by Steven King
Abruptly the skin on his back prickled into bumps, as if a goose had just walked over his grave, and although he knew it was only a car somewhere on the other side—sound carried a long way up here on still winter nights—his first thought was that something prehistoric had awakened and had tracked its prey to earth: a great wolf, or perhaps a saber-toothed tiger.
The sound was not repeated and he went on his way.
37
Darnell Cogitates
Will Darnell was at the garage until after midnight on the night Buddy Repperton and his friends met Christine in Squantic Hills. His emphysema had been particularly bad that day. When it got bad, he was afraid to lie down, although he was ordinarily a perfect bear for sleep.
The doctor told him it was not at all likely that he would choke to death in his sleep, but as he grew older and the emphysema slowly tightened its grip on his lungs, he feared it more and more. The fact that his fear was irrational didn’t change it in the least. Although he hadn’t been inside a church of any faith since he had been twelve years old—forty-nine years ago now!—he had been morbidly interested in the circumstances surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I ten weeks before. John Paul had died in bed and had been found there in the morning. Already stiffening, probably. That was the part that haunted Will: already stiffening, probably.
He pulled into the garage at half-past nine, driving his 1966 Chrysler Imperial—the last car he intended to ever own. At about the same time Buddy Repperton was noticing the twin sparks of distant headlights in his rearview mirror.
Will was worth better than two million dollars, but money didn’t give him much pleasure anymore, if indeed it ever had. The money didn’t even seem completely real anymore. Nothing did, except the emphysema. That was hideously real, and Will welcomed anything that took his mind off it.
The problem of Arnie Cunningham, now—that had taken his mind off his emphysema. He supposed that was why he had let Cunningham hang around the place when all of his strongest instincts told him to get the kid out of the garage, he was in some way dangerous. Something was going on with Cunningham and his rebuilt ’58. Something very peculiar.
The kid wasn’t in tonight; he and the entire LHS chess club were in Philadelphia for three days at the Northern States Fall Tourney. Cunningham had laughed about that; he was much changed from the pimply, big-eyed kid that Buddy Repperton had jumped on, the kid Will had immediately (and erroneously) dismissed as a crybaby jellyfish and maybe a goddam queer in the bargain.
For one thing, he had grown cynical.
He had told Will in the office yesterday afternoon over cigars (the boy had developed a taste for those as well; Will doubted if his parents knew) that he had missed so many chess club meetings that according to the by-laws, he was no longer a member. Slawson, the faculty advisor, knew it but was conveniently overlooking it until after the Northern States Tourney.
“I’ve missed more meetings than anyone, but I also happen to play better than anyone else, and the shitter knows—” Arnie winced and shoved both hands into the small of his back for a moment.
“You ought to get a doctor to look at that,” Will remarked.
Arnie winked, suddenly looking much older than nearly eighteen. “I don’t need anything but a good Christian fuck to stretch the vertebrae.”
“So you’re going to Philly?” Will had been disappointed, even though Cunningham had the off-time coming; it meant he would have to put Jimmy Sykes in charge for the next couple of nights, and Jimmy didn’t know his ass from ice cream.
“Sure. I’m not about to turn down three days of bright lights,” Arnie said. He saw Will’s sour face and had grinned. “Don’t worry, man. This close to Christmas, all your regulars are buying toys for the kiddies instead of spark plugs and carburetor kits. This place will be dead until next year, and you know it.”
That was certainly true enough, but he hadn’t needed a snotnose kid to point it out for him.
“You want to go to Albany for me after you get back?” Will had asked.
Arnie looked at him carefully. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the deal?”
“You take my Chrysler to Albany, that’s the fucking deal. Henry Buck has fourteen clean used cars he wants to get rid of. He says they’re clean. You go look at them. I’ll give you a blank check. If they look good, you make the deal. If they look hot, tell him to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”
“And what do I take with me?”
Will had looked at him for a long time. “Getting scared, Cunningham?”
“No.” Arnie crushed his cigar out half-smoked. He looked at Will defensively. “Maybe I just feel the odds getting a little longer each time I do it. Is it coke?”
