Cujo

Cujo follows the Trenton family. They’re recent transplants from New York City to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine. Father Vic is an ad-man who’s forced to travel to New York for a couple of weeks leaving mother Donna and son Tad at home. Donna’s been having car trouble and Vic urges her to take her car to Joe Camber, a mechanic who lives on the outskirts of town. Donna and Tad make the journey not knowing the Camber family have all departed. Donna and Tad arrive only to have the car die, stranding them on the Camber’s driveway where they’re terrorized by the Camber’s 200lb St. Bernard, Cujo, who’s gone rabid.

I first read Cujo when I was thirteen or fourteen. I went in expecting some kind of possessed demon-dog and when Cujo turned out to just be rabid, I felt let down. Reading it now, I can see that in keeping it grounded with a real monster King could delivery a real ending, his best one so far.

Not that King doesn’t intone that there are supernatural goings-on. The only plot King has to worry about is getting Donna and Tad to the Camber’s, but this involves a series of compounding circumstances. We accept them because in King’s hands Castle Rock itself becomes a central character, one with, lets say, an “inclination” toward evil. If one were to look at the infant mortality rate across Maine, one would suspect it would be a point or so higher in Castle Rock. The kind of thing most would dismiss as part of the margin for error in the sampling, but we know better. King makes it clear that Cujo isn’t a bad dog, just one unfortunate enough to catch rabies because, well, that’s what Castle Rock does to good things.

Vic is a successful advertising executive and family man facing the collapse of his firm and marriage. Donna is a doting mother carrying on an affair with the local tennis pro. Joe Camber is an honest mechanic but a mean drunk well on his way to being an alcoholic. Charity is Joe’s dutiful wife who dreams of running away. Free from plot, King dives deep into the hidden side of bucolic small-town life.

It’s a great meditation on the horrors of aging and parenthood and all the things that I couldn’t hope to relate to in the eighth grade. And did I mention that none of the characters are writers?