Needful Things (5 page)

“How much . . . how much would you sell something like that for?” Brian asked. He pointed toward the splinter with a finger which was not quite steady. He was only now beginning to realize how deeply the experience had affected him. It had been like holding a conch shell to your ear and hearing the sound of the ocean . . . only in 3-D and Sensurround. He dearly wished Mr. Gaunt would let him hold it again, perhaps even a little longer, but he didn't know how to ask and Mr. Gaunt did not offer.

“Oh now,” Mr. Gaunt said, steepling his fingers below his chin and looking at Brian roguishly. “With an item like that—and with most of the
good
things I sell, the really
interesting
things—that would depend on the buyer. What the
buyer
would be willing to pay. What would
you
be willing to pay, Brian?”

“I don't know,” Brian said, thinking of the ninety-one cents in his pocket, and then gulped: “A
lot!
”

Mr. Gaunt threw back his head and laughed heartily. Brian noticed when he did that he'd made a mistake about the man. When he first came in, he had thought Mr. Gaunt's hair was gray. Now he saw that it was only silver at the temples. He must have been standing in one of the spotlights, Brian thought.

“Well, this has been terribly interesting, Brian, but I really
do
have a lot of work ahead of me before ten tomorrow, and so—”

“Sure,” Brian said, startled back into a consideration of good manners. “I have to go, too. Sorry to have kept you so long—”

“No, no, no! You misunderstand me!” Mr. Gaunt laid one of his long hands on Brian's arm. Brian pulled his arm away. He hoped the gesture didn't seem impolite, but he couldn't help it even if it did. Mr. Gaunt's hand was hard and dry and somehow unpleasant. It did not feel that different, in fact, from the chunk of petrified wood that was supposed to be from Nora's Ark, or whatever it was. But Mr. Gaunt was too much in earnest to notice Brian's instinctive shrinking away. He acted as if he, not Brian, had committed a breach of etiquette. “I just thought we should get down to business. There's no sense, really, in your looking at the few other things I've managed to unpack; there aren't very many of them, and you've seen the most interesting of those which
are
out. Yet I have a pretty good knowledge of my own stock, even without an inventory sheet in my hand, and I might have something that you'd fancy, Brian. What
would
you fancy?”

“Jeepers,” Brian said. There were a
thousand
things he would fancy, and that was part of the problem—when the question was put as baldly as that, he couldn't say just which of the thousand he would fancy the most.

“It's best not to think too deeply about these things,” Mr. Gaunt said. He spoke idly, but there was nothing idle about his eyes, which were studying Brian's face closely. “When I say, ‘Brian Rusk, what do you want more than anything else in the world at this moment?' what is your response? Quick!”

“Sandy Koufax,” Brian responded promptly. He had not
been aware that his palm was open to receive the splinter from Noah's Ark until he had seen it resting there, and he hadn't been aware of what he was going to say in response to Mr. Gaunt's question until he heard the words tumbling from his mouth. But the moment he heard them he knew they were exactly and completely right.

“Sandy Koufax,” Mr. Gaunt said thoughtfully. “How interesting.”

“Well, not Sandy Koufax
himself”
Brian said, “but his baseball card.”

“Topps or Fleers?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

Brian hadn't believed the afternoon could get any better, but suddenly it had. Mr. Gaunt knew about baseball cards as well as splinters and geodes. It was amazing, really amazing.

“Topps.”

“I suppose it's his rookie card you'd be interested in,” Mr. Gaunt said regretfully. “I don't think I could help you there, but—”

“No,” Brian said. “Not 1954. That's the one I'd like to have. I've got a collection of 1956 baseball cards. My dad got me going on it. It's fun, and there are only a few of them that are really expensive—Al Kaline, Mel Parnell, Roy Campanella, guys like that. I've got over fifty already. Including Al Kaline. He was thirty-eight bucks. I mowed a lot of lawns to get Al.”

“I bet you did,” Mr. Gaunt said with a smile.

