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    From a Buick 8: A Novel
    From a Buick 8: A Novel
    From a Buick 8: A Novel
    Ebook480 pages8 hours

    From a Buick 8: A Novel

    By Stephen King

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King—a novel about the fascination deadly things have for us and about our insistence on answers when there are none…

    Since 1979, the state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in the shed out behind the barracks. Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox had answered a strange call just down the road and came back with an abandoned 1953 Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and this one was…just wrong. As it turned out, the Buick 8 was worse than dangerous—and the members of Troop D decided that it would be better if the public never found out about it. Now, more than twenty years later, Curt’s son Ned starts hanging around the barracks and is allowed into the Troop D family. And one day he discovers the family secret—a mystery that begins to stir once more, not only in the minds and hearts of these veteran troopers, but out in the shed as well, for there’s more power under the hood than anyone can handle…
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateSep 24, 2002
    ISBN9780743246798
    Author

    Stephen King

    Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. 

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    Reviews for From a Buick 8

    3.5/5

    1,495 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Some of his best writing, period; definitely one of his best books post-accident. I read this once or twice a year. Where some of his later books insert his accident midstream, interrupting a story that was otherwise about something else, this one integrates it smoothly and binds it to the story inextricably. It's a book about sons and fathers, about growing up, about questions that don't have answers, about the strangeness of worlds unseen. And it's also a book about this REALLY creepy car that turns up one day...It's told to a boy just about to graduate from high school, by people who knew and worked with his father, all of whom were tied up in the mystery/horror of the car in some way; the voices are strong and distinct, and the stories themselves were highly disturbing. I kind of loved this one!
    • 4/5
      This book has a lot more personal philosophy to impart rather than horror. This is about growing old. This is about mysteries in life. This is about sticking to duty. This is about the chains that we can feel but rarely know. The Buick 8 pulls up to the gas pumps at a full-serve gas station in Western Pennsylvania in 1979. While the statio attendant is filling the tank, the driver walks around to the back of the station and...disappears. The local police, two Pennsylvania State Troopers named Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox from Troop D, show up and almost immediately notice that this car isn't...right. For one thing, it can't be driven. And...it hums. You can't really hear it, but it's there. Troop D takes custody of it and they watch it. This is one Buick 8 that bears watching. And guarding. Whatever it is, it's not a car. Worse than that, it breathes. It exhales things out into our world and inhales things in to...who knows where. You don't want to know, and you don't want to go there. You won't come back. The car becomes Troop D's family secret, kept in Shed B and quietly but vigilantly guarded. When Wilcox is killed in a senseless accident in the fall of 2001, Ned, his 18 year old son, begins doing odd jobs around the barracks, trying to hold onto his father's memory. Ned discovers the car and the story behind it and he wants to know more. And the car is ready to give him far, far more than he will ever want.

      "From A Buick 8" is a wonderfully gripping read, full of the creepy crawlies, but mostly it's a moving, melancholy meditation on time and loss. Give this book a try, it's a great read.
    • 5/5
      I picked this book up on a 3 for 2 sale and didn't really expect much from it. It wasn't something I was looking for and I didn't really expect the subject matter to be in my area, but it was written by Stephen King and that is always a good sign, so I took my chances and began to read. I have to say that I was very quickly caught up in the story. It focusses on the strange goings on around a Buick 8 and how a group of Pennsylvania State Police go about dealing with the situation.

