Needful Things

by Stephen King

  In that moment, as he stood looking at the fox-tail in the display window of Needful Things, Hugh could see a future. For the first time in years he could see a future, and that beautiful orange fox-brush with its white tip floated through it like a battle-flag.

  Then reality crashed back in, and reality smelled like rain and damp, dirty clothes. There would be no fox-tail for him, no A.A. meetings, no chips, no future. He was fifty-one fucking years old, and fifty-one was too old for dreams of the future. At fifty-one you had to keep running just to escape the avalanche of your own past.

  If it had been business hours, though, he would have taken a shot at it, anyway. Damned if he wouldn't. He'd walk in there, just as big as billy-be-damned, and ask how much was that fox-tail in the window. But it was ten o'clock, Main Street was locked up as tight as an ice-queen's chastity belt, and when he woke up tomorrow morning, feeling as if someone had planted an icepick between his eyes, he would have forgotten all about that lovely fox-tail, with its vibrant russet color.

  Still, he lingered a moment longer, trailing dirty, callused fingers over the glass like a kid looking into a toyshop window. A little smile had touched the comers of his mouth. It was a gentle smile, and it looked out of place on Hugh Priest's face. Then, somewhere up on Castle View, a car backed off several times, sounds as sharp as shotgun blasts on the rainy air, and Hugh was startled back to himself.

  Fuck it. What the hell are you thinking of!

  He turned away from the window and pointed his face toward home again--if you wanted to call the two-room shack with the tacked-on woodshed where he lived home. As he passed under the canopy, he looked at the door ... and stopped again.

  The sign there, of course, read

  OPEN.

  Like a man in a dream, Hugh put his hand out and tried the knob. It turned freely under his hand. Overhead, a small silver bell tinkled. The sound seemed to come from an impossible distance away.

  A man was standing in the middle of the shop. He was running a feather-duster over the top of a display case and humming. He turned toward Hugh when the bell rang. He didn't seem a bit surprised to see someone standing in his doorway at ten minutes past ten on a Wednesday night. The only thing that struck Hugh about the man in that confused moment was his eyes--they were as black as an Indian's.

  "You forgot to turn your sign over, buddy," Hugh heard himself say.

  "No, indeed," the man replied politely. "I don't sleep very well, I'm afraid, and some nights I take a fancy to open late. One never knows when a fellow such as yourself may stop by ... and take a fancy to something. Would you like to come in and look around?"

  Hugh Priest came in and closed the door behind him.

  7

  "There's a fox-tail--" Hugh began, then had to stop, clear his throat, and start again. The words had come out in a husky, unintelligible mutter. "There's a fox-tail in the window."

  "Yes," the proprietor said. "Beauty, isn't it?" He held the duster in front of him now, and his Indian-black eyes looked at Hugh with interest from above the bouquet of feathers which hid his lower face. Hugh couldn't see the guy's mouth, but he had an idea he was smiling. It usually made him uneasy when people--especially people he didn't know--smiled at him. It made him feel like he wanted to fight. Tonight, however, it didn't seem to bother him at all. Maybe because he was still half-shot.

  "It is," Hugh agreed. "It is a beauty. My dad had a convertible with a fox-tail just like that tied to the antenna, back when I was a kid. There's a lot of people in this crummy little burg wouldn't believe I ever was a kid, but I was. Same as everyone else."

  "Of course." The man's eyes remained fixed on Hugh's, and the strangest thing was happening--they seemed to be growing. Hugh couldn't seem to pull his own eyes away from them. Too much direct eye-contact was another thing which usually made him feel like he wanted to fight. But this also seemed perfectly okay tonight.

  "I used to think that fox-tail was just about the coolest thing in the world."

  "Of course."

  "Cool--that was the word we used back then. None of this rad shit. And gnarly--I don't have the slightest fuckin idea what that means, do you?"

  But the proprietor of Needful Things was silent, simply standing there, watching Hugh Priest with his black Indian eyes over the foliage of his feather-duster.

  "Anyway, I want to buy it. Will you sell it to me?"

  "Of course," Leland Gaunt said for the third time.

