Needful Things (68 page)

“It . . . it does?”

“Polly,” he said softly, “I think everything is going to turn out just fine. If you trust me. Do you? Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Polly said, although something inside, something far and faint, cried out a desperate warning. “I do—no matter what Alan says, I trust you with all my heart.”

“Well, that's fine,” Mr. Gaunt said. He reached out and took one of Polly's hands. Her face wrinkled in disgust for a moment, and then relaxed into its former blank and dreaming expression. “That's just fine. And your friend the Sheriff needn't have worried, you know; your personal check is just as good as gold with me.”

Alan saw he was going to be late unless he turned on the flasher-bubble and stuck it on the roof. He didn't want to do that. He didn't want Brian Rusk to see a police car; he wanted him to see a slightly down-at-the-heels station wagon, just like the kind his own dad probably drove.

It was too late to make it to the school before it let out for the day. Alan parked at the intersection of Main and School streets instead. This was the most logical way for Brian to come; he would just have to hope that logic would work somewhere along the line today.

Alan got out, leaned against the station wagon's bumper, and felt in his pocket for a stick of chewing gum. He was unwrapping it when he heard the three o'clock bell at the Middle School, dreamy and distant in the warm air.

He decided to talk to Mr. Leland Gaunt of Akron, Ohio, as soon as he finished with Brian Rusk, appointment or no appointment . . . and just as abruptly changed his mind. He'd call the Attorney General's Office in Augusta first, have them check Gaunt's name against the con file. If there was nothing there, they could send the name on to the LAWS R & I computer in Washington—LAWS, in Alan's opinion, was one of the few good things the Nixon administration had ever done.

The first kids were coming down the street now, yelling, skipping, laughing. A sudden idea struck Alan, and he opened the driver's door of the station wagon. He reached across the seat, opened the glove compartment, and pawed through the stuff inside. Todd's joke can of nuts fell out onto the floor as he did so.

Alan was about to give up when he found what he wanted. He took it, slammed the glove compartment shut, and backed out of the car. He was holding a small cardboard envelope with a sticker on it that said:

The Folding Flower Trick

Blackstone Magic Co.

19 Greer St.

Paterson, N.J.

From this packet Alan slipped an even smaller square—a thick block of multicolored tissue-paper. He slipped it beneath his watchband. All magicians have a number of “palming wells” on their persons and about their clothes, and each has his own favorite well. Under the watchband was Alan's.

With the famous Folding Flowers taken care of, Alan went back to watching for Brian Rusk. He saw a boy on a bike, cutting jazzily in and out through the clots of pint-sized pedestrians, and was alert at once. Then he saw it was one of the Hanlon twins, and allowed himself to relax again.

“Slow down or I'll give you a ticket,” Alan growled as the boy shot past. Jay Hanlon looked at him, startled, and almost ran into a tree. He pedaled on at a much more sedate speed.

Alan watched him for a moment, amused, then turned
back in the direction of the school and resumed his watch for Brian Rusk.

Sally Ratcliffe climbed the stairs from her little speech therapy room to the first floor of the Middle School five minutes after the three o'clock bell and walked down the main hall toward the office. The hall was clearing rapidly, as it always did on days when the weather was fair and warm. Outside, droves of kids were shouting their way across the lawn to where the #2 and #3 buses idled sleepily at the curb. Sally's low heels clicked and clacked. She was holding a manila envelope in one hand. The name on this envelope, Frank Jewett, was turned in against her gently rounded breast.

She paused at Room 6, one door down from the office, and looked in through the wire-reinforced glass. Inside, Mr. Jewett was talking to the half-dozen teachers who were involved in coaching fall and winter sports. Frank Jewett was a pudgy little man who always reminded Sally of Mr. Weatherbee, the principal in the Archie comics. Like Mr. Weatherbee's, his glasses were always sliding down on his nose.

Sitting to his right was Alice Tanner, the school secretary. She appeared to be taking notes.

