Stephen King - Needful Things

“I dunno. I doubt if the other guys do, either. I hate to fire a man, but I’d made up my mind on Hugh even before you pulled in here this afternoon. I’m done with him.”

“Excuse me, Deke.” Alan went back to the car, called Sheila, and told her Hugh hadn’t been at work all day.

“See if you can reach Clut, Sheila, and tell him to really watch his ass. And send John out there as backup.” He hesitated over the next part, knowing the caution had resulted in more than a few needless shootings, and then went ahead. He had to; he owed it to his officers in the field. “Clut and John are to consider Hugh armed and dangerous.

Got it?”

“Armed and dangerous, ten-four.”

“Okay. Ten-forty, Unit One out.”

He racked the microphone and walked back to Deke"Do you think he might have left town, Deke?”

“Him?” Deke cocked his head to one side and spat tobacco juice.

“Guys like him never leave town until they’ve picked up their last paycheck. Most of em never leave at all. When it comes to remembering what roads lead out of town, guys like Hugh seem to have some sort of forgetting disease.”

Something caught Deke’s eye and he turned toward the men offloading the wooden crates. “Watch what you’re doing with those, you guys! You’re s’posed to be unloadin em, not playin pepper with em!”

“That’s a lot of bang you got there,” Alan said.

“Ayuh-twenty cases. We’re gonna blow a granite jar-top over at the gravel-pit out on #5. The way it looks to me, we’ll have enough left over to blow Hugh all the way to Mars, if you want to.”

“Why did you get so much?”

“It wasn’t my idea; Buster added to my purchase order, God knows why. I can tell you one thing, though-he’s gonna shit when he sees the electrical bill for this month… unless a cold front moves in.

That air conditioner sucks up the juice something wicked, but you got to keep that stuff cool or it sweats. They all tell you this new bang don’t do it, but I believe in better safe than sorry.”

“Buster topped your order,” Alan mused.

“Yeah-by four or six cases, I can’t remember which. Wonders’ll never cease, huh?”

“I guess not. Deke, can I use your office phone?”

“Be my guest.”

Alan sat behind Deke’s desk for a full minute, sweating dark patches beneath the arms of his uniform shirt and listening to the telephone at Polly’s house ring again and again and again. At last he dropped the handset back into the cradle.

He left the office in a slow walk, head down. Deke was padlocking the door of the dynamite shack, and when he turned to Alan, his face was long and unhappy. “There was a good man somewhere inside of Hugh Priest, Alan. I swear to God there was. A lot of times that man comes out. I seen it happen before. More often than most people’d believe.

With Hugh. He shrugged.

“Huh-uh. No soap.”

Alan nodded.

“Are you okay, Alan? You look like you come over funny.”

“I’m fine,” Alan said, smiling a little. But it was the truth; he had come over funny. Polly, too. And Hugh. And Brian Rusk. It seemed as if everyone had come over funny today.

“Want a glass of water or cold tea? I got some.”

“Thanks, but I better get going.”

“All right. Let me know how it turns out.”

That was something Alan couldn’t promise to do, but he had a sickening little feeling in the pit of his stomach that Deke would be able to read all about it for himself in a day or two. Or watch it on TV.

Lenny Partridge’s old Chevy Bel-Air pulled into one of the slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things shortly before four, and the man of the hour got out. Hugh’s fly was still unzipped, and he was still wearing the fox-tail around his neck. He crossed the sidewalk, his bare feet slapping on the hot concrete, and opened the door. The small silver bell overhead jingled.

The only person who saw him go in was Charlie Fortin. He was standing in the doorway of the Western Auto and smoking one of his stinky home-rolled cigarettes. “Old Hugh finally flipped,” Charlie said to no one in particular.

Inside, Mr. Gaunt looked at old Hugh with a pleasant, expectant little smile… as if barefooted, bare-chested men wearing motheaten fox-tails around their necks showed up in his shop every day.

He made a small check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register.

The last check-mark.

“I’m in trouble,” Hugh said, advancing on Mr. Gaunt. His eyes rolled from side to side in their sockets like pinballs. “I’m in a real mess this time.”

“I know,” Mr. Gaunt said in his most soothing voice.

“This seemed like the right place to come. I dunno-I keep dreaming about you. I… I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“This is the right place, Hugh.”

“He cut my tires Hugh whispered. “Beaufort, the bastard who owns The Mellow Tiger. He left a note. ’You know what I’ll come after next time Hubert,’ it said. I know what that means. You bet I do.” One of Hugh’s grubby, large-fingered hands caressed the mangy fur, and an expression of adoration spread across his face.

It would have been sappy if it had not been so clearly genuine.

“My beautiful, beautiful fox-tail.”

“Perhaps you ought to take care of him,” Mr. Gaunt suggested thoughtfully, “before he can take care of you. I know that sounds a little… well… extreme… but when you consider-”

“Yes! Yes!

That’s just what I want to do!”

“I think I have just the thing,” Mr. Gaunt said. He bent down, and when he straightened up he had an automatic pistol in his left hand. He pushed it across the glass top of the case. “Fully loaded.”

Hugh picked it up. His confusion seemed to blow away like smoke as the gun’s solid weight filled his hand. He could smell gungrease, low and fragrant.

“I… I left my wallet at home,” he said.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Mr. Gaunt told him.

“At Needful Things, Hugh, we insure the things we sell.” Suddenly his face hardened. His lips peeled back from his teeth and his eyes blazed. “Go get him!” he cried in a low, harsh voice. “Go get the bastard that wants to destroy what is yours! Go get him, Hugh!

Protect yourself! Protect your property!”

Hugh grinned suddenly. “Thanks, Mr. Gaunt. Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mr. Gaunt said, dropping immediately back into his normal tone of voice, but the small silver bell was already jangling as Hugh went back out, stuffing the automatic into the sagging waistband of his trousers as he walked.

Mr. Gaunt went to the window and watched Hugh get behind the wheel of the tired Chevy and back it into the street. A Budweiser truck rolling slowly down Main Street blared its horn and swerved to avoid him.

“Go get him, Hugh,” Mr. Gaunt said in a low voice. Small wisps of smoke began to rise from his ears and his hair; thicker threads emerged from his nostrils and from between the square white tombstones of his teeth. “Get all of them you can. Party down, big fella.”

Mr. Gaunt threw back his head and began to laugh.

John LaPointe hurried toward the side door of the Sheriff’s Office, the one that gave on the Municipal Building parking lot. He was excited. Armed and dangerous. It wasn’t often that you got to assist in arresting an armed and dangerous suspect. Not in a sleepy little town like Castle Rock, anyway. He had forgotten all about his missing wallet (at least for the time being), and Sally Ratcliffe was even further from his mind.

He reached for the door just as someone opened it from the other side. All at once John was facing two hundred and twenty pounds of angry Phys Ed coach.