Characters in Christine

… birthday cakes, as had Ellie's closest childhood friend Aimee Carruthers (long since moved to Nevada and now referred to in the doleful tones reserved for those who have died young and senselessly) and many other chums. Now my dad gave most of what he made to the Salvation Army 400 …

He opened his mouth to answer the Federal cop's question and produced only another dusty croak. 'Is this information correct?' the Federal cop asked patiently. 'Yes,' Bill Upshaw croaked. 'And another office at 100 Frankstown Road in Monroeville?' 'Yes.' 'Hon, who is it?' Amber asked, and came into the hallway.

'Arnold Richard Cunningham? one of the cops asked. 'Yes, indeed,' Arnie said calmly. 'Was I speeding?' 'No, son,' one of the others said. 'But you are in a world of hurt, all the same.' The first cop stepped forward as formally as a career Army officer.

It had been Arnie's idea that they not cancel the traditional Christmas Eve visit with Aunt Vicky and Uncle Steve, Regina's sister and her husband.

'Barry Gottfried,' the hitchhiker said. 'At your service.' Again he swept off an imaginary hat. 'Leigh Cabot,' she said. 'This is Arnie Cunningham. Thank you again.' 'For sure,' Arnie added, but Leigh heard no real thanks in his voice - only that shakiness.

It was those two shitters Barry Qualson and Mike Hicks that had lost it for them; both of them played chess as if maybe they thought Ruy Lopex was some new kind of soft drink or something He stripped the wrapper and the foil from a stick of gum, folded …

So was Bobby Stanton in the back seat. In the few months since he had been ushered out of LHS, Buddy seemed to have aged. Part of it was the beard. He looked less like Clint Eastwood and more like some hard-drinking young actor's version of Captain Ahab.

Brad Jeffries, the job foreman, had been frankly dubious about taking a runt like Arnie on, but had finally allowed that he could use a flagman; the girl he had been planning to hire had gotten herself pregnant and had run off to get married.

A pimply, bullet-headed nerd named Brandon Hurling had invited her to go roller skating with him. My dad was going to drive them. Pretty cool. My mother and father joined in, but my mother kept throwing anxious don't-forget glances at Dad, and he lingered after Mom had taken Elaine out.

Coach had taken me out halfway through the fourth quarter to put in Brian McNally, who would be replacing me next year - actually even earlier than that, as it turned out. I showered and changed up, then came back out just as the two-minute warning went off.

They were looking for something for Bruce, Mother and Dad's only nephew. Somewhere a department-store Santa Claus was ho-ho-ho-ing into a PA system, and the amplified sound was not jolly but somehow ominous, the laughter of a maniac who had come in the …

Like the kids in the smoking area at school, like Ralph on Basin Drive, like Buddy Repperton (we'll be talking about him all too soon, I'm afraid), he had taken an instant dislike to Arnie - it was a case of hate at first sight.

When I was nine, we had a cat named Captain Beefheart, and he got hit by a UPS truck. We took him to the vet's - my mom had to drive slow because she was crying and it was hard for her to see - and I sat in the …

One of her girlfriends, Carolyn Shambliss, said it was, but Carolyn lied about almost everything. I told her to ask Milton Dodd, her dorky-looking boyfriend. Then Elaine really did get mad and tried to hit me and asked me why do you always have to be so awful, Dennis?

But the floor held - at least for the time being, it held. Christine roared across the living room at him. Behind, she left a zig-zag pattern of snowy tyre prints on the rug. She slammed into the stairs. Will was thrown back against the wall.

The sounds of the cheers, the blaring, distorted voice of Chubby McCarthy from the loudspeaker as he announced downs and yards, even the sounds of players hitting other players, all sounded weird and echoey in that constant, flat wind.

- Z. Z. Top At Libertyville High, Coach Puffer bad given way to Coach Jones, and football had given way to basketball.

The boos made Coach Puffer turn nearly purple, and he invited those 'poor sports and fair-weather friends' to turn out Saturday afternoon to watch the comeback of the century. I don't know if the poor sports and fair-weather friends turned out or not, but I was there.

Elaine had gone over, to her friend Della's house. Our place was quiet; outside, the sun played tag with a few benign white clouds. Dad gave me a beer, which he does only when he's feeling extraordinarily mellow. But Saturday still felt flat.

The problem was I couldn't believe what I was seeing. 'My name is Dennis Guilder,' I said 'My dad used to do your books, didn't he?'

