could bet that shit was going to change, too, and soon. Why shore, Hubert, I’ll prob’ly be down around seven, same as always.

So Hugh, confident of a ride if he got a little too pixillated to drive, had pulled into the Tiger at just about five minutes of four (he’d knocked off a little early, al@nost an hour and a half early, actually, but what the hell, Deke Bradford hadn’t been around), and had waded right in. And come seven o’clock, guess what? No Bobby Dugas!

Golly-gosh-wow! Come eight and nine and ninethirty, guess further what? More of the same, by God!

At twenty to ten, Henry Beaufort, bartender and owner of The Mellow Tiger, had invited Hugh to put an egg in his shoe and beat it, to make like a tree and leave, to imitate an amoeba and split-in other words, to get the fuck out. Hugh had been outraged.

It was true he had kicked the jukebox, but the goddam Rodney Crowell record had been skipping again.

“What was I supposed to do, just sit here and listen to it?” he demanded of Henry. “You oughtta take that record off, that’s all.

Guy sounds like he’s havin a fuckin pepileptic fit.”

“You haven’t had enough, I can see that,” Henry said, “but you ve had all you’re going to get here. You’ll have to get the rest out of your own refrigerator.”

“What if I say no?” Hugh demanded.

“Then I call Sheriff Pangborn,” Henry said evenly.

The other patrons of the Tiger-there weren’t many this late on a weeknight-were watching this exchange with interest. Men were careful to be polite around Hugh Priest, especially when he was in his cups, but he was never going to win Castle Rock’s Most Popular Fella contest.

“I wouldn’t like to,” Henry continued, “but I will do it, Hugh.

I’m sick and tired of you kicking my Rock-Ola.”

Hugh considered saying, Then I guess I’ll just have to kick You a few times instead, you frog son of a bitch. Then he thought of that fat bastard Keeton, handing him a pink slip for kicking up dickens in the local tavern. Of course, if he really got fired the pink would come in the mail, it always did, pigs like Keeton never dirtied their hands (or risked a fat lip) by doing it in person, but it helped to think of that-it turned the dials down a little. And he did have a couple of six-packs at home, one in the fridge and the other in the woodshed.

“Okay,” he said. “I don’t need this action, anyway. Gimme my keys.” For he had turned them over to Henry, as a precaution, when he sat down at the bar six hours and eighteen beers ago.

“Nope.” Henry wiped his hands on a piece of towel and stared at Hugh unflinchingly.

“Nope? What the hell do you mean, nope?”

“I mean you’re too drunk to drive. I know it, and when you wake up tomorrow morning, you’re going to know it, too.”

“Listen,” Hugh said patiently. “When I gave you the goddam keys, I thought I had a ride home. Bobby Dugas said he was coming down for a few beers. It’s not my fault the numb fuck never showed.”

Henry sighed. “I sympathize with that, but it’s not my problem.

I could get sued if you wiped someone out. I doubt if that means much to you, but it does to me. I got to cover my ass, buddy. In this world, nobody else does it for you.”

Hugh felt resentment, self-pity, and an odd, inchoate wretched foul liquid seeping ness well to the surface of his mind like some up from a long-buried canister of toxic waste. He looked from his keys, hanging behind the bar next to the plaque which read IF YOU DON’T LIKE OUR TOWN LOOK FOR A TIME-TABLE, back to Henry. He was alarmed to find he was on the verge of tears.

Henry glanced past him at the few other customers currently in attendance. “Hey! Any of you yo-yos headed up Castle Hill?”

Men looked down at their tables and said nothing. One or two cracked their knuckles. Charlie Fortin sauntered toward the men’s room with elaborate slowness. No one answered.

“See?” Hugh said. “Come on, Henry, gimme my keys.”

Henry had shaken his head with slow finality. “If you want to come in here and do some drinking another time, you want to take a hike.”

“Okay, I will!” Hugh said. His voice was that of a pouty child on the verge of a temper tantrum. He crossed the floor with his head down and his hands balled into tight fists. He waited for someone to laugh. He almost hoped someone would. He would clean some house then, and fuck the job. But the place was silent except for Reba McEntire, who was whining something about Alabama.

“You can pick up your keys tomorrow!” Henry called after him.

Hugh said nothing. With a mighty effort he had restrained himself from putting one scuffed yellow workboot right through Henry Beaufort’s damned old Rock-Ola as he went by. Then, with his head down, he had passed out into darkness.

