Stephen King - Needful Things

Lester stared fixedly at the snapshot he’d come upon. It was a snapshot of John and Sally. A snap of a fellow and his best girl.

They were standing in front of what looked like a carnival shootinggallery. They were looking at each other and laughing. Sally was holding a big stuffed teddy bear. LaPointe had probably just won it for her.

Lester stared at the picture. A vein had risen in the center of his forehead, quite a prominent one, and it pulsed steadily.

What had she called him? A cheating bastard?

“Well, look who’s talking,” Lester Pratt whispered.

Rage began to build up in him. It happened very quickly. And when someone touched him on the shoulder he swung around, dropping the wallet and doubling up his fists. He came very close to punching inoffensive, stuttering Slopey ’dodd into the middle of next week.

“Cub-Coach P-Pratt?” Slopey asked. His eyes were big and round, but he didn’t look frightened. Interested, but not frightened.

“Are yuh-yuh-you o-k-k-kay?”

“I’m fine,” Lester said thickly. “Go home, Slopey. You don’t have any business with that skateboard in the faculty parking lot.”

He bent down to pick up the dropped wallet, but Slopey was two feet closer to the ground and beat him to it. He looked curiously at LaPointe’s driver’s-license photo before handing the wallet back to Coach Pratt. “Yep,” Slopey said. “That’s the same guh-guh-guy, all r-right.”

He hopped onto his board and prepared to ride away. Lester grabbed him by the shirt before he could do so. The board squirted out from under Slopey’s foot, rolled away on its own, hit a pothole and turned over. Slopey’s AC/DC shirt-FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK, WE SALUTE You, it said-tore at the neck, but Slopey didn’t seem to mind; didn’t even seem to be much surprised by Lester’s actions, let alone frightened. Lester didn’t notice. Lester was beyond noticing nuances.

He was one of those large and normally placid men who own a short, nasty temper beneath that placidity, a damaging emotional tornado-in-waiting. Some men go through their entire lives without ever discovering that ugly stormcenter. Lester, however, had discovered his (or rather it had discovered him) and he was now completely in its grip.

Holding a swatch of Slopey’s tee-shirt in a fist which was nearly the size of a Daisy canned ham, he bent his sweating face down to Slopey’s. The vein in the center of his forehead was pulsing faster than ever.

“What do you mean, ’that’s the same guy, all right’?”

“He’s the same g-g-guy who muh-met M-Miss Rub-Rub-Ratclime after school last Fuh-Friday.”

“He met her after school?” Lester asked hoarsely. He gave Slopey a shake brisk enough to rattle the boy’s teeth in his head. “Are you sure of that?”

“Yeah,” Slopey said. “They w-went off in your cub-cub-bar, Coach P-Pratt. The guh-guy was d-d-driving.”

“Driving? He was driving my car?john LaPointe was driving my car with Sally in it?”

“Well, that g-g-guy,” Slopey said, pointing at the driver’s-license photograph again. “B-But before they g-g-got ih-in, he g-gave her a kuh-kuh-kiss.”

“Did he,” Lester said. His face had become very still. “Did he, now.

“Oh, shuh-shuh-shore,” Slopey said. A wide (and rather salacious) grin lit his face.

In a soft, silky tone utterly unlike his usual rough hey-guyslet’s-go-get-em voice, Lester asked: “And did she kiss him back?

What do you think, Slopey?”

Slopey rolled his eyes happily. “I’ll sub-say she d-d-did! They were r-really sub-sub-huckin face, C-Coach Pub-Pratt!”

“Sucking face,” Lester mused in his new soft and silky voice.

“Yep.”

“Really sucking face,” Lester marvelled in his new soft and silky voice.

“You b-b-bet.”

Lester let go of the Slopester (as his few friends called him) and straightened up. The vein in the center of his forehead was pulsing and pumping away. He had begun to grin. It was an unpleasant grin, exposing what seemed like a great many more white, square teeth than a normal man should have. His blue eyes had become small, squinty triangles. His crewcut screamed off his head in all directions.

“Cub-Cub-Coach Pratt?” Slopey asked. “Is something rub-ruhhong?”

“Nope,” Lester Pratt said in his new soft and silky voice. His grin never wavered. “Nothing I can’t put right.” In his mind, his hands were already locked around the neck of that lying, Popeloving, teddy-bear-winning, girl-stealing, shit-eating French frog of a John LaPointe. The asshole that walked like a man. The asshole who had apparently taught the girl Lester loved, the girl who would do no more than part her lips the tiniest bit when Lester kissed her, how to really suck face.

First he would take care of John LaPointe. No problem there.

Once that was done, he’d have to talk to Sally.

Or something.

“Not a thing in the world I can’t put right,” he repeated in his new soft and silky voice, and slid back behind the Mustang’s wheel.

The car leaned appreciably to the left as Lester’s two hundred and twenty pounds of solid hock and loin settled into the bucket seat.

He started the engine, gunned it in a series of hungry tiger-cage roars, then drove away in a screech of rubber. The Slopester, coughing and theatrically waving dust away from his face, walked over to where his skateboard lay.

The neck of his old tee-shirt had been torn completely away from the shirt’s body, leaving what looked like a round black necklace lying over Slopey’s prominent collarbones. He was grinning. He had done just what Mr. Gaunt had asked him to do, and it had gone like gangbusters. Coach Pratt had looked madder than a wet hen.

Now he could go home and look at his teapot.

“I j-j-just wish I didn’t have to stub-stub-butter,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Slopey mounted his skateboard and rode away.

Sheila had a hard time connecting Alan with Henry Payton-once she was positive she’d lost Henry, who sounded really excited, and would have to call him back-and she had no more than accomplished this technological feat when Alan’s personal line lit up.

Sheila put aside the cigarette she’d been about to light and answered it. “Castle County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Pangborn’s line.”

“Hello, Sheila. I want to talk to Alan.”

“Polly?” Sheila frowned. She was sure that was who it was, but she had never heard Polly Chalmers sound exactly as she did nowcold and clipped, like an executive secretary in a big company. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Polly said. “I want to talk to Alan.”

“Gee, Polly, you can’t. He’s talking with Henry Payton right n-”

“Put me on hold,” Polly interrupted. “I’ll wait.”

Sheila began to feel flustered. “Well… uh… I would, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You see, Alan’s… you know, in the field. I had to patch Henry through.”

“If you can patch Henry Payton through, you can patch me through,” Polly said coldly. “Right?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t know how long they’ll be “I don’t care if they talk until hell freezes over,” Polly said. “Put me on hold, and when they’re done, patch me through to Alan. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it weren’t important-you know that, Sheila, don’t you?”

Yes-Sheila knew it. And she knew something else, too: Polly was beginning to scare her. “Polly, are you okay?”

There was a long pause. Then Polly answered with a question of her own. “Sheila, did you type any correspondence for Sheriff Pangborn that was addressed to the Department of Child Welfare in San Francisco?

Or see any envelopes addressed that way go out?”