Needful Things (20 page)

Hugh felt a frustrated anger creep into his chest, as if this were not simply speculation but something which had already happened. He stroked the fox-tail, then looked around in the growing gloom of five o'clock, as if he expected to see a crowd of light-fingered kids gathering already on the far side of Castle Hill Road, just waiting for him to go back inside and stuff a couple of Hungry Man dinners into the oven so they could take his fox-tail.

No. It was better not to go. Kids had no respect these days.
Kids would steal anything, just for the joy of stealing it. Keep it for a day or two, then lose interest and toss it in a ditch or a vacant lot. The picture—and it was a very clear picture, almost a vision—of his lovely brush lying abandoned in a trashy gully, growing sodden in the rain, losing its color amid the Big Mac wrappers and discarded beer cans, filled Hugh with a feeling of angry agony.

It would be
crazy
to take a risk like that.

He untwisted the wire which held the tail to the antenna, took the brush into the house again, and put it back on the high shelf in the closet. This time he closed the closet door, but it wouldn't latch tightly.

Have to get a lock for that,
he thought.
Kids'll break in anyplace. There's no respect for authority these days. None at all.

He went to the refrigerator, got a can of beer, looked at it for a moment, then put it back. A beer—even four or five beers—wouldn't do much to put him back on an even keel. Not the way he felt tonight. He opened one of the lower cupboards, pawed past the assortment of rummage-sale pots and pans stacked there, and found the half-full bottle of Black Velvet he kept for emergencies. He filled a jelly-glass to the halfway mark, considered for a moment, then filled it all the way to the top. He took a swallow or two, felt the heat explode in his belly, and filled the glass again. He started to feel a little better, a little more relaxed. He looked toward the closet and smiled. It was safe up there, and would be safer as soon as he got a good strong Kreig padlock at the Western Auto and put it on. Safe. It was good when you had something you really wanted and needed, but it was even better when that thing was safe. That was the best of all.

Then the smile faded a little.

Is that what you bought it for? To keep it on a high shelf behind a locked door?

He drank again, slowly. All right, he thought, maybe that's not so good. But it's better than losing it to some light-fingered kid.

“After all,” he said aloud, “it's not 1955 anymore. This is modern days.”

He nodded for emphasis. Still, the thought lingered.
What good was the fox-tail doing in there? What good for him, or anyone else?

But two or three drinks took care of that thought. Two or three drinks made putting the fox-tail back seem like the most reasonable, rational decision in the world. He decided to put off dinner; such a sensible decision deserved to be rewarded by another drink or two.

He filled the jelly-glass again, sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with its tubular steel legs, and lit a cigarette. And as he sat there, drinking and tapping curls of ash into one of the frozen dinner trays, he forgot about the foxtail and started thinking about Nettie Cobb. Crazy Nettie. He was going to play a trick on Crazy Nettie. Maybe next week, maybe the week after that . . . but this week seemed most likely. Mr. Gaunt had told him he was a man who didn't like to waste time, and Hugh was willing to take his word for it.

He looked forward to it.

It would break up the monotony.

He drank, he smoked, and when he finally passed out on the filthy sheets of the narrow bed in the other room at quarter of ten, he did it with a smile on his face.

Wilma Jerzyck's shift at Hemphill's Market ended when the store closed at seven. She pulled into her own driveway at seven-fifteen. Soft light spilled out through the drawn drapes across the living-room window. She went in and sniffed. She could smell macaroni and cheese. Good enough . . . at least, so far.

Pete was sprawled on the couch with his shoes off, watching
Wheel of Fortune.
The Portland
Press-Herald
was in his lap.

“I read your note,” he said, sitting up quickly and putting the paper aside. “I put in the casserole. It'll be ready by seven-thirty.” He looked at her with earnest and slightly anxious brown eyes. Like a dog with a strong urge to please, Pete Jerzyck had been house trained early and quite well. He had his lapses, but it had been a long time since she'd
come in and found him lying on the couch with his shoes on, a longer one since he'd dared to light up his pipe in the house, and it would be a snowy day in August when he took a piss without remembering to put the ring back down after he was through.