      The plot is almost entirely focussed in one place, but this is a strength of the book rather than a limitation. It helps focus on how a bunch of ordinary people go about dealing with extraordinary situations. As always, King's characters are down to earth and fully believable. The way the story is told is also very well done. It's pretty much a masterclass in story telling. I was hooked from the start and really liked the way the story unfolded, and how it didn't have cliches or predictable events. What it did have was credibility and character. This is a really good book. I enjoyed it a lot.
    • 3/5
      One of the better novels I've read by him. Horror and aliens mix in King's typical small-town scenario.
    • 3/5
      "Come close, children, and see the living crocodile..."Overall, I liked this. Reading a King book NOT set in Maine was pretty cool! And I liked the characters, especially Arky's accent. I also liked that the story was told by many of the characters, past and present, and the cool transitions between chapters. The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania, and their Shed B, made for interesting reading. (As did the several aside mentions of the Amish!) For me though, the story really dragged. It wasn't scary, and for me, didn't get interesting until the summer of 1988 story. I did enjoy very much, the ol' switcheroo at the ending of who died. That really fooled me! And I liked reading about the origins for this story in the "Author's Note" at the end! But:SPOILER ALERT:I did not like that we did not get to know more about the Buick's origins and who? what? why? it was there. Frustrating!
    • 3/5
      In rural Pennsylvania Troop D performs all the usual work that a small town police force performs. They answer the calls, assist the public and keep order. But Troop D provides one other not so public service. Out behind the station house in an unremarkable shed they have worked since 1979 to keep one very big secret. A strange abandoned Buick 8, which is not really a Buick 8 at all, but a portal of some sort. A portal that occasionally brings strange creatures forth into our world. And on the rare occasion snatches someone from our world and takes them ‘elsewhere’. Stephen King has managed to blend a traditional haunted house story into his fable of an otherworldly Buick that is far more than it first seems. As the troopers tell their spellbinding history to Ned, the son of one of their fallen commands the Buick listens and it waits…
    • 5/5
      The officers of the Troop D state police in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret since 1979. Since then, stowed out behind the police barracks in Shed B, has been a classic car - a Buick Roadmaster. In 1979, Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with the abandoned Buick. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this car was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Trooper Rafferty vanished without a trace, Curt and his fellow troopers knew the old Buick Roadmaster was worse than dangerous - and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it.With Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated Trooper Rafferty's disappearance as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years, the troop eventually absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work; the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still life painting that breathes - inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from. In the fall of 2001, some time after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18 year-old son Ned starts coming by the barracks. Ned does various odd jobs around the barracks - mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow.Sergeant Commanding, Sandy Dearborn, knows it's just the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become a part of the Troop D family. One day, Ned happens to look through the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers, and the secret begins to stir; not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well...I must say that I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. It was very exciting and my goodness, what an imagination Stephen King has. I've said before that I'm always a little wary of reading Stephen King's longer novels - the plots of many of his books start off brilliantly, and then they seem to go off the rails slightly, at least in my opinion. Anyway, while I found that some passages in From a Buick 8: A Novel were slightly verbose, overall, the book managed to capture my attention and successfully hold it until the end. I give this book an A!
    • 3/5
      Maybe it was because of lowered expectations but I didn't think this book was as bad as some of the reviews said it was. I saw a lot of articles that commented on how this was just another scary car novel, a la CHRISTINE. And how this wasn't some of his strongest writing. And I believe it was after the release and some of those reviews that King announced his planned retirement, a retirement that I'll believe when I see. Personally I think that he'll be like The Rolling Stones or Ozzy or Cher who announce their retirement but then keep on doing what they love. And even now King has announced his plans to do a crime novel called THE COLORADO KID. But I digress, back to FROM A BUICK 8.I'll agree that it was not one of his better books. Since there is no active threat, no monster looming or no quest driving folks forward, the action was minimal. The tale unfolds as several troopers reveal the history of a car that was impounded many years back. Their recipient of the story is Ned Wilcox, a young man who recently lost his dad, a fellow trooper.While the story is interesting and intriguing, there is also a level of detachment to the telling. This is probably due to it being told to Ned while sitting around a picnic table rather than experiencing the story live, so to speak. I'm not sure if this hurt the story or not but I know that I wasn't pulled into it as much as I am with other novels. At the same time though, Stephen King on his off-days is still tons better than a lot of other stuff out there. And for you completists, it does tie-in to the Dark Tower series but more on the peripheral than directly. In that regards it is a nice complement to Hearts In Atlantis.
    • 4/5
      I never did figure out exactly wtf the Buick 8 was supposed to be, but I think that was the point. The book was damn good anyway.
    • 5/5
      One of King's 21st -century masterpieces. Flawlessly handles mutliple narrators and delivers a story of mesmerizing impact.
    • 3/5
      If I didn't have to drive right now I would never finish a book these days - it's the only time I get to read/listen. This just plodded. Underwhelming. Bound to happen to him sometimes!
    • 4/5
      Like "The Colorado Kid," "From A Buick 8" uses the narrative device of having old codgers tell a young person about something that happened in the past. The story begins in 1979 when the mysterious Buick is abandoned at a gas station in western Pennsylvania. Most of the book consists of the now-middle-aged state troopers who impounded the car relating the events over the past 20 years that convinced them the Buick is actually a portal to another world. This book is far more philosophical than typical early King novels – not a lot of action and not much resolution. The Buick becomes a symbol of the mysteries of life and the nature of obsession. Those who prefer classic King might not appreciate this book, but I enjoyed it. Stephen King has become so adept at character voice that I can hear each one of them speaking. And occasionally there are bits that sound more like poetry than prose. Another King novel with something of the same flavor is "Lisey's Story" -- a lot of mysterious and unexplained happenings, with the reader left to draw his own conclusions.
    • 3/5
      Read in 2003 I think and I remember that I did not like it as much as I did his other books. I want to re read some of his books. Read them in English for the first time although I must say the Dutch translator of his work back in the days when I bought his books the minute they were in the shop, did a fantastic job.
    • 4/5