Mr. Jewett glanced to his left, saw Sally looking in the window, and gave her one of his prissy little smiles. She raised one hand in a wave and made herself smile back. She could remember the days when smiling had come naturally to her; next to praying, smiling had been the most natural thing in the world.

Some of the other teachers looked over to see who their fearless leader was looking at. So did Alice Tanner. Alice waggled her fingers coyly at Sally, smiling with saccharine sweetness.

They know, Sally thought. Every one of them knows that Lester and I are history. Irene was so sweet last night . . . so sympathetic . . . and so anxious to spill her guts. That little bitch.

Sally waggled her fingers right back, feeling her own coy—and totally bogus—smile stretch her lips. I hope you get hit by a dump-truck on your way home, you whory-looking thing, she thought, and then walked on, her sensible low heels clicking and clacking.

When Mr. Gaunt had called her during her free period and told her it was time to finish paying for the wonderful splinter, Sally had reacted with enthusiasm and a sour kind of pleasure. She sensed that the “little joke” she had promised to play on Mr. Jewett was a mean one, and that was all right with her. She felt mean today.

She put her hand on the office door . . . then paused.

What's the matter with you? she wondered suddenly. You have the splinter . . . the wonderful, holy splinter with the wonderful, holy vision caught inside it. Aren't things like that supposed to make a person feel better? Calmer? More in touch with God the Father Almighty?
You
don't feel calmer and more in touch with anyone. You feel like someone filled your head up with barbed wire.

“Yes, but that's not my fault, or the splinter's fault,” Sally muttered. “That's Lester's fault. Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt.”

A short girl wearing glasses and heavy braces turned from the Pep Club poster she'd been studying and glanced curiously at Sally.

“What are
you
looking at, Irvina?” Sally asked.

Irvina blinked. “Nuffink, Miz Rat-Cliff.”

“Then go look at it someplace else,” Sally snapped. “School is out, you know.”

Irvina hurried down the hall, throwing an occasional distrustful glance back over her shoulder.

Sally opened the door to the office and went in. The envelope she carried had been right where Mr. Gaunt had told her it would be, behind the garbage cans outside the cafeteria doors. She had written Mr. Jewett's name on it herself.

She took one more quick glance over her shoulder to make sure that little whore Alice Tanner wasn't coming in. Then she opened the door to the inner office, hurried across the room, and laid the manila envelope on Frank Jewett's desk. Now there was the other thing.

She opened the top desk drawer and removed a pair
of heavy scissors. She bent and yanked on the lower left-hand drawer. It was locked. Mr. Gaunt had told her that would probably be the case. Sally glanced into the outer office, saw it was still empty, the door to the hallway still shut. Good. Great. She jammed the tips of the scissors into the crack at the top of the locked drawer and levered them up, hard. Wood splintered, and Sally felt her nipples grow strangely, pleasantly hard. This was sort of fun. Scary, but fun.

She re-seated the scissors—the points went in farther this time—and levered them up again. The lock snapped and the drawer rolled open on its casters, revealing what was inside. Sally's mouth dropped open in shocked surprise. Then she began to giggle—breathy, stifled sounds that were really closer to screams than to laughter.

“Oh Mr. Jewett! What a naughty boy you are!”

There was a stack of digest-sized magazines inside the drawer, and
Naughty Boy
was, in fact, the name of the one on top. The blurry picture on the cover showed a boy of about nine. He was wearing a '50's-style motorcycle cap and nothing else.

Sally reached into the drawer and pulled out the magazines—there were a dozen of them, maybe more.
Happy Kids. Nude Cuties. Blowing in the Wind. Bobby's Farm World.
She looked into one and could barely believe what she was seeing. Where did things like this come from? They surely didn't sell them down at the drugstore, not even on the top rack Rev. Rose sometimes preached about in church, the one with the sign that said
ONLY EYES
18
YRS AND OLDER PLEASE.

A voice she knew very well suddenly spoke up in her head.
Hurry, Sally. The meeting's almost over, and you don't want to be caught in here, do you?

