Needful Things (21 page)

Who lived almost right around the corner from here, on Ford Street?

Correction: What crazy lady with a fucking loudmouth dog named Raider lived right around the corner from here?

Why, Nettie Cobb, that was who.

The dog had barked all spring, those high-pitched puppy yaps that really got under your skin, and finally Wilma had called Nettie and told her that if she couldn't get her dog to shut up, she ought to get rid of it. A week later, when there had still been no improvement (at least none that Wilma was willing to admit), she had called Nettie again and told her that if she couldn't keep the dog quiet, she, Wilma, would have to call the police. The next night, when the goddamned mutt started up its yarking and barking once more, she had.

A week or so after
that,
Nettie had shown up at the market (unlike Wilma, Nettie seemed to be the sort of person who had to turn things over in her mind for a while—brood on them, even—before she was able to act). She stood in line at Wilma's register, although she didn't have a single solitary item. When her turn came, she had said in a squeaky, breathless little voice: “You stop making trouble for me and my Raider, Wilma Jerzyck. He's a good little doggy, and you just better stop making trouble.”

Wilma, always ready for a fight, had not been in the least disconcerted at being confronted in the workplace.

In fact, she rather liked it. “Lady, you don't know what trouble is. But if you can't get your damn dog to shut up, you will.”

The Cobb woman had been as pale as milk, but she drew herself up, clutching her purse so tightly that the tendons on her scrawny forearms showed all the way from her wrists to her elbows. She said: “I'm warning you,” then hurried out.

“Oh-oh, I think I just peed my panties!” Wilma had called boisterously after her (a taste of battle always put her in good spirits), but Nettie never turned—only hurried on her way a little faster.

After that, the dog had quieted down. This had rather disappointed Wilma, because it had been a boring spring. Pete was showing no signs of rebellion, and Wilma had been feeling an end-of-winter dullness that the new green in the trees and grass couldn't seem to touch. What she really needed to add color and spice to her life was a good feud. For a while it had seemed that crazy Nettie Cobb would fill the bill admirably, but with the dog minding its manners, it seemed to Wilma that she would have to look elsewhere for diversion.

Then one night in May the dog had started barking again. The mutt had only gone on for a while, but Wilma hurried to the telephone and called Nettie anyway—she had marked the number in the book just in case such an occasion offered.

She did not waste time on the niceties but got right to the point. “This is Wilma Jerzyck, dear. I called to tell you that if you don't shut that dog up, I'll shut him up myself.”

“He's already stopped!” Nettie had cried. “I brought him in as soon as I got home and heard him! You just leave me and Raider alone! I warned you! If you don't, you'll be sorry!”

“Just remember what I said,” Wilma told her. “I've had enough. The next time he starts up that ruckus, I won't bother complaining to the cops. I'll come over and cut his goddam throat.”

She had hung up before Nettie could reply. The cardinal rule governing engagements with the enemy (relatives,
neighbors, spouses) was that the aggressor
must
have the last word.

The dog hadn't popped off since then. Well, maybe it had, but Wilma hadn't noticed it if so; it had never been that bothersome in the first place, not
really,
and besides, Wilma had inaugurated a more productive wrangle with the woman who ran the beauty parlor in Castle View. Wilma had almost forgotten Nettie and Raider.

But maybe Nettie hadn't forgotten
her.
Wilma had seen Nettie just yesterday, in the new shop. And if looks could kill, Wilma thought, I would have been laid out dead on the floor right there.

Standing here now by her muddied, ruined sheets, she remembered the look of fear and defiance that had come over the nutty bitch's face, the way her lip had curled back, showing her teeth for a second. Wilma was very familiar with the look of hate, and she had seen it on Nettie Cobb's face yesterday.

I warned you . . . you'll be sorry.

“Wilma, come on inside,” Pete said. He put a tentative hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it off briskly. “Leave me alone.”

Pete withdrew a step. He looked like he wanted to wring his hands but didn't quite dare.

