Mrs. Todd’s Mercedes gets her out of Castle Rock (and out of the known universe) in “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut,” but the old Cresswell in “Uncle Otto’s Truck” (both in the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew) is the opposite: a reliable local landmark, though its significance is fluid and intensely subjective. 

When the narrator’s Uncle Otto and his business partner George McCutcheon first get the truck, it’s a symbol of their hard work and success, as they build their names and empire in Castle County. They claim their territory near Castle Rock, though the purchase of four thousand acres, and “they explored them in McCutcheon’s truck, cruising the woods roads and the pulper’s tracks, grinding along in first gear for the most part, shuddering over washboards and splashing throughout washouts … two young men who had become New England land barons in the dark depths of the big Depression” (429). On their last daring adventure in the truck, it also becomes a symbol of their luck—the engine overheats, setting off a destructive chain reaction of explosive mechanical failure, but both men emerge unscathed. 

While the significance and symbolism of the truck brings these two men together, eventually their paths diverge: McCutcheon has the old truck brought back to the property and positioned facing the road, a sight that cheers and motivates him as he dreams of building his own home in that spot. But when he and Uncle Otto come to a disagreement about a business deal, the truck becomes a useful tool for eliminating McCutcheon, when Otto pushes the truck off of its precarious blocks, crushing his erstwhile partner and resolving their disagreement for good. 

Rumors circulate about just what might have happened with the truth and McCutcheon’s “accidental” death, but there’s no proof, and the truck takes on a range of different meanings and memories for people in Castle Rock, both those who live there full time and tourists who pass through. It becomes a symbol of Uncle Otto’s deteriorating mental state for some, a pretty place to take a picture against the backdrop of the White Mountains for others, and, for the narrator, a site of fear and horror. When his father lifts him up onto the truck seat to check it out as a young boy, he says “I remember fear sweeping over me in a wave colder and grayer than the taste of the air as my father put his hands in my armpits and lifted me into the cab …I remember the air sweeping past my face as I went up and up, and then its clean taste was replaced by the smells of ancient Diamond Gem Oil, cracked leather, mouse droppings, and … I swear it … blood” (432). 

In his final years, the truck inspires a similar dread in Uncle Otto, who becomes convinced that the truck is coming to kill him, slowly making its way to his house across the road, though to the outside observer, it never seems to move. But while the truck clearly stays in its accustomed place, anchored in objective and physical reality, Uncle Otto also turns up unquestionably dead, leaking motor oil from his orifices, and with a 1920s-vintage Champion spark plug jammed in his mouth. While the accepted wisdom around Castle Rock is that Otto committed suicide by drinking oil, the narrator cannot deny the truck’s power, confiding in his readers that “the truck is still out there in its field … and for whatever it is worth, it all happened” (443, emphasis original). 

Just about every small town has its familiar features and local landmarks, which become as much a part of the town’s geography as the streets, intersections, and buildings, integral parts of the world through which its residents move. The old Cresswell truck is one such common feature in Castle Rock: a recognizable landmark, a good place for a picture, and the source of endless rumors and speculation. But none of these stories capture the true depth and complexity of the truck, its significance, and its terrifying ability. Residents of Castle Rock may drive past the abandoned truck, using its steadfast position as a navigational reference point or feeling a pang of nostalgic recognition, drawing on their own perceptions and perspectives without ever really sensing the library of stories the old truck holds. 

[Page numbers for “Uncle Otto’s Truck” are from the 1986 Signet edition of Skeleton Crew].