“I’ll get Jimmy to do it,” Will said brusquely.
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Two hundred cartons of Winstons.”
“All right.”
“You sure? Just like that?”
Arnie had laughed. “It’ll be a break from chess.”
• • •
Will parked the Chrysler in the stall closest to his office, the one with mr. darnell do not block! painted inside the lines. He got out and slammed the door, puffing, laboring for breath. The emphysema was sitting on his chest, and tonight it seemed to have brought its brother. No, he just wasn’t going to lie down, no matter what that asshole doctor said.
Jimmy Sykes was apathetically wielding the big push broom. Jimmy was tall and gangling, twenty-five years old. His light mental retardation made him look perhaps eight years younger. He had started combing his hair back in a fifties-style ducktail, in imitation of Cunningham, whom Jimmy almost worshipped. Except for the low whssht, whssht of the broom’s bristles on the oil-stained concrete, the place was silent. And empty.
“Place is really jumpin tonight, Jimmy, huh?” Will wheezed.
Jimmy looked around. “No, sir, Mr. Darnell, nobody been in since Mr. Hatch came and got his Fairlane, an that was half an hour ago.”
“Just joking,” Will said, wishing again that Cunningham were here. You couldn’t talk to Jimmy except on a perfectly literal Dick-and-Jane level. Still, maybe he would invite him in for a cup of coffee with a slug of Courvoisier tipped in for good measure. Make it a threesome. Him, Jimmy, and the emphysema. Or maybe, since the emphysema had brought its brother tonight, you’d have to call it a foursome. “What do you say about—”
He broke off suddenly, noticing that stall twenty was empty. Christine was gone.
“Arnie came in?” he said.
“Arnie?” Jimmy repeated, blinking stupidly.
“Arnie, Arnie Cunningham,” Will said impatiently. “How many Arnies do you know? His car’s gone.”
Jimmy looked around at stall twenty and frowned. “Oh. Yeah.”
Will smiled. “Hotshot got knocked out of his hotshot chess tournament, huh?”
“Oh, did he?” Jimmy asked. “Jeez, that’s too bad, huh?”
Will restrained an urge to grab Jimmy and give him a shake and a wallop. He would not get angry; that only made it harder to breathe, and he would end up having to shoot his lungs full of the horrible-tasting stuff from his aspirator. “Well, what did he say, Jimmy? What did he say when you saw him?” But Will knew suddenly and surely that Jimmy hadn’t seen Arnie.
Jimmy finally understood what Will was driving at. “Oh, I didn’t see him. Just saw Christine go out the door, you know. Boy, that’s some pretty car, ain’t it? He fixed it up like magic.”
“Yes,” Will said. “Like magic.” It was a word that had occurred to him in connection with Christine before. He suddenly changed his mind about inviting Jimmy in for coffee and brandy. Still looking at stall twenty, he said, “You can go home now, Jimmy.”
“Aw, jeez, Mr. Darnell, you said I could have six hours tonight. That ain’t over until ten.”
“I’ll punch you out at ten.”
Jimmy’s muddy eyes brightened at this unexpected, almost unheard-of largesse. “Really?”
“Yeah, really, really. Make like a tree and leave, Jimmy, okay?”
“Sure,” Jimmy said, thinking that for the first time in the five or six years he had worked for Will (he had trouble remembering which it was, although his mother kept track of it, the same as she kept track of all his tax papers), the old grouch had gotten the Christmas spirit. Just like in that movie about the three ghosts. Summoning up his own Christmas spirit, Jimmy cried: “That’s a big ten-four, good buddy!”
Will winced and lumbered into his office. He turned on the Mr. Coffee and sat down behind his desk, watching as Jimmy put away his broom, turned out most of the overhead fluorescents, and got his heavy coat.
Will leaned back and thought.