6

Now the mist had become a proper drizzle, and Hugh guessed The drizzle would develop into a steady, drenching rain by the time he reached home. It was just his luck. He walked steadily onward, not weaving quite so much now (the air had had a sobering effect on him), eyes moving restlessly from side to side. His mind was troubled, and he wished someone would come along and give him some lip. Even a little lip would do tonight. He thought briefly of the rday afternoon, and kid who had stepped in front of his truck yesterday wished sulkily that he had knocked the brat all the way across the street. it wouldn’t have been his fault, no way. In his day, kids had looked where they were going. e the Emporium Galorium had He passed the vacant lot wher Castle Rock Hardstood before it burned down, You Sew and Sew, ware… and then he was passing Needful Things. He glanced into the display window, looked back up Main Street (only a mile and a half to go, now, and maybe he would beat the rain before it really started to pelt down, after all), and then came to a sudden halt.

His feet had carried him past the new store, and he had to go back. There was a single light on above the window display, casting its soft glow down over the three items arranged there. The light also spilled out onto his face, and it worked a wondrous transformation there. Suddenly Hugh looked like a tired little boy up long past his bedtime, a little boy who has just seen what he wants for Christmas-what he must have for Christmas, because all at once nothing else on God’s green earth would do. The central object in the window was flanked by two fluted vases (Nettle Cobb’s beloved carnival glass, although Hugh didn’t know this and would not have cared if he did).

It was a fox-tail.

Suddenly it was 1955 again, he had ’Just gotten his license, and the Western Maine Schoolboy Championship he was driving to game-Castle Rock vs. Greenspark-in his dad’s ’53 Ford convertible. It was an unseasonably warm November day, warm enough to pull that old ragtop down and tack the tarp over it (if you were a bunch of hot-blooded kids ready, willing, and able to raise some eter Do on N E E I N G S Cabin whiskey, Perry Como was on the had brought a flask of Log. ting behind the white wheel, and fluttering radio, Hugh Prie,t was sit just like from the radio antenna had been a long, - luxuriant fox-tail,) as now looking at in the window of this store. the one he wanta’l and thinkHe remembered looking up at that fluttering fox is own, he was going to ing that, when he owned a convertible of his have one just like that- sing the flask when it came around to He remembered refu 1 him.

He was driving, and you didn’t drink while you were driving, be cause you were responsible for the lives of others. And he remem I remembered one other thing, as well: the certainty that he was living the best hour of the best day of his life. Its clarity and total e memory surprised and hurt him in 1

sensory recall-smoky aroma of burning leaves, November sun twinkling on guardrail reflectors, and now, looking at the fox-tail in the display window of Needful Things, it struck him that it had been the best day of his life, one of the last days before the booze him into had caught him firmly in its rubbery, pliant grip, turning 1

I a weird variation of King Midas: everything he had touched since then, it seemed, had turned to shit.

He suddenly thought: I could change.

This idea had its own arresting clarity.

I could start over.

Were such things possible?

Yes, I think sometimes they are. I could buy that fox-tail and tie it on the antenna of my Buick.

They’d laugh, though. The guys’d laugh.

What guys? Henry Beaufort.;, That little Pissant Bobby Dugas.’ So what… ’ Fuck em. Buy that fox-tail, tie it to the antenna, and drive Drive where?

Well, how about that Thursday-night A.A. meeting over in Greens Park for a start.@ For a moment the possibility stunned and excited him, the way a long-term prisoner might be stunned and excited by the sight of the key left in the lock of his jail cell by a careless warder. For a moment he could actually see himself doing it, picking up a wite chip, then a red chip, then a blue chip, getting sober day by day and month by month. No more Mellow Tiger. Too bad. But also no more paydays spent in terror that he would find a pink slip in his envelope along with his check, and that was not so too bad.

In that moment, as he stood looking at the fox-tail in the display window of Needful Things, Hugh could see a future. For the first time in years he could see a future, and that beautiful orange foxbrush with its white tip floated through it like a battle-flag.

Then reality crashed back in, and reality smelled like rain and damp, dirty clothes. There would be no fox-tail for him, no A.A. meetings, no chips, no future. He was fifty-one fucking years old, and fifty-one was too old for dreams of the future. At fifty-one you had to keep running just to escape the avalanche of your own past.

