Needful Things

  "Did you have a good time throwing mud at my sheets, you numb cunt?" Wilma was furious. The woman was actually trying to pretend this was still about the dog.

  "Sheets? What sheets? I ... I ..." Nettie looked toward the carnival glass lampshade and seemed to draw strength from it. "You leave me alone! You're the one that's crazy, not me!"

  "I'm going to get you for this. Nobody comes into my yard and throws mud at my sheets while I'm gone. Nobody. NOBODY! Understand? Is this getting through that cracked skull of yours? You won't know where, and you won't know when, and most of all you won't know how, but I ... am going ... to GET you. Do you understand?"

  Nettie held the phone tightly screwed against her ear. Her face had gone dead pale except for a single bright streak of red which ran across her forehead between her eyebrows and hairline. Her teeth were clenched and her cheeks puffed in and out like a bellows as she panted from the sides of her mouth.

  "You leave me alone or you'll be sorry!" she screamed in her high, fainting, helium voice. Raider was standing now, his ears up, his eyes bright and anxious. He sensed menace in the room. He barked once, severely. Nettie didn't hear him. "You'll be very sorry! I ... I know people! People in Authority! I know them very well! I don't have to put up with this!"

  Speaking slowly in a voice which was low and sincere and utterly furious, Wilma said: "Fucking with me is the worst mistake you ever made in your life. You won't see me coming."

  There was a click.

  "You don't dare!" Nettie wailed. Tears were running down her cheeks now, tears of terror and abysmal, impotent rage. "You don't dare, you bad thing! I ... I'll..."

  There was a second click. It was followed by the buzz of an open line.

  Nettie hung up the phone and sat bolt upright in her chair for almost three minutes, staring into space. Then she began to weep. Raider barked again and put his paws up on the edge of her chair. Nettie hugged him and wept against his fur. Raider licked her neck.

  "I won't let her hurt you, Raider," she said. She inhaled the sweet and clean doggy warmth of him, trying to take comfort from it. "I won't let that bad, bad woman hurt you. She's not a Person in Authority, not at all. She's just a bad old thing and if she tries to hurt you ... or me ... she'll be sorry."

  She straightened at last, found a Kleenex tucked down between the side of her chair and the cushion, and used it to wipe her eyes. She was terrified ... but she could also feel anger buzzing and drilling through her. It was the way she'd felt before she'd taken the meat-fork from the drawer under the sink and stuck it in her husband's throat.

  She took the carnival glass lampshade off the table and hugged it gently to her. "If she starts something, she will be very, very sorry," Nettie said.

  She sat that way, with Raider at her feet and the lampshade in her lap, for a very long time.

  5

  Norris Ridgewick cruised slowly down Main Street in his police cruiser, eyeballing the buildings on the west side of the street. His shift would be over soon, and he was glad. He could remember how good he had felt this morning before that idiot had grabbed him; could remember standing at the mirror in the men's room, adjusting his hat and thinking with satisfaction that he looked Squared Away. He could remember it, but the memory seemed very old and sepia-toned, like a photograph from the nineteenth century. From the moment that idiot Keeton had grabbed him up to right now, nothing had gone right.

  He'd gotten lunch at Cluck-Cluck Tonite, the chicken shack out on Route 119. The food there was usually good, but this time it had given him a roaring case of acid indigestion followed by a case of the dribbling shits. Around three o'clock he had run over a nail out on Town Road #7 near the old Camber place and had to change the tire. He'd wiped his fingers on the front of his freshly dry-cleaned uniform blouse, not thinking about what he was doing, only wanting to dry the tips so they would provide a better grip on the loosened lug-nuts, and he had rubbed grease across the shirt in four glaring dark-gray stripes. While he was looking at this with dismay, the cramps had turned his bowels to water again and he'd had to hurry off into the puckerbrush. It had been a race to see if he could manage to drop his trousers before he filled them. That race Norris managed to win ... but he hadn't liked the look of the little stand of bushes he had chosen to take a squat in. It had looked like poison sumac, and the way his day had gone so far, it probably had been.

