Yet what of that? It was a beautiful thing, the sort of thing she had always wanted, the only thing she needed to complete her modest collection. She considered telling Mr. Gaunt that her husband might still be alive if he had not smashed a carnival glass lampshade much like this one fourteen years ago, that it had been the last straw, the one which finally drove her over the edge. He had broken many of her bones during their years together, and she had let him live. Finally he had broken something she really needed, and she had taken his life.
She decided she did not have to tell Mr. Gaunt this.
He looked like the sort of man who might already know.
3
"Polly! Polly, she's coming out!"
Polly left the dressmaker's dummy where she had been slowly and carefully pinning up a hem, and hurried to the window. She and Rosalie stood side by side, watching as Nettle left Needful Things in a state which could only be described as heavily laden.
Her purse was under one arm, her umbrella was under the other, and in her hands she held Polly's Tupperware cake container balanced atop a square white box.
"Maybe I better go help her," Rosalie said.
"No." Polly put out a hand and restrained her gently. "Better not. I think she'd only be embarrassed and fluttery."
They watched Nettle walk up the street. She no longer scuttled, as if before the jaws of a storm; now she seemed almost to drift.
No, Polly thought. No, that isn't right. It's more like... floating.
Her mind suddenly made one of those odd connections which were almost like cross-references, and she burst out laughing.
Rosalie looked at her, eyebrows raised. "Share?"
"It's the look on her face," Polly said, watching Nettle cross Linden Street in slow, dreamy steps.
"What do you mean?"
"She looks like a woman who just got laid... and had about three orgasms."
Rosalie turned pink, looked at Nettle once more, and then screamed with laughter. Polly joined in. The two of them held each other and rocked back and forth, laughing wildly.
"Gee," Alan Pangborn said from the front of the store. "Ladies laughing well before noon! It's too early for champagne, so what is it?"
"Four!" Rosalie said, giggling madly. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "It looked more like four to me!"
Then they were off again, rocking back and forth in each other's arms, howling with laughter while Alan stood watching them with his hands in the pockets of his uniform pants, smiling quizzically.
4
Norris Ridgewick arrived at the Sheriff's Office in his street clothes about ten minutes before the noon whistle blew at the mill. He had the mid-shift, from twelve until nine p.m right through the weekend, and that was just the way he liked it. Let somebody else clean up the messes on the highways and byways of Castle County after the bars closed at one o'clock; he could do it, had done it on many occasions, but he almost always puked his guts. He sometimes puked his guts even if the victims were up, walking around, and yelling that they didn't have to take any f**king breathalyzer test, and that kind of they knew their Constipational rights- Norris just had a stomach. Sheila Brigham liked to tease him by saying he was like Deputy Andy on that TV show Twin Peaks, but Norris knew he wasn't.
Deputy Andy cried when he saw dead people. Norris didn't cry, but he was apt to puke on them, the way he had almost puked on Homer Gamache that time when he had found Homer sprawled in a ditch out by Homeland Cemetery, beaten to death with his own artificial arm.
Norris glanced at the roster, saw that both Andy Clutterbuck and John LaPointe were out on patrol, then at the daywatch board.
Nothing there for him, which was also just the way he liked it.
To make his day complete-this end of it, at least-his second uniform had come back from the cleaners... on the day, promised, for once.
That would save him a trip home to change.
A note pinned to the plastic dry-cleaning bag read, "Hey Barney-you owe me $5.25. Do not stiff me this time or you will be a sadder amp; wiser man when the sun goes down." It was signed Clut.
Norris's good mood was unbroken even by the note's salutation.
Sheila Brigham was the only person in the Castle Rock Sheriff's Office who thought of Norris as a Twin Peaks kind of guy (Norris had an idea that she was the only person in the department-besides himself, that was-who even watched the show). The other deputies-john LaPointe, Seat Thomas, Andy Clutterbuck-called him Barney, after the Don Knotts character on the old Andy Griffith Show. This sometimes irritated him, but not today. Four days of mid-shift, then three days off. A whole week of silk laid out before him. Life could sometimes be grand.
