Brett grinned. He had only been out of Maine twice in his life, most recently with his father on a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They had gone to a used-car auction where Joe had picked up a '58 Ford with a hemi engine. 'Sure!' he said. 'When?'
'I was thinking of Monday,' she said. 'After the weekend of the Fourth. We'd be gone a week. Could you do that?'
'I guess! jeez, I thought Dad had a lot of work lined up for next week. He must have -'
'I haven't mentioned this to your father yet.'
Brett's grin fell apart. He picked up a piece of bacon and began to eat it. 'Well, I know he promised Richie Simms he'd pull the motor on his International Harvester. And Mr. Miller from the school was gonna bring over his Ford because the tranny's shot. And -'
'I thought just the two of us would go,' Charity said. 'On the Greyhound from Portland.'
Brett looked doubtful. Outside the back-porch screen, Cujo padded slowly up the steps and collapsed onto the boards in the shade with a grunt. He looked in at THE BOY and THE WOMAN With weary, red-rimmed eyes. He was feeling very bad now, very bad indeed.
'Jeez, Mom, I don't know ---'
'Don't say jeez. It's just the same as swearing.'
'Sorry.'
'Would you like to go? If your father said it was all right?'
'Yeah, really! Do you really think we could?'
'Maybe.' She was looking out through the window over the sink thoughtfully.
'How far is it to Stratford, Mom?'
'About three hundred and fifty miles, I guess.'
'Jee - I mean, boy, that's a long way. Is it
'Brett.'
He looked at her attentively. That curious intense quality was back in her voice and on her face. That nervousness.
'What, Mom?'
'Can you think of anything your father needs out in the shop? Any one thing he's been looking to get?'
The fight dawned in Brett's eyes a little. 'Well, he always needs adjustable wrenches ... and he's been wanting a new set of ball-and-sockets ... and he could use a new welder's helmet since the old one got a crack in the faceplate
'No, I mean anything big. Expensive.'
Brett thought awhile, then smiled. 'Well, what he'd really like to have is a new Jorgen chainfall, I guess. Rip that old motor out of Richie Simms's International just as slick as sh -well, slick.' He blushed and hurried on. 'But you couldn't get him nothing like that, Mom. That's really dear.'
Dear. Joe's word for expensive. She hated it.
'How much?'
'Well, the one in the catalogue says seventeen hundred dollars, but Dad could probably get it from Mr. Belasco at Portland Machine for wholesale. Dad says Mr. Belasco's scared of him.'
'Do you think there's something smart about that?' she asked sharply.
Brett sat back in his chair, a little frightened by her fierceness. He couldn't remember his mother ever acting quite like this. Even Cujo, out on the porch, pricked his ears a little.
'Well? Do you?'
'No, Mom,' he said, but Charity knew in a despairing way that he was lying. If you could scare somebody into giving you wholesale, you were trading a right smart. She had heard the admiration in Brett's voice, even if the boy himself had not. Wants to be just like him. Thinks his daddy is just standing tall when he scares someone. Oh my God.
'There's nothing smart about being able to scare people,'
Charity said. 'All it takes is a big voice and a mean disposition.
There's no smart to it.' She lowered her voice and flapped a hand at him. 'Go on and cat your eggs. I'm not going to shout at you. I guess it's the heat.'
He ate, but quietly and carefully, looking at her now and then.
There were hidden mines around this morning.
'What would wholesale be, I wonder? Thirteen hundred dollars? A thousand?'
'I don't know, Mamma.'
'Would this Belasco deliver? On a big order like that?'
'Ayuh, I guess he would. If we had that kind of money.'
Her hand went to the pocket of her- housedress. The lottery ticket was there. The green number on her ticket, 76, and the red number, 434, matched the numbers drawn by the State Lottery Commission two weeks before. She had checked it dozens of times, unable to believe it. She had invested fifty cents that week, as she had done every week since the lottery began in 1975, and this time she had
