Needful Things Part 59

After all, it was such a little thing.

2.

The shovel was exactly where he had told her it would be, leaning against one wall in a dusty shaft of sunlight. She took hold of its smooth, worn handle.

Suddenly she seemed to hear a low, purring growl from the deep shadows of the barn, as if the rabid Saint Bernard which had killed Big George Bannerman and caused the death of Tad Trenton were still here, back from the dead and meaner than ever. Goose-flesh danced up her arms and Polly left the barn in a hurry. The dooryard was not exactly cheery-not with that empty house glaring sullenly at her-but it was better than the barn.

What am I doing here? her mind asked again, woefully, and it was Aunt Evvie's voice that came back: her mind asked again, woefully, and it was Aunt Evvie's voice that came back: Going ghost. That's what you're doing. You're going ghost. Going ghost. That's what you're doing. You're going ghost.

Polly squeezed her eyes shut. "Stop it!" she whispered fiercely. "Just stop stop it!" it!"

That's right, Leland Gaunt said. Leland Gaunt said. Besides, what's the big deal? It's only a harmless little joke. And if something serious were to come of it-it won't, of course, but just supposing, for the sake of argument, that it did-whose fault would that be? Besides, what's the big deal? It's only a harmless little joke. And if something serious were to come of it-it won't, of course, but just supposing, for the sake of argument, that it did-whose fault would that be?

"Alan's," she whispered. Her eyes rolled nervously in their sockets and her hands clenched and unclenched nervously between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "If he were here to talk to... if he hadn't cut himself off from me by snooping around in things that are none of his business... "

The little voice tried to speak up again, but Leland Gaunt cut it off before it could say a word.

Right again, Gaunt said. Gaunt said. As to what you're doing here, Polly, the answer to that is simple enough: you're paying. That's what you're doing, and that's all you're doing. Ghosts have nothing to do with it. And remember this, because it is the simplest, most wonderful aspect of commerce: once an item is paid for, it belongs to you. You didn't expect such a wonderful thing to come cheap, did you? But when you finish paying, it's yours. You have clear t.i.tle to the thing you have paid for. Now will you stand here listening to those old frightened voices all day, or will you do what you came to do? As to what you're doing here, Polly, the answer to that is simple enough: you're paying. That's what you're doing, and that's all you're doing. Ghosts have nothing to do with it. And remember this, because it is the simplest, most wonderful aspect of commerce: once an item is paid for, it belongs to you. You didn't expect such a wonderful thing to come cheap, did you? But when you finish paying, it's yours. You have clear t.i.tle to the thing you have paid for. Now will you stand here listening to those old frightened voices all day, or will you do what you came to do?

Polly opened her eyes again. The azka azka hung movelessly at the end of its chain. If it had moved-and she was no longer sure it had-it had stopped now. The house was just a house, empty too long and showing the inevitable signs of neglect. The windows were not eyes, but simply holes rendered gla.s.sless by adventuresome boys with rocks. If she had heard something in the barn-and she was no longer sure she had-it had only been the sound of a board expanding in the unseasonable October heat. hung movelessly at the end of its chain. If it had moved-and she was no longer sure it had-it had stopped now. The house was just a house, empty too long and showing the inevitable signs of neglect. The windows were not eyes, but simply holes rendered gla.s.sless by adventuresome boys with rocks. If she had heard something in the barn-and she was no longer sure she had-it had only been the sound of a board expanding in the unseasonable October heat.

Her parents were dead. Her sweet little boy was dead. And the dog which had ruled this dooryard so terribly and completely for three summer days and nights eleven years ago was dead.

There were no ghosts.

"Not even me," she said, and began to walk around the barn.

3.

When you go around to the back of the barn, Mr. Gaunt had said, Mr. Gaunt had said, you'll see the remains of an old trailer. you'll see the remains of an old trailer. She did; a silver-sided Air-Flow, almost obscured by goldenrod and high tangles of late sunflowers. She did; a silver-sided Air-Flow, almost obscured by goldenrod and high tangles of late sunflowers.

You'll see a large flat rock at the left end of the trailer.

She found it easily. It was as large as a garden paving stone.

Move the rock and dig. About two feet down you'll find a Crisco can.

