Cujo (47 page)

Twice, Charity had opened her mouth to tell Holly that she and Brett would be going home tomorrow, and both times she had closed it again, trying to think of a way she could say it without leading Holly to believe they didn't like it here.

Now the problem was momentarily forgotten as she sat at the telephone table, a fresh cup of tea beside her. She felt a little anxious—nobody likes to get a telephone call while they're on vacation from someone who sounds official.

“Hello?” she said.

•  •  •

Holly watched her sister's face go white, listened as her sister said, “What?
What?
No . . . no! There must be some mistake. I tell you, there must—”

She fell silent, listening to the telephone. Some dreadful news was being passed down the wire from Maine, Holly thought. She could see it in the gradually tightening mask of her sister's face, although she could hear nothing from the phone itself except a series of meaningless squawks.

Bad news from Maine.
To her it was an old story. It was all right for her and Charity to sit in the sunny morning kitchen, drinking tea and eating orange sections and talking about sneaking into the Met Theater. It was all right, but it didn't change the fact that every day she could remember of
her childhood had brought a little piece of bad news with it, each piece a part of her early life's jigsaw, the whole picture so terrible that she would not really have minded if she had never seen her older sister again. Torn cotton underpants that the other girls at school made fun of. Picking potatoes until her back ached and if you stood up suddenly the blood rushed out of your head so fast you felt like you were going to faint. Red Timmins—how carefully she and Charity had avoided mentioning Red's arm, so badly crushed it had to be amputated, but when Holly heard she had been glad, so
glad.
Because she remembered Red throwing a green apple at her one day, hitting her in the face, making her nose bleed, making her cry. She remembered Red giving her Indian rubs and laughing. She remembered an occasional nourishing dinner of Shedd's Peanut Butter and Cheerios when things were particularly bad. She remembered the way the outhouse stank in high summer, that smell was
shit,
and in case you should wonder, that wasn't a good smell.

Bad news from Maine. And somehow, for some crazed reason she knew they would never discuss even if they both lived to be a hundred and spent the last twenty old-maid years together, Charity had elected to stick with that life. Her looks were almost entirely gone. There were wrinkles around her eyes. Her breasts sagged; even in her bra they sagged. There were only six years between them, but an observer might well have thought it was more like sixteen. And worst of all, she seemed totally unconcerned about dooming her lovely, intelligent boy to a similar life . . . unless he got smart, unless he wised up. For the tourists, Holly thought with an angry bitterness that all the good years had not changed, it was Vacationland. But if you came from the puckies, it was day after day of bad news. Then one day you looked in the mirror and the face looking back at you was Charity Camber's face. And now there was more dreadful news from Maine, that home of all dreadful news. Charity was hanging up the telephone. She sat staring at it, her hot tea steaming beside her.

“Joe's dead,” she announced suddenly.

Holly sucked in breath. Her teeth felt cold.
Why did you come?
she felt like shrieking.
I knew you'd bring it all with you, and sure enough, you did.

“Oh, honey,” she said, “are you sure?”

“That was a man from Augusta. Name of Masen. From the Attorney General's office, Law Enforcement Division.”

“Was it . . . was it a car accident?”

Charity looked directly at her then, and Holly was both shocked and terrified to see that her sister did not look like someone who has just received dreadful news; she looked like someone who has just received
good
news. The lines in her face had smoothed out. Her eyes were blank . . . but was it shock behind that blankness or the dreamy awakening of possibility?

If she had seen Charity Camber's face when she had checked the numbers on her winning lottery ticket, she might have known.

“Charity?”

“It was the dog,” Charity said. “It was Cujo.”

“The dog?” At first she was bewildered, unable to see any possible connection between the death of Charity's husband and the Camber family dog. Then she realized. The implications came in terms of Red Timmins's horribly mangled left arm, and she said, in a higher, shriller tone, “The
dog?
”

Before Charity could reply—if she had means to—there were cheery voices in the back yard: Jim Junior's high, piping one and then Brett's, lower and amused, answering. And now Charity's face changed. It became stricken. It was a face that Holly remembered and hated well, an expression that made all faces the same—an expression she had felt often enough on her own face in those old days.

