Life happens, and I always found myself making excuses for delaying the resumption of my project. Finally, right after the Fouth of July holiday, I decided to recommit.
In order to be honest about it, I decided to start the book over. I kept my 'Before' writing, and was planning on supplementing it once I'd finally finished the book.
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
By the time I'd finished the book, I had a completely different perspective on the story and my upcoming entry. We'll get to that soon enough, but let's start at the top.
'Roadwork' is the 3rd book in 'The Bachman Books'. As a young kid, there was something about 'The Bachman Books' that was cool. It was like hipster-cred for Stephen King before hipsters were a culture. If you were 'in the know', then you were cool.
Or maybe you weren't. I don't really know. I was like, 10 years old, so I had no concept of cool at that point. We hadn't really starting making the social divisions in school that mark your adolescence yet. At the time I first approached 'Roadwork', I wasn't a jock, but I also wasn't NOT a jock. We were still in the kind of blissful state where kids were just kids. Sure, some kids had already started to separate themselves academically, and they were kind of the nerds. I was one of those nerds, but I went to a school with a special program that grouped me with the other nerds, so we were off and running together.
As I've said before, I've always had a connection with The Bachman Books because of their humanity. Yes, two of the books were futuristic sci-fi, but they weren't about ghosts and vampires and scary things. The scary things in The Bachman Books were just the people. That holds up for me through every re-reading in my life.
Barton George Dawes, Bart for short, is a man on a collision course with self-destruction. No one knows it but him until it's too late. Bart and his wife, Mary, are getting moved out of their house. The city is taking over the entire neighborhood, through Eminent Domain, to build a highway. Bart's house and his employer, The Blue Ribbon Laundry, are being displaced.
For the city, it's about location. For Bart, it's more than just a house. It's his life, his memories, his irreplaceable history.
Bart doesn't want to go quietly into that good night, or that nice suburb. Bart wants to fight. Bart wants to stick it to the man. Bart wants to stand up for himself. Bart, maybe, is tilting at windmills.
Bart, surely, is cracking up.
There is more to life than money. Eminent Domain sucks. The older I get, the more I can appreciate that. Sure, it's nice to get what's usually a sizable payout on a piece of property so that the city can take it over, especially if you've harbored thoughts of moving on. I can't say the same for it if you DON'T want to go.
The home is where you live your life. It's where you raise your children, or your pets, or both, or neither. It's where you have your triumphs and your struggles with your job, your work, your love. It's the touchstone for the good and the bad, and it's the epicenter of all the things that made you who you are. For someone to come and tell you 'Tough luck, you've gotta be out by July' because they're putting in an on-ramp, that's gotta be difficult to process.
I'm an adult now. A full-on 'Grown Ass Man', as I like to say sometimes. I haven't lived in my Mom's house for over 20 years now, and I can't imagine how upset I'd be if the city decided they were taking it over for ANY REASON. This entire project stems from the experiences that I had that started because I read books in that house. In that living room, snuggled up with Sheba, our dearly departed German Shepherd, I read through countless books by countless authors. I played some video games, I watched some television, I watched Hulk Hogan bodyslam Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III, I played Super Mario Bros on our new Nintendo until it was time to go to bed, only to wake up the next morning and find my father still in his chair after an all night, thumb-blistering binge.
If you're seeing this and wondering what it has to do with Stephen King, you're not really reading this blog.
Your house is a museum of memories, even if they're not physically represented by pictures or keepsakes. It's hallowed ground.
OK, so I've rambled enough about the house, maybe, but it's really the central character in the story. All of Bart's memories and flashbacks are based on the home he lived in. His life is falling apart. Granted, maybe his marriage would still have trouble even if the city wasn't moving in, but the loss of the house triggers all of these strange machinations in Bart.
Are they really that strange, though? To what lengths would you go to hold on to your past? Even the whispers of it, because you know, well and truly in your heart, that it's gone forever?
Bart talks to himself. Sometimes only in his head, sometimes out loud. His conscience is Fred. Fred is like a stern parent, referring to him by George, his middle name, his secret name. Fred tries to keep him from the unending spool of bad decisions he's about to make. More often than not, Bart quiets Fred down, but it doesn't always work.
"George, it's more than the highway, more than the move. I know what's wrong with you.
Shut up, Fred. I warn you.
But Fred wouldn't shut up and that was bad. If he couldn't control Fred anymore, how would he ever get any peace?
It's Charlie, isn't it, George? You don't want to bury him a second time"
That's it.
That's what finally clicked for me. An 'A-Ha!' moment that I hadn't connected until now. In re-reading the book, I finally found the elusive viewpoint that, maybe, I'd been searching for the whole time.
Bart and Mary lost their son, Charlie, to brain cancer. For some reason, it never connected with me, before, even despite the obvious link with my own life. I don't know what did it now, Maybe it's because I'm finally a parent myself and I've gained a different perspective. Maybe it's because I've experienced crippling and tragic loss.
My brother was killed in a car accident in 2001. He was 14 years old. It was, and remains, the darkest, most devastating single event I've ever experienced. I hope that it remains so, because I can't bear the thought of going through the couple of things that (I think) would be even worse.
"For you, I'd sell all my tomorrows, to keep you today"
As a society, we have a tendency to romanticize the quality and impact of character in the death of a person. We talk about the unrealized potential, the good in someone, what their future may have held. It's not always accurate, but we try to hold on to the good things. We didn't need to do that with my brother. He was a tremendously talented athlete and musician. A typical, yet atypical teenage boy. He was mischievous, but not mean. He was in the full-on sprint of adolescent development, learning to be a young man, shaping his personality through education and life experience. He accomplished many great things in his short life, but he (and we) were robbed of so many more.
It's a wound that never truly heals. It is a scar that mentally and emotionally disfigures for the rest of your life. Slowly, you adapt to it, as if you learned to walk with a mental limp. I think about him every day, and I try to live my life in a way that honors him.
That is my perspective as a sibling. I cannot speak for my parents, who endure the most difficult loss of all.
My parents, thankfully, are not like Bart and Mary Dawes. They, too, are scarred, but they are together. They have grieved, and they continue to grieve. They have struggled, and I imagine that they still do, even if they don't show it as much outwardly. There is nothing that I wouldn't give to be able to take that pain and that grief away from them. No matter if they are a single child, or one of many, no child is replaceable.
My parents channeled their grief, together and separately, in positive ways. They are both strong and vocal advocates for smart and safe choices. Every year, near Prom season, my Father speaks to thousands of high school students about making smart decisions and the butterfly-effect impact of the decisions we make. Despite the inevitable triggers it may carry for them, my parents have always made themselves available for support when a child or young adult in our area passes away. Through their pain, they work together. They cope. They support.
The wedge of death that drove Bart and Mary Dawes apart did not do the same for my parents. I am grateful for that.
but...
I've finally been able to look at Bart Dawes differently, and it's because of my own experiences.
When the world moves on and forgets about you and your loss and your grief and your life and your memories... When your home, the physical embodiment of all of the years of happiness and sadness, is to be literally ripped from this earth without any humanitarian consideration... what do you do? Do you let go? Do you take a stand? Do you fly a defiant middle finger against the construction? Against the government? Against your employer? Against your family? Against the concept of God him or herself?
Bart Dawes refused to accept what he couldn't control. By doing so, he lost everything that he could.