She tossed the rock aside and dug. Less than five minutes after she started, the shovel's blade clunked on the can. She discarded the shovel and dug into the loose earth with her fingers, breaking the light webwork of roots with her fingers. A minute later she was holding the Crisco can. It was rusty but intact. The rotting label came loose and she saw a recipe for Pineapple Surprise Cake on the back (the list of ingredients was mostly obscured by a black blotch of mold), along with a Bisquick coupon that had expired in 1969- She got her fingers under the lid of the can and pried it loose. The whiff of air that escaped made her wince and draw her head back for a moment. That voice tried one last time to ask what she was doing here, but Polly shut it out.

She looked into the can and saw what Mr. Gaunt had told her she would see: a bundle of Gold Bond trading stamps and several fading photographs of a woman having s.e.xual intercourse with a collie dog.

She took these things out, stuffed them into her hip pocket, and then wiped her fingers briskly on the leg of her jeans. She would wash her hands as soon as she could, she promised herself. Touching these things which had lain so long under the earth made her feel unclean.

From her other pocket she took a sealed business envelope. Typed on the front in capital letters was this: A MESSAGE FOR THE INTREPID TREASURE-HUNTER.

Polly put the envelope in the can, pressed the cover back down, and dropped it into the hole again. She used the shovel to fill in the hole, working quickly and carelessly. All she wanted right now was to get the h.e.l.l out of here.

When she was done, she walked away fast. The shovel she slung into the high weeds. She had no intention of taking it back to the barn, no matter how mundane the explanation of the sound she had heard might be.

When she reached her car, she opened first the pa.s.senger door and then the glove compartment. She pawed through the litter of paper inside until she found an old book of matches. It took her four tries to produce one small flame. The pain had almost entirely left her hands, but they were shaking so badly that she struck the first three much too hard, bending the paper heads uselessly to the side.

When the fourth flared alight, she held it between two fingers of her right hand, the flame almost invisible in the hot afternoon sunlight, and took the matted pile of trading stamps and dirty pictures from her jeans pocket. She touched the flame to the bundle and held it there until she was sure it had caught. Then she cast the match aside and dipped the papers down to produce the maximum draft. The woman was malnourished and hollow-eyed. The dog looked mangy and just smart enough to be embarra.s.sed. It was a relief to watch the surface of the one photograph she could see bubble and turn brown. When the pictures began to curl up, she dropped the flaming bundle into the dirt where a woman had once beaten another dog, this one a Saint Bernard, to death with a baseball bat.

The flames flared. The little pile of stamps and photos quickly crumpled to black ash. The flames guttered, went out... and at the moment they did, a sudden gust of wind blew through the stillness of the day, breaking the clot of ash up into flakes. They whirled upward in a funnel which Polly followed with eyes that had gone suddenly wide and frightened. Where, exactly, had that freak gust of wind come from?

Oh, please! Can't you stop being so d.a.m.ned- At that moment the growling sound, low, like an idling outboard motor, rose from the hot, dark maw of the barn again. It wasn't her imagination and it wasn't a creaking board.

It was a dog. dog.

Polly looked that way, frightened, and saw two sunken red circles of light peering out at her from the darkness.

She ran around the car, b.u.mping her hip painfully against the right side of the hood in her hurry, got in, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors. She turned the ignition key. The engine cranked over... but did not start.

No one knows where I am, she realized. No one but Mr. Gaunt... and he wouldn't tell.

For a moment she imagined herself trapped out here, the way Donna Trenton and her son had been trapped. Then the engine burst into life and she backed out of the driveway so fast she almost ran her car into the ditch on the far side of the road. She dropped the transmission into drive and headed back to town as fast as she dared to go.

She had forgotten all about was.h.i.+ng her hands.

4.

Ace Merrill rolled out of bed around the same time that Brian Rusk was blowing his head off thirty miles away.

He went into the bathroom, shucking out of his dirty skivvies as he walked, and urinated for an hour or two. He raised one arm and sniffed his pit. He looked at the shower and decided against it. He had a big day ahead of him. The shower could wait.

