Needful Things

by Stephen King

  "Nettie's got problems, all right," Polly said, "but her reaction to Mr. Gaunt was nothing short of amazing. It really was awfully sweet."

  "I have to see this guy for myself," Alan said.

  "Tell me what you think. And check out those hazel eyes."

  "I doubt if they'll cause the same reaction in me they seem to have caused in you," Alan said dryly.

  She laughed again, but this time he thought it sounded slightly forced.

  "Try to get some sleep," he said.

  "I will. Thanks for calling, Alan."

  "Welcome." He paused. "I love you, pretty lady."

  "Thank you, Alan--I love you, too. Goodnight."

  "Goodnight. "

  He racked the telephone, twisted the gooseneck of the desk lamp so it threw a spot of light on the wall, put his feet up on his desk, and brought his hands together in front of his chest, as if praying. He extended his index fingers. On the wall, a shadow-rabbit poked up its ears. Alan slipped his thumbs between his extended fingers, and the shadow-rabbit wiggled its nose. Alan made the rabbit hop across the makeshift spotlight. What lumbered back was an elephant, wagging its trunk. Alan's hands moved with a dextrous, eerie ease. He barely noticed the animals he was creating; this was an old habit with him, his way of looking at the tip of his nose and saying "Om."

  He was thinking about Polly; Polly and her poor hands. What to do about Polly?

  If it had been just a matter of money, he would have had her checked into a room at the Mayo Clinic by tomorrow afternoon--signed, sealed, and delivered. He would have done it even if it meant wrapping her in a straitjacket and shooting her full of sedative to get her out there.

  But it wasn't just a matter of money. Ultrasound as a treatment for degenerative arthritis was in its infancy. It might eventually turn out to be as effective as the Salk vaccine, or as bogus as the science of phrenology. Either way, it didn't make sense right now. The chances were a thousand to one that it was a dry hole. It was not the loss of money he dreaded, but Polly's dashed hopes.

  A crow--as limber and lifelike as a crow in a Disney animated cartoon--napped slowly across his framed Albany Police Academy graduation certificate. Its wings lengthened and it became a prehistoric pterodactyl, triangular head cocked as it cruised toward the filing cabinets in the corner and out of the spotlight.

  The door opened. The doleful basset-hound face of Norris Ridgewick poked through. "I did it, Alan," he said, sounding like a man confessing to the murder of several small children.

  "Good, Norris," Alan said. "You're not going to get hit with the shit on this, either. I promise."

  Norris looked at him for a moment longer with his moist eyes, then nodded doubtfully. He glanced at the wall. "Do Buster, Alan."

  Alan grinned, shook his head, and reached for the lamp.

  "Come on," Norris coaxed. "I ticketed his damn car--I deserve it. Do Buster, Alan. Please. That wipes me out."

  Alan glanced over Norris's shoulder, saw no one, and curled one hand against the other. On the wall, a stout shadow-man stalked across the spotlight, belly swinging. He paused once to hitch up his shadow-pants in the back and then stalked on, head turning truculently from side to side.

  Norris's laughter was high and happy--the laughter of a child. For one moment Alan was reminded forcibly of Todd, and then he shoved that away. There had been enough of that for one night, please God.

  "Jeez, that slays me," Norris said, still laughing. "You were born too late, Alan--you coulda had a career on The Ed Sullivan Show."

  "Go on," Alan said. "Get out of here."

  Still laughing, Norris pulled the door closed.

  Alan made Norris--skinny and a little setf-important--walk across the wall, then snapped off the lamp and took a battered notebook from his back pocket. He thumbed through it until he found a blank page, and wrote Needful Things. Below that he jotted: Leland Gaunt, Cleveland, Ohio. Was that right? No. He scratched out Cleveland and wrote Akron. Maybe I really am losing my mind, he thought. On a third line he printed: Check it out.

  He put his notebook back in his pocket, thought about going home, and turned on the lamp again instead. Soon the shadow-parade was marching across the wall once more: lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Like Sandburg's fog, the depression crept back on small feline feet. The voice began speaking about Annie and Todd again. After a while, Alan Pangborn began to listen to it. He did it against his will ... but with growing absorption.

