Cujo (25 page)

“I've got an idea,” Vic said quietly.

“Yeah, you said something on the plane.” Roger looked at him, but without much hope. “If you got one, let's hear it.”

“I think the Sharp Cereal Professor has to make one more spot,” Vic said. “I think we have to convince old man Sharp of that. Not the kid. The old man.”

“What's the old prof gonna sell this time?” Roger asked, twisting open another button on his shirt. “Rat poison or Agent Orange?”

“Come on, Roger. No one got poisoned.”

“Might as well have,” Roger said, and laughed shrilly. “Sometimes I wonder if you understand what advertising really is. It's holding a wolf by the tail. Well, we lost our grip on this particular wolf and he's just about to come back on us and eat us whole.”

“Roger—”

“This is the country where it's front-page news when some consumer group weighed the McDonald's Quarter Pounder and found out it weighed a little shy of a quarter pound. Some obscure California magazine publishes a report that a rear-end collision can cause a gas-tank explosion in Pintos, and the Ford Motor Company shakes in its shoes—”

“Don't get on that,” Vic said, laughing a little. “My wife's got a Pinto. I got problems enough.”

“All I'm saying is that getting the Sharp Cereal Professor to do another spot seems about as shrewd to me as having Richard Nixon do an encore State of the Union address. He's
compromised,
Vic, he's totally blown!” He paused, looking at Vic. Vic looked back at him gravely. “What do you want him to say?”

“That he's sorry.”

Roger blinked at him glassily for a moment. Then he threw back his head and cackled. “That he's sorry.
Sorry?
Oh, dear, that's wonderful. Was that your great idea?”

“Hold on, Rog. You're not even giving me a chance. That's not like you.”

“No,” Roger said. “I guess it's not. Tell me what you mean. But I can't believe you're—”

“Serious? I'm serious, all right. You took the courses.
What's the basis of all successful advertising? Why bother to advertise at all?”

“The basis of all successful advertising is that people want to believe. That people sell themselves.”

“Yeah. When the Maytag Repairman says he's the loneliest guy in town, people want to believe that there really is such a guy someplace, not doing anything but listening to the radio and maybe jacking off once in a while. People want to believe that their Maytags will
never
need repairs. When Joe DiMaggio comes on and says Mr. Coffee saves coffee, saves money, people want to believe
that.
If—”

“But isn't that why we've got our asses in a crack? They wanted to believe the Sharp Cereal Professor and he let them down. Just like they wanted to believe in Nixon, and
he
—”

“Nixon, Nixon, Nixon!” Vic said, surprised by his own angry vehemence. “You're getting blinded by that particular comparison, I've heard you make it two hundred times since this thing blew, and it
doesn't fit!
”

Roger was looking at him, stunned.

“Nixon was a crook, he knew he was a crook, and he said he wasn't a crook. The Sharp Cereal Professor said there was nothing wrong with Red Razberry Zingers and there
was
something wrong, but he didn't know it.” Vic leaned forward and pushed his finger gently against Roger's arm, emphasizing. “There was no breach of faith. He has to say that, Rog. He has to get up in front of the American people and tell them there was no breach of faith. What there was, there was a mistake made by a company which manufactures food dye. The mistake was
not
made by the Sharp Company. He has to say that. And most important of all, he has to say that he's sorry that mistake happened and that, although no one was
hurt,
he's sorry people were frightened.”

Roger nodded, then shrugged. “Yes, I see the thrust of it. But neither the old man or the kid will go for it, Vic. They want to bury the b—”

“Yes, yes,
yes!
” Vic cried, actually making Roger flinch. He jumped to his feet and began to walk jerkily up and down the screening room's short aisle. “Sure they do, and they're right, he's dead and he has to be buried, the Sharp Cereal Professor has to be buried, Zingers has
already
been buried. But the thing we've got to make them see is that it can't be a
midnight
burial. That's the exact point! Their impulse is to go
at this thing like a Mafia button man . . . or a scared relative burying a cholera victim.”

He leaned over Roger, so close that their noses were almost touching.

“Our job is to make them understand that the Cereal Professor will never rest easy unless he's interred in broad daylight. And I'd like to make the whole country mourners at his burial.”

“You're cr—” Roger began . . . then closed his mouth with a snap.

At long last Vic saw that scared, vague expression go out of his partner's eyes. A sudden sharpening happened in Roger's face, and the scared expression was replaced by a slightly mad one. Roger began to grin. Vic was so relieved to see that grin that he forgot about Donna and what had happened with her for the first time since he had gotten Kemp's note. The job took over completely, and it was only later that he would wonder, slightly dumbfounded, how long it had been since he had felt that pure, trippy, wonderful feeling of being fully involved with something he was good at.

“On the surface, we just want him to repeat the things Sharp has been saying since it happened,” Vic went on. “But when the Cereal Professor
himself
says them—”

“It comes full circle,” Roger murmured. He lit another cigarette.

“Sure, right. We can maybe pitch it to the old man as the final scene in the Red Razberry Zingers farce. Coming clean. Getting it behind us—”

“Taking the bitter medicine. Sure, that'd appeal to the old goat. Public penance . . . scourging himself with whips . . .”

“And instead of going out like a dignified guy that took a pratfall in a mudpuddle, everyone laughing at him, he goes out like Douglas MacArthur, saying old soldiers never die, they just fade away. That's the surface of the thing. But underneath, we're looking for a
tone
 . . . a
feeling
. . . .” He was crossing the border into Roger's country now. If he could only delineate the shape of what he meant, the idea that had come to him over coffee at Bentley's, Roger would take it from there.

“MacArthur,” Roger said softly. “But that's it, isn't it? The tone is farewell. The feeling is regret. Give people the feeling
that he's been unjustly treated, but it's too late now. And—” He looked at Vic, almost startled.