  Hugh felt relief and a sudden, sprawling happiness. He was suddenly sure everything was going to be all right--everything. This was utterly crazy; he owed money to just about everyone in Castle Rock and the surrounding three towns, he had been on the ragged edge of losing his job for the last six months, his Buick was running on a wing and a prayer--but it was also undeniable.

  "How much?" he asked. He suddenly wondered if he would be able to afford such a fine brush, and felt a touch of panic. What if it was out of his reach? Worse, what if he scrounged up the money somehow tomorrow, or the day after that, only to find the guy had sold it?

  "Well, that depends."

  "Depends? Depends on what?"

  "On how much you're willing to pay."

  Like a man in a dream, Hugh pulled his battered Lord Buxton out of his back pocket.

  "Put that away, Hugh."

  Did I tell him my name?

  Hugh couldn't remember, but he put the wallet away.

  "Turn out your pockets. Right here, on top of this case."

  Hugh turned out his pockets. He put his pocket-knife, a roll of Certs, his Zippo lighter, and about a dollar-fifty in tobacco-sprinkled change on top of the case. The coins clicked on the glass.

  The man bent forward and studied the pile. "That looks about right," he remarked, and brushed the feather-duster over the meager collection. When he removed it again, the knife, the lighter, and the Certs were still there. The coins were gone.

  Hugh observed this with no surprise at all. He stood as silently as a toy with dead batteries while the tall man went to the display window and came back with the fox-brush. He laid it on top of the cabinet beside Hugh's shrunken pile of pocket paraphernalia.

  Slowly, Hugh stretched out one hand and stroked the fur. It felt cold and rich; it crackled with silky static electricity. Stroking it was like stroking a clear autumn night.

  "Nice?" the tall man asked.

  "Nice," Hugh agreed distantly, and made to pick up the fox-tail.

  "Don't do that," the tall man said sharply, and Hugh's hand fell away at once. He looked at Gaunt with a hurt so deep it was grief. "We're not done dickering yet."

  "No," Hugh agreed. I'm hypnotized, he thought. Damned if the guy hasn't hypnotized me. But it didn't matter. It was, in fact, sort of ... nice.

  He reached for his wallet again, moving as slowly as a man under water.

  "Leave that alone, you ass," Mr. Gaunt said impatiently, and laid his feather-duster aside.

  Hugh's hand dropped to his side again.

  "Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallets?" the man asked querulously.

  "I don't know," Hugh said. He had never considered the idea before. "It does seem a little silly."

  "Worse, " Gaunt snapped. His voice had taken on the nagging, slightly uneven cadences of a man who is either very tired or very angry. He was tired; it had been a long, demanding day. Much had been accomplished, but the work was still just barely begun. "It's much worse. It's. criminally stupid! Do you know something, Hugh? The world is full of needy people who don't understand that everything, everything, is for sale ... if you're willing to pay the price. They give lip-service to the concept, that's all, and pride themselves on their healthy cynicism. Well, lip-service is bushwah! Absolute ... bushwah!"

  "Bushwah," Hugh agreed mechanically.

  "For the things people really need, Hugh, the wallet is no answer. The fattest wallet in this town isn't worth the sweat from a working man's armpit. Absolute bushwah! And souls! If I had a nickel,
Hugh, for every time I ever heard someone say 'I'd sell my soul for thus-and-such,' I could buy the Empire State Building!" He leaned closer and now his lips stretched back from his uneven teeth in a huge unhealthy grin. "Tell me this, Hugh: what in the name of all the beasts crawling under the earth would I want with your soul?"

  "Probably nothing." His voice seemed far away. His voice seemed to be coming from the bottom of a deep, dark cave. "I don't think it's in very good shape these days."

  Mr. Gaunt suddenly relaxed and straightened up. "Enough of these lies and half-truths. Hugh, do you know a woman named Nettie Cobb?"

  "Crazy Nettie? Everyone in town knows Crazy Nettie. She killed her husband."

  "So they say. Now listen to me, Hugh. Listen carefully. Then you can take your fox-tail and go home."

  Hugh Priest listened carefully.

  Outside it was raining harder, and the wind had begun to blow.

  8

  "Brian!" Miss Ratcliffe said sharply. "Why, Brian Rusk! I wouldn't have believed it of you! Come up here! Right now!"