“The boy,” Charity said. “Brett. Holly . . . how am I going to tell Brett his father is dead?”

Holly had no answer for her. She could only stare helplessly at her sister and wish neither of them had come.

•  •  •

RABID DOG KILLS 4 IN BIZARRE THREE-DAY REIGN OF TERROR
, the headline on that evening's edition of the Portland
Evening Express
blared. The subhead read:
Lone Survivor at Northern Cumberland Hospital in Guarded Condition.
The headline on the following day's
Press-Herald
read:
FATHER TELLS OF WIFE'S DOOMED STRUGGLE TO SAVE SON
. That evening the story had been relegated to the bottom of page one:
MRS. TRENTON RESPONDING TO RABIES TREATMENT, DOCTOR SAYS
.
And in a sidebar:
DOG HAD NO SHOTS: LOCAL VET
. Three days after it had ended, the story was inside, on page four:
STATE HEALTH AGENCY BLAMES RABID FOX OR RACCOON FOR DOG'S CASTLE ROCK RAMPAGE
. A final story that week carried the news that Victor Trenton had no intention of suing the surviving members of the Camber family, who were said to be in “deep shock.” This intelligence was scant, but provided a pretext upon which the entire tale could be rehashed. A week later, the front page of the Sunday paper carried a feature story on what had happened. A week after that, a national tabloid offered a fervid synopsis of what had happened, headed:
TRAGIC BATTLE IN MAINE AS MOM BATTLES KILLER SAINT BERNARD
. And that was really the end of the coverage.

•  •  •

There was a rabies scare in central Maine that fall. An expert attributed it to “rumor and the horrifying but isolated incident in Castle Rock.”

•  •  •

Donna Trenton was in the hospital for nearly four weeks. She finished her cycle of treatments for the rabid dog bites with a good deal of pain but no serious problems, but because of the potential seriousness of the disease—and because of her deep mental depression—she was closely watched.

In late August, Vic drove her home.

They spent a quiet, showery day around the house. That evening as they sat in front of the television, not really watching it, Donna asked him about Ad Worx.

“Everything's fine there,” he said. “Roger got the last Cereal Professor commercial on the rails single-handed . . . with Rob Martin's help, of course. Now we're involved in a major new campaign for the whole Sharp line.” Half a lie; Roger was involved. Vic went in three, sometimes four days a week, and either pushed his pencil around or looked at his typewriter. “But the Sharp people are being very careful to make sure that none of what we're doing will go beyond the two-year period we signed for. Roger was right. They're going to dump us. But by then it won't matter if they do.”

“Good,” she said. She had bright periods now, periods when she seemed very much like her old self, but she was still listless most of the time. She had lost twenty pounds and
looked scrawny. Her complexion was not very good. Her nails were ragged.

She looked at the TV for a while and then turned to him. She was crying.

“Donna,” he said. “Oh babe.” He put his arms around her and held her. She was soft but unyielding in his arms. Through the softness he could feel the angles of her bones in too many places.

“Can we live here?” she managed in an unsteady voice. “Vic, can we live here?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I think we ought to give it a damned good shot.”

“Maybe I should ask if you can go on living with me. If you said no, I'd understand. I'd understand perfectly.”

“I don't want anything else but to live with you. I knew that all along, I think. Maybe there was an hour—right after I got Kemp's note—when I didn't know. But that was the only time. Donna, I love you. I always have.”

Now she put her arms around him and hugged him tight. Soft summer rain struck the windows and made gray and black shadow patterns on the floor.

