Needful Things

by Stephen King

  He could wax Christlike and invite those among them without sin to cast the first stone. That should give them pause. If there was a man-jack among them who had not had his fingers in the state pie from time to time, Keeton would eat that man's shorts. Without salt.

  They would have to give him time. Now that he was able to set his hysteria aside and think the situation over rationally, he was almost sure they would. After all, they were politicians, too. They would know that the press would have plenty of tar and feathers left over for them, the supposed guardians of the public trust, once they had finished with Dan Keeton. They would know the questions which would surface in the wake of a public investigation or even (God forbid) a trial for embezzlement. Questions like how long--in fiscal years, if you please, gentlemen--had Mr. Keeton's little operation been going on? Questions like how come the State Bureau of Taxation hadn't awakened and smelled the coffee some time ago? Questions ambitious men would find distressing.

  He believed he could squeak through. No guarantees, but it looked possible.

  All thanks to Mr. Leland Gaunt.

  God, he loved Leland Gaunt.

  "Danforth?" Myrt asked shyly.

  He looked up. "Hmmm?"

  "This is the nicest day I've had in years. I just wanted you to know that. How grateful I am to have such a nice day. With you."

  "Oh!" he said. The oddest thing had just happened to him. For a moment he hadn't been able to remember the name of the woman sitting across from him. "Well, Myrt, it's been nice for me, too."

  "Will you be going to the racetrack tonight?"

  "No," he said, "I think tonight I'll stay home."

  "That's nice," she said. She found it so nice, in fact, that she had to dab at her eyes with her napkin again.

  He smiled at her--it wasn't his old sweet smile, the one which had wooed and won her to begin with--but it was close. "Say, Myrt! Want dessert?"

  She giggled and flapped her napkin at him. "Oh, you!"

  3

  The Keeton home was a split-level ranch in Castle View. It was a long walk uphill for Nettie Cobb, and by the time she got there her legs were tired and she was very cold. She met only three or four other pedestrians, and none of them looked at her; they were bundled deep into the collars of their coats, for the wind had begun to blow strongly and it had a keen edge. An ad supplement from someone's Sunday Telegram danced across the street, then took off into the hard blue sky like some strange bird as she turned into the Keetons' driveway. Mr. Gaunt had told her that Buster and Myrtle wouldn't be home, and Mr. Gaunt knew best. The garage door was up, and that showboat of a Cadillac Buster drove was gone.

  Nettie went up the walk, stopped at the front door, and took the pad and the Scotch tape from her left-hand coat pocket. She very much wanted to be home with the Sunday Super Movie on TV and Raider at her feet. And that's where she would be as soon as she finished this chore. She might not even bother with her knitting. She might just sit there with her carnival glass lampshade in her lap. She tore off the first pink slip and taped it over the sign by the doorbell, the embossed one which said THE KEETONS and NO SALESMEN, PLEASE. She put the tape and the pad back in her left pocket, then took the key from her right and slipped it into the lock. Before turning it, she briefly examined the pink slip she had just taped up.

  Cold and tired as she was, she just had to smile a little. It really was a pretty good joke, especially considering the way Buster drove. It was a wonder he hadn't killed anyone. She wouldn't like to be the man whose name was signed at the bottom of the warning-slip, though. Buster could be awfully grouchy. Even as a child he hadn't been one to take a joke.

  She turned the key. The lock opened easily. Nettie went inside.

  4

  "More coffee?" Keeton asked.

  "Not for me," Myrtle said. "I'm as full as a tick." She smiled.

  "Then let's go home. I want to watch the Patriots on TV." He glanced at his watch. "If we hurry, I think I can make the kick-off."

  Myrtle nodded, happier than ever. The TV was in the living room, and if Dan meant to watch the game, he wasn't going to spend the afternoon cooped up in his study. "Let's hurry, then," she said.

  Keeton held up one commanding finger. "Waiter? Bring me the check, please."

  5

  Nettie had stopped wanting to hurry home; she liked being in Buster and Myrtle's house.