Maybe she forgot, too,
Wilma thought.
At least until she saw me yesterday, in that new store. Or maybe she's been planning something

(I warned you)

all along in that half-stewed head of hers, and seeing me finally set her off.

Somewhere in the last few moments she had become sure that Nettie was the one—who else had she crossed glances with in the last couple of days who might hold a grudge? There were other people in town who didn't like her, but this kind of trick—this kind of sneaking, cowardly trick—went with the way Nettie had looked at her yesterday. That sneer of mingled fear

(you'll be sorry)

and hate. She had looked like a dog herself, one brave enough to bite only when its victim's back is turned.

Yes, it had been Nettie Cobb, all right. The more Wilma thought about it, the surer she became. And the
act was unforgivable. Not because the sheets were ruined. Not because it was a cowardly trick. Not even because it was the act of someone with a cracked brain.

It was unforgivable because Wilma had been frightened.

Only for a second, true, that second when the slimy brown thing had flapped out of the darkness and into her face, caressing her coldly like some monster's hand . . . but even one single second of fear was a second too much.

“Wilma?” Pete asked as she turned her flat face toward him. He did not like the expression the porch light showed him, all shiny white surfaces and black, dimpled shadows. He did not like that flat look in her eyes. “Honey? Are you all right?”

She strode past him, taking no notice of him at all. Pete scurried after her as she headed for the house . . . and the telephone.

Nettie was sitting in her living room with Raider at her feet and her new carnival glass lampshade on her lap when the telephone rang. It was twenty minutes of eight. She jumped and clutched the lampshade tighter, looking at the telephone with fear and distrust. She had a momentary certainty—silly, of course, but she couldn't seem to rid herself of such feelings—that it would be Some Person in Authority, calling to tell her she must give the beautiful lampshade back, that it belonged to someone else, that such a lovely object could not possibly have accrued to Nettie's little store of possessions in any case, the very idea was ridiculous.

Raider looked up at her briefly, as if to ask if she was going to answer that or not, then put his muzzle back down on his paws.

Nettie set the lampshade carefully aside and picked up the telephone. It was probably just Polly, calling to ask if she'd pick up something for dinner at Hemphill's Market before she came to work tomorrow morning.

“Hello, Cobb residence,” she said crisply. All her life
she had been terrified of Some Person in Authority, and she had discovered that the best way to handle such a fear was to sound like a person in authority yourself. It didn't make the fear go away, but at least it held the fear in check.

“I know what you did, you crazy bitch!” a voice spat at her. It was as sudden and as gruesome as the stab of an icepick.

Nettie's breath caught as if on a thorn; an expression of trapped horror froze her face and her heart tried to cram its way up into her throat. Raider looked up at her again, questioningly.

“Who . . . who . . .”

“You know goddam well who,” the voice said, and of course Nettie did. It was Wilma Jerzyck. It was that evil, evil woman.

“He hasn't been barking!” Nettie's voice was high and thin and screamy, the voice of someone who has just inhaled the entire contents of a helium balloon. “He's all grown up and he's not barking! He's right here at my feet!”

“Did you have a good time throwing mud at my sheets, you numb cunt?” Wilma was furious. The woman was actually trying to pretend this was still about the
dog.

“Sheets? What sheets? I . . . I . . .” Nettie looked toward the carnival glass lampshade and seemed to draw strength from it. “You leave me alone!
You're
the one that's crazy, not me!”

“I'm going to get you for this. Nobody comes into my yard and throws mud at my sheets while I'm gone. Nobody.
NOBODY
! Understand? Is this getting through that cracked skull of yours? You won't know where, and you won't know when, and most of all you won't know
how,
but I . . . am going . . . to
GET
you. Do you understand?”

Nettie held the phone tightly screwed against her ear. Her face had gone dead pale except for a single bright streak of red which ran across her forehead between her eyebrows and hairline. Her teeth were clenched and her cheeks puffed in and out like a bellows as she panted from the sides of her mouth.

