Characters in Uncle Otto’s Truck

When a pulper named Baker came by a year later and offered to buy the Cresswell’s wheels, tires and all, because they were the right size to fit his rig, McCutcheon took the man’s twenty dollars like a flash.

• • • McCutcheon had Billy Dodd hook his wrecker up to the Cresswell and drag it around so it faced the road.

Carl Durkin, the town undertaker and not the most closemouthed of men, said that when the docs opened him up to do the autopsy, they found more than three quarts of oil in him . . . and not just in his stomach, either. It had suffused his whole system.

… Otto finished the little building off by having Chuckie Barger slap on a coat of bright red paint and then announcing it was a gift to the town—a fine new schoolhouse, he said, and all he asked was that they name it after his late partner. Castle Rock’s selectmen were …

That was a total price of about ten thousand dollars. Uncle Otto couldn’t swing it, and so he took a partner—a Yankee named George McCutcheon.

They was tetched, y’know, t’both of them. Just lookit the way Otto Schenck ended up, if you don’t believe me. Right across the road in that little house he thought the town was gonna take for a school, and just as crazy as a shithouse rat.”

… into the cab, saying, “Drive her to Portland, Quentin . . . go to her!” I remember the air sweeping past my face as I went up and up, and then its clean taste was replaced by the smells of ancient Diamond Gem Oil, cracked leather, mouse-droppings, and . . …

… was filled with the glaring windshield of the Cresswell—and although it was only for a moment, I would swear on a Bible that was no hallucination. The Cresswell was there, in the window, less than six feet from me. I had placed my fingers on one of Uncle Otto’s cheeks, …