Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 14

Part 2: Chapters 31, 32, & 33

It’s the next day, and Arnie stumbles around the house getting ready to go to Darnell’s. There’s work to do on Christine, after all. His parents ask if he knew the boy who was run down on JFK Drive. Arnie assures them that he barely knew Moochie. Michael tells Arnie that the police talked to him. It seems that a Det. Junkins think that the Welch boy had something to do with the destruction of Arnie’s car. Michael pleads with Arnie to get rid of Christine, but Arnie feels that he’s put too much into the car to sell her. Arnie knows deep down inside that he’s not talking about money, either.

Down at Darnell’s, Arnie loses himself in the flow of oldies playing on Christine’s radio. Daydreaming, he recalls the actual work he’d done on Christine — a new antenna, popped a few dents out. But where had he got the new windshield and the new seat covers? How had the damage done to Christine’s engine been fixed? And how had he really hurt his back?

Arnie’s reverie is cut short when Pennsylvania State Police Detective Rudolph Junkins appears next to him. Junkins has come to Darnell’s to talk to Arnie… and to look at Christine. With Arnie parrying all of his probing questions with pat answers, Junkins exits the interview stymied but suspicious. He knows that Arnie is lying about something.

Arnie knows he is lying about something, too. (How did you hurt your back, Arnie?) He calls Leigh, hoping that by talking to her — by confessing to her — that he can still be saved. But from what? 

How did Arnie hurt his back?

It’s a question that hagrides Arnie for much of Part Two of Christine. It could be that — à la Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain — the pain that courses through Arnie’s back is simply an echo of LeBay’s condition. (Ol’ Rollie wore a back brace.) Arnie’s conscience keeps asking the question, but just as his conscious self shines its headlights onto the answer, Christine causes him to swerve away from it:

“That night after he and Leigh had found Christine smashed to hell in the parking lot, sitting on four slashed tires… that night at Darnell’s, after everyone was gone…

“And he had tuned the radio in Will’s office to the oldies on WDIL… and he had… he had…

“Hurt his back somehow.

“What had he been doing to hurt his back?…

“Did he really want to know? He didn’t. In fact, there were times when he didn’t want the car at all. There were times when he felt he would be better off just… well, junking it. Not that he ever would, or could. It was just that, sometimes (in the sweaty, shaking aftermath of that dream last night, for instance), he felt that if he got rid of it, he would be… happier.

“The radio suddenly spat an almost feline burst of static.” (253)

In the Cunningham kitchen, Regina asks Arnie if he would ever buy anything from a drug-pusher. Outside, when Arnie asks his father if he wants to check his arms from needle-marks, Michael tells Arnie, “I don’t need to ask if you’re on drugs… You’re only on one I know of, and that’s enough. It’s that goddam car” (246).

Stephen King’s battles with alcoholism and drug addiction are well documented. Ever since taking his first drink at the age of eighteen, King spent much of his professional life as a writer in a haze. A mixture of booze, pills, and cocaine fueled his late-night writing spells. Is it any wonder, then, that many of  his characters are either alcoholics (like The Shining’s Jack Torrance) or are addicted to drug stand-ins (the cursed goods sold by Leland Gaunt in the novel Needful Things)?

There are times in Christine when Arnie is clearheaded enough to realize that he has a problem. The example above from Chapter 33 is just one. Those moments of clarity are few and far between. Before long Arnie finds himself running to Christine in order to sit in her and listen to the radio. Or, when reality comes too close, Arnie feels compelled to reach out and touch Christine. Dennis sees what is happening to his friend and labels it “obsession.” He could easily call it by its rightful name: addiction.

I often wonder if King was aware of what he was doing in novels like Christine or The Shining. When writing about Jack Torrance and Arnie Cunningham, did King see their actions as the consequences of his own demons or was he simply creating a problem to be overcome by his characters? Were these cries for help from King or did he see them as people with bigger problems than his own. A “There but for the grace of God go I” type of thing? I’m tempted to think it was the latter. Like Arnie and Christine, I’m sure that King’s addictions told him that everything was fine so long as you stick by me… get in, Big Boy, and let’s cruise…

I’m gonna look for a motel to stop at for the night. I think I am still run down from yesterday’s run. Speaking of runs…

“[Arnie] was running cigarettes across the state line into New York, he was running fireworks all the way over to Burlington, and twice he had run something wrapped in flat brown-paper packages into Wheeling…” (253)

A drive between Pittsburgh and Wheeling, West Virginia, is about an hour. It’s only sixty miles. Making a run across the state border into West Virginia or Ohio is no big deal.

Burlington, Vermont, on the other hand, is 597 miles away. That’s a ten hour long trip. One way.

I know I am beating a dead horse, and I know that I am preaching to the choir, but… THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT A 17-YEAR OLD KID IS MAKING A 20-HOUR ROUND TRIP TO DELIVER FIREWORKS OR CIGARETTES OR DRUGS OR WHATEVER IN HIS BOSS’S CAR! IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN, STEVIE!

I have the sneaking suspicion that when King had originally started writing the book that it was to be set in his native New England. Then, at some point he moved the action to Pittsburgh. It’s the only way I can attest for the wonky geography. It’s just so wrongheaded, so dumb, and so easily fixed by picking up a freaking map and looking at it. I’m so tired of mentioning it, but I can’t help myself. It drives me bonkers, and…

Okay… I think I’m gonna jump straight into the motel pool to cool off. I many or may not change out of my clothes beforehand. While I sink to the bottom of the deep end and try to get a grip on my sanity, why don’t you read Part 2: Chapters 34 & 35? Guess where we’re going tomorrow?!

That’s right! We’re going to the Monroeville Mall! Leigh and Arnie will be there to do some Christmas shopping. We’ll do a little ice skating, maybe hit Chess King and Spencer’s Gifts (and look at the naughty posters in the back corner… wink-wink!), and then after, if you’ve been good, we’re all going to McDonald’s for burgers and fries… and maybe one of those apple pies!

There’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. “Hot” doesn’t really begin to describe the molten lava-esque filling in those pies. I haven’t had one in what must be forty years, but I’m sure the roof of my mouth still bears the scars. Take it from me, let that sucker cool off for a few hours before even thinking about taking a bite. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Well, don’t listen to me and see what happens. I’m sure we’d all like to see what happens. After all…