“What?”

“Prime time,” Roger said.

“Huh?”

“The spots. We run em in prime time. These ads are for the parents, not the kids. Right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“If we ever get the damned things made.”

Vic grinned. “We'll get them made.” And using one of Roger's terms for good and copy: “It's a tank, Roger. We'll drive it right the fuck over them if we have to. As long as we can get something concrete down before we go to Cleveland. . . .”

They sat and talked it over in the tiny screening room for another hour, and when they left to go back to the hotel, both of them sweaty and exhausted, it was full dark.

•  •  •

“Can we go home now, Mommy?” Tad asked apathetically.

“Pretty soon, honey.”

She looked at the key in the ignition switch. Three other keys on the ring: house key, garage key, and the key that opened the Pinto's hatchback. There was a piece of leather attached to the ring with a mushroom branded on it. She had bought the keyring in Swanson's, a Bridgton department store, back in April. Back in April when she had been so disillusioned and scared, never knowing what real fear was, real fear was trying to crank your kid's window shut while a rabid dog drooled on the back of your hands.

She reached out. She touched the leather tab. She pulled her hand back again.

The truth was this: She was afraid to try.

It was quarter past seven. The day was still bright, although the Pinto's shadow trailed out long, almost to the garage door. Although she did not know it, her husband and his partner were still watching kinescopes of the Sharp Cereal Professor at Image-Eye in Cambridge. She didn't know why no one had answered the SOS she had been beeping out. In a book, someone would have come. It was the heroine's reward for having thought up such a clever idea. But no one had come.

Surely the sound had carried down to the ramshackle house at the foot of the hill. Maybe they were drunk down there. Or maybe the owners of the two cars in the driveway (
dooryard,
her mind corrected automatically,
up here they call it a dooryard
) had both gone off somewhere in a third car. She wished she could see that house from here, but it was out of sight beyond the descending flank of the hill.

Finally she had given the SOS up. She was afraid that if she kept tooting the horn it would drain the Pinto's battery, which had been in since they got the car. She still believed the Pinto would start when the engine was cool enough. It always had before.

But you're afraid to try, because if it doesn't start . . . what then?

She was reaching for the ignition again when the dog stumbled back into view. It had been lying out of sight in front of the Pinto. Now it moved slowly toward the barn, its head down and its tail drooping. It was staggering and weaving like a drunk near the bitter end of a long toot. Without looking back, Cujo slipped into the shadows of the building and disappeared.

She drew her hand away from the key again.

“Mommy? Aren't we going?”

“Let me think, hon,” she said.

She looked to her left, out the driver's side window. Eight running steps would take her to the back door of the Camber house. In high school she had been the star of her high school's girls' track team, and she still jogged regularly. She could beat the dog to the door and inside, she was sure of that. There would be a telephone. One call to Sheriff Bannerman's office and this horror would end. On the other hand, if she tried cranking the engine again, it might not start . . . but it would bring the dog on the run. She knew hardly anything about rabies, but she seemed to remember reading at some time or other that rabid animals were almost supernaturally sensitive to sounds. Loud noises could drive them into a frenzy.

“Mommy?”

“Shhh, Tad. Shhh!”

Eight running steps. Dig it.

Even if Cujo was lurking and watching inside the garage just out of sight, she felt sure—she
knew
—she could win a
footrace to the back door. The telephone, yes. And . . . a man like Joe Camber surely kept a gun. Maybe a whole rack of them. What pleasure it would give her to blow that fucking dog's head to so much oatmeal and strawberry jam!

Eight running steps.

Sure. Dig on it awhile.

And what if that door giving on the porch was locked?

Worth the risk?

Her heart thudded heavily in her breast as she weighed the chances. If she had been alone, that would have been one thing. But suppose the door was locked? She could beat the dog to the door, but not to the door and then back to the car. Not if it came running, not if it charged her as it had done before. And what would Tad do? What if Tad saw his mother being ravaged by a two-hundred-pound mad dog, being ripped and bitten, being pulled open—

No. They were safe here.

Try the engine again!

She reached for the ignition, and part of her mind clamored that it would be safer to wait longer, until the engine was perfectly cool—

Perfectly cool? They had been here three hours or more already.

She grasped the key and turned it.

The engine cranked briefly once, twice, three times—and then caught with a roar.

“Oh, thank God!” she cried.

“Mommy?” Tad asked shrilly. “Are we going? Are we going?”

“We're going,” she said grimly, and threw the transmission into reverse. Cujo lunged out of the barn . . . and then just stood there, watching.
“Fuck you, dog!”
she yelled at it triumphantly.

She touched the gas pedal. The Pinto rolled back perhaps two feet—and stalled.

“No!”
she screamed as the red idiot lights came on again. Cujo had taken another two steps when the engine cut out, but now he only stood there silently, his head down.
Watching
me, the thought occurred again. His shadow trailed out behind him, as clear as a silhouette cut out of black crepe paper.

Donna fumbled for the ignition switch and turned it
from
ON TO START
. The motor began to turn over again, but this time it didn't catch. She could hear a harsh panting sound in her own ears and didn't realize for several seconds that she was making the sound herself—in some vague way she had the idea that it might be the dog. She ground the starter, grimacing horribly, swearing at it, oblivious of Tad, using words she had hardly known she knew. And all the time Cujo stood there, trailing his shadow from his heels like some surreal funeral drape, watching.

At last he lay down in the driveway, as if deciding there was no chance for them to escape. She hated it more then than she had when it had tried to force its way in through Tad's window.

“Mommy . . . Mommy . . . Mommy!”

From far away. Unimportant. What was important now was this goddamned sonofabitching little car. It was going to start. She was going to
make
it start by
pure . . . force . . . of will!