It was, after all, his brains that had kept him alive all these years, alive and one step ahead; he had never been handsome, he had been fat all of his adult life, and his health had always been terrible. A childhood bout of scarletina one spring had been followed by a mild case of polio; he had been left with a right arm that operated at only about seventy percent capacity. As a young man he had endured a plague of boils. When Will was forty-three his doctor had discovered a large, spongy growth under one arm. It had turned out to be non-malignant, but the removal surgery had kept him on his back most of one summer, and as a result he had developed bedsores. A year later he had almost died of double pneumonia. Now it was incipient diabetes and emphysema. But his brains had always been fine and dandy, and his brains kept him one step ahead.
So he leaned back and thought about Arnie. He supposed one of the things that had favorably impressed him about Cunningham after he had stood up to Repperton that day was a certain similarity to the long-ago teenaged Will Darnell. Of course, Cunningham wasn’t sickly, but he had been pimply, disliked, a loner. Those things had all been true of the young Will Darnell.
Cunningham had brains, too.
Brains and that car. That strange car.
“Good night, Mr. Darnell,” Jimmy called. He stood by the door for a moment and then added uncertainly, “Merry Christmas.”
Will raised his hand in a wave. Jimmy left. Will heaved his bulk out of his chair, got the bottle of Courvoisier out of the filing cabinet, and set it down next to the Mr. Coffee. Then he sat down again. A rough chronology was ticking through his mind.
August: Cunningham brings in an old wreck of a ’58 Plymouth and parks it in stall twenty. It looks familiar, and it should. It’s Rollie LeBay’s Plymouth. And Arnie doesn’t know it—he has no need to know it—but once upon a time Rollie LeBay also made an occasional run to Albany or Burlington or Portsmouth for Will Darnell … only in those dim dead days, Will had a ’54 Cadillac. Different transport cars, same false-bottom trunk with hidden compartment for fireworks, cigarettes, booze, and pot. In those days Will had never heard of cocaine. He supposed no one but jazz musicians in New York had.
Late August: Repperton and Cunningham get into it, and Darnell kicks Repperton out. He’s tired of Repperton, the constant braggadocio, the cock-of-the-walk manner. He’s hurting custom, and while he’ll make all the runs into New York and New England that Will wants, he’s careless, and carelessness is dangerous. He has a tendency to exceed the double-nickel speed limit, he’s gotten speeding tickets. All it would take is one nosy cop to put them all in court. Darnell isn’t afraid of going to jail—not in Libertyville—but it would look bad. There was a time when he didn’t care much how things looked, but he’s older now.
Will got up, poured coffee, and tipped in a capful of brandy. He paused, thought it over, and tipped in a second capful. He sat down, took a cigar out of his breast pocket, looked at it, and lit it. Fuck you, emphysema. Take this.
Fragrant smoke rising around him, good hot coffee laced with brandy before him, Darnell stared out into his shadowy, silent garage and thought some more.
September: The kid asks him to jump an inspection sticker and loan him a dealer plate so he can take his girl to a football game. Darnell does it—hell, there was a day when he used to sell an inspection sticker for seven dollars and never even look at the car it was going on. Besides, the kid’s car is looking good. A little rough, maybe, and it’s still more than a little noisy, but all in all, pretty damn good. He’s doing a real job of restoration.
And that’s pretty damn strange, isn’t it, when you consider that no one has ever seen him really work on it.
Oh, little things, sure. Replacing bulbs in the parking lights. Changing tires. The kid is no dummy about cars: Will sat right in this chair one day and watched him replace the upholstery in the back seat. But no one has seen him working on the car’s exhaust system, which was totally shot when he wheeled the ’58 in here for the first time late last summer. And no one has seen him doing any bodywork, either, although the Fury’s bod, which had an advanced case of cancer when the kid brought it in, now looks cherry.
Darnell knew what Jimmy Sykes thought, because he had asked him once. Jimmy thought Arnie did the serious work at night, after everyone was gone.
“That’s one hell of a lot of night work,” Darnell said aloud, and felt a sudden chill that not even the brandy-laced coffee could dispel. A lot of night work, yeah. It must have been. Because what the kid seemed to be doing days was listening to the greaser music on WDIL. That, and a lot of aimless fooling around.
