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

"I know," I said, but of course I didn't. My own father was still alive, a hale and genially profane man of seventy-four. At seventy, my mother was all that and a bag of chips.

Ned sighed, looking off at the hills. "How he went out is just so dumb," he said. "I can't even tell my kids, if I ever have any, that Grampy went down in a hail of bullets while foiling the bank robbers or the militia guys who were trying to put a bomb in the county courthouse. Nothing like that."

"No," I agreed, "nothing like that."

"I can't even say it was because he was careless. He was just...a drunk just came along and just..."

He bent over, wheezing like an old man with a cramp in his belly, and this time I at least put my hand on his back. He was trying so hard not to cry, that's what got to me. Trying so hard to be a man, whatever that means to an eighteen-year-old boy.

"Ned. It's all right."

He shook his head violently. "If there was a God, there'd be a reason," he said. He was looking down at the ground. My hand was still on his back, and I could feel it heaving up and down, like he'd just run a race. "If there was a God, there'd be some kind of thread running through it. But there isn't. Not that I can see."

"If you have kids, Ned, tell them their grandfather died in the line of duty. Then take them here and show them his name on the plaque, with all the others."

He didn't seem to hear me. "I have this dream. It's a bad one." He paused, thinking how to say it, then just plunged ahead. "I dream it was all a dream. Do you know what I'm saying?"

I nodded.

"I wake up crying, and I look around my room, and it's sunny. Birds are singing. It's morning. I can smell coffee downstairs and I think, 'He's okay. Jesus and thank you God, the old man's okay.' I don't hear him talking or anything, but I just know. And I think what a stupid idea it was, that he could be walking up the side of some guy's rig to give him a warning about a flapper and just get creamed by a drunk, the sort of idea you could only have in a stupid dream where everything seems so real...and I start to swing my legs out of bed...sometimes I see my ankles go into a patch of sun...it even feels warm...and then I wake up for real, and it's dark, and I've got the blankets pulled up around me but I'm still cold, shivering and cold, and I know that the dream was a dream."

"That's awful," I said, remembering that as a boy I'd had my own version of the same dream. It was about my dog. I thought to tell him that, then didn't. Grief is grief, but a dog is not a father.

"It wouldn't be so bad if I had it every night. Then I think I'd know, even while I was asleep, that there's no smell of coffee, that it's not even morning. But it doesn't come...doesn't come...and then when it finally does, I get fooled again. I'm so happy and relieved, I even think of something nice I'll do for him, like buy him that five-iron he wanted for his birthday...and then I wake up. I get fooled all over again." Maybe it was the thought of his father's birthday, not celebrated this year and never to be celebrated again, that started fresh tears running down his cheeks. "I just hate getting fooled. It's like when Mr. Jones came down and got me out of World History class to tell me, but even worse. Because I'm alone when I wake up in the dark. Mr. Grenville -- he's the guidance counselor at school -- says time heals all wounds, but it's been almost a year and I'm still having that dream."

I nodded. I was remembering Ten-Pound, shot by a hunter one November, growing stiff in his own blood under a white sky when I found him. A white sky promising a winter's worth of snow. In my dream it was always another dog when I got close enough to see, not Ten-Pound at all, and I felt that same relief. Until I woke up, at least. And thinking of Ten-Pound made me think, for a moment, of our barracks mascot back in the old days. Mister Dillon, his name had been, after the TV sheriff played by James Arness. A good dog.

Copyright © 2002 by Stephen King.