Excerpt from From A Buick 8 by Stephen King, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I know that feeling, Ned."

"Do you?" He looked at me hopefully.

"Yes. And it gets better. Believe me, it does. But he was your Dad, not a schoolmate or a neighbor from down the road. You may still be having that dream next year at this time. You may even be having it ten years on, every once in awhile."

"That's horrible."

"No," I said. "That's memory."

"If there was a reason." He was looking at me earnestly. "A damn reason. Do you get that?"

"Of course I do."

"Is there one, do you think?"

I thought of telling him I didn't know about reasons, only about chains -- how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you're lucky. Fucking strangled, if you're not.

I found myself gazing across the parking lot at Shed B again. Looking at it, I thought that if I could get used to what was stored in its dark interior, Ned Wilcox could get used to living a fatherless life. People can get used to just about anything. That's the best of our lives, I guess. Of course, it's the horror of them, too.

"Sandy? What do you think?"

"I think that you're asking the wrong guy. I know about work, and hope, and putting a nut away for the GDR."

He grinned. In Troop D, everyone talked very seriously about the GDR, as though it were some complicated subdivision of law enforcement. It actually stood for "golden days of retirement." I think it might have been Huddie Royer who first started talking about the GDR.

"I also know about preserving the chain of evidence so no smart defense attorney can kick your legs out from under you in court and make you look like a fool. Beyond that, I'm just another confused American male."

"At least you're honest," he said.

But was I? Or was I begging the goddam question? I didn't feel particularly honest right then; I felt like a man who can't swim looking at a boy who is floundering in deep water. And once again Shed B caught my eye. Is it cold in here? this boy's father had asked, back in the once-upon-a-time, back in the day. Is it cold in here, or is it just me?

No, it hadn't been just him.

"What are you thinking about, Sandy?"

"Nothing worth repeating," I said. "What are you doing this summer?"

"Huh?"

"What are you doing this summer?" It wouldn't be golfing in Maine or boating on Lake Tahoe, that was for sure; scholarship or no scholarship, Ned was going to need all of the old folding green he could get.

"County Parks and Rec again, I suppose," he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. "I worked there last summer until...you know."

Until his Dad. I nodded.

"I got a letter from Tom McClannahan last week, saying he was holding a place open for me. He mentioned coaching Little League, but that's just the carrot on the end of the stick. Mostly it'll be swinging a spade and setting out sprinklers, just like last year. I can swing a spade, and I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty. But Tom..." He shrugged instead of finishing.

I knew what Ned was too discreet to say. There are two kinds of work-functional alcoholics, those who are just too fucking mean to fall down and those so sweet that other people go on covering for them way past the point of insanity. Tom was one of the mean ones, the last sprig on a family tree full of plump county hacks going back to the nineteenth century. The McClannahans had fielded a Senator, two members of the House of Representatives, half a dozen Pennsylvania Representatives, and Statler County trough-hogs beyond counting. Tom was, by all accounts, a mean boss with no ambition to climb the political totem pole. What he liked was telling kids like Ned, the ones who had been raised to be quiet and respectful, where to squat and push. And of course for Tom, they never squatted deep enough or pushed hard enough.

Copyright © 2002 by Stephen King.