“Well, like I say, most '56 cards aren't really expensive—they cost five dollars, seven dollars, sometimes ten. But a Sandy Koufax in good condition costs ninety or even a hundred bucks. He wasn't a big star
that
year, but of course he turned out to be great, and that was when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. Everybody called them Da Bums back then. That's what my dad says, at least.”

“Your dad is two hundred per cent correct,” said Mr. Gaunt. “I believe I have something that's going to make you very happy, Brian. Wait right here.”

He brushed back through the curtained doorway and left Brian standing by the case with the splinter and the Polaroid and the picture of The King in it. Brian was almost dancing from one foot to the other in hope and anticipation. He told himself to stop being such a wuss; even if Mr. Gaunt
did
have a Sandy Koufax card, and even if it
was
a Topps card from the fifties, it would probably turn out to be a '55 or a '57. And suppose it really was a '56? What good was that going to do him, with less than a buck in his pocket?

Well, I can look at it, can't I? Brian thought. It doesn't cost anything to
look,
does it? This was also another of his mother's favorite sayings.

From the room behind the curtain there came the sounds of boxes being shifted and mild thuds as they were set on the floor. “Just a minute, Brian,” Mr. Gaunt called. He sounded a little out of breath. “I'm sure there's a shoebox here someplace . . .”

“Don't go to any trouble on my account, Mr. Gaunt!” Brian called back, hoping like mad that Mr. Gaunt would go to as much trouble as was necessary.

“Maybe that box is in one of the shipments still en route,” Mr. Gaunt said dubiously.

Brian's heart sank.

Then: “But I was sure . . . wait! Here it is! Right here!”

Brian's heart rose—did more than rise. It soared and did a backover flip.

Mr. Gaunt came back through the curtain. His hair was a trifle disarrayed, and there was a smudge of dust on one lapel of his smoking jacket. In his hands he held a box which had once contained a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. He set it on the counter and took off the top. Brian stood by his left arm, looking in. The box was full of baseball cards, each inserted in its own plastic envelope, just like the ones Brian sometimes bought at The Baseball Card Shop in North Conway, New Hampshire.

“I thought there might be an inventory sheet in here, but no such luck,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Still, I have a pretty good idea of what I have in stock, as I told you—it's the key to running a business where you sell a little bit of everything—and I'm quite sure I saw . . .”

He trailed off and began flipping rapidly through the cards.

Brian watched the cards flash by, speechless with astonishment. The guy who ran The Baseball Card Shop had what his dad called “a pretty country-fair” selection of old cards, but the contents of the whole store couldn't hold a candle to the treasures tucked away in this one sneaker box. There were chewing-tobacco cards with pictures of Ty Cobb and Pie Traynor on them. There were cigarette cards with pictures of Babe Ruth and Dom DiMaggio and Big George Keller and even Hiram Dissen, the one-armed pitcher who had chucked for the White Sox during the forties.
LUCKY STRIKE HAS GONE TO WAR!
many of the cigarette cards proclaimed. And there, just glimpsed, a broad, solemn face above a Pittsburgh uniform shirt—

“My God, wasn't that Honus Wagner?” Brian gasped. His heart felt like a very small bird which had blundered into his throat and now fluttered there, trapped. “That's the rarest baseball card in the
universe!”

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Gaunt said absently. His long fingers shuttled speedily through the cards, faces from another age trapped under transparent plastic coverings, men who had whacked the pill and chucked the apple and covered the anchors, heroes of a grand and bygone golden age, an age of which this boy still harbored cheerful and lively dreams. “A little of everything, that's what a successful business is all about, Brian. Diversity, pleasure, amazement, fulfillment . . . what a successful
life
is all about, for that matter . . . I don't give advice, but if I did, you could do worse than to remember that . . . now let me see . . . somewhere . . . somewhere . . .
ah!
”

He pulled a card from the middle of the box like a magician doing a trick and placed it triumphantly in Brian's hand.

It was Sandy Koufax.

It was a '56 Topps card.

And it was
signed.

“To my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax,” Brian read in a hoarse whisper.

And then found he could say nothing at all.

He looked up at Mr. Gaunt, his mouth working. Mr. Gaunt smiled. “I didn't plant it or plan it, Brian. It's just a coincidence . . . but a
nice
sort of coincidence, don't you think?”

Brian still couldn't talk, and so settled for a single nod of his head. The plastic envelope with its precious cargo felt weirdly heavy in his hand.

“Take it out,” Mr. Gaunt invited.

When Brian's voice finally emerged from his mouth again, it was the croak of a very old invalid. “I don't dare.”

“Well,
I
do,” Mr. Gaunt said. He took the envelope from Brian, reached inside with the carefully manicured nail of one finger, and slid the card out. He put it in Brian's hand.

He could see tiny dents in the surface—they had been made by the point of the pen Sandy Koufax had used to sign his name . . .
their
names. Koufax's signature was almost the same as the printed one, except the printed signature said Sanford Koufax and the autograph said
Sandy
Koufax. Also, it was a thousand times better because it was
real.
Sandy Koufax had held this card in his hand and had imposed his mark upon it, the mark of his living hand and magic name.

But there was
another
name on it, as well—Brian's own. Some boy with his name had been standing by the Ebbets Field bullpen before the game and Sandy Koufax,
the real Sandy Koufax,
young and strong, his glory years just ahead of him, had taken the offered card, probably still smelling of sweet pink bubblegum, and had set his mark upon it . . .
and mine, too,
Brian thought.

Suddenly it came again, the feeling which had swept over him when he held the splinter of petrified wood. Only this time it was much, much stronger.

Smell of grass, sweet and fresh-cut.

Heavy smack of ash on horsehide.

Yells and laughter from the batting cage.

“Hello, Mr. Koufax, could you sign your card for me?”

A narrow face. Brown eyes. Darkish hair. The cap
comes off briefly, he scratches his head just above the hairline, then puts the cap back on.

“Sure, kid.” He takes the card. “What's your name?”

“Brian, sir—Brian Seguin.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch on the card. The magic: the inscribed fire.

“You want to be a ballplayer when you grow up, Brian?” The question has the feel of rote recital, and he speaks without raising his face from the card he holds in his large right hand so he can write on it with his soon-to-be-magic left hand.

“Yes, sir.”

“Practice your fundamentals.” And hands the card back.

“Yes, sir!”

But he's already walking away, then he's breaking into a lazy run on the fresh-cut grass as he jogs toward the bullpen with his shadow jogging along beside him—

“Brian?
Brian?”

Long fingers were snapping under his nose—Mr. Gaunt's fingers. Brian came out of his daze and saw Mr. Gaunt looking at him, amused.

“Are you there, Brian?”

“Sorry,” Brian said, and blushed. He knew he should hand the card back, hand it back and get out of here, but he couldn't seem to let it go. Mr. Gaunt was staring into his eyes—right into his
head,
it seemed—again, and once more he found it impossible to look away.

“So,” Mr. Gaunt said softly. “Let us say, Brian, that
you
are the buyer. Let us say that. How much would you pay for that card?”

Brian felt despair like a rockslide weight his heart.

“All I've got is—”

Mr. Gaunt's left hand flew up. “Shhh!” he said sternly. “Bite your tongue! The buyer must never tell the seller how much he has! You might as well hand the vendor your wallet, and turn the contents of your pockets out on the floor in the bargain! If you can't tell a lie, then be still! It's the first rule of fair trade, Brian my boy.”

His eyes—so large and dark. Brian felt that he was swimming in them.

“There are two prices for this card, Brian. Half . . .

and half. One half is cash. The other is a deed. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Brian said. He felt
far
again—far away from Castle Rock, far away from Needful Things, even far away from himself. The only things which were real in this far place were Mr. Gaunt's wide, dark eyes.

“The cash price for that 1956 autographed Sandy Koufax card is eighty-five cents,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Does that seem fair?”