Needful Things

  Only one.

  "You motherfucker," The Mellow Tiger's owner and operator said in a soft, reflective voice. "You stupid crazy motherfucking sonofabitch."

  He thought about going back inside to get his deer rifle and then thought better of it. The Tiger was just up the road, and he kept a rather special box under the bar. Inside it was a double-barrelled Winchester shotgun sawed off at the knees. He'd kept it there ever since that numb fuck Ace Merrill had tried to rob him a few years back. It was a highly illegal weapon, and Henry had never used it.

  He thought he might just use it today.

  He touched the ugly scratch Hugh had laid into the side of his T-Bird, then crumpled up the note and tossed it aside. Billy Tupper would be up at the Tiger by now, sweeping the floor and swamping out the heads. Henry would get the sawed-off, then borrow Billy's Pontiac. It seemed he had a little asshole-hunting to do.

  Henry kicked the balled-up note into the grass. "You been taking those stupid-pills again, Hugh, but you aren't going to be taking any more after today--I guarantee it." He touched the scratch a final time. He had never been so angry in his whole life. "I guaran-fuckin-tee it."

  Henry set off up the road toward The Mellow Tiger, walking fast.

  2

  In the process of tearing apart George T. Nelson's bedroom, Frank Jewett found half an ounce of coke under the mattress of the double bed. He flushed it down the john, and as he watched it swirl away, he felt a sudden cramp in his belly. He started to unbuckle his pants, then walked back into the trashed bedroom again instead. Frank supposed he had gone utterly crazy, but he no longer cared much. Crazy people didn't have to think about the future. To crazy people, the future was a very low priority.

  One of the few undisturbed things in George T. Nelson's bedroom was a picture on the wall. It was a picture of an old lady. It was in an expensive gold frame, and this suggested to Frank that it was a picture of George T. Nelson's sainted mother. The cramp struck again. Frank removed the picture from the wall and put it on the floor. Then he unbuckled his pants, squatted carefully above it, and did what came naturally.

  It was the high point of what had been, up 'til then, a very bad day.

  3

  Lenny Partridge, Castle Rock's oldest resident and holder of the Boston Post Cane which Aunt Evvie Chalmers had once possessed, also drove one of Castle Rock's oldest cars. It was a 1966 Chevrolet Bel-Air which had once been white. It was now a generic smudged no-color--call it Dirt Road Gray. It wasn't in very good shape. The glass in the back window had been replaced by a flapping sheet of all-weather plastic some years ago, the rocker panels had rusted out so badly that Lenny could view the road through a complicated lacework of rust as he drove along, and the exhaust pipe hung down like the rotted arm of a man who had died in a dry climate. Also, the oil-seals were gone. When Lenny drove the Bel-Air, he spread great clouds of fragrant blue smoke out behind him, and the fields he passed on his daily trip into town looked as if a homicidal aviator had just dusted them with paraquat. The Chevy gobbled three (sometimes four) quarts of oil a day. This gaudy consumption did not bother Lenny in the least; he bought recycled Diamond motor oil from Sonny Jackett in the five-gallon economy size, and he always made sure that Sonny deducted ten per cent ... his Golden Ager discount. And because he hadn't driven the Bel-Air at a speed greater than thirty-five miles an hour in the last ten years, it would probably hold together longer than Lenny himself.

  While Henry Beaufort was starting up the road to The Mellow Tiger on the other side of the Tin Bridge, almost five miles away, Lenny was guiding his rusty Bel-Air over the top of Castle Hill.

  There was a man standing in the middle of the road with his arms held up in an imperial stop gesture. The man was bare-chested and barefooted. He wore only a pair of khaki pants with the fly unzipped, and, around his neck, a moth-eaten runner of fur.

  Lenny's heart took a large wheezy leap in his scrawny chest and he slammed both of his feet, clad in a pair of slowly disintegrating high-tops, down on the brake pedal. It sank almost to the floor with an unearthly moan and the Bel-Air finally stopped less than three feet from the man in the road, whom Lenny now recognized as Hugh Priest. Hugh had not so much as flinched. When the car stopped, he strode rapidly around to where Lenny was sitting, hands pressed against the front of his thermal undershirt, trying to catch his breath and wondering if this was the final cardiac arrest.

