by Rocky Wood
When the gang cornered Clarke at his cabin in the hills they were surprised by his 17 year old girlfriend (“soaring on meth and clutching a little .22 in one hand”). Wearing a sweatshirt that read Corman High Varsity135, she opened fire but Roy Klowes immediately cut her down with his machete, then “it was all sliding down the red hole, away from reality and into the territory of a bad dream.” As Clarke fled Race had killed him with one blow of a shovel. The money was gone but Race suspected Clarke might have left some with his sister, a prostitute in Show Low. While stopped at a truck stop after leaving the cabin Race and Vince discussed the killing, argued about whether to pay the sister a visit, or to return to Vegas. In anger, Race threw a glass whisky flask that smashed against the parked oil tanker they’d be standing next to during their discussion. “Vince would’ve laughed if not for what he saw next. / The trucker was sitting in the cab. His hand hung out the driver’s side window … Midway up his forearm was a faded tattoo, Death Before Dishonor, which made him a vet ..” Of course, this is the set up for the King/Hill riff on Duel. Vince expects trouble, and is concerned about what the man might have overheard, but the vet (Laughlin, according to the name stenciled on the side of the tanker) simply started up the semi and drove off, as Vince and his men headed for the diner – “It was almost an hour before he saw the truck again.”
Some members of the gang considered splitting to avoid getting caught up in the aftermath of the murders, even Vince’s closest sidekick, Lemmy wondered if he might go and see Lon Refus out in Denver, for instance.
“The truck with LAUGHLIN on the side was laboring uphill when they caught up to it around three in the afternoon.” So the fun began. As the bikes passed the truck Vince “cast a look up toward the driver on their way by, but could see nothing except that dark hand hanging out against the door,” another direct reference to the trucker in Duel, who viewers and the car driver he pursues (played by Dennis Weaver) never see.
In classic King style some of Vince and Race’s background is revealed when Race challenged Vince’s leadership of the group as they stop at crossroads to decide whether to drive onto Show Low via a narrow two-lane road, or through 20 miles of road works. The father-son relationship had slowly broken over the years – Vince remembered telling a ten year old Race, “You know just because I’m your father doesn’t mean I got to like you.” He wonders, “if he had known some other way to talk to Race, there would’ve been no Fallujah and no dishonorable discharge for ditching his squad, taking off in a Humvee while mortars fell; there would’ve been no Dean Clarke and no meth lab …” The group decided to drive toward Show Low, and the truck followed.
The road turns out to be a virtual trap for vehicles due to its narrow confines – “To the left was a battered guardrail, and to the right was an almost sheer face of rock.” Suddenly, the truck accelerated and slammed through the rear three back bikes of the formation (King and Hill’s description is at once gruesome, beautiful and, in the case of Vietnam Vet “Doc,” elegiac). “Vince looked back again and saw the remnants of the The Tribe coming around the bend. Just seven now. The truck howled after …”
Two more riders were run down and the truck seemed to almost supernaturally work its way through the carnage while actually speeding up, “Vince knew Macks were fast – the new ones had a 485 power-plant under the hood – but this thing … / Supercharged? Could you supercharge a goddam semi?” Vince desperately tried to think of a plan – he knew the road well but had not been there for some years and knew that, for the moment at least, they were trapped in a virtual canyon – with the monster truck bearing down.
They flew past a sign marking the “played-out little mining town on the side of a hill” – Cumba, two miles ahead. As they reached the access road Vince used Morse code with his brake-light and signaled his crew to stay on the main road when the truck would expect them to exit, but Race apparently did not understand Morse, or had not seen the signal, and he swept onto Cumba’s access road, with the truck in hot pursuit – and miles of dangerous hardpan dirt road ahead before Vince and his two remaining compatriots could rejoin the chase. The four men stopped to discuss the situation but Roy Klowes (the murderer of Clarke’s girlfriend) simply turned tail and fled back East – leaving Vince with only his long-time tail man, Lemmy and another survivor, “Peaches.”