'She'd scream, yeah.' 'Where is your mother?' 'She and Ellie went over to the Rennekes'. Dina Renneke got a complete library of Shaun Cassidy albums for Christmas. Ellie is green.' 'I thought Shaun was out,' my father said. 'I think she's afraid fashion might be doubling back on her.'

Dr Arroway says that's nothing but a folk-tale, but Coach Puffer swears by them, and he checks the bottle every time he comes to visit.' 'Does he come often? The Coach?' 'Yeah, he does. Now he's got me half-believing that stuff about rosehips making your broken bones knit faster.'

Knocked him senseless. We got him to old Dr Farner - Rollie had come around by then, but he was still groggy - and Farner put a dozen stitches in his scalp. A week later, Randy Throgmorton fell through the ice on Palmer Pond and was drowned.

At first it wasn't too bad, then it got worse. Dr Mascia prescribed - Dennis, are you okay?' With what felt like a fantastic effort, Dennis kept his voice even.

'Rollie was the oldest, I am the youngest. Our brother Drew died in France in 1944. He and Rollie were both career Army. We grew up here, in Libertyville. Only Libertyville was much, much smaller then, you know, only a village. Small enough to have the ins and the outs.

Elaine was in on her bed, listening to the latest K-Tel conglomeration of hits. I asked her to turn it down because I was going to bed. She stuck out her tongue at me. No way I allow that kind of thing.

… had known twenty years before, a fellow named Everett Dingle who had gone home from the garage one afternoon and murdered his entire family. Will lit a cigar. Anything to take the taste of the aspirator out of his mouth, that rotten taste. Lately it seemed harder than ever to …

They steamrollered us. Fred Dann went out of the game with a concussion in the first period. In the second period, Norman Aleppo got a ride to the Libertyville Community Hospital with a broken arm. And in the last period, the Bears scored three consecutive touchdowns, two on punt returns.

With a sinking in my stomach, I suddenly remembered a guy we had gone to school with. Freddy Darlington, his name had been. Freddy was no ball of fire, but he was an okay kid with a good sense of humour.

One of the classes Leigh and Arnie and I had all shared before my football injury was Fudgy Bowen's Classics of English Literature, and one of the first things we had been faced with in there was Malory's Morte d'arthur.

Across the way, in stall ten, a fellow named Gabbs was putting a new silencer on his old Valiant, and down at the far end of the garage there was the periodic burr on an air wrench as some fellow put on his snow tyres.

Gary Tardiff grabbed it up and rambled sixty yards for the score, a great big grin on his face. The Hillmen and their coach went bananas protesting that the ball had been dead at the line of scrimmage, but the officials disagreed and we led 6-0.

'Friendship,' George LeBay said. 'It eats friendship. If I were you, Dennis, I would now prepare for the worst.' He closed the door of the Chevette with a soft chuck! and started up its sewing-machine engine. He drove away, leaving me to stand there on the edge of the blacktop.

It's kind of spooky, like I said. Gerry Barlow - he was one of us who did it - always claimed LeBay threw a four-wheel drive into her somehow, but I don't think there's a conversion kit for something like that, do you?' 'No,' I said.

Gitney, the IRS man who had come along for this particular sleigh-ride, was frowning at him to go on. None of you know what this is about. None of you. But he raised the loudhailer to his lips again. 'This place of business is closed!

'Yes.' 'What's the deal?' 'You take my Chrysler to Albany that's the fucking deal. Henry Buck was 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 cheque. If they look good, you make the deal.

Junkins nodded. 'Oh yeah, I talked to the club advisor. Herbert Slawson. He says that the first three years you never missed a meeting, even came to a couple with a low-grade case of the flu. You were his star player.

… 'I seenya at the Shriners' dance last night, Howie, who was that skag your brother was wit?' 'Oh, her? That was your sister.' I mean, like, how Old World can you get? People came in and went out, a lot of them kids from school. Before long I'd be seeing …

… was criminal, hastily referred her to a colleague, Jim Warberg. She called Warberg and got an answering service that would not reveal Warberg's home number. She sat by the phone for a moment, drumming her fingers lightly against her lips, and then called Sprague again. He hadn't wanted to give …

… the day, keeps the tools inventoried, along with Jimmy Sykes. Have to be careful with tools around here, Dennis. They got a way of walkin away when your back's turned.' He laughed, and the laugh turned into a wheeze. 'Got him started strippin parts out back, as well. He's got …

Johnny Pomberton, who bought and sold used trucks, had been trying to get an old dumpster he'd picked up in running shape that week. Johnny knew cars and trucks better than anyone else in Libertyville, maybe anyone else in all of Pennsylvania.

