Roadwork

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bart Dawes is standing in the way of progress. A new highway extension is being built right over the laundry plant where he works—and right over his home. The house he has lived in for twenty years ... where he has made love with his wife ... played with his son.... But before the city paves over that part of Dawes’ life, he’s got one more party to throw—and it’ll be a blast....

NOVELS

Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
THE DARK TOWER I:
The Gunslinger
Christine
Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman
(with Peter Straub)
It
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing
of the Three
THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Green Mile
THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon
Dreamcatcher
Black House
(with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8
THE DARK TOWER V:
Wolves of the Calla
THE DARK TOWER VI:
Song of Susannah
THE DARK TOWER VII:
The Dark Tower

 

AS RICHARD BACHMAN
Rage
The Long Walk
Roadwork
The Running Man
Thinner
The Regulators

 

COLLECTIONS
Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and
Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual

 

NONFICTION
Danse Macabre
On Writing

 

SCREENPLAYS
Creepshow
Cat’s Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
Storm of the Century

SIGNET

Published by New American Library, a division of
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Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

 

 

First Printing, March 1981

First Printing (King Introduction), June 1999

Copyright © Richard Bachman, 1981

Introduction copyright © Stephen King, 1996

All rights reserved

 

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from the following copyrighted works: “On the Border” by Al Stewart. Copyright © Gwyneth Music Ltd., 1976. Controlled in the United States of America and Canada on behalf of Gwyneth Music Ltd. by Dick James Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. “Dirty Water” by Ed Cobb. Copyright © Equinox Music, Inc., 1965. By permission of Equinox Music. “Gimme Shelter” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Copyright © ABKCO Music, Inc., 1969. All rights reserved.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MARCA REGISTRADA

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

 

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-13813-7

 

This is my second introduction to the so-called Bachman Books-a phrase which has come to mean (in my mind, at least) the first few novels published with the Richard Bachman name, the ones which appeared as unheralded paperback originals under the Signet imprint. My first introduction wasn’t very good; to me it reads like a textbook case of author obfuscation. But that is not surprising. When it was written, Bachman’s alter ego (me, in other words) wasn’t in what I’d call a contemplative or analytical mood; I was, in fact, feeling robbed. Bachman was never created as a short-term alias; he was supposed to be there for the long haul, and when my name came out in connection with his, I was surprised, upset, and pissed off. That’s not a state conducive to good essay-writing. This time I may do a little better.

Probably the most important thing I can say about Richard Bachman is that
he became real.
Not entirely, of course (he said with a nervous smile); I am not writing this in a delusive state. Except ... well ... maybe I am. Delusion is, after all, something writers of fiction try to encourage in their readers, at least during the time that the book or story is open before them, and the writer is hardly immune from this state of ... what shall I call it? How does “directed delusion” sound?

At any rate, Richard Bachman began his career not as a delusion but as a sheltered place where I could publish a few early works which I felt readers might like. Then he began to grow and come alive, as the creatures of a writer’s imagination so frequently do. I began to imagine his life as a dairy farmer ... his wife, the beautiful Claudia Inez Bachman ... his solitary New Hampshire mornings, spent milking the cows, getting in the wood, and thinking about his stories ... his evenings spent writing, always with a glass of whiskey beside his Olivetti typewriter. I once knew a writer who would say his current story or novel was “putting on weight” if it was going well. In much the same way, my pen-name began to put on weight.

Then, when his cover was blown, Richard Bachman died. I made light of this in the few interviews I felt required to give on the subject, saying that he’d died of cancer of the pseudonym, but it was actually shock that killed him: the realization that sometimes people just won’t let you alone. To put it in more fulsome (but not at all inaccurate) terms, Bachman was the vampire side of my existence, killed by the sunlight of disclosure. My feelings about all this were confused enough (and fertile enough) to bring on a book (a Stephen King book, that is), The Dark Half. It was about a writer whose pseudonym, George Stark, actually comes to life. It’s a novel my wife has always detested, perhaps because, for Thad Beaumont, the dream of being a writer overwhelms the reality of being a man; for Thad, delusive thinking overtakes rationality completely, with horrific consequences.

I didn’t have that problem, though. Really. I put Bachman aside, and although I was sorry that he had to die, I would be lying if I didn’t say I felt some relief as well.