  He was sitting in the back row of the basement room where the speech therapy classes were held, and he had done something wrong--terribly wrong, by the sound of Miss Ratcliffe's voice-but he didn't know what it was until he stood up. Then he saw that he was naked. A horrible wave of shame swept over him, but he felt excited, too. When he looked down at his penis and saw it starting to stiffen, he felt both alarmed and thrilled.

  "Come up here, I said!"

  He advanced slowly to the front of the room while the others--Sally Meyers. Donny Frankel, Nonie Martin, and poor old half bright Slopey Dodd-goggled at him.

  Miss Ratcliffe stood in front of her desk, hands on hips, eyes blazing, a gorgeous cloud of dark-auburn hair floating around her head.

  "You're a bad boy, Brian--a very bad boy."

  He nodded his head dumbly, but his penis was raising ITS head, and so it seemed there was at least one part of him that did not mind being bad at all. That in fact RELISHED being bad.

  She put a piece of chalk in his hand. He felt a small bolt of electricity when their hands touched. "Now," Miss Ratcliffe said severely, "You must write I WILL FINISH PAYING FOR MY SANDY KOUFA X CARD five hundred times on the blackboard."

  "Yes, Miss Ratcliffe."

  He began to write, standing on tiptoe to reach the top of the board, aware of warm air on his naked buttocks. He had finished I WILL FINISH PAYING when he felt Miss Ratcliffe's smooth, soft hand encircle his stiff penis and begin to tug on it gently. For a moment he thought he would faint dead away, it felt so good.

  "Keep writing, " she said grimly from behind him, "and I'll keep on doing this."

  "M-Miss Ruh-Ruh-Ratcliffe, what about my t-tongue exercises?" asked Slopey Dodd.

  "Shut up or I'll run you over in the parking lot, Slopey, " Miss Ratcliffe said. "I'll make you squeak, little buddy. "

  She went on pulling Brian's pudding while she spoke. He was moaning now. It was wrong, he knew that, but it felt good. It felt most sincerely awesome. It felt like what he needed. Just the thing.

  Then he turned around and it wasn't Miss Ratcliffe standing at his shoulder but Wilma Jerzyck with her large round pallid face and her deep brown eyes, like two raisins pounded deep into a wad of dough.

  "He'll take it back if you don't pay, " Wilma said. "And that's not all, little buddy. He'll-"

  9

  Brian Rusk woke up with such a jerk that he almost fell out of bed and onto the floor. His body was covered with sweat, his heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and his penis was a small, hard branch inside his pajama trousers.

  He sat up, shivering all over. His first impulse was to open his mouth and yell for his mother, as he had done when he was small and a nightmare had invaded his sleep. Then he realized that he wasn't small anymore, he was eleven ... and it wasn't exactly the sort of dream you told your mother about, anyway, was it?

  He lay back, eyes wide and staring into the dark. He glanced at the digital clock on the table next to the bed and saw it was four minutes past midnight. He could hear the sound of rain, hard now, pelting against his bedroom window, driven by huge, whooping gasps of wind. It sounded almost like sleet.

  My card. My Sandy Koufax card is gone.

  It wasn't. He knew it wasn't, but he also knew he would not be able to go back to sleep until he'd checked to make sure it was still there, in the looseleaf binder where he kept his growing collection of Topps cards from 1956. He had checked it before leaving for school yesterday, had done so again when he got home, and last night, after supper, he had broken off playing pass in the back yard with Stanley Dawson to check on it once more. He had told Stanley he had to go to the bathroom. He had peeked at it one final time before crawling into bed and turning out the light. He recognized that it had become a kind of obsession with him, but recognition did not put a stop to it.

  He slipped out of bed, barely noticing the way the cool air brought out goosebumps on his hot body and made his penis wilt. He walked quietly across to his dresser. He left the shape of his own body behind him on the sheet which covered his mattress, printed in sweat. The big book lay on top of the dresser in a pool of white light thrown by the streetlamp outside.

