Yes, it had been Nettle Cobb, all right. The more Wilma thought about it, the surer she became. And the act was unforgivable. Not because the sheets were ruined. Not because it was a cowardly trick.
Not even because it was the act of someone with a cracked brain.
It was unforgivable because Wilma had been frightened.
Only for a second, true, that second when the slimy brown thing had flapped out of the darkness and into her face, caressing her coldly like some monster's hand... but even one single second of fear was a second too much.
"Wilma?" Pete asked as she turned her flat face toward him. He did not like the expression the porch light showed him, all shiny white surfaces and black, dimpled shadows. He did not like that flat look in her eyes. "Honey? Are you all right?"
She strode past him, taking no notice of him at all. Pete scurried after her as she headed for the house... and the telephone.
4
Nettle was sitting in her living room with Raider at her feet and her new carnival glass lampshade on her lap when the telephone rang.
It was twenty minutes of eight. She jumped and clutched the lampshade tighter, looking at the telephone with fear and distrust.
She had a momentary certainty-silly, of course, but she couldn't seem to rid herself of such feelings-that it would be Some Person in Authority, calling to tell her she must give the beautiful lampshade back, that it belonged to someone else, that such a lovely object could not possibly have accrued to Nettle's little store of possessions in any case, the very idea was ridiculous.
Raider looked up at her briefly, as if to ask if she was going to answer that or not, then put his muzzle back down on his paws.
Nettle set the lampshade carefully aside and picked up the telephone. It was probably just Polly, calling to ask if she'd pick up something for dinner at Hemphill's Market before she came to work tomorrow morning.
"Hello, Cobb residence," she said crisply. All her life she had been terrified of Some Person in Authority, and she had discovered that the best way to handle such a fear was to sound like a person in authority yourself. It didn't make the fear go away, but at least it held the fear in check.
"I know what you did, you crazy bitch!" a voice spat at her. It was as sudden and as gruesome as the stab of an icepick.
Nettle's breath caught as if on a thorn; an expression of trapped horror froze her face and her heart tried to cram its way up into her throat. Raider looked up at her again, questioningly.
"Who... who..."
"You know goddam well who," the voice said, and of course Nettle did. It was Wilma jerzyck. It was that evil, evil woman.
"He hasn't been barking!" Nettle's voice was high and thin and screamy, the voice of someone who has just inhaled the entire contents of a helium balloon. "He's all grown up and he's not barking! He's right here at my feet!"
"Did you have a good time throwing mud at my sheets, you numb cunt?" Wilma was furious. The woman was actually trying to pretend this was still about the dog.
"Sheets? What sheets? I... I..." Nettle looked toward the carnival glass lampshade and seemed to draw strength from it. "You leave me alone! You're the one that's crazy, not me!"
"I'm going to get you for this. Nobody comes into my yard and throws mud at my sheets while I'm gone. Nobody. NOBODY!
Understand? Is this getting through that cracked skull of yours?
You won't know where, and you won't know when, and most of all you won't know how, but I... am going... to GET you. Do you understand?"
Nettle held the phone tightly screwed against her ear. Her face had gone dead pale except for a single bright streak of red which ran across her forehead between her eyebrows and hairline. Her teeth were clenched and her cheeks puffed in and out like a bellows as she panted from the sides of her mouth.
"You leave me alone or you'll be sorry!" she screamed in her high, fainting, helium voice. Raider was standing now, his ears up, his eyes bright and anxious. He sensed menace in the room. He barked once, severely. Nettle didn't hear him. "You'll be very sorry!
I... I know people! People in Authority! I know them very well!
I don't have to put up with this!"
Speaking slowly in a voice which was low and sincere and utterly furious, Wilma said: "Tucking with me is the worst mistake you ever made in your life. You won't see me coming."
There was a click.
"You don't dare!" Nettle wailed. Tears were running down her cheeks now, tears of terror and abysmal, impotent rage. "You don't dare, you bad thing! I... I'll..."
There was a second click. It was followed by the buzz of an open line.
Nettle hung up the phone and sat bolt upright in her chair for almost three minutes, staring into space. Then she began to weep.
Raider barked again and put his paws up on the edge of her chair.
