Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 5

Part 1: Chapters 8, 9, & 10

It’s the weekend, and there’s a ballgame on the radio, but Arnie doesn’t show up at Dennis’s to listen to it. He’s been too busy down at the garage spending time with Christine and running errands for Darnell. Dennis can feel the thin end of the wedge begin to make its way between him and his friend.

After work and over a pizza, a bruised and battered Arnie tells Dennis about a run-in with high school bully Buddy Repperton at Darnell’s garage. Little by little, day by day, Repperton has tried to antagonize Arnie into a physical confrontation, but to no avail. One day, however, Buddy finally succeeds not by attacking Arnie but by “accidentally” smashing one of Christine’s headlights with a jackhandle. This sends Arnie over the edge, and (as Dennis finds out from a mutual friend and not from Arnie himself) he jumps on Repperton and fights back with a vehemence that the bully did not expect. Darnell (who up until this point had mysterious split the scene) breaks the fight up and tells Arnie to turn in his toolbox key and hit the bricks.

In an effort to help his friend out of a jam, Dennis gets the bright idea that since Arnie is on the outs with Darnell, he could store Christine at LeBay’s house. The old man would be happy to see his old car again, and he probably wouldn’t charge as much as Darnell was clipping Arnie for. Arnie is not amused by Dennis’s suggestion. Later, Dennis discovers why: LeBay has died… suddenly… around about the time that Repperton took his jackhandle to Christine…

Ah… Buddy Repperton…

Stephen King must have been the target of some serious tormenting as a kid, because the guy really nails the banal, mindless violence at the heart of your average school bully. Chris Hargensen in Carrie, Richie Boddin in ‘Salem’s Lot, Henry Bowers in IT — every one of these creeps is a finely crafted study in the small-minded despots that set up shop in our lives. You know the type… like the ones who jumped Otter in Animal House…

Repperton is no different, and his schtick is immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time on a school playground, in the back of a classroom, or in the locker room after gym. The idiotic strutting, playing to the “yes men” who guffaw at every dumb joke and putdown, the need to cull the weakest member from what Jean Shepherd would call “the nameless rabble of victims” — it’s all there on these few pages, and it all unlocks memories (in this reader, at least) of every jock or greaser who loved nothing more than flicking the ear lobes and slapping the necks of “nerds.”

Dennis has had his own run-in with this particular bogeyman. Four years earlier, at a school dance, Dennis fell into Repperton’s crosshairs. Here’s how sophomore Buddy looked then:

“He had a lantern jaw, a thick clot of greasy black hair, and little eyes set too close together. But those eyes were not entirely stupid; an unpleasant intelligence lurked behind them. He was one of those guys who spend their high school time majoring in Smoking Area.” (74)

I could probably pick a half a dozen felons… er, I mean, fellows… who match that description in my high school yearbook. I’m sure that you could, too. I’m sure they are CEOs and Senators now. We’ll keep an eye out for Mr. Repperton and his cronies. I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last of them.

We are beginning to see a change come over Arnie Cunningham. Namely, his complexion is starting to clear up. Up to now, when describing Arnie’s acne (say that ten times fast), Dennis has said that his friend’s face was “pimple city” (2) and that it looked like “a loaded pizza” (2).

Now, however, Dennis notes that Arnie’s “complexion seemed a trifle better than it had been lately” (69) and that

“[h]e sure must have been steering clear of [soda pop] lately. The slight improvement in his complexion I’d noticed on that overcast Sunday two weeks ago was definite now. He still had plenty of bumps and craters, but not so many of them were […] oozing.” (72)

So goes Christine, so goes Arnie’s skin and, it seems, his temperament. With Buddy Repperton’s attack on Christine’s headlight, Arnie (according to a eyewitness) “went after [him] as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass” (78). Dennis recalls his friend’s anger after dealing with Darnell and the yinzer family, but chalks that up to the stress of the situation. This — a physical fight with a much bigger opponent — strikes Dennis as something else entirely. It’s like he’s possessed or something.

LeBay’s life is also somehow linked to Christine’s physical wellbeing. I think Dennis makes the connection between Buddy Repperton’s attack on her headlight and LeBay suddenly dying a little too quickly. I’m not saying it isn’t right or it doesn’t work, but Dennis leaps to that conclusion just a tad too fast. One wonders what had been happening to LeBay after Arnie drove her off his property. If gaining Christine has made Arnie’s face clear up, what had been happening in the LeBay household?

Why the heck are those kids standing so close to the road?!?!

Let’s hit the buttons on the radio and jump around the dial a bit before we get to the next motor lodge…

I called BS on Dennis having a cat named Captain Beefheart. His current cat is named after Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I will allow that. It fits with the overall feel of the book, and Hawkins was a known quantity at the time. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s was the Alice Cooper of his day — emerging from a coffin onstage and using voodoo props — though he resented the exploitative quality of it all. His most famous recording, “I Put a Spell on You,” was released in 1956.

Arnie and Dennis head off to see a kung fu picture at the local movie theater that only charges a buck for a matinee program. Dennis says that they ended up seeing a Chuck Norris movie. I wonder which one it was? Movies moved around the country then very differently from today. A picture was opened regionally and often given time to garner some word of mouth. (A little independent ditty named Halloween would open in a single city — Kansas City, Missouri, on 24 October 1978, before taking off. Maybe Dennis and his cheerleader girlfriend saw it later — after catching Grease — as it made its way into Pennsylvania?) Dennis and Arnie would probably have gone to see Norris’s latest flick, Good Guys Wear Black (1978), but they could have also have seen the previous year’s CB radio-flavored goodie Breaker! Breaker! (1977). Either way, they sat in their seats, munched popcorn, and enjoyed watching someone get kicked in the face.

Dennis and Arnie have their heart-to-heart over pizza. That isn’t a difficult thing to do in Pittsburgh. There are three things that every little town in the Pittsburgh area has: churches, bars, and pizza joints. Sometimes that’s all they have. At one time, the town where I went to high school — Ambridge, PA — was known for having the most bars and churches per capita in the United States. (I don’t know if that is 100% true, but as the man once said, “It’s close enough for government work.”) Ambridge also boasts two of the best pizza joints I’ve ever ordered from — Police Station Pizza and (my personal all-time favorite) Frank’s Pizzeria.

Every Pittsburgh neighborhood I ever lived in had at least three pizza joints within walking distance of my apartment, and they were all good. It was like a city ordinance or something. One of the best pizza places in Pittsburgh is one that would not be too far from Libertyville: Forest Hills’s Vincent’s Pizza. I could see Arnie’s complexion bursting as well as his belly from a visit.

And, yes, there’s more Philadelphia Phillies nonsense from Dennis and Arnie. It has been noted. You know how I feel about that…

Well, we put some miles behind us today, did we not, Blog-o-weeners? Suddenly, I’ve got a hankerin’ for some pizza. While I go up to the counter and order us a couple of Vinnie pies (extra grease, if you please!) and a pitcher of Iron City, why don’t you get started on tomorrow’s reading — Part 1: Chapters 11, 12, & 13. We’re going to a funeral where we’re gonna meet Roland LeBay’s brother, George. He’s got a few things to tell us about ol’ Rollie and Christine.

Until then, keep your eyes peeled for Buddy Repperton. He said he was going to teach us a lesson. He doesn’t seem the booklearnin’ type, but who knows…