He pulled a five and a one from his wallet and laid them on Clut's desk. "Hey, Clut, live a little," he jotted on the back of a report form, signed his name with a flourish, and left it by the money. Then he stripped the dry-cleaning bag off the uniform and took it into the men's room. He whistled as he changed clothes, then waggled his eyebrows approvingly as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was Squared Away, by God. One hundred per cent Squared Away. The evildoers of Castle Rock had damned well better be on the lookout today, around him in the mirror, but before he He caught movement beh' could do more than begin to turn his head he had been grabbed, spun around, and slammed into the tiles beside the urinals. His head bonked the wall, his cap fell off, and then he was looking into the round, flushed face of Danforth Keeton.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Ridgewick?" he asked.
Norris had forgotten all about the ticket he had slipped under the windshield wiper of Keeton's Cadillac the night before. Now it all came back to him.
"Let go of me!" he said. He tried for a tone of indignation, but his voice came out in a worried squeak. He felt his cheeks growing hot. Whenever he was angry or scared-and right now he was both-he blushed like a girl.
Keeton, who overtopped Norris by five inches and outweighed him by a hundred pounds, gave the deputy a harsh little shake and then did let go. He pulled the ticket out of his pocket and brandished it under Norris's nose. "Is this your name on this goddam thing or isn't it?"
he demanded, as though Norris had already denied it.
Norris Ridgewick knew perfectly well that it was his signature, rubber-stamped but perfectly recognizable, and that the ticket had been pulled from his citation book.
"You were parked in the crip space," he said, stepping away from the wall and rubbing the back of his head. Damned if he didn't think there was going to be a knot there. (and Buster had jumped the living Jesus out of him, he couldn't deny that) As his initial surprise abated, his anger grew.
"The what?"
"The handicap space!" Norris shouted. And furthermore, it was Alan himself who told me to write that ticket! he was about to continue, and then didn't. Why give this fat pig the satisfaction of passing the buck? "You've been told about it before, Buh... Danforth, and you know it."
"What did you call me?" Danforth Keeton asked ominously.
Red splotches the size of cabbage roses had grown on his cheeks and jowls.
"That's a valid ticket," Norris said, ignoring this last, "and as far as I'm concerned, you better pay it. Why, you're lucky I don't cite you for assaulting a police officer as well!"
Danforth laughed. The sound banged flatly off the walls. "I don't see any police officer," he said. "I see a narrow piece of shit packaged to look like beef jerky."
Morris bent over and picked up his hat. His guts were a roil of fear-Danforth Keeton was a bad enemy for a man to have-and his anger had deepened into fury. His hands trembled. He took a moment, nonetheless, to set his hat squarely on his head.
"You can take this up with Alan, if you want-"
"I'm taking it up with you!"
"-but I'm done talking about it. Make sure you pay that within thirty days, Danforth, or we'll have to come and get you." Norris drew himself up to his full five-foot-six and added: "We know where to find you."
He started out. Keeton, his face now looking a little like sunset in a nuclear blast area, stepped forward to block his escape route.
Norris stopped and levelled a finger at him.
"if you touch me I'll throw you in a cell, Buster. I mean it."
"Okay, that's it," Keeton said in a queer, toneless voice. "That is it. You're fired. Take off that uniform and start looking for another j-"
"No," a voice said from behind them, and they both looked around. Alan Pangborn was standing in the men's-room doorway.
Keeton rolled his hands into fat white fists. "You keep out of this."
Alan walked in, letting the door swoosh slowly shut behind him.
"No," he said. "I was the one who told Norris to write that ticket.
I also told him I was going to forgive it before the appropriations meeting. It's a five-dollar ticket, Dan. What the hell got into you?"
Alan's voice was puzzled. He felt puzzled. Buster had never been a sweet-natured man, not even at the best of times, but an outburst like this was overboard even for him. Since the end of the summer, the man had seemed ragged and always on edge-Alan had often heard the distant bellow of his voice when the selectmen were in committee meetings-and his eyes had taken on a look which was almost haunted. He wondered briefly If Keeton might be sick, and decided that was a consideration for some later time.