I believe I'll have a bite to eat. I'd ask you to Join me, butWell, it was just something else that didn't matter. The Chevy was here now, and that was all that did. Ace opened the door, put the book with the precious map inside it on the seat, then pulled the keys out of the ignition. He went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He had a good idea of what he would find, and he wasn't disappointed. A pick and a short-handled spade were neatly crossed over each other in an X. Ace looked more closely and saw Mr. Gaunt had even put in a pair of heavy work gloves.
"Mr. Gaunt, you think of everything," he said, and slammed the trunk. As he did, he saw there was a sticker on the Celebrity's rear bumper, and he bent closer to read it:
I V ANTIQUES
Ace began to laugh. He was still laughing as he drove across the Tin Bridge and headed toward the old Treblehorn place, which he intended to make the site of his first dig. As he drove up Panderly's Hill on the other side of the bridge, he passed a convertible headed in the other direction, toward town. The convertible was filled with young men. They were singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" at the top of their voices, and in perfect one-part Baptist harmony.
9
One of those young men was Lester Ivanhoe Pratt. Following the touch-football game, he and a bunch of the guys had driven up to Lake Auburn, about twenty-five miles away. There was a week-long tent revival going on up there, and Vic Tremayne had said there would be a special five o'clock Columbus Day prayer-meeting and hymn-sing. Since Sally had Lester's car and they'd made no plans for the evening-no movie, no dinner out at McDonald's in South Paris-he'd gone along with Vic and the other guys, good Christian fellows every one.
He knew, of course, why the other guys were so eager to make the trip, and the reason wasn't religion-not entirely religion, anyway.
There were always lots of pretty girls at the tent revivals which crisscrossed northern New England between May and the last state fair ox-pull at the end of October, and a good hymn-sing (not to mention a mess of hot preaching and a dose of that oldtime Jesus spirit) always put them in a merry, eager mood.
Lester, who had a girl, looked upon the plans and schemes of his friends with the indulgence an old married man might show for the antics of a bunch of young bucks. He went along mostly to be friendly, and because he always liked to listen to some good preaching and do some singing after an exhilarating afternoon of headknocking and body-blocking. It was the best way of cooling down he knew.
It had been a good meeting, but an awful lot of people had wanted to be saved at the end of it. As a result, it had gone on a little longer than Lester would have wished. He had been planning to call Sally and ask her if she wanted to go out to Weeksie's for an ice-cream soda or something. Girls liked to do things like that on the spur of the moment sometimes, he had noticed.
They crossed the Tin Bridge, and Vic let him out on the corner of Main and Watermill.
"Great game, Les!" Bill MacFarland called from the back seat.
"Sure was!" Lester called back cheerily. "Let's do it again Saturday-maybe I can break your arm instead of just spraining it!"
The four young men in Vic's car roared heartily at this piece of wit and then Vic drove away. The sound of "Jesus Is a Friend Forever" drifted back on air which was still strangely summery.
You expected a chill to creep into it even during the warmest spells of Indian summer weather after the sun went down. Not tonight, though.
Lester walked slowly up the hill toward home, feeling tired and sore and utterly contented. Every day was a fine day when you'd given your heart to Jesus, but some days were finer than others.
This had been one of the finest kind, and all he wanted right now was to shower up, call Sally, and then jump into bed.
He was looking up at the stars, trying to make out the constellation Orion, when he turned into his driveway. As a result he ran balls-first, and at a brisk walking pace, into the rear end of his Mustang.
"Oooof!" Lester Pratt cried. He backed up, bent over, and clasped his wounded testicles. After a few moments, he managed to raise his head and look at his car through eyes which were watering with pain. What the heck was his car doing here, anyway? Sally's Honda wasn't supposed to be out of the shop until at least Wednesdayprobably Thursday or Friday, with the holiday and all.
Then, in a burst of bright pink-orange light, it came to him.
Sally was inside! She had come over while he was out, and now she was waiting for him! Maybe she had decided that tonight was the night!
Premarital sex was wrong, of course, but sometimes you had to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette. And he was certainly up to the task of atoning for that particular sin if she was.
"Rooty-toot-toot!" cried Lester Pratt enthusiastically. "Sweet little Sally in her birthday suit!"
He ran for the porch in a crabby little strut, still clutching his throbbing balls. Now, however, they were throbbing with anticipation as well as pain.
He took the key from beneath the doormat and let himself in.
