Eneh Akpan Writes: Theme of Failure in Stephen King's Roadwork

Stephen King doesn’t come right out and state either in the novel or elsewhere that his book, Roadwork, addresses the theme of failure or human ineptitude in dealing with trivial faux pas before it gets blown out of proportion. He shoves it right through the transom and drops the responsibility of peeling back the loaded symbolism into the bosom of that unsuspecting culprit, Reader’s Discretion—without actually detracting from the true essence of story. Bart Dawes' son, Charlie dies from brain cancer and to deal with the emotional strain Dawes invents a split personality who he calls Fred. As Dawes tells an employee, “In those days there was no slick abortion law. When you got a girl pregnant, you married her or you ran out on her. End of options.” So it happened Bart married his girlfriend because somebody slammed the doors downstairs when they were getting it on and startled him into an orgasm.

Bart said about ending up at the industrial laundry where he worked after he got his then girlfriend pregnant; “I married her and took the first job I could get, which was here.” The father-son management (at the laundry) gave him two grand which was a huge sum back then and told him to go get a college degree, which he did. “Mary (Mary is Bart’s wife) lost the baby in the seventh month and the doctor said she’d never have another one.” Bart never really expressed regrets towards marrying his wife. As Bart notes elsewhere concerning an unrelated issue, “I wouldn’t be sticking out my neck if I thought someone was going to cut it off.”

As it’s said in Nigeria; one thing led to another. Like a dragged out chain reaction, events suggested themselves to Bart Dawes step by tragic step. First, Bart inherits the laundry as an underdog manager; his laundry shop had been incorporated into a bigger parent company. Second, his house was in the line of a government road construction project and he was compelled to move out. Third, the industrial laundry which he owed his life and career was about to face the wrecking ball as well. His wife had become a walking dead since they lost Charlie, their son to brain cancer.

Charlie was buried in his backyard and Bart couldn’t quite bring himself to go dig him back up and bury him over again. The grief would be too much of a weight to carry on his pair of shoulders.

Bart took up the job at the industrial laundry because of an accidental pregnancy, though he lost the child, eventually. He stayed on and worked at the laundry, which afforded him the house about to face the wrecking ball on account of the juvenile mistake. If his house goes down add the laundry to the equation and Dawes eventually relocates, it would seem as if somebody wiped out his entire life (something that has taken him twenty some odd years to build) and handed him a clean slate. Only, it wouldn’t be to a young Dawes with the world in his sights. It would be instead to a graying, despairing guy married to an old hag (one who is daily tortured by memories of the son she lost) with only the casket of a dead son to show for all his effort. The crushing déjà vu of his initial failure (something Stephen King calls fuckaroo) would have been too debilitating to close the eyes to like somebody putting the ballpoint of a BIC pen to your eye.

Dawes inevitably, loses his job after botching moves to purchase a new facility and then his wife Mary dumps him when she learns that contrary to Bart’s assertion, he'd done nothing in the area of getting them relocated. There it was finally out in the open and just what Dawes had been gaining at from the start without actually knowing it himself. His wife, gone, the job their youthful indulgence shoved down his throat blown out the backdoor. His only take-away prize lay in his backyard concealed within a marked grave to guarantee he stays put-the remains of his dead son, Charlie.
To Bart Dawes, it was a perfect alibi for an explosive suicide.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan