Cujo

Brett seemed no different than ever. He did not mention Cuio, and he had apparently forgotten about calling home, at least for the time being. After some interior debate, Charity decided to let the matter rest there.

It was hot.

Donna uncranked her window a little farther - about a quarter of the way, as far as she dared - and then leaned across Tad's lap to unroll his too. That was when she noticed the creased yellow sheet on paper in his lap.

'What's that, Tad?'

He looked up at her. There were smudged brown circles under his eyes. 'The Monster Words,' he said..

'Can I see?'

He held them tightly for a moment and then let her take the paper. There was a watchful, almost proprietary expression on his face, and she felt an instant's jealousy. It was brief but very strong. So far she had managed to keep him alive and unhurt, but it was Vic's hocus-pocus he cared about. Then the feeling dissipated into bewilderment, sadness, and self-disgust. It was she who had put him in this situation in the first place. If she hadn't given in to him about the baby-sitter ...

'I put them in my pocket yesterday,' he said, 'before we went shopping. Mommy, is the monster going to eat us?'

'It's not a monster, Tad, it's just a dog, and no, it isn't going to eat us!' She spoke more sharply than she had intended. 'I told you, when the mailman comes, we can go home.' And I told him the car would start in just a little while, and I told him someone would come, that the Cambers would be home soon

But what was the use of thinking that?

'May I have my Monster Words back?' he asked.

For a moment she felt a totally insane urge to tear the sweatstained, creased sheet of yellow legal paper to bits and toss them out of her window, so much fluttering confetti. Then she handed the paper back to Tad and ran both hands through her hair, ashamed and scared. What was happening to her, for Christ's sake? A sadistic thought like that. Why would she want to make it worse for him? Was it Vic? Herself? What?

It was so hot - too hot to think. Sweat was streaming down her face and she could see it trickling down Tad's cheeks as well. His hair was plastered against his skull in unlovely chunks, and it looked two shades darker than its usual medium-blond. He needs his hair washed, she thought randomly, and that made her think of the bottle of Johnson's No More Tears again, sitting safely and sanely on the bathroom shelf, waiting for someone to take it down and pour a capful or two into one cupped palm.

(don't lose control of yourself)

No, of course not. She had no reason to lose control of herself. Everything was going to be all right, wasn't it? Of course it was. The dog wasn't even in sight, hadn't been for more than an hour. And the mailman. It was almost ten o'clock now. The mailman would be along soon, and then it wouldn't matter that it was so hot in the car. 'The greenhouse effect', they called it. She had seen that on an SPCA handout somewhere, explaining why you shouldn't shut your dog up in your car for any length of time when it was hot like this. The greenhouse effect. The pamphlet had said that the temperature in a car that was parked in the sun could go as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit if the windows were rolled up, so it was cruel and dangerous to lock up a pet while you did your shopping or went to see a movie. Donna uttered a short, cracked-sounding chuckle. The shoe certainly was on the other foot here, wasn't it? it was the dog that had the people locked up.

Well, the mailman was coming. The mailman was coming and that would end it. It wouldn't matter that they had only a quarter of a Thermos of milk left, or that early this morning she had to go to the bathroom and she had used Tad's smaller Thermos - or had tried to - and it had overflowed and now the Pinto smelled of urine, an unpleasant smell that only seemed to grow stronger with the heat. She had capped the Thermos and thrown it out the window. She had heard it shatter as it hit the gravel. Then she had cried.

But none of it mattered. It was humiliating and demeaning to have to try and pee into a Thermos bottle, sure it was, but it didn't matter because the mailman was coming - even now he would be loading his small blue-and-white truck at the ivy-covered brick post office on Carbine Street ... or maybe he had already begun his route, working his way out Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road. Soon it would end. She would take Tad home, and they would go upstairs. They would strip and shower together, but before she got into the tub with him and under the shower, she would take the bottle of shampoo from the shelf and put the cap neatly on the edge of the sink, and she would wash first Tad's hair and then her own.

Tad was reading the yellow paper again, his lips moving soundlessly. Not real reading, not the way he would be reading in a couple of years (if we get out of this, her traitorous mind insisted on adding senselessly but instantly), but the kind that came from rote memorization. The way driving schools prepared functional illiterates for the written part of the driver's exam. She had read that somewhere too, or maybe seen it on a TV news story, and wasn't it amazing, the amount of crud the human mind was capable of storing up? And wasn't it amazing how easily it all came spewing out when there was nothing else to engage it? Like a subconscious garbage disposal running in reverse.

That made her think of something that had happened in her parents' house, back when it had still been her house too. Less than two hours before one of her mother's Famous Cocktail Parties (that was how ' Donna's father always referred to them, with a satirical tone that automatically conferred the capital letters - the same satirical tone that could sometimes drive Samantha into a frenzy), the disposal in the kitchen sink had somehow backed up into the bar sink, and when her mother turned the gadget on again in an effort to get rid of everything, green goo had exploded all over the ceiling. Donna had been about fourteen at the time, and she remembered that her mother's utter, hysterical rage had both frighened and sickened her. She had been sickened because her mother was throwing a tantrum in front of the people who loved and needed her most over the opinion of a group of casual acquaintances who were coming over to drink free booze and munch up a lot of free canapes. She had been frightened because she could see no logic in her mother's tantrum ... and because of the expression she had seen in her father's eyes. It had been a kind of resigned disgust. That had been the first time she had really believed - believed in her gut - that she was going to grow up and become a woman, a woman with at least a fighting chance to be a better woman than her own mother, who could get into such a frightening state over what was really such a little thing....

She dosed her eyes and tried to dismiss the whole train of thought, uneasy at the vivid emotions that memory called up. SPCA, greenhouse effect, garbage disposals, what next? How I Lost My Virginity? Six Well-Loved Vacations? The mailman, that was the thing to think about, the goddam mailman.

'Mommy, maybe the car will start now.'

'Honey, I'm scared to try it because the battery is so low.'

'But we're just sitting here,' he said, sounding petulant and tired and cross. 'What does it matter if the battery's low or not if we're just sitting here? Try it!'

'Don't you go giving me Orders, kiddo, or I'll. whack your ass for you!'

He cringed away from her hoarse, angry voice and she cursed herself again. He was scratchy ... so, who could blame him? Besides, he was right. That was what had really made her angry. But Tad didn't understand, the real reason she didn't want to try the engine again was because she was afraid it would bring the dog. She was afraid it would bring Cujo, and more than anything else she didn't want that.

Grimly, she turned the key in the ignition. The Pinto's engine cranked very slowly now, with a draggy, protesting sound. h coughed twice but did not fire. She turned the key off and tapped the horn. It gave a foggy, low honk that