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Authors: Stephen King

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transmission in neutral and had almost lost an eye as a result. I could almost hear Tink laughing.

I fixed that and then tried the wires again. The motor turned over and turned over. It coughed once, puffing a dirty

brown smoke signal into the air to be torn away by the ceaseless wind, and then the motor just went on cranking. I

kept trying to tell myself the machine was just in rough shape - man who'd go off without putting the sand-flaps down,

after all, was apt to forget anything - but I became more and more sure that they had drained A the diesel, just as I had

feared.

And then, just as I was about to give up and look for something I could use to dipstick the loader's fuel tank
(all the

better to read the bad news with, my dear),
the motor bellowed into life.

I let the wires go - the bare patch on the blue one was smoking - and goosed the throttle. When it was running

smoothly, I geared it into first, swung it around, and started back toward the long brown rectangle cut neatly into the

westbound lane of the highway.

The rest of the day was a long bright hell of roaring engine and blazing sun. The driver of the Case-Jordan had

forgotten to mount his sand-flaps, but he had remembered to take his sun umbrella. Well, the old gods laugh

sometimes, I guess. No reason why. They just do. And I guess the old gods have a twisted sense of humor.

It was almost two o'clock before I got all of the asphalt chunks down into the ditch, because I had never achieved any

real degree of delicacy with the pincers. And with the spade-shaped piece at the end, I had to cut it in two and then

drag each of the chunks down into the ditch by hand. I was afraid that if I used the pincers I would break them.

When all the asphalt pieces were down in the ditch, I drove the bucketloader back down to the road equipment. I was

getting low on fuel; it was time to siphon. I stopped at the van, got the hose ... and found myself staring, hypnotized,

at the big jerrican of water. I tossed the siphon away for the time being and crawled into the back of the van. I poured

water over my face and neck and chest and screamed with pleasure. I knew that if I drank I would vomit, but I had to

drink. So I did and I vomited, not getting up to do it but only turning my head to one side and then crab-crawling as far

away from the mess as I could.

Then I slept again and when I woke up it was nearly dusk and somewhere a wolf was howling at a new moon rising in

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the purple sky.

In the dying light the cut I had made really did look like a grave - the grave of some mythical ogre. Goliath, maybe.

Never, I

told the long hole in the asphalt.

Please,

Elizabeth whispered back.
Please ... for me.

I got four more Empirin out of the glove compartment and swallowed them down.

'For you,' I said.

I parked the Case-Jordan with its fuel tank close to the tank of a bulldozer, and used a crowbar to pry off the caps on

both. A 'dozer-jockey on a state crew might get away with forgetting to drop the sand-flaps on his vehicle, but with

forgetting to lock the fuel-cap, in these days Of $1.05 diesel? Never.

I got the fuel running from the 'dozer into my loader and waited, trying not to think, watching the moon rise higher and

higher in the sky. After awhile I drove back to the cut in the asphalt and started to dig.

Running a bucket-loader by moonlight was a lot easier than running a jackhammer under the broiling desert sun, but it

was still slow work because I was determined that the floor of my excavation should have exactly the right slant. As a

consequence, I frequently consulted the carpenter's level I'd brought with me. That meant stopping the loader, getting

down, measuring, and climbing up into the peak-seat again. No problem ordinarily, but by midnight my body had

stiffened up and every movement sent a shriek of pain through my bones and muscles. My back was the worst; I

began to fear I had done something fairly unpleasant to it.

But that - like everything else - was something I would have to worry about later.

If a hole five feet deep as well as forty-two feet long and five feet wide had been required, it really would have been

impossible, of course, bucket-loader or not - I might just as well have planned to send him into outer space, or drop the

Taj Mahal on him. The total yield on such dimensions is over a thousand cubic feet of earth.

'You've got to create a funnel shape that will suck your bad aliens in,' my mathematician friend had said, 'and then

you've got to create an inclined plane that pretty much mimes the arc of descent.'

He drew one on another sheet of graph paper.

'That means that your intergalactic rebels or whatever they are only need to remove
half
as much earth as the figures

initially show. In, this case-' He scribbled on a work sheet, and beamed. 'Five hundred and twenty-five cubic feet.

Chicken-feed. One man could do it.'

I had believed so, too, once upon a time, but I had not reckoned on the heat ... the blisters ... the exhaustion ... the

steady pain in my back.

Stop for a minute, but not too long. Measure the slant of the trench.

It's
not as bad as you thought, is it, darling? At least it's roadbed and not desert hardpan

I moved more slowly along the length of the grave as the hole got deeper. My hands were bleeding now as I worked

the controls. Ram the drop-lever all the way forward until the bucket lay on the ground. Pull back on the drop-lever and

shove the one that extended the armature with a high hydraulic whine. Watch as the bright oiled metal slid out of the

dirty orange casing, pushing the bucket into the dirt. Every now and then a spark would flash as the bucket slid over a

piece of flint. Now raise the bucket ... swivel it, a dark oblong shape against the stars (and try to ignore the steady

throbbing pain in your neck the way you're trying to ignore the even deeper throb of pain in your back) ... and dump it

down in the ditch, covering the chunks of asphalt already there.

Never mind, darling-you can bandage your hands when it's done. When

he's
done.

'She was in pieces,' I croaked, and jockeyed the bucket back into place so I could take another two hundred pounds of

dirt and gravel out of Dolan's grave.

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How the time flies when you are having a good time.

Moments after I had noticed the first faint streaks of light in the east I got down to take another measurement of the

floor's incline with the carpenter's level-I
was actually getting
near the end. I thought I might just make it. I knelt, and

as I did I felt something in my back let go. It went with a dull little snap.

