Cujo (37 page)

Charity knew perfectly well that Joe had gone over to the Thorntons' with the repaired tire the previous Thursday. She also knew that Bessie was apt to get her days mixed up. All of which left her in a pretty dilemma. She could ask Bessie if Joe had had a tractor tire with him when he came up “yesterday or the day before,” and if Bessie said why yes, now that you mention it, he did, that would mean that Joe hadn't been up to see Alva since last Thursday, which would mean that Joe hadn't asked Alva to feed Cujo, which would
also
mean that Alva wouldn't have any information about Cujo's health and well-being.

Or she could just leave well enough alone and ease Brett's mind. They could enjoy the rest of their visit without thoughts of home intruding constantly. And . . . well, she was a little jealous of Cujo right about now. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Cujo was distracting Brett's attention
from what could be the most important trip he ever took. She wanted the boy to see a whole new life, a whole new set of
possibilities,
so that when the time came, a few years from now, for him to decide which doors he wanted to step through and which ones he would allow to swing closed, he could make those decisions with a bit of perspective. Perhaps she had been wrong to believe she could steer him, but let him at least have enough experience to make up his mind for himself.

Was it fair to let his worries about the damned dog stand in the way of that?

“Charity? You there? I said I thought—”

“Ayuh, I heard you, Bessie. He probably did ask Alva to feed him, then.”

“Well, I'll ask him when he gets home, Charity. And I'll let you know, too.”

“You do that. Thanks ever so much, Bessie.”

“Don't even mention it.”

“Fine. Good-bye.” And Charity hung up, realizing that Bessie had forgotten to ask for Jim and Holly's phone number. Which was fine. She turned toward Brett, composing her face. She would say nothing that was a lie. She would not lie to her son.

“Bessie said your dad was over to see Alva Sunday night,” Charity said. “Must have asked him to take care of Cujo then.”

“Oh.” Brett was looking at her in a speculative way that made her a little uneasy. “But you didn't talk to Alva himself.”

“No, he was out bowling. But Bessie said she'd let us know if—”

“She doesn't have our number down here.” Was Brett's tone now faintly accusatory? Or was that her own conscience talking?

“Well, I'll call her back in the morning, then,” Charity said, hoping to close the conversation and applying some salve to her conscience at the same time.

“Daddy took a tractor tire over last week,” Brett said thoughtfully. “Maybe Mrs. Thornton got mixed up on which day Daddy was there.”

“I think Bessie Thornton can keep her days straighter in her head than that,” Charity said, not thinking so at all.
“Besides, she didn't mention anything to me about a tractor tire.”

“Yeah, but you didn't ask her.”

“Go ahead and call her back, then!” Charity flashed at him. A sudden helpless fury swept her, the same ugly feeling that had come when Brett had offered his wickedly exact observation about Holly and her deck of credit cards. When he had done that his father's intonation, even his father's pattern of speech, had crept into his voice, and it had seemed to her, then and now, that the only thing this trip was doing was to show her once and for all who Brett really belonged to—lock, stock, and barrel.

“Mom—”

“No, go ahead, call her back, the number's right here on the scratchpad. Just tell the operator to charge it to our phone so it won't go on Holly's bill. Ask Bessie all your questions. I only did the best I could.”

There,
she thought with sad and bitter amusement.
Just five minutes ago I wasn't going to lie to him.

That afternoon her anger had sparked anger in him. Tonight he only said quietly, “Naw, that's okay.”

“If you want, we'll call somebody else and have them go up and check,” Charity said. She was already sorry for her outburst.

“Who would we call?” Brett asked.

“Well, what about one of the Milliken brothers?”

Brett only looked at her.

“Maybe that's not such a good idea,” Charity agreed. Late last winter, Joe Camber and John Milliken had had a bitter argument over the charge on some repair work Joe had done on the Milliken brothers' old Chevy Bel Air. Since then, the Cambers and the Millikens hadn't been talking much. The last time Charity had gone to play Beano down at the Grange, she had tried to pass a friendly word with Kim Milliken, Freddy's daughter, but Kim wouldn't say a word to her; just walked away with her head up as if she hadn't been acting the slut with half the boys in Castle Rock High School.