If it had been business hours, though, he would have taken a shot at it, anyway. Damned if he wouldn’t. He’d walk in there, just as big as billy-be-damned, and ask how much was that fox-tail in the window.

But it was ten o’clock, Main Street was locked up as tight as an ice-queen’s chastity belt, and when he woke up tomorrow morning, feeling as if someone had planted an icepick between his eyes, he would have forgotten all about that lovely fox-tail, with its vibrant russet color.

Still, he lingered a moment longer, trailing dirty, callused fingers over the glass like a kid looking into a toyshop window. A little smile had touched the corners of his mouth. It was a gentle smile, and it looked out of place on Hugh Priest’s face. Then, somewhere up on Castle View, a car backed off several times, sounds as sharp as shotgun blasts on the rainy air, and Hugh was startled back to himself.

Fuck it. What the hell are you thinking of?

He turned away from the window and pointed his face toward home again-if you wanted to call the two-room shack with the tacked-on woodshed where he lived home. As he passed under the canopy, he looked at the door… and stopped again.

The sign there, of course, read

Like a man in a dream, Hugh put his hand out and tried the knob.

It turned freely under his hand. Overhead, a small silver bell tinkled. The sound seemed to come from an impossible distance away.

A man was standing in the middle of the shop. He was running a feather-duster over the top of a display case and humming. He turned toward Hugh when the bell rang. He didn’t seem a bit surprised to see someone standing in his doorway at ten minutes past ten on a Wednesday night. The only thing that struck Hugh about the man in that confused moment was his eyes-they were as black as an Indian’s.

“You forgot to turn your sign over, buddy,” Hugh heard himself say.

“No, indeed,” the man replied politely. “I don’t sleep very well, I’m afraid, and some nights I take a fancy to open late. One never knows when a fellow such as yourself may stop by… and take a fancy to something. Would you like to come in and look around?”

Hugh Priest came in and closed the door behind him.

7

“There’s a fox-tail-” Hugh began, then had to stop, clear his throat, and start again. The words had come out in a husky, unintelligible mutter. “There’s a fox-tail in the window.”

“Yes,” the proprietor said. “Beauty, isn’t it?” He held the duster in front of him now, and his Indian-black eyes looked at Hugh with interest from above the bouquet of feathers which hid his lower face. Hugh couldn’t see the guy’s mouth, but he had an idea he was smiling. It usually made him uneasy when people-especially people he didn’t know-smiled at him. It made him feel like he wanted to fight.

Tonight, however, it didn’t seem to bother him at all. Maybe because he was still half-shot.

“It is,” Hugh agreed. “It is a beauty. My dad had a convertible with a fox-tail just like that tied to the antenna, back when I was a kid. There’s a lot of people in this crummy little burg wouldn’t believe I ever was a kid, but I was. Same as everyone else.”

“Of course.” The man’s eyes remained fixed on Hugh’s, and the strangest thing was happening-they seemed to be growing. Hugh couldn’t seem to pull his own eyes away from them. Too much direct eye-contact was another thing which usually made him feel like he wanted to fight.

But this also seemed perfectly okay tonight.

“I used to think that fox-tail was just about the coolest thing in the world.”

“Of course.”

“Cool-that was the word we u:ed back then. None of this rad shit.

And gnarly-I don’t have the slightest fuckin idea what that means, do you?”

But the proprietor of Needful Things was silent, simply standing there, watching Hugh Priest with his black Indian eyes over the foliage of his feather-duster.

“Anyway, I want to buy it. Will you sell it to me?”

“Of course,” Leland Gaunt said for the third time.

Hugh felt relief and a sudden, sprawling happiness. He was suddenly sure everything was going to be all right-everything. This was utterly crazy; he owed money to just about everyone in Castle Rock and the surrounding three towns, he had been on the ragged edge of losing his job for the last six months, his Buick was running on a wing and a prayer-but it was also undeniable.

“How much?” he asked. He suddenly wondered if he would be able to afford such a fine brush, and felt a touch of panic. What if it was out of his reach? Worse, what if he scrounged up the money somehow tomorrow, or the day after that, only to find the guy had sold it?

“Well, that depends.”

“Depends? Depends on what?”

“On how much you’re willing to pay.”

Like a man in a dream, Hugh pulled his battered Lord Burton out of his back pocket.

“Put that away, Hugh.”

Did I tell him my name?

Hugh couldn’t remember, but he put the wallet away.

“Turn out your pockets. Right here, on top of this case.”

Hugh turned out his pockets. He put his pocket-knife, a roll of Certs, his Zippo lighter, and about a dollar-fifty in tobaccosprinkled change on top of the case. The coins clicked on the glass.

The man bent forward and studied the pile. “That looks about right,” he remarked, and brushed the feather-duster over the meager collection. When he removed it again, the knife, the lighter, and the Certs were still there. The coins were gone.

Hugh observed this with no surprise at all. He stood as silently as a toy with dead batteries while the tall man went to the display window and came back with the fox-brush. He laid it on top of the cabinet beside Hugh’s shrunken pile of pocket paraphernalia.

Slowly, Hugh stretched out one hand and stroked the fur. it felt cold and rich; it crackled with silky static electricity.

Stroking it was like stroking a clear autumn night.

“Nice?” the tall man asked.

“Nice,” Hugh agreed distantly, and made to pick up the foxtail.

“Don’t do that,” the tall man said sharply, and Hugh’s hand fell away at once. He looked at Gaunt with a hurt so deep it was grief.

“We’re not done dickering yet.”

“No,” Hugh agreed. I’m hypnotized, he thought. Damned if the guy hasn’t hypnotized me. But it didn’t matter. It was, in fact, sort of… nice.

He reached for his wallet again, moving as slowly as a man under water.

“Leave that alone, you ass,” Mr. Gaunt said impatiently, and laid his feather-duster aside.

Hugh’s hand dropped to his side again.

“Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallets?” the man asked querulously.

“I don’t know,” Hugh said. He had never considered the idea before. “It does seem a little silly.”

“Worse,” Gaunt snapped. His voice had taken on the nagging, slightly uneven cadences of a man who is either very tired or very angry. He was tired; it had been a long, demanding day. Much had been accomplished, but the work was still just barely begun. “It’s much worse. It’s criminally stupid! Do you know something, Hugh?

The world is full of needy people who don’t understand that everything, everything, is for sale… if you’re willing to pay the price.

They give lip-service to the concept, that’s all, and pride themselves on their healthy cynicism. Well, lip-service is bushwah!

Absolute… bushwah!”

“Bushwah,” Hugh agreed mechanically.

“For the things people really need, Hugh, the wallet is no answer.

The fattest wallet in this town isn’t worth the sweat from a working man’s armpit. Absolute bushwah! And souls! If I had a nickel, Hugh, for every time I ever heard someone say I’d sell my soul for thusand-such,’ I could buy the Empire State Building!” He leaned closer and now his lips stretched back from his uneven teeth in a huge unhealthy grin. “Tell me this, Hugh: what in the name of all the beasts crawling under the earth would I want with your soul?”

“Probably nothing.” His voice seemed far away. His voice seemed to be coming from the bottom of a deep, dark cave. “I don’t think it’s in very good shape these days.”

Mr. Gaunt suddenly relaxed and straightened up. “Enough of these lies and half-truths. Hugh, do you know a woman named Nettle Cobb?”

“Crazy Nettle? Everyone in town knows Crazy Nettle. She killed her husband.”

“So they say. Now listen to me, Hugh. Listen carefully. Then you can take your fox-tail and go home.”

Hugh Priest listened carefully.

Outside it was raining harder, and the wind had begun to blow.

8

“Brian!” Miss Ratcliffe said sharply. “Why, Brian Rusk! I wouldn’t have believed it of you! Come up here! Right now!”

He was sitting in the back row of the basement room where the speech therapy classes were held, and he had done something wrong-terribly wrong, by the sound of Miss Ratcliffe’s voice-but he didn’t know what it was until he stood up. Then he saw that he was naked. A horrible wave of shame swept over him, but he felt excited, too. When he looked down at his penis and saw it starting to stiffen, he felt both alarmed and thrilled.

“Come up here, I said!”

He advanced slowly to the front of the room while the others@ally Meyers, Donny Frankel, Nome Martin, and poor old half-bright Slopey Dodd-goggled at him.

MISS Ratcliffe stood i’n front of her desk, hands on hips, eyes blazing, a gorgeous cloud of dark-auburn hair floating around her head.

“You’re a bad boy, Brian-a very bad boy.”

He nodded his head dumbly, but his penis was raising ITS head, and so it seemed there was at least one part of him that did not mind being bad at all. That in fact RELISHED being bad.