Lemmy dragged out a weapon – “The Tribe did not ride with guns. Outlaw motorheads like them never did. They all had records, and any cop in Nevada would be delighted to put one of them away for thirty years on a gun charge.” The weapon was “Little Boy,” an M84 stun grenade, which conveniently looked nothing like one, so that if searched most cops would have no idea what they were looking at. The three bikers shot off down the access road, hoping to beat the truck, and Race; and then use the grenade to save Vince’s son, or at least take revenge for their losses. Vince was desperately hoping the trucker still had his cab window open, and that that Little Boy might still work after five years in Lemmy’s saddlebag.
Vince raced ahead even as Peaches fell back after the head-gasket on his bike blew, considering his son and the others already lost:
those bodies back there had, until this afternoon, been his running buddies, the only thing he had of value in the world. They had been Vince’s brothers in a way, and Race was his son, and you couldn’t drive a man’s family to earth and expect to live. You couldn’t leave them butchered and expect to ride away. If LAUGHLIN didn’t know that, he would. / Soon.
To Vince’s relief, when he and Lemmy reached the place where the two roads again merged, they could hear two approaching engines – for the moment at least Race was still alive. Vince began to roll, trying to determine the right speed of approach, in the hope his attack might succeed. As he came up from behind the tanker, he contemplated the apparent madness of the trucker’s actions and, on “the truck’s ass-end just ahead on his right, he saw something that seemed not only to sum up this terrible day, but to explain it, in simple, perfectly lucid terms. It was a bumper sticker … / PROUD PARENT OF A CORMAN HIGH HONOR ROLL STUDENT!” (Remember, Clarke’s girlfriend had been wearing a Corman High sweatshirt).
Vince is able to get his shot away, lobbing the grenade through the cab window just as the trucker was about to swat him into oblivion. The grenade went off and the truck veered away, crashing through the guardrail and over a twenty foot embankment, the tanker going up in a fireball and the cab rolling past it, stopping “with the driver’s window up to sky.” Vince “saw the figure that tried to pull itself through the misshapen window. The face turned toward him, except there was no face, only a mask of blood.” Then the body collapsed back inside the wreck. Race roared up in triumph and hugged Vince in celebration, actually calling him “Dad.” Vince allowed this for a second before pushing his son away demanding, “What was her name?” After arguing Race allowed he knew Clarke’s girlfriend’s name, as Vince speculated the trucker must have overheard their conversation about the killings back in the parking lot (“Laughlin had settled on death before dishonor.”) Meanwhile, Lemmy checked the cab, finding Laughlin dead and a snapshot of the very girl Klowes had chopped to pieces with his machete, sealing Vince’s argument. Even now Race simply did not care – “Her name was Jackie Laughlin … And she’s dead, too, so fuck her.’
Then Vince made his final choice – telling his son, “Ride on, son … Keep the shiny side up.” He explained he intended to tell the police everything and Race’s only chance was to hightail it. As Race rode away, he and Lemmy sat by the road, waiting for the State Police to arrive.
In the King tradition this is ultimately a tale of morality. Outside normal society he may be, but Vince does have values and respects the honorable choice Laughlin made to avenge his daughter. He finally sees through his son’s lack of humanity. The juxtaposition of Vince’s thought that “you couldn’t drive a man’s family to earth and expect to live. You couldn’t leave them butchered and expect to ride away. If LAUGHLIN didn’t know that, he would,”
with the reality of Laughlin’s response to what he’d learned is worth the price of admission in itself.
This is one of the better short tales in King’s canon (or, in this case, the King and Hill canon) so it is to be hoped it will receive wider circulation through inclusion in a forthcoming collection from either of these two important writers.