And then there was another voice as well, a woman's voice, one Sally could almost put a name to. Hearing this second voice was like being on the telephone with someone while someone else spoke in the background on the other end of the line.

More than fair,
this second voice said.
It seems
divine.

Sally tuned the voice out and did what Mr. Gaunt had told her to do: she scattered the dirty magazines all over Mr. Jewett's office. Then she replaced the scissors and left
the room quickly, pulling the door shut behind her. She opened the door of the outer office and peeked out. No one there . . . but the voices from Room 6 were louder now, and people were laughing. They
were
getting ready to break up; it had been an unusually short meeting.

Thank God for Mr. Gaunt! she thought, and slipped out into the hall. She had almost reached the front doors when she heard them coming out of Room 6 behind her. Sally didn't look around. It occurred to her that she hadn't thought of Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt for the last five minutes, and that was really fine. She thought she might go home and draw herself a nice bubble-bath and get into it with her wonderful splinter and spend the next two
hours
not thinking about Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt, and what a lovely change
that
would be! Yes, indeed! Yes, ind—

What did you do in there? What was in that envelope? Who put it there, outside the cafeteria? When? And, most important of all, Sally, what are you starting?

She stood still for a moment, feeling little beads of sweat form on her forehead and in the hollows of her temples. Her eyes went wide and startled, like the eyes of a frightened doe. Then they narrowed and she began to walk again. She was wearing slacks, and they chafed at her in a strangely pleasant way that made her think of her frequent necking sessions with Lester.

I don't
care
what I did, she thought. In fact, I hope it's something really mean. He
deserves
a mean trick, looking like Mr. Weatherbee but having all those disgusting magazines. I hope he
chokes
when he walks into his office.

“Yes, I hope he fucking
chokes,”
she whispered. It was the first time in her life she had actually said the f-word out loud, and her nipples tightened and began to tingle again. Sally began to walk faster, thinking in some vague way that there might be something
else
she could do in the bathtub. It suddenly seemed to her that she had a need or two of her own. She wasn't sure exactly how to satisfy them . . . but she had an idea she could find out.

The Lord, after all, helped those who helped themselves.

“Does that seem like a fair price?” Mr. Gaunt asked Polly.

Polly started to reply, then paused. Mr. Gaunt's attention suddenly seemed to be diverted; he was gazing off into space and his lips were moving soundlessly, as if in prayer.

“Mr. Gaunt?”

He started slightly. Then his eyes returned to her and he smiled. “Pardon me, Polly. My mind wanders sometimes.”

“The price seems more than fair,” Polly told him. “It seems
divine.”
She took her checkbook from her purse and began to write. Every now and then she would wonder vaguely just what she was up to here, and then she would feel Mr. Gaunt's eyes call hers. When she looked up and met them, the questions and doubts subsided again.

The check she handed to him was drawn in the amount of forty-six dollars. Mr. Gaunt folded it neatly and tucked it into the lapel pocket of his sport-jacket.

“Be sure to fill out the counterfoil,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Your snoopy friend will undoubtedly want to see it.”

“He's coming to see you,” Polly said, doing exactly as Mr. Gaunt had suggested. “He thinks you're a confidence man.”

“He's got lots of thoughts and lots of plans,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but his plans are going to change and his thoughts are going to blow away like fog on a windy morning. Take my word for it.”

“You . . . you're not going to hurt him, are you?”

“Me? You do me a very great wrong, Patricia Chalmers. I am a pacifist—one of the world's
great
pacifists. I wouldn't raise a hand against our Sheriff. I just meant that he's got business on the other side of the bridge this afternoon. He doesn't know it yet, but he does.”

“Oh.”

“Now, Polly?”

“Yes?”

“Your check does not constitute complete payment for the
azka.”

“It doesn't?”

“No.” He was holding a plain white envelope in his hands. Polly didn't have the slightest idea where it had come from, but that seemed perfectly all right. “In order to finish paying for your amulet, Polly, you have to help me play a little trick on someone.”