Blaze

“It is her dog,” he said. “I wasn’t sure. I was hoping?” He shook his head.

“It’s hers. And I don’t want her to see him like this.”

“Of course not, but—”

“I’ll help him,” Mrs. Fevereau said. She looked a little better, and she had ditched the cigarette. She reached for my right armpit, then hesitated. “Will that hurt you?”

It would, but less than staying the way I was. As Hastings went up the Goldsteins’ walk, I took hold of the Hummer’s bumper. Together we managed to get me on my feet.

“I don’t supposed you’ve got anything to cover the dog with?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a rug remnant in the back.” She started around to the rear — it would be a long trek, given the Hummer’s size — then turned back. “Thank God it died before the little girl got back.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank God.”

“Still — she’ll never forget it, will she?”

“Well,” I said, “you’re asking the wrong person about that, Mrs. Fevereau. I’m just a retired general contractor.” But when I asked Kamen, he was surprisingly optimistic. He says it’s the bad memories that wear thin first. Then, he says, they tear open and let the light through. I told him he was full of shit and he just laughed.

Maybe si, he says. Maybe no.

,

Footnotes

1

In saying this, I assume you’re like me and rarely sit down to a meal — or even a lowly snack — without your current book near at hand.

2

With this exception: Bachman, writing under the pseudonym of John Swithen, sold a single hard-crime story, “The Fifth Quarter.”

3

Now out of print, and a good thing.

4

The Bachman novel following these was Thinner, and it was no wonder I got outed, since that one was actually written by Stephen King — the bogus author photo on the back flap fooled no one.

5

I believe I am the only writer in the history of English story-telling whose career was based on sanitary napkins; that part of my literary legacy seems secure.

6

I have had the same reaction to Everyman, by Philip Roth, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards — at some point while reading these books, I just start to laugh, wave my hands, and shout: “Bring on the cancer! Bring on the blindness! We haven’t had those yet!”

7

Not in an actual trunk, though; in a cardboard carton.

8

A dame with trouble in her eyes. And ecstasy, presumably, in her pants.

9

Also a throwback to the bad old paperback days, now that I think of it.

10

In my career I have managed to lose not one but two pretty good novels-in-progress. Under the Dome was only 50 pages long at the time it disappeared, but The Cannibals was over 200 pages at the time it went MIA. No copies of either. That was before computers, and I never used carbons for first drafts — it felt haughty, somehow.

11

And, of course, it’s an homage to Of Mice and Men — kinda hard to miss that.