  Norris crept slowly past the buildings which made up Castle Rock's downtown: the Norway Bank and Trust, the Western Auto, Nan's Luncheonette, the black hole where Pop Merrill's rickrack palace had once stood, You Sew and Sew, Needful Things, Castle Rock Hardware--

  Norris suddenly applied the brakes and came to a stop. He had seen something amazing in the window of Needful Things--or thought he had, anyway.

  He checked the rearview mirror, but Main Street was deserted. The stop-and-go light at the lower end of the business district abruptly went out, and remained dark for a few seconds while relays clicked thoughtfully inside. Then the yellow light in the center began to flash off and on. Nine o'clock, then. Nine o'clock on the button.

  Norris reversed back up the street, then pulled in at the curb. He looked down at the radio, thought of calling in 10-22--ofncer leaving the vehicle--and decided not to. He only wanted a quick look in the shop window. He turned up the gain on the radio a little and rolled down the window before getting out. That ought to do it.

  You didn't see what you thought you saw, he cautioned himself, hitching up his trousers as he walked across the sidewalk. No way. Today was made for disappointment, not discovery. That was just someone's old Zebco rod and reel--

  Except it wasn't. The fishing rod in the window of Needful Things was arranged in a cute little display with a net and a pair of bright yellow gum-rubber boots, and it was definitely not a Zebco. It was a Bazun. He hadn't seen one since his father died sixteen years before. Norris had been fourteen then, and he had loved the Bazun for two reasons: what it was and what it stood for.

  What was it? Just the best damned lake-and-stream fishing rod in the world, that was all.

  What had it stood for? Good times. As simple as that. The good times a skinny little boy named Norris Ridgewick had had with his old man. Good times ploughing through the woods beside some stream out on the edge of town, good times in their little boat, sitting in the middle of Castle Lake while everything around them was white with the mist that rose off the lake in steamy little columns and enclosed them in their own private world. A world made only for guys. In some other world moms would soon be making breakfast, and that was a good world, too, but not as good as this one. No world had been as good as that one, before or since.

  After his father's fatal coronary, the Bazun rod and reel had disappeared. He remembered looking for it in the garage after the funeral and it was just gone. He had hunted in the cellar, had even looked in the closet of his mom and dad's bedroom (although he knew his mom would have been more likely to let Henry Ridgewick store an elephant in there than a fishing pole), but the Bazun was gone. Norris had always suspected his Uncle Phil. Several times he had gathered his courage to ask, but each time it came to the sticking point, he had backed down.

  Now, looking at this rod and reel, which could have been that very one, he forgot about Buster Keeton for the first time that day. He was overwhelmed with a simple, perfect memory: his father sitting in the stem of the boat, his tackle-box between his feet, handing the Bazun to Norris so he could pour himself a cup of coffee from his big red Thermos with the gray stripes. He could smell the coffee, hot and good, and he could smell his father's aftershave lotion: Southern Gentleman, it had been called.

  Suddenly the old grief rose up and folded him in its gray embrace and he wanted his father. After all these years that old pain was gnawing his bones again, as fresh and as hungry as it had been on the day when his mother had come home from the hospital and taken his hands and said We have to be very brave now, Norris.

  The spotlight high in the display window pricked br
ight beams of light off the steel casing of the reel and all the old love, that dark and golden love, swept through him again. Norris stared in at the Bazun rod and thought of the smell of fresh coffee rising from a big red Thermos with gray stripes and the calm, wide sweep of the lake. In his mind he felt again the rough texture of the rod's cork handle, and slowly raised one hand to wipe his eyes.

  "Officer?" a quiet voice asked.

  Norris gave a little cry and leaped back from the window. For one wild moment he thought he was going to fill his pants after all--the perfect end to a perfect day. Then the cramp passed and he looked around. A tall man in a tweed jacket was standing in the open door of the shop, looking at him with a little smile.

  "Did I startle you?" he asked. "I'm very sorry."

  "No," Norris said, and then managed a smile of his own. His heart was still beating like a triphammer. "Well ... maybe just a little. I was looking at that rod and thinking about old times."

  "That just came in today," the man said. "It's old, but it's in awfully good condition. It's a Bazun, you know. Not a well-known brand, but well-regarded among serious fishermen. It's--"

  "--Japanese," Norris said. "I know. My dad used to have one."