She put a piece of chalk in his hand. He felt a small holt of electricity when their hands touched. “Now,” Miss Ratcliffe said severely, “You must write I WILL FINISH PAYING FOR MY SANDY KOUFAX CARD five hundred times on the blackboard. “Yes, Miss Ratcliffe. “He began to write, standing on tiptoe to reach the top of the board, aware of warm air on his naked buttocks.

He had finished WILL FINISH PAYING when he felt Miss Ratcliffe’s smooth, soft hand encircle his stiff penis and begin to tug on it gently. For a moment he thought he would faint dead away, it felt so good.

“Keep writing, “she said grimly from behind him, “and I’ll keep on doing this.”

“M-Miss Rub-Rub-Ratcliffe, what about my t-tongue exercises?”

asked Slopey Dodd.

“Shut up or I’ll run you over in the parking lot, Slopey, “Miss

Ratcliffe said. “I’ll make you squeak, little buddy.”

She went on pulling Brian’s pudding while she spoke. He was moaning now. It was wrong, he knew that, but it felt good. It felt most sincerely awesome. It felt like what he needed. just the thing.

Then he turned around and it wasn’t Miss Ratcliffe standing at his shoulder but Wilma jerzyck with her large round pallid face and her deep brown eyes, like two raisins pounded deep into a wad of dough.

“He’ll take it back if you don’t pay,” Wilma said. “And that’s not all, little buddy. Hell-”

9

Brian Rusk woke up with such a jerk that he almost fell out of bed and onto the floor. His body was covered with sweat, his heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and his penis was a small, hard branch inside his pajama trousers.

He sat up, shivering all over. His first impulse was to open his mouth and yell for his mother, as he had done when he was small and a nightmare had invaded his sleep. Then he realized that he wasn’t small anymore, he was eleven… and it wasn’t exactly the sort of dream you told your mother about, anyway, was it?

He lay back, eyes wide and staring into the dark. He glanced at the digital clock on the table next to the bed and saw it was four minutes past midnight. He could hear the sound of rain, hard now, pelting against his bedroom window, driven by huge, whooping gasps of wind. It sounded almost like sleet.

My card. My Sandy Koufax card it’s gone. it wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t, but he also knew he would not be able to go back to sleep until he’d checked to make sure it was still there, in the looseleaf binder where he kept his growing collection of Topps cards from 1956. He had checked it before leaving for school yesterday, had done so again when he got home, and last night, after supper, he had broken off playing pass in the back yard with Stanley Dawson to check on it once more. He had told Stanley he had to go to the bathroom. He had peeked at it one final time before crawling into bed and turning out the light. He recognized that it had become a kind of obsession with him, but recognition did not put a stop to it.

He slipped out of bed, barely noticing the way the cool air brought out goosebumps on his hot body and made his penis wilt.

He walked quietly across to his dresser. He left the shape of his own body behind him on the sheet which covered his mattress, printed in sweat. The big book lay on top of the dresser in a pool of white light thrown by the streetlamp outside.

He took it down, opened it, and paged rapidly through the sheets of clear plastic with the pockets you put the cards in. He passed Mel Parnell, Whitey Ford, and Warren Spahn-treasures over which he had once crowed mightily-with hardly a glance. He had a moment of terrible panic when he reached the sheets at the back of the book, the ones which were still empty, without seeing Sandy Koufax. Then he realized he had turned several pages at once in his hurry. He turned back, and yes, there he was-that narrow face, those faintly smiling, dedicated eyes looking out from beneath the bill of the cap.

To my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax.

His fingers traced over the sloping lines of the inscription. His lips moved. He felt at peace again… or almost at peace. The card wasn’t really his yet. This was just sort of a… a trial run. There was something he had to do before it would really be his. Brian wasn’t completely sure what it was, but he knew it had something to do with the dream from which he had just wakened, and he was confident that he would know when the time (tomorrow? later today?) came.

He closed the looseleaf binder-BRIAN’s COLLECTION DO NOT TOUCH!

carefully printed on the file card Scotch-taped to the front-and returned it to the dresser. Then he went back to bed.

Only one thing about having the Sandy Koufax card was troubling.

He had wanted to show it to his father. Coming home from Needful Things, he had imagined just how it would be when he showed it to him.