It occurred to her now how really isolated they were, up at the end of Town Road No. 3. It made her feel lonely and a little chilled. She could think of no one she could reasonably
ask to go up to the place with a flashlight and hunt up Cujo and make sure he was okay.

“Never mind,” Brett said listlessly. “Probably stupid, anyway. He probably just ate some burdocks or something.”

“Listen,” Charity said, putting an arm around him. “One thing you aren't is stupid, Brett. I'll call Alva himself in the morning and ask him to go up. I'll do it as soon as we get up. Okay?”

“Would you, Mom?”

“Yes.”

“That'd be great. I'm sorry to bug you about it, but I can't seem to get it off my mind.”

Jim popped his head in. “I got out the Scrabble board. Anyone want to play?”

“I will,” Brett said, getting up, “if you show me how.”

“What about you, Charity?”

Charity smiled. “Not just now, I guess. I'll be in for some of the popcorn.”

Brett went out with his uncle. She sat on the sofa and looked at the telephone and thought of Brett night-walking, feeding a phantom dog phantom dogfood in her sister's modern kitchen.

Cujo's not hungry no more, not no more.

Her arms suddenly tightened, and she shivered. We're going to take care of this business tomorrow morning, she promised herself. One way or the other. Either that or go back and take care of it ourselves. That's a promise, Brett.

•  •  •

Vic tried home again at ten o'clock. There was no answer. He tried again at eleven o'clock and there was still no answer, although he let the phone ring two dozen times. At ten he was beginning to be scared. At eleven he was good and scared—of what, he was not precisely sure.

Roger was sleeping. Vic dialed the number in the dark, listened to it ring in the dark, hung up in the dark. He felt alone, childlike, lost. He didn't know what to do or what to think. Over and over his mind played a simple litany:
She's gone off with Kemp, gone off with Kemp, gone off with Kemp.

All reason and logic was against it. He played over everything he and Donna had said to each other—he played it over again and again, listening to the words and to the
nuances of tone in his mind. She and Kemp had had a falling out. She had told him to go peddle his papers somewhere else. And that had prompted Kemp's vengeful little
billet-doux.
It did not seem the rosy scenery into which two mad lovers might decide to elope.

A falling out doesn't preclude a later rapprochement,
his mind retorted with a kind of grave and implacable calm.

But what about Tad? She wouldn't have taken Tad with her, would she? From her description, Kemp sounded like some sort of wildman, and although Donna hadn't said so, Vic had gotten the feeling that something damned violent had almost happened on the day she told him to fuck off.

People in love do strange things.

That strange and jealous part of his mind—he hadn't even been aware of that part in him until that afternoon in Deering Oaks—had an answer for everything, and in the dark it didn't seem to matter that most of the answers were irrational.

He was doing a slow dance back and forth between two sharpened points: Kemp on one (
DO
you
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS
?); a vision of the telephone ringing on and on in their empty Castle Rock house on the other. She could have had an accident. She and Tad could be in the hospital. Someone could have broken in. They could be lying murdered in their bedrooms. Of course if she'd had an accident, someone official would have been in touch—the office as well as Donna knew in which Boston hotel he and Roger were staying—but in the dark that thought, which should have been a comfort since no one
had
been in touch, only inclined his thoughts more toward murder.

Robbery and murder,
his mind whispered as he lay awake in the dark. Then it danced slowly across to the other sharpened point and took up its original litany:
Gone off with Kemp.

In between these points, his mind saw a more reasonable explanation, one that made him feel helplessly angry. Perhaps she and Tad had decided to spend the night with someone and had simply forgotten to call and tell him. Now it was too late to just start calling around and asking people without alarming them. He supposed he could call the sheriff's office and ask them to send someone up and check. But wouldn't that be overreacting?