Nettle hugged him and wept against his fur. Raider licked her neck.
"I won't let her hurt you, Raider," she said. She inhaled the sweet and clean doggy warmth of him, trying to take comfort from it.
"I won't let that bad, bad woman hurt you. She's not a Person in Authority, not at all. She's just a bad old thing and if she tries to hurt you... or me... she'll be sorry."
She straightened at last, found a Kleenex tucked down between the side of her chair and the cushion, and used it to wipe her eyes.
She was terrified... but she could also feel anger buzzing and drilling through her. It was the way she'd felt before she'd taken the meat-fork from the drawer under the sink and stuck it in her husband's throat.
She took the carnival glass lampshade off the table and hugged it gently to her. "If she starts something, she will be very, very sorry," Nettle said.
She sat that way, with Raider at her feet and the lampshade in her lap, for a very long time.
5
Norris Ridgewick cruised slowly down Main Street in his police cruiser, eyeballing the buildings on the west side of the street.
His shift would be over soon, and he was glad. He could remember how good he had felt this morning before that idiot had grabbed him; could remember standing at the mirror in the men's room, adjusting his hat and thinking with satisfaction that he looked Squared Away. He could remember it, but the memory seemed very old and sepia-toned, like a photograph from the nineteenth century. From the moment that idiot Keeton had grabbed him up to right now, nothing had gone right.
He'd gotten lunch at Cluck-Cluck Tonite, the chicken shack out on Route 119. The food there was usually good, but this time it had given him a roaring case of acid indigestion followed by a case of the dribbling shits. Around three o'clock he had run over a nail out on Town Road #7 near the old Camber place and had to change the tire.
He'd wiped his fingers on the front of his freshly dry-cleaned uniform blouse, not thinking about what he was doing, only wanting to dry the tips so they would provide a better grip on the loosened lug-nuts, and he had rubbed grease across the shirt in four glaring dark-gray stripes. While he was looking at this with dismay, the cramps had turned his bowels to water again and he'd had to hurry off into the puckerbrush. It had been a race to see if he could manage to drop his trousers before he filled them. That race Norris managed to win... but he hadn't liked the look of the little stand of bushes he had chosen to take a squat in. It had looked like poison sumac, and the way his day had gone so far, it probably had been.
Norris crept slowly past the buildings which made up Castle Rock's downtown: the Norway Bank and Trust, the Western Auto, Nan's Luncheonette, the black hole where Pop Merrill's rickrack palace had once stood, You Sew and Sew, Needful Things, Castle Rock Hardware Norris suddenly applied the brakes and came to a stop. He had seen something amazing in the window of Needful [email protected] thought he had, anyway.
He checked the rearview mirror, but Main Street was deserted.
The stop-and-go light at the lower end of the business district abruptly went out, and remained dark for a few seconds while relays clicked thoughtfully inside. Then the yellow light in the center began to flash off and on. Nine o'clock, then. Nine o'clock on the button.
Norris reversed back up the street, then pulled in at the curb.
He looked down at the radio, thought of calling in 10-22-officer leaving the vehicle-and decided not to. He only wanted a quick look in the shop window. He turned up the gain on the radio a little and rolled down the window before getting out. That ought to do it.
You didn't see what you thought you saw, he cautioned himself, hitching up his trousers as he walked across the sidewalk. No way.
Today was made for disappointment, not discovery. That was just someone's old Zebco rod and reelExcept it wasn't. The fishing rod in the window of Needful Things was arranged in a cute little display with a net and a pair of bright yellow gum-rubber boots, and it was definitely not a Zebco.
It was a Bazun. He hadn't seen one since his father died sixteen years before. Norris had been fourteen then, and he had loved the Bazun for two reasons: what it was and what it stood for.
What was it? Just the best damned lake-and-stream fishing rod in the world, that was all.
What had it stood for? Good times. As simple as that. The good times a skinny little boy named Norris Ridgewick had had with his old man. Good times ploughing through the woods beside some stream out on the edge of town, good times in their little boat, sitting in the middle of Castle Lake while everything around them was white with the mist that rose off the lake in steamy little columns and enclosed them in their own private world. A world made only for guys. In some other world moms would soon be making breakfast, and that was a good world, too, but not as good as this one.