Et cetera. Then he smiled - but the smile didn't touch his eyes at all. 'You're Kenny Guilder's boy?' 'Yes, that's right.' He patted the hood of Arnie's car with one pale, fat hand - there were two rings on it, and one of them looked like a real diamond.

'Did you like that? And do you remember when Ladd Smythe was a patrol-boy and he pushed you down in the street and I pulled his hat off and stuffed it down his pants? Where you been, Arnie? This guy LeBay is a Johnny-come-lately. Me, I was here all along.'

Lenny Barongg, one of our tailbacks, had a mild sunstroke and was mercifully - for him, at least - excused for the rest of the week.

They had been invited over to the Callisons' for a light Thanksgiving brunch, and Lou Callison, one of the three Callison boys, was fourteen and 'cute'. Her racked-up brother had become boring. They hadn't discovered a rare and tragic form of cancer breeding in his bones.

… survived by a brother, George, and a sister, Marcia. Funeral services were scheduled for Tuesday at two. Suddenly. In the obits ' it's always 'after a long illness', 'after a short illness', or 'suddenly'. Suddenly can mean anything from a brain embolism to electrocuting yourself in the bathtub. I remembered …

… of linemen hitting the tackling dummies, could hear Marty Bellerman yelling exuberantly, 'My ass and your face, Pedersen! Remember that! My ass and your face! It's easier to tell the fuckin Bobbsey Twins apart!' The dry smell of chalk-dust in the classrooms in the Math Wing. The sound of the …

That was when I started to wish I had just gone home. Michael Cunningham had turned from the refrigerator to stare at his son, holding a Granny Smith apple in one hand and a carton of plain yoghurt in the other.

It was those two shitters Barry Qualson and Mike Hicks that had lost it for them; both of them played chess as if maybe they thought Ruy Lopex was some new kind of soft drink or something He stripped the wrapper and the foil from a stick of gum, folded …

I told her to ask Milton Dodd, her dorky-looking boyfriend. Then Elaine really did get mad and tried to hit me and asked me why do you always have to be so awful, Dennis?

I asked. I had a study hall that period - and one proctored by the formidable Miss Raypach, whom all the kids called Miss Rat-Pack but never to her face, you can believe that.

Most of them were twenty and still struggling to get out of school. Don Vandenberg, Sandy Galton, Moochie Welch. Moochie's real name was Peter, but the kids all called him Moochie because you always saw him outside of the rock concerts in Pittsburgh, spare-changing odd dimes from the crowd.

Oh, I thought, oh my friends, I could tell you stories Then Mr Cabot was saying, 'What did you get my daughter into, boy?'

'Hey!' He jumped and looked around at me in terror 'Go get Mr Casey. He eats his lunch in the wood-shop office. Go get him right now.' Repperton glanced at me, then glanced at Arnie. 'Come on, Cunningham,' he said. 'What do you say, you want to go for it?'

'Mr Fenderson is famous for giving so few exams in the first half of a quarter that you can bring home a red-card with an F on it because you didn't understand one basic concept, and end up with an A for the whole marking period.

Will wheezed. Jimmy looked around. 'No, sir, Mr Darnell, nobody been in since Mr Hatch came and got his Fairlane, and 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.

'They put you on varsity and look what happens to the fucking football team.' Mr Hodder, who teaches freshmen the finer points of grammar (and also how to jerk off, some wits said) happened to be passing by just then, and he frowned impressively at Arnie.

If the shitters will let you."' We went inside. Mr Leheureux, the French teacher, was going someplace fast, his bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. 'You boys are late,' he said in a harried voice that reminded me of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

The sound of the typewriters from the big secretarial classrooms on the second floor. Mr Meecham, the principal, giving the announcements at the end of the day in his dry, fussy voice. Lunch outdoors on the bleachers in good weather. A new crop of freshmen looking dorky and lost.

I know that much just from watching TV. And when I was taking Auto Shop II two years ago, Mr Smolnack said that the two best ways he knew to totally destroy a car's front end was to either hit a deer or a person.

Her mother and father had gone over to the Stewarts for Christmas Eve drinks; Mr Stewart was her father's new boss, and they liked each other. This was a friendship Mrs Cabot was eager to promote.

The first nine weeks were being taught by Mr Thompson, the head of the department. The subject of that first nine weeks was Two Hundred Years of Boom and Bust.

Mr Vickers, the guidance counsellor at school, called and told me! He scored 700s on his college boards, he could get into almost any college in the country - at least he could have before this - this trouble ' Her voice wavered toward tears, and then she got hold …

'Yes, Mrs Guilder,' Arnie said dutifully. Elaine wandered in. 'Is there any more juice, or did you two coneheads drink it all?' 'Come on, give me a break!' I yelled. There had been some sort of disputed play at second and I had missed the whole thing.

