Christine - Stephen King [136]
'I don't know,' Arnie said, but he knew. It had happened before. Sometimes all that Christine's radio would pick up was WDIL. It didn't matter what buttons you pushed or how much you fooled with the FM converter tinder the dashboard; it was WDIL or nothing.
He suddenly felt that stopping for the hitchhiker had been a mistake.
But it was too late for second thoughts now; the fellow had opened one of Christine's rear doors, tossed his duffel-bag onto the floor, and slipped in after it. A blast of cold air and a swirl of snow came in with him.
'Ah, man, thanks.' He sighed. 'My fingers and toes all took off for Miami Beach about twenty minutes ago. They must have gone somewhere, anyway cause I sure can't feel em anymore.'
'Thank my lady,' Arnie said shortly.
'Thank you, ma'am,' the hitchhiker said, tipping an invisible hat gallantly.
'Don't mention it,' Leigh said, and smiled. 'Merry Christmas.'
'Same to you,' the hitchhiker said, 'although you'd never know there was such a thing if you'd been standing out there trying to hook a ride tonight. People just breeze by and then they're gone. Voom.' He looked around appreciatively. 'Nice car, man. Hell of a nice car.'
'Thanks,' Arnie said.
'You restore it yourself?'
'Yeah.'
Leigh was looking at Arnie, puzzled. His earlier expansive mood had been replaced by a curtness that was not like his usual self at all. On the radio, the Big Bopper finished and Richie Valens came on, doing 'La Bamba'.
The hitchhiker shook his head and laughed. 'First the Big Bopper, then Richie Valens. Must be death night on the radio. Good old WDIL.'
'What do you mean?' Leigh asked.
Arnie snapped the radio off. 'They died in a plane crash. With Buddy Holly.'
'Oh,' Leigh said in a small voice.
Perhaps the hitchhiker also sensed the change in Arnie's mood; he fell silent and meditative in the back seat. Outside, the snow began to fall faster and harder. The first good storm of the season had come in.
At length, the golden arches twinkled up out of the snow.
'Do you want me to go in, Arnie?' Leigh asked. Arnie had gone nearly as quiet as stone, turning aside her bright attempts at conversation with mere grunts.
'I will,' he said, and pulled in. 'What do you want?' 'Just a hamburger and french fries, please.' She had intended to go the whole hog - Big Mac, shake, even the cookies - but her appetite seemed to have shrunk away to nothing.
Arnie parked. In the yellow light flaring from the squat brick building's undersides, his face looked jaundiced and somehow diseased. He turned around, arm trailing over the seat. 'Can I grab you something?'
'No thanks,' the hitchhiker said. 'Folks'll be waiting supper. Can't disappoint my mom. She kills the fatted calf every time I come h - '
The chunk of door cut off his final word. Arnie had gotten out and was headed briskly across to the IN door, his boots kicking up little puffs of new snow.
'Is he always that cheery?' the hitchhiker asked 'Or does he get sorta taciturn sometimes?'
'He's very sweet,' Leigh said firmly. She was suddenly nervous. Arnie had turned off the engine and taken the keys, and she was left alone with this stranger in the back seat. She could see him in the rearview mirror, and suddenly his long black hair, tangled by the wind, his scruff of beard, and his dark eyes made him seem Manson-like and wild.
'Where do you go to school?' she asked. Her fingers were plucking at her slacks, and she made them stop.
'Pitt,' the hitchhiker said, and no more. His eyes met hers in the mirror, and Leigh dropped hers hastily to her lap. Cranberry red slacks. She had worn them because Arnie had once told her he liked them - probably because they were the tightest pair she owned, even tighter than her Levi's. She suddenly wished she had worn something else, something that could be considered provocative by no stretch of the imagination: a grain-sack, maybe. She tried to smile - it was a funny thought, all right, a grain-sack, get it, ha-ha-ho-ho, wotta knee-slapper - but no smile came.