      This is not one of the Stephen King books most people talk about, so I didn't expect much, but I liked this one. I thought Christine was creepier, in an evil, killer-car sort of way, but the alien car in From a Buick 8 is pretty weird, as is the guy who flits through the story early one to convey the car to the small Pennsylvania town where it lodges itself. Mostly, this book is about small-town life from the perspective of a boy whose dad was killed on duty. The kid is brought up by the rest of the men in the police precinct, and gains a more grown-up perspective on life and his own place in the world. Threaded into this coming-of-age novel is the alien car, which may be responsible for a lot, or maybe almost nothing of what happens in the boy's life, as it mostly just sits in a shed doing nothing, for most of the book.
      I love the idea that the car is a portal lock sent through a science experiment that began in a lab on some other planet where scientists are experimenting with high energy physics and time/dimension/large distance travel, but this book never really tells us what the car is, or why it turned up where it did.
    • 4/5
      The state police of Troop D in Pennsylvania have kept a very deep secret in Shed B outside of the station since 1979. When Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox went to the gas station and came back with a Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew right away that this one was wrong. A few hours later Rafferty vanished. Wilcox and his fellow police men knew the car was worse and that it would be better if the Public never found out about it. This was a great mystery/horror book that Stephen King wrote, in my opinion. This book kept me sitting at the edge of my seat waiting for more. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who likes to sit at the edge of their seat waiting for more. I personally never liked horror books, but after reading this book I might have to change my thoughts about horror books.-ERICH
    • 3/5
      Not one of my favorites by King, & I generally LOVE him. This book evokes Christine, just a TINY sliver, as both cars were extant, seemingly self aware. Both are menacing, creepy, killers. However, the difference with the Buick, is that it's an impossible car to begin with. And that's where the utter weirdness of this car starts. It "spit out" a batlike "alien" type being, it has occasional "lightning storms" in the garage/shed that it "lives" in because the police department doesn't know what else to DO with it, & it's a mystery in it's own right that they can't solve. In many ways, the Buick is the ultimate puzzle, that affects a lot of people over the years since it came to be in the possession of the police.
    • 3/5
      King not even getting out of third gear in a a classic tale of small town Americana, full of iced tea and 'right-back-atchas'. As always with King, there is a darkness looming in the background. However, From A Buick 8 fails to present the Constant Reader with any memorable characters and feels like an extended short story. Worth a read nevertheless.
    • 5/5
      It's a mistake to compare Buick 8 to Christine simply because the two stories are about cars. For one thing, the Buick isn't really a car... it's a metaphor on one level, and an alien artefact on another. Christine was full of murderous rage, both possessed by and possessing her owners - the Buick is never conclusively considered sentient.A further difference between Christine and Buick, is the ending - Christine is a fully formed story, with a beginning, lots of guts, and the perfect horror-story ending. Buick is a story about how stories unfold in real life (an increasing preoccupation in King's writing) and how they don't necessarily come tied up neatly with all four corners properly inside the wrapping. In this respect, Buick has more in common with later work, such as The Colorado Kid, and even Cell or the Dark Tower.Buick 8 is readable, thought-provoking and full of things that make you go 'dude, gross'. It's an important part of any King collection.
    • 4/5
      Usually I hate to see a story narrated by several different characters. It tends to complicate and confuse, but King pulls it off in Buick 8. I'm still trying to figure out the whole point to the story, but perhaps that is the point ... there is none. Not one of King's best, but an interesting read all the same.
    • 3/5
      While From a Buick 8 is neither as strong nor as compelling as King’s best books, it’s eerie that the central theme so closely paralleled my own thoughts in recent months. On the surface, this book is about a strange car that looks like a Buick, but only if you don’t examine it too closely, because then you’ll see that it is like no other car ever imagined. Abandoned at a western Pennsylvania gas station by its equally weird driver, the Buick is impounded by the State Police and kept out back of the barracks in Shed B, where it occasionally shows signs of life. Sometimes things come out of its trunk, and sometimes people go in.That’s the plot in a nutshell – your basic horror yarn. But this book is not about a Buick from another dimension, not really. It’s about the senselessness of death. It’s about how we, as human beings, try to impose some sort of pattern and meaning on our lives, when everything really is just chains of random events linked together. There are no easy answers to all these questions what we all ask, but which really come down to one thing: Why? We can’t even hope to understand death, no matter how much science we apply to it, no matter how many frustrated emotions we throw at it, not matter what we do.So, while FaB8 is not the intricate, suspenseful epic story that characterizes my favorite King books, there is a lot going on here – a lot more than in many of King’s more ordinary horror tales. Perhaps that’s why it feels so unsatisfying at the end – because that’s the point. The reader – like the character of young Ned, who lost his father in a traffic stop gone horrifically wrong – will never get any satisfying answers, and in the end, the reader – like Sandy Dearborn, the cop who has lived with the weird Buick for two decades – will just have to accept that.
    • 3/5
      A Buick from another place and the damage that it does. A son coming to terms with the death of his father and Stephen King's usual storytelling flair. Didn't really grab me at all but nothing wrong with the novel.
    • 4/5
      This probably would have worked better as a short story rather than a full sized novel, but overall it was a good, quick read that held my interest.
    • 3/5
      A mysterious man with a beautiful car stops at a gas station in Pennsylvania. The man goes to the men's room and never returns. This leaves the Buick in the hands of the man who runs the gas station. The police acquire the auto and place it in a shed in the back lot of the station. From there, strange things happen. One officer enters the shed and never comes back out. The temperature changes in the shed, and then the officers all know that there will be another incident. There is one officer who loses his life being run over by a drunk. His son keeps coming to the station and doing maintenance stuff. He is trying to stay close to his father. I thought that this was an OK Stephen King novel. I am a huge fan and this was not a disappointment by any means. You felt the anguish of all involved.
    • 4/5
      I love this book, but it was not one of King's best works. A mysterious car that is a portal to another world spews out monsters that die immediately (because they can't breathe in our atmosphere) and also sucks people into the other world. Creepy, yes. Could it have been creepier? And improve the story? I'm not sure. It is still good enough to recommend.
    • 5/5
      I've read several evil-possessed-car stories by Stephen King. This one was by far the best.
    • 4/5
      Stephen King writes some of the best suspense stories today. H.P Lovecraft wrote some of the best "strange" stories of his day. Now, imagine if they went out for a few drinks and collaborated on a novel. That is what you have in "From a Buick 8".While not directly connected to the Dark Tower stories, the title vehicle is a car that probably came from next door to Roland's world. The car is a doorway to . . . somewhere else. What sometimes comes through bears no resemblance to anything as nice as what came through the Wardrobe from "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe".The excellent job of the narrators only adds to the flavor of the story.
    • 3/5
      Looking at the reviews, this one didn't seem to go down that well. It's pretty different to most of Stephen King's other stuff -- very little actually happens beyond some old guys telling a story -- but I did like it. It's a story about stories, I think, how they don't really end, and I'm actually surprised that it got as much of an ending as it did. I was half-expecting the Buick to sit there for a couple more generations.

