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He's having a heart attack…
stroke… something.
"Arnie, what's wrong?" she cried. "Arnie
ooowwwhoww, that hurts!
"
For one unbearable moment the pressure on the hand he had been holding so
lightly and lovingly just before increased until it seemed that the bones would
actually splinter and break. The high color in his cheeks was gone, and his
skin was as leaden as a slate headstone.
He said one word—"Christine!"—and suddenly let go of her. He ran,
thumping his leg against the bumper of a Cadillac, spinning away, almost
falling, catching himself, and running forward again.
She realized at last it was something about the car—the ear, the car, always it
was the goddam car—and a bitter anger rose in her that was both total and
despairing. For the first time she wondered if it would be possible to love
him; if Arnie would allow it.
Her anger was quenched the instant she really looked… and saw.
Arnie ran to what remained of his car, hands out, and stopped so abruptly in
front of it that the gesture seemed almost to be a horrified warding-off; the
classic movie pose of the hit-and-run victim an instant before the lethal
collision.
He stood that way for a moment, as if to stop the car, or the whole world.
Then he lowered his arms. His adam's apple lurched up and down twice as
he struggled to swallow something back—a moan, a cry—and then his throat
seemed to lock solid, every muscle standing out, each cord standing out, even
the blood-vessels standing out in perfect relief. It was the throat of a man
trying to lift a piano.
Leigh walked slowly toward him. Her hand still throbbed, and tomorrow it
would be swollen and virtually useless, but for now she had forgotten it. Her
heart went out to him and seemed to find him; she felt his sorrow and shared
it or it seemed to her that she did. It was only later that she realized how
much Arnie shut her out that day—how much of his suffering he elected to do
alone, and how much of his hate he hid away.
"Arnie, who did it?" she asked, her voice breaking with grief for him. No,
she had not liked the car, but to see it reduced to this made her understand
fully what Arnie's commitment had been, and she could hate it no longer—or
so she thought.
Arnie made no answer. He stood looking at Christine, his eyes burning, his
head slightly down.
The windscreen had been smashed through in two places; handfuls of safety
glass fragments were strewn across the slashed seat covers like trumpery
diamonds. Half of the front bumper had been pried off and now dragged on
the pavement, near a snarl of black wires like octopus tentacles. Three of the
four side windows had also been broken. Holes had been punched through
the sides of the body at waist-level in ragged, wavering lines. It looked as if
some sharp, heavy instrument—maybe the pry-end of a tire iron—had been
used. The passenger door hung open, and she saw that all the dashboard glass
had been broken. Tufts and wads of stuffing were everywhere. The
speedometer needle lay on the driver's side floormat.
Arnie walked slowly around his car, noting all of this. Leigh spoke to him
twice. He didn't answer either time. Now the leaden color of his face was
broken by two hectic, burning spots of flush riding high up on his
cheekbones. He picked up the octopus-thing that a been lying on the pavement
and she saw it was a distributor cap—her father had pointed that out to her
once when he had been tinkering with their car.
He looked at it for a moment, as if examining an exotic zoological specimen,
and then threw it down. Broken glass gritted under their heels. She spoke to
him again. He didn't answer, and now, as well as a terrible pity for him, she
began to feel afraid, too. She told Dennis Guilder later that it seemed—at
least at the time—perfectly possible that he might have lost his mind.
He booted a piece of chrome trim out of his way. It struck the cyclone fence
at the back of the lot with a little tinkling sound. The tail-lights had been
smashed, more trumpery gems, this time rubies, this time on the pavement
instead of the seat.
"Arnie—" she tried again.
He stopped. He was looking in through the hole in the driver's side window.
A terrible low sound began to come from his chest, a jungle sound. She
looked over his shoulder, saw, and suddenly felt a crazy need to laugh and
scream and faint all at the same time. On the dashboard… she hadn't noticed
at first; in the midst of the general destruction she hadn't noticed what was on
the dashboard. And she wondered, with vomit suddenly rising in her throat,
who could be so low, so completely low, as to do such a thing, to…
"Shitters!" Arnie cried, and his voice was not his own. It was high and shrill
and cracked with fury.
Leigh turned around and threw up, holding blindly onto the car next to
Christine, seeing small white dots in front of her eyes that expanded like
puffed rice. Dimly she thought of the county fair—every year they'd haul an
old junk car up onto a plank platform and lean a sledgehammer against it and
you got three swings for a quarter. The idea was to demolish the car. But
not… not to…
"You goddam
shitters
!" Arnie screamed. "I'll get you! I'll get you if it's the
last thing I do! If it's the last motherfucking thing
I ever do
!"
Leigh threw up again and for one terrible moment found herself wishing that
she had never ever met Arnie Cunningham.
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