I made small-talk with Mrs Sykes, who was roughly the size of Mount Etna, while time passed and a dismal certainty rose inside me: Jimmy had lost his keys somewhere and the whole thing was off the rails before it could really begin. He came back shaking his head.

I thought that Arnie and I would be called to the office at the end of school to tell Ms Lothrop, the discipline officer, what had happened. But we weren't.

Arnie looked at Mrs Cabot and rolled his eyes. Natalie Cabot put a hand to her mouth and giggled. The rapprochement between her and Arnie was complete. Arnie and Leigh went to Baskin-Robbins, where an initial awkwardness, left over from the phone conversation of the night before, finally melted away.

'Anyway, I heard these two guys talking one day in chem lab - Lenny Barongg and Ned Stroughman - and Ned was telling Lenny that he'd asked her out and she'd said no, but in a nice way like maybe if he asked her again she might try it out.

Moochie Welch went up with Richie Trelawney and Nicky Biltingham but got separated from them even before the show began.

In the second period, Norman Aleppo got a ride to the Libertyville Community Hospital with a broken arm. And in the last period, the Bears scored three consecutive touchdowns, two on punt returns. The final score was 40-6. All false modesty aside, I'll tell you that I scored the six.

Gino's is run by a wonderful Italian fellow named Pat Donahue. He has a sticker on his cash register which reads IRISH MAFIA, he serves green beer on St Patrick's Day (on March 17th you can't even get near Gino's, and one of the cuts on the jukebox is Rosemary …

Paul Harvey used it on his programme. No mention was made of Christine being at Darnell's Garage. My family came to visit that night, and by then I was …

… to O'Malley's for a beer or two with Paul Strickland, another factory reject in the game of faculty politics. It would probably end up being six beers, or eight, or ten. And if she went upstairs to his study later on, she would find him sitting bolt upright behind his …

… Bellerman yelling exuberantly, 'My ass and your face, Pedersen! Remember that! My ass and your face! It's easier to tell the fuckin Bobbsey Twins apart!' The dry smell of chalk-dust in the classrooms in the Math Wing. The sound of the typewriters from the big secretarial classrooms on the second …

He was getting his jacket on and arguing with Poochie Anderson about some baseball question. When LeBay went, he always went the same way, kid. He'd jump into that Plymouth of his, back up, and then floor it.

Quent Youngerman, another friend, had claimed to have seen his father, long dead, standing at the foot of his hospital bed after Quent, a steel-worker, had taken a terrible fall from the fourth floor of a building under construction down on Wood Street.

… in front of someone's house for three hours,' Ralph said loudly. His lips were pulled back and I could see spit shining on his teeth in the light of the setting sun. 'It's been an hour,' I said quietly, 'if that.' 'Don't give me any of your smartmouth, kid,' Ralph …

… during a hockey game, and a fellow named Randy Throgmorton laid open Rollie's head with his stick. Knocked him senseless. We got him to old Dr Farner - Rollie had come around by then, but he was still groggy - and Farner put a dozen stitches in his scalp. A …

'I was lucky.' 'I guess you were.' Arnie didn't say a lot more, but a kid I knew named Randy Turner was there, and he filled me in on what had happened in more detail after school had started again.

Both Michael and Regina Cunningham were at home she was working one of an endless series of goofy jigsaw puzzles (this one was about six thousand different cogs and gears on a plain white background; it would have driven me out of my skull in about fifteen minutes), and he …

I got his name, Richard McCandless, from the building's janitor, who also found a telephone number to go with it. The number turned out to be that of David Emerson's, Libertyville's 'good' furniture store.

He looked tough. 'State Police Inspector,' he said. 'Richard Mercer is my name. Rick, if you like.' He held out his hand, and stretching awkwardly and carefully I touched it. I couldn't really shake it. My head ached and I was thirsty. 'Look,' I said.

