George Dusset

George Dusset runs the Florida Market, a small grocery store on the road leading to the Castle Rock Dump. He is a large man with a hammy hand, a huge beer belly rounding his white tee-shirt like a sail filled with a good wind, and a toothpick that journeys from one corner of his mouth to the other as if on ball bearings. When Gordon Lachance enters the store on a Friday afternoon in late August 1960 to buy supplies for his friends' hike, Dusset immediately recognizes him as Denny Lachance's brother and begins a nostalgic monologue about the dead older boy's athletic glory, his eyes misty with memory, the toothpick trembling between his lips.

The Attempted Cheat

While reminiscing about Denny's All-Conference halfback days, Dusset keeps his thumb pressed firmly on the white enamel of the scales as he weighs the hamburger, adding six ounces of phantom weight to the order. Gordon notices the trick because he has moved away from the counter a little when Dusset started talking about Dennis. When Gordon points out the thumb, Dusset looks down astounded, signs a cross on himself, and pats a little more meat on top before doing up the package in white butcher's paper. He then adds up the bill on the bag — three pounds of hamburg for a dollar forty-four, hamburg rolls for twenty-seven, four sodas for forty cents, and a churchkey for two pence — and announces a total of two-twenty-nine. Gordon corrects him: the actual sum is two-thirteen. Dusset had overcharged by sixteen cents on top of the scale cheat.

The Confrontation

Gordon slaps two dollars and thirteen cents down on the Schlitz placemat in front of Dusset and tells him he was going to throw some Hostess Twinkies on top of the order but now he guesses he won't. Dusset's frown becomes tremendous, the lines on his face as deep as fissures. He asks Gordon in a low, ominously confidential voice if he is some kind of smartass. Gordon replies that Dusset is not going to jap him and get away with it, and asks what Dusset's mother would say if she knew he was japping little kids. Dusset thrusts the groceries into a paper bag with quick stiff movements, making the Coke bottles clink together, and shoves the bag at Gordon roughly, not caring if he drops it and breaks the sodas. His swarthy face is flushed and dull, the frown frozen in place. He tells Gordon to get the Christ out of his store and that if he sees him in there again he will throw him out.

The Aftermath

Gordon walks to the screen door and pushes it open, then tells Dusset that he won't come in again and neither will any of his fifty or so friends. Dusset yells after him that his brother wasn't no smartass. Gordon yells "Fuck you!" and runs like hell down the road. He hears the screen door bang open like a gunshot and Dusset's bull roar coming after him, threatening to fat his lip if he ever comes in again. Gordon runs until he is over the first hill, scared and laughing to himself, his heart beating a triphammer pulse in his chest, then slows to a fast walk, looking back over his shoulder to make sure Dusset is not taking after him in his car. The incident leaves Gordon shaken but defiant, and it contributes to the gloomy silence that falls over the four boys as they continue their hike, thinking that maybe there is something to that stupid goocher business after all.

Narrative Role and Significance

George Dusset functions as a representative of the adult world's casual dishonesty and the way small-town commerce preys on children. His attempt to cheat Gordon is motivated not by need but by a lazy assumption of superiority, and his invocation of Denny's memory as a cover for the cheat reveals how the dead brother's legacy is used to manipulate Gordon. The confrontation is one of the first moments in the story where Gordon asserts himself against an adult, and it foreshadows the larger confrontations to come — with Milo Pressman, with Ace Merrill's gang, and with the adult world's indifference. Dusset's threat to fat Gordon's lip and his dismissal of Gordon as a smartass echo the town's broader contempt for boys who step out of line. The incident also deepens the theme of economic marginalization: the four boys pool their money — two dollars and thirty-seven cents — and Dusset's attempted cheat would have cost them a significant portion of their combined funds. Gordon's refusal to be cheated is a small act of resistance that prefigures the larger defiance he and Chris will show when they stand up to Ace Merrill over the body of Ray Brower.