  4

  Polly was lying on her bed, and when she finished talking with Alan, she turned over on her left side to hang up the telephone. It fell out of her hand and crashed to the floor instead. The Princess phone's base slid slowly across the nighttable, obviously meaning to join its other half. She reached for it and her hand struck the edge of the table instead. A monstrous bolt of pain broke through the thin web the painkiller had stretched over her nerves and raced all the way up to her shoulder. She had to bite down on her lips to stifle a cry.

  The telephone base fell off the edge of the table and crashed with a single cling! of the bell inside. She could hear the steady idiot buzz of the open line drifting up. It sounded like a hive of insects being broadcast via shortwave.

  She thought of picking the telephone up with the claws which were now cradled on her chest, having to do it not by grasping--tonight her fingers would not bend at all--but by pressing, like a woman playing the accordion, and suddenly it was too much, even something as simple as picking up a telephone which had fallen on the floor was too much, and she began to cry.

  The pain was fully awake again, awake and raving, turning her hands--especially the one she had bumped--into fever-pits. She lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling through her blurry eyes, and wept.

  Oh I would give anything to be free of this, she thought. I would give anything, anything, anything at all.

  5

  By ten o'clock on an autumn weeknight, Castle Rock's Main Street was as tightly locked up as a Chubb safe. The streetlamps threw circles of white light on the sidewalk and the fronts of the business buildings in diminishing perspective, making downtown look like a deserted stage-set. Soon, you might think, a lone figure dressed in tails and a top-hat--Fred Astaire, or maybe Gene Ketty--would appear and dance his way from one of those spots to the next, singing about how lonely a fellow could be when his best girl had given him the air and all the bars were closed. Then, from the other end of Main Street, another figure would appear--Ginger Rogers or maybe Cyd Charisse--dressed in an evening gown. She would dance toward Fred (or Gene), singing about how lonely a gal could be when her best guy had stood her up. They would see each other, pause artistically, and then dance together in front of the bank or maybe You Sew and Sew.

  Instead, Hugh Priest hove into view.

  He did not look like either Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, there was no girl at the far end of Main Street advancing toward a romantic chance meeting with him, and he most definitely did not dance. He did drink, however, and he had been drinking steadily in The Mellow Tiger since four that afternoon. At this point in the festivities just walking was a trick, and never mind any fancy dance-steps. He walked slowly, passing through one pool of light after another, his shadow running tall across the fronts of the barber shop, the Western Auto, the video-rental shop. He was weaving slightly, his reddish eyes fixed stolidly in front of him, his large belly pushing out his sweaty blue tee-shirt (on the front was a drawing of a huge mosquito above the words MAINE STATE BIRD) in a long, sloping curve.

  The Castle Rock Public Works pick-up truck he had been driving was still sitting at the rear of the Tiger's dirt parking lot. Hugh Priest was the not-so-proud possessor of several OUI driving violations, and following the last one--which had resulted in a six-month suspension of his privilege to drive--that bastard Keeton, his co-bastards Fullerton and Samuels, and their co-bitch Williams had made it clear that they had reached the end of their patience with him. The next OUI. would probably result in the permanent loss of his license, a
nd would certainly result in the loss of his job.

  This did not cause Hugh to stop drinking--no power on earth could do that--but it did cause him to form a firm resolution: no more drinking and driving. He was fifty-one years old, and that was a little late in life to be changing jobs, especially with a long drunk-driving rap-sheet following him around like a tin can tied to a dog's tail.

  That was why he was walking home tonight, and one fuck of a long walk it was, and there was a certain Public Works employee named Bobby Dugas who was going to have some tall explaining to do tomorrow, unless he wanted to go home with a few less teeth than he had come to work with.

  As Hugh passed Nan's Luncheonette, a light drizzle began to mist down. This did not improve his temper.

  He had asked Bobby, who had to drive right past Hugh's place on his way home every night, if he was going to drop down to the Tiger that evening for a few brewskis. Bobby Dugas had said, Why shore, Hubert--Bobby always called him Hubert, which was not his fucking name, and you could bet that shit was going to change, too, and soon. Why shore, Hubert, I'll prob'ly be down around seven, same as always.

