Cujo

the scare come the laughs, and the Professor, with his sober mien and his schoolroom surroundings, had been literally laughed to death.

George Carlin, in his nightclub routine: 'Yeah, it's a crazy world. Crazy world.' Carlin bends his head over his mike for a moment, meditating, and then looks up again. 'The Reagan guys are doing their campaign shit on TV, right? Russians are getting ahead of us in the arms race. The Russians are turning out missiles by the thousands, right? So Jimmy gets on TV to do one of his spots, and he says, 'My fellow Americans, the day the Russians get ahead of us in the arms race will be the day the youth of America shits red.`

Big laugh from the audience.

'So Ronnie gets on the phone to Jimmy, and he says, 'Mr. President, what did Amy have for breakfast?''

A gigantic laugh from the audience. Carlin pauses. The real punchline is then delivered in a low, insinuating tone:

'Nooope ... nothing wrong here.'

The audience roars its approval, applauds wildly. Carlin shakes his head sadly. 'Red shit, man. Wow. Dig on it awhile.'

That was the problem. George Carlin was the problem. Bob Hope was the problem. johnny Carson was the problem. Steve Martin was the problem. Every barbershop wit in America was the problem.

And then, consider this: Sharp stock had gone down nine and had only rebounded four and a quarter. The shareholders were going to be hollering for somebody's head. Let's see ... whose do we give them? Who had the bright idea of the Sharp Cereal Professor in the first place? How about those guys as the most eligible? Never mind the fact that the Professor had been on for four years before the Zingers. debacle. Never mind the fact that when the Sharp

Cereal Professor (and his cohorts the Cookie Sharpshooter and George and Gracie) had come on the scene, Sharp stock had been three and a quarter points lower than it was now.

Never mind all that. Mind this instead: just the fact, just the public announcement in the trades that Ad Worx had lost the Sharp account - just that would probably cause shares to bob up another point and a half to two points. And when a new ad campaign actually began, investors would take it as a sign that the old woes were finally behind the company, and the stock might creep up another point.

Of course, Vic thought, stirring Sweet 'n Low into his coffee, that was only theory. And even if the theory turned out to be true, both he and Roger believed that a short-run gain for Sharp would be more than offset if a new ad campaign, hastily thrown together by people who didn't know the Sharp Company as he and Roger did, or the competitive cereal market in general, didn't do the job.

And suddenly that new slant, that fresh angle, popped into his mind. It came unbidden and unexpected. His coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth and his eyes widened. In his mind he saw two men - perhaps him and Roger, perhaps old man Sharp and his ageing kid - filling in a grave. Their spades were flying. A lantern flickered fitfully in the windy night. Rain was drizzling down. These corporate sextons threw an occasional furtive glance behind them. It was a burial by night, a covert act performed in the darkness. They were burying the Sharp Cereal Professor in secret, and that was wrong.

'Wrong,' he muttered aloud.

Sure it was. Because if they buried him in the dead of night, he could never say what he had to say: that he was sorry.

He took his Pentel pen from his inner coat pocket, took a napkin from the holder, and wrote swiftly across it:

The Sharp Cereal Professor needs to apologize.

He looked at it. The letters were getting larger, fuzzing as the ink sank into the napkin. Below that first sentence he added:

Decent burial.

And below that:

DAYLIGHT burial.

He still wasn't sure what it meant; it was more metaphor than sense, but that was how his best ideas came to him. And there was something there. He felt sure of it.

Cujo lay on the floor of the garage, in semi-gloom. It was hot in here but it was even worse outside . . . and the daylight outside was too bright. It never had been before; in fact, he had never even really noticed the quality of the light before. But he was noticing now. Cujo's head hurt. His muscles hurt. The bright light made his eyes hurt. He was hot. And his muzzle still ached where he had been scratched.

Ached and festered.

THE MAN was gone somewhere. Not long after he left, THE Boy and THE WOMAN had gone somewhere, leaving him alone. THE Boy had put a big dish of food out for Cujo, and Cujo had eaten a little bit. The food made him feel worse instead of better, and he left the rest of it alone.

Now there was the growl of a truck turning into the driveway. Cujo got up and went to the barn door, knowing already it was a stranger. He knew the sound of both THE MAN's truck and the family car. He stood in the doorway, head poking out into the bright glare that hurt his eyes. The truck backed up the driveway and then stopped. Two men got down from the cab and came around to the back. One of them ran up the truck's sliding back door. The rattling, banging noise hurt Cujo's ears. He whined and retreated back into the comforting gloom.

The truck was from Portland Machine. Three hours ago, Charity Camber and her still-dazzled son had gone into Portland Machine's main office on Brighton Avenue and she had written a personal check for a new Jorgen chainfall wholesale had turned out to be exactly $1,241.71, tax included. Before going to Portland Machine she had gone into the State Liquor Store on Congress Street to fill out a lottery claim form. Brett, forbidden absolutely to come inside with her, stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets.

The clerk told Charity she would get a Lottery Commission cheek in the mail. How long? Two weeks at the very outside. It would come minus a deduction of roughly eight hundred dollars for taxes. This sum was based on her declaration of Joe's yearly income.

The deduction for taxes before the fact did not anger Charity at all. Up until the moment when the clerk had checked her number against his sheet, she had been holding her breath, still unable to believe this had really happened to her. Then the clerk had nodded, congratulated her. None of that mattered. What mattered was that now she could breathe again, and the ticket was no longer her responsibility. It had returned to the bowels of the Lottery Commission. Her Check Would Be in the Mail - wonderful, mystical, talismanic phrase.

And still she felt a small pang as she watched the dog-eared ticket, limp with her own nervous perspiration, dipped to the form she had filled out and then stored away. Lady Luck had singled her out. For the first time in her life' maybe for the only time, that heavy muslin drape of the everyday had been twitched a little, showing her a bright and shining world beyond. She was a practical woman, and in her heart she knew that she hated her husband more than a little, and feared him more than a little, but that they would grow old together, and he would die, leaving her with his debts and - this she would not admit for sure even in her secret heart, but now she feared it! - perhaps with his spoilt son.

If her name had been plucked from the big drum in the twiceyearly Super Drawing, if she had won ten times the five thousand dollars she had won, she might have entertained -notions of pushing aside that dull muslin curtain, taking her son by the hand, and leading them both out into whatever was beyond Town Road No. 3 and Camber's Garage, Foreign Cars Our Specialty, and Castle Rock. She might have taken Brett to Connecticut with the express purpose of asking her sister how much a small apartment in Stratford would cost.