      It's interesting that, I think, I identified most with Ned and Ned's father, yet we never hear anything from their points of view. We can't hear anything from the father's point of view. I feel like I'd feel the same draw of curiosity. Ned's father was possibly the most vivid character of the lot: the others, who just tried to get on with their lives, don't have that much to define them, so they blur into each other. But Curtis is pretty vivid.

      I really liked From A Buick 8, anyway. It's not perhaps the most satisfying read in the world, but the idea is fascinating and the narrative just kept on ticking, pulling me on through the story. If you need a hard and fast end, though, if you need answers? Definitely not the book for you.
    • 2/5
      This one took me a while to finish because I didn’t find it that compelling. This time instead of just starting out the tale on the stoop or in a gazebo, where one old timer talks to a young kid, he kept the whole story on the smoking bench. Each person told his or her part of the tale. I think because I read it in spurts, I had trouble remembering which character was which. I couldn’t keep Huddie and Eddie straight and the janitor, Arky, with the Swedish accent just bugged me. All I could think of was the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show.The writing was fairly good although I think he kind of lost interest in the characters after a while.
    • 4/5
      Stephen King tends to get hammered in the press and by literati. He’s pulp, they say. He’s popular, they say. Nobody can be as productive (he publishes an average of two books per year) and still write quality, they say. I remember starting college in Boston in 1988, shortly after U2 released their huge Joshua Tree album. The established U2 fans rejected it outright as a ’sell out’. They couldn’t believe that their heroes sold out to ‘the man’ and became… popular. I think King gets painted with a similar brush.But the truth is, much of his writing resonates quite deeply. His work can be touching. It’s relatable, and has as much symbolism and depth as one chooses to see. Is everything he touches great? No. But as a rule, is it schlock? Absolutely not.I only discovered Stephen King as an adult. And over the last few years, I’ve been working through his catalog, kicking myself for not having given him a chance sooner. Fortunately, I have a whole lot to look forward to.From a Buick 8 was published in 2002. The actual writing took place in 1999 and was finished shortly before it was published, bracketing King’s well-publicized auto accident, which almost took his life. The story’s emotional focal point centers on the accidental death of a police officer, Curt Wilcox, who was killed by a drunk driver while investigating a truck’s mechanical problem on the side of the road. The exposition surrounding the officer’s death is detailed and pain-laden, and I couldn’t help but view my analysis of the story through the lens of King’s accident until I got to the author’s notes where King is swift to point out that the scenes of the accident were written before his own and were only moderately edited after. It was just coincidence, which brings us to the crux of King’s story. How much in life has a natural beginning and end? How many of the threads of our existence have a natural continuance or succession? How much happens that is explainable or simple coincidence?From a Buick 8 is equal parts science fiction, horror and Lovecraftian ode. Many readers anticipate that the eponymous Buick is a sort of “son of” Christine — the evil car gone amok in his 1983 novel (and movie), but this is not the case. Stephen King’s 1953 Buick Roadmaster has nothing to do with Stephen Kings’s 1958 Plymouth Fury.When the story begins, it’s 1979 and a stranger in a black jacket pulls into a gas station in rural PA. He asks for a fill up, indicates he needs no oil and heads to the john. 30 minutes pass, the strange man never returns, and leaves his Buick 8 behind. Local Police Troop D is brought in and the mystery is off and running. The car is like nothing anyone’s seen. It has no functional parts, sucks the heat out of the shed in which it sits, and belches horrible creatures from its trunk.From a Buick 8’s narrative thread focuses on Officer Wilcox’s son, Ned, several months after his father’s death in 2001. The story is a journey taken together by two characters: Ned, and the current Chief Commanding of Troop D, Sandy Dearborn. The journey is one that covers time rather than space as vignettes connect the past and present of Troop D’s interactions and investigations of the Buick over the years. It’s Ned’s journey of understanding and acceptance. It’s Sandy’s story of reconciliation with what the Buick means and the role it’s played in the collective past of Troop D.Sandy’s journey started years ago but doesn’t end until the present. Ned’s is happening in the narrative real time.There’s much sitting around and talking… telling stories, drinking and eating. One might make a symbolic connection to the Last Supper: Jesus (who is probably Sandy, but could also be Ned at times), surrounded by disciples (the other officers and caretakers), mostly younger but some the same age, who sit at his feet while he tells tales and waxes poetic. King even references that the storytelling group appears to look like a “little council of elders… surrounding the young fellow, singing him our warrior-songs of the past.”The real theme of From a Buick 8 is about learning how to let go. Let go of the past… Let go of blame… Let go of finding fault and reason and answers. Chief Sandy uses the imagery of a chain when discussing cause and effect. And his idea of a chain surrounds, ties, and binds the story and characters. For example, the gas station attendant who witnesses the man in the black coat leave the Buick is the same person who, years later, hits and kills Curtis Wilcox.Sandy considers: I didn’t know about reasons, only about chains — how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you’re lucky. Fucking strangled, if you’re not.Is there simply cause and effect? Ned’s father’s death is suggestive of nothing beyond coincidence. The book sets the tone with the following quote from Sandy regarding Curtis’ death: If there was a God, there’d be a reason. If there was a God, there’d be some kind of thread running through it. But there isn’t. Not that I can see.This story didn’t have the emotional depth that makes King’s memorable work… well, memorable. Despite the incorporation of a dog who senses evil and a teenager whose father just died in a violent accident, it just didn’t touch me.The elements of horror are definitely creepy. There are some gross-out moments, but nothing flat-out scary. Lovecraftian ‘cosmic horror’ is a place King loves to go. But Lovecraft, for all of his bombast and grandeur, had a certain subtlety about his pacing and finales. Lovecraft is all about the glimpse… the merest horrified glimmer of ‘eldritch horrors’ that one sees in the periphery. King, for all of his own vivid visualizations, is not beyond that Lovecraftian subtlety.Sandy thinks back on the first time he entered the shed where Troop D kept the Buick: In the twenty-odd years that followed that day, he would go inside Shed B dozens of times, but never without the rest of that dark mental wave, never without the intuition of almost-glimpsed horrors, of abominations in the corner of the eye.And King always works one or two Lovecraft code words into his work. In this case, I didn’t catch a reference to ‘cyclopean’ structures, but I did see something that was “lit up a pallid, somehow eldritch yellow.”From a Buick 8 ends in very Lovecraftian fashion, which will disappoint people who desire a very conclusive and explosive finish. If you’ve read later-era Stephen King, you’ll relate the ending in From a Buick 8 to the big finale in Revival. It’s pretty dramatic, but King doesn’t give it to you: he leads you to the water and you have to drink it in. But he does this with a very clear purpose. Some things end and have a clear conclusion. And sometimes things just don’t. Ned searches for an answer to his father’s accidental death. Of course, there is no answer. Things happen. Sometimes bad things. Sandy, our own personal Pennsylvania Jesus, tells Ned at one point: Sometimes there’s nothing to learn, or no way to learn it, or no reason to even try. I saw a movie once where this fellow explained why he lit a candle in church even though he wasn’t a very good Catholic anymore. “You don’t fuck around with the infinite,” he said. Maybe that was the lesson…This is a good book. Not one of my favorites from King, but enjoyable and uncharacteristically short. If you’re a King fan you’ll enjoy it, though it may not be tremendously memorable. If you’re a Lovecraft fan, you’ll enjoy it as well.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite of King's novels. I like the storyline and the cross novelization with some of his characters.

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    From a Buick 8 - Stephen King

    Cover: From a Buick 8, by Stephen King

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    From a Buick 8, by Stephen King, Scribner

    Contents

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Arky

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Now: Phil

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Then

    Now: Sandy

    Then: Sandy

    Shirley

    Eddie

    Huddie

    Shirley

    Eddie

    Arky

    Eddie

    Shirley

    Eddie

    Huddie

    Eddie

    Shirley

    Eddie

    Now: Shirley

    Then: Eddie

    Now: Sandy

    Then: Curtis

    Now: Sandy

    Later

    Author’s Note

    Mr. Mercedes Excerpt

    About Stephen King

    This is for Surendra and Geeta Patel.

    Now: Sandy

    Curt Wilcox’s boy came around the barracks a lot the year after his father died, I mean a lot, but nobody ever told him get out the way or asked him what in hail he was doing there again. We understood what he was doing: trying to hold onto the memory of his father. Cops know a lot about the psychology of grief; most of us know more about it than we want to.

    That was Ned Wilcox’s senior year at Statler High. He must have quit off the football team; when it came time for choosing, he picked D Troop instead. Hard to imagine a kid doing that, choosing unpaid choring over all those Friday night games and Saturday night parties, but that’s what he did. I don’t think any of us talked to him about that choice, but we respected him for it. He had decided the time had come to put the games away, that’s all. Grown men are frequently incapable of making such decisions; Ned made his at an age when he still couldn’t buy a legal drink. Or a legal pack of smokes, for that matter. I think his Dad would have been proud. Know it, actually.

    Given how much the boy was around, I suppose it was inevitable he’d see what was out in Shed B, and ask someone what it was and what it was doing there. I was the one he was most likely to ask, because I’d been his father’s closest friend. Closest one that was still a Trooper, at least. I think maybe I wanted it to happen. Kill or cure, the oldtimers used to say. Give that curious cat a serious dose of satisfaction.

    *   *   *

    What happened to Curtis Wilcox was simple. A veteran county drunk, one Curt himself knew well and had arrested six or eight times, took his life. The drunk, Bradley Roach, didn’t mean to hurt anyone; drunks so rarely do. That doesn’t keep you from wanting to kick their numb asses all the way to Rocksburg, of course.

    Toward the end of a hot July afternoon in the year oh-one, Curtis pulled over one of those big sixteen-wheelers, an interstate landcruiser that had left the fourlane because its driver was hoping for a home-cooked meal instead of just another dose of I-87 Burger King or Taco Bell. Curt was parked on the tarmac of the abandoned Jenny station at the intersection of Pennsylvania State Road 32 and the Humboldt Road—the very place, in other words, where that damned old Buick Roadmaster showed up in our part of the known universe all those years ago. You can call that a coincidence if you want to, but I’m a cop and don’t believe in coincidences, only chains of event which grow longer and ever more fragile until either bad luck or plain old human mean-heartedness breaks them.