  He took it down, opened it, and paged rapidly through the sheets of clear plastic with the pockets you put the cards in. He passed Mel Parnell, Whitey Ford, and Warren Spahn--treasures over which he had once crowed mightily--with hardly a glance. He had a moment of terrible panic when he reached the sheets at the back of the book, the ones which were still empty, without seeing Sandy Koufax. Then he realized he had turned several pages at once in his hurry. He turned back, and yes, there he was--that narrow face, those faintly smiling, dedicated eyes looking out from beneath the bill of the cap.

  To my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax.

  His fingers traced over the sloping lines of the inscription. His lips moved. He felt at peace again ... or almost at peace. The card wasn't really his yet. This was just sort of a ... a trial run. There was something he had to do before it would really be his. Brian wasn't completely sure what it was, but he knew it had something to do with the dream from which he had just wakened, and he was confident that he would know when the time

  (tomorrow? later today?)

  came.

  He closed the looseleaf binder-BRIAN'S COLLECTION DO NOT TOUCH! carefully printed on the file card Scotch-taped to the front--and returned it to the dresser. Then he went back to bed.

  Only one thing about having the Sandy Koufax card was troubling. He had wanted to show it to his father. Coming home from Needful Things, he had imagined just how it would be when he showed it to him. He, Brian, elaborately casual: Hey, Dad, I picked up a '56 today at the new store. Want to check it out? His dad would say okay, not really interested, just going along with Brian to his room to keep Brian happy--but how his eyes would light up when he saw what Brian had lucked into! And when he saw the inscription--!

  Yes, he would be amazed and delighted, all right. He'd probably clap Brian on the back and give him a high-five.

  But then what?

  Then the questions would start, that was what ... and that was the problem. His father would want to know, first, where he had gotten the card, and second, where he had gotten the money to buy such a card, which was (a.) rare, (b.) in excellent condition, and (c.) autographed. The printed signature on the card read Sanford Koufax, which was the fabled fastball pitcher's real name. The autographed signature read Sandy Koufax, and in the weird and sometimes high-priced world of baseball trading-card collectors, that meant fair market value might be as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.

  In his mind, Brian tried out one possible answer.

  I got it at the new store, Dad--Needful Things. The guy gave it to me at a really WICKED discount... he said it would make people more interested in coming to his store if they knew he kept his prices down.

  This was good as far as it went, but even a kid still a year too youn
g to pay the full adult price of admission at the movies knew it didn't go far enough. When you said somebody had given you a really good deal on something, people were always interested. Too interested.

  Oh yeah? How much did he knock off? Thirty per cent? Forty? Did he give it to you for half price? That'd still be sixty or seventy bucks, Brian, and I KNOW you don't have that kind of money just laying around in your piggy-bank.

  Well ... actually it was a little less than that, Dad.

  Okay, tell me. How much did you pay?

  Well ... eighty five cents.

  He sold you a 1956 autographed Sandy Koufax baseball card, in uncirculated condition, for eighty-five cents?

  Yeah, that's where the real trouble would start, all right.

  What kind of trouble? He didn't know, exactly, but there would be a stink, he was sure of that. Somehow he would get biamed--maybe by his dad, but by his mom for sure.

  They might even try to make him give it back, and there was no way he was going to give it back. It wasn't just signed; it was signed to Brian.

  No way.

  Hell, he hadn't even been able to show Stan Dawson when Stan came over to play pass, although he'd wanted to--Stan would have fudged his Jockeys. But Stan was going to sleep over on Friday night, and it was all too easy for Brian to imagine him saying to Brian's dad: So how'd you like Brian's Sandy Koufax card, Mr. Rusk? Pretty rad, huh? The same went for his other friends. Brian had uncovered one of the great truths of small towns: many secrets--in fact, all the really important secrets--cannot be shared. Because word has a way of getting around, and getting around fast.

  He found himself in a strange and uncomfortable position. He had come by a great thing and could not show or share it. This should have vitiated his pleasure in his new acquisition, and it did, to some extent, but it also afforded him a furtive, niggardly satisfaction. He found himself not so much enjoying the card as gloating over it, and so he had uncovered another great truth: gloating in private provides its own peculiar pleasure. It was as if one corner of his mostly open and goodhearted nature had been walled off and then lit with a special black light that both distorted and enhanced what was hidden there.