Free Cujo by Stephen King Page A

gotten scared of asking Joe. He was tired of hearing her talk about it, and if she asked him again he might hit her. It had been almost sixteen months since she’d last asked him if maybe they couldn’t take a little vacation down Connecticut way. Not much of a one for traveling was Mrs. Camber’s son Joe. He liked it just fine in Castle Rock. Once a year he and that old tosspot Gary Perview and some of their cronies would go up north to Moosehead to shoot deer. Last November he had wanted to take Brett. She had put her foot down and it had stayed down, in spite of Joe’s sullen mutterings and Brett’s wounded eyes. She was not going to have the boy out with that bunch of men for two weeks, listening to a lot of vulgar talk and jokes about sex and seeing what animals men could turn into when they got to drinking nonstop over a period of days and weeks. All of them with loaded guns, walking in the woods. Loaded guns, loaded men, somebody always got hurt sooner or later, fluorescent-orange hats and vests or not. It wasn’t going to be Brett. Not her son.
    The hammer struck the steel steadily, rhythmically. It stopped. She relaxed a little. Then it started again.
    She supposed that sooner or later Brett would go with them, and that would be the end of him for her. He would join their club, and ever after she would be little more than a kitchen drudge that kept the clubhouse neat. Yes, that day would come, and she knew it, and she grieved for it. But at least she had been able to stave it off for another year.
    And this year? Would she be able to keep him home with her this November? Maybe not. Either way, it would be better—not all right but at least better—if she could take Brett down to Connecticut first. Take him down there and show him how some . . .
    . . . some . . .
    Oh, say it, if only to yourself.
    (how some decent people lived)
    If Joe would let them go alone . . . but there was no sense thinking of that. Joe could go places alone or with his friends, but she couldn’t, not even with Brett in tow. That was one of their marriage’s ground rules. Yet she couldn’t help thinking about how much better it would be without him—without him sitting in Holly’s kitchen, swilling beer, looking Holly’s Jim up and down with those insolent brown eyes. It would be better without him being impatient to be gone until Holly and Jim were also impatient for them to be gone. . . .
    She and Brett.
    Just the two of them.
    They could go on the bus.
    She thought: Last November, he wanted to take Brett hunting with him.
    She thought: Could a trade be worked out?
    Cold came to her, filling the hollows of her bones with spun glass. Would she actually agree to such a trade? He could take Brett to Moosehead with him in the fall if Joe in his turn would agree to let them go to Stratford on the bus—?
    There was money enough—now there was—but money alone wouldn’t do it. He’d take the money and that would be the last she would see of it. Unless she played her cards just right. Just . . . right.
    Her mind began to move faster. The pounding outsidestopped. She saw Brett leave the barn, trotting, and was dimly grateful. Some premonitory part of her was convinced that if the boy ever came to serious harm, it would be in that dark place with the sawdust spread over the old grease on the plank floor.
    There was a way. There must be a way.
    If she was willing to gamble.
    In her fingers she held a lottery ticket. She turned it over and over in her hand as she stood at the window, thinking.
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    When Steve Kemp got back to his shop, he was in a kind of furious ecstasy. His shop was on the western outskirts of Castle Rock, on Route 11. He had rented it from a farmer who had holdings in both Castle Rock and in neighboring Bridgton. The farmer was not just a nurd; he was a Super Nurd.
    The shop was