Cujo

'All right,' Vic said. 'That's one hell of a big dog, son. Are you sure he's safe?'

'He's safe,' the boy agreed, but Vic found himself moving up beside his wife as his son, incredibly small, toddled toward the dog. Cujo stood with his head cocked, that great brush of a tail waving slowly back and forth.

'Vic -' Donna began.

'It's all right,' Vic said, thinking, I hope. The dog looked big enough to swallow the Tadder in a single bite.

Tad stopped for a moment, apparently doubtful. He and the dog looked at each other.

'Doggy?' Tad said.

'Cujo,' Camber's boy said, walking over to Tad. 'His name's Cujo.'

'Cujo,' Tad said, and the dog came to him and began to lick his face in great, goodnatured, slobbery swipes that had Tad giggling and trying to fend him off. He turned back to his mother and father, laughing the way he did when one of them was tickling him. He took a step toward them and his feet tangled in each other. He fell down, and suddenly the dog was moving toward him, over him, and Vic, who had his arm around Donna's waist, felt his wife's gasp as well as he heard it. He started to move forward ... and then stopped.

Cujo's teeth had clamped on the back of Tad's SpiderMan T-shirt. He pulled the boy up - for a moment Tad looked like a kitten in its mother's mouth - and set the boy on his feet.

Tad ran back to his mother and father. 'Like the doggy! Mom! Dad! I like the doggy!'

Camber's boy was watching this with mild amusement, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

'Sure, it's a great dog,' Vic said. He was amused, but his heart was still beating fast. For just one moment there he had really believed that the dog was going to bite off Tad's head like a lollipop. 'It's a Saint Bernard, Tad,' he said.

'Saint... Berinart !' Tad cried, and ran back toward Cujo, who was now sitting outside the mouth of the barn like a small mountain. 'Cujo! Coooojo!'

Donna tensed beside Vic again. 'Oh, Vic, do you think

But now Tad was with Cujo again, first hugging him extravagantly and then looking closely at his face. With Cujo sitting down (his tail thumping on the gravel, his tongue lolling out pinkly), Tad could almost look into the dog's eyes by standing on tiptoe.

'I think they're fine,' Vic said.

Tad had now put one of his small hands into Cujo's mouth and was peering in like the world's smallest dentist. That gave Vic another uneasy moment, but then Tad was running back to them again. 'Doggy's got teeth,' he told Vic.

'Yes,' Vic said. 'Lots of teeth.,

He turned to the boy, meaning to ask him where he had come up with that name. but then Joe Camber was coming out of the barn, wiping his hands On 3 Piece of waste so he could shake without getting Vic greasy.

Vic was pleasantly surprised to find that Camber knew exactly what he was doing. He listened carefully to the clunking sound as he and Vic drove down to the house at the bottom of the hill and then back up to Camber's place.

'Wheel bearing's going,' Camber said briefly. 'You're lucky it ain't froze up on you already.'

'Can you fix it?' Vic asked.

'Oh, ayuh. Fix it right now if you don't mind hanging around for a couple of hours.'

'That'd be all right, I guess,' Vic said. He looked toward Tad and the dog. Tad had gotten the baseball Camber's son had been hitting. He would throw it as far as he could (which wasn't very far), and the Cambers' Saint Bernard would obediently get it and bring it back to Tad. The ball was looking decidedly slobbery. 'Your dog is keeping my son amused.'

'Cujo likes kids,' Camber agreed. 'You want to drive your car into the barn, Mr. Trenton?'

The doctor will see you now, Vic thought, amused, and drove the jag in. As it turned out, the job only took an hour and a half and Camber's price was so reasonable it was startling.

And Tad ran through that cool, overcast afternoon, calling the dog's name over and over again: 'Cujo ... Cooojo ... heeere, Cujo. . . .' just before they left, Camber's boy, whose name was Brett, actually lifted Tad onto Cujo's back and held him around the waist while Cujo padded obediently up and down the gravel dooryard twice. As it passed Vic, the dog caught his eye ... and Vic would have sworn it was laughing.

Just three days after George Meara's bellowed conversation with Aunt Evvie Chalmers, a little girl who was exactly Tad Trenton's age stood up from her place at the breakfast table -said breakfast table being in the breakfast nook of a tidy little house in Iowa City, Iowa - and announced: 'Oh, Mamma, I don't feel so good. I feel like I'm going to be sick.'

Her mother looked around, not exactly surprised. Two days before, Marcy's bigger brother had been sent from school with a raging case of stomach flu. Brock was all right now, but he had spent a lousy twenty-four hours, his body enthusiastically throwing off ballast from both ends.

'Are you sure, honey?' Marcy's mother said.

'Oh, I -' Marcy moaned loudly and lurched toward the downstairs hall, her hands laced over her stomach. Her mother followed her, saw Marcy buttonhook into the bathroom, and thought, Oh, boy, here we go again. If I don't catch this it'll be a miracle.

She beard the retching sounds begin and turned into the bathroom her mind already occupied with the details: clear liquids, bed rest, the chamber-pot, some books; Brock could take the portable TV up to her room when he got back from school and

She looked, and these thoughts were driven from her mind with the force of a roundhouse slap.

'Me toilet bowl where her four-year-old daughter had vomited was full of blood; blood splattered the white porcelain lip of the bowl; blood beaded the tiles.

'Oh, Mommy, I don't feel good -'

Her daughter turned, her daughter turned, turned, and there was blood all over her mouth, it was down her chin, it was matting her blue sailor dress, blood, oh dear God dear Jesus Joseph and Mary so much blood

'Mommy -,

And her daughter did it again, a huge bloody mess flying from her mouth to patter down everywhere like sinister rain, and then Marcy's mother gathered her up and ran with her, ran for the phone in the kitchen to dial the emergency unit.

Cujo knew he was too old to chase rabbits.

He wasn't old; no, not even for a dog. But at five, he was well past his puppyhood, when even a butterfly had been enough to set off an arduous chase through the woods and meadows behind the house and barn. He was five, and if he had been a human, he would have been entering the youngest stage of middle age.

But it was the sixteenth of June, a beautiful early morning, the dew still on the grass. The heat Aunt Evvie had predicted to George Meara had indeed arrived - it was the warmest early June in years - and by two that afternoon Cujo would be lying in the dusty dooryard (or in the barn, if THE BOY would let him in, which he sometimes did when he was drinking, which was most of the time these days), panting under the hot sun. But that was later.

And the rabbit, which was large, brown, and plump, didn't have the slightest idea Cujo was there, down near the