In 2015 Stephen King came out with yet another of his short story collections, titling this one The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. The first story was another of his "monster car" tales...remember Christine and From a Buick 8? This one, Mile 81, is set at a closed and abandoned Maine rest stop off I-95 between Portland and Augusta. Little Pete Simmons is out with his big brother George and George's twelve-to-thirteen year-old friends as they ride their bicycles around and look for fun. When they decide to go on a trail they designed for daredevil stunts, George...who feels responsible for taking care of Pete...tells him to stay back and "hang around" while he and his buddies do their daring bike jumps. Instead Pete, looking for an interesting experience to tell the others, sets out to find the old abandoned I-95 rest stop, where he knows the older teenagers like to go to drink and make out. Getting there, he finds a bottle of vodka and drinks himself to sleep. In the meantime...
A mud-covered nondescript station wagon pulls off the road in front of the rest stop. One good Samaritan after another pull off the road to provide assistance. But when they touch the car...well, I did say that this was one of King's "monster car" tales, didn't I? So what does little Pete have to do with this contraption from the gates of hell and the resolution of the story? Guess you'll have to read it to find out!
What I liked about Mile 81 was how the author took two apparently different narratives and brought them together at the end to make it all seem sensible and satisfactory...a hung-over little kid is hardly the kind of hero anyone would expect, but little Pete has brought with him the solution to this crisis. And yes, Stephen King did get around to explaining what that awful car was all about...which is more than he ever did in From a Buick 8...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment