Cujo by Stephen King Page A

Mom?”
    â€œCan you think of anything your father needs out in the shop? Any one thing he’s been looking to get?”
    The light dawned in Brett’s eyes a little. “Well, he always needs adjustable wrenches . . . and he’s been wanting a new set of ball-and-sockets . . . and he could use a new welder’s helmet since the old one got a crack in the faceplate—”
    â€œNo, I mean anything big. Expensive.”
    Brett thought awhile, then smiled. “Well, what he’d really like to have is a new Jörgen chainfall, I guess. Rip that old motor out of Richie Simms’s International just as slick as sh—well, slick.” He blushed and hurried on. “But you couldn’t get him nothing like that, Mom. That’s really dear.”
    Dear. Joe’s word for expensive. She hated it.
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œWell, the one in the catalogue says seventeen hundred dollars, but Dad could probably get it from Mr. Belasco atPortland Machine for wholesale, Dad says Mr. Belasco’s scared of him.”
    â€œDo you think there’s something smart about that?” she asked sharply.
    Brett sat back in his chair, a little frightened by her fierceness. He couldn’t remember his mother ever acting quite like this. Even Cujo, out on the porch, pricked his ears a little.
    â€œWell? Do you?”
    â€œNo, Mom,” he said, but Charity knew in a despairing way that he was lying. If you could scare somebody into giving you wholesale, you were trading a right smart. She had heard the admiration in Brett’s voice, even if the boy himself had not. Wants to be just like him. Thinks his daddy is just standing tall when he scares someone. Oh my God.
    â€œThere’s nothing smart about being able to scare people,” Charity said. “All it takes is a big voice and a mean disposition. There’s no smart to it.” She lowered her voice and flapped a hand at him. “Go on and eat your eggs. I’m not going to shout at you. I guess it’s the heat.”
    He ate, but quietly and carefully, looking at her now and then. There were hidden mines around this morning.
    â€œWhat would wholesale be, I wonder? Thirteen hundred dollars? A thousand?”
    â€œI don’t know, Mamma.”
    â€œWould this Belasco deliver? On a big order like that?”
    â€œAyuh, I guess he would. If we had that kind of money.”
    Her hand went to the pocket of her housedress. The lottery ticket was there. The green number on her ticket, 76, and the red number, 434, matched the numbers drawn by the State Lottery Commission two weeks before. She had checked it dozens of times, unable to believe it. She had invested fifty cents that week, as she had done every week since the lottery began in 1975, and this time she had won five thousand dollars. She hadn’t cashed the ticket in yet, but neither had she let it out of her sight or her reach since she found out.
    â€œWe do have that kind of money,” she said. Brett goggled at her.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    At quarter past ten, Vic slipped out of his Ad Worx office and went around to Bentley’s for his morning coffee, unable to face the bitch’s brew that was available at the office. He had spent the morning writing ads for Decoster Egg Farms.It was hard going. He had hated eggs since his boyhood, when his mother grimly forced one down his throat four days a week. The best he had been able to come up with so far was EGGS SAY LOVE . . . SEAMLESSLY . Not very good. Seamlessly had given him the idea of a trick photo which would show an egg with a zipper running around its middle. It was a good image, but where did it lead? Noplace that he had been able to discover. Ought to ask the Tadder, he thought, as the waitress brought him coffee and a blueberry muffin. Tad liked eggs.
    It wasn’t really the egg ad that was bringing him down, of course. It was having to take off