I got it at the new store, Dad-Needful Things. The guy gave it to me at a really WICKED discount... he said it would make people more interested in coming to his store if they knew he kept his prices down, This was good as far as it went, but even a kid still a year too young to pay the full adult price of admission at the movies knew it didn't go far enough. When you said somebody had given you a really good deal on something, people were always interested. Too interested.
Oh yeah? How much did he knock off Th' per cent? Forty? Did @if? 1 rty he give i't to you for half price? Thatd still be sixty or seventy bucks, Brian, and I KNOW you don't have that kind of money just laying around in your piggy-bank.
Well... actually it was a little less than that, Dad.
Okay, tell me. How much did you pay?
Well... eighty-five cents.
He sold you a 1956 autographed Sandy Koufax baseball card, i'n uncirculated condition, for eighty-five cents?
Yeah, that's where the real trouble would start, all right.
What kind of trouble? He didn't know, exactly, but there would be a stink, he was sure of that. Somehow he would get blamed maybe by his dad, but by his mom for sure.
They might even try to make him give it back, and there was no way he was going to give it back. It wasn't just signed; it was signed to Brian.
No way.
Hell, he hadn't even been able to show Stan Dawson when Stan came over to play pass, although he'd wanted to-Stan would have fudged his jockeys. But Stan was going to sleep over on Friday night, and it was all too easy for Brian to imagine him saying to Brian's dad: So howd you like Brian's Sandy Koufax card, Mr. Rusk.-' Pretty rad, huh? The same went for his other friends. Brian had uncovered one of the great truths of small towns: many secretsin fact, all the really important secrets-cannot be shared. Because word has a way of getting around, and getting around fast.
He found himself in a strange and uncomfortable position. He had come by a great thing and could not show or share it. This should have vitiated his pleasure in his new acquisition, and it did, to some extent, but it also afforded him a furtive, niggardly satisfaction. He found himself not so much enjoying the card as gloating over it, and so he had uncovered another great truth: gloating in private provides its own peculiar pleasure. It was as if one corner of his mostly open and goodhearted nature had been walled off and then lit with a special black light that both distorted and enhanced what was hidden there.
And he was not going to give it up.
No way, uh-uh, negatory.
Then you better finish paying for it, a voice deep in his mind whispered.
He would. No problem there. He didn't think the thing he was supposed to do was exactly nice, but he was pretty sure it wasn't anything totally gross, either. just a... a... just a prank, a voice whispered in his mind, and he saw the eyes of Mr. Gaunt-dark blue, like the sea on a clear day, and strangely soothing. That's all. just a little prank.
Yeah, just a prank, whatever it was.
No problem.
He settled deeper under his goosedown quilt, turned over on his side, closed his eyes, and immediately began to doze.
Something occurred to him as he and his brother sleep drew closer to each other. Something Mr. Gaunt had said. You will be a better advertisement than the local paper could ever THINK of being!
Only he couldn't show the wonderful card he had bought. If a little thought had made that obvious to him, an eleven-year-old kid who wasn't even bright enough to keep out of Hugh Priest's way when he was crossing the street, shouldn't a smart guy like Mr. Gaunt have seen it, too?
Well, maybe. But maybe not. Grownups didn't think the same as normal people, and besides, he had the card, didn't he? And it was in his book, right where it should be, wasn't it?
The answer to both questions was yes, and so Brian let go of the whole thing an went back to sleep as the rain pelted against his window and the restless fall wind screamed in the angles beneath the eaves.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
The rain had stopped by daylight on Thursday, and by ten-thirty, when Polly looked out the front window of You Sew and Sew and saw Nettle Cobb, the clouds were beginning to break up. Nettle was carrying a rolled-up umbrella, and went scuttling along Main Street with her purse clamped under her arm as if she sensed the jaws of some new storm opening just behind her.
"How are your hands this morning, Polly?" Rosalie Drake asked.
Polly sighed inwardly. She would have to field the same question, but more insistently put, from Alan that afternoon, she supposed-she had promised to meet him for coffee at Nan's Luncheonette around three.
You couldn't fool the people who had known you for a long time. They saw the pallor of your face and the dark crescents below your eyes.
More important, they saw the haunted look in the eyes.
"Much better today, thanks," she said. This was overstating the truth by more than a little; they were better, but much better?
Huh-uh.
"I thought with the rain and all-"
"It's unpredictable, what makes them hurt. That's the pure devil of it. But never mind that, Rosalie, come quick and look out the window. I think we're about to witness a minor miracle."