  "Did he?" The man's smile broadened. The teeth it revealed were crooked, but Norris found it a pleasant smile just the same. "That is a coincidence, isn't it?"

  "It sure is," Norris agreed.

  "I'm Leland Gaunt. This is my shop." He held out his hand.

  A momentary revulsion swept over Norris as those long fingers wrapped themselves around his hand. Gaunt's handshake was the matter of a moment, however, and when he let go, the feeling passed at once. Norris decided it was just his stomach, still queasy over those bad clams he'd eaten for lunch. Next time he was out that way, he'd stick to the chicken, which was, after all, the house specialty.

  "I could give you an extremely fair deal on that rod," Mr. Gaunt said. "Why not step in, Officer Ridgewick? We'll talk about it."

  Norris started a little. He hadn't told this old bird his name, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth to ask how Gaunt had known, then closed it again. He wore a little name-tag above his badge. That was it, of course.

  "I really shouldn't," he said, and hoisted a thumb back over his shoulder at the, cruiser. He could still hear the radio, although static was all it was putting out; he hadn't had a call all night. "On duty, you know. Well, I'm off at nine, but technically, until I turn in my car--"

  "This would only take a minute or so," Gaunt coaxed. His eyes regarded Norris merrily. "When I make up my mind to deal with a man, Officer Ridgewick, I don't waste time. Especially when the man in question is out in the middle of the night protecting my business."

  Norris thought of telling Gaunt that nine o'clock was hardly the middle of the night, and in a sleepy little place like Castle Rock, protecting the investments of the local business people was rarely much of a chore. Then he looked back at the Bazun rod and reel and that old longing, so surprisingly strong and fresh, washed over him again. He thought of going out on the lake with such a rod this weekend, going out early in the morning with a box of worms and a big Thermos of fresh coffee from Nan's. It would almost be like being with the old man again.

  "Well ..."

  "Oh, come on," Gaunt coaxed. "If I can do a little selling after hours, you can do a little buying on the town's time. And, really, Officer Ridgewick--I don't think anyone is going to rob the bank tonight, do you?"

  Norris looked toward the bank, which flicked first yellow and then black in the measured stutter of the blinker-light, and laughed. "I doubt it."

  "Well?"

  "Okay," Norris said. "But if we can't make a deal in a couple of minutes, I'll really have to split."

  Leland Gaunt groaned and laughed at the same time. "I think I hear the soft sound of my pockets being turned out," he said. "Come along, Officer Ridgewick--a couple of minutes it shall be."

  "I sure would like to have that rod," Norris blurted. It was a bad way to start a trade and he knew it, but he couldn't help it.

  "And so you shall," Mr. Gaunt said. "I'm going to offer you the best deal of your life, Officer Ridgewick."

  He led Norris inside Needful Things and closed the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  Wilma Jerzyck did not know her husband, Pete, quite as well as she thought she did.

  She went to bed that Thursday night planning to go over to Nettie Cobb's first thing Friday morning and Take Care of Things. Her frequent wrangles sometimes simply faded away, but on those occasions when they came to a head, it was Wilma who picked the duelling ground and chose the weapons. The first rule of her confrontational life-style was Always get the last word. The second was Always make the first move. Making this first move was what she thought of as Taking Care of Things, and she meant to take care of Nettie in a hurry. She told Pete she just might see how many times she could turn the crazy bitch's head around before it popped off the stem. She fully expected to spend most of the night awake and steaming, taut as a drawn bowstring; it wouldn't have been the first time. Instead, she slipped off to sleep less than ten minutes after lying down, and when she woke up she felt refreshed and oddly calm. Sitting at the kitchen table in her housecoat on Friday morning, it came to her that maybe it was too early to Take Care of Things Permanently. She had scared the living Jesus out of Nettie on the phone last night; as mad as Wilma had been, she hadn't been mad enough to miss that. Only a person as deaf as a stone post could have missed it.

