Needful Things (50 page)

Also, some of them might covet it.

He put the stem between his teeth, marvelling again at how perfectly right it felt there, how perfectly
in its place.
He tilted down the rearview mirror for a moment so he could see himself, and approved completely of what he saw. He thought the pipe made him look older, wiser, handsomer. And when he had the pipe clenched between his teeth, the bowl pointed up a bit at just the right debonair angle, he
felt
older, wiser, handsomer.

He drove down Main Street, meaning to cross the Tin Bridge between the town and the country, and then slowed as he approached Needful Things. The green awning tugged at him like a fishhook. It suddenly seemed very important—imperative, in fact—that he stop.

He pulled in, started to get out of the car, then remembered that the pipe was still clenched between his teeth. He took it out (feeling a small pang of regret as he did so) and locked it in the glove compartment again. This time he actually reached the sidewalk before returning to the Plymouth to lock all four doors. With a nice pipe like that, it didn't do to take chances. Anybody might be tempted to steal a nice pipe like that. Anybody at all.

He approached the shop and then stopped, feeling disappointed. A sign hung in the window.

CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY

it read.

Everett was about to turn away when the door opened. Mr. Gaunt stood there, looking resplendent and quite debonair himself in a fawn-colored jacket with elbow patches and charcoal-gray pants.

“Come in, Mr. Frankel,” he said. “I'm glad to see you.”

“Well, I'm on my way out of town—business—and I thought I'd
just stop and tell you again how much I like my pipe. I've always wanted one just like that.”

Beaming, Mr. Gaunt said, “I know.”

“But I see you're closed, so I won't bother y—”

“I am never closed to my favorite customers, Mr. Frankel, and I put you among that number.
High
among that number. Step in.” And he held out his hand.

Everett shrank away from it. Leland Gaunt laughed cheerfully at this and stepped aside so the young Physician's Assistant could enter.

“I really can't stay—” Everett began, but he felt his feet carry him forward into the gloom of the shop as if they knew better.

“Of course not,” Mr. Gaunt said. “The healer must be about his appointed rounds, releasing the chains of illness which bind the body and . . .” His grin, a thing of raised eyebrows and clenched, jostling teeth, sprang forth. “. . . and driving out those devils which bind the spirit. Am I right?”

“I guess so,” Everett said. He felt a pang of unease as Mr. Gaunt closed the door. He hoped his pipe would be all right. Sometimes people broke into cars. Sometimes they did that even in broad daylight.

“Your pipe will be fine,” Mr. Gaunt soothed. From his pocket he drew a plain envelope with one word written across the front. The word was
Lovey.
“Do you remember promising to play a little prank for me, Dr. Frankel?”

“I'm not a doc—”

Mr. Gaunt's eyebrows drew together in a way that made Everett cease and desist at once. He took half a step backward.

“Do
you remember or
don't
you?” Mr. Gaunt asked sharply. “You'd better answer me quickly, young man—I'm not as sure of that pipe as I was a moment ago.”

“I remember!” Everett said. His voice was hasty and alarmed. “Sally Ratcliffe! The speech teacher!”

The bunched center of Mr. Gaunt's more or less single eyebrow relaxed. Everett Frankel relaxed with it. “That's right. And the time has come to play that little prank, Doctor. Here.”

He held out the envelope. Everett took it, being careful that his fingers should not touch Mr. Gaunt's as he did so.

“Today is a school holiday, but the young Miss Ratcliffe is in her office, updating her files,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I know that's not on your way to the Burgmeyer farm—”

“How do you know so
much?
” Everett asked in a dazed voice.

Mr. Gaunt waved this away impatiently. “—but you might make time to go by on your way back, yes?”

“I suppose—”

“And since outsiders at a school, even when the students aren't there, are regarded with some suspicion, you might explain your presence by dropping in at the school nurse's office, yes?”

“If she's there, I guess I could do that,” Everett said. “In fact, I really should, because—”

“—you still haven't picked up the vaccination records,” Mr. Gaunt finished for him. “That's fine. As a matter of fact she
won't
be there, but
you
don't know that, do you? Just poke your head into her office, then leave. But on your way in or your way out, I want you to put that envelope in the car Miss Ratcliffe has borrowed from her young man. I want you to put it under the driver's seat . . . but not
entirely
under. I want you to leave it with just a corner sticking out.”

