Free Roadwork by Stephen King, Richard Bachman

reported that the school board of a town called Drake, North Dakota, had burned yea copies of Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five, which was about the Dresden fire bombing. When you thought about it, there was a funny connection there.
    Fred, why don’t those highway department fucksticks go build the 784 extension through Drake? I bet they’d love it. George, that’s a fine idea. Why don’t you write The Blade about that? Fuck you, Fred.
    The Chargers scored, making it 34-3. Some cheer-leaders pranced around on the Astroturf and shook their asses. He fell into a semidoze, and when Fred began to get at him, he couldn’t shake him off.
    George, since you don’t seem to know what you’re doing, let me tell you. Let me spell it out for you, old buddy. (Get off my back, Fred.) First, the option on the Waterford plant is going to run out. That will happen at midnight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Thorn McAn is going to close their deal with that slavering little piece of St. Patrick’s Day shit, Patrick J. Monohan. On Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, a big sign that says SOLD! is going up. If anyone from the laundry sees it, maybe you can postpone the inevitable by saying: Sure. Sold to us. But if Ordner checks, you’re dead. Probably he won’t. But (Freddy, leave me alone) on Friday a new sign will go up. That sign will say:
    SITE OF OUR NEW WATERFORD PLANT THOM MCAN SHOES Here We Grow Again!!!
    On Monday, bright and early, you are going to lose your job. Yes, the way I see it, you’ll be unemployed before your ten o’clock coffee break. Then you can come home and tell Mary. I don’t know when that will be. The bus ride only takes fifteen minutes, so conceivably you could end twenty years of marriage and twenty years of gainful employment in just about half an hour. But after you tell Mary, comes the explanation scene. You could put it off by getting drunk, but sooner or later—
    Fred, shut your goddam mouth.
    —sooner or later, you’re going to have to explain just how you lost your job. You’ll just have to fess up. Well, Mary, the highway department is going to rip down the Fir Street plant in a month or so, and I kind of neglected to get us a new one. I kept thinking that this whole 784 extension business was some kind of nightmare I was going to wake up from. Yes, Mary, yes, I located us a new plant—Waterford, that’s right, you capish —but somehow I couldn’t go through with it. How much is it going to cost Amroco? Oh, I’d say a million or a million-five, depending on how long it takes them to find a new plant location and how much business they lose for good.
    I’m warning you, Fred.
    Or you could tell her what no one knows better than you, George. That the profit margin on the Blue Ribbon has gotten so thin that the cost accountants might just throw up their hands and say, Let’s ditch the whole thing, guys. We’ll just take the city’s money and buy a penny arcade down in Norton or a nice little pitch ’n’ putt out in Russell or Crescent. There’s too much potential red ink in this after the sugar that son of a bitch Dawes poured into our gas tank. You could tell her that.
    Oh, go to hell.
    But that’s just the first movie, and this is a double feature, isn’t it? Part two comes when you tell Mary there isn’t any house to go to and there isn’t going to be any house. And how are you going to explain that?
    I’m not doing anything.
    That’s right. You’re just some guy who fell asleep in his rowboat. But come Tuesday midnight, your boat is going over the falls, George. For Christ’s sweet sake, go see Monohan on Monday and make him an unhappy man. Sign on the dotted line. You’ll be in trouble anyway, with all those lies you told Ordner Friday night. But you can bail yourself out of that. God knows you’ve bailed yourself out of trouble before this.
    Let me alone. I’m almost asleep.
    It’s Charlie, isn’t it. This is a way of committing suicide. But it’s not fair to