And yet ... and yet ...

Brett was looking out the window, enrapt. Without turning from the view, he said, 'You think Cujo's all right, Mom?'

'I'm sure he's fine,' she said absently.

For the first time she found herself thinking about divorce in a concrete way - what she could do to support herself and her son, how they would get along in such an unthinkable (almost unthinkable) situation. If she and Brett didn't come home from this trip, would he come after them, as he had vaguely threatened back in Portland? Would he decide to let Charity go to the bad but try to get Brett back by fair means ... or foul?

She began to tick the various possibilities over in her mind, weighing them, suddenly thinking that maybe a little perspective wasn't such a bad thing after all. Painful, maybe. Maybe useful, too.

The Greyhound slipped across the state line into New Hampshire and rolled on south.

The Delta 727 rose steeply, buttonhooked over Castle Rock -Vic always looked for his house near Castle Lake and 117, always fruitlessly - and then headed back toward the coast. It was a twenty-minute run to Logan Airport.

Donna was down there, some eighteen thousand feet below. And the Tadder. He felt a sudden depression mixed with a black premonition that it wasn't going to work, that they were crazy to even think it might. When your house blew down, you had to build a new house. You couldn't put the old one back together again with Elmer's Glue.

The stewardess came by. He and Roger were riding in first class ('Might as well enjoy it while we can, buddy,' Roger had said last Wednesday when he made the reservations; 'not everyone can go to the poorfarm in such impeccable style'), and there were only four or five other passengers, most of them reading the morning paper - as was Roger.

'Can I get you anything?' she asked Roger with that professional twinkly smile that seemed to say she had been overjoyed to get up this morning at five thirty to make the upsy-downsy run from Bangor to Portland to Boston to New York to Atlanta.

Roger shook his head absently, and she turned that unearthly smile on Vic. 'Anything for you, sir? Sweet roll? Orange juice?'

'Could you rustle up a screwdriver?' Vic asked, and Roger's head came out of his paper with a snap.

The stew's smile didn't falter; a request for a drink before nine in the morning was no news to her. 'I can rustle one up,' she said, 'but you'll have to hustle to get it all down. It's really only a hop to Boston.'

'I'll hustle,' Vic promised solemnly, and she passed on her way back up to the galley, resplendent in her powder-blue slacks uniform and her smile.

'What's with you?' Roger asked.

'What do you mean, what's with me?'

'You know what I mean. I never even saw you drink a beer before noon before. Usually not before five.'

'I'm launching the boat,' Vic said.

'What boat?'

'The R.M.S. Titanic,' Vic said.

Roger frowned. 'That's sort of poor taste, don't you think?'

He did, as a matter of fact. Roger deserved something better, but this morning, with the depression still on him like a foul-smelling blanket, he just couldn't think of anything better. He managed a rather bleak smile instead. But Roger went on frowning at him.

'Look,' Vic said, 'I've got an idea on this Zingers thing. It's going to he a bitch convincing old man Sharp and the kid, but it might work.'

Roger looked relieved. It was the way it had always worked with them; Vic was the raw idea man, Roger the shaper and implementer. They had always worked as a team when it came to translating the ideas into media, and in the matter of presentation.

'What is it?'

'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 damp 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 tom the bejesus 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 sped. 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 country people 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 been goofing around the dooryard while Charity hung out clothes.

'Well, that's too bad, Ray,' Joe said, 'but I don't work for free. This ain't no charitable organization.'