    Ned’s father took out after that semi because it had a flapper. When it went by he saw rubber spinning out from one of the rear tires like a big black pinwheel. A lot of independents run on recaps, with the price of diesel so high they just about have to, and sometimes the tread peels loose. You see curls and hunks of it on the interstate all the time, lying on the highway or pushed off into the breakdown lane like the shed skins of giant blacksnakes. It’s dangerous to be behind a flapper, especially on a twolane like SR 32, a pretty but neglected stretch of state highway running between Rocksburg and Statler. A big enough chunk might break some unlucky follow-driver’s windshield. Even if it didn’t, it could startle the operator into the ditch, or a tree, or over the embankment and into Redfern Stream, which matches 32 twist for twist over a distance of nearly six miles.

    Curt lit his bar lights, and the trucker pulled over like a good boy. Curt pulled over right behind him, first calling in his 20 and the nature of his stop and waiting for Shirley to acknowledge. With that done, he got out and walked toward the truck.

    If he’d gone directly to where the driver was leaning out and looking back at him, he might still be on Planet Earth today. But he stopped to examine the flapper on the rear outside tire, even gave it a good yank to see if he could pull it off. The trucker saw all of it, and testified to it in court. Curt stopping to do that was the last link save one in the chain that brought his boy to Troop D and eventually made him a part of what we are. The very last link, I’d say, was Bradley Roach leaning over to get another brewski out of the six-pack sitting on the floor in the passenger footwell of his old Buick Regal (not the Buick, but another Buick, yes—it’s funny how, when you look back on disasters and love affairs, things seem to line up like planets on an astrologer’s chart). Less than a minute later, Ned Wilcox and his sisters were short a daddy and Michelle Wilcox was short a husband.

    *   *   *

    Not very long after the funeral, Curt’s boy started showing up at the Troop D House. I’d come in for the three-to-eleven that fall (or maybe just to check on things; when you’re the wheeldog, it’s hard to stay away) and see the boy before I saw anyone else, like as not. While his friends were over at Floyd B. Clouse Field behind the high school, running plays and hitting the tackling dummies and giving each other high-fives, Ned would be out on the front lawn of the barracks by himself, bundled up in his green and gold high school jacket, making big piles of fallen leaves. He’d give me a wave and I’d return it: right back atcha, kid. Sometimes after I parked, I’d come out front and shoot the shit with him. He’d tell me about the foolishness his sisters were up to just lately, maybe, and laugh, but you could see his love for them even when he was laughing at them. Sometimes I’d just go in the back way and ask Shirley what was up. Law enforcement in western Pennsylvania would fall apart without Shirley Pasternak, and you can take that to the bank.

    Come winter, Ned was apt to be around back in the parking lot, where the Troopers keep their personal vehicles, running the snowblower. The Dadier brothers, two local wide boys, are responsible for our lot, but Troop D sits in the Amish country on the edge of the Short Hills, and when there’s a big storm the wind blows drifts across the lot again almost as soon as the plow leaves. Those drifts look to me like an enormous white ribcage. Ned was a match for them, though. There he’d be, even if it was only eight degrees and the wind still blowing a gale across the hills, dressed in a snowmobile suit with his green and gold jacket pulled over the top of it, leather-lined police-issue gloves on his hands and a ski-mask pulled down over his face. I’d wave. He’d give me a little right-back-atcha, then go on gobbling up the drifts with the snowblower. Later he might come in for coffee, or maybe a cup of hot chocolate. Folks would drift over and talk to him, ask him about school, ask him if he was keeping the twins in line (the girls were ten in the winter of oh-one, I think). They’d ask if his Mom needed anything. Sometimes that would include me, if no one was hollering too loud or if the paperwork wasn’t too heavy. None of the talk was about his father; all of the talk was about his father. You understand.

    Raking leaves and making sure the drifts didn’t take hold out there in the parking lot was really Arky Arkanian’s responsibility. Arky was the custodian. He was one of us as well, though, and he never got shirty or went territorial about his job. Hell, when it came to snowblowing the drifts, I’ll bet Arky just about got down on his knees and thanked God for the kid. Arky was sixty by then, had to have been, and his own football-playing days were long behind him. So were the ones when he could spend an hour and a half outside in ten-degree temperatures (twenty-five below, if you factored in the wind chill) and hardly feel it.

    And then the kid started in with Shirley, technically Police Communications Officer Pasternak. By the time spring rolled around, Ned was spending more and more time with her in her little dispatch cubicle with the phones, the TDD (telephonic device for the deaf), the Trooper Location Board (also known as the D-map), and the computer console that’s the hot center of that high-pressure little world. She showed him the bank of phones (the most important is the red one, which is our end of 911). She explained about how the traceback equipment had to be tested once a week, and how it was done, and how you had to confirm the duty-roster daily, so you’d know who was out patrolling the roads of Statler, Lassburg, and Pogus City, and who was due in court or off-duty.

    My nightmare is losing an officer without knowing he’s lost, I overheard her telling Ned one day.

    Has that ever happened? Ned asked. Just . . . losing a guy?

    Once, she said. Before my time. Look here, Ned, I made you a copy of the call-codes. We don’t have to use them anymore, but all the Troopers still do. If you want to run dispatch, you have to know these.

    Then she went back to the four basics of the job, running them past him yet again: know the location, know the nature of the incident, know what the injuries are, if any, and know the closest available unit. Location, incident, injuries, CAU, that was her mantra.

    I thought: He’ll be running it next. She means to have him running it. Never mind that if Colonel Teague or someone from Scranton comes in and sees him doing it she’d lose her job, she means to have him running it.

    And by the good goddam, there he was a week later, sitting at PCO Pasternak’s desk in the dispatch cubicle, at first only while she ran to the bathroom but then for longer and longer periods while she went across the room for coffee or even out back for a smoke.

    The first time the boy saw me seeing him in there all alone, he jumped and then gave a great big guilty smile, like a kid who is surprised in the rumpus room by his mother while he’s still got his hand on his girlfriend’s tit. I gave him a nod and went right on about my beeswax. Never thought twice about it, either. Shirley had turned over the dispatch operation of Statler Troop D to a kid who still only needed to shave three times a week, almost a dozen Troopers were out there at the other end of the gear in that cubicle, but I didn’t even slow my stride. We were still talking about his father, you see. Shirley and Arky as well as me and the other uniforms Curtis Wilcox had served with for over twenty years. You don’t always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify.

