(no, be would have gotten his gun or brained it with a wrench orsomething and where's the cad There was a car here before theyall went off on a family trip - do you bear me FAMILY TRIP - took the car left the truck)
Then why had no one come to feed the dog?
That was the logic of the thing, part of what frightened her. Why hadn't anyone come to feed the dog? Because if you were going to be away for a day or for a couple of days. you made an arrangement with somebody. They fed your dog for you, and then when they were gone, you fed their cat for them, or their fish, or their parakeet, or whatever. So where
And the dog kept going back into the barn.
Was it eating in there?
That's the answer, her mind told her, relieved. He didn't have anyone to feed the dog, so he poured it a tray of food. Gaines Meal, or something.
But then she stuck upon what Joe Camber himself had stuck upon earlier on that long, long day. A big dog would gobble it all at once and then go hungry. Surely it would be better to get a friend to feed the dog if you were going to be gone. On the other hand, maybe they had been held- up. Maybe there really had been a family reunion, and Camber had gotten drunk and passed out. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe anything.
Is the dog eating in the barn?
(what is it eating in there? Gaines Meal? or people?) She spat the last of the cucumber into her cupped hand and felt her stomach roll, wanting to send up what she had already eaten. She
set her will upon keeping it down, and because she could be very determined when she wanted to, she did keep it down. They had left the dog some food and had gone off in the car. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that. The rest of it was nothing but a bad case of the willies.
But that image of death kept trying to creep back in. The dominant image was the bloody sawdust, sawdust which had gone the dark color of natural-casing franks.
Stop. Think about the mail, if you have to think about anything.
Think about tomorrow. Think about being safe.
There was a soft, scuffling, scratching noise on her side of the car.
She didn't want to look but was helpless to stop herself. Her head began to turn as if forced by invisible yet powerful hands. She could hear the low creak of the tendons in her neck. Cujo was there, looking in at her. His face was less than six inches from her own. Only the Saf-T-Glas of the driver's side window separated them. Those red, bleary eyes stared into hers. The dog's muzzle looked as if it had been badly lathered with shaving cream that had been left to dry.
Cujo was grinning at her.
She felt a scream building in her chest, coming up in her throat like iron, because she could feel the dog thinking at her, telling her I'm going to get you, babe. I'm going to get you, kiddo. Think about the mailman all you want to. I'll kill him too if I have to, the way I killed all three of the Cambers, the way I'm going to kill you and your son. You might as well get used to the idea. You might as well The scream, coming up her throat. It was a live thing struggling to get out, and everything was coming on her at once: Tad having to pee, she had unrolled his window four inches and held him up so he could do it out the window, watching all the time for the dog, and for a long time he hadn't been able to go and her arms had
begun to ache; then the dream, then the images of death, and now this
The dog was grinning in at her; he was grinning in at her, Cujo was his name, and his bite was death.
The scream had to come
(but Tad's) or she would go mad.
(sleeping)
She locked her jaws against the scream the way she had locked her throat against the urge to vomit a few moments ago. She struggled with it, she fought it. And at last her heart began to slow down and she knew she had it licked.
She smiled at the dog and raised both of her middle fingers from closed fists. She held them against the glass, which was now slightly fogged on the outside with Cujo's breath. 'Go get fucked,'
she whispered.
After what seemed an endless time, the dog put its forepaws down and went back into the barn. Her mind turned down the same dark track again
(what's it eating in there?)
and then she slammed a door shut somewhere in her mind.
But there would be no more sleep, not for a long time, and it was so long until dawn. She sat upright behind the wheel, trembling, telling herself over and over again that it was ridiculous, really ridiculous, to feel that the dog was some kind of a hideous revenant which had escaped from Tad's closet, or that it knew more about the situation than she did.
Vic jerked awake in total darkness, rapid breath as dry as salt in his throat. His heart was triphammering in his chest, and he was totally
disoriented - so disoriented that for a moment he thought he was falling, and reached out to clutch the bed.
He closed his eyes for a moment, forcibly holding himself together, making himself coalesce.
(you are in)
He opened his eyes and saw a window, a bedstand, a lamp.
(the Ritz-CarIton Hotel in Boston Massachusetts) He relaxed. That reference point given, everything came together with a reassuring click, making him wonder how he could have been so lost and totally apart, even momentarily. It was being in a strange place, he supposed. That, and the nightmare.
Nightmare! Jesus, it had been a beaut. He couldn't remember having such a bad one since the failing dreams that had plagued him off and on during early puberty. He reached for the Travel-Ette clock on the nightstand, gripped it in both hands, and brought it close to his face. It was twenty minutes of two. Roger was snoring lightly in the other bed, and now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark he could see him, sleeping flat on his back. He had kicked the sheet over the end of the bed. He was wearing an absurd pair of pajamas covered with small yellow college pennants.
Vic swung his legs out of bed, went quietly into the bathroom, and closed the door. Roger's cigarettes were on the washstand and he helped himself to one. He needed it. He sat on the toilet and smoked, tapping ashes into the sink.
An anxiety dream, Donna would have said, and God knew he had enough to be anxious about. Yet he had gone to bed around ten thirty in better spirits than he had been in for the last week. After arriving back at the hotel, he and Roger had spent half an hour in the Ritz-CarIton's bar, kicking the apology idea around, and then, from the bowels of the huge old wallet he hauled around, Roger
produced the home number of Yancey Harrington. Harrington was the actor who played the Sharp Cereal Professor.
'Might as well see if he'll do it before we go any further,' Roger said. He had picked up the phone and dialed Harrington, who lived in Westport, Connecticut. Vic hadn't known just what to expect. If pressed for his best guess, he would have said that probably Harrington would have to be stroked a little - he had been just miserable over the Zingers affair and what he considered it had done to his image.