  Why not just let Ms. Mental Illness of 1991 swing in the wind for a little while? Let her be the one to lie awake nights, wondering from which direction the Wrath of Wilma would fall. Do a few drive-bys, perhaps make a few more phone calls. As she sipped her coffee (Pete sat across the table, watching her apprehensively from above the sports section of the paper), it occurred to her that, if Nettie was as cracked as everyone said, she might not have to Take Care of Things at all. This might be one of those rare occasions when Things Took Care of Themselves. She found this thought so cheering that she actually allowed Pete to kiss her as he gathered up his briefcase and made ready to leave for work.

  The idea that her frightened mouse of a husband might have drugged her never crossed Wilma's mind. Nevertheless, that was just what Pete Jerzyck had done, and not for the first time, either.

  Wilma knew that she had cowed her husband, but she had no idea to how great an extent. He did not just live in fear of her; he lived in awe of her, as natives in certain tropical climes once supposedly lived in awe and superstitious dread of the Great God Thunder Mountain, which might brood silently over their sunny lives for years or even generations before suddenly exploding in a murderous tirade of burning lava.

  Such natives, whether real or hypothetical, undoubtedly had their own rituals of propitiation. These may not have helped much when the mountain awoke and cast its bolts of thunder and rivers of fire at their villages, but they surely improved everyone's peace of mind when the mountain was quiet. Pete Jerzyck had no high rituals with which he could worship Wilma; it seemed that more prosaic measures would have to serve. Prescription drugs instead of Communion wafers, for instance.

  He made an appointment with Ray Van Allen, Castle Rock's only family practitioner, and told him that he wanted something which would relieve his feelings of anxiety. His work-schedule was a bitch, he told Ray, and as his commission-rate rose, he found it harder and harder to leave his work-related problems at the office. He had finally decided it was time to see if the doctor could prescribe something that would smooth off some of the rough edges.

  Ray Van Allen knew nothing about the pressures of the real-estate game, but he had a fair idea of what the pressures of living with Wilma must be like. He suspected that Pete Jerzyck would have a lot less anxiety if he never left the office at all, but of course it was not his place to say so. He wrote a prescription for Xanax, cited the usual cautions, and wished the man good luck and God speed. He believed that, as Pete w
ent down the road of life in tandem with that particular mare, he would need a lot of both.

  Pete used the Xanax but did not abuse it. Neither did he tell Wilma about it--she would have had a cow if she knew he was USING DRUGS. He was careful to keep his Xanax prescription in his briefcase, which contained papers in which Wilma had no interest at all. He took five or six pills a month, most of them on the days before Wilma started her period.

  Then, last summer, Wilma had gotten into a wrangle with Henrietta Longman, who owned and operated The Beauty Rest up on Castle Hill. The subject was a botched perm. Following the initial shouting match, there was an exchange between them at Hemphill's Market the next day, then a yelling match on Main Street a week later. That one almost degenerated into a brawl.

  In the aftermath, Wilma had paced back and forth through the house like a caged lioness, swearing she was going to get that bitch, that she was going to put her in the hospital. "She'll need a Beauty Rest when I get through with her," Wilma had grated through clenched teeth. "You can count on it. I'm going up there tomorrow. I'm going to go up there and Take Care of Things."

  Pete had realized with mounting alarm that this was not just talk; Wilma meant it. God knew what wild stunt she might pull. He'd had visions of Wilma ducking Henrietta's head in a vat of corrosive goo that would leave the woman as bald as Sinead O'Connor for the rest of her life.

  He'd hoped for some modulation of temperament overnight, but when Wilma got up the next morning, she was even angrier. He wouldn't have believed it possible, but it seemed it was. The dark circles under her eyes were a proclamation of the sleepless night she had spent.

  "Wilma," he'd said weakly, "I really don't think it's such a good idea for you to go up there to The Beauty Rest today. I'm sure, if you think this over--"

  "I thought it over last night," Wilma had replied, turning that frighteningly flat gaze of hers on him, "and I decided that when I finish with her, she's never going to burn the roots of anyone else's hair. When I finish with her, she's going to need a Seeing Eye dog just to find her way to the john. And if you fuck around with me, Pete, you and her can buy your goddam dogs from the same litter of German shepherds."