He, Brian, elaborately casual: Hey, Dad, I picked up a ’56 today at the new store. Want to check it out? His dad would say okay, not really interested, just going along with Brian to his room to keep Brian happy-but how his eyes would light up when he saw what Brian had lucked into! And when he saw the inscription-!

Yes, he would be amazed and delighted, all right. He’d probably clap Brian on the back and give him a high-five.

But then what?

Then the questions would start, that was what… and that was the problem. His father would want to know, first, where he had gotten the card, and second, where he had gotten the money to buy such a card, which was (a.) rare, (b.) in excellent condition, and (c.) autographed.

The printed signature on the card read Sanford Koufax, which was the fabled fastball pitcher’s real name. The autographed signature read Sandy Koufax, and in the weird and sometimes high-priced world of baseball trading-card collectors, that meant fair market value might be as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.

In his mind, Brian tried out one possible answer.

I got it at the new store, Dad-Needful Things. The guy gave it to me at a really WICKED discount… he said it would make people more interested in coming to his store if they knew he kept his prices down, This was good as far as it went, but even a kid still a year too young to pay the full adult price of admission at the movies knew it didn’t go far enough. When you said somebody had given you a really good deal on something, people were always interested. Too interested.

Oh yeah? How much did he knock off Th’ per cent? Forty? Did @if? 1 rty he give i’t to you for half price? Thatd still be sixty or seventy bucks, Brian, and I KNOW you don’t have that kind of money just laying around in your piggy-bank.

Well… actually it was a little less than that, Dad.

Okay, tell me. How much did you pay?

Well… eighty-five cents.

He sold you a 1956 autographed Sandy Koufax baseball card, i’n uncirculated condition, for eighty-five cents?

Yeah, that’s where the real trouble would start, all right.

What kind of trouble? He didn’t know, exactly, but there would be a stink, he was sure of that. Somehow he would get blamed maybe by his dad, but by his mom for sure.

They might even try to make him give it back, and there was no way he was going to give it back. It wasn’t just signed; it was signed to Brian.

No way.

Hell, he hadn’t even been able to show Stan Dawson when Stan came over to play pass, although he’d wanted to-Stan would have fudged his jockeys. But Stan was going to sleep over on Friday night, and it was all too easy for Brian to imagine him saying to Brian’s dad: So howd you like Brian’s Sandy Koufax card, Mr. Rusk.-’ Pretty rad, huh? The same went for his other friends. Brian had uncovered one of the great truths of small towns: many secretsin fact, all the really important secrets-cannot be shared. Because word has a way of getting around, and getting around fast.

He found himself in a strange and uncomfortable position. He had come by a great thing and could not show or share it. This should have vitiated his pleasure in his new acquisition, and it did, to some extent, but it also afforded him a furtive, niggardly satisfaction. He found himself not so much enjoying the card as gloating over it, and so he had uncovered another great truth: gloating in private provides its own peculiar pleasure. It was as if one corner of his mostly open and goodhearted nature had been walled off and then lit with a special black light that both distorted and enhanced what was hidden there.

And he was not going to give it up.

No way, uh-uh, negatory.

Then you better finish paying for it, a voice deep in his mind whispered.

He would. No problem there. He didn’t think the thing he was supposed to do was exactly nice, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t anything totally gross, either. just a… a… just a prank, a voice whispered in his mind, and he saw the eyes of Mr. Gaunt-dark blue, like the sea on a clear day, and strangely soothing. That’s all. just a little prank.

Yeah, just a prank, whatever it was.

No problem.

He settled deeper under his goosedown quilt, turned over on his side, closed his eyes, and immediately began to doze.

Something occurred to him as he and his brother sleep drew closer to each other. Something Mr. Gaunt had said. You will be a better advertisement than the local paper could ever THINK of being!

Only he couldn’t show the wonderful card he had bought. If a little thought had made that obvious to him, an eleven-year-old kid who wasn’t even bright enough to keep out of Hugh Priest’s way when he was crossing the street, shouldn’t a smart guy like Mr. Gaunt have seen it, too?

Well, maybe. But maybe not. Grownups didn’t think the same as normal people, and besides, he had the card, didn’t he? And it was in his book, right where it should be, wasn’t it?

The answer to both questions was yes, and so Brian let go of the whole thing an went back to sleep as the rain pelted against his window and the restless fall wind screamed in the angles beneath the eaves.