Needful Things (Page 69)

"No," Keeton murmured. He was looking out the window. His eyes were blank and dreamy.

"They would have a party!" Mr. Gaunt cried softly. "They would get liquored up in Sheriff Pangborn’s office! They would go out to Homeland Cemetery and urinate on your grave!"

"Sheriff Pangborn?" Keeton said uncertainly.

"You don’t really believe a drone like Deputy Ridgewick is allowed to operate in a case like this without orders from his higherups, do you?"

"No, of course not." He was beginning to see more clearly now.

They; it had always been They, a tormenting dark cloud around him, and when you snatched at that cloud, you came away with nothing. Now he at last began to understand that They had faces and names. They might even be vulnerable. Knowing this was a tremendous relief.

"Pangborn, Fullerton, Samuels, the Williams woman, your own wife.

They are all part of it, Mr. Keeton, but I suspect-yes, and rather strongly-that Sheriff Pangborn is the ringleader. If so, he would love it if you killed one or two of his underlings and then put yourself out of the way. Why, I suspect that is exactly what he has been aiming for all along. But you’re going to fool him, Mr.

Keeton, aren’t you?"

"Yessss!" Keeton whispered fiercely. "What should I do?"

"Nothing today. Go about your business as usual. Go to the races tonight, if you like, and enjoy your new purchase. If you appear the same as always to Them, it will throw Them off balance.

It will sow confusion and uncertainty amidst the enemy."

"Confusion and uncertainty." Keeton spoke the words slowly, tasting them.

"Yes. I’m laying my own plans, and when the time comes, I’ll let you know."

"Do you promise?"

"Oh yes indeed, Mr. Keeton. You are quite important to me.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I could not do without you."

Mr. Gaunt rang off. Keeton put his pistol and the gun-cleaning kit away. Then he went upstairs, dumped his soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, showered, and dressed. When he came down, Myrtle shrank away from him at first, but Keeton spoke kindly to her and kissed her cheek. Myrtle began to relax. Whatever the crisis had been, it seemed to have passed.

3

Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork… which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother’s ancestors had sprung. He had been Ray Van Allen’s P.A. for four years, ever since he’d gotten out of the Navy.

He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett’s diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor-who would be in shortlycould examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.

Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.

Besides, there was the pipe.

Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaum, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor’s office but because he didn’t like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.

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 factthat 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 fiancee. 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 bet 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?"