  So Hugh, confident of a ride if he got a little too pixillated to drive, had pulled into the Tiger at just about five minutes of four (he'd knocked off a little early, almost an hour and a half early, actually, but what the hell, Deke Bradford hadn't been around), and had waded right in. And come seven o'clock, guess what? No Bobby Dugas! Golly-gosh-wow! Come eight and nine and nine-thirty, guess further what? More of the same, by God!

  At twenty to ten, Henry Beaufort, bartender and owner of The Mellow Tiger, had invited Hugh to put an egg in his shoe and beat it, to make like a tree and leave, to imitate an amoeba and split--in other words, to get the fuck out. Hugh had been outraged. It was true he had kicked the jukebox, but the goddam Rodney Crowell record had been skipping again.

  "What was I supposed to do, just sit here and listen to it?" he demanded of Henry. "You oughtta take that record off, that's all. Guy sounds like he's havin a fuckin pepileptic fit."

  "You haven't had enough, I can see that," Henry said, "but you've had all you're going to get here. You'll have to get the rest out of your own refrigerator."

  "What if I say no?" Hugh demanded.

  "Then I call Sheriff Pangborn," Henry said evenly.

  The other patrons of the Tiger--there weren't many this late on a weeknight--were watching this exchange with interest. Men were careful to be polite around Hugh Priest, especially when he was in his cups, but he was never going to win Castle Rock's Most Popular Fella contest.

  "I wouldn't like to," Henry continued, "but I will do it, Hugh. I'm sick and tired of you kicking my Rock-Ola."

  Hugh considered saying, Then I guess I'll just have to kick YOU a few times instead, you frog son of a bitch. Then he thought of that fat bastard Keeton, handing him a pink slip for kicking up dickens in the local tavern. Of course, if he really got fired the pink would come in the mail, it always did, pigs like Keeton never dirtied their hands (or risked a fat lip) by doing it in person, but it helped to think of that--it turned the dials down a little. And he did have a couple of six-packs at home, one in the fridge and the other in the woodshed.

  "Okay," he said. "I don't need this action, anyway. Gimme my keys." For he had turned them over to Henry, as a precaution, when he sat down at the bar six hours and eighteen beers ago.

  "Nope." Henry wiped his hands on a piece of towel and stared at Hugh unflinchingly,

  "Nope? What the hell do you mean, nope?"

  "I mean you're too drunk to drive. I know it, and when you wake up tomorrow morning, you're going to know it, too."

  "Listen," Hugh said patiently. "When I gave you the goddam keys, I thought I had a ride home. Bobby Dugas said he was coming down for a few beers. It's not my fault the numb fuck never showed."

  Henry sighed. "I sympathize with that, but it's not my problem. I could get sued if you wiped someone out. I doubt if that means much to you, but it does to me. I got to cover my ass, buddy. In this world, nobody else does it for you."

  Hugh felt resentment, self-pity, and an odd, inchoate wretchedness well to the surface of his mind like some foul liquid seeping up from a long-buried canister of toxic waste. He looked from his keys, hanging behind the bar next to the plaque which read IF YOU DON'T LIKE OUR TOWN LOOK FOR A TIME-TABLE, back to Henry. He was alarmed to find he was on the verge of tears.

  Henry glanced past him at the few other customers currently in attendance. "Hey! Any of you yo-yos headed up Castle Hill?"

  Men looked down at their tables and said nothing. One or two cracked their knuckles. Charlie Fortin sauntered toward the men's room with elaborate slowness. No one answered.

  "See?" Hugh said. "Come on, Henry, gimme my keys."

  Henry had shaken his head with slow finality. "If you want to come in here and do some drinking another time, you want to take a hike."

  "Okay, I will!" Hugh said. His voice was that of a pouty child on the verge of a temper tantrum. He crossed the floor with his head down and his hands balled into tight fists. He waited for someone to laugh. He almost hoped someone would. He would clean some house then, and fuck the job. But the place was silent except for Reba McEntire, who was whining something about Alabama.

