Needful Things (Page 91)

As an extra added attraction, he smashed the Buick’s headlights and the taillights, too. He finished by putting a note which read)7(/sr AwAo2Aji#v40 @oo KWOcj Wft,+TILt- ONE AFriFit mexr r#mF ftsejei-,)(0 p if A v jr 14 C KC- D M y’ f OCKOLA it 0T-#tf- L*$T -rlmg. 5-rAY OUTOF- MY t5tie 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 f**king 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.

9

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 grand father 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 griefsomehow 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…"

Slopey raised his head a little and looked fearfully through the hanging fringe of his red hair at Leland Gaunt.

"The time has come for you to finish paying for it."

"Oh!" An expression of vast relief filled Slopey’s face. "Is that all you wanted me for? I thought maybe…" But he either couldn’t or didn’t dare finish. He hadn’t been sure what Mr. Gaunt had wanted.

"Yes. Do you remember who you promised to play a trick on?"

"Sure. Coach Pratt."

"Right. There are two parts to this prank-you have to put something somewhere, plus you have to tell Coach Pratt something.

And if you follow directions exactly, the teapot will be yours forever."

"Can I talk like this, too?" Slopey asked eagerly. "Can I talk without stuttering forever, too?"

Mr. Gaunt sighed regretfully. "I’m afraid you’ll go back to the way you were as soon as you leave my shop, Slopey. I believe I do have an anti-stuttering device somewhere in stock, but-"

"Please! Please, Mr. Gaunt! I’ll do anything! I’ll do anything to anyone! I hate to stutter!"

"I know you would, but that’s just the problem, don’t you see?

I am rapidly running out of pranks which need to be played; my dance-card, you might say, is nearly full. So you couldn’t pay me."

Slopey hesitated a long time before speaking again. When he did, his voice was low and diffident. "Couldn’t you… I mean, do you ever just… give things away, Mr. Gaunt?"

Leland Gaunt’s face grew deeply sorrowful. "Oh, Slopey! How often I’ve thought of it, and with such longing! There is a deep, untapped well of charity in my heart. But…

"But?"

"It just wouldn’t be business," Mr. Gaunt finished. He favored Slopey with a compassionate smile… but his eyes sparkled so wolfishly that Slopey took a step backward. "You understand, don’t you?"

"Uh… yeah! Sure!"

"Besides," Mr. Gaunt went on, "the next few hours are crucial to me. Once things really get rolling, they can rarely be stopped… but for the time being, I must make prudence my watchword.

If you suddenly stopped stuttering, it might raise questions.

That would be bad. The Sheriff is already asking questions he has no business asking." His face darkened momentarily, and then his ugly, charming, jostling smile burst forth again. "But I intend to take care of him, Slopey. Ah, yes."

"Sheriff Pangborn, you mean?"

"Yes-Sheriff Pangborn, that’s what I mean to say." Mr. Gaunt raised his first two fingers and once again drew them down in front of Slopey Dodd’s face, from forehead to chin. "But we never talked about him, did we?"

"Talked about who?" Slopey asked, bewildered.

"Exactly. "Leland Gaunt was wearing a jacket of dark-gray suede today, and from one of its pockets he produced a black leather wallet.

He held it out to Slopey, who took it gingerly, being careful not to touch Mr. Gaunt’s fingers.

"You know Coach Pratt’s car, don’t you?"

"The Mustang? Sure."

"Put this in it. Under the passenger seat, with just a corner sticking out. Go to the high school right now-it wants to be there before the last bell. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then you’re to wait until he comes out. And when he does…

Mr. Gaunt went on speaking in a low murmur, and Slopey looked up at him, jaw slack, eyes dazed, nodding every once in awhile.

Slopey Dodd left a few minutes later with john LaPointe’s wallet tucked into his shirt.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1

Nettle lay in a plain gray casket which Polly Chalmers had paid for.

Alan had asked her to let him help share the expense, and she’d refused in that simple but final way he had come to know, respect, and accept. The coffin stood on steel runners above a plot in Homeland Cemetery near the area where Polly’s people were buried. The mound of earth next to it was covered with a carpet of bright green artificial grass which sparkled feverishly in the hot sunlight. That fake grass never failed to make Alan shudder. There was something obscene about it, something hideous. He liked it even less than the morticians’ practice of first rouging the dead and then dolling them up in their finest clothes so they looked as if they were bound for a big business meeting in Boston instead of a long season of decay amid the roots and the worms.

Reverend Tom Killingworth, the Methodist minister who conducted twice-weekly services at juniper Hill and who had known Nettle well, performed the service at Polly’s request. The homily was brief but warm, full of reference to the Nettle Cobb this man had known, a woman who had been slowly and bravely coming out of the shadows of insanity, a woman who had taken the courageous decision to try to treat once more with the world which had hurt her so badly.

"When I was growing up," Tom Killingworth said, "my mother kept a plaque with a lovely Irish saying on it in her sewing room.

It said ‘May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.’ Nettle Cobb had a hard life, in many ways a sad life, but in spite of that I do not believe she and the devil ever had much to do with each other. In spite of her terrible, untimely death, my heart believes that it is to heaven she has gone, and that the devil still hasn’t gotten the news." Killingworth raised his arms in the traditional gesture of benediction. "Let us pray."