Part 3: Chapter 48
It is later the same day. Dennis drops Leigh at home. He tells her that he doesn’t expect anything to happen to them so long as Arnie is in town. LeBay and Christine dare not make their move with their alibi (Arnie) still around.
At home, Dennis starts putting his still amorphous plans into action. First, he calls up his old boss from PennDOT, Brad Jefferies. Dennis asks if he knows anyone willing to rent a certain piece of equipment to a teen. Surprised, Brad tells Dennis to give Johnny Pomberton a call.
Next, Dennis calls Arnie’s house, but not to talk to Arnie. Instead, Dennis asks Michael to call him if Arnie decides to go out of town for any reason. Michael promises him that he will do so.
Dennis calls Johnny Pomberton and makes an appointment with the man for the following morning. Dennis is going to pick up something special… something that requires knowledge of driving a stick shift.
Dennis then calls Jimmy Sykes. Jimmy has been out of a job since Darnell’s Garage closed. Dennis tells Jimmy that Arnie left something behind at the garage, and he needs Jimmy’s keys to retrieve it. Jimmy is hesitant at first, not wanting to break a promise he made to Darnell about not loaning out the garage keys. In the end, wanting to do his friend Arnie a favor, Jimmy agrees to give Dennis the keys — so long as he returns them. They are, he says, all he has to remember Will by.
Lastly, Dennis calls up Leigh and lots her know his plan. She needs to help Dennis convince LeBay that what he is planning isn’t a trap. She agrees, and Dennis hopes that he can keep Arnie from getting killed one more time…
Boy, this last week of Blog-o-ween is gonna be a breeze, ain’t it? I could take my hands off the steering wheel, so to speak, and let the blog drive itself, huh?
Well, maybe not. I think I’ll keep my hands on the ol’ ten-and-two, if you know what I mean. Still, there are a few points-of-interest I’d like to illuminate for you…
For instance, when Brad Jefferies suggests to Dennis that he should talk to Johnny Pomberton, he says, “He’s got more rolling stock than Carter’s got liver pills.”
Say what now?
Developed in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1868 by Samuel J. Carter, Carter’s Little Liver Pills were marketed as a cure-all. Advertisements claimed that the pills would take care of ailments as varied as headaches, digestive issues, and “torpid liver.”
After nearly a century of marketing, it was discovered that Carter’s Little Liver Pills actually had nothing to do with the liver. The United States Federal Trade Commission made the company remove the word “liver” from the name, and it’s been Carter’s Little Pills ever since. Nowadays, the pills are purchased as sodium-free laxative.
Carter’s advertisements were so ubiquitous that the name entered into the everyday language of millions of newspaper readers, radio listeners, and tv viewers. Indeed, to this day some people (older people, I’ll grant you) still use the phrase “so-&-so’s got more [blank] than Carter’s got little pills.”
We are at the sharp end of Christine. We only have five more chapters to go. It is time to focus on the job at hand: killing Christine. There isn’t any room for error or time for any shenanigans. It’s January 1979, and the baseball season has been over for three months, so there shouldn’t be any silliness about Dennis cheering on the Phillies, right?
Think again.
When Dennis calls his old boss up, Brad is genuinely glad to here from his old employee. He mentions the two of them getting together and hanging out:
“‘Dennis Guilder, scourge of the turnpike extension project!’ Bard Jefferies said heartily. ‘Good to hear from you, kiddo. When are you gonna come over and watch the Penguins with me again?’‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I get tired of watching handicapped people play hockey after a while. Now if you got interested in a good team, like the Flyers—’‘Christ, have I got to listen to this from a kid that isn’t even mine?’ Brad asked. ‘The world really is going to hell, I guess.’” (445)
I can sorta kinda forgive Dennis in this moment. The Philadelphia Flyers were the scourge of the National Hockey League during the 1970s. Known as the “Broad Street Bullies” they punched, kicked, and bit their way to two Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975.
They scored a few goals, too, I suppose.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, on the other hand, were a bunch saps in the 1970s. Coming into the league at the same time as the Flyers (during the 1967 expansion of the NHL from six teams to twelve), the Penguins’ fortunes weren’t as rosy as the Flyers’. Though they put up some impressive offensive numbers from the likes of Syl Apps, Lowell MacDonald and Jean Pronovost, they just weren’t as complete a team as the Flyers. The Penguins wouldn’t come into their own until the mid-1980s when they drafted a certain 6 ft. 4 in. French Canadian center forward from Montreal, Canada.
Brad also asks Dennis when they are going to get together and “peel a few cans” (446)
Brad, Dennis is four years underage and a high school student. You, on the other hand, are a grown man. Get a life!
Is that our motel just ahead? Are we there already? Man, time is flying during this last week of Blog-o-ween. Tomorrow, we got another short trip along the highways and byways, but I think the view, so to speak, is one of the best in the book. Why don’cha read Part 3: Chapter 49 to see what I am talking about.
Dennis finally comes face to face with LeBay, and it is maybe my favorite moment in the entire book. We may even finally get some closure when it comes to figuring out what kind of monster Christine is. (I know I say that a lot, but I mean it this time!)
Is Dennis making the right decision confronting LeBay? Well, we shall see. Even if he’s making a monumental mistake (and the stains on the road that are Buddy Repperton and Moochie Welch certainly suggest that he is), we can still take some learn from his example, because…
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