  For one thing, it was warm. For another, being here gave Nettie an unexpected sense of power--it was like seeing behind the scenes of two actual human lives. She began by going upstairs and looking through all the rooms. There were a lot of them, too, considering there were no children, but, as her mother had always been fond of saying, them that has, gets.

  She opened Myrtle's bureau drawers, investigating her underwear. Some of it was silk, quality stuff, but to Nettie most of the good things looked old. The same was true of the dresses hung on her side of the closet. Nettie went on to the bathroom, where she inventoried the pills in the medicine cabinet, and from there to the sewing room, where she admired the dolls. A nice house. A lovely house. Too bad the man who lived here was a piece of shit.

  Nettie glanced at her watch and supposed she should start putting up the little pink slips. And she would, too.

  Just as soon as she finished looking around downstairs.

  6

  "Danforth, isn't this a little too fast?" Myrtle asked breathlessly as they swung around a slow-moving pulp truck. An oncoming car blared its horn at them as Keeton swung back into his lane.

  "I want to make the kick-off," he said, and turned left onto the Maple Sugar Road, passing a sign which read CASTLE ROCK 8 MILES.

  7

  Nettie snapped on the TV--the Keetons had a big color Mitsubishi--and watched some of the Sunday Super Movie. Ava Gardner was in it, and Gregory Peck. Gregory seemed to be in love with Ava, although it was hard to tell; it might be the other woman he was in love with. There had been a nuclear war. Gregory Peck drove a submarine. None of this interested Nettie very much, so she turned off the TV, taped a pink slip to the screen, and went into the kitchen. She looked at what was in the cupboards (the dishes were Corelle, very nice, but the pots and pans were nothing to write home about), then checked the refrigerator. She wrinkled her nose. Too many leftovers. Too many leftovers was a sure sign of slipshod housekeeping. Not that Buster would know; she'd bet her boots on that. Men like Buster Keeton wouldn't be able to find their way around the kitchen with a map and a guide-dog.

  She checked her watch again and started. She had spent an awfully long time wandering around the house. Too long. Quickly, she began to tear off slips of pink paper and tape them to things--the refrigerator, the stove, the telephone which hung on the kitchen wall by the garage doorway, the breakfront in the dining room. And the more quickly she worked, the more nervous she became.

  8

  Nettie had just gotten down to business when Keeton's red Cadillac crossed the Tin Bridge and started up Watermill Lane toward Castle View.

  "Danforth?" Myrtle asked suddenly. "Could you let me out at Amanda Williams's house? I know it's a little out of the way, but she's got my fondue pot. I thought--" The shy smile came and went on her face again. "I thought I might make you--us--a little treat. For the football game. You could just drop me off."

  He opened his mouth to tell her the Wittiamses' was a lot out of his way, the game was about to start, and she could get her goddam fondue pot tomorrow. He didn't like cheese when it was hot and runny anyway. The goddamned stuff was probably full of bacteria.

  Then he thought better of it. Aside from himself, the Board of Selectmen was made up of two dumb bastards and one dumb bitch. Mandy Williams was the bitch. Keeton had been at some pains to see Bill Fullerton, the town barber, and Harry Samuels, Castle Rock's only mortician, on Friday. He was also at pains to make these seem like casual calls, but they weren't. There was always the possibility that the Board of Taxation had begun sending them letters as well. He had satisfied himself that they we
re not--not yet, at least--but the Williams bitch had been out of town on Friday.

  "All right," he said, then added: "You might ask her if any town business has come to her attention. Anything I should get in touch with her about."

  "Oh, honey, you know I can never keep that stuff straight--"

  "I do know that, but you can ask, can't you? You're not too dumb to ask, are you?"

  "No," she said hastily, in a small voice.

  He patted her hand. "I'm sorry."

  She looked at him with a wonderstruck expression. He had apologized to her. Myrtle thought he might have done this at some time or other in their years of marriage, but she could not remember when.

  "Just ask her if the State boys have been bothering about anything lately," he said. "Land-use regulations, the damn sewage ... taxes, maybe. I'd come in and ask myself, but I really want to catch the kick-off."

  "All right, Dan."

