'Go get your other biscuit,' Gary said, and pointed.
Cujo turned around, went to the biscuit, picked it up, mouthed it - a long string of saliva depending from his mouth -and then dropped it. He looked at Gary apologetically.
'You, turnin down chow?' Gary said unbelievingly. 'You?'
Cujo picked up the dog biscuit again and ate it.
'That's better,' Gary said. 'A little heat ain't gonna killya. Ain't gonna kill me either, but it bitches the shit outta my hemorrhoids. Well, I don't give a shit if they get as big as fucking golfballs. You know it?' He swatted a mosquito.
Cujo lay down beside Gary's chair as Gary picked up his screwdriver again. It was almost time to go in and freshen it up, as the country-club cunts said.
'Freshen up my ass,' Gary said. He gestured at the roof of his house, and a sticky mixture of orange juice and vodka
trickled down his sunburned, scrawny arm. 'Look at that chimbly, Cuje ole guy. Fallin right the fuck down. And you know what? I don't give a shit. The whole place could fall flat and I wouldn't fart sideways to a dime. You know that?'
Cujo thumped his tail a little. He didn't know what this MAN was saying, but the rhythms were familiar and the patterns were soothing. These polemics had gone on a dozen times a week since ... well, as far as Cujo was concerned, since forever. Cujo liked this MAN, who always had food. just lately Cujo didn't seem to want food, but if THE MAN wanted him to eat, he would. Then he could lie here - as he was now - and listen to the soothing talk. All in all, Cujo didn't feel very well. He hadn't growled at THE ~ because he was hot but simply because he didn't feel good. For a moment there - just a moment - he had felt like biting THE
'Got your nose in the brambles, looks like,' Gary said. 'What was you after? Woodchuck? Rabbit?'
Cujo thumped his tail a little. Crickets sang in the rampant bushes. Behind the house, honeysuckle grew in a wild drift, calling the somnolent bees of a summer afternoon. Everything in Cujo's life should have been right, but somehow it wasn't. He just didn't feel good at all.
'I don't even give a shit if all that Georgia redneck's teeth fall out, and all of Ray-Gun's teeth too,' Gary said, and stood up unsteadily. The lawn chair fell over and collapsed itself. If you had guessed that Gary Pervier didn't give a shit, you would have been right. 'Scuse me, boy.' He went inside and built himself another screwdriver. 'Me kitchen was buzzing, fly-blown horror of splitopen green garbage bags, empty cans, and empty liquor bottles.
When Gary came back out again, fresh drink in hand, Cujo had left.
On the last day of June, Donna Trenton came back from downtown Castle Rock (the locals called it 'downstreet', but at least she hadn't picked up that particular Maine-ism yet), where she had dropped Tad off at his afternoon daycamp and picked up a few groceries at the Agway Market. She was hot and tired, and the sight of Steve Kemp's battered Ford Econoline van with the gaudy desert murals painted on the sides suddenly turned her furious.
Anger had simmered all day. Vic had told her about the impending trip at breakfast, and when she had protested being left alone with Tad for what might be ten days or two weeks or God only knew, he made it clear to her exactly what the stakes were. He had thrown a scare into her, and she didn't like to be frightened. Up until this morning she had treated the Red Razberry Zingers affair as a joke - a rather good one at Vic and Roger's expense. She had never dreamed that such an absurd thing could have such serious consequences.
Then Tad had been scratchy about going off to the daycamp, complaining that a bigger boy had pushed him down last Friday. The bigger boy's name was Stanley Dobson, and Tad was afraid that Stanley Dobson might push him down again today. He had cried and clutched onto her when she got him to the American Legion field where the camp was held, and she'd had to pry his fingers loose from her blouse finger by finger, making her feel more like a Nazi than a mom: You vill go
To add to the fun, her Pinto had started to act funny on the way home from the market, jerking and hitching, as if it had an automotive case of the hiccups. It had smoothed out after a bit, but what could happen once could happen again, and
- and, just to put a little icing on the cake, here was Steve Kemp.
'Well, no bullshit' she muttered, grabbed her bag of
groceries, and got out, a pretty, dark-haired woman of twenty-nine, tall, gray-eyed. She somehow managed to look tolerably fresh in spite of the relentless heat, her Tad-printed blouse, and academygray shorts that felt pasted to her hips and fanny.
She went up the steps quickly and into the house by the porch door. Steve was sitting in Vic's living-room chair. He was drinking one of Vic's beers. He was smoking a cigarette -presumably one of his own. The TV was on, and the agonies of
'Tlhe princess arrives,' Steve said with the lopsided grin she had once found so charming and interestingly dangerous. 'I thought you were never going to -'
'I want you out of here, you son of a bitch,' she said tonelessly, and went through into the kitchen. She put the grocery bag down on the counter and started putting things away. She could not remember when she had last been so angry, so furious that her stomach had tied itself in a gripping, groaning knot. One of the endless arguments with her mother, maybe. One of the real horrorshows before she had gone away to school. When Steve came up behind her and slipped his tanned arms around her bare midriff, she acted with no thought at all; she brought her elbow back into his lower chest. Her temper was not cooled by the obvious fact that he had anticipated her. He played a lot of tennis, and her elbow felt as if it had struck a stone wall coated with a layer of hard rubber.
She turned around and looked into his grinning, bearded face. She stood five-eleven and was an inch taller than Vic when she wore heels, but Steve was nearly six-five.
'Didn't you hear me? I want you out of here!'
'Now, what for?' he asked. 'The little one is off making beaded loincloths or shooting apples off the heads of counselors with his little bow and arrow ... or whatever they do ... and hubby is busting heavies at the office... and now is the time for Castle Rock's prettiest
'I've got every reason to park in the driveway,' Steve said, still grinning. 'I've got that dresser in the back. Stripped clean. Even as I wish you were yourself, my dear.'
'You can put it on the porch. I'll take care of it. While you're doing that, I'll write you a check.'
His smile faded a little. For the first time since she had come in, the surface charm slipped a little and she could see the real person underneath. It was a person she didn't like at all, a person that dismayed her when she thought of him in connection with herself. She had lied to Vic, gone behind his back, in order to go to bed with Steve Kemp. She wished that what she felt now could be something as simple as rediscovering herself, as after a nasty bout of fever. Or rediscovering herself as Vic's mate. But when you took the bark off it, the simple fact was that Steve Kemp - publishing poet, itinerant furniture stripper and refinisher, chair caner, fair amateur tennis player, excellent afternoon lover - was a turd.
'Be serious,' he said.
'Yeah, no one could reject handsome, sensitive Steven Kemp,' she said. iesgot to be a joke. Only it's not. So
