Charity watched them go. She sat down on one of the hard benches, opened her purse, took out a handkerchief, and began fretting at it. It would just be like him to wish her a good time and then try to talk the boy into going back to the home place with him.
On the sidewalk, Joe said: 'Lemme give you two pieces of advice, boy. You probably won't take neither of them, boys seldom do, but I guess that never stopped a father giving em. First piece of advice is this: That fella you're going to see, that Jim, he's nothing but a piece of shit. One of the reasons I'm letting you go on this jaunt is that you're ten now, and ten's old enough to tell the difference between a turd and a tearose. You watch him and you'll see. He don't do nothing but sit in an office and push papers. People like him is half the trouble with this world, because their brains have got unplugged from their hands.' Thin, hectic color had risen in Joe's cheeks. 'He's a piece of shit. You watch him and see if you don't agree.'
'All right,' Brett said. His voice was low but composed.
Joe Camber smiled a little. 'The second piece of advice is to keep your hand on your pocketbook.'
'I haven't got any mon -'
Camber held out a rumpled five-dollar bill. 'Yeah, you got this.
Don't spend it all in one place. The fool and his money soon parted.'
'All right. Thank you'
'So long,' Camber said. He didn't ask for another kiss.
'Good-bye, Daddy.' Brett stood on the sidewalk and watched his father climb into the car and drive away. He never saw his father alive again.
At quarter past eight that morning, Gary Pervier staggered out of his house in his pee-stained underwear shorts and urinated into the honeysuckle. In a perverse sort of way he hoped that someday his piss would become so rancid with booze that it would blight the honeysuckle. That day hadn't come yet.
'Arrrouggh, my head!' he screamed, holding it with his free hand as he watered the honeysuckle which had buried his fence. His eyes were threaded with bright snaps of scarlet. His heart clattered and roared like an old water pump that was drawing more air than water just lately. A terrible stomach cramp seized him as he finished voiding himself -they had been getting more common lately - and as he doubled up a large and foul-smelling flatulence purred out from between his skinny shanks.
He turned to go back in. and that was when he heard the growling begin. It was a low, powerful sound coming from just beyond the point where his overgrown side yard merged with the hayfield beyond it.
He turned toward the sound quickly, his headache forgotten, the clatter and roar of his heart forgotten, the cramp forgotten. It had been a long time since he'd had a flashback to his war in France, but he had one now, Suddenly his mind was screaming, Germans!
Germans! Squad down!
But it wasn't the Germans. When the grass parted it was Cujo who appeared.
'Hey, boy, what are you growling f -'Gary said, and then faltered.
It had been twenty years since he had wen a rabid dog, but you didn't forget the look. He had been in an Amoco station east of Machias, headed back from a camping trip down Eastport way. He had been driving the old Indian motorcycle he'd had for a while in the mid-fifties. A panting, slat-sided yellow dog had drifted by outside that Amoco station like a ghost. Its sides had been moving in and out in rapid, shallow springs of respiration. Foam was dripping from its mouth in a steady watery stream. It's eyes were rolling wildly. Its hindquarters were caked with shit. It had been reeling rather than walking, as if some unkind soul had opened its jaws an hour before and filled it full of cheap whiskey.
'Hot damn, there he is,' the pump jockey said. He had dropped the adjustable wrench he was holding and had rushed into the cluttered, dingy little office which adjoined the station's garage bay. He had come out with a .30-30 clutched in his greasy, big-knuckled hands. He went out onto the tarmac, dropped to one knee, and started shooting. His first shot had been low, shearing away one of the dog's back legs in a cloud of blood. That yellow dog never even moved, Gary remembered as he stared at Cujo now.
Just looked around blankly as if he didn't have the slightest idea what was happening to it. The pump jockey's second try had cut the dog almost in half. Guts hit the station's one pump in a black and red splash. A moment later three more guys had pulled in, three of Washington County's finest crammed shoulder to shoulder in the cab of a 1940 Dodge pickup. They were all armed. ]bey piled out and pumped another eight or nine rounds into the dead dog. An hour after that, as the pump jockey was finishing tip putting a new headlamp on the front of Gary's Indian cyclic, the County Dog Officer arrived in a Studebaker with no door on the passenger side. She donned long rubber gloves and cut off what
was left of the yellow dog's head to send to State Health and Welfare.