Everett knew perfectly well who “Miss Ratcliffe's young man” was: the high school Physical Education instructor. Given a choice, Everett would have preferred playing the trick on Lester Pratt rather than on his fiancée. Pratt was a beefy young Baptist who usually wore blue tee-shirts and blue sweat-pants with a white stripe running down the outside of each leg. He was the sort of fellow who exuded sweat and Jesus from his pores in apparently equal (and copious) amounts. Everett didn't care much for him. He wondered vaguely if Lester had slept with Sally yet—she was quite the dish. He thought the answer was probably no. He further thought that when Lester got het up after a little too much necking on the porch swing, Sally probably had him do sit-ups in the back yard or run a few dozen wind-sprints around the house.

“Sally has got the Prattmobile again?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said, a trifle testily. “Are you done being witty, Dr. Frankel?”

“Sure,” he said. In truth, he felt a surprisingly deep sense of relief. He had been a little worried about the “prank” Mr. Gaunt wanted him to play. Now he saw that his worry had been foolish. It wasn't as if Mr. Gaunt wanted him to stick a firecracker in the lady's shoe or put Ex-Lax in her chocolate milk or anything like that. What harm could an envelope do?

Mr. Gaunt's smile, sunny and resplendent, burst forth once again. “Very good,” he said. He came toward Everett, who observed with horror that Mr. Gaunt apparently meant to put an arm around him.

Everett moved hastily backward. In this way, Mr. Gaunt maneuvered him back to the front door and opened it.

“Enjoy that pipe,” he said. “Did I tell you that it once belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes?”

“No!” Everett Frankel exclaimed.

“Of course I didn't,” Mr. Gaunt said, grinning. “That would have been a lie . . . and I never lie in matters of business, Dr. Frankel. Don't forget your little errand.”

“I won't.”

“Then I'll wish you a good day.”

“Same to y—”

But Everett was talking to no one. The door with its drawn shade had already been closed behind him.

He looked at it for a moment, then walked slowly back to his Plymouth. If he had been asked for an exact account of what he had said to Mr. Gaunt and what Mr. Gaunt had said to him, he would have made a poor job of it, because he couldn't exactly remember. He felt like a man who has been given a whiff of light anaesthetic.

Once he was sitting behind the wheel again, the first thing Everett did was unlock the glove compartment, put the envelope with
Lovey
written on the front in, and take the pipe out. One thing he
did
remember was Mr. Gaunt's teasing him, saying that A. Conan Doyle had once owned the pipe. And he had almost believed him. How silly! You only had to put it in your mouth and clamp your teeth on
the stem to know better. The original owner of this pipe had been Hermann Göring.

Everett Frankel started his car and drove slowly out of town. And on his way to the Burgmeyer farm, he had to pull over to the side of the road only twice to admire how much that pipe improved his looks.

Albert Gendron kept his dental offices in the Castle Building, a graceless brick structure which stood across the street from the town's Municipal Building and the squat cement pillbox that housed the Castle County Water District. The Castle Building had thrown its shadow over Castle Stream and the Tin Bridge since 1924, and housed three of the county's five lawyers, an optometrist, an audiologist, several independent realtors, a credit consultant, a one-woman answering service, and a framing shop. The half dozen other offices in the building were currently vacant.

Albert, who had been one of Our Lady of Serene Waters' stalwarts since the days of old Father O'Neal, was getting on now, his once-black hair turning salt-and-pepper, his broad shoulders sloping in a way they never had in his young days, but he was still a man of imposing size—at six feet, seven inches tall and two hundred and eighty pounds, he was the biggest man in town, if not the entire county.

He climbed the narrow staircase to the fourth and top floor slowly, stopping on the landings to catch his breath before going on up, mindful of the heart-murmur Dr. Van Allen said he now had. Halfway up the final flight, he saw a sheet of paper taped to the frosted glass panel of his office door, obscuring the lettering which read
ALBERT GENDRON D.D.S.

