Cujo - By Stephen King Page 0,154

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 begun 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 that 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 vet’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 of 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 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.” It

“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 Brett’s college.

Shortly following 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, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.

The small cave into which Cujo had chased the rabbit was never discovered. Eventually, for whatever vague reasons small creatures may have, the bats moved on. The rabbit was unable to get out and it starved to death in slow, soundless misery. Its bones, so far as I know, still remain there with the bones of those small animals unlucky enough to have tumbled into that place before it.

I’m tellin you so you’ll know,

I’m tellin you so you’ll know,

I’m tellin you so you’ll know,

Ole Blue’s gone where the good dogs go.

—FOLK SONG

September 1977—

March 1981

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