Stephen King is one of the most prolific writers in all of human history. Best known for his horror stories (like Carrie), King has written everything from religious epics (The Stand and Desperation) to teen drama (Rage) to high fantasy (The Eyes of the Dragon) to dystopias (The Long Walk) to an amalgamation of every genre of which you can conceive (The Dark Tower series is at turns a Western, a dystopia, an action movie, a high fantasy, a science fiction story, a post-apocalyptic story, and an eschatological religious drama – sometimes all within the same volume.) I unabashedly enjoy Stephen King and find great value in many of his works. His influence has been so massive that one day I imagine we’ll be talking about him as one of the most influential writers in all of history. The reason people keep coming back to him again and again, one of the reasons I keep coming back to him again and again, is that despite however outlandish the setting of his story may be, he always manages to expose the beating heart and frayed nerve of humanity, in all its blood and all its glory. His stories are always revealing of the human condition as it truly is as opposed to how we like to imagine ourselves to be. Recently, I finished one of his lesser known novels, 1981’s Roadwork, that does this very well.
Reading Roadwork, it makes sense why it is a lesser known work. The book would probably have been a better novella than novel and drags a bit in the middle where it feels like the main character, Barton Dawes, is spinning his wheels and things are taking just a little too long to occur. Nevertheless, the story has a lot to recommend itself to a reader, not the least of which is its exploration of what happens when everything just seems to conspire to crush the soul of a man, taking from him everything he has ever loved and found meaningful in life.
Within a few months Dawes loses his son, to brain cancer as a walnut sized tumor, inch by torturous inch, first steals his son’s personality, then his humanity, and finally his life. Then he loses his wife, who seems to mourn and heal the loss of her son while Dawes is trapped in an ever spiraling cycle of grief which ultimately destroys his marriage and drives him to alcoholic self-destruction. Though, as a side note, considering the way she just lets her marriage collapse it is likely that his wife only seems outwardly to be doing better than Barton is; her brokeness merely manifests differently and in a socially more acceptable manner than his does.
At the same time his lifelong job is disintegrating, bought out by corporate overlords who only care about how much money they make and not about the people in their employ. Finally his home is being stolen as the city is exercising its eminent domain power to buy up all the land in Dawes’s neighborhood. They want to build an off ramp right through wher. The last thing is the last straw, under the weight of so much loss Dawes snaps and, refusing to leave his home decides that he will shoot the cops who come to eventually arrest him and blow up the house itself, taking as many people as he can with him and making as big a statement possible about the way that this is destroying him.
There are lots of key themes running through the book. For example, it repeatedly mentions that the government isn’t trying to screw Dawes on the price of his home – he is getting paid a very good price for it and many of his neighbors have already used their pay outs to buy better homes in better places across town. But Dawes’s point isn’t that he is being cheated. Instead he is incensed by the dehumanizing realization that there is nothing he can do to save his home. It isn’t that the house is particularly nice or that he isn’t getting a fair market value, it is that this is his home. This is where he fell came home to safety every night, this is where he made a family, this is the place that he raised and lost his son, the person whom he loved the most in all the world. The fact that this huge faceless corporate monster – the government – can simply take it no matter his own wishes is infuriating in its evil.
Like Ellis Wyatt in another novel, Barton Dawes decides that if he cannot prevent the government from taking what he has built then he will destroy it himself on his own terms. The futility of it all, the down right evil of it all, is driven home in the last few pages of the story when we discover that the extension wasn’t really needed anyway. The local government was only do it in order to continue getting a certain amount of money from the federal government every year. As with most everything having to do with the state, a man’s entire life was destroyed on the whim of some rent-seeking politician looking out for his/her own agenda no matter how it violates and wrecks the lives of us common folk. But all these themes, and the others worthy of mention which I have cut for time, are all side themes. The main theme comes down to one simple question: What does it take to destroy a good man? Said another way, how much can one person take before the Natural Man rears up like a Beast in our chests releasing the monster within each of us that we try and pretend doesn’t exist? And what happens if we can’t put it back in the box again?