  "Hugh!" he gasped. "Why, what in the tarnal hell are you doin? I almost run you down! I--"

  Hugh opened the driver's door and leaned in. The fur stole he was wearing around his neck swung forward and Lenny flinched back from it. It looked like a half-rotten fox-tail with great hunks of fur missing from the hide. It smelled bad.

  Hugh seized him by the straps of his overalls and hauled him out of the car. Lenny uttered a squawk of terror and outrage.

  "Sorry, oldtimer," Hugh said in the absent voice of a man who has much greater problems than this one on his mind. "I need your car. Mine's a little under the weather."

  "You can't--"

  But Hugh most definitely could. He tossed Lenny across the road as if the old fellow were no more than a bag of rags. When Lenny came down, there was a clear snapping sound and his squawks turned to mournful, hooting cries of pain. He had broken one collarbone and two ribs.

  Ignoring him, Hugh got behind the wheel of the Chevy, pulled the door shut, and floored the accelerator. The engine let out a scream of surprise and a blue fog of oilsmoke rolled out of the sagging tailpipe. He was rolling down the hill at better than fifty miles an hour before Lenny Partridge could even manage to thrash his way over onto his back.

  4

  Andy Clutterbuck swung onto Castle Hill Road at approximately 3:35 p.m. He passed Lenny Partridge's old oil-guzzler going the other way and didn't give it a thought; Clut's mind was totally occupied with Hugh Priest, and the rusty old Bel-Air was just another part of the scenery.

  Clut didn't have the slightest idea of why or how Hugh might have been involved in the deaths of Wilma and Nettie, but that was all right; he was a footsoldier and that was all. The whys and hows were someone else's job, and this was one of those days when he was damned glad of it. He did know that Hugh was a nasty drunk whom the years had not sweetened. A man like that might do anything ... especially when he was deep in his cups.

  He's probably at work, anyway, Clut thought, but as he approached the ramshackle house which Hugh called home, he unsnapped the strap on his service revolver just the same. A moment later he saw the sun twinkling off glass and chrome in Hugh's driveway and his nerves cranked up until they were humming like telephone wires in a gale. Hugh's car was here, and when a man's car was at home, the man usually was, too. It was just a fact of country life.

  When Hugh had left his driveway on foot, he had turned right, away from town and toward the top of Castle Hill. If Clut had looked in that direction, he would have seen Lenny Partridge lying on the soft shoulder of the road and flopping around like a chicken taking a dustbath, but he didn't look that way. All of Clut's attention was focused on Hugh's house. Lenny's thin, birdlike cries went in one of Clut's ears, directly across his brain without raising the slightest alarm, and out the other.

  Clut drew his gun before getting out of the cruiser.

  5

  William Tupper was only nineteen and he was never going to be a Rhodes Scholar, but he was smart enough to be terrified by Henry's behavior when Henry came into the Tiger at twenty minutes to four on the last real day of Castle Rock's existence. He was also smart enough to know trying to refuse Henry the keys to his Pontiac would do no good; in his present mood, Henry (who was, under ordinary circumstances, the best boss Billy had ever had) would just knock him down and take them.

  So for the first--and perhaps the only--time in his life, Billy tried guile. "Henry," he said timidly, "you look like you could use a drink. I know I could. Why don't you let me pour us both a short one before you go?"

  Henry had disappeared behind
the bar. Billy could hear him back there, rummaging around and cursing under his breath. Finally he stood up again, holding a rectangular wooden box with a small padlock on it. He put the box on the bar and then began to pick through the ring of keys he wore at his belt.

  He considered what Billy had said, began to shake his head, then reconsidered. A drink really wasn't such a bad idea; it would settle both his hands and his nerves. He found the right key, popped the lock on the box, and laid the lock aside on the bar. "Okay," he said. "But if we're gonna do it, let's do it right. Chivas. Single for you, double for me." He pointed his finger at Billy. Billy flinched--he was suddenly sure Henry was going to add: But you're coming with me. "And don't you tell your mother I let you have hard liquor in here, do you understand me?"

  "Yessir," Billy said, relieved. He went quickly to get the bottle before Henry could change his mind. "I understand you perfect."

  6

  Deke Bradford, the man who ran Castle Rock's biggest and most expensive operation--Public Works--was utterly disgusted.

  "Nope, he's not here," he told Alan. "Hasn't been in all day. But if you see him before I do, do me a favor and tell him he's fired."

  "Why have you held onto him as long as you have, Deke?"

  They were standing in the hot afternoon sunlight outside Town Garage #1. Off to the left, a Case Construction and Supply truck was backed up to a shed. Three men were offloading small but heavy wooden cases. A red diamond shape--the symbol for high explosives--was stencilled on each of these. From inside the shed, Alan could hear the whisper of air conditioning. It seemed very odd to hear an air conditioner running this late in the year, but in Castle Rock, this had been an extremely odd week.

  "I kep' him on longer than I should," Deke admitted, and ran his hands through his short, graying hair. "I did it because I thought there was a good man hidin somewhere inside of him." Deke was one of those short, stocky men--fireplugs with legs--who always looked ready to take a large chomp out of someone's ass. He was, however, one of the sweetest, kindest men Alan had ever met. "When he wasn't drunk or too hung over, wasn't nobody in this town'd work harder for you than Hugh would. And there was somethin in his face made me think he might not be one of those men who just has to go on drinkin until the devil knocks em down. I thought maybe with a steady job, he'd straighten up and fly right. But this last week . . ."

  "What about this last week?"

  "Man's been going to hell in a handbasket. Looked like he was all the time on something, and I don't necessarily mean booze. It seemed like his eyes sank way back in his head, and he was always lookin over your shoulder when you talked to him, never right at you. Also, he started talking to himself."

  "About what?"

  "I dunno. I doubt if the other guys do, either. I hate to fire a man, but I'd made up my mind on Hugh even before you pulled in here this afternoon. I'm done with him."

  "Excuse me, Deke." Alan went back to the car, called Sheila, and told her Hugh hadn't been at work all day.

  "See if you can reach Clut, Sheila, and tell him to really watch his ass. And send John out there as backup." He hesitated over the next part, knowing the caution had resulted in more than a few needless shootings, and then went ahead. He had to; he owed it to his officers in the field. "Clut and John are to consider Hugh armed and dangerous. Got it?"

  "Armed and dangerous, ten-four."

  "Okay. Ten-forty, Unit One out."

  He racked the microphone and walked back to Deke.

  "Do you think he might have left town, Deke?"

  "Him?" Deke cocked his head to one side and spat tobacco juice. "Guys like him never leave town until they've picked up their last paycheck. Most of em never leave at all. When it comes to remembering what roads lead out of town, guys like Hugh seem to have some sort of forgetting disease."

  Something caught Deke's eye and he turned toward the men offioading the wooden crates. "Watch what you're doing with those, you guys! You're s'posed to be unloadin em, not playin pepper with em!"

  "That's a lot of bang you got there," Alan said.

  "Ayuh--twenty cases. We're gonna blow a granite jar-top over at the gravel-pit out on #5. The way it looks to me, we'll have enough left over to blow Hugh all the way to Mars, if you want to."

  "Why did you get so much?"

  "It wasn't my idea; Buster added to my purchase order, God knows why. I can tell you one thing, though--he's gonna shit when he sees the electrical bill for this month ... unless a cold front moves in. That air conditioner sucks up the juice somethin wicked, but you got to keep that stuff cool or it sweats. They all tell you this new bang don't do it, but I believe in better safe than sorry."

  "Buster topped your order," Alan mused.

  "Yeah--by four or six cases, I can't remember which. Wonders'll never cease, huh?"

  "I guess not. Deke, can I use your office phone?"

  "Be my guest."

  Alan sat behind Deke's desk for a full minute, sweating dark patches beneath the arms of his uniform shirt and listening to the telephone at Polly's house ring again and again and again. At last he dropped the handset back into the cradle.

  He left the office in a slow walk, head down. Deke was padlocking the door of the dynamite shack, and when he turned to Alan, his face was long and unhappy. "There was a good man somewhere inside of Hugh Priest, Alan. I swear to God there was. A lot of times that man comes out. I seen it happen before. More often than most people' d believe. With Hugh ..." He shrugged. "Huh-uh. No soap."

  Alan nodded.

  "Are you okay, Alan? You look like you come over funny."

  "I'm fine," Alan said, smiling a little. But it was the truth; he had come over funny. Polly, too. And Hugh. And Brian Rusk. It seemed as if everyone had come over funny today.

  "Want a glass of water or cold tea? I got some."

  "Thanks, but I better get going."

  "All right. Let me know how it turns out."

  That was something Alan couldn't promise to do, but he had a sickening little feeling in the pit of his stomach that Deke would be able to read all about it for himself in a day or two. Or watch it on TV.

  7

  Lenny Partridge's old Chevy Bel-Air pulled into one of the slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things shortly before four, and the man of the hour got out. Hugh's fly was still unzipped, and he was still wearing the fox-tail around his neck. He crossed the sidewalk, his bare feet slapping on the hot concrete, and opened the door. The small silver bell overhead jingled.

  The only person who saw him go in was Charlie Fortin. He was standing in the doorway of the Western Auto and smoking one of his stinky home-rolled cigarettes. "Old Hugh finally flipped," Charlie said to no one in particular.

  Inside, Mr. Gaunt looked at old Hugh with a pleasant, expectant little smile ... as if barefooted, bare-chested men wearing moth-eaten fox-tails around their necks showed up in his shop every day. He made a small check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. The last check-mark.

  "I'm in trouble," Hugh said, advancing on Mr. Gaunt. His eyes rolled from side to side in their sockets like pin-balls. "I'm in a real mess this time."

  "I know," Mr. Gaunt said in his most soothing voice.

  "This seemed like the right place to come. I dunno--I keep dreaming about you. I ... I didn't know where else to turn."

  "This is the right place, Hugh."

  "He cut my tires," Hugh whispered. "Beaufort, the bastard who owns The Mellow Tiger. He left a note. 'You know what I'll come after next time Hubert,' it said. I know what that means. You bet I do." One of Hugh's grubby, large-fingered hands caressed the mangy fur, and an expression of adoration spread across his face. It would have been sappy if it had not been so clearly genuine. "My beautiful, beautiful fox-tail."

  "Perhaps you ought to take care of him," Mr. Gaunt suggested thoughtfully, "before he can take care of you. I know that sounds a little . . . well ... extreme ... but when you consider--"

  "Yes! Yes! That's just what I want t
o do!"

  "I think I have just the thing," Mr. Gaunt said. He bent down, and when he straightened up he had an automatic pistol in his left hand. He pushed it across the glass top of the case. "Fully loaded."

  Hugh picked it up. His confusion seemed to blow away like smoke as the gun's solid weight filled his hand. He could smell gun-grease, low and fragrant.

  "I ... I left my wallet at home," he said.

  "Oh, you don't need to worry about that," Mr. Gaunt told him. "At Needful Things, Hugh, we insure the things we sell." Suddenly his face hardened. His lips peeled back from his teeth and his eyes blazed. "Go get him!" he cried in a low, harsh voice. "Go get the bastard that wants to destroy what is yours! Go get him, Hugh! Protect yourself! Protect your property!"

  Hugh grinned suddenly. "Thanks, Mr. Gaunt. Thanks a lot."

  "Don't mention it," Mr. Gaunt said, dropping immediately back into his normal tone of voice, but the small silver bell was already jangling as Hugh went back out, stuffing the automatic into the sagging waistband of his trousers as he walked.

  Mr. Gaunt went to the window and watched Hugh get behind the wheel of the tired Chevy and back it into the street. A Budweiser truck rolling slowly down Main Street blared its horn and swerved to avoid him.

  "Go get him, Hugh," Mr. Gaunt said in a low voice. Small wisps of smoke began to rise from his ears and his hair; thicker threads emerged from his nostrils and from between the square white tombstones of his teeth. "Get all of them you can. Party down, big fella."

  Mr. Gaunt threw back his head and began to laugh.

  8

  John LaPointe hurried toward the side door of the Sheriff's Office, the one that gave on the Municipal Building parking lot. He was excited. Armed and dangerous. It wasn't often that you got to assist in arresting an armed and dangerous suspect. Not in a sleepy little town like Castle Rock, anyway. He had forgotten all about his missing wallet (at least for the time being), and Sally Ratcliffe was even further from his mind.