  The Williams house was halfway up Castle View. Keeton piloted the Cadillac into the driveway and parked behind the woman's car. It was foreign, of course. A Volvo. Keeton guessed she was a closet Communist, a lesbo, or both.

  Myrtle opened her door and got out, flashing him the shy, slightly nervous smile again as she did so.

  "I'll be home in half an hour."

  "Fine. Don't forget to ask if she's aware of any new town business," he said. And if Myrt's description--garbled though it would surely be--of what Amanda Williams said raised even one single hackle on Keeton's neck, he would check in with the bitch personally... tomorrow. Not this afternoon. This afternoon was his. He was feeling much too good to even look at Amanda Williams, let alone make chit-chat with her.

  He hardly waited for Myrtle to close her door before throwing the Cadillac in reverse and backing down to the street again.

  9

  Nettie had just taped the last of the pink sheets to the door of the closet in Keeton's study when she heard a car turn into the driveway. A muffled squeak escaped her throat. For a moment she was frozen in place, unable to move.

  Caught! her mind screamed as she listened to the soft, well-padded burble of the Cadillac's big engine. Caught! Oh Jesus Savior meek and mild I'm caught! He'll kill me!

  Mr. Gaunt's voice spoke in answer. It was not friendly now; it was cold and it was commanding and it came from a place deep in the center of her brain. He probably WILL kill you if he catches you, Nettie. And if you panic, he'll catch you for sure. The answer is simple: don't panic. Leave the room. Do it now. Don't run, but walk fast. And as quietly as you can.

  She hurried across the second-hand Turkish rug on the study floor, her legs as stiff as sticks, muttering "Mr. Gaunt knows best" in a low litany, and entered the living room. Pink rectangles of paper glared at her from what seemed like every available surface. One even dangled from the central light-fixture on a long strand of tape.

  Now the car's engine had taken on a hollow, echoey sound. Buster had driven into the garage.

  Go, Nettie! Go right away! Now is your only chance!

  She fled across the living room, tripped over a hassock, and went sprawling. She banged her head on the floor almost hard enough to knock herself out--would have knocked herself out, almost certainly, but for the thin cushion of a throw-rug. Bright globular lights skated across her field of vision. She scrambled up again, vaguely aware that her forehead was bleeding, and began fumbling at the knob of the front door as the car engine cut off in the garage. She cast a terrified glance back over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. She could see the door to the garage, the door he would come through. One of the pink slips of paper was taped to it.

  The doorknob turned under her hand, but the door wouldn't open. It seemed stuck shut.

  From the garage came a hefty swoop-chunk as Keeton slammed his car door. Then the rattle of the motorized garage door starting down on its tracks. She heard his footsteps gritting across the concrete. Buster was whistling.

  Nettie's frantic gaze, partially obscured by blood from her cut forehead, fell upon the thumb-boh. It had been turned. That was why the door wouldn't open for her. She must have turned it herself when she came in, although she couldn't remember doing it. She flicked it up, pulled the door open, and stepped through.

  Less than a second later, the door between the garage and the kitchen opened. Danforth Keeton stepped inside, unbuttoning his overcoat. He stopped. The whistle died on his lips. He stood there with his hands frozen in the act of undoing one of the lower coat-buttons, his lips still pursed, and looked around the kitchen. His eyes began to widen.

  If he had gone to the living-room window right then, he would have seen Nettie running wildly across his lawn, her unbuttoned coat billowing around her like the wings of a bat. He might not have recognized her, but he would surely have seen it was a woman, and this might have changed later events considerably. The sight of all those pink slips froze him in place, however, and in his first shock his mind was capable of producing two words and two words only. They flashed on and off inside his head like a giant neon sign with letters of screaming scarlet: THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS!

  10

  Nettie reached the sidewalk and ran down Castle View as fast as she could. The heels of her loafers rattled a frightened tattoo, and her ears convinced her that she was hearing more feet than her own--Buster was behind her, Buster was chasing her, and when Buster caught her he might hurt her ... but that didn't matter. It didn't matter because he could do worse than just hurt her. Buster was an important man in town, and if he wanted her sent back to Juniper Hill, she would be sent. So Nettie ran. Blood trickled down her forehead and into her eye, and for a moment she saw the world through a pale red tens, as if all the nice houses on the View had begun to ooze blood. She wiped it away with the sleeve of her coat and went on running.

