Cujo

But it did.

It was 3:45 P.m.

They drove southeast along Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road, which was about five miles out of town. The Pinto behaved in exemplary fashion, and if it hadn't been for the bout of snaps and jerks coming home from the shopping trip, Donna would have wondered what she had bothered making such a fuss about. But there had been that bout of the shakes, and so she drove sitting bolt upright again, going no faster than forty, pulling as far to the right as she could when a car came up behind her. And there was a lot of traffic on the road. The summer influx of tourists and vacationers had begun. The Pinto had no air conditioning, so they rode with both windows open.

A Continental with New York plates towing a gigantic trailer with two mopeds on the back swung around them on blind curve, the driver bleating his horn. The driver's wife, a fat woman wearing mirror sunglasses, looked at Donna and Tad with imperious contempt.

'Get stuffed!' Donna yelled, and popped her middle finger up at the fat lady. The fat lady turned away quickly. Tad was looking at his mother just a little nervously, and Donna smiled at him. 'No hassle, big guy. We're going good. Just out-of-state fools.'

'Oh,' Tad said cautiously.

Listen to me, she thought. The big Yankee. Vic would be proud.

She had to grin to herself, because everyone in Maine understood that if you moved here from another place, you would be an outof-stater until you were sent to your grave. And on your tombstone they would write something like HARRY JONES, CASTLE CORNERS, MAINE (Originally from Omaha, Nebraska).

Most of the tourists were headed toward 302, where they would turn east to Naples or west toward Bridgton, Fryeburg, and North Conway, New Hampshire, with its alpine slides, cut-rate amusement parks, and tax-free restaurants. Donna and Tad were not going up to the 302 junction.

Although their home overlooked downtown Castle Rock and its picturebook Town Common, woods had closed in on both sides of the road before they were five miles from their own front door. These woods drew back occasionally - a little - to show a lot with with a house or a trailer on it, and as they went farther out, the houses were more often of the type that her father had called 'shanty Irish'. The sun still shone brightly down and there was a good four hours of daylight left, but the emptiness made her feel uneasy again. It was not so bad here, on 117, but once they left the main road

Their turnoff was marked with a sign saying MAPLE SUGAR ROAD in faded, almost unreadable letters. It had been splintered considerably by kids banging away with.22s and birdshot. This road was two-lane blacktop, bumpy and frost-heaved. It wound past two or three nice houses, two or three not-so-nice houses, and one old and shabby RoadKing trailer sitting on a crumbling concrete foundation. There was a yardful of weeds in front of the trailer. Donna could see cheap-looking plastic toys in the weeds. A sign nailed askew to a tree at the head of the driveway read FREE KITTEN'S. A potbellied kid of maybe two stood in the driveway, his sopping Pamper hanging below his tiny penis. His mouth hung open and he was picking his nose with one finger and his navel with another. Looking at him, Donna felt a helpless chill of gooseflesh.

Stop it! For Christ's sake, what's wrong with you?

The woods closed in around them again. An old '68 Ford Fairlane with a lot of rusty-red primer paint on the hood and around the headlights passed them going the other way. A young kid with a lot of hair was slouched nonchalantly behind the wheel. He wasn't wearing a shirt. The Fairlane was doing maybe eighty. Donna winced. It was the only traffic they saw.

The Maple Sugar Road climbed steadily, and when they passed the occasional field or large garden they were afforded a stunning view of western Maine toward Bridgton and Freyburg. Long Lake glittered in the farthest distance like the sapphire pendant of a fabulously rich woman.

They were climbing another long slope up one of these eroded bills (as advertised, the sides of the road were now lined with dusty, heat-drooping maples) when the Pinto began to buck and jolt again. Donna's breath dogged in her throat and she thought, Oh come on, oh come on, come on, you cruddy little car, come on!

Tad shifted uneasily in the passenger bucket and held onto his Snoopy lunchbox a little tighter.

She began to tap the accelerator lightly, her mind repeating the same words over and over like an inarticulate prayer: come on, come on, come on.

'Mommy? Is it

'Hush, Tad.'

The jerking grew worse. She pressed the gas pedal harder in frustration - and the Pinto squirted ahead, the engine smoothing out once more.

'Yay!' Tad said, so suddenly and loudly that she lumped

'We're not there yet, Tadder.'

A mile farther along they came to an intersection marked with another wooden sign, this one reading TOWN ROAD NO. 3. Donna turned in, feeling triumphant. As well as she remembered, Camber's place was less than a mile and a half from here. If the Pinto gave up the ghost now, she and Tad could ankle it.

They passed a ramshackle house with a station wagon and a big old rusty white car in the driveway. In her rearview mirror, Donna noticed that the honeysuckle had really gone crazy on the side of the house that would catch most of the sun. A field opened up on their left after they passed the house, and the Pinto began to climb a long, steep hill.

Halfway up, the little car began to labor again. This time it was jerking harder than it ever had before.

'Will it get up, Mommy?'

'Yes,' she said grimly.

The Pinto's speedometer needle dropped from forty to thirty. She dropped the transmission selector lever from drive into the lower range, thinking vaguely that it might help compression or something. Instead, the Pinto began to buck worse than ever. A fusillade of backfires roared through the exhaust pipe, making Tad cry out. Now they were down to fast running speed, but she could see the

Camber house and the red barn that served as his garage. Flooring the accelerator had helped before. She tried again, and for a moment the engine smoothed out. The speedometer needle crept up from fifteen to twenty. Then it began to shake and shudder once more. Donna tried flooring the gas yet again, but this time, instead of smoothing out, the engine began to fail. The AMP idiot light on the dashboard began to flicker dully, signaling the fact that the Pinto was now on the edge of a stall.

But it didn't matter because the Pinto was now laboring past the Camber mailbox. They were here. There was a package hung over the mailbox lid, and she saw the return address clearly as they passed it: J. C. Whitney & Co.

The information went directly to the back of her mind without stopping. Her immediate attention was focused on getting the car into the driveway. Let it stall then, she thought. He'll have to fix it before he can get in or out.

The driveway was a little beyond the house. If it had been an uphill driveway all the way, as the Trentons' own was, the Pinto would not have made it. But after a small initial rise, the Cambers' driveway ran either dead level or slightly downhill toward the big converted barn.