“I guess he does the big stuff at night,” Jimmy had said, with all the guileless faith of a child explaining how Santa Claus gets down the chimney or how the tooth fairy put the quarter under his pillow. Will didn’t believe in either Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, and he didn’t believe that Arnie had restored Christine at night, either.
Two other facts rolled around uneasily in his mind like pool balls looking for a pocket in which to come to rest.
He knew that Cunningham had been driving the car around out back a lot before it was street-legal, that was one thing. Just cruising slowly up and down the narrow lanes between the thousands of junked cars in the block-long back lot. Driving at five miles an hour, around and around after dark, after everyone had gone home, circling the big crane with the round electromagnet and the great box of the car-crusher. Cruising. The one time Darnell asked him about it, Arnie had told him he was checking out a shimmy in the front end. But the kid couldn’t lie for shit. No one ever checked out a shimmy at five miles an hour.
That was what Cunningham did after everyone else went home. That had been his night work. Cruising out back, threading his way in and out of the junkers, headlights flickering unsteadily in their rust-eaten sockets.
Then there was the Plymouth’s odometer. It ran backward. Cunningham had pointed that out to him with a sly little smile. It ran backward at an extremely fast rate. He told Will that he figured the odometer turned back five miles or so for every actual mile travelled. Will had been frankly amazed. He had heard of setting odometers back in the used-car business, and he had done a good bit of it himself (along with stuffing transmissions full of sawdust to stifle their death whines and pouring boxes of oatmeal into terminally ill radiators to temporarily plug their leaks), but he had never seen one that ran backward spontaneously. He would have thought it impossible. Arnie had just smiled a funny little smile and called it a glitch.
It was a glitch, all right, Will thought. One hell of a glitch.
The two thoughts clicked lazily off each other and rolled in different directions.
Boy, that’s some pretty car, isn’t it? He fixed it up like magic.
Will didn’t believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, but he was perfectly willing to acknowledge that there were strange things in the world. A practical man recognized that and put it to use if he could. A friend of Will’s who lived in Los Angeles claimed he had seen the ghost of his wife before the big quake of ’67, and Will had no particular reason to doubt the claim (although he would have doubted it completely if the friend had had anything to gain). Quent Y
oungerman, another friend, had claimed to have seen his father, long dead, standing at the foot of his hospital bed after Quent, a steelworker, had taken a terrible fall from the fourth floor of a building under construction down on Wood Street.
Will had heard such stories off and on all his life, as most people undoubtedly did. And as most thinking people probably did, he put them in a kind of open file, neither believing nor disbelieving, unless the teller was an obvious crank. He put them in that open file because no one knew where people came from when they were born and no one knew where people went when they died, and not all the Unitarian ministers and born-again Jesus-shouters and Popes and Scientologists in the world could convince Will otherwise. Just because some people went crazy on the subject didn’t mean they knew anything. He put stuff like that in that open file because nothing really inexplicable had ever happened to him.
Except maybe something like that was happening now.
November: Repperton and his good buddies beat the living shit out of Cunningham’s car at the airport. When it comes in on the tow-truck, it looks like the Green Giant shat all over it Darnell looks at it and thinks, It’s never gonna run again. That’s all; it’s never gonna run another foot. At the end of the month the Welch kid gets killed on JFK Drive.
December: A State Police detective comes sucking around. Junkins. He comes sucking around one day and talks to Cunningham, then he comes sucking around on a day when Cunningham isn’t here and wants to know how come the kid is lying about how much damage Repperton and his dogturd friends (of whom the late and unlamented Peter “Moochie” Welch was one) did to Cunningham’s Plymouth. Why you talking to me? Darnell asks him, wheezing and coughing through a cloud of cigar smoke. Talk to him, it’s his fucking Plymouth, not mine. I just run this place so working joes can keep their cars running and keep putting food on the table for their families.
Junkins listens patiently to this rap. He knows Will Darnell is doing a hell of a lot more than just running a do-it-yourself garage and a junkyard, but Darnell knows he knows, so that’s okay.