“Did you bring in the wash?”

An expression of mingled guilt and surprise troubled his round, open face. “Jeez! I was reading the newspaper and forgot. I'll go right out.” He was already fumbling for his shoes.

“Never mind,” she said, starting for the kitchen.

“Wilma, I'll get it!”

“Don't bother,” she said sweetly. “I wouldn't want you to leave your paper or Vanna White just because I've been on my feet behind a cash register for the last six hours. Sit right there, Peter. Enjoy yourself.”

She didn't have to look around and check his reaction; after seven years of marriage, she honestly believed Peter Michael Jerzyck held no more surprises for her. His expression would be a mixture of hurt and weak chagrin. He would stand there for a few moments after she had gone out, looking like a man who just came out of the crapper and can't quite remember if he's wiped himself, and then he would go to work setting the table and dishing up the casserole. He would ask her many questions about her shift at the market, listen attentively to her answers, and not interrupt once with the details of his own day at Williams-Brown, the large real-estate agency in Oxford where he worked. Which was just as fine as paint with Wilma, since she found real estate the world's most boring subject. After dinner, he would clear up without being asked, and
she
would read the paper. All of these services would be performed by him because he had forgotten one minor chore. She didn't mind taking in the wash at all—in fact, she was
fond
of the feel and smell of clothes which had spent a happy afternoon drying in the sun—but she had no intention of letting Pete in on that. It was her little secret.

She had many such secrets, and kept them all for the same reason: in a war, you held onto every advantage. Some nights she would come home and there might be an hour or even two hours of skirmishing before she was
finally able to prod Peter into a full-scale retreat, replacing his white pins on her interior battle-map with her red ones. Tonight the engagement had been won less than two minutes after she stepped inside the door, and that was just fine with Wilma.

She believed in her heart that marriage was a lifetime adventure in aggression, and in such a long campaign, where ultimately no prisoners could be taken, no quarter given, no patch of marital landscape left unscorched, such easy victories might eventually lose their savor. But that time had not yet come, and so she went out to the clotheslines with the basket under her left arm and her heart light beneath the swell of her bosom.

She was halfway across the yard before coming to a puzzled stop. Where in the hell were the sheets?

She should have seen them easily, big rectangular white shapes floating in the dark, but they weren't there. Had they blown away? Ridiculous! There had been a breeze that afternoon, but hardly a
gale.
Had someone stolen them?

Then a gust of wind kicked through the air and she heard a large, lazy flapping sound. Okay, they were there . . .
somewhere.
When you were the oldest daughter in a sprawling Catholic clan of thirteen children, you knew what a sheet sounded like when it flapped on the line. But it still wasn't right, that sound. It was too heavy.

Wilma took another step forward. Her face, which always wore the faintly shadowed look of a woman who expects trouble, grew darker. Now she could see the sheets . . . or shapes that
should
have been the sheets. But they were
dark.

She took another, smaller step forward, and the breeze whisked through the yard again. The shapes flapped toward her this time, belling out, and before she could get her hand up, something heavy and slimy struck her. Something gooey splattered her cheeks; something thick and soggy pressed against her. It was almost as if a cold, sticky hand were trying to grasp her.

She was not a woman who cried out easily or often, but she cried out now, and dropped the laundry-basket. That sloppy flapping sound came again and she tried to twist away from the shape looming before her. Her left
ankle struck the wicker laundry-basket and she stumbled to one knee, missing a full-length tumble only by a combination of luck and quick reflexes.

A heavy, wet thing slobbered its way up her back; thick wetness drooled down the sides of her neck. Wilma cried out again and crawled away from the lines on her hands and knees. Some of her hair had escaped the kerchief she wore and hung against her cheeks, tickling. She hated that feeling . . . but she hated that drooling, clammy caress from the dark shape hung on her clothesline even more.

