Needful Things (Page 11)

Like things must look in heaven."

"Well, I’ll tell you something," he said. "I bought quite a lot of carnival glass when I got these, and they’re not as expensive as you might think. And the others are much nicer. Would you like to come by tomorrow and have a look at them?"

She jumped again and sidled away a step, as If he had suggested she might like to come by the next day so he could pinch her bottom a few times… perhaps until she cried

"Oh, I don’t think… Thursday’s my busy day, you know… at Polly’s… we have to really turn the place out on Thursdays, you know…"

"Are you sure you can’t drop by?" he coaxed. "Polly told me that you made the cake she brought this morning-"

"Was it all right?"

Nettle asked nervously. Her eyes said she expected him to say, No, it was not all right, Nettle, it gave me cramps, it gave me the backdoor trots, in fact, and so I am going to hurt you, Nettle, I’m going to drag you into the back room and twist your ni**les until you holler uncle

"It was wonderful," he said soothingly. "It made me think of cakes my mother used to make… and that was a very long time ago."

This was the right note to strike with Nettle, who had loved her own mother dearly in spite of the beatings that lady had administered after her frequent nights out in the juke-joints and ginmills. She relaxed a little

"Well, that’s fine, then," she said. "I’m awfully glad it was good

Of course, it was Polly’s idea. She’s just about the sweetest woman in the world."

"Yes," he said. "After meeting her, I can believe that." He glanced at Rosalie Drake, but Rosalie was still browsing. He looked back at Nettle and said, "I just felt I owed you a little something-"

"Oh no!" Nettle said, alarmed all over again. "You don’t owe me a thing. Not a single solitary thing, Mr. Gaunt."

"Please come by. I can see you have an eye for carnival glass… and I could give you back Polly’s cake-box."

"Well… I suppose I could drop by on my break…" Nettle’s eyes said she could not believe what she was hearing from her own mouth

"Wonderful," he said, and left her quickly, before she could change her mind again. He walked over to the boys and asked them how they were doing. They hesitantly showed him several old issues of The Incredible Hulk and The X-Men. Five minutes later they went out with most of the comic books in their hands and expressions of stunned joy on their faces

The door had barely shut behind them when it opened again

Cora Rusk and Myra Evans strode in. They looked around, eyes as bright and avid as those of squirrels in nut-gathering season, and went immediately to the glass case containing the picture of Elvis

Cora and Myra bent over, cooing with interest, displaying bottoms which were easily two axe-handles wide

Gaunt watched them, smiling

The bell over the door jingled again. The new arrival was as large as Cora Rusk, but Cora was fat and this woman looked strong-the way a lumberjack with a beer belly looks strong. A large white button had been pinned to her blouse. The red letters proclaimed:

CASINO NITE-JUST FOR FUN!

The lady’s face had all the charm of a snowshovel. Her hair, an unremarkable and lifeless shade of brown, was mostly covered by a kerchief which was knotted severely under her wide chin. She surveyed the interior of the store for a moment or two, her small, deepset eyes flicking here and there like the eyes of a gunslinger who surveys the interior of a saloon before pushing all the way through the batwing doors and starting to raise hell. Then she came in

Few of the women circulating among the displays gave her more than a glance, but Nettle Cobb looked at the newcomer with an extraordinary expression of mingled dismay and hate. Then she scuttled away from the carnival glass. Her movement caught the newcomer’s eye. She glanced at Nettle with a kind of massive contempt, then dismissed her

The bell over the door jingled as Nettle left the shop

Mr. Gaunt observed all of this with great interest

He walked over to Rosalie and said, "Mrs. Cobb has left without you, I’m afraid."

Rosalie looked startled. "Why-" she began, and then her eyes settled on the newcomer with the Casino Nite button pinned adamantly between her br**sts. She was studying the Turkish rug hung on the wall with the fixed interest of an art student in a gallery

Her hands were planted on her vast hips. "Oh, "Rosalie said

"Excuse me, I really ought to go along."

"No love lost between those two, I’d say," Mr. Gaunt remarked

Rosalie smiled distractedly

Gaunt glanced at the woman in the kerchief again. "Who is she?"

Rosalie wrinkled her nose. "Wilma Jersyck," she said. "Excuse me… I really ought to catch up with Nettle. She’s high-strung, you know."

"Of course," he said, and watched Rosalie out the door. To himself he added, Aren’t we all."

Then Cora Rusk was tapping him on the shoulder. "How much is that picture of The King?" she demanded

Leland Gaunt turned his dazzling smile upon her. "Well, let’s talk about it," he said. "How much do you think it’s worth?"

CHAPTER THREE

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.