He was able to read the salutation on this note while he was still five steps from the top, and his heart began to pound harder, murmur or no murmur. Only it wasn't exertion causing it to kick up its heels; it was rage.

LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER!
was printed at the top of the sheet in bright red Magic Marker.

Albert pulled the note from the door and read it quickly. He breathed through his nose as be did so—harsh, snorting exhalations that made him sound like a bull about to charge.

LISTEN UP YOU MACKEREL-SNAPPER!

We have tried to reason with you—“Let him hear who hath understanding”—but it has been no use.
YOU ARE SET ON YOUR COURSE OF DAMNATION AND BY THEIR WORKS SHALT YOU KNOW THEM
. We have put up with your Popish idolatry and even with your licentious worship of the Babylon Whore. But now you have gone too far.
THERE WILL BE NO DICING WITH THE DEVIL IN CASTLE ROCK
!

Decent Christians can smell
HELLFIRE
and
BRIMSTONE
in Castle Rock this fall. If you cannot it is because your nose has been stuffed shut by your own sin and degradation.
HEAR OUR WARNING AND HEED IT: GIVE UP YOUR PLAN TO TURN THIS TOWN INTO A DEN OF THIEVES AND GAMBLERS OR YOU
WILL
SMELL THE HELLFIRE! YOU
WILL
SMELL THE BRIMSTONE!

“The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Psalm 9:17.

HEAR AND HEED, OR YOUR CRIES OF LAMENTATION WILL BE LOUD INDEED
.

THE CONCERNED BAPTIST MEN OF CASTLE ROCK

“Shit on toast,” Albert said at last, and crumpled the note into one ham-sized fist. “That idiotic little Baptist shoe-salesman has finally gone out of his mind.”

His first order of business after opening his office was to call Father John and tell him the game might be getting a little rougher between now and Casino Nite.

“Don't worry, Albert,” Father Brigham said calmly. “If the idiot bumps us, he's going to find out how hard we mackerel-snappers can bump back . . . am I right?”

“Right you are, Father,” Albert said. He was still
holding the crumpled note in one hand. Now he looked down at it and an unpleasant little smile surfaced below his walrus moustache. “Right you are.”

By quarter past ten that morning, the digital read-out in front of the bank announced the temperature in Castle Rock as seventy-seven degrees. On the far side of the Tin Bridge, the unseasonably hot sun produced a bright twinkle, a daystar at the place where Route 117 came over the horizon and headed toward town. Alan Pangborn was in his office, going over reports on the Cobb-Jerzyck murders, and did not see that reflection of sun on metal and glass. It wouldn't have interested him much if he had—it was, after all, only an approaching car. Nevertheless, the savagely bright twinkle of chrome and glass, heading toward the bridge at better than seventy miles an hour, heralded the arrival of a significant part of Alan Pangborn's destiny . . . and that of the whole town.

In the show window of Needful Things, the sign reading

CLOSED COLUMBUS DAY

was taken down by a long-fingered hand which emerged from the sleeve of a fawn sport-jacket. A new sign went up in its place. This one read

HELP WANTED
.

The car was still doing fifty in a zone posted for twenty-five when it crossed the bridge. It was a unit the high school kids would have regarded with awe and envy: a lime-green Dodge Challenger that had been jacked in the back so the nose pointed toward the road. Through the smoked-glass windows, one could dimly make out the roll-bar which
arched across the roof between the front and back seats. The rear end was covered with stickers:
HEARST, FUELLY, FRAM, QUAKER STATE, GOODYEAR WIDE OVALS
,
RAM CHARGER.
The straight-pipes burbled contentedly, fat on the ninety-six-octane fuel which could be purchased only at Oxford Plains Speedway once you got north of Portland.

It slowed a little at the intersection of Main and Laurel, then pulled into one of the slant-parking spaces in front of The Clip Joint with a low squeal of tires. There was no one in the shop getting a haircut just then; both Bill Fullerton and Henry Gendron, his number-two barber, were seated in the customers' chairs under the old Brylcreem and Wildroot Creme Oil signs. They had shared the morning paper out between them. As the driver gunned his engine briefly, causing exhaust to crackle and bang through the pipes, both looked up.