Cujo

'Maybe I should ask if you can go on living with me. If you said no, I'd understand. I'd understand perfectly.'

'I don't want anything else but to live with you. I knew that all along, I think. Maybe there was an hour - right after I got

Kemp's note - when I didn't know. But that was the only time. Donna, I love you. I always have.

Now she put her arms around him and hugged him tight. Soft summer rain struck the windows and made gray and black shadow patterns on the floor.

'I couldn't save him,' she said. 'That's what keeps coming back on me. I can't get rid of it. I go over it again ... and again . . . and again. If I'd run for the porch sooner ... or gotten the baseball bat. . .'She swallowed. 'And when I finally did get up the guts to go out there, it was just ... over. He was dead.'

He could have reminded her that she'd had Tad's welfare in mind above her own all the time. That the reason she hadn't gone for the door was because of what would have happened to Tad if the dog had gotten to her before she could get inside. He could have told her that the siege had probably weakened the dog as much as it had Donna herself, and if she had tried Cujo with the baseball bat earlier on, the outcome might have been terribly different; as it was, the dog had almost killed her in the end. But he understood that these points had been brought to her attention again and again, by himself and by others, and that not all the logic in the world could blunt the pain of coming upon that mute pile of coloring books, or seeing the swing, empty and motionless at the bottom of its arc, in the back yard. Logic could not blunt her terrible sense of personal failure. Only time could do those things, and time would do an imperfect job.

He said, 'I couldn't save him either.'

'You –'

'I was so sure it was Kemp. If I'd gone up there earlier, if I hadn't fallen asleep, even if I hadn't talked to Roger on the phone.'

'No,' she said gently. 'Don't.'

'I have to. I guess you do too. We'll just have to get along. That's what people do, you know? They just get along. And try to help each other.'

'I keep feeling him sensing him ... around every comer.'

'Yeah. Me too.'

He and Roger had taken all of Tad's toys to the Salvation Army two Saturdays ago. When it was done, they had come back here and had a few beers in front of the ballgame, not talking much. And when Roger went home, Vic went upstairs and sat on the bed in Tad's room and wept until it seemed the weeping would pull all his insides apart. He wept and wanted to die but he hadn't died and the next day he had gone back to work.

'Make us some coffee,' he said, and slapped her lightly on the rump. 'I'll light a fire. Chilly in here.'

'All right.' She got up. 'Vic?'

'What?'

Her throat worked. 'I love you too.'

'Thanks,' he said. 'I think I needed that.'

She smiled wanly and went to make the coffee. And they got through the evening, although Tad was still dead. They got through the next day as well. And the next. It was not much better at the end of August, nor in September, but by the time the leaves had turned and began to fall, it was a little better. A little.

She was wired with tension and trying not to show it.

When Brett came back from the barn, knocked the snow from his boots, and let himself in the kitchen door, she was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. For a moment he only looked at her, He had lost some weight and had grown taller in the last six months. The total effect was to make him look gangling, where he had always before seemed compact and yet lithe. His grades during the first quarter hadn't been so good, and he had been in trouble twice - scuffles in the schoolyard both times, probably over what had happened this last summer. But his second-quarter marks had been a lot better.

'Mom? Momma? Is it –'

'Alva brought him over,' she said. She set the teacup on the saucer carefully, and it did not chatter. 'No law says you have to keep him.'

'Has he had his shots?' Brett asked, and her heart broke a little that this should be his first question.

'As a matter of fact, he has,' she said. 'Alva tried to slip that over on me, but I made him show me the Yet's bill. Nine dollars, it was. Distemper and rabies. Also, there's a tube of cream for ticks and ear mites. If you don't want him, Alva will give me my nine dollars back.'

Money had become important to them. For a little bit she hadn't been sure if they would be able to keep the place, or even if they should try to keep it. She had talked it over with Brett, being level with him. There had been a small life insurance policy. Mr. Shouper at the Casco Bank in Bridgton had explained to her that if the money was put in a special trust account, it plus the lottery money would make nearly all the outstanding mortgage payments over the next five years. She had landed a decent job in the packing and billing department of Castle Rock's one real industry, Trace Optical. The sale of Joe's equipment - including the new chainfall - had brought them in an additional three thousand dollars. It was possible for them to keep the place, she had explained to Brett, but it was apt to be a hard scrabble. The alternative was an apartment in town. Brett had slept on it, and it had turned out that what he wanted was what she wanted - to keep the home place. And so they had stayed.

'What's his name?' Brett asked.

'Doesn't have a name. He's just weaned.'

'Is he a breed?'

'Yes,' she said, and then laughed. 'He's a Heinz. Fifty-seven Varieties.'

He smiled back, and the smile was strained. But Charity reckoned it better than no smile at all.

'Could he come in? It's started to snow again.'

'He can come in if you put down papers. And if he piddles around, you clean it up.'

'All right.' He opened the door to go out.

'What do you want to call him, Brett?'

'I don't know,' Brett said. There was a long, long pause. 'I don't know yet. I'll have to think on it.

She had an impression that he was crying, and restrained an impulse to go to him. Besides, his back was to her and she couldn't really tell. He was getting to be a big boy, and as much as it pained her to know it, she-understood that big boys often don't want their mothers to know they're crying.

He went outside and brought the dog back in, carrying it cradled in his arms. It remained unnamed until the following spring, when for no reason either of them could exactly pinpoint, they began to call it Willie. It was a small, lively, short-haired dog, mostly terrier. Somehow it just looked like a Willie. The name stuck.

Much later, that spring, Charity got a small pay raise. She began to put away ten dollars a week. Toward's Brett's college.

Shortly before those mortal events in the Camber dooryard, Cujo's remains were cremated. The ashes went out with the trash and were disposed of at the Augusta waste-treatment plant. It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN and most of all his Boy, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate,