Stephen King - Needful Things

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 Things@r 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.

No world had been as good as that one, before or since.

After his father’s fatal coronary, the Bazun rod and reel had disappeared. He remembered looking for it in the garage after the funeral and it was just gone. He had hunted in the cellar, had even looked in the closet of his mom and dad’s bedroom (although he knew his mom would have been more likely to let Henry Ridgewick store an elephant in there than a fishing pole), but the Bazun was gone. Norris had always suspected his Uncle Phil. Several times he had gathered his courage to ask, but each time it came to the sticking point, he had backed down.

Now, looking at this rod and reel, which could have been that very one, he forgot about Buster Keeton for the first time that day.

He was overwhelmed with a simple, perfect memory: his father sitting in the stern of the boat, his tackle-box between his feet, handing the Bazun to Norris so he could pour himself a cup of coffee from his big red Thermos with the gray stripes. He could smell the coffee, hot and good, and he could smell his father’s aftershave lotion: Southern Gentleman, it had been called.

Suddenly the old grief rose up and folded him in its gray embrace and he wanted his father. After all these years that old pain was gnawing his bones again, as fresh and as hungry as it had been on the day when his mother had come home from the hospital and taken his hands and said We have to be very brave now, Norris.

The spotlight high in the display window pricked bright beams of light off the steel casing of the reel and all the old love, that dark and golden love, swept through him again. Norris stared in at the Bazun rod and thought of the smell of fresh coffee rising from a big red Thermos with gray stripes and the calm, wide sweep of the lake. In his mind he felt again the rough texture of the rod’s cork handle, and slowly raised one hand to wipe his eyes.

“Officer?” a quiet voice asked.

Norris gave a little cry and leaped back from the window. For one wild moment he thought he was going to fill his pants after all-the perfect end to a perfect day. Then the cramp passed and he looked around. A tall man in a tweed jacket was standing in the open door of the shop, looking at him with a little smile.

“Did I startle you?” he asked. “I’m very sorry.”

“No,” Norris said, and then managed a smile of his own. His heart was still beating like a triphammer. “Well… maybe just a little.

I was looking at that rod and thinking about old times.”

“That just came in today,” the man said. “It’s old, but it’s in awfully good condition. It’s a Bazun, you know. Not a well-known brand, but well-regarded among serious fishermen. It’s-”

“-Japanese,” Norris said. “I know. My dad used to have one.”

“Did he?” The man’s smile broadened. The teeth it revealed were crooked, but Norris found it a pleasant smile just the same.

“That is a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Norris agreed.

“I’m Leland Gaunt. This is my shop.” He held out his hand.

A momentary revulsion swept over Norris as those long fingers wrapped themselves around his hand. Gaunt’s handshake was the matter of a moment, however, and when he let go, the feeling passed at once.

Norris decided it was just his stomach, still queasy over those bad clams he’d eaten for lunch. Next time he was out that way, he’d stick to the chicken, which was, after all, the house specialty.

“I could give you an extremely fair deal on that rod,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Why not step in, Officer Ridgewick? We’ll talk about it.”

Norris started a little. He hadn’t told this old bird his name, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth to ask how Gaunt had known, then closed it again. He wore a little name-tag above his badge.

That was it, of course.

“I really shouldn’t,” he said, and hoisted a thumb back over his shoulder at the cruiser. He could still hear the radio, although static was all it was putting out; he hadn’t had a call all night. “On duty, you know. Well, I’m off at nine, but technically, until I turn in my car-”

“This would only take a minute or so,” Gaunt coaxed. His eyes regarded Norris merrily. “When I make up my mind to deal with a man, Officer Ridgewick, I don’t waste time. Especially when the man in question is out in the middle of the night protecting my business.”