almost ran up the stairs, before everything could spill out, the stupid recriminations and accusations that would not solve anything but only muddy up whatever poor honesty they had been able to manage.
There was little sleep for either of them that night. And the fact that he had forgotten to call Joe Camber and ask him if he could work on his wife’s ailing Pinto Runabout was the furthest thing from Vic’s mind.
As for Joe Camber himself, he was sitting with Gary Pervier in one of the decaying lawn chairs which dotted Gary’s run-to-riot side yard. They were drinking vodka martinis out of McDonald’s glasses under the stars. Lightning bugs flickered across the dark, and the masses of honeysuckle clinging to Gary’s fence filled the hot night with its cloying, heavy scent.
Cujo would ordinarily have been chasing after the fireflies, sometimes barking, and tickling both men no end. But tonight he only lay between them with his nose on his paws. They thought he was sleeping, but he wasn’t. He simply lay there, feeling the aches that filled his bones and buzzed back and forth in his head. It had gotten hard for him to think what came next in his simple dog’s life; something had gotten in the way of ordinary instinct. When he slept, he had dreams of uncommon, unpleasant vividity. In one of these he had savaged THE BOY, had ripped his throat open and then pulled his guts out of his body in steaming bundles. He had awakened from this dream twitching and whining.
He was continually thirsty, but he had already begun to shy away from his water dish some of the time, and when he did drink, the water tasted like steel shavings. The water made his teeth ache. The water sent bolts of pain through his eyes. And now he lay on the grass, not caring about the lightning bugs or anything else. The voices of THE MEN were unimportant rumbles coming from somewhere above him. They meant little to him compared to his own growing misery.
“Boston!” Gary Pervier said, and cackled. “Boston! What the hell are you going to do in Boston, and what makes you think I could afford to tag along? I don’t think I got enough to go down to the Norge until I get my check cashed.”
“Fuck you, you’re rolling in it,” Joe replied. He was getting pretty drunk. “You might have to dig into what’s in your mattress a little, that’s all.”
“Nothing in there but bedbugs,” Gary said, and cackled again. “Place is crawlin with em, and I don’t give a shit. You ready for another blast?”
Joe held out his glass. Gary had the makings right beside his chair. He mixed in the dark with the practiced, steady, and heavy hand of the chronic drinker.
“Boston!” He said again, handing Joe his drink. He said slyly, “Kickin up your heels a little, Joey, I guess.” Gary was the only man in Castle Rock—perhaps the world—who could have gotten away with calling him Joey. “Kickin up some whoopee, I guess. Never known you to go further than Portsmouth before.”
“I been to Boston once or twice,” Joe said. “You better look out, Pervert, or I’ll sic my dog on you.”
“You couldn’t sic that dog on a yellin nigger with a straight razor in each hand,” Gary said. He reached down and ruffled Cujo’s fur briefly. “What’s your wife say about it?”
“She don’t know we’re goin. She don’t have to know.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“She’s takin the boy down to Connecticut to see her sister ’n’ that freak she’s married to. They’re gonna be gone a week. She won some money in the lottery. Might as well tell you that right out. They use all the names on the radio, anyway. It’s all in the prize form she had to sign.”
“Won some money in the lottery, did she?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
Gary whistled. Cujo flicked his ears uncomfortably at the sound.
Joe told Gary what Charity had told him at supper, leaving out the argument and making it appear a straight trade that had been his idea: The boy could go down to Connecticut for a week with her, and up to Moosehead for a week with him in the fall.
“And you’re gonna go down to Boston and spend some of that dividend yourself, you dirty dog,” Gary said. He clapped Joe on the shoulder and laughed. “Oh, you’re a one, all right.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You know when the last time was I had a day off? I