“Give me a little while, Vic said. ”Until tonight, maybe. Then we’ll run it up the flagpole—”
“—and see who drops their pants,” Roger finished with a grin. He shook his paper open to the financial page again. “Okay. As long as I get it by tonight. Sharp stock went up another eighth last week. Were you aware of that?”
“Dandy,” Vic murmured, and looked out the window again. No fog now; the day was as clear as a bell. The beaches at Kennebunk and Ogunquit and York formed a panoramic picture postcard—cobalt blue sea, khaki sand, and then the Maine landscape of low hills, open fields, and thick bands of fir stretching west and, out of sight. Beautiful. And it made his depression even worse.
If I have to cry, I’m damn well going into the crapper to do it, he thought grimly. Six sentences on a sheet of cheap paper had done this to him. It was a goddam fragile world, as fragile as one of those Easter eggs that were all pretty colors on the outside but hollow on the inside. Only last week he had been thinking of just taking Tad and moving out. Now he wondered if Tad and Donna would still be there when he and Roger got back. Was it possible that Donna might just take the kid and decamp, maybe to her mother’s place in the Poconos?
Sure it was possible. She might decide that ten days apart wasn’t enough, not for him, not for her. Maybe a six months’ separation would be better. And she had Tad now. Possession was nine points of the law, wasn’t it?
And maybe, a crawling, insinuating voice inside spoke up, maybe she knows where Kemp is. Maybe she’ll decide to go to him. Try it with him for a while. They can search for their happy pasts together. Now there’s a nice crazy Monday-morning thought, he told himself uneasily.
But the thought wouldn’t go away. Almost, but not quite.
He managed to finish every drop of his screwdriver before the plane touched down at Logan. It gave him acid indigestion that he knew would last all morning long—like the thought of Donna and Steve Kemp together, it would come creeping back even if he gobbled a whole roll of Turns—but the depression lifted a little and so maybe it was worth it.
Maybe.
Joe Camber looked at the patch of garage floor below his big vise clamp with something like wonder. He pushed his green felt hat back on his forehead, stared at what was there awhile longer, then put his fingers between his teeth and whistled piercingly.
“Cujo! Hey, boy! Come, Cujo!”
He whistled again and then leaned over, hands on his knees. The dog would come, he had no doubt of that. Cujo never went far. But how was he going to handle this?
The dog had shat on the garage floor. He had never known Cujo to do such a thing, not even as a pup. He had piddled around a few times, as puppies will, and he had torn the be-jesus out of a chair cushion or two, but there had never been anything like this. He wondered briefly if maybe some other dog had done it, and then dismissed the thought. Cujo was the biggest dog in Castle Rock, so far as he knew. Big dogs ate big, and big dogs crapped big. No poodle or beagle or Heinz Fifty-seven Varieties had done this mess. Joe wondered if the dog could have sensed that Charity and Brett were going away for a spell. If so, maybe this was his way of showing just how that idea set with him. Joe had heard of such things.
He had taken the dog in payment for a job he had done in 1975. The customer had been a one-eyed fellow named Ray Crowell from up Fryeburg way. This Crowell spent most of his time working in the woods, although it was acknowledged that he had a fine touch with dogs—he was good at breeding them and good at training them. He could have made a decent living doing what New England countrypeople sometimes called “dog farming,” but his temper was not good, and he drove many customers away with his sullenness.
“I need a new engine in my truck,” Crowell had told Joe that spring.
“Ayuh,” Joe had said.
“I got the motor, but I can’t pay you nothing. I’m tapped out.”
They had been standing just inside Joe’s garage, chewing on stems of grass. Brett, then five, had