“I couldn't save him,” she said. “That's what keeps coming back on me. I can't get rid of it. I go over it again . . . and again . . . and again. If I'd run for the porch sooner . . . or gotten the baseball bat . . .” she swallowed. “And when I finally did get up the guts to go out there, it was just . . . over. He was dead.”

He could have reminded her that she'd had Tad's welfare in mind above her own the whole time. That the reason she hadn't gone for the door was because of what would have happened to Tad if the dog had gotten to her before she could get inside. He could have told her that the siege had probably weakened the dog as much as it had Donna herself, and if she had tried Cujo with the baseball bat earlier on, the outcome might have been entirely different; as it was, the dog had almost killed her in the end. But he understood that these points had been brought to her attention again and again, by himself and by others, and that not all the logic in the world could blunt the pain of coming upon that mute pile of coloring books, or seeing the swing, empty and motionless at the bottom of its arc, in the back yard. Logic could not blunt her
terrible sense of personal failure. Only time could do those things, and time would do an imperfect job.

He said, “I couldn't save him either.”

“You—”

“I was so sure it was Kemp. If I'd gone up there earlier, if I hadn't fallen asleep, even if I hadn't talked to Roger on the phone.”

“No,” she said gently. “Don't.”

“I have to. I guess you do too. We'll just have to get along. That's what people do, you know? They just get along. And try to help each other.”

“I keep feeling him . . . sensing him . . . around every corner.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

He and Roger had taken all of Tad's toys to the Salvation Army two Saturdays ago. When it was done, they had come back here and had a few beers in front of the ballgame, not talking much. And when Roger went home, Vic went upstairs and sat on the bed in Tad's room and wept until it seemed the weeping would pull all his insides apart. He wept and wanted to die but he hadn't died and the next day he had gone back to work.

“Make us some coffee,” he said, and slapped her lightly on the rump. “I'll light a fire. Chilly in here.”

“All right.” She got up. “Vic?”

“What?”

Her throat worked. “I love you too.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I think I needed that.”

She smiled wanly and went to make the coffee. And they got through the evening, although Tad was still dead. They got through the next day as well. And the next. It was not much better at the end of August, nor in September, but by the time the leaves had turned and begun to fall, it was a little better. A little.

•  •  •

She was wired with tension and trying not to show it.

When Brett came back from the barn, knocked the snow from his boots, and let himself in the kitchen door, she was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. For a moment he only looked at her. He had lost some weight and had grown taller in the last six months. The total effect was to
make him look gangling, where he had always before seemed compact and yet lithe. His grades during the first quarter hadn't been so good, and he had been in trouble twice—scuffles in the schoolyard both times, probably over what had happened this last summer. But his second-quarter marks had been a lot better.

“Mom? Momma? Is it—”

“Alva brought him over,” she said. She set the teacup on the saucer carefully, and it did not chatter. “No law says you have to keep him.”

“Has he had his shots?” Brett asked, and her heart broke a little that that should be his first question.

“As a matter of fact, he has,” she said. “Alva tried to slip that over on me, but I made him show me the vet's bill. Nine dollars, it was. Distemper and rabies. Also, there's a tube of cream for ticks and ear mites. If you don't want him, Alva will give me my nine dollars back.”

Money had become important to them. For a little bit she hadn't been sure if they would be able to keep the place, or even if they should try to keep it. She had talked it over with Brett, being level with him. There had been a small life insurance policy. Mr. Shouper at the Casco-Bank in Bridgton had explained to her that if the money was put in a special trust account, it plus the lottery money would make nearly all of the outstanding mortgage payments over the next five years. She had landed a decent job in the packing and billing department of Castle Rock's one real industry, Trace Optical. The sale of Joe's equipment—including the new chainfall—had brought in an additional three thousand dollars. It was
possible
for them to keep the place, she had explained to Brett, but it was apt to be a hard scrabble. The alternative was an apartment in town. Brett had slept on it, and it had turned out that what he wanted was what she wanted—to keep the home place. And so they had stayed.