The Story of Mr. Piazzi’s Dog
This theme is best illustrated by a story told by one of the characters, a Jewish-Italian mafioso named Salvatore “Sal” Magliore. Dawes meets with Sal in order to obtain the illegal explosives that he will eventually use to destroy his home, the police who have come to take control of it, and himself in the climax of the book (though really Dawes had already been destroyed long before he dies.) Sal tells Dawes a story about a dog that the neighborhood kids would pet when he was a child and how it ultimately snapped one day and attacked one of the other children. In telling the story Sal ultimately says a great deal about the Natural Man, the crushing pain of the world we live in, and, for me, raises question concerning the nature of God’s justice in the Final Judgment. Here is the story:
Magliore said. “Because you remind me of something that happened to me when I was a kid about my son’s age. There was a dog that lived in the neighborhood where I grew up. Hell’s Kitchen, in New York. This was before the Second World War, in the Depression. And this guy named Piazzi had a black mongrel bitch named Andrea, but everybody just called her Mr. Piazzi’s dog. He kept her chained up all the time, but that dog never got mean, not until this one hot day in August. It might have been 1937. She jumped a kid that came up to pet her and put him in the hospital for a month. Thirty-seven stitches in his neck. But I knew it was going to happen. That dog was out in the hot sun all day, every day, all summer long. In the middle of June, it stopped wagging its tail when kids came up to pet it. Then it started to roll its eyes. By the end of July, it would growl way back in its throat when some kid patted it. When it started doing that, I stopped patting Mr. Piazzi’s dog. And the guys said, Wassa matta, Sally? You chickenshit? And I said, No, I ain’t chickenshit but I ain’t stupid, either. That dog’s gone mean. And they all said, “Up your ass, Mr. Piazzi’s dog don’t bite, she never bit nobody, she wouldn’t bite a baby that stuck its head down her throat.” And I said, “You go on and pat her, there’s no law that says you can’t pat a dog, but I ain’t gonna.” And so they all go around saying, Sally’s chickenshit, Sally’s a girl, Sally wants his mama to walk him past Mr. Piazzi’s dog. You know how kids are.”
…”And one of the kids who was yelling the loudest was the kid who finally got it. Luigi Bronticelli, his name was. A good Jew like me, you know?” Magliore laughed. “He went up to pat Mr. Piazzi’s dog one day in August when it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and he ain’t talked above a whisper since that day. He’s got a barbershop in Manhattan, and they call him Whispering Gee. ” Magliore smiled at him. “You remind me of Mr. Piazzi’s dog. You ain’t growling yet, but if someone was to pat you, you’d roll your eyes. And you stopped wagging your tail a long time ago.”
…[Dawes] had the door open and was stepping out when Magliore called after him: “You know what they did to Mr. Piazzi’s dog, mister? They took her to the pound and gassed her.”
From Roadwork, pg. 171 of The Bachman Books anthology, e-book edition
Mr. Piazzi’s dog pops up again and again in the novel after this excerpt. First on page 195 when Dawes talks about the way the government trains people to act and think the way it wants them to act and think and how much the American people, and I would argue the masses generally, love to be trained and be told what they can and cannot think, what they can and cannot do. The next instance comes on page 206 when he has a nightmare where the dog attacks and kills his dead son. This example relates to the previous example mentioned and seems to be symbolic of how the training that the government subjects children to is violent, destructive, and cruel, a cancer that eats away at their innocence and humanity in the same way that his son’s cancer ate away at his mind and personality until nothing was left. Both of these examples tie-in well with the purpose and effect of public education. The final major example comes once more when he meets the final time with Sal Magliore:
[Dawes] stuck out his hand, not sure that Magliore would shake it, but Magliore did.
From Roadwork, pg. 290 of The Bachman Books anthology, e-book edition
“You make no sense to me,” Magliore said. “Why should I like a guy who makes no sense to me?”
“It’s a senseless world,” he said. “If you doubt it, just think about Mr. Piazzi’s dog.”
“I think about her a lot,” Magliore said.
Other than one final passing mention on page 292 that is it. So, what can we take away from the story of Andrea, Mr. Piazzi’s mongrel dog left out in the torturous heat where she is burned and annoyed until she goes feral and attacks a child?
A Parable of Life
We live in a fallen world. We say that so often that it is almost cliché. The kind of people it naturally produces are the literal enemies of God (Mos. 3:19) and are the antithesis of everything God stands for. If God is merciful, loving, kind, and forgiving then the Natural Man, man as he naturally exists, is cruel, vindictive, hateful, selfish, greedy, and brutal. The only sense to be found in the world is that found in the barbaric acts of rape, murder, theft, and corruption that slash across human history leaving nothing but bloody sprays of ichor behind. Even the groups we think of as being the most civilized – think the Romans, the Egyptians, or the Chinese – glorified in violence, slaughter. oppression, torture, incest, and murder.
