My father just thought I might like to sit in the cab of that old truck; he had seen the way I looked at it every time we passed, mistaking my dread for admiration, I suppose.
I remember the goldenrod, its bright yellow dulled by the October chill. I remember the gray taste of the air, a little bitter, a little sharp, and the silvery look of the dead grass. I remember the whisssht-whissht of our footfalls. But what I remember best is the truck looming up, getting bigger and bigger—the toothy snarl of its radiator, the bloody red of its paint, the bleary gaze of the windshield. I remember fear sweeping over me in a wave colder and grayer than the taste of the air as my father put his hands in my armpits and lifted me into the cab, saying, “Drive her to Portland, Quentin ... go to her!” I remember the air sweeping past my face as I went up and up, and then its clean taste was replaced by the smells of ancient Diamond Gem Oil, cracked leather, mouse-droppings, and ... I swear it ... blood. I remember trying not to cry as my father stood grinning up at me, convinced he was giving me one hell of a thrill (and so he was, but not the way he thought). It came to me with perfect certainty that he would walk away then, or at least turn his back, and that the truck would just eat me-eat me alive. And what it spat out would look chewed and broken and ... and sort of exploded. Like a pumpkin that got squot by a tractor wheel.
I began to cry and my father, who was the best of men, took me down and soothed me and carried me back to the car. He carried me up in his arms, over his shoulder, and I looked at the receding truck, standing there in the field, its huge radiator looming, the dark round hole where the crank was supposed to go looking like a horridly misplaced eye socket, and I wanted to tell him I had smelled blood, and that’s why I had cried. I couldn’t think of a way to do it. I suppose he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
As a five-year-old who still believed in Santy Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Allamagoosalum, I also believed that the bad, scary feelings which swamped me when my father boosted me into the cab of the truck came from the truck. It took twenty-two years for me to decide it wasn’t the Cresswell that had murdered George McCutcheon; my Uncle Otto had done that.
The Cresswell was a landmark in my life, but it belonged to the whole area’s consciousness, as well. If you were giving someone directions on how to get from Bridgton to Castle Rock, you told them they’d know they were going right if they saw a big old red truck sitting off to the left in a hayfield three miles or so after the turn from 11. You often saw tourists parked on the soft shoulder (and sometimes they got stuck there, which was always good for a laugh), taking pictures of the White Mountains with Uncle Otto’s truck in the foreground for picturesque perspective-for a long time my father called the Cresswell “the Trinity Hill Memorial Tourist Truck,” but after a while he stopped. By then Uncle Otto’s obsession with it had gotten too strong for it to be funny.
So much for the provenance. Now for the secret.
That he killed McCutcheon is the one thing of which I am absolutely sure. “Squot him like a pumpkin,” the barbershop sages said. One of them added: “I bet he was down in front o’ that truck, prayin like one o’ them greaseball Ay-rabs prayin to Arlah. I can just pitcher him that way. They was tetched, y‘know, t’both of them. Just lookit the way Otto Schenck ended up, if you don’t believe me. Right across the road in that little house he thought the town was gonna take for a school, and just as crazy as a shithouse rat.”
This was greeted with nods and wise looks, because by then they thought Uncle Otto was odd, all right-oh, ayuh! —but there wasn’t a one of the barbershop sages who considered that image-McCutcheon down on his knees in front of the truck “like one o’ them greaseball Ay-rabs prayin to Arlah”—suspicious as well as eccentric.