No,
his mind said.

Yes,
his mind said,
definitely.

She and Tad are both dead with knives stuck in their throats,
his mind said.
You read about it in the papers all the time. It even happened in Castle Rock just before we came to town. That crazy cop. That Frank Dodd.

Gone off with Kemp,
his mind said.

At midnight he tried again, and this time the constant ringing of the phone with no one to pick it up froze him into a deadly certainty of trouble. Kemp, robbers, murderers, something. Trouble. Trouble at home.

He dropped the phone back into its cradle and turned on the bed lamp. “Roger,” he said. “Wake up.”

“Huh. Wuh. Hzzzzzzz. . . .” Roger had his arm over his eyes, trying to block out the light. He was in his pajamas with the little yellow college pennants.

“Roger. Roger!”

Roger opened his eyes, blinked, looked at the Travel-Ette clock.

“Hey, Vic, it's the middle of the night.”

“Roger . . .” He swallowed and something clicked in his throat. “Roger, it's midnight and Tad and Donna still aren't home. I'm scared.”

Roger sat up and brought the clock close to his face to verify what Vic had said. It was now four past the hour.

“Well, they probably got freaked out staying there by themselves, Vic. Sometimes Althea takes the girls and goes over to Sally Petrie's when I'm gone. She gets nervous when the wind blows off the lake at night, she says.”

“She would have called.” With the light on, with Roger sitting up and talking to him, the idea that Donna might have just run off with Steve Kemp seemed absurd—he couldn't believe he had even indulged it. Forget logic. She had told him it was over, and he had believed her. He believed her now.

“Called?” Roger said. He was still having trouble tracking things.

“She knows I call home almost every night when I'm away. She would have called the hotel and left a message if she was going to be gone overnight. Wouldn't Althea?”

Roger nodded. “Yeah. She would.”

“She'd call and leave a message so you wouldn't worry. Like I'm worrying now.”

“Yeah. But she might have just forgotten, Vic.” Still, Roger's brown eyes were troubled.

“Sure,” Vic said. “On the other hand, maybe something's happened.”

“She carries ID, doesn't she? If she and Tad were in an accident, God forbid, the cops would try home first and then the office. The answering service would—”

“I wasn't thinking about an accident,” Vic said. “I was thinking about . . .” His voice began to tremble. “I was thinking about her and Tadder being there alone, and . . . shit, I don't know . . . I just got scared, that's all.”

“Call the sheriff's office,” Roger said promptly.

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah but nothing. You aren't going to scare Donna, that's for sure. She's not there. But what the hell, set your mind at rest. It doesn't have to be sirens and flashing lights. Just ask if they can send a cop by to check and make sure that everything looks normal. There must be a thousand places she could be. Hell, maybe she just tied into a really good Tupperware party.”

“Donna hates Tupperware parties.”

“So maybe the girls got playing penny-ante poker and lost track of the time and Tad's asleep in someone's spare room.”

Vic remembered her telling him how she had steered clear of any deep involvement with “the girls”—
I don't want to be one of those faces you see at the bake sales,
she had said. But he didn't want to tell Roger that; it was too close to the subject of Kemp.

“Yeah, maybe something like that,” Vic said.

“Have you got an extra key to the place tucked away somewhere?”

“There's one on a hook under the eave on the front porch.”

“Tell the cops. Someone can go in and have a good look around . . . unless you've got pot or coke or something you'd just as soon they didn't stumble over.”

“Nothing like that.”

“Then do it,” Roger said earnestly. “She'll probably call here while they're out checking and you'll feel like a fool, but sometimes it's
good
to feel like a fool. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Vic said, grinning a little. “Yeah, I do.”

He picked the telephone up again, hesitated, then tried home again first. No answer. Some of the comfort he had gotten from Roger evaporated. He got directory assistance for Maine and jotted down the number of the Castle County Sheriff's Department. It was now nearly fifteen minutes past twelve on Wednesday morning.