"Sally?" he called. "Sal, are you here? Sorry I'm late-I went over to the Lake Auburn revival meeting with some of the guys, and..." He trailed off. There was no response, and that meant she wasn't here, after all. Unless...!
He hurried upstairs as fast as he could, suddenly sure he would find her asleep in his bed. She would open her eyes and sit up, the sheet falling away from her lovely br**sts (which he had felt-well, sort of-but never actually seen); she would hold her arms out to him, those lovely, sleepy, cornflower-blue eyes opening wide, and by the time the clock struck ten, they would be virgins no longer.
Rooty-toot!
But the bedroom was as empty as the kitchen and living room had been. The sheets and blankets were on the floor, as they almost always were; Lester was one of those fellows so full of energy and the holy spirit that he could not simply sit up and get out of bed in the morning; he bounded up, eager not just to meet the day but to blitz it, knock it to the greensward, and force it to cough up the ball.
Now, however, he walked downstairs with a frown creasing his wide, ingenuous face. The car was here, but Sally wasn't. What did that mean? He didn't know, but he didn't much like it.
He flipped on the porch light and went out to look in the car; maybe she had left him a note. He got as far as the head of the porch steps, then froze. There was a note, all right. It had been written across the Mustang's windshield in hot-pink spray-paint, probably from his own garage. The big capital letters glared at him:
GO TO HELL YOU CHEATING BASTARD
Lester stood on the top porch step for a long time, reading this message from his fiancee over and over and over again. The prayermeeting? Was that it? Did she think he'd gone over to the prayermeeting in Lake Auburn to meet some floozy? In his distress, it was the only idea that made any sense to him at all.
He went inside and called Sally's house. He let the phone ring two dozen times, but no one answered.
Sally knew he would call, and so she had asked Irene Lutjens if she could spend the night at Irene's place. Irene, all but bursting with curiosity, said yes, sure, of course. Sally was so distressed about something that she hardly looked pretty at all. Irene could hardly believe it, but it was true.
For her own part, Sally had no intention of telling Irene or anyone else what had happened. It was too awful, too shameful.
She would carry it with her to the grave. So she refused to answer Irene's questions for over half an hour. Then the whole story came pouring out of her in a hot flood of tears. Irene held her and listened, her eyes growing big and round.
"That's all right," Irene crooned, rocking Sally in her arms.
"That's all right, Sally-Jesus loves you, even if that son of a bitch doesn't. So do 1. So does Reverend Rose. And you certainly gave the musclebound creep something to remember you by, didn't you?"
Sally nodded, sniffling, and the other girl stroked her hair and made soothing sounds. Irene could hardly wait until tomorrow, when she could start calling her other girlfriends. They wouldn't believe it!
Irene felt sorry for Sally, she really did, but she was also sort of glad this had happened. Sally was so pretty, and Sally was so darned holy. It was sort of nice to see her crash and burn, just this once.
And Lester's the best-looking guy in church. If he and Sally really do break up, I wonder if he might not ask me out? He looks at me sometimes like he's wondering what kind of underwear I've got on, so
I guess it's not impossible...
"I feel so horrible!" Sally wept. "So d-d-dirty!"
"Of course you do," Irene said, continuing to rock her and stroke her hair. "You don't still have the letter and that picture, do you?"
"I b-b-burned them!" Sally cried loudly against Irene's damp bosom, and then a fresh storm of grief and loss carried her away.
"Of course you did," Irene murmured. "It's just what you should have done." Still, she thought, you could have waited until I had at least one look, you wimpy thing.
Sally spent the night in Irene's guest-room, but she hardly slept at all. Her weeping passed eventually, and she spent most of that rug ' lit staring dry-eyed into the dark, gripped by those dark and bitterly satisfying fantasies of revenge which only a jilted and previously complacent lover can fully entertain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
Mr. Gaunt's first "by appointment only" customer arrived promptly at eight o'clock on Tuesday morning. This was Lucille Dunham, one of the waitresses at Nan's Luncheonette. Lucille had been struck by a deep, hopeless aching at the sight of the black pearls in one of the display cases of Needful Things. She knew she could never hope to buy such an expensive item, never in a million years. Not on the salary that skinflint Nan Roberts paid her. All the same, when Mr. Gaunt suggested that they talk about it without half the town leaning over their shoulders (so to speak), Lucille had leaped at the offer the way a hungry fish might leap at a sparkling lure.