    When I was out of his sightline, though, I stopped. Stood there. Listened. Across the room, in front of the highway-side windows, Shirley Pasternak stood looking back at me with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand. Next to her was Phil Candleton, who had just clocked off and was once more dressed in his civvies; he was also staring in my direction.

    In the dispatch cubicle, the radio crackled. Statler, this is 12, a voice said. Radio distorts, but I still knew all of my men. That was Eddie Jacubois.

    This is Statler, go ahead, Ned replied. Perfectly calm. If he was afraid of fucking up, he was keeping it out of his voice.

    Statler, I have a Volkswagen Jetta, tag is 14-0-7-3-9 Foxtrot, that’s P-A, stopped County Road 99. I need a 10-28, come back?

    Shirley started across the floor, moving fast. A little coffee sloshed over the rim of the Styrofoam cup in her hand. I took her by the elbow, stopping her. Eddie Jacubois was out there on a county road, he’d just stopped a Jetta for some violation—speeding was the logical assumption—and he wanted to know if there were any red flags on the plate or the plateholder. He wanted to know because he was going to get out of his cruiser and approach the Jetta. He wanted to know because he was going to put his ass out on the line, same today as every day. Was the Jetta maybe stolen? Had it been involved in an accident at any time during the last six months? Had its owner been in court on charges of spousal abuse? Had he shot anyone? Robbed or raped anyone? Were there even outstanding parking tickets?

    Eddie had a right to know these things, if they were in the database. But Eddie also had a right to know why it was a high school kid who had just told him This is Statler, go ahead. I thought it was Eddie’s call. If he came back with Where the hell is Shirley, I’d let go of her arm. And if Eddie rolled with it, I wanted to see what the kid would do. How the kid would do.

    Unit 12, hold for reply. If Ned was popping a sweat, it still didn’t show in his voice. He turned to the computer monitor and keyed in Uniscope, the search engine used by the Pennsylvania State Police. He hit the keys rapidly but cleanly, then punched ENTER.

    There followed a moment of silence in which Shirley and I stood side by side, saying nothing and hoping in perfect unison. Hoping that the kid wouldn’t freeze, hoping that he wouldn’t suddenly push back the chair and bolt for the door, hoping most of all that he had sent the right code to the right place. It seemed like a long moment. I remember I heard a bird calling outside and, very distant, the drone of a plane. There was time to think about those chains of event some people insist on calling coincidence. One of those chains had broken when Ned’s father died on Route 32; here was another, just beginning to form. Eddie Jacubois—never the sharpest knife in the drawer, I’m afraid—was now joined to Ned Wilcox. Beyond him, one link further down the new chain, was a Volkswagen Jetta. And whoever was driving it.

    Then: 12, this is Statler.

    12.

    Jetta is registered to William Kirk Frady of Pittsburgh. He is previous . . . uh . . . wait . . .

    It was his only pause, and I could hear the hurried riffle of paper as he looked for the card Shirley had given him, the one with the call-codes on it. He found it, looked at it, tossed it aside with an impatient little grunt. Through all this, Eddie waited patiently in his cruiser twelve miles west. He would be looking at Amish buggies, maybe, or a farmhouse with the curtain in one of the front windows pulled aslant, indicating that the Amish family living inside included a daughter of marriageable age, or over the hazy hills to Ohio. Only he wouldn’t really be seeing any of those things. The only thing Eddie was seeing at that moment—seeing clearly—was the Jetta parked on the shoulder in front of him, the driver nothing but a silhouette behind the wheel. And what was he, that driver? Rich man? Poor man? Beggarman? Thief?

    Finally Ned just said it, which was exactly the right choice. 12, Frady is DUI times three, do you copy?

    Drunk man, that’s what the Jetta’s driver was. Maybe not right now, but if he had been speeding, the likelihood was high.

    Copy, Statler. Perfectly laconic. Got a current laminate? Wanting to know if Frady’s license to drive was currently valid.

    Ah . . . Ned peered frantically at the white letters on the blue screen. Right in front of you, kiddo, don’t you see it? I held my breath.

    Then: Affirmative, 12, he got it back three months ago.

    I let go of my breath. Beside me, Shirley let go of hers. This was good news for Eddie, too. Frady was legal, and thus less likely to be crazy. That was the rule of thumb, anyway.

    12 on approach, Eddie sent. Copy that?

    Copy, 12 on approach, standing by, Ned replied. I heard a click and then a large, unsteady sigh. I nodded to Shirley, who got moving again. Then I reached up and wiped my brow, not exactly surprised to find it was wet with sweat.

    How’s everything going? Shirley asked. Voice even and normal, saying that, as far as she was concerned, all was quiet on the western front.

    Eddie Jacubois called in, Ned told her. He’s 10-27. That’s an operator check, in plain English. If you’re a Trooper, you know that it also means citing the operator for some sort of violation, in nine cases out of ten. Now Ned’s voice wasn’t quite steady, but so what? Now it was all right for it to jig and and jag a little. He’s got a guy in a Jetta out on Highway 99. I handled it.

    Tell me how, Shirley said. Go through your procedure. Every step, Ned. Quick’s you can.

    I went on my way. Phil Candleton intercepted me at the door to my office. He nodded toward the dispatch cubicle. How’d the kid do?

    Did all right, I said, and stepped past him into my own cubicle. I didn’t realize my legs had gone rubbery until I sat down and felt them trembling.

    *   *   *

    His sisters, Joan and Janet, were identicals. They had each other, and their mother had a little bit of her gone man in them: Curtis’s blue, slightly uptilted eyes, his blonde hair, his full lips (the nickname in Curt’s yearbook, under his name, had been Elvis). Michelle had her man in her son, as well, where the resemblance was even more striking. Add a few crow’s-feet around the eyes and Ned could have been his own father when Curtis first came on the cops.

    That’s what they had. What Ned had was us.

    *   *   *

    One day in April he came into the barracks with a great big sunny smile on his face. It made him look younger and sweeter. But, I remember thinking, we all of us look younger and sweeter when we smile our real smiles—the ones that come when we are genuinely happy and not just trying to play some dumb social game. It struck me fresh that day because Ned didn’t smile much. Certainly not big. I don’t think I realized it until that day because he was polite and responsive and quickwitted. A pleasure to have around, in other words. You didn’t notice how grave he was until that rare day when you saw him brighten up and shine.

    He came to the center of the room, and all the little conversations stopped. He had a paper in his hand. There was a complicated-looking gold seal at the top. Pitt! he said, holding the paper up in both hands like an Olympic judge’s scorecard. I got into Pitt, you guys! And they gave me a scholarship! Almost a full boat!