Cujo looked a hell of a lot spryer than that long-ago yellow dog, but the other symptoms were exactly the same. Not too far gone, he thought. More dangerous. Holy Jesus, got to get my gun He started to back away. 'Hi, Cujo ... nice dog, nice boy, nice doggy -' Cujo stood at the edge of the lawn. his great head lowered, his eyes reddish and filmy, growling.
'Nice boy –‘
To Cujo, the words coming from THE MAN meant nothing. They were meaningless -sounds, like the wind. What mattered was the smell coming from THE MAN. It was hot, rank, and pungent. It was the smell of fear, and was maddening and unbearable. He suddenly understood THE MAN had made him sick. He lunged forward, the growl in his chest mounting into a heavy roar of rage.
Gary saw the dog coming for him. He turned and ran. One bite, one scratch could mean death. He ran for the porch and the safety of the house beyond the porch. But there had been too many drinks, too many long winter days by the stove, and too many long summer nights in the lawn chair. He could hear Cujo closing in behind him, and then there was the terrible split second when he could hear nothing and understood that Cujo had leaped.
As he reached the first splintery step of his porch, two hundred pounds of Saint Bernard hit him like a locomotive, knocking him flat and driving the wind from him. The dog went for the back of his neck. Gary tried to scramble up. The dog was over him, the thick fur of its underbelly nearly suffocating him, and it knocked him back down easily. Gary screamed.
Cujo bit him high on the shoulder, his powerful jaws dosing and crunching through the bare skin, pulling tendons like wires. He continued to growl. Blood flew. Gary felt it running warmly down
his skinny upper arm. He turned over and battered at the dog with his fists. It gave back a little and Gary was able to scramble up three more steps on his feet and hands. Then Cujo came again.
Gary kicked at the dog. Cujo feinted the other way and then came boring in, snapping and growling. Foam flew from his jaws, and Gary could smell his breath. It smelled rotten - rank and yellow.
Gary balled his right fist and swung in a roundhouse, connecting with the bony shelf of Cujo's lower jaw. It was mostly luck. The jolt of the impact ran all the way up to his shoulder, which was on fire from the deep bite.
Cujo backed off again.
Gary looked at the dog, his thin, hairless chest moving rapidly up and down. His face was ashy gray. The laceration on his shoulder welled blood that splattered on the peeling porch steps. 'Come for me, you sonofawhore,' he said. 'Come on, come on, I don't give a shit.' He screamed, 'You hear me! I don't give a shit!'
But Cujo backed off another pace.
The words still had no meaning, but the smell of fear had left THE
MAN. Cujo was no longer sure if he wanted to attack or not. He hurt, he hurt so miserably, and the world was a crazyquilt of sense and impression.
Gary got shakily to his feet. He backed up the last two steps of the porch. He backed across the porch's width and felt behind him for the handle of the screen door. His shoulder felt as if raw gasoline had been poured under the skin. His mind raved at him, Rabies! I got the rabies!
Never mind. One thing at a time. His shotgun was in the hall closet. Thank Christ Charity and Brett Camber were gone from up on the hill. That was God's mercy at work.
He found the screen door's handle and pulled the door open. He kept his eyes locked on Cujo's until he had backed in and pulled the screen door shut behind him. Then a great relief swept through him. His legs went rubbery. For a moment the world swam away, and he pulled himself back by sticking his tongue out and biting down on it. This was no time to swoon like a girl. He could do that after the dog was dead, if he wanted. Christ, but it had been close out there; he had thought he was going to punch out for sure.
He turned and headed down the darkened hallway to the Closet, and that was when Cujo smashed through the lower half of the screen door, muzzle wrinkled back from his teeth in a kind of sneer, a dry volley of barking sounds coming from his chest.
Gary screamed again and whirled just in time to catch Cujo in both arms as the dog leaped again, driving him back down the hall, bouncing from side to side and trying to keep his feet. For a moment they almost seemed to waltz. Then Gary, who was fifty pounds lighter, went down. He was dimly aware of Cujo's muzzle burrowing in under his chin, was dimly aware that Cujo's nose was almost sickeningly hot and dry. He tried getting his hands up and was thinking that he would have to go for Cujo's eyes with his thumbs when Cujo seized his throat and tore it open. Gary screamed and the dog savaged him again. Gary felt warm blood sheet across his face and thought, Dear God, that's mine! His hands beat weakly and ineffectually at Cujo's upper body, doing no damage. At last they fell away.
