Needful Things

At last Frank managed to break the lock on his tongue. “Killed your bird, right! Shit on that stupid picture of your mom, right again! And what did you do? What did you do, George, besides make sure that I’ll lose my job and never teach again? God, I’ll be lucky not to end up in jail!” He saw the total injustice of this in a sudden black flash of comprehension; it was like rubbing vinegar into a raw scrape. “Why didn’t you just come and ask me for money, if you needed it? Why didn’t you just come and ask? We could have worked something out, you dumb bastard!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” George T. Nelson shouted back. “All I know is that you’re brave enough to kill teenytiny parakeets but you don’t have balls enough to take me on in a fair fight!”

“Don’t know what… don’t know what I’m talking about?” Frank sputtered. The muzzle of the Llama wavered wildly back and forth.

He could not believe the gall of the man below him on the sidewalk; simply could not believe it. To be standing there with one foot on the pavement and the other practically in eternity and to simply go on lying…

“No! I don’t! Not the slightest idea!”

In the extremity of his rage, Frank jewett regressed to the childhood response to such outrageous, boldface denial: “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Coward!” George T. Nelson smartly returned. “Baby-coward!

Parakeet-killer!”

“Blackmailer!”

“Loony! Put the gun away, loony! Fight me fair!”

Frank gri

George T. Nelson held up his empty hands and waggled the fingers at Frank. “More than you, it looks like.”

Frank opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He was temporarily silenced by George T. Nelson’s empty hands.

“Go on,” George T. Nelson said. “Put it away. Let’s do it like they do in the Westerns, George. If you’ve got the sack for it, that is. Fastest man wins.”

Frank thought: Well, why not? just why the hell not?

He hadn’t much else to live for, one way or the other, and if he did nothing else, he could show his old “friend” he wasn’t a coward.

“Okay,” he said, and shoved the Llama into the waistband of his own pants. He held his hands out in front of him, hovering just I above the butt of the gun. “How do you want to do it, GeorgiePorgie?”

George T. Nelson was gri

“All right,” Frank said. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

He started down the stairs. And George T. Nelson started up.

7

Polly had just spotted the green awning of Needful Things up ahead when the funeral parlor and the barber shop went up. The glare of light and the roar of sound were enormous. She saw debris burst out of the heart of the explosion like asteroids in a science fiction movie and ducked instinctively. It was well that she did; several chunks of wood and the stainless-steel lever from the side of Chair #2-Henry Gendron’s chair-smashed through the windshield of her Toyota. The lever made a weird, hungry humming sound as it flew through the car and exited by way of the rear window. Broken glass whispered through the air in a widening shotgun cloud.

The Toyota, with no driver to steer it, bumped up over the curb, struck a fire hydrant, and stalled.

Polly sat up, blinking, and stared out through the hole in the windshield. She saw someone coming out of Needful Things and heading toward one of the three cars parked in front of the store.

In the bright light of the fire across the street, she recognized Alan easily.

“Alan!” She yelled it, but Alan didn’t turn. He moved with single-minded purpose, like a robot.

Polly shoved open the door of her car and ran toward him, screaming his name over and over. From down the street came the rapid rattle of gunfire. Alan did not turn in that direction, nor did he look at the conflagration which, only moments ago, had been the funeral parlor and the barber shop. He seemed to be locked entirely on his own interior course of action, and Polly suddenly realized that she was too late. Leland Gaunt had gotten to him. He had bought something after all, and if she didn’t make it to his car before he embarked on whatever wild-goose chase it was that Gaunt was sending him on, he would simply leave… and God only knew what might happen then.

She ran faster.

8

“Help me,” Norris said to Seaton Thomas, and slung an arm around Seat’s neck. He staggered to his feet.

“I think I winged him,” Seaton said. He was puffing, but his color had come back.

“Good,” Norris said. His shoulder hurt like fire… and the as if pain seemed to be sinking deeper into his flesh all the time, seeking his heart. “Now just help me.”

“You’ll be all right,” Seaton said. In his distress over Norris, Seat had forgotten his fear that he was, in his words, coming down with a heart attack. “Soon as I get you insid"No,” Norris gasped.

“Cruiser.”

“What?”

Norris turned his head and glared at Thomas with frantic, painfilled eyes. “Get me in my cruiser! I have to GO to Needful Things!”

Yes. The moment the words were out of his mouth, everything seemed to fall into place. Needful Things was where he had bought the Bazun fishing rod- It was the direction In which the man who had shot him had gone ru

Ga@ia blew up, flooding Main Street with fresh glare. A Double Dragon machine rose out of the ruins, turned over twice, and landed upside down in the street with a crunch.

“Norris, you been shot-”

“Of course I’ve been shot!” Norris screamed. Bloody froth flew from his lips. “Now get me in the cruiser!”

“It’s a bad idea, Norris-”

“No It’s not,” Norris said grimly. He turned his head and spat blood. “It’s the only idea. Now come on.

Help me.”

Seat Thomas began to walk him toward Unit 2.

9

If Alan hadn’t glanced into his rearview mirror before backing out into the street, he would have run Polly down, completing the evening by crushing the woman he loved under the rear wheels of his old station wagon. He did not recognize her; she was only a shape behind his car, a woman-shape outlined against the cauldron of flames on the other side of the street. He jammed on the brakes, and a moment later she was hammering at his window.

Ignoring her, Alan began to back up again. He had no time for the town’s problems tonight; he had his own. Let them slaughter each other like stupid animals, if that was what they wanted to do.

He was going to Mechanic Falls. He was going to get the man who had killed his wife and son in revenge for a piddling four years in the Shank.

Polly grabbed his doorhandle and was half-pulled, half-dragged, out into the debris-strewn street. She punched down on the button below the handle, her hand shrieking with pain, and the door flew open with her clinging desperately to it and her feet dragging as Alan made his reverse turn. The nose of the station wagon was pointing down Main Street. In his grief and fury, Alan had totally forgotten that there was no bridge to cross down that way anymore.

“Alan!” she screamed. “Alan, stop!”

It got through. Somehow it got through in spite of the rain, the thunder, the wind, and the heavy, hungry crackle of the fire. In spite of his compulsion.

He looked at her, and Polly’s heart broke at the expression in his eyes. Alan wore the look of a man floating in the gut of a nightmare.

“Polly?” he asked distantly.

“Alan, you have to stop!”