  The sidewalk was deserted, and most eyes inside the houses which were occupied this early Sunday afternoon were trained on the Patriots-Jets game. Nettie was seen by only one person.

  Tansy Williams, fresh from two days in Portland where she and her mommy had gone to visit Grampa, was looking out the living-room window, sucking a lollypop and holding her teddy bear, Owen, under her left arm, when Nettie went by with wings on her heels.

  "Mommy, a lady just ran by," Tansy reported.

  Amanda Williams was sitting in the kitchen with Myrtle Keeton. They each had a cup of coffee. The fondue pot sat between them on the table. Myrtle had just asked if there was any town business going on that Dan should know about, and Amanda considered this a very odd question. If Buster wanted to know something, why hadn't he come in himself? For that matter, why such a question on a Sunday afternoon in the first place?

  "Honey, Mommy's talking with Mrs. Keeton."

  "She had blood on her," Tansy reported further.

  Amanda smiled at Myrtle. "I told Buddy that if he was going to rent that Fatal Attraction, he should wait until Tansy was in bed to watch it."

  Meantime, Nettie went on running. When she reached the intersection of Castle View and Laurel, she had to stop for a while. The Public Library was here, and there was a curved stone wall running around its lawn. She leaned against it, gasping and sobbing for breath as the wind tore past her, tugging at her coat. Her hands were pressed against her left side, where she had a deep stitch.

  She looked back up the hill and saw that the street was empty. Buster had not been following her after all; that had just been her imagination. After a few moments she was able to hunt through her coat pockets for a Kleenex to wipe away some of the blood on her face. She found one, and she also discovered that the key to Buster's house was no longer there. It might have fallen out of her pocket as she ran down the hill, but she thought it more likely that she had left it in the lock of the front door. But what did that matter? She had gotten out before Buster saw her, that was the important thing. She thanked God that Mr. Gaunt's voice had spoken to her in the nick of time, forgetting that Mr. Gaunt was the reason she had been in Buster's hom
e in the first place.

  She looked at the smear of blood on the Kleenex and decided the cut probably wasn't as bad as it could have been. The flow seemed to be slowing down. The stitch in her side was going away, too. She pushed off the rock wall and began to plod toward home with her head down, so the cut wouldn't show.

  Home, that was the thing to think about. Home and her beautiful carnival glass lampshade. Home and the Sunday Super Movie. Home and Raider. When she was at home with the door locked, the shades pulled, the TV on, and Raider sleeping at her feet, all of this would seem like a horrible dream--the sort of dream she'd had in Juniper Hill, after she had killed her husband.

  Home, that was the place for her.

  Nettie walked a little faster. She would be there soon.

  11

  Pete and Wilma Jerzyck had a light lunch with the Pulaskis after Mass, and following lunch, Pete and Jake Pulaski settled in front of the TV to watch the Patriots kick some New York ass. Wilma cared not a fig for football--base--ball, basketball, or hockey, either, as far as that went. The only pro sport she liked was wrestling, and although Pete didn't know it, Wilma would have left him in the wink of an eye for Chief Jay Strongbow.

  She helped Frieda with the dishes, then said she was going home to watch the rest of the Sunday Super Movie--it was On the Beach, with Gregory Peck. She told Pete she was taking the car.

  "That's fine," he said, his eyes never leaving the TV. "I don't mind walking."

  "Goddam good thing for you," she muttered under her breath as she went out.

  Wilma was actually in a good mood, and the major reason had to do with Casino Nite. Father John wasn't backing down on it the way Wilma had expected him to do, and she had liked the way he'd looked that morning during the homily, which was called "Let Us Each Tend Our Own Garden." His tone had been as mild as ever, but there had been nothing mild about his blue eyes or his outthrust chin. Nor had all his fancy gardening metaphors fooled Wilma or anyone else about what he was saying: if the Baptists insisted on sticking their collective nose into the Catholic carrot-patch, they were going to get their collective ass kicked.