I uttered a guttural cry and collapsed on my side on the narrow, slanted floor of the excavation, lips pulled back from

my teeth, hands pressing into the small of my back.

Little by little the very worst of the pain passed and I was able to get to my feet.

All right, I

thought.
That's it.
It's
over. It was a good try, but it's over.

Please, darling,

Elizabeth whispered back - impossible as it would have been to believe once upon a time, that whispering voice had

begun to take on unpleasant undertones in my mind; there was a sense of monstrous implacability about it.
Please

don't give up. Please go on.

Go on digging? I don't even know if I can

walk!

But there's so little left to do!

the voice wailed - it was no longer just the voice that
spoke
for Elizabeth, if it had ever been; it
was
Elizabeth. So
little

left, darling!

I looked at my excavation in the growing light and nodded slowly. She was right. The bucket-loader was only five feet

from the end; seven at most. But it was the
deepest
five or seven, of course; the five or seven with the most dirt in it.

You can do it, darling - I know you can.

Softly cajoling.

But it was not really her voice that persuaded me to go on. What really turned the trick was an image of Dolan lying

asleep in his penthouse while I stood here in this hole beside a stinking, rumbling bucket-loader, covered with dirt, my

hands in flaps and ruins. Dolan sleeping in silk pajama bottoms with one of his blondes asleep beside him, wearing

only the top.

Downstairs, in the glassed-in executive section of the parking garage, the Cadillac, already loaded with luggage,

would be gassed and ready to go.

'All right, then,' I said. I climbed slowly back into the bucket-loader's seat and revved the engine.

I kept on until nine o'clock and then I quit - there were other things to do, and I was running out of time. My angled

hole was forty feet long. It would have to be enough.

I drove the bucket-loader back to its original spot and parked it. I would need it again, and that would mean siphoning

more gas, but there was no time for that now. I wanted more Empirin, but there weren't many left in the bottle and I

would need them all later today ... and tomorrow. Oh, yes, tomorrow - Monday, the glorious Fourth.

Instead of Empirin I took a fifteen-minute rest. I could ill-afford the time, but I forced myself to take it just the same. I

lay on my back in the van, my muscles jumping and twitching, imagining Dolan.

He would be packing a few last-minute items in a Travel-All now – some papers to look over, a toilet kit, maybe a

paperback book or a deck of cards.
Suppose he flies this time?
a malicious voice deep inside me whispered, and I

couldn't help it - a moan escaped me. He had never flown to LA before - always it had been the Cadillac. I had an idea

he didn't
like
to fly. Sometimes he did, though - he had flown all the way to London once - and the thought lingered,

itching and throbbing like a scaly patch of skin.

It was nine-thirty when I took out the roll of canvas and the big industrial stapler and the wooden struts. The day was

overcast and a little cooler - God sometimes grants a favor. Up until then I'd forgotten my bald head in consideration of

larger agonies, but now, when I touched it with my fingers, I drew them away with a little hiss of pain. I looked at it in

the outside passenger mirror and saw that it was a deep, angry red - almost a plum color.

Back in Vegas Dolan would be making last-minute phone calls. His driver would be bringing the Cadillac around front.

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There were only about seventyfive miles between me and it, and soon the Cadillac would start to close that distance at

sixty miles an hour. I had no time to stand around bemoaning my sunburned pate.

I love your sunburned pate, dear,

Elizabeth said beside me.

'Thank you, Beth,' I said, and began taking the struts over to the hole.

The work was now light compared to the digging I'd done earlier, and the almost unbearable agony in my back

subsided to a steady dull throb.

But what about later?

that insinuating voice asked.
What about that, hmmmm?

Later would have to take care of itself, that was all. It was beginning to look as if the trap was going to be ready, and

that was the important thing.

The struts spanned the hole with just enough extra length to allow me to seat them tightly in the sides of the asphalt

which formed the top layer of my excavation. This was a job that would have been tougher at night, when the asphalt

was hard, but now, at mid-morning, the stuff was sludgy-pliable, and it was like sticking pencils in wads of cooling

taffy.

When I had all the struts in, the hole had taken on the look of my original chalk diagram, minus the line down the

middle. I positioned the heavy roll of canvas next to the shallow end of the hole and removed the hanks of rope that

had tied it shut.

Then I unrolled forty-two feet of Route 71

Close up, the illusion was not perfect - as stage make-up and set-decoration is never perfect from the first three rows.

But from even a few yards away, it was virtually undetectable. It was a dark-gray strip which matched the actual

surface of Route 71 exactly. On the far left of the canvas strip (as you faced west) was a broken yellow passing line.

I settled the long strip of canvas over the wooden under-structure, then went slowly along the length of it, stapling

the canvas to the struts. MY hands didn't want to do the work but I coaxed them.

With the canvas secured, I returned to the van, slid behind the wheel (sitting down caused another brief but

agonizing muscle spasm), and drove back to the top of the rise. I sat there for a fun minute, looking down at my lumpy,

wounded hands as they lay in my lap. Then I got out and looked back down Route 71, almost casually. I didn't want to

focus on any one thing, you see; I wanted the whole picture - a gestalt, if you will. I wanted, as much as possible, to

see the scene as Dolan and his men were going to see it when they came over the rise. I wanted to get an idea of how

right - or how wrong - it was going to feel to them.

What I saw looked better than I could have hoped.

The road machinery at the far end of the straight stretch justified the piles of dirt that had come from my excavation.

BOOK: Dolan's Cadillac
10.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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