Left alone in the world we are all like Andrea the dog. We come into the world pure, innocent full of light. Barring serious mental illness, the vast majority of us find joy in our days and sources of love with others. We love serving and helping people, in being kind and loving to others. But the world, in its casual cruelty, corrupts us. It inflicts upon us not only wanton suffering but the meaningless everyday pain that seems to do nothing more than ratchet up the suffering we feel and infect us with hatred and bitterness. And this is before the intentional cruelty humanity inflicts on each other is accounted for.
Soon we begin to withdraw from others. Strangers are no longer a treat the way they were when we were children and everyone was a new friend. Now every stranger is a threat – a robber, rapist, or kidnapper until proven otherwise. Everyone is suspicious and dangerous. If we are lucky this degradation can be slowed by the presence of trusted friends whose love provides some relief from the crushing existential nightmare heat of life. But often it cannot. More and more suffering is piled on by the world and its systems until we break like Andrea, like Dawes.
No wonder so many self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, and porn. No wonder that entertainment, escapism, hedonism, and endless mind-numbing epicureanism are all the things so many of us spend our lives upon. We inherently know we have a rabid animal deep within us, an insane monster, a Natural Man who wants to enact blood and horror upon the Earth, and we’re doing what we can to keep that Beast in its cage least it frenzy and destroy everything we’ve built in our lives. Sometimes that destruction is localized and we merely destroy relationships and careers. Too often for too many though that destruction is massive and people are slaughtered, wars level civilizations, women are raped, children are killed. But it doesn’t even have to be that dramatic.
Witness the real life story of Marvin Heemeyer and the Killdozer.
Bureaucratic Insanity
Heemeyer was a resident of Granby, Colorado who lost a four year zoning case with the city council and the much richer Docheff family. Heemeyer had originally bought a piece of property from auction that the Docheff’s had wanted to purchase but for which Heemeyer outbid them. When they approached him about buy the property and the muffler shop he had built upon it he refused unless they paid him a million dollars or they traded him another patch of land with a building on it for his muffler business. The Docheffs refused. Instead what they did was buy a parcel of land next to the one they wanted from Heemeyer on which they would build their concrete plant. In doing so they also blocked Heemeyer from being able to hook up to the city’s sewer line, which he was legally obligated to do but could not because the Docheffs would only let him do so and to go around them would cost Heemeyer and exorbitant amount of money. The Docheffs, by their own admission, used this to try and force Heemeyer to sell them his land and drop his suit against them (he was suing them for, among other things, blocking his access to the road.) Finally, Heemeyer was willing to sell but the city wouldn’t let him because it demanded the site be hooked up to the city sewer lines first.
This trapped Heemeyer in a no-win situation. Even if he could find a buyer for his land the price would be significantly devalued because they would either want him to pay for the sewer hook-up first or to decrease the price they were willing to purchase the property for by the amount it would cost them to install the sewer hook-up. When Heemeyer eventually lost his case he quietly retired and began to turn the bulldozer he had purchased originally to build his road to the street into a kind of tank – nicknamed the “killdozer.” It was impervious to both small arms fire and small external explosives and could go just about anywhere except underwater. Once prepared, Heemeyer went on a tactical strike, destroying the business and homes of those he felt had screwed him out of him property, targeting both the Docheffs, city property, and the private property of the city officials who he felt had been unreasonable and had used the law to destroy him and his dream, racking up over $7 million dollars worth of damages. Having lost everything he gave into the despair and rage that life inflicted upon him and sought vengeance for what was done to him against those who had hurt him. He once wrote, ““I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”
In the end he shot himself rather than be caught. Like Andrea the dog when he snapped back at those who had ruined him the only outcome would be his death.
In Roadwork the main character, Barton Dawes, found himself, like Andrea the dog and the real life Martin Heemeyer – pushed by the suffering and bureaucratic injustice of life beyond a point where he could be sane anymore. The monster was loose and taking over his life. First it destroyed his job, then his marriage, and finally his home and his life. Without the hope for tomorrow the pain of life overwhelmed Dawes and he lashed out violently, brutally, and suicidally. He knew he would be “gassed” either by the police who would try to kill him or by his own hand. And he kept thundering down that road anyway. He had become wild and vicious and deadly, a threat to everyone around him, rabid and lost.
This is why the Natural Man is so dangerous, why it is the Enemy of God, and exactly why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so important.