  "You can pick up your keys tomorrow!" Henry called after him.

  Hugh said nothing. With a mighty effort he had restrained himself from putting one scuffed yellow workboot right through Henry Beaufort's damned old Rock-Ola as he went by. Then, with his head down, he had passed out into darkness.

  6

  Now the mist had become a proper drizzle, and Hugh guessed the drizzle would develop into a steady, drenching rain by the time he reached home. It was just his luck. He walked steadily onward, not weaving quite so much now (the air had had a sobering effect on him), eyes moving restlessly from side to side. His mind was troubled, and he wished someone would come along and give him some lip. Even a little lip would do tonight. He thought briefly of the kid who had stepped in front of his truck yesterday afternoon, and wished sulkily that he had knocked the brat all the way across the street. It wouldn't have been his fault, no way. In his day, kids had looked where they were going.

  He passed the vacant lot where the Emporium Galorium had stood before it burned down, You Sew and Sew, Castle Rock Hardware ... and then he was passing Needful Things. He glanced into the display window, looked back up Main Street (only a mile and a half to go, now, and maybe he would beat the rain before it really started to pelt down, after all), and then came to a sudden halt.

  His feet had carried him past the new store, and he had to go back. There was a single light on above the window display, casting its soft glow down over the three items arranged there. The light also spilled out onto his face, and it worked a wondrous transformation there. Suddenly Hugh looked like a tired little boy up long past his bedtime, a little boy who has just seen what he wants for Christmas--what he must have for Christmas, because all at once nothing else on God's green earth would do. The central object in the window was flanked by two fluted vases (Nettie Cobb's beloved carnival glass, although Hugh didn't know this and would not have cared if he did).

  It was a fox-tail.

  Suddenly it was 1955 again, he had just gotten his license, and he was driving to the Western Maine Schoolboy Championship game--Castle Rock vs. Greenspark--in his dad's '53 Ford convertible. It was an unseasonably warm November day, warm enough to pull that old ragtop down and tack the tarp over it (if you were a bunch of hot-blooded kids ready, willing, and able to raise some hell, that was), and there were six of them in the car. Peter Doyon had brought a flask of Log Cabin whiskey, Perry Como was on the radio, Hugh Priest was sitting behind the white wheel, and fluttering from the radio antenna had been a long, luxuriant fox-tail, just like the one he was now looking at in the window of this store.

  He remembered looking up at that fluttering fox-tail and thinking that, when he owned a convertible of his own, he was going to have on
e just like that.

  He remembered refusing the flask when it came around to him. He was driving, and you didn't drink while you were driving, because you were responsible for the lives of others. And he remembered one other thing, as well: the certainty that he was living the best hour of the best day of his life.

  The memory surprised and hurt him in its clarity and total sensory recall--smoky aroma of burning leaves, November sun twinkling on guardrail reflectors, and now, looking at the fox-tail in the display window of Needful Things, it struck him that it had been the best day of his life, one of the last days before the booze had caught him firmly in its rubbery, pliant grip, turning him into a weird variation of King Midas: everything he had touched since then, it seemed, had turned to shit.

  He suddenly thought: I could change.

  This idea had its own arresting clarity.

  I could start over.

  Were such things possible?

  Yes, I think sometimes they are. I could buy that fox-tail and tie it on the antenna of my Buick.

  They'd laugh, though. The guys'd laugh.

  What guys? Henry Beaufort? That little pissant Bobby Dugas? So what? Fuck em. Buy that fox-tail, tie it to the antenna, and drive--

  Drive where?

  Well, how about that Thursday-night A.A. meeting over in Greenspark for a start?

  For a moment the possibility stunned and excited him, the way a long-term prisoner might be stunned and excited by the sight of the key left in the lock of his jail cell by a careless warder. For a moment he could actually see himself doing it, picking up a white chip, then a red chip, then a blue chip, getting sober day by day and month by month. No more Mellow Tiger. Too bad. But also no more pay-days spent in terror that he would find a pink slip in his envelope along with his check, and that was not so too bad.