… to drop by in Sandy's old dented Mustang; Richie Trelawney might come by in his Firebird; and Don, of course, was in and out almost all the time - when he wasn't goofing off at school. By midnight on any given weekend there might be six or eight guys sitting …

… come loose, you cunt, come on over here, Rick, and help me get this twat off. I looked around for Darnell and didn't see him any place No one took any particular notice of me, so I walked over to stall twenty where Christine sat, now pointing nose-out, just like …

I slipped my hand along the rusty surface and I thought of George LeBay, and Veronica and Rita LeBay, and somewhere along the line the hand that was supposed to be caressing closed into a fist and I suddenly slammed it down on Christine's flank as hard as I could …

… money from the Federal government), a kid named Roger Gilman beat the living shit out of him. That's pretty fucking vulgar, I know, but there's just no fancy, elegant way to put it. Gilman just beat the living shit out of Arnie. The beating was bad enough to keep Arnie …

Roland D. LeBay. US Army, retired.' 'Arnie Cunningham.' The old sport pumped his hand and sort of waved at me. I was out of the play; he had his sucker. Arnie might as well have handed LeBay his wallet. How much?' Arnie asked. And then he plunged ahead.

'Arnie? Are you all right?' 'Huh? Sure. T thought you were taking Roseanne to the movies.' 'That's where I'm calling from.' 'It must not be that exciting,' Arnie said. His voice was still flat - flat and dreary. 'Roseanne thinks it's great.'

I'm free tomorrow afternoon from noon until three.' 'That'll be fine. You ask for Roy Mustungerra, and mention my name.' 'Spell that.' Will spelled it. 'That's all?' 'Yeah except I hope you get your ass whuped.' 'Fat chance,' Cunningham said, and laughed. Will told him goodbye and hung up.

'Rudolph Junkins. State Police, Detective Division.' Junkins stuck his hand in through the open window. Arnie looked at it for a moment. So his father had been right. He grinned his most charming grin, took the hand, shook it firmly, and said, 'Don't shoot, copper, I'll throw out my guns.'

… of fact - was a young man named Sandy Galton, the only one of Buddy Repperton's close circle of hoodlum friends who had not been in the smoking area on the day Repperton had been expelled from school. Arnie didn't recognize him, but Galton recognized Arnie. Buddy Repperton, out of …

We sat down in the lawn chairs. Pretty soon our cat, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Captain Beefheart's replacement, came creeping out from under the porch, probably hoping to find some cute little chipmunk to murder slowly and nastily. His amber-green eyes glinted in the afternoon light, which was overcast and muted.

… conversation around the house since my mother's brother, Sid, went into bankruptcy and asked my dad for a loan. I went through the same song-and-dance. Then I went upstairs to bed. My ass was dragging, and it looked to me as if my mom and dad had business of their …

That thing'd go out of the parking lot like a rocket, spraying gravel everywhere. So - this was Sonny Bellerman's idea - about four of us go out the back door to the parking lot while LeBay's shouting at Poochie.

I went to college with a tall, ugly fellow we all called Stork. With Stork it was his model train set he'd been hooked on model trains ever since the third grade, and his set was pretty damn near the eighth wonder of the world.

Liberate the real you? I seemed to hear Stukey James, our old high school math teacher, whispering his oft-repeated refrain in my own head: If we follow this line of reasoning to the bitter end, ladies and gentlemen, where does it take us? Where indeed?

She called Tom Sprague, their lawyer, who, hearing that their problem was criminal, hastily referred her to a colleague, Jim Warberg. She called Warberg and got an answering service that would not reveal Warberg's home number.

Our breath made little plumes.. 'Or what about in the fifth grade, when Tommy Deckinger used to call you Fart-Breath?' I asked, my voice rising. Getting angry at him hadn't been part of the game-plan, but now it was here, shaking inside me. 'Did you like that?

My Uncle Fred's a janitor up at the college, and he says there's an op-nin, because this other Janitor, he disappeared, just took off or somethin, and - ' 'Arnie says when they closed down the garage, he lost his whole socket-wrench kit,' I broke in.

… traditional Christmas Eve visit with Aunt Vicky and Uncle Steve, Regina's sister and her husband. The two families had created a casual, loosely rotating ritual over the years, with Vicky and Steve coming to their house some years, the Cunnhinghams going over to Ligonier on others. This year's trip had …

I thought of Veronica LeBay and shivered. As if reading my thoughts - part of them, anyway LeBay said, 'I knew very little about how my brother may have lived or felt during the last years of his life, but I'm quite sure of one thing, Dennis.

He thought of his one girlfriend, a pallid blonde named Wanda Haskins, whose white cheeks had been splattered with freckles which grew painfully profuse in the August sun.

It was a block-long space enclosed in five-foot-high strips of the same corrugated tin, Will Darnell's apathetic nod toward the Town Zoning Board.

… paperwork in hand knocked on the door of William Upshaw, who lived in the very much upscale suburb of Sewickley. Upshaw answered the door in his bathrobe. From behind came the cartoon squawks of Saturday-morning TV. 'Who is it, honey?' his wife called from the kitchen. Upshaw looked at the …