From a Buick 8 by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

since its driver had cried 'Oil's fine!' back over his shoulder in his strangly voice and then disappeared down the side of the building in a fine swirl of black cloth. Was he a SKA? Did any of them drive cars? Brad didn't think so. The SKAs thought anything with an engine was the work of Satan, didn't they?
    Okay, so maybe he wasn't. But whatever he was, why wasn't he back?
    All at once the image of that guy on the gloomy, discolored throne back there by the diesel pump didn't seem so funny. In his mind's eye, Brad could still see him sitting there with his coat puddled around him on the filthy linoleum and his pants down around his ankles, but now Brad saw him with his head down, his chin resting on his chest, his big hat (which didn't really look like an Amish hat at all) slewed forward over his eyes. Not moving. Not breathing. Not shitting but dead. Heart-attack or brain trembolism or something like that. It was possible. If the goddam King of Rock and Roll could croak while doing Number Two, anyone could.
    'Naw,' Bradley Roach said softly. 'Naw, that ain't . . . he wudd'n . . . naw!'
    He picked up the paper, tried to read about the flying saucers that were keeping an eye on us, and Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    couldn't convert the words into coherent thoughts. He put it down and looked out the door. The Buick was still there, shining in the sun.
    No sign of the driver.
    Half an hour . . . no, thirty-five minutes now. God dang. Bradley picked up Inside View and tried to read about teenage cultists in Florida. One of the girls had a great rack, but as far as Bradley Roach was concerned, Satan could have the rest of them.
    Five more minutes passed and he found himself tearing strips off the newspaper and drifting them down to the wastebasket, where they formed piles of nervous confetti.
    'Fuggit,' he said, and got to his feet. He went out the door and around the corner of the little white cinderblock cube where he'd worked since dropping out of high school. The restrooms were down at the back, on the east side. Brad hadn't made up his mind if he should play it straight - Mister, are you all right? - or humorous - Hey Mister, I got a firecracker, if you need one. As it turned out, he got to deliver neither of these carefully crafted phrases. The men's room door had a loose latch and was apt to fly open in any strong puff of wind unless bolted shut from the inside, so Brad and Hugh always stuffed a piece of folded cardboard into the crack to keep the door shut when the restroom wasn't in use. If the man from the Buick had been inside the toilet, the fold of cardboard would either have been in there with him (probably left beside one of the sink's faucets while the man tended his business), or it would be lying on the small cement stoop at the foot of the door. This latter was usually the case, Brad later told Ennis Rafferty; he and Hugh were always putting that cardboard wedge back in its place after the customers left. They had to flush the toilet as well, more often than not. People were careless about that when they were away from home. People were downright nasty when they were away from home. Not all, of course, but a surprising number. Right now, that cardboard wedge was poking out of the crack between the door and the jamb, just above the latch exactly where it worked the best. All the same, Brad opened the door to check, catching the little cardboard wedge neatly as it fell - as neatly as he would learn to open a bottle of beer on the driver's-side handle of his own Buick in later years. The little cubicle was empty, just as he'd known in his heart it would be. No sign that the toilet had been used, and there had been no sound of a flush as Brad sat in the office reading his paper. No beads of water on the rust-stained sides of the basin, either. It occurred to Brad then that the guy hadn't come around the side of the station to use the can but to take a look at Redfern