He left the bathroom without bothering to flush-if it's yellow, let it mellow was an integral part of Ace's philosophy-and went directly to the bureau, where the last of Mr. Gaunt's blow was laid out on a shaving mirror. It was great stuff-easy on the nose, hot in the head. It was also almost gone. Ace had needed a lot of go-power last night, just as Mr. Gaunt had said, but he had a pretty good idea there was more where this had come from. was an integral part of Ace's philosophy-and went directly to the bureau, where the last of Mr. Gaunt's blow was laid out on a shaving mirror. It was great stuff-easy on the nose, hot in the head. It was also almost gone. Ace had needed a lot of go-power last night, just as Mr. Gaunt had said, but he had a pretty good idea there was more where this had come from.

Ace used the edge of his driver's license to shape a couple of lines. He snorted them with a rolled-up five-dollar bill, and something that felt like a Shrike missile went off in his head.

"Boom!" cried Ace Merrill in his best Warner Wolf voice. "Let's go to the videotape!"

He pulled a pair of faded jeans up over his naked hips and then got into a Harley-Davidson tee-s.h.i.+rt. It's what all the well-dressed treasure-hunters are wearing this year, he thought, and laughed wildly. My, that c.o.ke was fine!

He was on his way out the door when his eye fell on last night's take and he remembered that he had meant to call Nat Copeland in Portsmouth. He went back into the bedroom, dug through the clothes which were balled helter-skelter in his top bureau drawer, and finally came up with a battered address book. He went back into the kitchen, sat down, and dialled the number he had. He doubted that he would actually catch Nat in, but it was worth a try. The c.o.ke buzzed and whipsawed in his head, but he could already feel the rush tapering off. A headshot of cocaine made a new man of you. The only trouble was, the first thing the new man wanted was another one, and Ace's supply was severely depleted.

"Yeah?" a wary voice said in his ear, and Ace realized he had beaten the odds again-his luck was in.

"Nat!" he cried.

"Who the f.u.c.k says so?"

"I do, old hoss! do, old hoss! I I do!" do!"

"Ace? That you?"

"None other! How you doin, ole Natty?"

"I've been better." Nat sounded less than overjoyed to hear from his old machine-shop buddy at Shawshank. "What do you want, Ace?"

"Now, is that any way to talk to a pal?" Ace asked reproachfully. He c.o.c.ked the phone between his ear and shoulder and pulled a pair of rusty tin cans toward him.

One of them had come out of the ground behind the old Treblehorn place, the other from the cellar-hole of the old Masters farm, which had burned flat when Ace was only ten years old. The first can had contained only four books of S & H Green Stamps and several banded packets of Raleigh cigarette coupons. The second had contained a few sheafs of mixed trading stamps and six rolls of pennies. Except they didn't look like regular pennies.

They were white.

"Maybe I just wanted to touch base," Ace teased. "You know, check on the state of your piles, see how your supply of K-Y's holdin out. Things like that."

"What do you want, Ace?" Nat Copeland repeated wearily.

Ace plucked one of the penny-rolls out of the old Crisco can. The paper had faded from its original purple to a dull wash pink. He shook two of the pennies out into his hand and looked at them curiously. If anyone would know about these things, Nat Copeland was the guy.

He had once owned a shop in Kittery called Copeland's Coins and Collectibles. He'd also had his own private coin collection-one of the ten best in New England, at least according to Nat himself. Then he too had discovered the wonders of cocaine. In the four or five years following this discovery, he had dismantled his coin collection item by item and put it up his nose. In 1985, police responding to a silent alarm at the Long John Silver coin-shop in Portland had found Nat Copeland in the back room, stuffing Lady Liberty silver dollars into a chamois bag. Ace met him not long after.

"Well, I did did have a question, now that you mention it." have a question, now that you mention it."

"A question? That's all?"

"That's absolutely all, good buddy."

"All right." Nat's voice relaxed the smallest bit. "Ask, then. I don't have all day."

"Right," Ace said. "Busy, busy, busy. Places to go and people to eat, am I right, Natty?" He laughed crazily. It wasn't just the blow; it was the day day. He hadn't gotten in until first light, the c.o.ke he had ingested had kept him awake until almost ten this morning in spite of the drawn shades and his physical exertions, and he still felt ready to eat steel bars and spit out tenpenny nails. And why not? Why the f.u.c.k not? not? He was standing on the rim of a fortune. He knew it, he felt it in every fiber. He was standing on the rim of a fortune. He knew it, he felt it in every fiber.

"Ace, is there really something on that thing you call your mind or did you phone just to rag me?"

"No, I didn't call to rag you. Give me the straight dope, Natty, and I might give you you some straight dope. some straight dope. Very Very straight." straight."

"Really?" Nat Copeland's voice lost its edge at once. It became hushed, almost awed. "Are you s.h.i.+tting me, Ace?"

"The best, primo-est s.h.i.+t I ever had, Natty b.u.mppo, my lad."

"Can you cut me in?"

"I wouldn't doubt it a bit," Ace said, meaning to do no such thing. He had pried three or four more of the strange pennies out of their old, faded roll. Now he pushed them into a straight line with his finger. "But you've got to do me a favor."

"Name it."

"What do you know about white pennies?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Nat said cautiously, "White pennies? Do you mean steel steel pennies?" pennies?"

"I don't know what I mean-you're the coin collector, not me."

"Look at the dates. See if they're from the years 1941 to 1945."

Ace turned over the pennies in front of him. One was a 1941; four were 1943s; the last was from 1944.

"Yeah. They are. What are they worth, Nat?" He tried to disguise the eagerness in his voice and was not entirely successful.

"Not a lot taken one by one," Nat said, "but a h.e.l.l of a lot more than ordinary pennies. Maybe two bucks apiece. Three if they're U.C."

"What's that?"

"Uncirculated. In mint condition. Have you got a lot, Ace?"

"Quite a few," Ace said, "quite a few, Natty my man." But he was disappointed. He had six rolls, three hundred pennies, and the ones he was looking at didn't look in particularly good shape to him. They weren't exactly beat to s.h.i.+t, but they were a long way from being s.h.i.+ny and new. Six hundred dollars, eight hundred tops. Not what you'd call a big strike.

"Well, bring them down and let me look," Nat said. "I can get you top dollar." He hesitated, then added: "And bring some of that marching powder with you."

"I'll think about it," Ace said.

"Hey, Ace! Don't hang up!"

"f.u.c.k you very much, Natty," Ace replied, and did just that.

He sat where he was for a moment, brooding over the pennies and the two rusty cans. There was something very weird about all of this. Useless trading stamps and six hundred dollars' worth of steel pennies. What did that add up to?

That's the b.i.t.c.h of it, Ace thought. It doesn't add up to anything. Where's the real stuff? Where's the G.o.ddam LOOT?

He pushed back from the table, went into the bedroom, and snorted the rest of the blow Mr. Gaunt had laid on him. When he came out again, he had the book with the map in it and he was feeling considerably more cheerful. It did did add up. It added up just fine. Now that he had helped his head a little bit, he could see that. add up. It added up just fine. Now that he had helped his head a little bit, he could see that.

After all, there had been lots of crosses on that map. He had found two caches right where those crosses suggested they would be, each marked with a large, flat stone. Crosses + Flat Stones = Buried Treasure. It did did seem that Pop had been a little softer in his old age than people from town had believed, that he'd had a bit of a problem telling the difference between diamonds and dust there at the end, but the big stuff-gold, currency, maybe negotiable securities-had to be out there seem that Pop had been a little softer in his old age than people from town had believed, that he'd had a bit of a problem telling the difference between diamonds and dust there at the end, but the big stuff-gold, currency, maybe negotiable securities-had to be out there someplace, someplace, under one or more of those flat rocks. under one or more of those flat rocks.

He had proved proved that. His uncle had buried things of that. His uncle had buried things of value, value, not just bunches of moldy old trading stamps. At the old Masters farm he had found six rolls of steel pennies worth at least six hundred dollars. Not much... but an indication. not just bunches of moldy old trading stamps. At the old Masters farm he had found six rolls of steel pennies worth at least six hundred dollars. Not much... but an indication.

"It's out there," Ace said softly. His eyes sparkled madly. "It's all out there-in one of those other seven holes. Or two. Or three."

He knew knew it. it.

He took the brown-paper map out of the book and let his finger wander from one cross to the next, wondering if some were more likely than others. Ace's finger stopped on the old Joe Camber place. It was the only location where there were two crosses close together. His finger began to move slowly back and forth between them.