Needful Things (65 page)

“Oh Mr. Gaunt,” she wailed, “every time I close my eyes everything goes all
purple!
What am I going to
do?”

Mr. Gaunt said nothing for a moment. He only looked at her, fixing her with his eyes until she grew calm and distant.

“Is that better?” he asked finally.

“Yes!” she replied in a faint, relieved voice. “I believe I can see the blue again . . .”

“But you're too upset to even
think
about shopping.”

“Yes . . .”

“Considering what that bitch did to you.”

“Yes . . .”

“She ought to pay.”

“Yes.”

“If she ever tries anything like that again, she
will
pay.”

“Yes!”

“I may have just the thing. Sit right there, Mrs. Potter. I'll be back in a jiffy. In the meantime, think blue thoughts.”

“Blue,” she agreed dreamily.

When Mr. Gaunt returned, he put one of the automatic pistols Ace had brought back from Cambridge into Lenore Potter's hands. It was fully loaded and gleamed a greasy blue-black under the display lights.

Lenore raised the gun to eye level. She looked at it with deep pleasure and even deeper relief.

“Now, I would never urge anyone to shoot anyone else,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Not without a very good
reason,
at least. But you sound like a woman who might
have
a very good reason, Mrs. Potter. Not the flowers—we both know they are not the important thing. Flowers are replaceable. But your karma . . . your
calava
 . . . well, what else do we—any of us—really have?” And he laughed deprecatingly.

“Nothing,” she agreed, and pointed the automatic at the wall. “Pow. Pow, pow, pow. That's for you, you envying little roundheels trollop. I hope your husband ends up town garbage collector. It's what he deserves. It's what you
both
deserve.”

“You see that little lever there, Mrs. Potter?” He pointed it out to her.

“Yes, I see it.”

“That's the safety catch. If the bitch should come over again, trying to do more damage, you'd want to push that first. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes,” Lenore said in her sleeper's voice. “I understand perfectly. Ka
-pow.”

“No one would blame you. After all, a woman has to protect her property. A woman has to protect her karma. The Bonsaint creature probably won't come again, but if she does . . .”

He looked at her meaningfully.

“If she does, it will be for the last time.” Lenore raised the short barrel of the automatic to her lips and kissed it softly.

“Now put that in your purse,” Mr. Gaunt said, “and get on home. Why, for all you know, she could be in your yard right now. In fact, she could be in your house.”

Lenore looked alarmed at this. Thin threads of sinister purple began to twist and twine through her blue aura. She got up, stuffing the automatic into her purse. Mr. Gaunt looked away from her and she blinked her eyes rapidly several times as soon as he did.

“I'm sorry, but I'll have to look at Howdy Doody another time, Mr. Gaunt. I think I'd better go home. For all I know, that Bonsaint woman could be in my yard right
now, while I'm here. She might even be in my
house!”

“What a terrible idea,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“Yes, but property is a responsibility—it must be protected. We have to face these things, Mr. Gaunt. How much do I owe you for the . . . the . . .” But she could not remember exactly what it was he had sold her, although she was sure she would very soon now. She gestured vaguely at her purse instead.

“No charge to you. Those are on special today. Think of it as . . .” His smile widened. “. . . as a free get-acquainted gift.”

“Thank you,” Lenore said. “I feel ever so much better.”

“As always,” said Mr. Gaunt with a little bow, “I am glad to have been of service.”

Norris Ridgewick was not fishing.

Norris Ridgewick was looking in Hugh Priest's bedroom window.

Hugh lay on his bed in a loose heap, snoring at the ceiling. He wore only a pair of pee-stained boxer shorts. Clutched in his big, knuckly hands was a matted piece of fur. Norris couldn't be sure—Hugh's hands were very big and the window was very dirty—but he thought it was an old moth-eaten fox-tail. It didn't matter what it was, anyway; what mattered was that Hugh was asleep.

Norris walked back down the lawn to where his personal car stood parked behind Hugh's Buick in the driveway. He opened the passenger door and leaned in. His fishing creel was sitting on the floor. The Bazun rod was in the back seat—he found he felt better,
safer,
if he kept it with him.

It was still unused. The truth was just this simple: he was
afraid
to use it. He had taken it out on Castle Lake yesterday, all fitted up and ready to go . . . and then had hesitated just before making his first cast, with the rod cocked back over his shoulder.

What if,
he thought,
a really big fish takes the lure? Smokey, for instance?

Smokey was an old brown trout, the stuff of legend among the fisherpeople of Castle Rock. He was reputed to be over two feet long, wily as a weasel, strong as a stoat, tough as nails. According to the oldtimers, Smokey's jaw bristled with the steel of anglers who had hooked him . . . but had been unable to hold him.

What if he snaps the rod?

It seemed crazy to believe that a lake-trout, even a big one like Smokey (if Smokey actually existed), could snap a Bazun rod, but Norris supposed it was possible . . . and the way his luck had been running just lately, it might really happen. He could hear the brittle snap in his head, could feel the agony of seeing the rod in two pieces, one of them in the bottom of the boat and the other floating alongside. And once a rod was broken, it was Katy bar the door—there wasn't a thing you could do with it except throw it away.

So he had ended up using the old Zebco after all. There had been no fish for dinner last night . . . but he
had
dreamed of Mr. Gaunt. In the dream Mr. Gaunt had been wearing hip-waders and an old fedora with feathered lures dancing jauntily around the brim. He was sitting in a rowboat about thirty feet out on Castle Lake while Norris stood on the west shore with his dad's old cabin, which had burned down ten years before, behind him. He stood and listened while Mr. Gaunt talked. Mr. Gaunt had reminded Norris of his promise, and Norris had awakened with a sense of utter certainty: he had done the right thing yesterday, putting the Bazun aside in favor of the old Zebco. The Bazun rod was too nice, far too nice. It would be criminal to risk it by actually
using
it.

Now Norris opened his creel. He took out a long fish-gutting knife and walked over to Hugh's Buick.

Nobody deserves it more than this drunken slob, he told himself, but something inside didn't agree. Something inside told him he was making a black and woeful mistake from which he might never recover. He was a policeman; part of his job was to arrest people who did the sort of thing he was about to do. It was vandalism, that was exactly what it came down to, and vandals were bad guys.

You decide, Norris.
The voice of Mr. Gaunt spoke up suddenly in his mind.
It's your fishing rod. And it's your God-given right of free will, too. You have a choice. You always have a choice. But—

The voice in Norris Ridgewick's head didn't finish. It didn't need to. Norris knew what the consequences of turning away now would be. When he went back to his car, he would find the Bazun broken in two. Because every choice had consequences. Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn't pay, or
refused
to pay, you would remain needful forever.

Besides, he'd do it to me, Norris thought petulantly. And not for a nice fishing rod like my Bazun, either. Hugh Priest would cut his own mother's throat for a bottle of Old Duke and a pack of Luckies.

Thus he refuted guilt. When the something inside tried to protest again, tried to tell him to please think before he did this,
think,
he smothered it. Then he bent down and began to carve up the tires of Hugh's Buick. His enthusiasm, like Myra Evans's, grew as he worked. As an extra added attraction, he smashed the Buick's headlights and the taillights, too. He finished by putting a note which read

under the windshield wiper on the driver's side.

With the job done he crept back up to the bedroom window, his heart hammering heavily in his narrow chest. Hugh Priest was still deeply asleep, clutching that ratty runner of fur.

Who in God's name would want a dirty old thing like that? Norris wondered. He's holding onto it like it was his fucking teddy bear.

He went back to his car. He got in, shifted into neutral, and let his old Beetle roll soundlessly down the driveway. He didn't
start the engine until the car was on the road. Then he drove away as fast as he could. He had a headache. His stomach was rolling around nastily in his guts. And he kept telling himself it didn't matter; he felt good, he felt good, goddammit, he felt
really good.

It didn't work very well until he reached back between the seats and grasped the limber, narrow fishing rod in his left fist. Then he began to feel calm again.

Norris held it like that all the way home.

The silver bell jingled.

Slopey Dodd walked into Needful Things.

“Hullo, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“Huh-Huh-Hello, Mr. G-G-Guh—”

“You don't need to stutter around me, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said. He raised one of his hands with the first two fingers extended in a fork. He drew them down through the air in front of Slopey's homely face, and Slopey felt something—a tangled, knotted snarl in his mind—magically dissolve. His mouth fell open.

“What did you do to me?” he gasped. The words ran perfectly out of his mouth, like beads on a string.

“A trick Miss Ratcliffe would undoubtedly love to learn,” Mr. Gaunt said. He smiled and made a mark beside Slopey's name on his sheet. He glanced at the grandfather clock ticking contentedly away in the corner. It was quarter to one. “Tell me how you got out of school early. Will anyone be suspicious?”

“No.” Slopey's face was still amazed, and he appeared to be trying to look down at his own mouth, as if he could actually see the words tumbling from it in such unprecedented good order. “I told Mrs. DeWeese I felt sick to my stomach. She sent me to the school nurse. I told the nurse I felt better, but still sick. She asked me if I thought I could walk home. I said yes, so she let me go.” Slopey paused. “I came because I fell asleep in study hall. I dreamed you were calling me.”

“I was.” Mr. Gaunt tented his oddly even fingers beneath
his chin and smiled at the boy. “Tell me—did your mother like the pewter teapot you got her?”

A blush mounted into Slopey's cheeks, turning them the color of old brick. He started to say something, then gave up and inspected his feet instead.

In his softest, kindest voice, Mr. Gaunt said: “You kept it yourself, didn't you?”

Slopey nodded, still looking at his feet. He felt ashamed and confused. Worst of all, he felt a terrible sense of loss and grief: somehow Mr. Gaunt had dissolved that tiresome, infuriating knot in his head . . . and what good did it do? He was too embarrassed to talk.

“Now what, pray tell, does a twelve-year-old boy want with a pewter teapot?”

Slopey's cowlick, which had bobbed up and down a few seconds ago, now waved from side to side as he shook his head. He didn't
know
what a twelve-year-old boy wanted with a pewter teapot. He only knew that he wanted to keep it. He liked it. He really . . . really . . . liked it.

“. . . feels,” he muttered at last.

“Pardon me?” Mr. Gaunt asked, raising his single wavy eyebrow.

“I like the way it
feels,
I said!”

“Slopey, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said, coming around the counter, “you don't have to explain to
me.
I know all about that peculiar thing people call ‘pride of possession.' I have made it the cornerstone of my career.”

Slopey Dodd shrank away from Mr. Gaunt in alarm. “Don't you touch me!
Please
don't!”

“Slopey, I have no more intention of touching you than I do of telling you to give your mother the teapot. It's
yours.
You can do anything you want with it. In fact, I
applaud
your decision to keep it.”

“You . . . you do?”

“I do!
Indeed
I do! Selfish people are happy people. I believe that with all my heart. But Slopey . . .”