    Everyone applauded. Shirley kissed him smack on the mouth, and the kid blushed all the way down to his collar. Huddie Royer, who was off-duty that day and just hanging around, stewing about some case in which he had to testify, went out and came back with a bag of L’il Debbie cakes. Arky used his key to open the soda machine, and we had a party. Half an hour or so, no more, but it was good while it lasted. Everyone shook Ned’s hand, the acceptance letter from Pitt made its way around the room (twice, I think), and a couple of cops who’d been at home dropped by just to talk to him and pass along their congrats.

    Then, of course, the real world got back into the act. It’s quiet over here in western Pennsylvania, but not dead. There was a farmhouse fire in Pogus City (which is a city about as much as I’m the Archduke Ferdinand), and an overturned Amish buggy on Highway 20. The Amish keep to themselves, but they’ll gladly take a little outside help in a case like that. The horse was okay, which was the big thing. The worst buggy fuckups happen on Friday and Saturday nights, when the younger bucks in black have a tendency to get drunk out behind the barn. Sometimes they get a worldly person to buy them a bottle or a case of Iron City beer, and sometimes they drink their own stuff, a really murderous corn shine you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. It’s just part of the scene; it’s our world, and mostly we like it, including the Amish with their big neat farms and the orange triangles on the backs of their small neat buggies.

    And there’s always paperwork, the usual stacks of duplicate and triplicate in my office. It gets worse every year. Why I ever wanted to be the guy in charge is beyond me now. I took the test that qualified me for Sergeant Commanding when Tony Schoondist suggested it, so I must have had a reason back then, but these days it seems to elude me.

    Around six o’clock I went out back to have a smoke. We have a bench there facing the parking lot. Beyond it is a very pretty western view. Ned Wilcox was sitting on the bench with his acceptance letter from Pitt in one hand and tears rolling down his face. He glanced at me, then looked away, scrubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand.

    I sat down beside him, thought about putting my arm around his shoulder, didn’t do it. If you have to think about a thing like that, doing it usually feels phony. I guess, anyway. I have never married, and what I know about fathering you could write on the head of a pin with room left over for the Lord’s Prayer. I lit a cigarette and smoked it awhile. It’s all right, Ned, I said eventually. It was the only thing I could think of, and I had no idea what it meant.

    I know, he replied at once in a muffled, trying-not-to-cry voice, and then, almost as if it was part of the same sentence, a continuation of the same thought: No it ain’t.

    Hearing him use that word, that ain’t, made me realize how bad he was hurt. Something had gored him in the stomach. It was the sort of word he would have trained himself out of long ago, just so he wouldn’t be lumped with the rest of the Statler County hicks, the pickup-truck-n-snowmobile gomers from towns like Patchin and Pogus City. Even his sisters, eight years younger than he was, had probably given up ain’t by then, and for much the same reasons. Don’t say ain’t or your mother will faint and your father will fall in a bucket of paint. Yeah, what father?

    I smoked and said nothing. On the far side of the parking lot by one of the county roadsalt piles was a cluster of wooden buildings that needed either sprucing up or tearing down. They were the old Motor Pool buildings. Statler County had moved its plows, graders, ’dozers, and asphalt rollers a mile or so down the road ten years before, into a new brick facility that looked like a prison lockdown unit. All that remained here was the one big pile of salt (which we were using ourselves, little by little—once upon a time, that pile had been a mountain) and a few ramshackle wooden buildings. One of them was Shed B. The black-paint letters over the door—one of those wide garage doors that run up on rails—were faded but still legible. Was I thinking about the Buick Roadmaster inside as I sat there next to the crying boy, wanting to put my arm around him and not knowing how? I don’t know. I guess I might have been, but I don’t think we know all the things we’re thinking. Freud might have been full of shit about a lot of things, but not that one. I don’t know about a subconscious, but there’s a pulse in our heads, all right, same as there’s one in our chests, and it carries unformed, no-language thoughts that most times we can’t even read, and they are usually the important ones.

    Ned rattled the letter. "He’s the one I really want to show this to. He’s the one who wanted to go to Pitt when he was a kid but couldn’t afford it. He’s the reason I applied, for God’s sake. A pause; then, almost too low to hear: This is fucked up, Sandy."

    What did your mother say when you showed her?

    That got a laugh, watery but genuine. "She didn’t say. She screamed like a lady who just won a trip to Bermuda on a gameshow. Then she cried. Ned turned to me. His own tears had stopped, but his eyes were red and swollen. He looked a hell of a lot younger than eighteen just then. The sweet smile resurfaced for a moment. Basically, she was great about it. Even the Little J’s were great about it. Like you guys. Shirley kissing me . . . man, I got goosebumps."

    I laughed, thinking that Shirley might have raised a few goose-bumps of her own. She liked him, he was a handsome kid, and the idea of playing Mrs. Robinson might have crossed her mind. Probably not, but it wasn’t impossible. Her husband had been out of the picture almost twenty years by then.

    Ned’s smile faded. He rattled the acceptance letter again. "I knew this was yes as soon as I took it out of the mailbox. I could just tell, somehow. And I started missing him all over again. I mean fierce."

    I know, I said, but of course I didn’t. My own father was still alive, a hale and genially profane man of seventy-four. At seventy, my mother was all that and a bag of chips.

    Ned sighed, looking off at the hills. "How he went out is just so dumb, he said. I can’t even tell my kids, if I ever have any, that Grampy went down in a hail of bullets while foiling the bank robbers or the militia guys who were trying to put a bomb in the county courthouse. Nothing like that."

    No, I agreed, nothing like that.

    I can’t even say it was because he was careless. He was just . . . a drunk just came along and just . . .

    He bent over, wheezing like an old man with a cramp in his belly, and this time I at least put my hand on his back. He was trying so hard not to cry, that’s what got to me. Trying so hard to be a man, whatever that means to an eighteen-year-old boy.

    Ned. It’s all right.

    He shook his head violently. If there was a God, there’d be a reason, he said. He was looking down at the ground. My hand was still on his back, and I could feel it heaving up and down, like he’d just run a race. If there was a God, there’d be some kind of thread running through it. But there isn’t. Not that I can see.

    If you have kids, Ned, tell them their grandfather died in the line of duty. Then take them here and show them his name on the plaque, with all the others.

    He didn’t seem to hear me. I have this dream. It’s a bad one. He paused, thinking how to say it, then just plunged ahead. I dream it was all a dream. Do you know what I’m saying?

    I nodded.

    "I wake up crying, and I look around my room, and it’s sunny. Birds are singing. It’s morning. I can smell coffee downstairs and I think, ‘He’s okay. Jesus and thank you God, the old man’s okay.’ I don’t hear him talking or anything, but I just know. And I think what a stupid idea it was, that he could be walking up the side of some guy’s rig to give him a warning about a flapper and just get creamed by a drunk, the sort of idea you could only have in a stupid dream where everything seems so real . . . and I start to swing my legs out of bed . . . sometimes I see my ankles go into a patch of sun . . . it even feels warm . . . and then I wake up for real, and it’s dark, and I’ve got the blankets pulled up around me but I’m still cold, shivering and cold, and I know that the dream was a dream."

