his chin, was dimly aware that Cujo’s nose was almost sickeningly hot and dry. He tried getting his hands up and was thinking that he would have to go for Cujo’s eyes with his thumbs when Cujo seized his throat and tore it open. Gary screamed and the dog savaged him again. Gary felt warm blood sheet across his face and thought, Dear God, that’s mine! His hands beat weakly and ineffectually at Cujo’s upper body, doing no damage. At last they fell away.
Faintly, sick and cloying, he smelled honeysuckle.
“What do you see out there?”
Brett turned a little toward the sound of his mother’s voice. Not all the way—he did not want to lose sight of the steadily unrolling view even for a little while. The bus had been on the road for almost an hour. They had crossed the Million Dollar Bridge into South Portland (Brett had stared with fascinated, wondering eyes at the two scum-caked, rustbucket freighters in the harbor), joined the Turnpike going south, and were now approaching the New Hampshire border.
“Everything,” Brett said. “What do you see, Mom?”
She thought: Your reflection in the glass—very faint. That’s what I see.
Instead she answered. “Why, the world, I guess. I see the world unrolling in front of us.”
“Mom? I wish we could ride all the way to California on this bus. See everything there is in the geography books at school.”
She laughed and ruffled his hair. “You’d get damn tired of scenery, Brett.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t.”
And he probably wouldn’t, she thought. Suddenly she felt both sad and old. When she had called Holly Saturday morning to ask her if they could come, Holly had been delighted, and her delight had made Charity feel young. It was strange that her own son’s delight, his almost palpable euphoria, would make her feel old. Nevertheless . . .
What exactly is there going to be for him? she asked herself, studying his ghostlike face, which was superimposed over the moving scenery like a camera trick. He was bright, brighter than she was and much brighter than Joe. He ought to go to college, but she knew that when he got to high school Joe would press him to sign up for the shop and automotive maintenance courses so he could be more help around the place. Ten years ago he wouldn’t have been able to get away with it, the guidance counselors wouldn’t have allowed a bright boy like Brett to opt for all manual trades courses, but in these days of phase electives and do your own thing, she was terribly afraid it might happen.
It made her afraid. Once the had been able to tell herself that school was far away, so very far away—high school, real school. Grammar school was nothing but play to a boy who slipped through his lessons as easily as Brett did. But in high school the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years.
She gripped her elbows and shivered, not even kidding herself that it was because the Hound’s air conditioning was turned up too high.
For Brett, high school was now just four years away.
She shivered again and suddenly found herself wishing viciously that she had never won the money, or that she had lost the ticket. They had only been away from Joe for an hour, but it was the first time she had really been separated from him since they had married in late 1966. She hadn’t realized that perspective would be so sudden, so dizzying, and so bitter. Picture this: Woman and boy are let free from brooding castle keep . . . but there’s a catch. Stapled to their backs are large hooks, and slipped over the ends of the hooks are heavy-duty invisible rubber bands. And before you can get too far, presto-whizzo! You’re snapped back inside for another fourteen years!
She made a little croaking sound in her throat.
“Did you say something, Mom?”
“No. Just clearing my throat.”
She shivered a third time, and this time her arms broke out in gooseflesh. She had recalled a line of poetry from one of her own high school English classes (she had wanted to take the college courses, but her father had been furious at the idea—did she think they were rich?—and her mother had laughed the idea to death gently and pityingly). It was from a poem by Dylan Thomas, and she couldn’t remember the whole thing, but