Roadwork

Published in 1981 under Stephen King's pseudonym Richard Bachman, Roadwork is set in an unnamed American city during the winter of 1973–1974, amid the Watergate scandal and energy crisis.

In August 1972, a young television reporter named Dave Albert conducts interviews at a ground-breaking ceremony for the Route 784 expressway extension. A man named Dawes tells the camera the project is worthless, ruining the take. The two will meet again 17 months later, though neither will remember this encounter.

By November 1973, Barton George Dawes is a middle-aged laundry manager. The Route 784 highway extension is consuming both the Blue Ribbon Laundry, where Bart has worked for 20 years, and his house on Crestallen Street West, which he shares with his wife, Mary. The city has given residents until January 20, 1974, to relocate. Bart's employer, the Amroco corporation, expects him to secure a new plant in Waterford, but Bart does neither. He operates through what he calls a mental "circuit breaker" that prevents him from examining why he is sabotaging his own life. On November 20, he buys a .44 Magnum pistol and a .460 Weatherbee rifle after fabricating a story about Christmas gifts.

At the laundry, the 90-day option to buy the Waterford plant expires November 26, and Bart has done nothing to close the deal. He falls into a reverie about lost landmarks, including the park where he took his son Charlie as a child, and discovers he has been crying at his desk. When a young employee named Vinnie Mason leaks information about the stalled deal to Steve Ordner, a senior Amroco executive, Bart threatens Vinnie's job. At a Friday meeting at Ordner's home, he lies, claiming a competing buyer has withdrawn and that delay is shrewd strategy. Ordner accepts the reasoning but warns that failure will cost Bart his job.

The source of Bart's paralysis surfaces in dreams. On Thanksgiving morning, he wakes from a nightmare in which he and Charlie build a sand castle while the tide washes it away. Charlie died of a brain tumor three years earlier. The connection between that loss and Bart's self-destruction remains just below conscious awareness, breaking through only once, when his circuit breaker fails and he acknowledges aloud that Charlie's death is what he cannot face.

The Waterford option expires, and a competing company buys the property. Johnny Walker, the laundry's longest-serving driver, is killed in a traffic accident. Bart writes his resignation on the back of a wash formula and informs Ordner by phone. At home, Mary has learned of his firing from colleagues. She asks whether he blames her for Charlie's death; he cannot answer. Through his colleague Tom Granger, Bart learns about Salvatore "Sally One-Eye" Magliore, a local organized-crime figure. He visits Magliore and asks to buy explosives to destroy the 784 construction equipment. Magliore refuses, warning that destroying machines accomplishes nothing because replacements always come.

Mary leaves on December 1, and Bart's isolation deepens. He drinks heavily and drives the turnpike at high speed. One afternoon he picks up a young hitchhiker heading to Las Vegas. She cooks him his first real meal in weeks, and he offers her $200. After another nightmare about Charlie, he goes to her room and they sleep together. In the morning she identifies herself as Olivia and gives him a small packet of synthetic mescaline, a psychedelic drug.

Bart's attempts at reconciliation with Mary fail. They meet for lunch, but he has been drinking since morning and blurts out that maybe they will not tear down the house, a remark that horrifies her. He screams at her across the restaurant and she flees. Vinnie Mason punches him at a department store. Tom Granger calls with more bad news: Ordner is investigating Bart for criminal violations, and Johnny Walker's brother Arnie has died by suicide.

On December 18, Bart watches the Blue Ribbon Laundry demolished by a wrecking ball. That night, he fills 20 bottles with gasoline and rag wicks, drives to the construction site, and firebombs the equipment. Radio news reports approximately $100,000 in damage, but police seek a Chevrolet station wagon; Bart drives a Ford.

On Christmas Day, Olivia calls from Las Vegas, distraught after being assaulted at a party. Bart sends money and admits he has been thinking about suicide. That evening, Magliore congratulates him on the firebombing but delivers crushing news: The construction company has backup equipment and is proceeding on schedule.

Bart reflects at length on Charlie's illness: the diagnosis of an inoperable tumor the size of a walnut, the deterioration, seizures, and a three-week coma. He concludes that if something as small as a walnut can destroy everything meaningful, life is a demolition derby.

At a New Year's Eve party, Bart swallows Olivia's mescaline. Mary discovers he is tripping and is horrified. He meets Phil Drake, a former Catholic priest who runs a coffeehouse for street kids, and Drake talks him through the trip while Bart asks whether suicide is a mortal sin. Drake drives him home. At midnight, Bart smashes the television screen with a hammer.

In January, a city lawyer named Philip Fenner reveals that the city has been electronically surveilling Bart. Bart agrees to sign the relocation form in exchange for a $68,500 cashier's check, converts half to cash, and mails his checkbook to Mary. Through Magliore's contacts, he acquires 40 sticks of malglinite, a military-grade explosive roughly 60 times more powerful per stick than dynamite. He tries to donate $5,000 to Drake's coffeehouse, but Drake refuses, sensing the gift is a farewell. In a final meeting, Bart gives Magliore $18,000: $3,000 as a fee and $15,000 for Olivia.

Mary calls, and Bart tells her his final lie: He has sold the house and rented a farmhouse. They discuss divorce calmly and say goodbye. On the night of January 19, he test-fires the Weatherbee into the backyard and weeps himself to sleep.

He wakes at 2:15 A.M. on January 20, the day the house legally becomes city property, and wires every room with malglinite. All fuses splice into a master line connected to a car battery. One clip is attached; the other lies beside the negative terminal, waiting.

At 10 that morning, Fenner arrives with associates and police. Bart fires the Weatherbee through the picture window, and a firefight begins. When a WHLM Channel 9 news van arrives, Bart threatens to detonate the house unless the cameras set up. Dave Albert, the same reporter from the 1972 ceremony, sprints through the police line. Bart lets him inside and tells him his motive is "roadwork" (403). Once the cameras are rolling, Bart throws both guns out the window, puts on the Rolling Stones, and clips the final cable to the battery terminal as tear gas canisters crash through the windows.

The house explodes outward and upward. Bart's last conscious thought is that the explosion inside him is "not larger than, say, a good-sized walnut" (406).

In the epilogue, the WHLM news team wins a Pulitzer Prize. A documentary titled Roadwork reveals that the city built the extension partly to meet a federal road-mileage quota. The city sues Mary to recover its payment but drops the suit after public outcry. In Las Vegas, a young woman recently enrolled in business school sees the photographs and faints. The 784 extension is completed 18 months later, ahead of schedule. But the footage of the house exploding, followed by Mary's shocked, tear-streaming face, remains vivid in the memory of anyone who saw it.