Christine - Stephen King [128]
The mind-monkey was satisfied. Michael rolled over on his right side, slept, and dreamed that he and his nine-year old son were playing miniature golf on an endless series of small Astro-Turfed greens where windmills turned and tiny water-hazards lay in wait and he dreamed that they were alone, all alone in the world, because his son's mother had died in childbirth - very sad; people still remarked on how inconsolable Michael had been - but when they went home, he and his son, the house would be theirs alone, they would eat spaghetti right from the pot like a couple of bachelor slobs, and when the dishes were washed they would sit at a kitchen table hidden beneath spread newspapers and build model cars with harmless plastic engines.
In his sleep Michael Cunningham smiled. Beside him, in the other bed, Regina did not. She lay awake and waited for the sound of the door that would tell her that her son had come in from the world outside.
When she heard the door open and close when she heard his step on the stairs then she would be able to sleep.
Maybe.
33 JUNKINS
I think you better slow down and drive
with me, baby
You say what?
Hush up and mind my own bidness?
But Baby, you are my bidness!
You gooood bidness, baby,
And I love good bidness!
What kind of car am I drivin?
I'm drive a '48 Cadillac
With Thunderbird wings
I tell you, baby, she's a movin thing,
Ride on, Josephine, ride on
- Ellas McDaniel
Junkins turned up at Darnell's around eight-forty-five that evening. Arnie had just finished with Christine for the night. He had replaced the radio aerial that Repperton's gang had snapped off with a new one, and for the last fifteen minutes or so he had been sitting behind the wheel, listening to WDIL's Friday Night Cavalcade of Gold.
He had meant to do no more than turn the radio on and dial across once, making sure that he had hooked up the aerial plug properly and that there was no static. But he had run onto WDIL's strong signal and had sat there, looking straight through the windscreen, his grey eyes musing and far away, as Bobby Fuller sang 'I Fought the Law', as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers sang' Why Do Fools Fall in Love?', as Eddie Cochran sang 'C'mon, Everybody', and Buddy Holly sang 'Rave On'. There were no commercials on WDIL Friday nights, and no deejays. Just the sounds. Gone from the charts but not from our hearts. Every now and then a soothing female voice would break in and tell him what he already knew - that he was listening to WDIL Pittsburgh, the sound of Blue Suede Radio.
Arnie sat dreaming behind the wheel, the red dash lights glowing, tapping his fingers lightly. The aerial was fine. Yes. He had done a good job. It was like Will said; he had a light touch, Look at Christine; Christine proved it. She had been a hunk of junk sitting on LeBay's lawn and he had brought her back; then she had been a hunk of junk sitting in the long-term lot out at the airport and he had brought her back again. He had
Rave on rave on and tell me
Tell me not to be lonely
He had what?
Replaced the aerial, yes. And he had popped so -me of the dents, he could remember that. But he hadn't ordered any glass (although it was all replaced), he hadn't ordered any new seat covers (but they were all replaced, too), and he had only looked closely under the hood once before slamming it back down in horror at the damage they had done to Christine's mill.
But now the radiator was whole, the engine block clean and glowing, the pistons moving free and clear. And it purred like a cat.
But there had been dreams.
He had dreamed of LeBay behind the wheel of Christine, LeBay dressed in an Army uniform that was spotted and splotched with blue-grey patches of graveyard mould, LeBay's flesh had sloughed and run. White, gleaming bone poked through in places. The sockets where LeBay's eyes had once been were empty and dark (but something was squirming in there, ah, yes, something). And then Christine's headlights had come on and someone had been pinned there, pinned