“You leave me alone or you'll be sorry!” she screamed in her high, fainting, helium voice. Raider was standing now, his ears up, his eyes bright and anxious. He sensed
menace in the room. He barked once, severely. Nettie didn't hear him. “You'll be very sorry! I . . . I
know
people! People in Authority! I know them
very well!
I don't have to put up with this!”

Speaking slowly in a voice which was low and sincere and utterly furious, Wilma said: “Fucking with me is the worst mistake you ever made in your life. You won't see me coming.”

There was a click.

“You don't dare!” Nettie wailed. Tears were running down her cheeks now, tears of terror and abysmal, impotent rage. “You don't dare, you bad thing! I . . . I'll . . .”

There was a second click. It was followed by the buzz of an open line.

Nettie hung up the phone and sat bolt upright in her chair for almost three minutes, staring into space. Then she began to weep. Raider barked again and put his paws up on the edge of her chair. Nettie hugged him and wept against his fur. Raider licked her neck.

“I won't let her hurt you, Raider,” she said. She inhaled the sweet and clean doggy warmth of him, trying to take comfort from it. “I won't let that bad, bad woman hurt you. She's not a Person in Authority, not at all. She's just a bad old thing and if she tries to hurt you . . . or me . . . she'll be sorry.”

She straightened at last, found a Kleenex tucked down between the side of her chair and the cushion, and used it to wipe her eyes. She was terrified . . . but she could also feel anger buzzing and drilling through her. It was the way she'd felt before she'd taken the meat-fork from the drawer under the sink and stuck it in her husband's throat.

She took the carnival glass lampshade off the table and hugged it gently to her. “If she starts something, she will be very, very sorry,” Nettie said.

She sat that way, with Raider at her feet and the lampshade in her lap, for a very long time.

Norris Ridgewick cruised slowly down Main Street in his police cruiser, eyeballing the buildings on the west side of the street. His shift would be over soon, and he was glad. He could remember how good he had felt this morning before that idiot had grabbed him; could remember standing at the mirror in the men's room, adjusting his hat and thinking with satisfaction that he looked Squared Away. He could remember it, but the memory seemed very old and sepia-toned, like a photograph from the nineteenth century. From the moment that idiot Keeton had grabbed him up to right now, nothing had gone right.

He'd gotten lunch at Cluck-Cluck Tonite, the chicken shack out on Route 119. The food there was usually good, but this time it had given him a roaring case of acid indigestion followed by a case of the dribbling shits. Around three o'clock he had run over a nail out on Town Road #7 near the old Camber place and had to change the tire. He'd wiped his fingers on the front of his freshly dry-cleaned uniform blouse, not thinking about what he was doing, only wanting to dry the tips so they would provide a better grip on the loosened lug-nuts, and he had rubbed grease across the shirt in four glaring dark-gray stripes. While he was looking at this with dismay, the cramps had turned his bowels to water again and he'd had to hurry off into the puckerbrush. It had been a race to see if he could manage to drop his trousers before he filled them.
That
race Norris managed to win . . . but he hadn't liked the look of the little stand of bushes he had chosen to take a squat in. It had looked like poison sumac, and the way his day had gone so far, it probably had been.

Norris crept slowly past the buildings which made up Castle Rock's downtown: the Norway Bank and Trust, the Western Auto, Nan's Luncheonette, the black hole where Pop Merrill's rickrack palace had once stood, You Sew and Sew, Needful Things, Castle Rock Hardware—

Norris suddenly applied the brakes and came to a stop. He had seen something amazing in the window of Needful Things—or
thought
he had, anyway.

He checked the rearview mirror, but Main Street was
deserted. The stop-and-go light at the lower end of the business district abruptly went out, and remained dark for a few seconds while relays clicked thoughtfully inside. Then the yellow light in the center began to flash off and on. Nine o'clock, then. Nine o'clock on the button.

Norris reversed back up the street, then pulled in at the curb. He looked down at the radio, thought of calling in 10-22—officer leaving the vehicle—and decided not to. He only wanted a quick look in the shop window. He turned up the gain on the radio a little and rolled down the window before getting out. That ought to do it.