134 This harrowing 1971 TV movie, directed by Stephen Spielberg, is credited with bringing the great director to mainstream attention
135 An almost certain homage to Roger Corman, ‘King of the B-Movies’, whose horror movies of the 1960s inspired a young Stephen King
Untitled (The Huffman Story) (1970s)
This story was first “rediscovered” by Rocky Wood, in King’s papers at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono. During research for The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King he spent 17 days in November 2002 going through each page of every box in King’s papers at the Library. This was one of the ten stories rediscovered and announced to the world in early 2003. While the story is untitled in King’s manuscript it has been given the sub-title, The Huffman Story for ease of reference.
The part manuscript for this story is held in Box 2702 at Fogler and is incomplete. Although the pages are numbered to 72, there are in fact only 71 pages. There is no page 20 but it is not missing, as the text is continuous.
The tone and events of the story are hauntingly reminiscent of the Castle Rock murders in King’s classic, The Dead Zone and it may be this that caused King to abandon the story. If this is the case, it is a real shame, as the story is very King in tone. Well laid out, it is just reaching an interesting turning point when the manuscript ends. It is a typical King tale in which we become deeply engrossed in the people, history and ambience (good and bad) of small town Maine within a few short pages. The characters leap off the page and the town itself seems fully realized as we rush forward with the storyline.
There would appear to be little hope that King would pick up this story and complete it. It is also unclear when the story was written, although it may have been about the time of The Dead Zone and may actually be an attempt at one part of that work. King often sets his stories in timelines close to that in which he is writing and, as this story is set in early 1976, it may well have been written in the years around 1975 (The Dead Zone was written in 1976 and 1977, the last Castle Rock killing in it occurred in December 1975 and it was published in 1979).
At the time of writing The Huffman Story is held in a public access box at the Fogler Library, meaning that readers who visit UMO can actually read these 71 pages.
In the story we read that on a Friday in mid to late January Tansy Dolgun arrives at her mother’s shop, Pretty Penny in Huffman, Maine. A man on a park bench offers five year old Frances Tho candy. Later, Louise Bouchard, Frances’ adoptive mother, reports her missing. Louise had been baby-sitting Sandy McCracken’s daughter, Loretta, at the time of the disappearance. Bill Ouelette, a Huffman police officer finds Tho’s body in a pond on the Town Green.
The Bouchards are given the bad news and Bob Bouchard faints. The town doctor, George Peters is called in. The County Medical Examiner is called to the murder scene and reports that Frances Tho had been stabbed and raped post mortem. The press arrives but Huffman Police Chief Andy Stone avoids them.
Harry Deems from the office of the Maine Attorney-General begins his investigation into the killing. We learn the history of the Thatcher family, headed by Morton, Senior, a local car dealer. Morton Thatcher, Junior determines to make a simple-minded town boy, “Crazy Joe” (Joe Drogan) confess to Tho’s murder. He and a friend beat Joe and leave him by the roadside suffering an epileptic seizure and with a broken nose, three cracked ribs and a mild concussion.
Bill Ouelette reminds Chief Stone Tho’s killer had left no tracks. Elizabeth Drogan, Joe’s mother and the local newspaper owner, reports the assault on Joe to the police. George Peters asks Janet Dolgun to dinner. We learn Elizabeth Drogan’s history as something of a crusader and of her fear of telling Chief Stone what Joe had told her of being forced to “confess.”
Elizabeth Drogan editorialises in the Huffman Gazette-Intelligencer. She offers rewards of $5000 in relation to the assault on Joe and $25,000 in relation to Tho’s murder. We learn the sordid Chasswick family history. Tho’s killer lures five-year-old Michael Chasswick into the woods behind his parent’s house.
Unfortunately the story ends at this point. This is a Maine Street Horror – Huffman is in Maine and actually appears to be located in the same county as Castle Rock (interestingly, King never mentions Huffman in any other story)! This can be deduced from the fact that the med van boys were told to take Frances Tho’s body to Castle Rock, combined with the fact that the body then fell under the control of the County Medical Examiner. (See the feature panel for a summary of the information King provides about Huffman in the story).
The story is set from mid-January to early February 1976, which is in the immediate aftermath of the end of Frank Dodd’s reign as the Castle Rock killer. Considering that a number of sex offenders from the Western Maine area are mentioned in the story it may seem strange that Dodd is not mentioned, even if only in passing. Of course this anomaly would be explained if The Huffman Story is an indeed an earlier attempt at part of The Dead Zone.
We know the killer is male, although he mysteriously left no tracks at Frances Tho’s murder scene. He used comic books to lure Michael Chasswick to what we fear will be his death and also dropped a clue, the wrapper from the Tootsie Roll with which he lured Tho. Local school kids immediately nicknamed him “The Slasher.” We can also presume the killer was a Huffman local as he knew the Chasswick’s vicious dog by its name, Bopper.
Frances Tho was a five year old Vietnamese girl, adopted by Bob and Louise Bouchard as a sister for their natural children, eight year old Marilys (who was so traumatized by her sister’s death that she attempted suicide with sleeping pills) and Rob. Poor Frances was stabbed as she attempted to cross the Town Green and raped post-mortem.
Confusingly, two major characters have similar surnames – Elizabeth Pillsbury Drogan (Pillsbury was King’s mother’s maiden name) and Janet Dolgun. Drogan was the richest person in Huffman, a power in the town, the owner of the local newspaper and a crusader on various issues, including development and the environment. Her son, Joseph, a small and constantly smiling boy was known as “Crazy Joe.” Severely retarded and epileptic, he was viciously beaten by Morton Thatcher, Junior and his sidekick, Richie Evans in their attempt to make him “confess” to the Tho murder.
Janet Dolgun, a widow who it seems may form an attachment with Dr. George Peters was also the mother of Tansy Dolgun, another 5 year old. Reading the story one cannot help but feel Tansy may become another victim (attempted, at least) of the killer. One also senses the prototype of Polly Chalmers (Needful Things) in Janet Dolgun. Peters was a shy 29 year old, addicted to obscure paperback Westerns (perhaps he would later read the works of Bobbi Anderson, protagonist of The Tommyknockers, whose first western, Hangtown was published in September 1975).
King sets us deeply in sympathy with Michael Chasswick, the next likely victim. Michael’s mother, Charlotte, came to the aid of her five year old son, the last of her eighteen children, when she caught the boy’s father, George, torturing him by burning his toes. She held a gun to George’s head and threatened to kill him if he hurt the boy again. This reminds us of Dolores Claiborne’s courage in defending her daughter against the sexual molestations of her equally brutal husband, Joe St. George, Senior in Dolores Claiborne. Michael was an early developer, bright and a good reader, and King draws him as the exact opposite of the rest of his family, no-hopers who were all “on the town.” One sister was so promiscuous she’d actually had sex with three of her older brothers, but in some sort of twisted morality, none of the younger boys! It is the very comparison between Michael and his loser family that brings the foreboding surrounding his bein
g lured into the brush by the killer into sharp focus for the reader. Already the killer had taken an adopted Vietnamese girl, loved by all and now the one last hope of a dissolute family was at mortal risk.
The local police chief was Andy Stone, a Vietnam veteran who had uncovered a hot car ring protected by another policeman while serving as an officer in Clifton Notch, Maine. Another power in the town was the local Ford-Honda dealer, whose business was near the Bridgton town line, Morton Thatcher, Senior. A nasty man, he blamed his wife for the death of one their sons from leukemia. He doted on the surviving Morton Thatcher, Junior helping him avoid criminal charges and also represented a form of corrupt opposition to Elizabeth Drogan’s campaigning. The junior Thatcher was a thug, small time criminal and habitual speeder and it was he who organized and participated in the severe beating of “Crazy” Joe Drogan. (The Thatchers seem like early prototypes of the Rennies in Under the Dome).