breath. She let it out through her teeth in a low, hot sigh.
Cujo stood at the door, his back paws on the ground, his forepaws on the top step. He continued to growl low in his chest—a hateful, nightmarish sound. At last he turned and looked at the Pinto for a time—Donna could see the dried foam caked on his muzzle and chest—then he padded back into the shadows and grew indistinct. It was impossible to tell exactly where he went. In the garage, maybe. Or maybe down the side of the barn.
Tad was tugging desperately at the sleeve of her shirt.
“Mommy, I have to go bad!”
She looked at him helplessly.
Brett Camber put the phone down slowly. “No one answered. He’s not home, I guess.”
Charity nodded, not terribly surprised. She was glad that Jim had suggested they make the call from his office, which was downstairs and off the “family room.” The family room was soundproofed. There were shelves of board games in there, a Panasonic large-screen TV with a video recorder and an Atari video-games setup attached to it. And standing in one corner was a lovely old Wurlitzer jukebox that really worked.
“Down at Gary’s, I guess,” Brett added disconsolately.
“Yes, I imagine he’s with Gary,” she agreed, which wasn’t exactly the same as saying they were together at Gary’s house. She had seen the faraway look that had come into Joe’s eyes when she had finally struck the deal with him, the deal that had gotten her and her son down here. She hoped Brett wouldn’t think of calling directory assistance for Gary Pervier’s number, because she doubted if there would be any answer there either. She suspected that there were two old dogs out somewhere tonight howling at the moon.
“Do you think Cuje is okay, Mom?”
“Why, I don’t think your father would go off and leave him if he wasn’t,” she said, and that was true—she didn’t believe he would. “Why don’t we leave it for tonight and you call him in the morning? You ought to be getting to bed anyway. It’s past ten. You’ve had a big day.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Well, it’s not good to go too long on nervous excitement. I put your toothbrush out, and your Aunt Holly put out a washcloth and a towel for you. Do you remember which bedroom—?”
“Yeah, sure. You going to bed, Mom?”
“Soon. I’m going to sit up with Holly for a while. We’ve got a lot of history to catch up on, she and I.”
Shyly, Brett said, “She looks like you. Y’know that?”
Charity looked at him, surprised. “Does she? Yes, I suppose she does. A little.”
“And that little kid, Jimmy. He’s got a real right hook. Pow!” Brett burst out laughing.
“Did he hurt your stomach?”
“Heck, no.” Brett was looking around Jim’s study carefully, noting the Underwood typewriter on the desk, the Rolodex, the neat open file of folders with the names on the tabs in alphabetical order. There was a careful, measuring look in his eyes that she couldn’t understand or evaluate. He seemed to come back from far away. “Nah, he didn’t hurt me. He’s just a little kid.” He cocked his head at her. “My cousin, right?”
“Right.”
“Blood relation.” He seemed to muse over it.
“Brett, do you like your Uncle Jim and Aunt Holly?”
“I like her. I can’t tell about him yet. That jukebox. That’s really neat. But . . . ” He shook his head in a kind of impatience.
“What about it, Brett?”
“He takes so much pride in it!” Brett said. “It was the first thing he showed me, like a kid with a toy, isn’t this neat, you know—”
“Well, he’s only had it for a little while,” Charity said. An unformed dread had begun to swirl around inside of her, connected somehow with Joe—what had he told Brett when he took him out on the sidewalk? “Anyone’s partial to something new. Holly wrote me when they finally got it, said Jim had wanted one of those things since he was a young man. People . . . honey, different people buy different things to . . . to show themselves that they’re successful, I suppose. There’s no accounting for it. But usually it’s something they couldn’t have when they were poor.”
“Was Uncle Jim poor?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “But they’re not poor now.”
“All I meant was that he didn’t have anything to do with it. You get what I mean?” He looked at her closely. “He bought it with money and hired some people to