Arnie ran to what remained of his car, hands out, and stopped so abruptly in front of it that the gesture seemed almost to be a horrified warding-off; the classic movie pose of the hit-and-run victim an instant before the lethal collision.
He stood that way for a moment, as if to stop the car, or the whole world. Then he lowered his arms. His adam’s apple lurched up and down twice as he struggled to swallow something back—a moan, a cry—and then his throat seemed to lock solid, every muscle standing out, each cord standing out, even the blood-vessels standing out in perfect relief. It was the throat of a man trying to lift a piano.
Leigh walked slowly toward him. Her hand still throbbed, and tomorrow it would be swollen and virtually useless, but for now she had forgotten it. Her heart went out to him and seemed to find him; she felt his sorrow and shared it or it seemed to her that she did. It was only later that she realized how much Arnie shut her out that day—how much of his suffering he elected to do alone, and how much of his hate he hid away.
“Arnie, who did it?” she asked, her voice breaking with grief for him. No, she had not liked the car, but to see it reduced to this made her understand fully what Arnie’s commitment had been, and she could hate it no longer—or so she thought.
Arnie made no answer. He stood looking at Christine, his eyes burning, his head slightly down.
The windscreen had been smashed through in two places; handfuls of safety glass fragments were strewn across the slashed seat covers like trumpery diamonds. Half of the front bumper had been pried off and now dragged on the pavement, near a snarl of black wires like octopus tentacles. Three of the four side windows had also been broken. Holes had been punched through the sides of the body at waist-level in ragged, wavering lines. It looked as if some sharp, heavy instrument—maybe the pry-end of a tyre iron—had been used. The passenger door hung open, and she saw that all the dashboard glass had been broken. Tufts and wads of stuffing were everywhere. The speedometer needle lay on the driver’s side floormat.
Arnie walked slowly around his car, noting all of this. Leigh spoke to him twice. He didn’t answer either time. Now the leaden colour of his face was broken by two hectic, burning spots of flush riding high up on his cheekbones. He picked up the octopus-thing that a been lying on the pavement and she saw it was a distributor cap—her father had pointed that out to her once when he had been tinkering with their car.
He looked at it for a moment, as if examining an exotic zoological specimen, and then threw it down. Broken glass gritted under their heels. She spoke to him again. He didn’t answer, and now, as well as a terrible pity for him, she began to feel afraid, too. She told Dennis Guilder later that it seemed—at least at the time—perfectly possible that he might have lost his mind.
He booted a piece of chrome trim out of his way. It struck the cyclone fence at the back of the lot with a little tinkling sound. The tail-lights had been smashed, more trumpery gems, this time rubies, this time on the pavement instead of the seat.
“Arnie—” she tried again.
He stopped. He was looking in through the hole in the driver’s side window. A terrible low sound began to come from his chest, a jungle sound. She looked over his shoulder, saw, and suddenly felt a crazy need to laugh and scream and faint all at the same time. On the dashboard… she hadn’t noticed at first; in the midst of the general destruction she hadn’t noticed what was on the dashboard. And she wondered, with vomit suddenly rising in her throat, who could be so low, so completely low, as to do such a thing, to…
“Shitters!” Arnie cried, and his voice was not his own. It was high and shrill and cracked with fury.
Leigh turned around and threw up, holding blindly onto the car next to Christine, seeing small white dots in front of her eyes that expanded like puffed rice. Dimly she thought of the county fair—every year they’d haul an old junk car up onto a plank platform and lean a sledgehammer against it and you got three swings for a quarter. The idea was to demolish the car. But not… not to…
“You goddam shitters!” Arnie screamed. “I’ll get you! I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do! If it’s the last motherfucking thing I ever do!”
Leigh threw up again and for one terrible moment found herself wishing that she had never ever met Arnie Cunningham.
Would you like to go riding
In my Buick ’59? I said, would you like to go riding
In my Buick ’59? It’s got two carburettors
And a supercharger up the side.
