He supposed he could fill up that old pig trough behind the barn with Gaines Meal—they had just about a long ton of the stuff stored downstairs in the cellar—but it would get soggy if it rained. And if he left it in the house or the barn, Cujo might just decide to up and crap on the floor again. Also, when it came to food, Cujo was a big, cheerful glutton. He would eat half the first day, half the second day, and then walk around hungry until Joe came back.
“Shit,” he muttered.
The dog wasn’t coming. Knew Joe would have found his mess and ashamed of it, probably. Cujo was a bright dog, as dogs went, and knowing (or guessing) such a thing was by no means out of his mental reach.
Joe got a shovel and cleaned up the mess. He spilled a capful of the industrial cleaner he kept handy on the spot, mopped it, and rinsed if off with a bucket of water from the faucet at the back of the garage.
That done, he got out the small spiral notebook in which he kept his work schedule and looked it over. Richie’s International Harvester was taken care of—that chainfall surely did take the ouch out of pulling a motor. He had pushed the transmission job back with no trouble; the teacher had been every bit as easygoing as Joe had expected. He had another half a dozen jobs lined up, all of them minor.
He went into the house (he had never bothered to have a phone installed in his garage; they charged you dear for that extra line, he had told Charity) and began to call people and tell them he would be out of town for a few days on business. He would get to most of them before they got around to taking their problems somewhere else. And if one or two couldn’t wait to get their new fanbelt or radiator hose, piss on em.
The calls made, he went back out to the barn. The last item before he was free was an oil change and a ring job. The owner had promised to come by and pick up his car by noon. Joe got to work, thinking how quiet the home place seemed with Charity and Brett gone . . . and with Cujo gone. Usually the big Saint Bernard would lie in the patch of shade by the big sliding garage door, panting, watching Joe as he worked. Sometimes Joe would talk to him, and Cujo always looked as if he was listening carefully.
Been deserted, he thought semi-resentfully. Been deserted by all three. He glanced at the spot where Cujo had messed and shook his head again in a puzzled sort of disgust. The question of what he was going to do about feeding the dog recurred to him and he came up empty again. Well, later on he would give the old Pervert a call. Maybe he would be able to think of someone—some kid—who would be willing to come up and give Cujo his chow for a couple-three days.
He nodded his head and turned the radio on to WOXO in Norway, turning it up loud. He didn’t really hear it unless the news or the ball scores were on, but it was company. Especially with everyone gone. He got to work. And when the phone in the house rang a dozen or so times, he never heard it.
Tad Trenton was in his room at midmorning, playing with his trucks. He had accumulated better than thirty of them in his four years on the earth, an extensive collection which ranged from the seventy-nine-cent plastic jobs that his dad sometimes bought him at the Bridgton Pharmacy where he always got Time magazine on Wednesday evenings (you had to play carefully with the seventy-five-cent trucks because they were MADE IN TAIWAN and had a tendency to fall apart) to the flagship of his line, a great yellow Tonka bulldozer that came up to his knees when he was standing.
He had various “men” to stick into the cabs of his trucks. Some of them were round-headed guys scrounged from his PlaySkool toys. Others were soldiers. Not a few were what he called “Star Wars Guys.” These included Luke, Han Solo, the Imperial Creep (aka Darth Vader), a Bespin Warrior, and Tad’s absolute favorite, Greedo. Greedo always got to drive the Tonka dozer.
Sometimes he played Dukes of Hazzard with his trucks, sometimes