    That’s awful, I said, remembering that as a boy I’d had my own version of the same dream. It was about my dog. I thought to tell him that, then didn’t. Grief is grief, but a dog is not a father.

    It wouldn’t be so bad if I had it every night. Then I think I’d know, even while I was asleep, that there’s no smell of coffee, that it’s not even morning. But it doesn’t come . . . doesn’t come . . . and then when it finally does, I get fooled again. I’m so happy and relieved, I even think of something nice I’ll do for him, like buy him that five-iron he wanted for his birthday . . . and then I wake up. I get fooled all over again. Maybe it was the thought of his father’s birthday, not celebrated this year and never to be celebrated again, that started fresh tears running down his cheeks. I just hate getting fooled. It’s like when Mr. Jones came down and got me out of World History class to tell me, but even worse. Because I’m alone when I wake up in the dark. Mr. Grenville—he’s the guidance counselor at school—says time heals all wounds, but it’s been almost a year and I’m still having that dream.

    I nodded. I was remembering Ten-Pound, shot by a hunter one November, growing stiff in his own blood under a white sky when I found him. A white sky promising a winter’s worth of snow. In my dream it was always another dog when I got close enough to see, not Ten-Pound at all, and I felt that same relief. Until I woke up, at least. And thinking of Ten-Pound made me think, for a moment, of our barracks mascot back in the old days. Mister Dillon, his name had been, after the TV sheriff played by James Arness. A good dog.

    I know that feeling, Ned.

    Do you? He looked at me hopefully.

    Yes. And it gets better. Believe me, it does. But he was your Dad, not a schoolmate or a neighbor from down the road. You may still be having that dream next year at this time. You may even be having it ten years on, every once in awhile.

    That’s horrible.

    No, I said. That’s memory.

    If there was a reason. He was looking at me earnestly. "A damn reason. Do you get that?"

    Of course I do.

    "Is there one, do you think?"

    I thought of telling him I didn’t know about reasons, only about chains—how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you’re lucky. Fucking strangled, if you’re not.

    I found myself gazing across the parking lot at Shed B again. Looking at it, I thought that if I could get used to what was stored in its dark interior, Ned Wilcox could get used to living a fatherless life. People can get used to just about anything. That’s the best of our lives, I guess. Of course, it’s the horror of them, too.

    Sandy? What do you think?

    I think that you’re asking the wrong guy. I know about work, and hope, and putting a nut away for the GDR.

    He grinned. In Troop D, everyone talked very seriously about the GDR, as though it were some complicated subdivision of law enforcement. It actually stood for golden days of retirement. I think it might have been Huddie Royer who first started talking about the GDR.

    I also know about preserving the chain of evidence so no smart defense attorney can kick your legs out from under you in court and make you look like a fool. Beyond that, I’m just another confused American male.

    At least you’re honest, he said.

    But was I? Or was I begging the goddam question? I didn’t feel particularly honest right then; I felt like a man who can’t swim looking at a boy who is floundering in deep water. And once again Shed B caught my eye. Is it cold in here? this boy’s father had asked, back in the once-upon-a-time, back in the day. Is it cold in here, or is it just me?

    No, it hadn’t been just him.

    What are you thinking about, Sandy?

    Nothing worth repeating, I said. What are you doing this summer?

    Huh?

    What are you doing this summer? It wouldn’t be golfing in Maine or boating on Lake Tahoe, that was for sure; scholarship or no scholarship, Ned was going to need all of the old folding green he could get.

    County Parks and Rec again, I suppose, he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. I worked there last summer until . . . you know.

    Until his Dad. I nodded.

    I got a letter from Tom McClannahan last week, saying he was holding a place open for me. He mentioned coaching Little League, but that’s just the carrot on the end of the stick. Mostly it’ll be swinging a spade and setting out sprinklers, just like last year. I can swing a spade, and I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty. But Tom . . . He shrugged instead of finishing.

    I knew what Ned was too discreet to say. There are two kinds of work-functional alcoholics, those who are just too fucking mean to fall down and those so sweet that other people go on covering for them way past the point of insanity. Tom was one of the mean ones, the last sprig on a family tree full of plump county hacks going back to the nineteenth century. The McClannahans had fielded a Senator, two members of the House of Representatives, half a dozen Pennsylvania Representatives, and Statler County trough-hogs beyond counting. Tom was, by all accounts, a mean boss with no ambition to climb the political totem pole. What he liked was telling kids like Ned, the ones who had been raised to be quiet and respectful, where to squat and push. And of course for Tom, they never squatted deep enough or pushed hard enough.

    Don’t answer that letter yet, I said. I want to make a call before you do.

    I thought he’d be curious, but he only nodded his head. I looked at him sitting there, holding the letter on his lap, and thought that he looked like a boy who has been denied a place in the college of his choice instead of being offered a fat scholarship incentive to go there.

    Then I thought again. Not just denied a place in college, maybe, but in life itself. That wasn’t true—the letter he’d gotten from Pitt was only one of the things that proved it—but I’ve no doubt he felt that way just then. I don’t know why success often leaves us feeling lower-spirited than failure, but I know it’s true. And remember that he was just eighteen, a Hamlet age if there ever was one.

    I looked across the parking lot again at Shed B, thinking about what was inside. Not that any of us really knew.

    *   *   *

    My call the following morning was to Colonel Teague in Butler, which is our regional headquarters. I explained the situation, and waited while he made a call, presumably to Scranton, where the big boys hang their hats. It didn’t take long for Teague to get back to me, and the news was good. I then spoke to Shirley, although that was little more than a formality; she had liked the father well enough, but outright doted on the son.

    When Ned came in that afternoon after school, I asked him if he’d like to spend the summer learning dispatch—and getting paid for it—instead of listening to Tom McClannahan bitch and moan down at Parks and Rec. For a moment he looked stunned . . . hammered, almost. Then he broke out in an enormous delighted grin. I thought he was going to hug me. If I’d actually put my arm around him the previous evening instead of just thinking about it, he probably would’ve. As it was, he settled for clenching his hands into fists, raising them to the sides of his face, and hissing Yesssss!

    Shirley’s agreed to take you on as ’prentice, and you’ve got the official okay from Butler. It ain’t swinging a shovel for McClannahan, of course, but—

    This time he did hug me, laughing as he did it, and I liked it just fine. I could get

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