The Cure For The Pain
There is no help for the Natural Man in the world. The world’s best advice is simply to embrace it. You be you, you do you, etc. Anything that tells you to put a leash on who you are – your identity, your gender, your sexual orientation, etc. – to give up something and discipline yourself is treated as dangerous and a threat. In a way it is dangerous because the Natural Man wants to run wild, wants you to give in, doesn’t want you to seize control of your destiny by seizing control of yourself and deciding who and what you will be through self-sacrifice and discipline. But these things are the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And not only does the Gospel give you the pathway to follow, it gives you the power to walk that path, it makes it real through the grace of Jesus Christ, the enabling power of Christ that empowers us to surpass our fallen worldly limitations and to be able to progress towards exaltation and godhood.
Christ slays the Natural Man and gives us the tools to respond to the hatred, pain, and cruelty of the world with love, relief, and kindness, no matter what vitriol is poured out upon us. Though often portrayed as weakness these virtues are actually the most powerful tools we have to tame the monster within ourselves and within others. All of us lose control and lash out at those we love, intentionally saying and doing things that we know will cause them pain and suffering as the monster within us stretches the length of chain holding it back. It is only by intentionally acting against it in the very opposite ways that our violent instincts tell us to, by meeting violence with peace and cruelty with kindness, that we actually drive the Beast howling back inside and assert our liberty of it.
Through repentance we are able to go through the lifelong process of transformation to become something truly more than we are now. Because we know the purpose of life, because we know why we are here, because we know where we are going after death, because we have access to power beyond the ken of the fallen world and those who will not come out from it we are able to over come the world through Christ who has already overcome all things. These are the things that Barton Dawes lacked.
Dawes didn’t know that beyond this veil of tears there was a more joyful sphere, one where he and his son could be reunited forever. He didn’t know how to find spiritual healing through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and could not escape his pain as a result. He could not save his marriage because it wasn’t built upon the eternal truths of the Gospel which would make it possible. His life was without meaning and therefore without purpose. When you have no purpose, no goal, then it isn’t just easy to become lost. You already are lost and can never be found. Without the Gospel, Dawes had no hope, only pain, finding purpose in his loss and rage that he couldn’t find anywhere else.
This brings me to the topic of the Final Judgment. If we as humans are constantly struggling against the violent chittering monkey inside of us, the bloody Natural Man red in tooth and claw, and life is constantly pouring on the pain and suffering until we break under the weight, how accountable are we when we lash out? I am sure that some will merely dismiss this question out of hand, but I ask you to go back to the story of Mr. Piazzi’s dog. Is that dog responsible for eventually breaking down after enduring months of torturous heat and pain that drove it mad? Of course not. The dog’s owner is ultimately to blame, not the dog, who did everything it could to resist its final descent into madness.
However much agency we have, in the end of the day cannot the same thing happen to us? Cannot life break someone down so much, expose them to so much pain, subject them to so much suffering, and pour salt on to their open wounds so long that we lose control of who we are and what we know to be good?
I think so. We can all be Mr. Piazzi’s dog, which is why the Gospel calls so much for intervention. God cares little for the excuses, justifications, and laws of man. Faith without works is dead.
God orders us to step into the breach and help others we see in pain so that it never gets to the point of violence. If someone had simply stepped up and given the dog a blanket to cover the concrete, a tent for shade, or let loose its collar and set it free, then it most likely would never have attacked and permanently hurt a child. If we see people in need we serve them and damn any man or any law that would stop us we can save them from suffering and those who would they would have hurt. In the Day of Judgment we will be called to account for whether we did this or not. Those who have broken under life’s pain will face mercy from a God who can see into every aspect of their minds, hearts, and circumstances. On the other hand, we will face judgment for whether we have done God’s work or not, if we loved God more than we feared man, and if we did what we could to relieve the suffering of others with Christ. In all cases His justice will be tempered by the blood of Christ who has already paid the cost of the evils we commit and we should rejoice that all people can be saved in the Kingdom of God instead of hoping some really get what they “deserve.”
I hope none of us get what we deserve, because then we are all damned.
It is when I see the darkness that I most rejoice in the Light of Christ. Though Roadwork is an imperfect book, the story in tells contains a powerful warning about the darkness of the world. To the disciple of Christ Roadwork is a forceful reminder of the duty we have to love one another, serve our enemies, carry forth the Gospel message of salvation and Hope to all the world, confront evil no matter where it comes from – whether that be from government or from the common man, and prepare the world for His Second Coming so that what happened to Barton Dawes fictionally and what happens to Marvin Heemeyer (and so many others) in reality never happens again. As we do so we will alleviate the mist of darkness that blinds the world and causes them to become lost in its dreary wastes. Through our actions we will lead them to the exceedingly great joy that comes from the fruit of the Tree of Everlasting Life (see 1 Nephi 8).
We will make the world a better place.
We will build Zion.