The kitchen door banged open, and Pete's alarmed voice carried across the yard: “Wilma? Wilma, are you all right?”

Flapping from behind her—a nasty sound, like a chuckle from vocal cords clotted with dirt. In the next yard the Haverhills' mutt began to bellow hysterically in its high, unpleasant voice—
yark! yark! yark!
—and this did nothing to improve Wilma's state of mind.

She got to her feet and saw Pete cautiously descending the back steps. “Wilma? Did you fall down? Are you okay?”

“Yes!” she shouted furiously. “Yes, I fell down! Yes, I'm okay! Turn on the goddam light!”

“Did you hurt yourse—”

“Just turn on the goddam
LIGHT!”
she screamed at him, and rubbed a hand across the front of her coat. It came away covered with cold goo. She was now so angry she could see her own pulse as bright points of light before her eyes . . . and angriest of all at herself, for being scared. Even for a second.

Yark! Yark! Yark!

The goddam mutt in the next yard was going ape. Christ, she hated dogs, especially the mouthy ones.

Pete's shape retreated to the top of the kitchen steps. The door opened, his hand snaked inside, and then the floodlight came on, bathing the rear yard with bright light.

Wilma looked down at herself and saw a wide swath of dark brown across the front of her new fall coat. She wiped furiously at her face, held out her hand, and saw it had also turned brown. She could feel a slow, syrupy trickle running down the middle of her back.

“Mud!” She was stupefied with disbelief—so much so that she was unaware she had spoken aloud. Who could have done this to her? Who would have
dared?

“What did you say, honey?” Pete asked. He had been coming toward her; now he stopped a prudent distance away. Wilma's face was working in a way Pete Jerzyck found extremely alarming: it was as if a nest of baby snakes had hatched just beneath her skin.

“Mud!”
she screamed, holding her hands out toward him . . .
at
him. Flecks of brown flew from her fingertips.
“Mud, I say! Mud!”

Pete looked past her, finally understanding. His mouth dropped open. Wilma whirled in the direction of his gaze. The floodlight mounted above the kitchen door lit the clotheslines and the garden with merciless clarity, revealing everything that needed to be revealed. The sheets which she had hung out clean were now drooping from their pins in dispirited, soggy clots. They were not just spattered with mud; they were coated with it,
plated
with it.

Wilma looked at the garden and saw deep divots where the mud had been scooped out. She saw a beaten track in the grass where the mudslinger had gone back and forth, first loading up, then walking to the lines, then throwing, then going back to reload.

“God
damn
it!” she screamed.

“Wilma . . . come on in the house, honey, and I'll . . .” Pete groped, then looked relieved as an idea actually dawned. “I'll make us some tea.”

“Fuck
the tea!” Wilma howled at the top, the very tippy-top, of her vocal range, and from next door the Haverhills' mutt went for broke,
yarkyarkyark,
oh she hated dogs, it was going to drive her crazy, fucking loudmouth
dog!

Her rage overflowed and she charged the sheets, clawed at them, began pulling them down. Her fingers caught over the first line and it snapped like a guitar string. The sheets hung from it dropped in a sodden, meaty swoop. Fists clenched, eyes squinched like a child doing a tantrum, Wilma took a single large, froggy leap and landed on top of one. It made a weary
flooosh
sound and billowed up, splattering gobbets of mud on her nylons. It
was the final touch. She opened her mouth and
shrieked
her rage. Oh, she would find who had done this. Yes-indeedy-doodad. You better believe it. And when she did—

“Is everything all right over there, Mrs. Jerzyck?” It was Mrs. Haverhill's voice, wavering with alarm.

“Yes goddammit, we're drinking Sterno and watching Lawrence Welk, can't you shut that mutt of yours up?”
Wilma screamed.

She backed off the muddy sheet, panting, her hair hanging all around her flushed face. She swiped at it savagely. Fucking dog was going to drive her crazy. Fucking loudmouth do—

Her thoughts broke off with an almost audible snap.

Dogs.

Fucking loudmouth dogs.